Travels with Trout

Europe June 2011 -- Wrap Up

2011-10-17T14:25:00.002-07:00

On Monday, June 27th, we left Annecy to get to Basel for our last night in Europe. We drove in France, Switzerland and Germany that day.

Having rented the car in Stuttgart, we returned it in the little town of Lorrach, Germany, just over the border from Basel to save money on the rental. Even though there may be some taxi or public transportation costs, it is still cheaper to rent a car in town in Europe rather than at the airport (or often at a train station). And, it is dramatically cheaper to return it to the country of the original rental rather than in a different country -- even if it's not to the same town.

If you take a taxi, you may be lucky enough to get a driver who can speak English and is entertaining at the same time. For the ride from Lorrach, we got just such a man who had even done a big bus tour of the US. The ride was fun. I wonder if I should count that as ground transportation or entertainment?

He dropped us at the downtown train station. There we could catch a free bus for the EuroAirport. This airport is right where Switzerland, France and Germany come together. We stayed at Airport Hotel Basel. There was a bus stop right across the street from it and they had a free airport shuttle that we took the next morning. Within 1/2 mile or less, we were in France, where the airport is actually located.

It was a long trip home, as the documentation below shows. The worst part was getting back into the US at Philadelphia. There were tons of people arriving at the time we did and hardly any passport control people to check our passports coming in. No additional resources were brought in to help.

There were so many people that to TSA's credit, they did put on extra workers and opened extra workstations to handle the crowd. After we got through security, we literally had to run and were almost the last ones to get on our connecting flight to Phoenix. They held it a bit due to the crowds and to the large group of students who had been with us since Frankfurt, not all of which had yet made it through.

I think part of the reason for the crowds was that the weather was miserable and several flights were delayed due to the circling required to get through the storms.

If you click on the documents below, you will see that we flew this route: Basel --> Frankfurt --> Philadelphia --> Phoenix --> Tucson. Someday I hope to be able to do a non-stop somewhere, but living in Tucson, that's unlikely. At best we may be able to do a one stop, like Tucson --> Atlanta --> Madrid.

Just for fun, this is the view from our room in Basel.

We had pretty bad bar food when we arrived there, but the dinner was excellent. The next morning we just had the continental breakfast before heading for the airport.

As you all know, we made it home just fine. Now for the costs.

This time we also just about matched Rick Steves' suggested daily average without airfare per person for moderate European travel. It cost us $390 per day or $195 per person. The last time I read his numbers it was $185 per person, I think. I figure if we are close to $200 per person, we're doing good.

Here are the particulars:

Airfare -- $3450. That included both of us, Tucson to Lisbon, Lisbon to Florence, Florence to Stuttgart, Basel to Tucson. We did all the internal European flying via European low-cost airlines rather than booking typical American ones or their partners. We saved 1/2 the flying cost by doing that, ie. this airfare number would have been twice as much. It was a big chunk of the cost and was one we didn't have to pay last time.

Ground transportation -- $ 1130. This included taxis, rental car, parking, fuel, public transportation, etc. That was actually much cheaper than on our last trip. Of course, this trip was only 1 month instead of 2.

Lodging -- $3985. Even with the two, one-week apartment rentals, the average cost per day was $142. The closest thing to a Motel 6 in Europe is a hostel and my hostel days are long gone.

Food -- $3710. That included what we bought for our apartments, the meals we ate out and the cost of breakfast where we had to pay for it separately. That's an average of $133 per day.

Fun -- $925. This included all museum entrances, entertainment, etc. Many of the things we did for entertainment were also ground transportation, so we got by very cheaply on this at $33 per day average.

Miscellaneous -- $1090. This includes parking in Tucson, pet boarding, foreign transaction fees, laundry, tips, postcards, stamps, extra phone charges -- you get the picture. It can really add up if you're not careful. For this trip it was about $39 per day.

So the grand total with everything was $14,290. I had estimated a total cost of $13,555, so we went over the estimate by $735 or $26 per day. Almost all of that was for food.

What can I say? We like to eat and feel that the food is a major part of the trip. Okay, I'll admit it, in some places we are all about the food like our son-in-law, Jason, but we both came home weighing the same or less, so how can that be wrong?

I secretly hoped we would cut the cost of our first trip in half since this one was for 1/2 the time, but the airfare put us way over. Without the airfare, this trip would have been 44% of the cost of the 2009 one. With the airfare, it was 58%.

I hope the 2012 one will be even cheaper, but we are budgeting about $10,000 for it just in case. It still sounds like a lot of money, but if you take some time to research travel packages, you will find that the costs are very similar for much less time.

The other two possibilities I looked at for this year's trip was Scandinavia (16 days) and Greece (13 days). They both would have been packaged bus tours and we would likely have stayed over somewhere to make the whole trip about a month long.

The land only (no airfare) price for just the packaged Scandinavia itinerary at the time we would go was about $5600 per person (total $11,200 without airfare) and the Greece one at the time we would go was about $3000 per person (total $6000 without airfare). We might do one of these sometime. Actually I'm thinking Greece in the spring of 2013 for our 25th anniversary. It's never too early to plan and budget for these things.

Joan asked me how we saved money for these trips when we have no income. I reminded her that we do have income, we both get Social Security, Trout gets a pension and we both have IRAs we draw upon. But the answer is the same as for saving for anything, working or not, we physically, electronically and mentally set the money aside and don't spend it on other things or in other ways. So simple to say, much harder to do, but possible if you're really obsessed.

I hope you enjoyed seeing where we went and what we did. It was definitely a different trip from the 2009 one.

Europe June 2011 -- Lake Annecy

2011-10-17T12:26:00.000-07:00

After cruising around Lake Como, we decided an hour tour on a boat around Lake Annecy would be a good thing. I made sure Trout took a picture of me in the boat. That's not snow back behind me. It's high rock on the mountains around the lake.

Trout always gets his picture taken. This is "that" look.

We had a number of options for the tour around the lake, but we chose this one-hour one.

This bigger boat did two hour cruises complete with a meal.

But we went on this shorter Compagnie des Bateaux excursion boat. Although the linked website is in English, the announcer used only French. Needless to say, I understood almost nothing. the Savoie was our boat.

There was a nice walk down the quay to it.

The park side was also lovely.

The swans seem to like this canal. The water is very clear. The dark places you see are the underwater foliage.

I tried to capture some of the fish swimming in it. Trout did see fishermen on the canal farther into town.

No matter how many pictures I took, the fish hid.

I left all these in because I thought they were pretty and that they would make really hard jigsaw puzzles.

In this one you can see the foliage a little better.

So off we went into the lake.

That's the park behind us.

We could have taken a speed boat like this, but Trout was concerned about sunburn.

I loved these rocky mountains.

The lake is quite large. The link says it's the 2nd largest in France, and also the cleanest in Europe. I just thought it was beautiful.

I think everyone else on the boat with us was French.

This is a beach across the lake from Annecy.

This is typical of the way we saw things being built all over. Most locations are so hilly and crowded that it is nearly impossible to get materials up to a building site. So they set up a BIG crane and lift them up.

This escarpment was amazingly beautiful.

The chateau wasn't too bad either.

But wait, what are those multicolored dots?

There are so many of them and they are everywhere.

Base jumpers? Paragliders? Daredevils of some sort. This link is not for the faint of heart -- or those afraid of heights -- but it does show some good shots of how they do it. There are many more on YouTube.

Spending almost every weekend on the water growing up, I loved these shores. The water's edge pictures are very similar to what Medina Lake looked like in the 50's when we had our place there.

Well, not like this. We were in the hill country and there are Turk's Head and Mormon's Bluff, but they didn't exactly look like this.

They weren't very high and kind of looked like this. People would gather in the area to fish and to jump off the top.

I'm not sure what this is, but I thought it was worth a picture.

Here are some more pictures of the wild ones.

We got down as far as we were going to go and turned toward home. There was this interesting chateau right on the lake. We didn't get quite to the right angle for any of my pictures to correspond very closely to Paul Cezanne's painting.

So we continued on around the lake with more great views.

And too soon we were back close to the park and to the dock.

It was the perfect relaxing end to our last weekend in Europe. I would go there again, but perhaps with more energy to explore more of the countryside. The week here, week there idea is really catching on with me -- maybe 2 weeks here...

Europe June 2011 -- Annecy

2011-10-15T15:29:00.002-07:00

After breakfast on June 24th, it was time for us to take the shuttle from Zermatt back to Tasch, get our car and drive to France. We had lots of options for the route, but I navigated us along the south side of Lake Leman (Geneva on the other side in Switzerland), through small towns along the lake, through some back country, and into Annecy. We had reservations for 3 nights at our hotel there.

The countryside along the way, even on the autobahn and the autoroute was lovely. We did kind of wonder about these giant dishes...

To get to the Hotel du Palais de l'Isle, we had some interesting directions. We were to drive to a speaker on the pedestrian street, call the hotel, drive across the bridge (the very one you will see later in the pictures), stop at the hotel, dump out our luggage and drive to the underground parking.

It was so crowded that Friday afternoon that doing that was a huge problem. It was compounded by the fact that we had multiple bags of stuff including lots of dirty laundry. We literally dumped all of them into the tiny lobby of the hotel. Then we tried to follow the directions the desk clerk told us, but the street was so crowded we could not get through the way we were supposed to go.

So we got off the pedestrian street the best we could and then started circling the drain to try to get back to the parking area. As was normal, Trout was tired, cranky and hungry and not in the mood for doing that. Fortunately, it only took us about 15 minutes to find our way back and park, but it seemed like forever. We later walked the way we were told to go and discovered that would not have been an obvious or easy way to go, either.

We had considered taking the car out and driving around the area and maybe up to Chamonix in the French Alps, but we got so comfortable and settled in that we just left the car and explored the little town on foot.

So this is the front of our hotel.

This is the street sign on the building.

This was the window in our room. The hotel did have an elevator, thank goodness.

After taking our stuff up to the room, we set out to get some lunch. France typically has more restricted hours for eating, and we were having a hard time finding anyplace open. While looking, we stopped in this little church.

Across the street from the ATM I used to get money, we saw this place that was still open. I was up for going in and buying a picnic there, but Trout wanted to sit down somewhere. Yes, these beautiful dishes were real and for sale. None is sweet in this area, all are savory.

We did find a small place along the water to have a bite to eat. It is the one with the red umbrellas in the right of this picture. It was just a little bistro, but the pommes frites were great.

After eating we took off walking again. This is the pedestrian zone right behind our hotel.

When we came out of our hotel on Saturday morning, this pedestrian area was completely filled for blocks with a typical French flea market. Of course, I didn't have the camera. We couldn't help gawking. Why is it that French junk looks so much better than American junk?

You could tell it was June -- and white was the big color for summer.

We were heading in the direction of the laundromat the desk clerk told us about. We came upon this sizable square. I liked the combination of old and new buildings here.

You can see Trout walking toward the corner arch. Restaurants were just starting to open up for dinner again.

That was the way to the laundromat. On Saturday morning we went there somewhat early for us. I was sure it would be full of people and that it would take forever to do our clothes. But when we arrived there was only one woman about our age drying her things. During the entire time I was there (Trout went off looking for an English book store) there were a total of 5 other people who came in to wash and/or dry their clothes.

Two of them were the Australian couple we chatted with. They were about our age, had farmed cotton and had even been to Lubbock. They were traveling for about 3 months, escaping the Australian winter and were ending their trip in the US and Canada and flying home from Dallas. Sometimes it's as much fun to meet travelers from other countries as to meet locals.

The first time anyone goes to Europe, they are often surprised at the number of dogs in restaurants. There are very few places where they are not allowed, and you usually can see at least one sitting outside with their owners.

This is the arch we were supposed to drive through to get to the parking garage upon our arrival. It's lovely when it's not crammed full of people at the ice cream place. You'll see a picture of that later.

Upon walking out the way we were to have driven out, we found ourselves on a main street looking back at the entrance into the old part of the town.

The castle was just above us. The gold building on the right is our hotel.

While walking around, we saw this picture-worthy motorcycle. Trout says it is a pricey one.

Then we walked in the park. I didn't have the camera with us for this walk, but I did when we went back the next day, so we actually did this walk twice. We were surprised to see this totem in the area where we entered.

There were families picnicing. I thought we were in an Impressionist painting.

There were paddle boat rentals and lots of people in and on Lake Annecy. The next posting will be all about our trip around it.

You could go on a beautiful wooden boat to tour the lake if you wanted.

There were these fun pedal horses for kids to ride.

We loved the tree bark.

And we loved the trees and dappled sunshine.

There were some very nice small boats moored in this area. Trout like this one a lot.

We were walking along the Promenade Jacquet.

Across the street was this church and on the way to it was the entrance to our underground parking.

As we were walking back down the pedestrian street, it started to get dark.

There were crowds at this ice cream place just below our window from the minute it opened in the morning until it closed at night. Look to the left and you can see the arch we were supposed to drive through. There were lots of ice cream places in the area, some huge, but the Glacier des Alpes was the most popular. It would have long lines when the others had no one in them. The sign says they make their ice cream right there, i.e. they are an artisan glacier. I went for the anise and Trout had rum raisin.

It seemed like the later it got at night, the more action there was.

So we just leaned against the wall of the main bridge and watched. This baloon guy was very popular with the kids.

After seeing so many of them, I finally had to take a picture of a Jack Russell. That was probably the dog we saw the most on the whole trip.

The old prison just got more picturesque the darker it got.

The other buildings in the area looked striking as it got darker, too.

Of course there were ducks.

"Our" street was really busy with diners and walkers. This is about how it looked when we arrived only it was lunch time.

Trout wanted me to take a picture of these bugs.

There's that charming prison again.

I'm not sure what I was doing, but Trout stepped into this church and said it was very nice inside.

The swans were a favorite with the crowds. They looked like they were too dumb to get up on the upper level, but they were actually hanging out and waiting for something edible to drop over the edge.

We had breakfast at the hotel 2 of the 3 mornings we were there, but one we slept too late. I was up for trying the little Creperie du Chateau right behind our hotel. We had a fun conversation with the older couple sitting next to us. When she couldn't think of the English word for sheep, she bleated. Some sounds are universal. I linked to a review of this restaurant on a blog called Sit Down, Dig In. It was a good meal.

The entertainment was good, too. Remember that big square? There was a food market there on Sunday morning. It closed at noon and these vehicles made their way past us and out through that arch while we were eating, leaving a view of the old part of our hotel across the street. I think this is where Trout came out when he took the spiral stairs down from our room rather than the elevator.

So Trout and I are always talking about French food. We had decent meals the whole time in Annecy. Even the one we had along the canal at the place that catered to Germans was decent. But the best were at the French places.

I already mentioned the creperie above. I had both a savory crepe and a sweet one. We also had lunch at the Atelier Gourmand des Jumeaux. We got there toward the end of their lunch hours, and were almost the last to leave, but they were happy to serve us. This is the place where the waiter spoke American-accented English and where we saw the young Asian "models" with the older French men. The food was great. The waiter said he learned his English from American movies and TV.

The other two great places we ate were Il Etait une Fois and Le Bilboquet. We had fabulous meals at both. At the former, the chef came out and talked to us in English. At the latter, Trout had a little difficulty communicating with the waitress, but all was worked out. A young man at a table close to us offered to help if we needed it.

This little town was very busy the weekend we were there. In fact, the desk clerk who was there at night said he didn't know what was going on it was so busy. This is the other place where we mostly saw families with children and few old retirees like us, or young backpackers. I'm beginning to think that was because we stayed in the heart of things in a modestly priced hotel as opposed to a typical tourist place.

Europe June 2011 -- Zermatt

2011-10-12T13:56:00.002-07:00

When we were planning our route, I noticed that Zermatt was almost due west of Lake Como. It wasn't really on our list at first, but then I thought we couldn't bypass the Matterhorn, so Zermatt was our next stop.

These first 2 pictures are still at Lake Como.

We went through lots of tunnels like this.

Out of all the pictures I took and all the roundabouts we were on, this was the only decent picture of that experience. Stop lights were rare. This was the usual option for an intersection.

The closer we got to Switzerland, the worse the weather got.

As soon as we could find a place to do it, we stopped and got the required sticker for driving in Switzerland. It's another country where there can be heavy fines if you don't have one.

We also had to get Swiss Francs. Switzerland doesn't use the Euro. I had some left from when I lived in Germany. They still spent just fine.

Along the way, we encountered very old and very new structures.

Trout loved this bridge.

He also made sure I took the picture of the Dodge Ram pickup.

You can't actually drive to Zermatt. You have park your car in Tasch and take a taxi or take the Tasch-Zermatt shuttle train. We opted for the shuttle. I bought our tickets and noticed that they were round trip and that they lasted a month. Too bad we had only 2 nights to spend there.

We had a great room at the Hotel Daniela. They promised a Matterhorn view and they delivered.

This is one of the few pictures of me. I'm on the balcony off our room. It was hard not to look at the mountain.

These are more pictures with different weather conditions.

I had planned for us to take the Gornergratbahn up to have lunch and view the Matterhorn. You can see it through the trees here in a picture from our balcony, but the weather was so iffy, we decided to not spend the time and money to do that.

Instead we decided to walk around town and explore. We ran into the usual tourist activities.

We got glimpses of the "old" part of town. More about that later.

Some are lived in and rented out. I loved this one with the TV aerial.

This restaurant in the Hotel la Couronne was just around the corner from our hotel. It was at an intersection with the river and had a view of the Matterhorn. We had lunch there twice. Trout got the same thing both times, a fabulous veggie plate. I got two different things, one of which had so much cheese it needed to be shared so multiple people could have heart attacks together.

The shop across the street was a small market. As with most stores, it closed mid-day for lunch and a nap and reopened later.

This is a view of the Hotel Julen where we had our dinners. We had breakfast at our hotel. For the first time ever, I chose the half-board option and we weren't disappointed. If you click on the link, you will see the dining room. Those chairs were weird and not very comfortable, but the food was great.

This shows the view of the Matterhorn from the La Couronne restaurant. We opted to sit in the shade rather than in the sun.

This is the dominant church in town, St. Mauritius Catholic. Our first morning there, we were having breakfast at our hotel and a parade came right down the street we were on. I didn't have the camera and was afraid I'd miss something if I went up to the room to get it. It turned out to be for the Feast of Corpus Christi, and it was quite a long and solemn procession.

We didn't spend much time in the really touristy part of Zermatt with all the expensive shops.

As soon as we could, we turned off into the "old" Zermatt. This is actually a village within Zermatt pulled together with old buildings to illustrate typical buildings from past centuries.

The signs are in German, French, English and Japanese.

We wondered about the structural integrity of some of the places, and why the entrances were so high.

Our best guess is that it's due to the amount of snow each year...

After our little walkabout, we walked back to our hotel. You can take taxis around town, but the town is really small. There are about 6,000 year round inhabitants and the number swells to about 20,000 during ski season.

This is our balcony from below.

These are typical vehicles. They are all electric. We did see a few fossil fuel powered trucks, but they were only for heavy work around town. No personal vehicles are allowed.

The most fascinating thing for us was the graveyard. Right next to St. Mauritius is an area reserved for people who died on the Matterhorn.

Across the street were the family plots. At first I thought Swiss women kept their maiden names when they got married, but upon a little research, I learned the following: 1.) Only civil marriages are recognized in Switzerland. They take place at the Registry Office. A religious ceremony may follow the civil one. 2.) The couple takes the surname of the husband, although they can take the surname of the wife with advanced permission from the Registry. 3.) The wife may keep her surname but only if it is hyphenated and/or precedes the husband's.

In this cemetery we saw lots of hyphenated family named plots.

Trout thought these markers were some of the most interesting he had ever seen. He said he saw one where the woman had 3 husbands, but he never could find it again for me to shoot.

This is a good example of a hyphenated family plot.

This was an interesting stone. These may be brother and sister. Note the woman's "married" name is in smaller letters. If you look at the tourist street scene picture above, you will see the Darioli name on a shop in town. Graven is also a common name in the cemetery.

We saw this memorial and had no idea what it meant. When we got back, I translated using Google translate: Mountain guidevictims of their profession. Here we lost the life. There we foundit again. On the sacred mountain of the Lord.

This is a close up of the earliest plaque on this monument. Note the Graven name.

Trout enjoyed our time in Zermatt more than I did. He said he would like to go back sometime. I'm not so hot for that. I'm more about our next stop, Annecy, France.

Europe June 2011 -- Lake Como

2011-10-10T13:45:00.001-07:00

Here's our pal, another Ape/Pinocchio below our window at Lake Como. I just had to throw that in at the beginning.

This is a pretty detailed map of the lake. We stayed in the Hotel Olivedo in Varenna. It's about in the middle on the east side of the lake.

This was our first view of the lake. It got better from here.

This is our hotel, right across the street from the ferry dock. If you click on the picture, you can see me on the balcony at the left on the 3rd (2nd European) floor. We arrived and parked with the cars in the foreground to register, but moved our car into the fenced area in the back for the duration of our stay.

We went downstairs to see if we could get something to eat. Even though it wasn't the "right" time, they made us some sandwiches and got us some drinks. We had dinner there later and had some of the best ravioli we have ever eaten. The house made tiramisu wasn't too shabby either.

I had to get some shots from the room. We were in a fabulous room with views two directions. This is through the side windows to the park below and beyond.

This is through the French doors on the front to the balcony and beyond.

This is on the balcony looking down the lake over the car ferry dock.

This is from the balcony after dinner.

And this is early the next morning.

This little place was right next door, but we never went there.

These shots are from the balcony getting as close as I could with my little camera.

This is looking down to the restaurant and the linen delivery. We had interesting waffle texture towels. I had read some complaints about them, but they were large and very absorbent. Trout and I both like our towels larger and thinner than most people, so they were perfect for us.

We started a walk around town and this is one place I could photography with the hills and narrow streets.

Mostly we saw this kind of view as we walked.

This was the paving for most of the ways we walked. The stones are not cemented in.

I loved this "beware of the dog" sign. It's a copy of the one on the floor of a villa in Pompeii.

Rather than going up and down into the town, an easier way to walk was on a cantilevered sidewalk over the lake.

The hydrangeas were doing some serious blooming along the way. Take that, Madonna!

This is where we parked our car. It's the 3rd one from the bottom. We wouldn't have any pictures of it except that Trout noticed these rented Alfa Romeos.

We both loved the stone house behind our hotel.

Picturesque, eh?

More hydrangeas.

The fishermen had very long poles.

You may recognize Varenna from this picture. A similar shot was on a recent cover of the National Geographic Catalog.

Trout had me take a picture of this poster. That's a wooden motorcycle.

We got an all day pass and went to all the stops it allowed around the lake -- twice. We only got off once, and it wasn't here in Bellagio. This is the priciest tourist town around the lake.

From what we saw from the water, this was my favorite town except for Varenna.

I loved this church. If you click on the picture you should be able to see people entering the church.

Now we're in open water heading for the next stop.

That's Tremezzo. There's a famous palace there. Not being much on palaces, we stayed on the boat, but it was one of the busiest stops.

We were getting a little hungry for lunch and considered stopping at Lenno, but were put off by all the tents you can see in the background. Tents mean some kind of market which means lots of people.

I loved this ultra-modern (probably 40s or 50s) house right on the water surrounded by significantly older buildings.

This church was lovely. I think I saw it in some movie.

This is the most popular Tremezzo stop. In this picture you can see the palace in the background, and the gobs of people waiting to get on the boat.

We ate lunch here in Menaggio. It was at the far end of the line and was much quieter. We found a small place off the main drag and had a great lunch.

It was popular enough and surrounded by enough wealthy folks to support a hovercraft operation. Supposedly, a number of movie stars have places in this area. We didn't see George Clooney anywhere on the lake, though. I guess he must've been working.

I continued to be taken by seeing fish in such clear water.

So here we go around again. This is Varenna from the water.

And this is a broader look at Bellagio.

I was surprised at the American flag being displayed here, but it is a tourist attention getting device, as are all the others from other countries.

This is Varenna from across the lake. The yellow hotel in the bottom middle is ours. We walked up to and down from the church in the upper middle right.

This is more of Tremezzo from the water.

Along with its fancy hotel.

We were on a foot passenger only ferry, but we did get pretty close to the car one.

This one was a real tourist operation. They served lunch on board. I don't know if they also went by the movie star homes.

This hotel is on the water in Bellagio. I liked the stencil work. It's similar to some done on the Cathedral here in Tucson.

And we finally got back home to Varenna and our hotel.

We walked along the lake down to the colorful part of the waterfront and had dinner in a highly recommended place there. We both thought the meal was mediocre, but Trout said they had the best dessert he'd had on the trip. It was a big bowl of fresh fruit and gelato.

There was a pretty good sunset view from there.

Our hotel did have the strangest shower set up of any on the trip. Most of the showers were just that, and very small. This bathroom had a tub with a shower curtain that was very interesting. We called it the "Circ de Soleil" shower.

First you need to understand that the tub is long but very narrow. We could hardly put both feet together and face either end. The bottom was round, like a tube round.

How this curtain worked was a real puzzle until Trout figured out that you had to lift the wall apparatus up, slide the wire supports into slots, and slide them back down again to lock it into position.

Then it encircled you and you didn't splash all over the place like I did the first time I used it.

We both agreed that Lake Como was more beautiful than we had imagined. Trout said the pictures don't do it justice. If you click on the link above, you will see more of them. It's a glacier fed lake that is about 400 meters deep with the bottom being about 200 meters below sea level.

We were there only 2 nights, but we could have stayed longer. This was one of the places where we were aware of a large number of families with young children visiting the area. It's not just a popular spot for retirees and backpacking students.

Europe June 2011 -- Dolomite Road & Merano to Lake Como

2011-10-10T10:46:00.001-07:00

After lunch in Lienz, Austria, we started on our way into Italy. I had planned to go on a couple of high passes on side roads for this drive to Merano, but after the previous night's experience and looking at the weather at the tops of some of these mountains, we decided to stay down somewhat lower and travel on SS241, known as the Dolomite Road.

It lived up to its reputation as a beautiful drive and had plenty of twisty parts and elevation to be exciting. Thank goodness Trout agreed that going over a high pass just to say he did it wasn't worth it if it was so socked in at the top and you couldn't see anything.

So these are the Dolomites from the passenger side of the car.

As far as Alps driving goes, this was my favorite route. There was just something about them when we came through on the train from Munich to Venice in 2009.

Don't be too distracted by the reflection of my hand holding the map...

Trout wanted me to be sure to get a picture of the road, so we actually pulled off to take this one.

We got lower down and started to see some farming activity. There was more of that to see on the way to Lake Como. It doesn't seem to matter how steep the slope, those Italians take advantage of every bit of arable land.

We went through Bolzano and on a smaller road to Merano. This was just an overnight, but we stayed in a really nice place called the Windsor Hotel. Merano is very close to the border with Austria and the place seemed more Austrian than Italian. This whole Tyrol area did go back and forth between Italy and Austria/Germany, so that makes sense.

Merano is a spa town surrounded by mountains. It's another one of the many lovely small towns we stayed in that has a river running through it. I didn't get any pictures, so you will need to go here to see some.

We had a nice dinner at a pizza place we walked to in town. We stopped and had some gelato on the way back, but forgot about not sitting at the tables if we walked up and took it away, so even though there were many outside tables free, we were shooed away. We walked about 20 paces to a bench along the river and sat and finished our gelato while we watched people come and go from the gelato shop.

The next morning we had a Italian/German combo breakfast. That means not as big as a German one but not just a roll and coffee either.

Then we got on the road for Lake Como. I had originally planned for us to go over Stelvio Pass to get there. That's why we stayed in Merano. But we decided not to and took the SS42 route instead. We did have a good Google map to follow, but we found the signage great as well.

The road was primarily through farming country and small villages. If you click on this picture, you can see what's on the display in the car better.

From a distance, we thought these were vineyards, but they were actually huge fruit orchards.

Many of the trees were netted.

We did go through some mountains.

And on some twisty roads.

There were a few little villages.

The road was in good shape but a bit narrow.

This fruit truck and the bus got a little close to each other.

We could see Italian hill towns.

We could also see some farm houses.

And we could see one of our favorite vehicles, the 3-wheeled small truck. I'm not sure who the manufacturer was of the ones we saw, but the Piaggio Ape is a sample of what they look like. Trout dubbed them Pinocchiomobiles.

We had such a nice breakfast in Merano that we waited to have a light lunch in Varenna at the hotel where we stayed. More about Lake Como in the next posting.

Europe June 2011 -- Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse

2011-10-10T07:57:00.000-07:00

After a good night's rest and a typically good German breakfast, we were ready to find a laundry in town and wash our clothes before we left Berchtesgaden for Austria and our drive to the Edelweiss Hutte for the next night. Our hosts at the Hotel Bavaria insisted on doing our laundry for us using their big machines. They did charge us but it was easily 1/3 of what we would have to pay at a public facility and we got to sit in the dining room and read, snack and look at the mountains while things washed and dried.

We got all packed up and headed out. The "normal" route to go to the Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse is to go on the autobahn in Austria. We chose to take a back road. In either case, we had to get a special Austria driving sticker for the car or risk being tagged by cameras and paying a big fine. We were able to fill up our gas tank and get the sticker in Berchtesgaden before we left.

The road we took was still a major one, even though it wasn't the autobahn. I was looking forward to the scenery along a major lake that was on the way, but it turned out that we actually went through a tunnel all along that lake. It was then that I realized that if a major road is shown like a dotted line, it means a tunnel in most of the places we drove.

For half of this trip, we planned to drive through the Alps and go over some high passes. The first was the Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse. If you go to the link, you can see more about this twisty, touristy road, including its history.

I grabbed this illustration off the website. Remember, these numbers are meters, not feet.

This is a panoramic view of the road, also from the website.

When we paid our toll at the bottom of the mountains, we asked about the weather. We were told that it was just a little rainy. This was the way the cobblestone road up to our hotel, the Edelweiss Hutte, is supposed to look.

We arrived at the turn off to it off the main road and the wind was blowing the rain sideways. We had reservations, but we hadn't paid anything yet or guaranteed them with a credit card, so we seriously considered going on over the pass and finding somewhere else to stay, but it was about 3:00 in the afternoon and we were tired, so we decided to go on up. The cobblestones were wet, but cars and motorcycles were coming and going, so it seemed like it would be okay.

We got to the top, struggled in the wind and rain to get our stuff out of the car and checked into the hotel. It is a tiny place. We had a light lunch and went back to the room to rest before going down to dinner around 7:00.

When we arrived we couldn't see much because we were in the clouds, but we did see a marmot on the rocks outside our windows. Marmots are a big thing there and the hotel had many products make with marmot fat.

While we were having dinner, it started to snow. Everyone there started getting a little anxious -- but especially the folks who had come on motorcycles.

It was very cold in our room, but we had down comforters so that helped when the hotel did their heat control thing. Unfortunately, I didn't get a good picture of the marmot, but I did get some good pictures of what it looked like outside our window the next morning.

Yeah, we were snowed in. Big time.

We were still in the clouds. The little parking area for the hotel was down a steep incline. A couple of cars and an older Toyota 4-wheel drive were parked there. The motocycles were stored in some garages the hotel had for that purpose.

The staff spent a couple of hours clearing the snow there and on the incline down to there. Fortunately, we had parked up on the major parking lot where the gift shop is. At one point the Toyota folks took off and we thought they had left. When we went up exploring, we discovered that they were in the upper parking lot. They had tried to leave, but the road hadn't been plowed yet and they only got to the edge of the road when they realized that it was too slippery even for them.

So we all waited...and waited...and waited. We went up to the car again and discovered that the parking lot had been plowed. Our car was somewhat surrounded by snow and the Toyota folks were still there. Finally, while we were chatting with them with my poor German and their better English, the woman who ran the gift shop arrived in her old Toyota front wheel drive station wagon.

She said that the road was okay, just a little snow close to the edges, and that we should be able to make it down fine. So we followed the Toyota folks down. I was most concerned about getting onto the asphalt and off the cobblestones after what we learned about the road up to the Eagle's Nest. I was also intent upon getting out of the clouds and down to a level where we could actually see the edge of the road.

It didn't take too long for us to see that even if we hadn't been at the highest point on the road, we still would have been snowed in. Trout did a great job of driving on the wet and still slippery road. We loved these "barriers". They were just wide enough apart that most of today's cars would sail right through them.

The farther down we got the better the weather conditions were and the more we could see. So much for us seeing the mountains from our hotel.

Ahhhh, finally something green.

And is that some blue sky?

Now we're talking. No snow. No rain. This is the way it's supposed to be the 3rd week of June.

A twisty road for Trout to drive and scenery for both of us.

And we caught up with the Toyota folks. They were heading over to the glacier for their next night.

This looks like some kind of postcard, but I did take this picture.

There were waterfalls along the ground.

We did get below the timberline.

And down into the valley with some charming villages.

Where we could see waterfalls higher up.

I'm not really a flatlander, but it did feel good to be on lower ground.

This day we were heading into Italy to drive another high pass in the Dolomites. We passed on that pass. The weather continued to be iffy at the tops of the mountains. Trout said he really didn't need to drive the high passes. My knuckles were still white, so we varied our route to Merano a little bit.

Before we left Austria, we stopped in the little town of Lienz for lunch. We drove through town looking for a likely place and decided upon the Dolomiten Hotel. They had a conservatory on the side and that's where we ate. If you click on the link and then on the 1st picture, you'll see that it's very 70s. They were featuring fresh "spargel". That's asparagus and it is white, so both of us got pasta dishes with it in them. We were almost to Italy.

Europe June 2011 -- Berchtesgaden & the Eagle's Nest

2011-10-08T11:48:00.000-07:00

After breakfast and a little shopping for toiletries, we headed on east toward our final destination for the day, Berchtesgaden. We followed the good map we got in Fussen and spent part of the time on the backroads of the Deutsche Alpenstrasse and part on the Autobahn.

We also spent part of the time following this MR2 so I could get a picture.

One of the cool views from Berchtesgaden is this one of Mount Watzmann. The weather was variable to say the least, but I got one good shot.

Berchtesgaden is in the mountains, so most of the directions are up or down or both. When we arrived we checked into our hotel and immediately walked into town to find a place for kaffee and kuchen.

We walked back to the hotel by this route through a park. It went both up and down. The cafe we snacked at is the middle building on the right.

I found it interesting that it was cold and damp, but they had a form of lantana growning near the cafe.

This Hotel Bavaria is where we stayed our 2 nights in Berchtesgaden. The link is to the room we stayed in. They had parking for the car and they were almost on the flat. We later learned that the railroad tunnel to nowhere on the left is the place where the Nazis tried to hide much of their stolen art in boxcars. Of course the Allies found it when they took over.

This is the part of the train station where Hitler had his own personal arrival and departure point. He would come out the middle arch to wave to his adoring followers.

The River Ache runs through Berchtesgaden. It is greenish, largely due to the level of glacier melt in the water.

We liked this little covered bridge with the flower boxes.

Here's Trout looking over the river with Mount Watzmann in the background.

Part of the time we were there, the river flowed normally.

But when it rained, the water got a little more interesting.

We spent 2 nights and one day in Berchtesgaden. That was so that we could go on a tour of the Eagle's Nest. I highly encourage you to follow the link and go to the description and the content of the tour.

Some people say that it's not worth the money to go on a guided tour, that you can use a guidebook and look for yourself. I think it was well worth the money. Our tour guide was a woman who has lived in Germany for over 20 years and started her career there doing similar tours for the US Army when it controlled all that you see on the tour. I went there twice when I lived in Germany, but we certainly didn't have her as a tour guide.

She is married to another American who has lived most of his life overseas. He's written a book about Berchtesgaden. When the Americans turned all the facilities back over the Germans, they were able to start a business doing these English only tours because no one else was doing that. It was shortly after the two parts of Germany were reunited and the Germans needed all the income they could get to help deal with bringing in East Germany.

I was so fascinated by the bunker part of the tour, that I didn't take many pictures and what I did take weren't worth keeping. The link is to some that are on Google. At the end of this posting there is also a link to more from the museum located over part of the bunkers.

When you have a tour by a knowledgable person, you learn a lot both from what they say and from the answers to the questions they are asked. Some fun and significant things that we learned will be noted with the pictures.

The Eagle's Nest was built as a 50th birthday present for Hitler, his mistress Eva Braun and other high-ranking Nazis. It was a tea house and not intended for overnight. Eva spent more time there than he did.

The Eagle's Nest is on top of the mountain. It was supposed to be bombed into oblivion like the houses and other buildings farther down the mountain that were actually the 2nd seat of the Nazi Party. But the RAF didn't hit the target, so it remains fully intact.

To get to it you go through this tunnel and into an elevator to get to the top. The tunnel is the same length as the elevator to the top. One of the reasons Hitler didn't go here is that he was claustrophobic. He couldn't handle the tunnel or the elevator.

This is inside the tunnel looking out.

These are people waiting for the elevator to go back down. Except for the removal of the benches that lined it, the elevator is the same as during Hitler's time.

So here we are at the top. At this moment, we are above the clouds.

They start to dissipate a bit.

And we can see some of the mountains better. These are not the kinds of views Hitler liked to see. In addition to being claustrophobic, he was also afraid of heights.

Eva was not afflicted by such fears. She came to the tea house often and hiked up this short climb to the cross on a regular basis.

I suspect she didn't call Adolf back in those days. Trout has a penchant for calling friends from odd places. Our mobile phone bills illustrate that when we get home.

Before heading back down, I took this close up of the medallion over the tunnel entrance.

The clouds finally blew away long enough to see the building from below.

Note that the sign is in German and English.

Here people are waiting for the buses to go back down the mountain.

Trout white knuckled it on the way up because it was cloudy a lot of the way. I sat next to the window both directions and got these pictures on the way down.

An interesting story we heard about the building of this road. It is very twisty and steep. At one point it's a 27% grade. Yeah, that's not a typo. The Germans brought in Italian road builders at great expense to build the road because they were the best mountain road builders.

Typically roads were built with cobblestones back then, but this one was asphalted from the beginning to make it safer and less slippery for Hitler. Remember that for the next posting.

After returning to Berchtesgaden, we crossed the street to a little outdoor cafe for a bite to eat. While there, two separate single travelers from the US struck up conversations with us. One young man had separated from his wife and was traveling to try to deal with that. We "counseled" him as best we could.

One woman about our age was there trying to learn German better. She was an opera composer and librettist. If we understood her correctly, she is a professor at Rice University in Houston. She said her vocabulary was great, but she wasn't so good at speaking German and that's what she was working on.

Several years ago she came to the area to work on a libretto. She stayed in a guesthouse on the side of the mountain, the Hotel zum Turken. It was March, it was snowed in, a taxi took her to it and she was the only guest. The owner allowed her to go into the bunkers below it -- with a flashlight, and the phone passed through the security gate, which was locked. She was to call the owner when she was ready to come out.

The signficance of this to us is that we had just visited the Obersalzberg museum on our tour and been told the story of this guest house. When the Nazis built their compound, both above and below ground, at this level of the mountain, they "bought" out the families that lived there. If they wouldn't be bought, they would wake up in the night to the sounds of their roof being removed from the house.

After the war, the families of the former owners were allowed to return to their places, at least to the ones that had survived the bombing, if they could prove their connections to the owners who were displaced. The Zum Turken was one of those places. If you go to the link above, there is a little information about that at the hotel's website.

After they took over the Zum Turken, the SS was quartered there and their bunkers were below. Until the late 1990s, these were the only bunkers anyone could visit and our tour guide took people there.

If you go to the Obersalzberg museum link, you will see more pictures of the bunkers. They are bare concrete now, but when they were built they were opulent with hardwood floors, carpets, wood paneling, elaborate baths and all the comforts the high-level Nazis would need to survive for a long time if they were forced to do so. There were advanced systems to pipe in fresh air, heat and cool the rooms, remove the water and sewage, keep the dampness from seeping through the walls, etc.

Europe June 2011 -- Getting Started on the Alps Drive

2011-09-29T14:55:00.000-07:00

On June 15th it was time to leave Florence to start on our Alps driving adventure. I wasn't feeling very well that morning, so I called our apartment owner and asked if it was okay for us to take a couple of extra hours before we left the apartment. She said that was fine, so we did.

The only little hitch was that I also called for a taxi to take us to the airport, and they said to call about 5 minutes before we wanted to leave. So I tried that, but the phone had been turned off. That was a problem because the taxi service recognized the phone number and knew exactly where we were when we called before. So I tried calling from my cell phone, but failed to communicate.

Our solution was to prevail upon the good will of the bar owner next door to call for us. That worked. We had plenty of time to get there, but I was getting a little antsy.

When we checked in for our flight, the person who helped us was an American ex-pat who had lived in Italy for 20 years but still held her US passport. She had been in Florence for about 7 years. That was a surprise, but it was fun to talk to her.

Although many said we wouldn't need them, Trout and I got International Driver Licenses from AAA before we left. As our friend John Larrivee said, Trout has perfected this look and wears it in many pictures, both casual and not. Because of all the white, I call this his "Polar Bear in a Snow Storm" picture.

They caught me talking, naturally.

These were our ticket stubs from Florence to Stuttgart where we got our rental car for the drive.

And this was the kind of plane we flew on. The wheels folded up inside the pods on the side. We flew over the Alps. We were very close to them. I was too fascinated with looking down to dig out the camera. I had the window seat and offered to trade with Trout for part of the flight, but he opted out.

The flight was pretty good until we got close to Stuttgart where it was raining. Then we had some "ride 'em cowboy" moments, but we landed just fine.

We got a taxi to the pick-up point for our car, got the car (an Opel, of course) and found our way to the Autobahn. I did an okay job of navigating and Trout did a fine job of driving and we arrived for our first night in Germany at our hotel in Fussen.

The hotel had free parking and was off a little pedestrian only zone, but we couldn't quite figure out how to get there, so Trout parked and I walked to it. While parked, he noticed this car.

Then as we drove around seeking the best way to get to the parking area, he saw this car's tail lights and wanted me to take a picture.

After another zip around the city, we got to our hotel. We had a decent dinner and spend a quiet night in the room.

The next day we had the typical German breakfast provided by the hotel, went next door and bought a map of Germany that covered where we were going, went down the street to a surprisingly large drug store to get bath gel and shampoo in quantities that would last us the rest of the trip, and got on our way along the Deutsche Alpenstrasse.

We started at #8 on the linked map and finished at the end (#25) in Berchtesgaden. We didn't follow it completely, because we didn't have enough time, but we did hit most of the highlights. The worst part was trying to get through Garmisch-Partenkirchen. It was congested and too crowded with tourists -- even on a Thursday.

I had to take my usual "from the car" pictures along the way. We saw some lakes.

And Trout saw another car photo opportunity.

And there were some mountains, but they weren't quite as high or as dramatic as those we would see later.

Although the scenery was lovely and I could have taken lots of pictures of cows and green fields and mountains, somehow I wasn't inspired. I took lots more pictures in Berchtesgaden and they are in the next posting.

Europe June 2011 -- Florence Walkabout

2011-09-09T10:34:00.000-07:00

As Trout and I walked around Florence, I could have taken a picture every step, but I didn't. It was an easy walk from our apartment almost anywhere, but we tended to list toward the River Arno.

One of our first stops was the Uffizi Gallery. I didn't take pictures inside, but the link will give you an idea of what we saw. My favorites include Leonardo Da Vinci's Annunciation, Botticelli's Primavera and Uccello's Battle of San Romano, especially the center panel. Unfortunately, the Uccello was out for restoration, but we did get to see lots of other magnificent paintings.

The building is a U shape with a courtyard in the center. There are lots of activities there, including artists that set up to sell their works as well as living statues and street performers at the far end where you see the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio. But more about that later.

The bottom of the U is on the street adjacent to the Arno. There is a tradition of lovers placing locks on some of the chained barracades there. It's illegal, but hard to enforce.

We didn't have a lock, but we did have our ubiquitous tie wraps.

This is the river from the Uffizi side. The bridge is the famous Ponte Vecchio.

Trout is walking through the arcade along the river near the bridge. Artists set up here, too.

This is a closer look at the east side of the Ponte Vecchio.

There is a break in the shops on both sides of the bridge in the middle. People gather here to look up and down the river.

Did we tell you that the primary form of transportation (besides human feet) is the motor scooter?

Of course we ate our last evening meal at the Open Bar again. This is what was going on along the Arno. Yes, a lot of English is used...

Part of the entertainment for the event was the rowing. Here's the Ponte Vecchio in the background.

They seemed to only go between the bridges. This is the Ponte alle Grazie, the one we walked on to get home, only a few blocks away.

Our timing for walking home that night was perfect. These are the sunset pics I got as we crossed the bridge.

It couldn't have been a more spectacular finish to our week in Florence.

But now about one of our 1st experiences. There is, as it turns out, a very popular mime named gReY who works the tight passage called the Offici square. It's between the Palazzo Vecchio, the Uffizi and the Loggia dei Lanzi. He got me. He threw his arms around me from the back, I hugged him back and he said, "finally a nice one."

Then he proceeded to act like he was making love to me. He told me to close my mouth (I was laughing), and acted like he was kissing me. We ended up on the ground. Then he tried to get me up, but I probably outweigh him by 50 pounds, so that was very funny for everyone. He did get me vertical, after a couple of tries. Like in many of the videos, he got white grease paint all over my face. I used the glass of some of the doors to the Uffizi offices to see to wipe it off.

Trout said it was hilarious. He stood by and laughed and wished he had the camera instead of me. When I started preparing the posting, I tried to find the mime who got me, and discovered his name and that there are a number of videos of his performances. There are many pictures and clips with him doing something similar to other women. This clip is more of an interview with him. It's long, but very interesting and well worthwhile watching to the end.

Europe June 2011 -- Florence: Churches

2011-09-01T16:40:00.002-07:00

At least a week could be spent exploring churches in Florence. I suppose everyone has their favorite. Santa Croce is mine. In fact it's in my top 5 for all of Europe.

There is something intimate and atmospheric about this sacred place. It captivated me when I was in Florence in 1977 and it has never let me go. I don't think it was a coincidence that the apartment we rented was across the street from it. We walked past it daily while we were in Florence.

It was on Ramona's must-see list and we all visited it together. I got these pictures at around sunset on a different day. The taped off area you see in front was for a special event to be held in the piazza a few days after we left.

Dante's presence is both outside and inside.

The tombs and memorials for famous people certainly are impressive. This is Galileo's. Because of his scientific "heresy," when he died in 1642 he was buried in a relatively obscure part of the church. His body was moved to this tomb in 1737.

Michelangelo's tomb is a popular photo op. The story goes that he chose this location in Santa Croce himself so that when the front doors of the basilica are opened, he can see the Duomo.

Of course, Dante is memorialized here, although the tomb is empty. He is actually buried in Ravenna at the Church of San Pier Maggiore.

And what's a great church without a great historian, philosopher, writer and a main founder of modern political science buried there? This is the tomb of Machiavelli.

There are many other famous people buried here, but it's not really these tombs that get me.

The church architecture is of the simple, even austere type I like. It is the largest Franciscan church in the world. It replaced an older building and construction was started in 1294. It was consecrated in 1442.

I love the space, but that's only part of Santa Croce's hold on me.

I'm a big fan of Cimabue and Giotto and the frescoes are astonishing. I just wasn't able to get any good pictures. You can see Cimabue's cross here with some of Giotto's frescoes.

This is Giotto's Resurrection of Drusiana.

As much as I love Giotto, it's not just his frescoes that keep bringing me back.

The courtyard area and the grill work are impressive, but it's not those either.

It's the tombs like this that I always want to see again and again. Now they are roped off, but when I first saw them, they weren't. You can see how worn the reliefs are from hundreds of years of people walking over them. There are over 250 tombs in the floor. Not all of them are as fancy as these, but they all are part of what makes Santa Croce unique.

The Duomo is the best known church in Florence. It is the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore. It was begun in 1296 in Gothic style and finished in 1436 with the Brunelleschi dome. The links have much more information on the church with more pictures.

We did not go inside. That was partly because we got there after closing, and that was somewhat intentional to avoid the crowds. In fact, Trout just sat on a bench and watched the world go by while I walked around and took pictures.

As is so often the case, work was being done on the outside, mostly cleaning of this marble skin that was put there in the 19th century. This part had not been cleaned yet.

Giotto's bell tower isn't leaning, I was. This is on the side where Trout was sitting.

Here you can see some of the scaffolding for the work being done, along with an angle on the dome.

This is pretty impressive for a side entrance.

This is the main facade.

And these are the front doors.

This is the scene above the main doors.

And here is Mary and the baby Jesus in one of the niches.

This is another view of the bell tower.

These are the famous Ghiberti doors on the Baptistry, or at least reproductions of them. The original ones are in the museum for the Duomo. They were replaced to preserve them. I got there just as they were closing and rolling the security gate up.

Even after closing, the Duomo is a popular site.

I liked going around this back side. You can see the buttresses for the dome well here. More scaffolding, eh?

I loved this view -- including the clock.

So I worked my way back around to Trout.

The Piazza del Duomo is busy on all sides.

Trout didn't read his book or gawk at Italian girls the whole time he waited for me. He did read about this guy as best he could. This is a sculpture of Brunelleschi consulting his drawings as he looks at his dome.

That was the extent of our church going in Florence. There are lots of advantages to visiting this city: there is so much to see, it is within decent walking distance of the major areas to stay in and it is almost all flat.

Europe June 2011 -- Fun in Tuscany with Ramona & Aidan: Part 2. San Gimignano, Pisa & Florence

2011-08-30T19:22:00.000-07:00

This is a leftover picture from Siena, but it could be a scene from almost anywhere -- a person who is a street performer, in this case a living statue, getting dressed for his gig. It's common to see them do this and fun to watch them get into costume and makeup.

After that lovely lunch at the agriturismo, we rode on over to San Gimignano. By this time, I was really getting weary. My knees hurt and I was just dragging. I watched as the bus drove by this entrance to the town hoping they would let us off here. But noooooo, we went to the lowest parking lot and had to walk back uphill to get to the entrance.

Walking up a slope isn't nearly as bad for me as going up and down stairs, but there were some of those, too. Ramona, Aidan and Trout handled the hike just fine, but I was very slow. I had on my good hiking Salomons with some wicking socks I got at REI. At one point I pulled up my pants and my ankles were exceedingly swollen and the tops of the socks were cutting into my legs so much that it looked like they were those balloon animals twisted in the middle. When I moved the top of the sock down to my ankle, I was much more comfortable. I made sure to get a few good whines out of the situation, though.

San Gimignano is a very touristy town, but it's still interesting to see. I linked to a Wikipedia article above, but I found no really good articles on the town. The major interest is the towers. It was a common thing during the middle ages for the wealthy to build towers to show off their wealth, the bigger the better. At one time San Gimignano had 70+ of them. Now there are only about 14. I was so pooped, I shot no pictures of them, but you can see lots of good pictures here.

We walked uphill through lots of shops ready to take our money, until we got to the Piazza della Cisterna.

We had to have some world champion gelato, naturally.

Like so many others, we sat on the steps of the "well" to gawk and enjoy the gelato. You can also see a wedding party having pictures made here.

It turns out that this is no ordinary well. The cistern from which the piazza gets its name is under it. It was designed about 800 years ago to be a rainwater collection device. The runoff goes into the cistern and the well is the way the people got to the water. And we think we're so clever...

This is a hotel right on the piazza. We didn't go inside but I suspect the rooms are quite nice and quite pricey.

These kinds of views are what make Tuscany so attractive to so many people. I have to admit that in spite of this area being cultivated and populated for millenia, it is still beautiful. I took these pictures on the way back (down, thank goodness) to the bus.

Our longest bus ride of the day was to Pisa from San Gimignano. This is the famous Piazza dei Miracoli with the Duomo, Baptistry and Bell (Leaning) Tower. Even though it was a Saturday in June, it wasn't as crowded as I expected.

There's something about this setting with only the green grass and the buildings that I find particularly appealing.

Trout found the steps to a chapel on the tower side appealing. Many of the larger churches keep one chapel open for people to go in and light candles and pray without having to pay an entrance fee. I went in this chapel and did that. It was the 1st chapel I had been to where the candles are now battery operated. I could look at the rest of the cathedral, but I couldn't go into it to see anything close up. It was well-guarded to prevent that.

Ramona and Aidan went around to explore on their own. I walked around the Duomo.

I liked this drain design. You many remember a very similar one I shot at the Forum when we were in Rome in 2009.

Here wheelchair access becomes a bicycle ramp for this child and his grandmother.

This is the Baptistry.

This is the entrance side to the Duomo.

Our long day was complete with the visit to Pisa. We got on the bus and headed back to Florence. We took a taxi back to our apartment and once again ate at Baldovino.

The next day was Sunday. In spite of my attempts to schedule our must-sees so as not to conflict with things Ramona had already seen, I couldn't get tickets to the Accademia to see Michelangelo's David except on this Sunday.

That worked out okay because she wanted to take Aidan to a Micky D's and to ride on the carousel at the Piazza della Repubblica. You can see the carousel in the aerial pictures shown in the Wikipedia link.

I linked to some photos of the David above. I didn't take any pictures inside the galleries.

After our time at the Accademia, we walked to the piazza and watched Aidan from a sidewalk cafe while we had a little snack. She was definitely having a good time.

From there we went on to the Palazzo Vecchio. Trout and I watched Aidan while Ramona went inside. We hung out in the open sculpture court called the Loggia dei Lanzi and played games with Aidan on the steps while Ramona enjoyed the Palazzo.

These buildings and scuptures are all off the Piazza della Signoria, a significant and major square in Florence. We went through it many times on the way to other places as well as just for its own sake.

It was getting close to dinner time, so that meant going to the Golden View Open Bar. Ramona recommended it and we had already eaten there once on our own. She didn't have to twist our arms to get us to go. She noticed the place because it was one of the few places that is open all day without shutting down in the afternoon. Then there was the fun decor, the great location and the food.

It was super having Ramona and Aidan come up and join us for that weekend in Florence. We had lots of fun in spite of my whining in San Gimignano. She has what I think is the perfect attitude about traveling and the costs involved. She decides how much she wants to spend and when the money starts to run out, it's time to go home. If it doesn't run out, more's the better. The travel gurus all say to make that decision in Euros (these days) and forget about comparing them to dollars all the time.

I'm really pleased that she and Jason understand the value of experiences and have taken good advantage of their time in Europe. They have seen and done things I'm sure they will never forget, and I think Aidan will remember the feeling of living in Italy and their travels, even if she doesn't remember the details. I'm sure there are many military families that hardly venture away from the immediate area where they live and hate every minute of being there. I certainly saw them in Germany in the 80s, even though the exhange rate (marks back then) was so favorable to the American dollar.

Of course, we all know that regardless of how much or how little money we have, we all spend it on the things we enjoy or think are important, right? That's why I'm sceptical when people say that they can't "afford" something. I think that really means that whatever they can't afford really isn't as much of a priority for them as what they can.

Europe June 2011 -- Fun in Tuscany with Ramona & Aidan: Part 1. Siena & an Agriturismo

2011-08-25T12:36:00.000-07:00

When Ramona and I started planning for her and Aidan to spend the weekend with us in Florence, we compared notes on what she wanted to see and didn't need to see again with what I wanted to see and didn't mind seeing again. Trout was just along for the ride because it was all new to him.

I decided that a day trip on a big tourist bus (not my usual type of tourist option) would be the most efficient way to get a lot of sightseeing done in one day and include some of our must-sees and dos while in Tuscany. The option I chose is Walkabout's Best of Tuscany Tour. It was a long day and at first Trout thought it would be too long for Aidan, but Ramona said she thought it looked great and that they had been on similar tours of similar lengths and Aidan did just fine. That proved to be a totally correct prediction of the way things went. Aidan was great the whole time.

We got up early on Saturday morning (June 11th), everyone got ready and we took a taxi to the train station where we were to meet the bus for the tour. Sidebar: There were no bathrooms on the bus, so I had to make one last pit stop in the train station. I almost got locked in because the lock on the stall I chose was not working right. After hollering, the attendant -- thank goodness for those attendants -- came and got me out.

We loaded on the busses. Ramona said that someone she knew on base had been on this same tour, said it was great and hoped we got Stefano for our guide. We found our seats and our guide got on. It was Stefano! He was an absolute delight, one of those adorable, blue-eyed northern Italian men with a stumbling command of English and a great self-deprecating sense of humor. He was somewhere around 30 and a university student getting an advanced degree in hospitality/tourism.

We took off and drove through the Tuscan countryside to our first stop, Siena. I had been to Siena before...way back in the 70's. That time I also went on a a guided tour. It was well worth it, as was this one.

After taking a series of escalators up the hill (Tuscany, remember?) to the city, we met up with a guide who did the local tour of the city for our group. She was also funny and had some lively banter about the rivalry between Florence and Siena.

Our first stop was the Basilica of San Francesco. Although I appreciate Gothic and many other types of church architecture, these are the kinds of churches I usually prefer.

Then we started walking through the narrow, medieval streets of the city with our guide pointing out things along the way.

I liked the stone on this building.

Another one had heads of many famous Italians, but Dante is always a favorite, even if he was born in that pesky rival, Florence.

You can always spot the tourists -- cameras, backpacks, looking up...

The goal of any trip to Siena is the central piazza, the Piazza del Campo. This is one of the most renowned plazas in the world. It's not only beautiful architecturally, but a central place for locals and tourists of all stripes.

Perhaps the most famous event held here is the horse race called the Palio. Go to the link for more information on that. What we learned that was a surprise to us is that there are 17 "contrade" or areas of town that can participate. Only 10 are chosen, so the potential participants cheer or groan if they are chosen or not. They do not have their own horses. The horses are chosen separately so cheers or groans go up among the 10 participants when their horse is announced.

The piazza is covered in dirt for the horses to run on. People crowd into the center of the ring (about 30,000 of them) or watch from the buildings around it. If you saw Under the Tuscan Sun, you saw some of the pageantry involved in the whole event.

The horses run around the ring 3 times and the winner is determined by which horse gets to the finish line first -- with or without its rider. The riders do not use saddles. For a general idea of this event, take a look at this video clip. There are many more on You Tube, some done like sporting coverage, some very long.

We were not there for the Palio, so it was just a somewhat normal Saturday morning.

This is the Torre del Mangia, Tower of the Eater. It was named for its first guardian who tended to spend all his money on food.

This wasn't quite an average Saturday because it was the last day of school for some kids. They went for a short time in the early morning and then were released. These ones chose to come to the fountain, fill up water bottles and douse each other.

We crossed the piazza and headed toward the Duomo.

My first trip here, we didn't go to the Duomo. We concentrated on the Basilica of San Domenico. I must have taken this picture from the most popular spot to do it because the link has almost the same shot. This church contains several relics of St. Catherine of Siena.

Somebody had their tights out to dry.

The is the entrance to one of the contrade neighborhoods.

This is the entrance to the stables where the horses are kept around the time of the Palio.

Siena is definitely a medieval town.

After going through the narrow and somewhat steep streets, we came out on the piazza in front of the Cathedral of Siena. The cathedral or duomo is a great example of Italian Gothic architecture, but it is particularly known for the marble floor that took almost 200 years to complete.

Pet peeve: I'm often flabbergasted at the number of people who go on trips to other countries without learning anything about where they are going, especially about the culture. I think that's the major cause of the misunderstandings that make Americans look ugly and make Americans think that people in other countries are rude to them.

On our tour was one woman (at least 40) in very tight short, shorts and a tank top. She carried nothing with her to use to cover up. No church anywhere in Catholic Europe that I know of will allow anyone (males included) inside with their knees or shoulders showing. Usually the idiots who try to go in dressed inappropriately are simply turned away, which I think is the way it should be. Some churches provide paper wraps for those who are so disrespectful. This was one of those churches and that woman got 2, one for each over-exposed body area. One good thing about the wraps is that the whole time the person is in the church, everyone can see that they are an idiot.

Although our experience on this trip was that the European "dress codes" so many people worry about are much more relaxed than people think, especially in summer, this was one case where the person was way out of line and at her age, she should have known better.

Across the piazza is the old hospital of Santa Maria della Scala. The earliest official record of this hospital is from 1090, but legends about it go back to 898. It's now a museum, but when it was built, it was one of the first hospitals in Europe. It's original purpose was to house pilgims on the way to Rome as well as to help abandoned children and the poor. It was a hospital until 1996. If we go back, I would like to spend some time inside.

Now back to that marble floor. There are many scenes or designs done with several colors of marble.

My favorites were the ones showing people. The gold marble is the rarest.

As with most churches of this era, there are many amazing works of art.

These are pictures from the library.

Gotta love that floor.

Large hymnals were on display.

Art of all types is not only beautiful, but also a fine historical research source. Until I went to college, I knew nothing of art history and not much of history at all, except Texas history, of course. My first class was a basic art appreciation one and I was hooked. Both for scene and costume design, the way we learned about how things looked and what people wore was through the art of the times.

Its not only about the art. It's about the culture which includes buildings and religion and politics and food and clothing and, and, and... The dates and battles and rulers were never of interest to me, but the context in which they existed became a fascination that is ongoing.

These are some pictures of the sides and back of the Duomo.

Now we had a blessed downhill walk back to the piazza where we explored and hung out until it was time to go back to the bus. I had already explored the bathroom at the Duomo. I knew it would be clean and nice and worth the 1/2 Euro cost. Trout, Ramona and Aidan did not take the time to do that, so we bought drinks at a bar. The ticket proof of the purchase allowed them to use the bathroom.

This is a common practice throughout Europe, especially in very touristy areas. It sounds money-grubbing to most Americans, but these places would be overrun with lines out the door if they didn't require people to buy something. Most public bathrooms at tourist sites also charge to help pay for the maintenance of the facility. If you go to a free public bathroom in most places you will gladly pay the next time.

A wedding was happening somewhere close by. Trout zoomed in on these cars like a hawk. Here he is with Aidan.

Can you see Ramona with the camera behind the car?

Our visit to Siena was over and it was getting close to lunch time. That meant we made our way down the hill and escalators to the bus. I was usually the last person to get to and on the bus. More about that in the next posting.

Our next stop was an agriturismo for a tour and lunch. It was at a farm that specializes in wine and Chianina cattle. We did a very short tour and then had a lovely lunch at long tables under an arbor overlooking the Tuscan hills. I was too enthralled to take pictures after we sat down.

At this farm, they "test" the health of the vines with roses. They plant roses that are susceptible to the same kinds of diseases as the vines, only the roses get them sooner. So if the rose gets sick, they know to treat the vines right away.

There are some itsy bitsy grapes on this vine.

The cattle were cute.

There were a couple of babies.

You gotta love a place with lizards.

The wine fermentation vats were interesting.

As were these old Chianti jugs -- there only for show, I'm sure.

Ramona thought Aidan would be put off by the cattle smell but she had no problem with the Chianina. It was the wine smell that she didn't like.

Trout made out like a bandit on the wine. He got Ramona's and my share since neither of us drank any. After lunch we were off for a very short drive to San Gimignano. In fact, we could see it from the farm. Too bad there wasn't time for a nap.

Europe June 2011 -- Florence Apartment & Neighborhood

2011-08-24T16:52:00.000-07:00

Some of you may remember me telling about the cost of airfare this time. The airfare for both of us for our first trip to Europe together in 2009 was covered by the points I saved up through my BECU (Boeing Employees Credit Union) Visa. We were not so lucky this time and had to pay.

I priced out options for the places were were going and it was going to cost a fortune. Then I priced flying internally on European airlines as recommended by Rick Steves and others. It literally cut the price in half for both of us. So that's what we did.

However, we had to fly 2 different airlines with a change in Madrid, and we had to pick up our luggage, go through customs, etc. in Madrid. And we had to get to a totally separate terminal to fly from Madrid to Florence. It was a bit of a struggle, but we finally found our way through both the Lisbon and Madrid airports without killing each other, and arrived in Florence almost on time.

The arrival in Florence was a little strange as we landed out on the runway, had to be bussed to the terminal and it took forever for the shuttle to come. Then we spent quite a bit of time waiting for our luggage to be delivered while sniffer dogs were sniffing around all of us. Welcome to Italy.

The terminal in Madrid was super modern, but the food was typical airport terminal food, mediocre at best.

We took a taxi to our apartment, the Casa Nicola. It is on the top floor of a building right across the street from Santa Croce, my favorite church in Florence and just about anywhere else so far. It wasn't as high up and the stairs weren't as steep and narrow as the place in Lisbon, but it was still a challenge.

The last flight up is secured with an iron gate. That was a good thing. Although our apartment went from front to back and had good ventilation (along with great air conditioning), the apartment at the top of the first landing did not, so the people there often left their front door open as well as the one on the street so that they could get some circulation. We constantly closed that door, only to find it open again the next time we got to it.

This is Trout behind the gate.

This is looking down from the gate.

I didn't take a lot of pictures of the place because I knew I was going to link to it for this posting, but I was fascinated by the ceiling. It's a very old building and the ceilings were low on this top floor. You can see a beam in the middle with a wood ceiling on one side and a brick one on the other. This is in the living room.

Our bedroom on the front of the building had a very high ceiling and was all plaster. The peak of the roof was in the little hall where you entered the apartment. The bedroom was to the left and the rest of the apartment was to the right. Off that hall was a storage area up some winding stone steps into the roof peak. I should've taken a picture of that, but I didn't.

The bathroom was actually next to the kitchen and off the living room. Its ceiling is brick.

As is the ceiling in the kitchen.

The kitchen had a spiral staircase up the the terrace. I only went up there a couple of times. It was very pleasant but not worth the effort of trying to carry coffee up when the view was almost the same as from the kitchen.

There was a nice little table and chairs to use.

And some nice sub-tropical plants. In the place with the AC, there was a great cat who hung out in the plant holder under the window a lot of the time.

Like I said, the views from the kitchen windows were just fine.

This is what we saw from the bathroom. At first I wondered what the spikes were all about.

Then I got it. Apparently they work better for pigeons in Florence than they do for doves in Tucson.

They were a little difficult to reach over to hang out our laundry. I used a kitchen towel to cover them. It was just enough to keep them from acupuncturing me while I worked.

The famous leather school of Florence was right across the street from us. It is housed in the former monastery connected to Santa Croce. This is the view from our bedroom. We looked, but didn't buy.

We were in a great location, but there was action on our street from late morning until late night. We ran the ACs partly because of the noise.

There were lots of restaurants, but Trout mostly noticed the vehicles parked on the street.

The view at night was interesting, too.

Ramona and Aidan were suppoed to arrive at around 6:00 pm on Friday night, but there were issues with landing in Florence, so they had to land in Pisa and then be bussed to Florence. They took a taxi and finally made it to our place at about 10:00. Fortunately, there was a recommended restaurant, Baldovino, right around the corner and it was still open, so we all got something to eat before going to bed. Interestingly, Baldovino was the only place I used the bathroom on the whole trip that had what I would call an ADA toilet -- at least in the women's bathroom.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get my camera to focus for some reason, so this is pretty blurry.

Europe June 2011 -- Lisbon: Fairgrounds, Metro, Cross & Comments

2011-08-20T14:27:00.000-07:00

This is the last posting about Lisbon and as such, it's a bit of a salad of things. It includes a visit by subway to the 1998 fairgrounds, pictures of some subway stops and the cross that dominates the city.

In 1998 Lisbon held a World's Fair. The fairgrounds are now called the Parque das Nações, (Park of the Nations). Go to the link (only in Portuguese) if you would like to see more pictures.

We went on Monday. It was cool, gray and dreary, but we still enjoyed seeing a bit of it. It was lovely and sunny the day before, so it was probably a zoo then.

We took the metro to the end of the red line and walked over to the water. Naturally we were hungry by then, so we found a little place that was open and much to our delight, had a delicious meal there. On our way back to the station, I took some pictures.

This sculpture of bathers is lots of fun. There are many more pictures of it and other works of art in the park at the website.

I didn't take any pictures on the way to the park, but these are on the way back and from the train.

As is common, there are major shops at big metro intersections. That's why you rarely see any large stores on the streets. In fact, at one point where we changed lines, I had to go to the bathroom. Trout stayed inside the station and I went through the turnstile to try to find a potty. One flight of stairs headed above ground, so I knew that wasn't an option. The other flight went straight to an enormous grocery and shopping complex, complete with the Lisbon version of a food court. I did find a women's bathroom, much to my relief. Our passes let us come and go at will, so I was able to easily get back through the turnstile to where Trout was waiting for me.

This is not that location. It is on the way to the station from the park, but it is similar. I took the picture because of the lovely terrazzo floor.

Lisbon being famous for tiles, all the Lisbon Metro stations are artistically done with tiles. This is the station (Oriente) at the end of the red line where the park is. At the link you can read about the artists and see the station list as well as a map of the whole system.

Trout asked if I wanted to get out to take pictures, but I preferred to take them from the train as we stopped.

At one point on the red line we went above ground. This is a typical suburban modern apartment building.

Now we're back underground.

I didn't take pictures of every stop along the way. These have been just some examples. Most of the stations we saw were very modern. At first this one looked like it was more traditional, but if you click and look closely, you can tell it really isn't.

These are the last of my pictures. This cross monument is actually a statue of Christ called Christ the King. It is across the Tagus River, but visible from many locations in the area. This is from the apartment during the day.

It is lit at night.

This is a closer photo from when we were in Belem.

So that concludes our stay in Lisbon from a photographic point of view. I had some gut issues on the last day there, and we didn't get out except for dinner. I'd hoped to take another day trip that day, but it was not to be.

One of the major parts of our European travels is the food. On the whole, I'd say we had pretty good food. Where we didn't it was either a poor choice of restaurant (really only once) or of menu items (Trout did better than I did). In general, the food in Portugal is considered to be the cheapest in Europe. That doesn't mean that it's cheap, though.

One major problem with it for us is that, almost everything we got was heavily salted. I understand this is common with Portuguese cuisine, but we are so not into salt that we could really taste the difference.

Our last meal was at a restaurant right around another corner from our apartment that was touted as having a great view. It did have a good view over the train station, but not as good a view as we had from our apartment. In fact, I realized that I could see its dining area from our kitchen window, that's how close it is to where we stayed. It was packed on a Tuesday night, but we got early reservations so we had no problems with service or waiting. This is the only place I've ever been where they used an iPad for the menu. Mine worked fine, but Trout's was a little balky. I noticed after us, the rest of the people in the place got paper menus.

We found our way around the city easily by foot and by public transportation and taxis were always available. The people we met were consistently nice and helpful. Even with our muddled Portuguese and their muddled English, we usually could figure things out.

Staying in an apartment was great, even if it was up lots of steep stairs. It was very helpful financially because we typically only ate 1 meal a day out and the lodging cost per day was also much cheaper than in a hotel. It was also helpful when either or both of us needed to slow down a bit.

Trout's ready to go back, but wants to be sure to go to Estoril, the site of a racetrack, of course. There are other more rural parts of Portugal I wouldn't mind seeing, but I'm not as interested in going back as he is.

Europe June 2011 -- Lisbon: Tile Museum + a Surprise

2011-08-20T12:34:00.000-07:00

One of my must-sees in Lisbon was the tile museum -- Museu Nacional do Azulejo. Fortunately, it was open pretty late on the Sunday we were there, and going late allowed us to have a delightful surprise at the end of our visit.

We took the bus from the train station to the museum, but this time we went the opposite direction of town. The museum is in a former 1509 convent building with a chapel.

As the website says, this museum is unique in the world. Its collection of five centuries of decorative ceramic tiles traces the history of their design and provides information on how they were made.

When we arrived we were graciously met by a woman who gave us some advice as to what to see and how to go through the facility. She was very nice and seemed thrilled to see Americans and to use her English.

These first few pictures are of some very early tiles. The Moorish influence is all over Portugal as it is in Spain, but the Portuguese took the craft and developed it over time to make they own.

This is the first example I have of painted tiles that make a picture as opposed to a pattern.

This is a close up of the center panel.

That was at the end of a hall, but in the gallery off the hall, there were more individual tiles that made patterns. These were salvaged from buildings.

They are incredibly beautiful.

This group was amazing to me, no matter what the angle.

This pattern is similar to the one above the optical illusion panel, but not the same.

These borders were fun.

This tiled turret caught my eye.

Now back inside. This is a fun combination of painted and patterned tiles.

More painted.

More patterned in the mini-cloister.

This is an area where they were sorting some salvaged tiles. Trout said he would love to do this job. He'd be very good at it, too.

These tiles lined the staircase.

This was in a room filled with scenes of dogs going after bigger animals. I chose this one to shoot.

This was the only cat scene, going after a rat.

This was a fun series of painted tiles.

This is not a period I care much for in art or fashion, but the big tile picture is pretty impressive.

I don't want to know what this "doctor" is doing here.

This is a full scene of a harbor.

This was the only 3-dimensional ceramic work that got my attention. It's a magnificent creche.

This was in the side of a window opening. The walls of the building are very thick.

This looks like a Portuguese exploration picture, somewhere in the tropics.

The museum also displays more current tilework. These are early 20th century. I loved them, even though their raised nature would require lots of dusting.

These are also beautiful. Click and look closely to see what the images actually are.

I think these were from the 1930's.

And this piece is very recent.

We finished with the museum and came down to exit. The cafe was closed, but I had to take a picture of the tiles at its serving bar. These are old and a great way to show what the shop had to sell.

I needed to hit the bathroom before leaving. When I came out, the woman who was so nice to us when we arrived, grabbed us and told us there was a special presentation with kids in the chapel and that we could go see it if we wanted. That was the surprise.

I had taken pictures of the chapel and was intrigued by its elaborate style and the blue and white tile scenes on the walls.

But I couldn't figure out what those things were on the altar. An octopus? A stingray?

There was a tour there at the time. It was in French and I caught a little of what the guide was saying, but got nothing about the stuff on the altar.

When the docent told us about the presentation, she pointed down the hall. We could see some kids in Viking helmets and we were sold. We thought we were too late to get inside, but the kids were just getting organized.

Yes, there were Vikings and Mexicans and Russians and ???

Finally some adults guided us through the kids and we were able to stand/sit in the very back of the chapel on the side. That was fine because I could get some pictures from there, although many are blurry.

As it turned out, the theme of the pageant was all the peoples of the world seeing King Neptune on his throne. Here we have some Chinese.

I loved this little kid. He was so excited to see the groups come in.

These were the Native Americans.

As each group came in, they played music appropriate for them. The Mexicans were the most popular. They got the biggest applause complete with people clapping in time to the music.

All the groups did something typical in front of King Neptune. The Vikings had a fight up on the stage.

Those kids that I labeled ??? were from outer space.

After it was over, the kids paraded back out, sort of in order.

People in the audience had a great time, especially the kids. It was definitely a family event.

They were hanging out with the costumed kids as well as each other. One of the great things about this performance is that kids with mental and physical challenges were integrated in the performing groups along with kids who didn't have those issues.

By this time it was getting pretty late. We went out to the bus stop and joined some of the museum employees waiting to go home. We took in so much in such a short period of time there, I can't even remember if we went out to eat that night or just stopped at the grocery and took something home.

Europe June 2011 -- Belem: Jerónimos Monastery

2011-08-20T11:07:00.000-07:00

After eating lunch at Pasteis de Belem, our next stop was to visit the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos. Built in 1459, it is a fine example of the Portuguese late Gothic architectural style. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The pictures on the website will show the entire building much better than any picture I could have taken. This is on the way to the front. The monastery is just a block or so from the cafe.

This is part of the entrance side.

This was the first room we went into. It was a place the monks gathered.

I loved the addittion of the blue and yellow tiles. I also loved this old couple.

The monastery is famous for its cloister. I thought the Gothic style here was wonderful. I really like how plain the courtyard is so that it doesn't compete with the architecture. I can visualize the monks walking through this space.

Each column is different. No, I didn't photograph all of them.

This is a close up of one of the bases.

This shows the dome of the church peeking up above the cloister.

This is the choir of a small chapel inside.

Everybody has to take a picture like this.

Now I'm on the upper level.

Here are some examples of the different columns.

Pause for a gargoyle.

Now back to the columns.

Here we are inside the choir of the Church of Santa Maria. We were already on the 2nd level so access was easy.

Lots of people were taking pictures of the chapel down below.

I couldn't get enough of the arches.

Even though the stained glass was also impressive.

This is taken down the side.

This is downstairs, as close as I could get to this chapel.

Shall I say again how impressed I was by the arches?

This last picture is of the choir upstairs where we were before.

That was our visit to the monastery. I thought the cloisters were more impressive than the chapel, except for the arches. Now it's on to more sites in Lisbon proper.

Europe June 2011 -- Belem Side Trip

2011-08-20T08:47:00.000-07:00

We used our passes to make a side trip to Belem. That's Bethlehem in Portuguese, but it isn't pronounced the way it looks. It sounds more like "balai" with a very nasal ending.

There were many things to see (and eat) in Belem. This post deals with a number of them and the next one will concentrate on the major attraction, the monastery.

We took the subway/commuter train, got off in Belem and walked directly to one of the most famous places in Portugal to get the traditional egg custard Pasteis (pastry). As you can see from the sidewalk, this cafe has been there awhile.

Roughly translated, this tile sign on the wall says, "Rest on the way to the holy temple on the seashore of the place named for the land where God in the flesh was given to the world", i.e., Bethlehem.

This says that the house (restaurant/cafe) was founded in 1837. The link will take you to some history about Pasteis de Belem.

Tile is abundant here, but these pieces were particularly protected. They were also directly in front of the table where we sat.

This was the tile on the wall right next to us.

The tile formed a wainscot on all the walls. People kept coming in the door to the restaurant part and standing right in front of us looking and waiting for a table. I started asking them if they spoke English, and if they did, I pointed out that there were lots of tables through the open doorways.

Gradually people started going farther back and finding rooms like this. The place was enormous.

The kitchen's tile went up higher on the walls.

Many people just line up at the take-out door, get their pastries and eat them outside.

They make thousands of these little egg custards every day.

We had lunch and pasteis for dessert along with some coffee and then started walking. We went to the monastery first (next posting), then took the bus farther away to see some more famous sites along the Tagus River.

Built in the early 16th centure, the Belem Tower served as both a line of defence and a gateway to Lisbon on the Tagus.

We were not sure what this building is, but it is right where the Tagus goes into the Atlantic. We guessed that it might have something to do with producing tidal energy, but I couldn't find anything specific about it.

The park along the river is lovely with lots of trees in some places. We took advantage of those to take an ice cream break.

Trout liked this bi-plane monument.

This is a little bridge over the tracks of the train we were on.

Trout was fascinated by the locations of these gas pumps.

There is a marina to the right of those gas pumps. The water was clear enough for me to see fish feeding on the algae of its wall.

They were impressive until we got back on the path along the Tagus. These guys were a little bigger. They were hanging out by some kind of effluent pipe. Whatever was coming out definitely attracted them.

This bridge across the Tagus is called the 25th of April Bridge. It's often compared to the Golden Gate and was built by the American Bridge Company that built the Oakland Bay Bridge. The name comes from the date the Carnation Revolution started in 1974. That was a military coup in which no shots were fired and which changed Portugal from a dictatorship to a democracy. The name comes from the fact that people celebrated the end of the war in the colonies by putting carnations in the guns of the soldiers and on their uniforms. It was the 70's, you know.

This has gotta be some kind of energy producing thing, right?

Besides the monastery, and the pasteis shop, this has got to be the most popular site in Belem. Built in 1960, the Discoveries Monument commemorates the 500th anniversary of the the death of Prince Henry the Navigator, but includes references to other Portuguese explorers including Vasco de Gama and Magellan.

The plaza in front of it has more of that wavy cobbleston design.

Of particular interest to me was this large depiction of Portugues explorations. There were so many people around and standing on it, I barely got a couple of decent pictures. I concentrated on the Americas.

Although most paving we saw in Portugal had the large blocks, this area of the park between the monatery and the monument used smaller stones.

After a long day, it was time for food. I had Nune's Real Marisqueira on my list as being one of the best seafood restaurants in the Lisbon/Belem area. It was on my tourist map as right next to the monastery. We walked and we walked back and we asked directions and I called them and after being totally exhausted and with a very cranky Trout, we hailed a cab.

The driver didn't know where it was either, so I called the restaurant again, gave him my cell phone and they talked him to their door, although he passed it and had to turn around and go back. It turned out to be only about a block from where we gave up walking the first time before turning back. And it was a good 6 or more blocks from the monastery. So if you are looking for this place, don't believe the maps if they show it right next to the monastery. It's on the same main street, but much farther away.

I won't depend on Fodor's or Frommer's or whatever map it was again, but I'm glad we found it. The food was excellent, and it was served family style. Like most Americans, we were there a bit early, but by the time we got our food, the place was full. It was good we got there early because we didn't have reservations.

They had the typical lobsters in the tank, but I liked the seafood on ice. The items on the right are a Portuguese delicacy -- barnacles. They are very expensive. We didn't have any.

The crabs were huge. It wasn't the case with what I got (some small fried fish) or what Trout got (a stew with shrimp), but many of the seafood options on Portuguese menus are priced by how much you get. The menu will usually give the price for a kilo and you can figure out the cost from that for how much you want.

We felt a lot better after eating, so we walked back to the train station and began our journey home to our apartment. It was a typically full sightseeing day and we were pooped. It was great to come "home" and settle in for the night.

Europe June 2011 -- Lisbon: a Walk Downtown

2011-08-19T12:03:00.009-07:00

On Thursday, June 2nd, our 2nd day in Lisbon, we were rested and ready to hit the streets. We walked all the way downtown by following our noses. We started at the little Rua dos Remedios of bollard and cleaning fame in my first post. It was an easy walk because it was literally all down hill.

The first order of business was to cross the Commercio Square and find the tourist information office. There we bought passes for all the forms of transportation, entry into museums, etc.

En route to the tourist office, I spotted the restaurant I wanted to visit for lunch. It is the Cafe Restaurante Martinho da Arcada. Although some dispute it, it is supposed to be the oldest restaurant in town, dating back to 1782 in its present form. According to its website (the English version doesn't seem to work), it actually started in 1778 as a tavern.

The Baixa or downtown center of Lisbon is "new". It was rebuilt after an earthquake in 1755. The Alfama, the largely Moorish area where we stayed, is much older and was not heavily damaged by the earthquake.

The inside is beautiful and formal, although you can stop here and purchase some pastries to go.

We chose to sit outside under the arcade to have lunch. We always seem to be in places at odd hours, so when we sat down, it looked a lot like this, but by the time we left, more people were stopping for coffee and cake.

Trout had a chef's salad and I had a tuna salad. His salad was great, but about what you would expect. Much to my surprise, my tuna was served over black-eyed peas with onions, tomatoes and celery, along with some other good stuff. The Portuguese were explorers and navigators, and their food is heavily influenced by where they went. I don't know if the black-eyed peas made their way to Portugal because of that or if they came with the Moors, but I was glad to see and eat them. They were cooked perfectly and yes, it was a cold salad.

Since Lisbon is known as THE place for coffee and dessert, we had to have some. Trout got an ice cream thing, but I chose the Alentejano coffee cake. It was made with pumpkin and it was absolutely delicious. For me it was the best dessert of the whole trip. Alentejo is an area south of the Tagus River and stretching to the Algarve. It is famous for its cooking.

I do need to mention that Trout noticed someone dealing drugs right by where we were eating which was less than a block from the police station. Portugal decriminalized the personal use and possession of all drugs and started emphasizing treatment over punishement in 2001. Reports since then have indicated that the change in policy has been a big success. For more on that, take a look at the Economist article from 2009.

Now back to our walk. This is where the Commercio Square opens onto the Tagus. It reminds me of Venice.

This is looking back from there to the square.

Many people visit this place to rest for awhile and look at the river.

The square is big. Note the hill rising behind it.

The river is picturesque.

It was hard for me to decide where to look and snap.

Trout helped with the decision.

This is King Jose I (1714-1777). He was the king when the earthquake happened.

This is the primary shopping street down town. Note the tiled street and the beggar to the left.

This is looking back at the clock in the arched entry to the shopping area. As per usual, we were there late in the day.

Here's Trout walking along the patterned "sidewalk" area. No cars were allowed, but these side designs seem to mark a path for people to stroll and window shop.

The center was more for moving faster or hanging out and for street entertainers.

We rarely see women doing this, but here is one.

According to his sign, this guy is in the Guiness Book of World Records. I didn't try to verify that. He must have some kind of apparatus that comes from the cane and goes around him to hold him up.

He also paints his eyelids so he can keep his eyes closed. Could he be napping?

Standing around an attraction like him is a good place to get your pocket picked if you aren't careful. Lisbon was the only place where we saw evidence of that this trip.

As we were walking along, I was ahead of Trout taking pictures. I saw a young kid coming toward me pass something that looked like a wallet to a guy in front of me heading in my direction. I dropped back and pointed them out to Trout. Later he saw the two of them talking together, but in the initial pass, they only brushed up against each other.

Men in particular seem to hate wearing a money belt, but if you carry a typical wallet in any of the normal pants locations, you are likely to get it lifted in many places in the world. Lisbon is no exception.

One of the sites of Lisbon is the Santa Justa Elevator. Remember those hills? This is a way to get up to the top without walking up lots and lots and lots of stairs. It was completed in 1902. Needless to say it's a major tourist attraction -- too major for us to wait in line to get on it.

We continued walking and Trout wanted me to be sure and shoot this vehicle. He thinks it was a bookmobile appropriately sized for serving the castle area in the Alfama.

This is the tile pattern at the Rossio Square. It really is flat although it doesn't look like it.

I'll finish this off with the ship in the sidewalk across the street from Rossio Square. I thought it was great.

We both really like these square cobblestones. One nice thing about cobblestones in general is that if they need repair, it's easy to pull them up, straighten things out and replace them. They are not cemented in. The especially cool thing about them in Lisbon and that they are beautifully used as art as well as practically used for addresses and paving. All it takes to make things pleasant is to take a deep breath and think creatively. It's just not that much more expensive to do, so why not build it in instead of arguing about adding it on later?

Europe June 2011 -- Lisbon: Fado +

2011-08-19T11:02:00.007-07:00

I could be one of those old ladies living in an apartment relatively high up with a window and/or a balcony where I could sit and watch the rest of the world go by. There would have to be an elevator, though.

This is looking down from one of our windows on the water side of the apartment. There are people way down there on the street.

Our apartment didn't have big balconies, but you could step out a bit to look down -- or to hang your laundry. Doing laundry while Trout was sleeping was a form of entertainment for me. My mother would be so proud.

These lines were on rollers. I couldn't quite reach the laundry from this window, but I could from the one above. I could pull the lines to hang more items or to take things in.

Every apartment from the ground floor up seemed to have these lines. The good part about being above the ground floor is that no one could steal your laundry. The bad part is that if you drop something, it's a long way down and back up to retrieve it. Fortunately, I didn't drop anything.

Just around the corner from us was one of the most authentic Fado venues in town. We tried for reservations on the Wednesday night we arrived, but they were booked solid. Amazingly, we were able to get reservations for Saturday night.

Reservations were a must because there are only 26 seats in the place. I know, I counted them. The way it works at Sr. Fado is that you make a reservation for dinner and it includes the Fado after. After dinner, they shut the doors, turn off the exterior signs and play until around 01:00 in the morning. Naturally, we closed the place down. The link above is to someone else's blog. Thanks to Dr. J for the good pictures and the film clips.

The female singer you see below is Ana Marina, the wife and co-owner of the place. She also does the cooking. Her husband, Duarte, plays guitar, takes the orders and does the serving. They are only open on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights when they perform. They spend the rest of their time on their farm north of Lisbon where they grow much of what they serve in the restaurant.

These pictures are dark because I didn't use a flash. This guy is playing a Portuguese guitar. He also sang. In times past, men usually didn't sing, but now it is more common. He was a great player and singer.

Duarte, to the right in this picture is the co-owner. He plays guitar. He always seemed to have his head down, so I never got a good picture of him.

He's in the middle here, but you still can't quite see him.

Here's the older Portuguese guitar player singing.

And here is Ana Marina singing. They were both great, but never sang together.

Sometimes entertainment for us is just going someplace special, sitting on the street and watching what's going on. A Brasileira is a 100+ year old restaurant. It's in a little square off the trolley line, but we walked to it.

After what I would call a so-so meal in the basement, we came upstairs to find some street musicians.

So we sat down to have something to drink and take in the scene. After that we took the subway home. The stop was right there in the square and we rode all the way home to the stop at the train station down the hill from us.

I didn't take any pictures, but we also went to Sr. Vinho. It is a much fancier place with space for more people, but there were only 18 of us in the audience. We went on a Monday night, so that's probably why. There were several performers and all were good, but to my eyes and ears, I preferred the smaller and more intimate Sr. Fado.

Europe June 2011 -- Lisbon: Famous Trolley Ride

2011-08-16T12:02:00.009-07:00

A must-do for any Lisbon tourist is to take the #28 Trolley through the Alfama. You can get off and on like any public transportation. We didn't. We had a pass, rode it to the end of the line, and then back again.

As most touristy things, it's infamous for pickpockets, but at the time we went, there were few passengers and we saw no suspicious activity. These pictures show what we did see.

Here we are passing another trolley going the other way in front of the Church of San Vicente de Fora.

These trolleys are old, but well-maintained and the woodwork is lovely.

There are several ways to explore the Alfama. Many people walk, but even the youngest and most fit find it a challenge. You can rent Gocars to drive through like in many cities, but we opted for the trolley.

As you can see from these pictures, the streets are narrow.

Occasionally there will be a "main" one.

The trolley goes down the middle or to the side enough that a person or a car might be able to fit on either side of it.

Something about this place on the corner said photo op, especially with the other trolley going by.

There's a miradouro (viewpoint) to the left of this shot. There are many miradouros in the city and all are very popular. We felt like our apartment was one.

This example hints at why the miradouros are tourist destinations.

I love seeing the same plants we have in the US show up in other parts of the world. This was a particularly pretty bougainvillea.

And this tile wall on the side of a building was a hint of better things to come.

Yeah, they park wherever they can here, too.

Can you count the steps on these stairs? I think this was the back of the building and these were fire escapes, but maybe not.

We swung around a corner and I managed to get a shot of this tile work. These are actually cobblestone cubes about 2"-3" on a side. They are used everywhere to make patterns, addresses, etc.

Here we keep going around a major plaza. We returned to it later, but I'll save that for another post.

This is a typical building exterior. Trout said the primary finishes were tile and graffiti.

This was a building exterior we passed. I'm not sure if the pipe is a gas line or water.

I took this picture straight down from my trolley window. We had about 12"-18" of clearance from the car.

Here we are coming back around by the San Jose Cathedral.

I can only imagine how beautiful this tile work was at some time. At least they are trying to preserve some of it.

It's not night. This is a heavily tree-lined street.

Every city has to have it's pseudo-Greek public building.

Trout liked the grillwork.

And he enjoyed the trolley ride, too. He only had to stand for a brief time on the way back and then he got to sit and see more of the sites.