Sunday, November 28, 2004
Leaving Madrid
We are leaving Madrid today. Yesterday we took a day trip to Toledo. It was
not as great as our guidebook said, but it was nice. A old style walled town
in the countryside, next to a gorgeous river gorge. We saw the cathedral
that was supposed to be really awesome, but it was almost totally under
contruction so we couldnt see half of it. And we saw two old synagogues. one
was converted to a church and apparently had some moorish history too, but
it was a real disappointment. There was nothing in it, but the church altar.
We walked in, took a circle around the big room and left. the only
interesting part were the moorish style arches that ran the whole length of
it on both sides. There was nothing there to suggest it was ever a synagogue
though. Then we went to the jewish musuem and synagogue. That was slightly
more interesting, but all the descriptions pretty much were in spanish
except these cards that were in english and basically told the history of
the jews from the diaspora to
present day, and included info on all the festivals and stuff. It was
really pretty generic. It was interesting to see the excavations of the old
building though. They think they found the old mikvah, but we didnt get to
see that.
I have found that I like El Greco paintings. (Seth says they look like anime
cartoons) So I was looking forward to seeing the El Greco musuem there.
Unfortunately it was all pretty much portraits of saints and bishops and
stuff. I dont really enjoy the religious themed paintings as much, but if it
sort of tells a story then it is interesting anyway. But the portraits are
almost always boring. Oh well, it was still fun to walk around the old town.
This morning we went to the El Rastro market. It is held on Sunday in Madrid
and it was really interesting and HUGE. Pretty much anything you could
imagine was there, people selling handmade stuff, people selling cheap mass
produced souveneirs, hardware, antiques, books, comic books, animals, -
basically just all kinds of stuff. It was fun to walk around and we bought a
few small things.
Now on to Seville. There is rain headed here so I hope it misses Seville and
continues on its way, but I fear we are going to get it in Paris.
Meg and Seth
not as great as our guidebook said, but it was nice. A old style walled town
in the countryside, next to a gorgeous river gorge. We saw the cathedral
that was supposed to be really awesome, but it was almost totally under
contruction so we couldnt see half of it. And we saw two old synagogues. one
was converted to a church and apparently had some moorish history too, but
it was a real disappointment. There was nothing in it, but the church altar.
We walked in, took a circle around the big room and left. the only
interesting part were the moorish style arches that ran the whole length of
it on both sides. There was nothing there to suggest it was ever a synagogue
though. Then we went to the jewish musuem and synagogue. That was slightly
more interesting, but all the descriptions pretty much were in spanish
except these cards that were in english and basically told the history of
the jews from the diaspora to
present day, and included info on all the festivals and stuff. It was
really pretty generic. It was interesting to see the excavations of the old
building though. They think they found the old mikvah, but we didnt get to
see that.
I have found that I like El Greco paintings. (Seth says they look like anime
cartoons) So I was looking forward to seeing the El Greco musuem there.
Unfortunately it was all pretty much portraits of saints and bishops and
stuff. I dont really enjoy the religious themed paintings as much, but if it
sort of tells a story then it is interesting anyway. But the portraits are
almost always boring. Oh well, it was still fun to walk around the old town.
This morning we went to the El Rastro market. It is held on Sunday in Madrid
and it was really interesting and HUGE. Pretty much anything you could
imagine was there, people selling handmade stuff, people selling cheap mass
produced souveneirs, hardware, antiques, books, comic books, animals, -
basically just all kinds of stuff. It was fun to walk around and we bought a
few small things.
Now on to Seville. There is rain headed here so I hope it misses Seville and
continues on its way, but I fear we are going to get it in Paris.
Meg and Seth
Friday, November 26, 2004
Madrid
We are in Madrid now, but I forgot one thing about Barcelona. there was this
street market on the main street that sells pets. Mostly birds and reptiles
and rodents becuase the people of Barcelona live in apartments mostly. What
was interesting though is the variety of these things they had, there were a
ton of different kinds of turtles - seth said most of them would be illegal
in the US becuase of salmonella or something - and there were every kind of
bird including turkeys and chickens and pigeons and peacocks I think. I dont
think any of them were for eating either, they each had their own little
cage and there werent more than like 2 of any kind of bird. And there were
chipmunks. It was really interesting.
Ok so now we are in Madrid. the train ride here was pretty awful, 5 hours
and we were in a very crowded cramped second class becuase the reservation
for first class would have been 22 euro each - at the end of the trip we
decided it would have been worth it. And they didnt even give us seats next
to each other. We sat in other seats until the people came back for them,
then the woman next to seth offered to switch so we were able to sit next to
each other, but it was still pretty annoying.
Madrid is pretty bland compared to Barcelona. It is just a big city really.
Our hotel is nice and in a good location, we get our own room and our own
shower, but not our own toilet. Yesterday we went to the three main musuems
in Madrid, the Prado - which has a ton of art by famous artists like 100
paintings by Rubens and a bunch by El Greco and Velazquez and we liked some
by the Dutch painter Bosch, it is only art up until like the 17th century
though - then we went to the thyssen gallery which is described as major
works by minor artists and minor works by major artists, it is a collection
of art that was collected all by one family, and the musuem is huge. there
were all different genres. It was interesting to us becuase we didnt have a
guide or anything, we just wandered and looked at the paintings and it was
apparent how much we learned about art on this trip that we could make
comments and compare styles and stuff. The musuem was also set up to
facilitate that becuase they had
it divided into rooms like 17th century Italian art, 17th century German
art, ect. and you could really compare how the different countries evolved
over time. Like 17th century German art looks practically medieval compared
to the 17th century Italians who were getting ready for the Renaissance.
Also this musuem had a good collection of impressionism and more modern art
that we enjoy. We have found that we like the art from the 19th century like
late 1800s to early 1900s the most, but after that it starts to get too
modern with just the dots and lines.
The final musuem was the modern art sofia musuem, where Picasso Guernica is.
We found that three art musuems in one day is too much, we kind of skimmed
this musuem, but that is ok because it was mostly really modern art that we
arent into anyway. Guernica and the other Picassos were interesting, as were
some of the Dali and other surrealist works.
After that it was about 8pm so we went for tapas at a place that was
recommended by the easy jet airline magazine for being cheap and tasty. It
really was good. It was crowded with locals by the time we left, but we had
gotten there early enough to get a spot at the counter. We tried practically
every tapa that wasnt ham or fish. We had this really good pig in a blanket
type thing, and a stuffed red pepper, and some sort of shrimp and cheese
thing that was really tasty, and a beef empanada that wasnt so good becuase
they dont serve them hot around here, and a stuffed mussel, and the free
appetizer that came with our drinks was tuna fish pizza. Seth had some beer
and I had some really good house wine and it only cost like 12 euros, which
is really good becuase the dollar is continuing to fall against the euro so
now we have even less money than we did before. Oh and we had to make our
train reservations to Paris and Seville and those were NOT cheap. even with
the eurail pass. It seems
that the eurail pass is most useful in like Germany and austria and even
italy, but spain and france have all these high speed premium trains that
you have to pay extra for.
Today we were going to go for a day trip to Toledo but decided to sleep in
and run errands and see the rest of the city that we missed so far, like the
palace and a statue of the fallen angel - or satan on his way down before he
was totally satan. We saw that this morning, it was a really cool statue, he
still has wings and looks like an angel for the most part, but tiny little
horns are starting and a serpent is grabbing him and pulling him down toward
the demons at the base. Now we are doing laundry. Tommorrow we will go to
Toledo.
Hope everyone had a good thanksgiving.
Meg and Seth
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Loving Barcelona!
We are still in Barcelona and loving it! This city is wonderful! Yesterday
we started out with bagels for breakfast. Bagels are not a big thing in
europe I guess but there is a pretty good restaurant here so we went there
it was a nice change from our usual croissant and latte breakfast. Then we
ran a few errands in the morning. We had to send a money order to the hotel
that we reserved in Paris, that was a pain in the rear but I think we
managed it. There were some very helpful people at the post office (believe
it or not!). Then we went on a bike tour. That was fun and a little scary.
Mostly we were on pedestrian streets, but I am not sure that was less scary
than the roads with cars because people walking are less predictable,
especially in tourist areas where they spend a great deal of time looking up
or out or at books than watching where they are going. Still we saw a lot of
cool stuff, and heard some interesting stories and history. Our tour guide
was originally from
California. We saw the Sagrada Familia church, designed originally by
antonio gaudi, the back part was designed by a different architect after
gaudi´s death and so the front and back could be two different buildings!
The Gaudi front looks sort of like a drippy sandcastle that kids make at the
beach, all curvy and stuff, and the back is cubist! AND it is still under
construction and only about 30 percent done. The Spanish people like to
think it will be done in like 30 years, but supposedly experts say more like
100!! Still it was amazing. I am not usually into architecture, much less
modern architecture, but I found that I really like Gaudi. He was part of
what started the art noveau and art deco movements in paris and new york
respectively and I like those styles too. We also saw the music theater that
he designed which was just amazing with color and nature inspried motifs.
Finally we saw a fountain that he designed while still a student for a
world´s fair or something. It was
gorgoues! Since he was still a student his style hadnt totally devolped
yet and he used more classical greek and roman themes, but instead of
incorporating the nature into the structure like he would later in life, he
added it right on top by planting all these plants and mosses to cover
certain parts of the fountain. It looks partially like the fountain is part
of the landscape and partially like some ancient oasis that has been
overtaken by plants.
We also stopped by the beach and learned how there was no beach in barcelona
until the 1992 olympics when they created one. After the bike tour we took a
siesta before going out for dinner. We decided to try this restaurant that
was recommended in our guide books and also by the tour guide as really
cheap good catalan food. Only problem is that they dont open until 8:30 and
they dont take reservations so there is always a line when they open. So we
went to a sort of local tapas / sidraria bar that was recommended by rick
steves. It was kind of dead when we were there but I suspect it would pick
up later, and it was definitely a local type place. Sure they probably get a
bunch of tourists now becuase it is in that book, but it was kind of rough
around the edges and on a back street. We shared a bottle of homemade sidra
(apple wine, or cider) and the bartender even showed us how to pour it.
There is a half of a barrel sort of in front of the bar and you hold the
bottle up about chest
level and the glass tilted and down just below your waist then pour it, so
that it gets a lot of air in it. (that is why the waiters and the bar we
went to the night before were pouring it over their heads) I didnt try but
seth really got the hang of it, so much that the bartender commented on it
being good. he only spilled a little too! (even the bartenders were spilling
a little each time so that is ok.)
After that we went back to the restaurant to stand in line. When we got
there 20 min before opening there were maybe 30 people in front of us. But
the place was pretty big so we got a table. Seth had the appetizer sampler
which I thought was brave since it included baby squid and cuttlefish and
other stuff. I had a shellfish soup. His was better though, I even tried the
baby squid even though I could hardly look at it, but it was really tasty!
they had flavored it really well. And there was this little slice of onion
pie that was really good. We had sangria to go with it, but it was a little
sweet for my taste. Sangria is always a little sweet but I think they added
a lot of sugar to this. Then for dinner Seth had lamb stew that came with
what we thought were potatoes but turned out to be pieces of assorted fruit.
It was good though. I had meatballs in some sort of special sauce. Again I
made a mediocre choice, it tasted like stroganoff.
Today we went around to the places that we had not seen yet mostly other
gaudi works since I found that I really like his stuff. We had to buy some
postcards though becuase it is hard to get good pictures of the buildings
becuase there are trees and cars and stuff in the way. Then we made
reservations for the train to madrid and for our hotel there. I called the
hotel and the guy didnt speak english so I managed to book the whole thing
in spanish and he even said my spanish was ´´muy bien´´ which I thought was
crazy since I havent spoken any spanish really since high school and I was
never really any good at it. But I guess it is passable, at least for making
hotel reservations. It still cracks me up!
Tommorrow we leave for Madrid.
Meg and Seth
we started out with bagels for breakfast. Bagels are not a big thing in
europe I guess but there is a pretty good restaurant here so we went there
it was a nice change from our usual croissant and latte breakfast. Then we
ran a few errands in the morning. We had to send a money order to the hotel
that we reserved in Paris, that was a pain in the rear but I think we
managed it. There were some very helpful people at the post office (believe
it or not!). Then we went on a bike tour. That was fun and a little scary.
Mostly we were on pedestrian streets, but I am not sure that was less scary
than the roads with cars because people walking are less predictable,
especially in tourist areas where they spend a great deal of time looking up
or out or at books than watching where they are going. Still we saw a lot of
cool stuff, and heard some interesting stories and history. Our tour guide
was originally from
California. We saw the Sagrada Familia church, designed originally by
antonio gaudi, the back part was designed by a different architect after
gaudi´s death and so the front and back could be two different buildings!
The Gaudi front looks sort of like a drippy sandcastle that kids make at the
beach, all curvy and stuff, and the back is cubist! AND it is still under
construction and only about 30 percent done. The Spanish people like to
think it will be done in like 30 years, but supposedly experts say more like
100!! Still it was amazing. I am not usually into architecture, much less
modern architecture, but I found that I really like Gaudi. He was part of
what started the art noveau and art deco movements in paris and new york
respectively and I like those styles too. We also saw the music theater that
he designed which was just amazing with color and nature inspried motifs.
Finally we saw a fountain that he designed while still a student for a
world´s fair or something. It was
gorgoues! Since he was still a student his style hadnt totally devolped
yet and he used more classical greek and roman themes, but instead of
incorporating the nature into the structure like he would later in life, he
added it right on top by planting all these plants and mosses to cover
certain parts of the fountain. It looks partially like the fountain is part
of the landscape and partially like some ancient oasis that has been
overtaken by plants.
We also stopped by the beach and learned how there was no beach in barcelona
until the 1992 olympics when they created one. After the bike tour we took a
siesta before going out for dinner. We decided to try this restaurant that
was recommended in our guide books and also by the tour guide as really
cheap good catalan food. Only problem is that they dont open until 8:30 and
they dont take reservations so there is always a line when they open. So we
went to a sort of local tapas / sidraria bar that was recommended by rick
steves. It was kind of dead when we were there but I suspect it would pick
up later, and it was definitely a local type place. Sure they probably get a
bunch of tourists now becuase it is in that book, but it was kind of rough
around the edges and on a back street. We shared a bottle of homemade sidra
(apple wine, or cider) and the bartender even showed us how to pour it.
There is a half of a barrel sort of in front of the bar and you hold the
bottle up about chest
level and the glass tilted and down just below your waist then pour it, so
that it gets a lot of air in it. (that is why the waiters and the bar we
went to the night before were pouring it over their heads) I didnt try but
seth really got the hang of it, so much that the bartender commented on it
being good. he only spilled a little too! (even the bartenders were spilling
a little each time so that is ok.)
After that we went back to the restaurant to stand in line. When we got
there 20 min before opening there were maybe 30 people in front of us. But
the place was pretty big so we got a table. Seth had the appetizer sampler
which I thought was brave since it included baby squid and cuttlefish and
other stuff. I had a shellfish soup. His was better though, I even tried the
baby squid even though I could hardly look at it, but it was really tasty!
they had flavored it really well. And there was this little slice of onion
pie that was really good. We had sangria to go with it, but it was a little
sweet for my taste. Sangria is always a little sweet but I think they added
a lot of sugar to this. Then for dinner Seth had lamb stew that came with
what we thought were potatoes but turned out to be pieces of assorted fruit.
It was good though. I had meatballs in some sort of special sauce. Again I
made a mediocre choice, it tasted like stroganoff.
Today we went around to the places that we had not seen yet mostly other
gaudi works since I found that I really like his stuff. We had to buy some
postcards though becuase it is hard to get good pictures of the buildings
becuase there are trees and cars and stuff in the way. Then we made
reservations for the train to madrid and for our hotel there. I called the
hotel and the guy didnt speak english so I managed to book the whole thing
in spanish and he even said my spanish was ´´muy bien´´ which I thought was
crazy since I havent spoken any spanish really since high school and I was
never really any good at it. But I guess it is passable, at least for making
hotel reservations. It still cracks me up!
Tommorrow we leave for Madrid.
Meg and Seth
Exciting Barcelona!
We are in Barcelona now.
On our full day in Florence we started out at 9am at the Accademia musuem.
There we made the mistake of renting the audio guide, for two people, which
basically meant that we were tied together by our headphones and this tiny
cord. And the guide wasnt that good anyway. Oh well. We saw Michelangelo´s
David and his unfinished Prisoners and Pieta statues. The Prisoners were
really incredible. They say Michelangelo, unlike most sculptors who make
plaster casts and marks on the stone and stuff, just started chipping away
freehand in fits of activity at the block to reveal the figure that he
believed was put there by God and was just waiting to be revealed. I find
that really amazing, and it was even more amazing to see his unfinished
works, especially the Prisoners, becuase you get to see a little of his
creative process and the figures really do look like they are trying to get
out of the stone. Almost like there is a figure of a man laying in a pool of
water and you can only see the
parts that are above the surface. Then of course there was David. We
looked at it for a while. At first it strikes you just as massive and
incredible in that respect. But after you look at it for a while it almost
seems like he is going to come to life and stride towards you. The muscles
and veins are that real.
After that we got some lunch before heading over to the Uffizi gallery.
There are lots of famous works in that gallery, mostly of the Florentine
Renaissance, which we learned was characterized by very soft colors and lots
of beauty. Like in the famous, Birth of Venus, or Venus in a Clamshell as
most people recognize it. It had a hazy quality to it that was just
beautiful.
We also saw the duomo and the baptistery doors facing it that were designed
by Ghiberti in a competition. They were amazing in their detail and 3D
effect. They are bronze reliefs and so a little 3D anyway, but the bronze
used was only a few centimeters thick, and they look much more 3D than they
actually are. We also saw the Ponte Vecchio bridge which is really
beautiful. The bridge has all these little buildings on it that are used as
jewelry shops, but from either side of the bridge they are just multihued
buildings practically on top of one another that provide a really beautiful
facade along the river. Oh and we ate lots of Gelato, because that is the
Florence thing to do and it was really good.
We left Florence with no real definite plans of how to get here three days
ago. We planned to stop in Pisa to see the tower then spend the night in a
town a little farther on - like Genoa maybe. On the train to Pisa though, we
decided that we wanted to go straight on to Nice if we could only stopping
to see the tower since we were there already. Well as it turned out the only
train out of Pisa that would get us to Nice - connecting in Genoa - left a
half hour after we got in, so we didnt have time to see the tower. So yeah
we went to Pisa but we didnt see the tower. Oh well, I have heard it isnt
all that great anyway but as long as we were there it would have been nice
to see. So we stopped in Genoa for an hour and a half, didnt see much there
either, but the reason we didnt stay the night there as planned is that the
guide book said it was kind of seedy. Well the area near the train station
sure was. I mean the area near train stations is never nice, but we have
stayed in those
areas lots, like in rome, and it wasnt as bad as genoa. Even the train
station was depressing in Genoa. Seth said the little cafe in the train
station that we were sitting in is the kind of cafe where you would sit
every day and write a really depressing novel, like Crime and Punishment or
something.
So we arrived in Nice around 8:30pm and found our hotel with no problem. (we
had called from pisa when we decided to go there.) the hotel was nice - ha
ha nice hotel in nice. we had our own room. Nice was really expensive
though. all the food was pricey unless you ate just sandwhiches, and even
those were more expensive than we are used to. We stopped in nice for two
reasons, one was that it was about half way from florence to barcelona and
the other is that there is a chagall musuem there and we both like chagall.
So we stayed two nights which gave us like one day. so on the first day we
went to the train station to find out about trains to barcelona or avignon.
we were deciding if we wanted to take a really long train to barcelona or
stop again in avignon. and we found out that there was a night train from
nice to barcelona that we didnt know about and was different than the
expensive one from milan. So we booked in on that the next night, which gave
us two days in Nice. Then we
headed up the hill to the chagall musuem. Well werent we surprised when it
was closed for renovations until sometime in 2005! so we decided to hang
around Nice then decide about maybe a day trip the next day before our 10pm
train (Cannes and Monte Carlo are close). We basically decided to just take
it easy becuase I am STILL sick. nothing big just a cold but it is really a
drag. So we napped and watched tv (which we hadnt seen in a while, but only
CNN was in english). The next day we did laundry and hung out some more, and
went down to the water where it was pretty cold. We spent a lot of time in a
coffee shop planning out our time in Spain and we made some reservations for
Paris and Barcelona. Oh and in Nice, we had a lot of Beaujolais Noveau ( I
probably spelled that wrong) it is the first wine of the season from
somewhere in the north of France, and THE thing to drink at this time of
year, it is like tradition one waitress explained to us. And I dont blame
them, it was really
good. It tasted fresh and fruity and wonderful.
So last night we got on the train in Nice at 10pm and arrived on the Spanish
side of the border at Port Bou around 6:30 this morning. We had to wait an
hour for another train to take us to Barcelona. But it was ok becuase we had
some time to get some food. We got here around 9:30 am and found our hotel
with a little difficulty (we were not at the train station that I had
suspected) But our hotel is nice even if it is on the 4th floor!! I was so
tired I could barely make it up the stairs.
We had a cheap lunch before heading to the Cathedral (which is under
renovation and we can´t see other than the picture of it on the tarp that
covers it). In front of the Cathedral on Sundays the locals, and I am sure a
few tourists gather and do this dance. I cant remember the exact name
something like sardana. There was an orchestra there to play the music and
mostly older people gathered in circles, placing their bags and coats and
things in the center (to symbolize community one book said, but also I
imagine so that they can dance without having someone run off with there
stuff) then they hold hands and do this slow kind of hokey pokey dance. Ok
not quite the hokey pokey, but they dont go around in circles or anything,
they more of shuffle their feet back and forth adding the occasional toe tap
toward the center or little hop from one foot to the other. It was really
interesting becuase these people werent being paid, or anything, they just
hang around after mass and do this
dance if they want, and people just kept running up and joining in. It
certainly wasnt spontaneous since they do it after mass every sunday and
someone arranged the orchestra to be there, but it was really neat anyway
becuase it was like real culture, real people. Supposedly it is the national
dance of Catalunya. ( the state that barcelona is in.) Oh another thing that
is interesting here is that the signs are all in Spanish AND Catalan, and
sometimes english if they choose a third language. I guess the Catalan
dialect of Spanish is that different (and they are that patriotic about it)
that they feel they need to have both Spanish and Catalan.
After that we headed to the Picasso musuem. I wasnt really impressed. It was
well done in that it told the story of his life and the evolution of his
works, but most of the stuff there were this little tiny postcard sized
paintings. I felt like the just gathered anything they could find by him and
put it in this musuem. It was interesting, dont get me wrong, and I would
recommend anyone who came here to go, but it just wasnt as good as I thought
it was going to be from all the stuff I had heard.
We took a long siesta this afternoon becuase we didnt sleep well on the
train. Then we went out and had tapas! It was really cool. We went to this
place recommended by both of our guidebooks, but there seemed to be just as
many spanish speakers there as tourists, and the place wasnt large tacky.
(nevertheless maybe we can find a more authentic place later) It was just a
bar basically with all these plates of tapas on it like a buffet and you get
a plate and take what you want and each one has a toothpick in it and when
you are done you pay 1.20euro for each toothpick on your plate. It was
really fun we tried all sorts on things, everything on a piece of crostini
bread. Like different cheeses, mostly cream cheese like consistency but with
different flavors and all sorts of additions. I had cider to drink, which I
guess is the thing to drink there. The waiters pour it like over their head
into the cup at like waist height. It was really good though and cheap. The
whole meal only cost
us 20euro and that included 3 ciders and a beer and enough tapas to fill
us up! It was really fun. Then we storlled along the main pedestrian street
which is interesting becuase it was so crowded and it is Sunday night! Seth
says Barcelona is just a party town, but everywhere else in europe that we
have been sundays are dead so it was a nice surprise.
Wooo that was long! sorry about that.
Meg and Seth
On our full day in Florence we started out at 9am at the Accademia musuem.
There we made the mistake of renting the audio guide, for two people, which
basically meant that we were tied together by our headphones and this tiny
cord. And the guide wasnt that good anyway. Oh well. We saw Michelangelo´s
David and his unfinished Prisoners and Pieta statues. The Prisoners were
really incredible. They say Michelangelo, unlike most sculptors who make
plaster casts and marks on the stone and stuff, just started chipping away
freehand in fits of activity at the block to reveal the figure that he
believed was put there by God and was just waiting to be revealed. I find
that really amazing, and it was even more amazing to see his unfinished
works, especially the Prisoners, becuase you get to see a little of his
creative process and the figures really do look like they are trying to get
out of the stone. Almost like there is a figure of a man laying in a pool of
water and you can only see the
parts that are above the surface. Then of course there was David. We
looked at it for a while. At first it strikes you just as massive and
incredible in that respect. But after you look at it for a while it almost
seems like he is going to come to life and stride towards you. The muscles
and veins are that real.
After that we got some lunch before heading over to the Uffizi gallery.
There are lots of famous works in that gallery, mostly of the Florentine
Renaissance, which we learned was characterized by very soft colors and lots
of beauty. Like in the famous, Birth of Venus, or Venus in a Clamshell as
most people recognize it. It had a hazy quality to it that was just
beautiful.
We also saw the duomo and the baptistery doors facing it that were designed
by Ghiberti in a competition. They were amazing in their detail and 3D
effect. They are bronze reliefs and so a little 3D anyway, but the bronze
used was only a few centimeters thick, and they look much more 3D than they
actually are. We also saw the Ponte Vecchio bridge which is really
beautiful. The bridge has all these little buildings on it that are used as
jewelry shops, but from either side of the bridge they are just multihued
buildings practically on top of one another that provide a really beautiful
facade along the river. Oh and we ate lots of Gelato, because that is the
Florence thing to do and it was really good.
We left Florence with no real definite plans of how to get here three days
ago. We planned to stop in Pisa to see the tower then spend the night in a
town a little farther on - like Genoa maybe. On the train to Pisa though, we
decided that we wanted to go straight on to Nice if we could only stopping
to see the tower since we were there already. Well as it turned out the only
train out of Pisa that would get us to Nice - connecting in Genoa - left a
half hour after we got in, so we didnt have time to see the tower. So yeah
we went to Pisa but we didnt see the tower. Oh well, I have heard it isnt
all that great anyway but as long as we were there it would have been nice
to see. So we stopped in Genoa for an hour and a half, didnt see much there
either, but the reason we didnt stay the night there as planned is that the
guide book said it was kind of seedy. Well the area near the train station
sure was. I mean the area near train stations is never nice, but we have
stayed in those
areas lots, like in rome, and it wasnt as bad as genoa. Even the train
station was depressing in Genoa. Seth said the little cafe in the train
station that we were sitting in is the kind of cafe where you would sit
every day and write a really depressing novel, like Crime and Punishment or
something.
So we arrived in Nice around 8:30pm and found our hotel with no problem. (we
had called from pisa when we decided to go there.) the hotel was nice - ha
ha nice hotel in nice. we had our own room. Nice was really expensive
though. all the food was pricey unless you ate just sandwhiches, and even
those were more expensive than we are used to. We stopped in nice for two
reasons, one was that it was about half way from florence to barcelona and
the other is that there is a chagall musuem there and we both like chagall.
So we stayed two nights which gave us like one day. so on the first day we
went to the train station to find out about trains to barcelona or avignon.
we were deciding if we wanted to take a really long train to barcelona or
stop again in avignon. and we found out that there was a night train from
nice to barcelona that we didnt know about and was different than the
expensive one from milan. So we booked in on that the next night, which gave
us two days in Nice. Then we
headed up the hill to the chagall musuem. Well werent we surprised when it
was closed for renovations until sometime in 2005! so we decided to hang
around Nice then decide about maybe a day trip the next day before our 10pm
train (Cannes and Monte Carlo are close). We basically decided to just take
it easy becuase I am STILL sick. nothing big just a cold but it is really a
drag. So we napped and watched tv (which we hadnt seen in a while, but only
CNN was in english). The next day we did laundry and hung out some more, and
went down to the water where it was pretty cold. We spent a lot of time in a
coffee shop planning out our time in Spain and we made some reservations for
Paris and Barcelona. Oh and in Nice, we had a lot of Beaujolais Noveau ( I
probably spelled that wrong) it is the first wine of the season from
somewhere in the north of France, and THE thing to drink at this time of
year, it is like tradition one waitress explained to us. And I dont blame
them, it was really
good. It tasted fresh and fruity and wonderful.
So last night we got on the train in Nice at 10pm and arrived on the Spanish
side of the border at Port Bou around 6:30 this morning. We had to wait an
hour for another train to take us to Barcelona. But it was ok becuase we had
some time to get some food. We got here around 9:30 am and found our hotel
with a little difficulty (we were not at the train station that I had
suspected) But our hotel is nice even if it is on the 4th floor!! I was so
tired I could barely make it up the stairs.
We had a cheap lunch before heading to the Cathedral (which is under
renovation and we can´t see other than the picture of it on the tarp that
covers it). In front of the Cathedral on Sundays the locals, and I am sure a
few tourists gather and do this dance. I cant remember the exact name
something like sardana. There was an orchestra there to play the music and
mostly older people gathered in circles, placing their bags and coats and
things in the center (to symbolize community one book said, but also I
imagine so that they can dance without having someone run off with there
stuff) then they hold hands and do this slow kind of hokey pokey dance. Ok
not quite the hokey pokey, but they dont go around in circles or anything,
they more of shuffle their feet back and forth adding the occasional toe tap
toward the center or little hop from one foot to the other. It was really
interesting becuase these people werent being paid, or anything, they just
hang around after mass and do this
dance if they want, and people just kept running up and joining in. It
certainly wasnt spontaneous since they do it after mass every sunday and
someone arranged the orchestra to be there, but it was really neat anyway
becuase it was like real culture, real people. Supposedly it is the national
dance of Catalunya. ( the state that barcelona is in.) Oh another thing that
is interesting here is that the signs are all in Spanish AND Catalan, and
sometimes english if they choose a third language. I guess the Catalan
dialect of Spanish is that different (and they are that patriotic about it)
that they feel they need to have both Spanish and Catalan.
After that we headed to the Picasso musuem. I wasnt really impressed. It was
well done in that it told the story of his life and the evolution of his
works, but most of the stuff there were this little tiny postcard sized
paintings. I felt like the just gathered anything they could find by him and
put it in this musuem. It was interesting, dont get me wrong, and I would
recommend anyone who came here to go, but it just wasnt as good as I thought
it was going to be from all the stuff I had heard.
We took a long siesta this afternoon becuase we didnt sleep well on the
train. Then we went out and had tapas! It was really cool. We went to this
place recommended by both of our guidebooks, but there seemed to be just as
many spanish speakers there as tourists, and the place wasnt large tacky.
(nevertheless maybe we can find a more authentic place later) It was just a
bar basically with all these plates of tapas on it like a buffet and you get
a plate and take what you want and each one has a toothpick in it and when
you are done you pay 1.20euro for each toothpick on your plate. It was
really fun we tried all sorts on things, everything on a piece of crostini
bread. Like different cheeses, mostly cream cheese like consistency but with
different flavors and all sorts of additions. I had cider to drink, which I
guess is the thing to drink there. The waiters pour it like over their head
into the cup at like waist height. It was really good though and cheap. The
whole meal only cost
us 20euro and that included 3 ciders and a beer and enough tapas to fill
us up! It was really fun. Then we storlled along the main pedestrian street
which is interesting becuase it was so crowded and it is Sunday night! Seth
says Barcelona is just a party town, but everywhere else in europe that we
have been sundays are dead so it was a nice surprise.
Wooo that was long! sorry about that.
Meg and Seth
Saturday, November 20, 2004
in florence now, planning spain
We spent the last two nights in Perguia in the Italian province of Umbria.
It was a nice town, not small but not big. We basically relaxed and wandered
around, it was cold though. And they only had single sex dorms so we had to
sleep in different rooms. Which was kind of tough becuase we share
toothpaste and shampoo and seth has no watch or alarm, but we managed.
Now we are in Florence and it is a lot warmer which is nice and we have our
own room which is also nice. We walked around this afternoon and spent a
bunch of time at the train station trying to figure out how we are going to
get to and around spain. Barcelona and madrid are pretty much far from
everything, so we wanted to take several night trains to minimize wasted
time on the train, but it seems that those 1)book up fast 2) are really
expensive 3) can only be booked in spain. So we had to replan a little. we
were going to go pretty much straight to barcelona from here, but it is a
14hour train ride and the night train beds are all booked. so now we are
going to stop along the way a few nights, sort of break up the journey. then
we are still deciding if we are going to pay the extra money for a night
train from barcelona to madrid (7hours if we take the day train) and madrid
to paris (12 hours). it is all very complicated.
tommorrow we have reservations for the accadamia (where michelangelo's david
is) and the uffizi art musuems, so we dont have to wait in huge lines like
we did at the vatican.
Meg
It was a nice town, not small but not big. We basically relaxed and wandered
around, it was cold though. And they only had single sex dorms so we had to
sleep in different rooms. Which was kind of tough becuase we share
toothpaste and shampoo and seth has no watch or alarm, but we managed.
Now we are in Florence and it is a lot warmer which is nice and we have our
own room which is also nice. We walked around this afternoon and spent a
bunch of time at the train station trying to figure out how we are going to
get to and around spain. Barcelona and madrid are pretty much far from
everything, so we wanted to take several night trains to minimize wasted
time on the train, but it seems that those 1)book up fast 2) are really
expensive 3) can only be booked in spain. So we had to replan a little. we
were going to go pretty much straight to barcelona from here, but it is a
14hour train ride and the night train beds are all booked. so now we are
going to stop along the way a few nights, sort of break up the journey. then
we are still deciding if we are going to pay the extra money for a night
train from barcelona to madrid (7hours if we take the day train) and madrid
to paris (12 hours). it is all very complicated.
tommorrow we have reservations for the accadamia (where michelangelo's david
is) and the uffizi art musuems, so we dont have to wait in huge lines like
we did at the vatican.
Meg
Sunday, November 14, 2004
leaving Rome
Today we are leaving rome heading to a smaller town in the hills of Umbria.
Yesterday we got up early and headed to the vatican to see the sistine
chapel. I wanted to be in line by 8:45 when they open becuase the close at
12:30. We got there around 9am and spent 15 minutes walking at a fast pace
past the line, which was ten people wide and about a mile long. We stood in
line for a little over 2 hours and were finally admitted at a little after
11. The sistine chapel closes before everything else so we headed there, but
unfortunately it is at the end of a very long - like half mile
hallway/series of rooms. There were interesting paintings by raphael and
others in these rooms but we didnt really have much chance to stop and look
since the place was so crowded we were basically just pushed along with the
crowd, but very slowly. We finally got to the sistine chapel and at first it
was interesting and impressive, but after you look at it for a little while
it just strikes you how great it
really is. The room was just wall to wall people but at least we were
stopped and able to just stand there staring up in amazement. It is also
amazing how much difference the restoration must have made. There were some
paintings at the side that were not restored and they were a lot darker than
the rest. the restored part of it just 'pops'.
after that, fearing more lines, we headed straight for st peter's cathedral.
There was a huge line to climb the dome so while I would have liked to do
that, we skipped it. But we did look around inside. It was HUGE! they had
markers on the floor noting where the other famous cathedrals in the world
would end if they were put inside - like the big ones in london, newyork,
washington and florence. And there was this gorgeous iron canopy in the
middle over the main altar that is supposedly seven stories high. It was
definitely huge but I am not sure I buy that it is that high. the whole
place was designed to make it look smaller than it actually is and they
really achieved that.
After the cathedral we had lunch then walked around, saw a huge protest of
some kind that brought out about 500 police. We think they were protesting
israel and the USA being in falluja or something to do with arafat. That was
kind of weird, walking past this huge parade basically protesting us! but
they were all really peaceful - how could they not be with all those police
right?
anyway, now we are doing some laundry before we head to Perugia. we got our
reservations for Florence already though, because after the fiasco we went
through here with being switched three times and then last night they
oversold our room. (We were in there around 4pm resting before dinner and
these two Canadian girls came in and said that Seth was on the bed that they
were given. They werent mad at him just went and got the woman to see what
was going on, well there were already 3 italian guys in there and three
other beds were clearly taken and there were only 8 beds so we were one
short. so after discussing the situation the woman moved this wardrobe thing
and brought in another bed - even though there was hardly room to move as it
was. Then like 20 min later two MORE girls came in and said that they had
the one bed that was given to me - I had switched with one of the italian
guys so I could be next to seth so she said that that bed he was in was
hers. Well the italian guys had
already went out for the night so the woman said that those two girls
could have that bed. We still dont know what happened to the italian guy, we
think at some point the reception woman came in and got his stuff.) Anyway,
so everyone we talked to is heading to Florence next so we made reservations
early, for a cheap double instead of a dorm so hopefully we wont have that
problem again.
Ok gotta go our laundry is done!
Meg and Seth
Yesterday we got up early and headed to the vatican to see the sistine
chapel. I wanted to be in line by 8:45 when they open becuase the close at
12:30. We got there around 9am and spent 15 minutes walking at a fast pace
past the line, which was ten people wide and about a mile long. We stood in
line for a little over 2 hours and were finally admitted at a little after
11. The sistine chapel closes before everything else so we headed there, but
unfortunately it is at the end of a very long - like half mile
hallway/series of rooms. There were interesting paintings by raphael and
others in these rooms but we didnt really have much chance to stop and look
since the place was so crowded we were basically just pushed along with the
crowd, but very slowly. We finally got to the sistine chapel and at first it
was interesting and impressive, but after you look at it for a little while
it just strikes you how great it
really is. The room was just wall to wall people but at least we were
stopped and able to just stand there staring up in amazement. It is also
amazing how much difference the restoration must have made. There were some
paintings at the side that were not restored and they were a lot darker than
the rest. the restored part of it just 'pops'.
after that, fearing more lines, we headed straight for st peter's cathedral.
There was a huge line to climb the dome so while I would have liked to do
that, we skipped it. But we did look around inside. It was HUGE! they had
markers on the floor noting where the other famous cathedrals in the world
would end if they were put inside - like the big ones in london, newyork,
washington and florence. And there was this gorgeous iron canopy in the
middle over the main altar that is supposedly seven stories high. It was
definitely huge but I am not sure I buy that it is that high. the whole
place was designed to make it look smaller than it actually is and they
really achieved that.
After the cathedral we had lunch then walked around, saw a huge protest of
some kind that brought out about 500 police. We think they were protesting
israel and the USA being in falluja or something to do with arafat. That was
kind of weird, walking past this huge parade basically protesting us! but
they were all really peaceful - how could they not be with all those police
right?
anyway, now we are doing some laundry before we head to Perugia. we got our
reservations for Florence already though, because after the fiasco we went
through here with being switched three times and then last night they
oversold our room. (We were in there around 4pm resting before dinner and
these two Canadian girls came in and said that Seth was on the bed that they
were given. They werent mad at him just went and got the woman to see what
was going on, well there were already 3 italian guys in there and three
other beds were clearly taken and there were only 8 beds so we were one
short. so after discussing the situation the woman moved this wardrobe thing
and brought in another bed - even though there was hardly room to move as it
was. Then like 20 min later two MORE girls came in and said that they had
the one bed that was given to me - I had switched with one of the italian
guys so I could be next to seth so she said that that bed he was in was
hers. Well the italian guys had
already went out for the night so the woman said that those two girls
could have that bed. We still dont know what happened to the italian guy, we
think at some point the reception woman came in and got his stuff.) Anyway,
so everyone we talked to is heading to Florence next so we made reservations
early, for a cheap double instead of a dorm so hopefully we wont have that
problem again.
Ok gotta go our laundry is done!
Meg and Seth
Friday, November 12, 2004
First hectic day in Rome
So we arrived in Rome last night and found our hostel with no problem. We
had our own room which was nice, and free breakfast and cheap beer and free
pizza for dinner. So we were loving this hostel, then this morning we went
down to check if we could keep the double or if we had to move to a dorm and
they said we had to leave! They said that you have to reserve online, so
even though two DIFFERENT guys last night said that there would be no
problem and had our names down (only question was if we could keep the
double or not) they kicked us out this morning, guess they overbooked. But
the good thing is that they helped us find a new place, but only for
tonight, they are full tommorrow night. but this new place helped us find a
room for tommorrow night, so three days in Rome, three different hostels!
what a pain!
So after we got that whole room thing sorted out this morning we set out -
later than expected - to the colosseum. I wanted to get there early to beat
the line, but we didnt so we had to wait in line for like 45 min, but then
we got in a tour and got out of line, but we had to wait another hour for
the tour to start. It was good that we got the tour though. It was given by
an archeologist and was very interesting, and becuase it was teh official
tour it was even cheaper than the audio guide, which I still dont understand
but hey, it worked for us. It was amazing! the Colloseum is huge and so
impressive even though it is only a shadow of its former self. The tour
guide did a really good job of helping us picture how it used to be with the
marble and frescoes.
Then we had lunch before heading to Palatine Hill and the Roman forum. The
Roman forum was cool but not nearly as impressive as the Colosseum. We took
a self guided tour from one of our guidebooks and it told us a lot, but the
ruins were not in as good of condition as the colloseum so it wasnt as easy
to picture their former glory.
Then we headed to the Mamertime Prison, an old cistern converted to a prison
that once held Sts Peter and Paul. It was basically just an old stone well
that you could go in and try to picture what it would have been like to be a
prisoner there. (cold and dreary)
Then we headed up Capitol hill. Capitol hill has a square that was designed
by Michelangelo. It was really gorgeous. He thought of everything to make
the square appear the most impressive from the direction that most people
would approach it. A grand staircase leads up flanked by two huge statues.
In the center of the square stands a statue of marcus aurelieus surounded by
three magnificent buildings.
We then headed down past the statue of Immanuel somebody, the first king of
unified Italy. It is an immense white marble building occupying a great
location at the end of 'the main drag' through the center of italy. It also
holds the tomb of the unknown soldier. Some demonstration was going on when
we were there so that was interesting lots of police and people with huge
italy flags.
We then headed over to the Pantheon. Almost as impressive as the Colloseum,
it is a huge domed building, which no one is really sure still how it was
created so large and still standing from so many years ago.
Finally we wandered over to the Trevi fountain which really didnt live up to
the hype. Yeah it was a really gorgeous fountain, but the thousands of
tourists hanging around kind of detracted from that. It was seriously the
most crowded place we had been (and the pantheon was completely filled with
people). Like I said it was pretty, but just not 'all that'.
Tommorrow we are going to get up early, change hotels and head to the
vatican. The sistine chapel closes early during the off season so you need
to get there really early to even get in, not to mention wait in a long
line.
Meg and Seth
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Beautiful Venice!
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 03:59:53 -0800 (PST)
We are in Venice now. We left Vienna on a night train on Sunday night.
Sleeping on the train was not as bad as we thought it would be. We had the
bottom two bunks in a 6 bed cabin - we know now for next time that it only
costs a little more to get a 4 bed cabin and you have a lot more space. But
it was really ok, we (the 5 of us in the cabin) managed to fit everything
in, and we got some decent sleep and were awakened in the morning by the
lady that brought us our breakfast.
Then we got to Venice at just before 9 am feeling pretty good and we found
our hotel which turned out to be much nicer than expected - only 60euro a
night and we get our own room and our own bathroom and the location is
really convenient, not far from the train station and close to the water-bus
station. Then we went and bought a 3 day transit ticket so we can take the
water busses (vaporetti) as much as we want, and set off for a little
sightseeing. First we got an overview from the slow boat down the grand
canal then we walked around st marks square and through the streets (all
car-free of course) back to our hotel for checkin and a nap. I am loving it
so much that we added another day to our stay!
The next day I woke up with a cold :( but still we got up rather early and
headed to the Accademia musuem to beat the crowds. (On Monday there were
hardly any tourists anywhere, but on Tuesday when we went to get on the
vaporetto it was so crowded that we had to wait through three boats before
we were close enough to the front of the crowd to get basically pushed onto
the boat.) But there were no crowds at the musuem so we strolled through
taking it easy becuase I wasnt feeling all that well. Then we headed over to
the basilica. There is where we found the crowds. It was a real pain trying
to figure out where to leave our bag becuase you couldnt take it in and
apparently the bag check room was in a building across the street and around
the corner. But once we were inside it was really nice. Amazing in fact. The
entire place (which is huge) is covered in these gold and colored mosaics.
Gold is the dominating color but there are lots of others as well. The floor
is mosaic marble that
sort of rolls under your feet due to the fact that the basilica (and the
whole city in fact) is sinking. It was kind of disorienting but really cool
to look at the geometric patterns on the floor and with the sloping of the
floor they were even more disorienting. After lunch we took a boat over to
the island of murano where they make the famous venetian glass. We saw a
demonstration then walked around the island - which was refreshingly devoid
of crowds - and looked in the glass shops. We bought a few souveniers before
heading back to the mainland. That evening as it was getting much colder, we
went out for a somewhat traditional venetian dinner in a restuarant pretty
far off the beaten track. We had a first course of spaghetti with clams and
for our second course we had swordfish and tuna steak. It was really
wonderful and relaxing to be away from the tourists and we got a warm
welcome from the staff.
This morning I woke up feeling a lot better and anxious to get out and see
the flood! Apperently venice floods every now and then (once a month maybe)
when the tides are especially high. And today is one of those days. Luckily
our hotel is on some higher ground so we were able to get out without
needing the wader boots or garbage bags over our shoes that most people had.
Then they set up these raised sidewalkes in the streets so you can get
around (but not necessarily into restaurants or stores). So we walked over
to the vaporetti stop and had breakfast in the one restaurant on the street
that had set up a raised sidewalk to its front door. Then we took the
vaporetti to San Marco square becuase I wanted to see it flooded. It is
supposedly the lowest spot in the city and so gets the deepest water, but by
the time we got there - around 10am - the water had started to go down
already (high tide was at 9am) so we snapped a few photos of the still
flooded square and then went into the
Doges palace. That place was really cool, preobably the best palace we
have been in yet. When we came out the water had gone down a lot more, but
it was even colder, more windier and now raining. So the flooding doesnt
really have anything to do with the rain, but the most untolerable part is
not that there is 6-12 inches of water on the ground, but that it is
extremely cold windy and rainy outside. Now we are just trying to avoid the
cold. Apparently it is going to flood again around 9 tonight and again at
around 9am tommorrow morning becuase the tide is high every 12 hours. And I
guess the higher than normal tide has something to do with the phase of the
moon.
It is really interesting though and I am glad that we got a chance to see
the city flooded. The boats are basically moored at the sidewalks, which I
guess they always are, but they are usually moored in front of the
sidewalks, and now if not for being tied up, they would be on the sidewalk,
it is really funny. Also it is interesting to think that in any other city
if it flooded as bad as this everything would stop and they might declare a
state of emergency, but here it is just business as usual pretty much. The
stands of souveniers on the sidewalks close but everything else pretty much
goes on. Really strange.
Anyway, we leave tommorrow, and due to the cold, I am not that sad about it.
But I can't wait to come back to Venice, this is my favorite city so far! I
hope Rome is warmer!!
Meg and Seth
We are in Venice now. We left Vienna on a night train on Sunday night.
Sleeping on the train was not as bad as we thought it would be. We had the
bottom two bunks in a 6 bed cabin - we know now for next time that it only
costs a little more to get a 4 bed cabin and you have a lot more space. But
it was really ok, we (the 5 of us in the cabin) managed to fit everything
in, and we got some decent sleep and were awakened in the morning by the
lady that brought us our breakfast.
Then we got to Venice at just before 9 am feeling pretty good and we found
our hotel which turned out to be much nicer than expected - only 60euro a
night and we get our own room and our own bathroom and the location is
really convenient, not far from the train station and close to the water-bus
station. Then we went and bought a 3 day transit ticket so we can take the
water busses (vaporetti) as much as we want, and set off for a little
sightseeing. First we got an overview from the slow boat down the grand
canal then we walked around st marks square and through the streets (all
car-free of course) back to our hotel for checkin and a nap. I am loving it
so much that we added another day to our stay!
The next day I woke up with a cold :( but still we got up rather early and
headed to the Accademia musuem to beat the crowds. (On Monday there were
hardly any tourists anywhere, but on Tuesday when we went to get on the
vaporetto it was so crowded that we had to wait through three boats before
we were close enough to the front of the crowd to get basically pushed onto
the boat.) But there were no crowds at the musuem so we strolled through
taking it easy becuase I wasnt feeling all that well. Then we headed over to
the basilica. There is where we found the crowds. It was a real pain trying
to figure out where to leave our bag becuase you couldnt take it in and
apparently the bag check room was in a building across the street and around
the corner. But once we were inside it was really nice. Amazing in fact. The
entire place (which is huge) is covered in these gold and colored mosaics.
Gold is the dominating color but there are lots of others as well. The floor
is mosaic marble that
sort of rolls under your feet due to the fact that the basilica (and the
whole city in fact) is sinking. It was kind of disorienting but really cool
to look at the geometric patterns on the floor and with the sloping of the
floor they were even more disorienting. After lunch we took a boat over to
the island of murano where they make the famous venetian glass. We saw a
demonstration then walked around the island - which was refreshingly devoid
of crowds - and looked in the glass shops. We bought a few souveniers before
heading back to the mainland. That evening as it was getting much colder, we
went out for a somewhat traditional venetian dinner in a restuarant pretty
far off the beaten track. We had a first course of spaghetti with clams and
for our second course we had swordfish and tuna steak. It was really
wonderful and relaxing to be away from the tourists and we got a warm
welcome from the staff.
This morning I woke up feeling a lot better and anxious to get out and see
the flood! Apperently venice floods every now and then (once a month maybe)
when the tides are especially high. And today is one of those days. Luckily
our hotel is on some higher ground so we were able to get out without
needing the wader boots or garbage bags over our shoes that most people had.
Then they set up these raised sidewalkes in the streets so you can get
around (but not necessarily into restaurants or stores). So we walked over
to the vaporetti stop and had breakfast in the one restaurant on the street
that had set up a raised sidewalk to its front door. Then we took the
vaporetti to San Marco square becuase I wanted to see it flooded. It is
supposedly the lowest spot in the city and so gets the deepest water, but by
the time we got there - around 10am - the water had started to go down
already (high tide was at 9am) so we snapped a few photos of the still
flooded square and then went into the
Doges palace. That place was really cool, preobably the best palace we
have been in yet. When we came out the water had gone down a lot more, but
it was even colder, more windier and now raining. So the flooding doesnt
really have anything to do with the rain, but the most untolerable part is
not that there is 6-12 inches of water on the ground, but that it is
extremely cold windy and rainy outside. Now we are just trying to avoid the
cold. Apparently it is going to flood again around 9 tonight and again at
around 9am tommorrow morning becuase the tide is high every 12 hours. And I
guess the higher than normal tide has something to do with the phase of the
moon.
It is really interesting though and I am glad that we got a chance to see
the city flooded. The boats are basically moored at the sidewalks, which I
guess they always are, but they are usually moored in front of the
sidewalks, and now if not for being tied up, they would be on the sidewalk,
it is really funny. Also it is interesting to think that in any other city
if it flooded as bad as this everything would stop and they might declare a
state of emergency, but here it is just business as usual pretty much. The
stands of souveniers on the sidewalks close but everything else pretty much
goes on. Really strange.
Anyway, we leave tommorrow, and due to the cold, I am not that sad about it.
But I can't wait to come back to Venice, this is my favorite city so far! I
hope Rome is warmer!!
Meg and Seth
Saturday, November 06, 2004
Back in Vienna from Poland
Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 10:02:31 -0800 (PST)
We are back in Vienna after our trip to Poland. We
were in Vienna for a day and a half before we left for
Poland and found it nice but kind of boring. It was
all saint's day on Monday so everything was closed, so
we thought we would go to a museum on Tuesday, but it
was closed on Tuesday becuase it was open on Monday!
usually it is closed on Monday but I guess it was open
becuase everything else was closed. anyway, we walked
around the city, had some sacher torte and relaxed.
The sacher torte was good but not all it is cracked up
to be.
Then on Wednesday we left for Poland. We left Vienna
at 3:30 and flew to Warsaw which only took a little
over an hour. When we landed in Warsaw at 4:45 it was
pitch dark! The sun sets there around 4:00 I guess.
But it wasnt that cold, in fact we had pretty nice
weather the first day, I even took my coat off. The
second day it rained a little, but was still pretty
warm.
Zdzislaw and Halina Goschler met us at the airport
with a friend of theirs from Warsaw. I thought we were
staying with family but we stayed in a hotel in the
room next to them, and the couple from warsaw showed
us around. They met Z and Halina in Hawaii - they
noticed that they were speaking Polish and started
talking. But this couple - Marek and Monica - are
really nice and they speak english. So the first day
they took us to the 'old town' which incidentally was
completely destroyed - like most of warsaw - during
the war and rebuilt to pretty much look like it did
before. So it isnt really old but it looks old. We
toured the palace which was nice and had some
interesting paintings and things about Polish history
- all in english. And we saw remnants of the city wall
and marie curie's house and several churches and the
memorial to the victims of the warsaw uprising against
the nazis. I guess a bunch of people - not soldiers -
fought back against the nazis and were slaughtered.
Since it was two days after all saints day when we
were there, there were flowers and candles all over
the memorial - in fact all over these little memorials
all over town, and covering the cemetaries. They take
all saints day seriously in eastern/central europe and
put flowers and candles on all the graves of their
relatives (that is why Z and Halina were in Poland)
and on the memorials to people who died in war and
stuff around the city. It was pretty and sad at the
same time. Another interesting thing about that day
was that there were very few tourists. Everywhere else
that we have been there were lots of toursits even
though it is the off season. Here I felt like the only
one. A few Polish tourists were around but that is
all.
Oh and maybe the most intersting thing of the whole
day was getting up in the morning and finding there
was no water. Apparently there is no water in our
hotel from like 8am to 8:30, we dont really know why.
It seemed like a remnant from communism or something.
The hotel was interesting, clean and perfectly
acceptable (except the no water thing which we solved
the next day by planning for it) but it was in this
huge block building with really plain rooms. Near a
school for soldiers or police or something. So all the
other buildings around looked the same, it was very
much what you think of when you think of Poland and
communist countries.
We had dinner at Marek and Monica's house. They have
two sons one who is 10 and the other who is 3. the
older one is speaking english pretty well already.
They transferred him to a school in the city that they
have to drive him 45 minutes to everyday so that he
could have 8 hours a week of english.
Anyway, Monica made a traditional Polish dish from the
region she is from. It was like a potato cake with ham
and bacon in it. I thought it was really good, the
potatoes were whipped like so they were really fluffy
and good. Seth didnt like it becuase it had ham and
bacon, so he ate the salmon cream cheese stuffed
tomatoes instead. He did try the Polish blood sausage
though - I couldnt do that. He said it was actually
not bad, but he only took one tiny bite. Even if it
tastes good, it is hard to get past the fact that it
is blood.
We also had Marek take us to the grocery to buy some
Polish vodka so we sampled some of that before and
after dinner. We tried this one kind that is famous
and flavored with bison grass or something. It was
kind of sweet and really interesting. We bought some
to bring home.
The next day Marek and Monica had to work so we were
on our own with Z and Halina. Oh by the way, Zdzislaw
is pronounced like JeeHoo. Weird huh? Either that or
that is a nickname becuase that is what everyone calls
him. They took us to two palaces just outside of the
city, but since it is winter they were closed for
renovations, so we just walked around the grounds in a
light drizzle. Then Z and Halina left and we stayed at
the hotel resting and waiting for Marek and Monica.
They came around 8pm and took us out to dinner at a
pub where I had perogies and seth had kielbasa and we
all drank Polish beer. Polish beer isnt very good, but
it isnt bad either, just kind of light beer. But they
serve it, if you want, with a little bit of raspberry
juice, so that is what I had becuase it tasted a lot
better that way. Monica had that too, it is a girl
drink I guess.
Then we had to get up early and Marek took us to the
airport at 6:00 am. Our flight from warsaw to vienna
was cancelled so they had booked us on a connection
through Dusseldorf. Which, if you look at a map, is
really stupid. we had to go twice as far practically.
AND then they gave us no time for the connection -
like 20 minutes, but we arrived in the international,
non-eu terminal from poland and had to go through
customs then out and into another terminal through
security to get our flight to vienna. We would have
missed it except they held the plane becuase a lot of
people that would have been on our original flight
were doing the same thing. When we got to Vienna we
wanted to run errands, but it was afternoon on
saturday and everything is closed already. We are
doing laundry here at the hostel and we had to track
down a 24 hour pharmacy becuase our contact solution
leaked on the plane and is gone and we needed new, and
you can't get it in the grocery store here. In fact
there are three different stores that make up one of
our grocery stores, the strictly food grocery store,
the pharmacy with the pharmacist (which sells the
contact solution) and the drug store like place that
sells soap and stuff but not medicine. Weird.
So tommorrow I guess we are going to see the musuem
that we didnt see the other day, and then we have an
overnight train to Venice.
Megan and Seth
We are back in Vienna after our trip to Poland. We
were in Vienna for a day and a half before we left for
Poland and found it nice but kind of boring. It was
all saint's day on Monday so everything was closed, so
we thought we would go to a museum on Tuesday, but it
was closed on Tuesday becuase it was open on Monday!
usually it is closed on Monday but I guess it was open
becuase everything else was closed. anyway, we walked
around the city, had some sacher torte and relaxed.
The sacher torte was good but not all it is cracked up
to be.
Then on Wednesday we left for Poland. We left Vienna
at 3:30 and flew to Warsaw which only took a little
over an hour. When we landed in Warsaw at 4:45 it was
pitch dark! The sun sets there around 4:00 I guess.
But it wasnt that cold, in fact we had pretty nice
weather the first day, I even took my coat off. The
second day it rained a little, but was still pretty
warm.
Zdzislaw and Halina Goschler met us at the airport
with a friend of theirs from Warsaw. I thought we were
staying with family but we stayed in a hotel in the
room next to them, and the couple from warsaw showed
us around. They met Z and Halina in Hawaii - they
noticed that they were speaking Polish and started
talking. But this couple - Marek and Monica - are
really nice and they speak english. So the first day
they took us to the 'old town' which incidentally was
completely destroyed - like most of warsaw - during
the war and rebuilt to pretty much look like it did
before. So it isnt really old but it looks old. We
toured the palace which was nice and had some
interesting paintings and things about Polish history
- all in english. And we saw remnants of the city wall
and marie curie's house and several churches and the
memorial to the victims of the warsaw uprising against
the nazis. I guess a bunch of people - not soldiers -
fought back against the nazis and were slaughtered.
Since it was two days after all saints day when we
were there, there were flowers and candles all over
the memorial - in fact all over these little memorials
all over town, and covering the cemetaries. They take
all saints day seriously in eastern/central europe and
put flowers and candles on all the graves of their
relatives (that is why Z and Halina were in Poland)
and on the memorials to people who died in war and
stuff around the city. It was pretty and sad at the
same time. Another interesting thing about that day
was that there were very few tourists. Everywhere else
that we have been there were lots of toursits even
though it is the off season. Here I felt like the only
one. A few Polish tourists were around but that is
all.
Oh and maybe the most intersting thing of the whole
day was getting up in the morning and finding there
was no water. Apparently there is no water in our
hotel from like 8am to 8:30, we dont really know why.
It seemed like a remnant from communism or something.
The hotel was interesting, clean and perfectly
acceptable (except the no water thing which we solved
the next day by planning for it) but it was in this
huge block building with really plain rooms. Near a
school for soldiers or police or something. So all the
other buildings around looked the same, it was very
much what you think of when you think of Poland and
communist countries.
We had dinner at Marek and Monica's house. They have
two sons one who is 10 and the other who is 3. the
older one is speaking english pretty well already.
They transferred him to a school in the city that they
have to drive him 45 minutes to everyday so that he
could have 8 hours a week of english.
Anyway, Monica made a traditional Polish dish from the
region she is from. It was like a potato cake with ham
and bacon in it. I thought it was really good, the
potatoes were whipped like so they were really fluffy
and good. Seth didnt like it becuase it had ham and
bacon, so he ate the salmon cream cheese stuffed
tomatoes instead. He did try the Polish blood sausage
though - I couldnt do that. He said it was actually
not bad, but he only took one tiny bite. Even if it
tastes good, it is hard to get past the fact that it
is blood.
We also had Marek take us to the grocery to buy some
Polish vodka so we sampled some of that before and
after dinner. We tried this one kind that is famous
and flavored with bison grass or something. It was
kind of sweet and really interesting. We bought some
to bring home.
The next day Marek and Monica had to work so we were
on our own with Z and Halina. Oh by the way, Zdzislaw
is pronounced like JeeHoo. Weird huh? Either that or
that is a nickname becuase that is what everyone calls
him. They took us to two palaces just outside of the
city, but since it is winter they were closed for
renovations, so we just walked around the grounds in a
light drizzle. Then Z and Halina left and we stayed at
the hotel resting and waiting for Marek and Monica.
They came around 8pm and took us out to dinner at a
pub where I had perogies and seth had kielbasa and we
all drank Polish beer. Polish beer isnt very good, but
it isnt bad either, just kind of light beer. But they
serve it, if you want, with a little bit of raspberry
juice, so that is what I had becuase it tasted a lot
better that way. Monica had that too, it is a girl
drink I guess.
Then we had to get up early and Marek took us to the
airport at 6:00 am. Our flight from warsaw to vienna
was cancelled so they had booked us on a connection
through Dusseldorf. Which, if you look at a map, is
really stupid. we had to go twice as far practically.
AND then they gave us no time for the connection -
like 20 minutes, but we arrived in the international,
non-eu terminal from poland and had to go through
customs then out and into another terminal through
security to get our flight to vienna. We would have
missed it except they held the plane becuase a lot of
people that would have been on our original flight
were doing the same thing. When we got to Vienna we
wanted to run errands, but it was afternoon on
saturday and everything is closed already. We are
doing laundry here at the hostel and we had to track
down a 24 hour pharmacy becuase our contact solution
leaked on the plane and is gone and we needed new, and
you can't get it in the grocery store here. In fact
there are three different stores that make up one of
our grocery stores, the strictly food grocery store,
the pharmacy with the pharmacist (which sells the
contact solution) and the drug store like place that
sells soap and stuff but not medicine. Weird.
So tommorrow I guess we are going to see the musuem
that we didnt see the other day, and then we have an
overnight train to Venice.
Megan and Seth
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
FW: leaving budapest
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2004 09:06:37 -0800 (PST)
Our last day in Prague was nice, we slept in then went to see the jewish
musuem and cemetery. The first thing we saw was the synagogue that has all
the names of Czech holocaust victims on it. that was pretty moving. It also
had an exhibit that included the artwork from some children in the
concentration camp.
then we saw the old cemetary and then moved on to the burial society
building that had an exhibit about burial rituals which was very
interesting. Finally there was the newer synagogue that houses a musuem
about jewish life and history in the czech republic since the middle ages.
The next morning we had to get up early to make the train to budapest.
Unfortunately we couldnt get a night train so we had to spend the entire day
on the train. We arrived in budapest around 7pm. Finding our hostel wasnt
that difficult though and it is nice, clean and had a laundry service which
was nice becuase we were really in need.
The first full day in Budapest I wasnt feeling like doing much so we slept
in then wandered around. We saw all the main sights but didnt go in
anything. We did go to a market though which was intersting to walk around.
The second day we went on a walking tour where we heard more information
about the sights we had seen the day before. First we saw the Heroes Square
with monuments to all the old kings and leaders. Also the castle in the park
which we had seen the day before, we learned why it is so strange, is that
it is a recreation of one in the countryside that was built for a festival
years ago. Also we saw the most beautiful of the bath buildings. We got a
peek at the outdoor pools. Then we saw the opera house and st stevens
cathedral which is the second largest in the country and very beautiful. We
got a peek inside at the relic of st steven's mummified right hand, and at
the altar where there is a statue of st steven instead of one of jesus or
mary.
From there we had our first lunch at mcdonalds since coming to europe. Rick
steves (the travel guide writer) says that every american will at one time
go to eat at mcdonalds in europe, but we didnt think it would be us since we
dont even eat there at home. but the tour stopped for lunch there, so we
didnt really have a choice. After lunch we walked past the synagogue which
was gorgeous and saw the memorial weeping willow with a leaf for every
person killed in the holocaust in hungary, then across the chain bridge (the
first permanent bridge to connect buda and pest which was completely
destroyed during the war and rebuilt - like most of the city almost 80% in
fact) and we saw Parliament building, which is huge and it was interesting
to learn that more than half of it is never used becuase hungary only has
400 members in parliament. From there we went up to the castle where we saw
some great views of the city and got to see the palace up close. Finally we
ended at the hungarian wine
association where we tasted some wines. I was really excited because
hungary is known for their wines and there were 36 to taste. unfortunately
we tasted a lot! But it was fun. So today we didnt feel too good. We slept
in then walked around looking for breakfast, but it is Sunday so almost
everything was closed. And it is a good thing that we are travelling
tommorrow becuase it is a holiday - all saints day or something, and
everything is closed tommorrow too. After lunch we went to the baths
finally. And that was really neat.
They have a mens side and a womens side so we couldnt be together but it was
neat anyway. they had a steam room, a warm pool and a hot pool and a cold
plunge pool. and you just take turns in each moving on when you feel like
it. I really liked the steam room and taking a plunge in teh cold pool then
into the hot pool - it made my skin tingle. We spent a little over and hour
there, and I felt so refreshed and relaxed! Then we had a Thai dinner, which
was probably the best we had in hungary. Tommorrow we move on to vienna then
warsaw.
Megan and Seth
Our last day in Prague was nice, we slept in then went to see the jewish
musuem and cemetery. The first thing we saw was the synagogue that has all
the names of Czech holocaust victims on it. that was pretty moving. It also
had an exhibit that included the artwork from some children in the
concentration camp.
then we saw the old cemetary and then moved on to the burial society
building that had an exhibit about burial rituals which was very
interesting. Finally there was the newer synagogue that houses a musuem
about jewish life and history in the czech republic since the middle ages.
The next morning we had to get up early to make the train to budapest.
Unfortunately we couldnt get a night train so we had to spend the entire day
on the train. We arrived in budapest around 7pm. Finding our hostel wasnt
that difficult though and it is nice, clean and had a laundry service which
was nice becuase we were really in need.
The first full day in Budapest I wasnt feeling like doing much so we slept
in then wandered around. We saw all the main sights but didnt go in
anything. We did go to a market though which was intersting to walk around.
The second day we went on a walking tour where we heard more information
about the sights we had seen the day before. First we saw the Heroes Square
with monuments to all the old kings and leaders. Also the castle in the park
which we had seen the day before, we learned why it is so strange, is that
it is a recreation of one in the countryside that was built for a festival
years ago. Also we saw the most beautiful of the bath buildings. We got a
peek at the outdoor pools. Then we saw the opera house and st stevens
cathedral which is the second largest in the country and very beautiful. We
got a peek inside at the relic of st steven's mummified right hand, and at
the altar where there is a statue of st steven instead of one of jesus or
mary.
From there we had our first lunch at mcdonalds since coming to europe. Rick
steves (the travel guide writer) says that every american will at one time
go to eat at mcdonalds in europe, but we didnt think it would be us since we
dont even eat there at home. but the tour stopped for lunch there, so we
didnt really have a choice. After lunch we walked past the synagogue which
was gorgeous and saw the memorial weeping willow with a leaf for every
person killed in the holocaust in hungary, then across the chain bridge (the
first permanent bridge to connect buda and pest which was completely
destroyed during the war and rebuilt - like most of the city almost 80% in
fact) and we saw Parliament building, which is huge and it was interesting
to learn that more than half of it is never used becuase hungary only has
400 members in parliament. From there we went up to the castle where we saw
some great views of the city and got to see the palace up close. Finally we
ended at the hungarian wine
association where we tasted some wines. I was really excited because
hungary is known for their wines and there were 36 to taste. unfortunately
we tasted a lot! But it was fun. So today we didnt feel too good. We slept
in then walked around looking for breakfast, but it is Sunday so almost
everything was closed. And it is a good thing that we are travelling
tommorrow becuase it is a holiday - all saints day or something, and
everything is closed tommorrow too. After lunch we went to the baths
finally. And that was really neat.
They have a mens side and a womens side so we couldnt be together but it was
neat anyway. they had a steam room, a warm pool and a hot pool and a cold
plunge pool. and you just take turns in each moving on when you feel like
it. I really liked the steam room and taking a plunge in teh cold pool then
into the hot pool - it made my skin tingle. We spent a little over and hour
there, and I felt so refreshed and relaxed! Then we had a Thai dinner, which
was probably the best we had in hungary. Tommorrow we move on to vienna then
warsaw.
Megan and Seth
