Epilogue

Finally, a selection of the rest of the photos from Crete are up on Flickr. That makes 251 photos up and available out of a total of 1,347 photos (3.11 GB). 18.6% is pretty bad but I do hope to someday show many of you the rest of them. If you’d like to get a DVD of them please let me know and I will see what I can do!

Aaand so. Do you want to hear about the epilogue? I kind of had one sketched out. (Of course you do.)

Actually, there’s not much more to say about the trip itself that hasn’t already been said. Sevilla was by far our favorite of Spain, Grenoble was beyond amazing, Venice won for improbability and Osteria Bea Vita far outshone the rest of the restaurants on our trip, and returning to Crete cemented its nomination as one of my favorite places. There have been so many great moments…the Tour de France, windy death-roads on the way to the mountaintop restaurant, watching candles being made, Agriculture August, lots of sunsets, and of course things like bad hotels and getting lost. We did a pretty good job doing a pretty crazy thing!

For the curious (and for posterity) I made a handy map of where we were, and although some of the routes are not exactly the ones we took, it’s close enough without getting too hardcore about it. Voila!

I guess the thing I was most struck by right when I got back was how jealous I was of the women in France and the municipalities of Crete, who would scoff at my fascination with the “emerging trends” of slow, local, and organic food because they’ve already been doing that their whole lives. It does not get any more direct than buying your eggs from the farmer or making your own olive oil. They have no transport emissions associated with their food, which is almost unimaginable for many in the States (those who have gardens and such notwithstanding). Suffice to say that I’m impressed and I will be trying to measure up to even a fraction of that. Omnivore’s Dilemma touts eatwild.com as a database for local pasture farms and once we settle in I think Peter and I will put in for a CSA (community supported agriculture) box. While investing in this style of farming seems selfish (given that prices are too high for much of the population) and less thrifty (a tomato is a tomato, right? Why pay more?) the agricultural practices seem to be generally better and hopefully if demand goes up then the cost of production will go down. Anyway, I’m not much of an expert on this facet of environmentalism but it seems like the right thing to do. We seem to be across from a very helpful grocery store to that end, in that lots of things are already organic without me having to pick them out as special. We’ll see how it goes!

Otherwise the move to Pittsburgh has gone reasonably well. An insane week of packing, last minute visiting and even later-minute appointments (haircut, chiropractor, massage, thank goodness) has passed even quicker than I had thought. It’s crazy to think we won’t be back in Delaware for so long – that I can’t just hop in the car and be on Main Street in a few minutes. But after four days here we are mostly unpacked and settled, although the rhythm of life is certainly different than in Europe. Significantly less walking, for one thing. I find it has been harder to get used to this new place, even after so many other days of new places…probably because I know I’ll be here a while. In any case I think we will be okay, we just have to figure out the bus schedules and payroll and all the minutia of life that didn’t really come up while we were abroad. Woo hoo.

Well I guess that’s it for this blog! Adios, au revoir, ciao, and yassu… hope you enjoyed the read!

Finally home

Well, welcome to the unplanned 37th day of our trip…and to start off, more observations about the hotel (Tryp Diana for those of you keeping tabs)! The most obvious one was the shower, which has a pretty cool setup but also an enormous amount of water pressure. After all the weak showers we’ve had I almost fell over. Unfortunately it was so hard that it turned into a mist when it hit, so the entire bathroom ended up a bit soggy. Nothing really new after curtainless Greece but still, 4 stars?! Also we were interrupted by housekeeping at 8:40 and 9AM, who didn’t knock and almost walked in on me in my underwear the first time. I guess our fault for not leaving the ‘do not disturb’ sign out? We haven’t done that all trip…plus I figured we were in Spain, no one is up that early. Oh well. Perhaps the important lesson is that four-stars aren’t really much better than three-stars. Also that non-cheese, non-meat food in Spain is as depressing as ever, given that the yogurt and apples we bought yesterday were probably the worst I’ve had in a long time. Sigh.

Once they dropped us off at the airport (free shuttle ain’t bad at least) it wasn’t important though. We got there supremely early, by almost three hours, and checked in and bided our time comfortably. We even had time to look around the shops! Not much to actually consider though, as it seems that the only reasonable thing in Duty Free is alcohol. Everything else is horrendous. But we did manage to get free samples of dark chocolate and some sort of peanut thing, plus fountain water, so I suppose we took the shops for all they were worth without buying anything. We only had 3.86E left at that point, after scrounging up an extra 3.50E from our bags and finding a cent on the ground. Since I was hungry and euros would be useless after Madrid, it became my job to finish them off. After considerable scouting, I found a little Spanish omelet sandwich for 3.05 (believe me, no easy task) and convinced the Starbucks lady to give me an 85 cent mini chocolate muffin for my remaining 81 cents. Bwuahaha!

A little while later we boarded the plane (exactly on time to the minute! After Olympic I’m shocked) and took off! Woo hoo! We even got lunch on the plane…a little sandwich and a kit kat at least, plus a mysterious little tube of milk (mmm, tastes like Europe milk…oh wait, not really a good thing). Made my previous search a little silly but it was still fun. Time passed uneventfully throughout the flight and soon enough we were through to Heathrow, looking at fancy gadget shops, waiting a bit, and then on our flight home! Finally. Unfortunately we had been placed square in the baby screaming zone, as there were twin infants plus assorted other children in our section that took turns being incredibly upset. For the entire seven hours. Glblugh. Peter and I tried to escape by watching movies, but their entertainment system was down so we only got a small fraction of what we were supposed to have access to. We ended up watching The Soloist (eh, it was ok I guess?) and then I watched some random Indian movie while Peter continued to plow through sudoku. Mostly we just stayed up going “grr babies” but after more than enough of that we arrived back on American soil. And our checked bag made it, and we weren’t stopped on the way out. What a relief.

So kudos to the Adelmans for picking up the groggy travelers and feeding them nice American leftovers for dinner! Yay hamburgers and sweet corn (and MILK!). Peter and I split the gifts (found some things we had forgotten about) before they drove me back home. Ahh home, with tons of moving stuff piled up and lots waiting to be in boxes…switching from ‘europe ahh’ to ‘packing ackkk’ is not a thing I look forward to. I’d like to just relax for the next week but that would be impossible. Sadness. But doling out presents was (and will be) fun, as was going to sleep in my own comfy comfy bed. And waking up and getting eggs in a basket (and MILK! Yeah that’s not old yet). And taking a shower will be excellent when it is available. And not spending any more freaking euros…

For a second when I laid down last night it felt like I had never left, because nothing had moved. But 37 days is a long time and there’s a pretty good hole in my wallet now, not to mention the almost-4 gigs of pictures I’ve taken (more selections will be up soon). This was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime trip, not just because it was so notable but also because I don’t think we would survive doing it like this again. There was too much stress about the plane situation coming and going, for one thing. Stress on our bodies would be another point. Hopefully next time we can organize whatever we do much better given all this experience…or just hire a travel agent. Whuf. But I think we did pretty well despite all our planning mistakes. Hooray.

I will probably update once more when I get around to posting the pictures…otherwise thanks for reading!

Stuck

Well, we knew today might be tough, and it sure ended up unpleasant in the morning. We got up around 5am – blegh, already – and our bus was a little late, and then our flight to Athens was delayed. Fortunately, our flight from Athens to Madrid was also delayed, so we didn’t miss it…buuuuut it was an hour late, which means it landed just about as the plane connecting Madrid to Heathrow took off. Wonderful, Olympic Airlines. Every single flight we’ve had with them has been late. As Peter says, it’s a very Greek airline – they tell us not to worry about late flights, because all the rest of their flights are also delayed, and at least they have nice food right? I mean the lunch was really good for an airline – meats, cheeses, lettuce and a chicken salad thing for sandwich plus delicious croissants, fruit, Happy Cow cheese and some other things. We ate it all with suspicions that we would have to stay overnight in Madrid, in a country with not so stellar food. Of course it was early enough that this could not end up being the case, but that’s the stress we were feeling. At least we’d napped and been fed a little.

Ultimately, though, dread and stress were the right things to feel. We couldn’t get anyone in Athens to help us, despite entering security to talk to people at our gate, exiting security to talk to non-existent BA people (probably on a goddamn coffee break for the 45 min that we needed them), and re-entering security before the flight departed. I suspect it was because if we stayed on their home turf, Olympic would have to own up to their fault. Instead they shuttled us to Madrid where we were then thrown between Iberia (a subsidiary of BA) and BA and Iberia again, without any useful results. The Olympic office was also closed at Madrid – oh good. If we had a dime for every wrong thing or goosechase we’ve been on for these flights, we’d be pretty rich. When we checked last week when we first landed in Iraklion they said that they would be able to check our checked luggage through no problem, so we wouldn’t have to worry about picking it up in Madrid. When we checked today they said that was impossible. So not only did we not have time to make the flight, we had to wait at baggage as well. We should have just run to the terminal for last call and said bugger to the checked bag, all things considered. But we didn’t so…now we’re in a pickle.

So without anyone to help us – not Iberia, not a local BA rep, not Olympic, not even Lufthansa or US Air or Continental – we activated a pretty intense phone tree. This is the first time we’ve needed to use our phones abroad and I suppose it was worth it, although it will probably be very expensive come bill day. Anyhow, finally we got through to a BA rep over the phone and she took our info and upgraded to a flight out tomorrow. BA457 from MAD to LHR and BA069 from LHR to PHL, for a paltry 374 USD (!) each. Considering that a new ticket costs somewhere around 1000E, that’s a pretty good deal. Not as good as actually making our flight tonight but I guess not bad (aka the magic of the airlines – screwing you less than you thought seems like a fantastic deal!). Also the travel agency booth we were near was able to book us a hotel for only 58E/ night…woo! Free shuttle service and it’s a 4-star hotel – probably the first we’ve stayed at this summer! I guess they have some kind of lastminute deal with the hotels in the area so the prices are lower…awesome. Big, has AC and a terrace (although no free internet, which seems to be pretty standard for 4-star hotel, poo on them).

So at this point we had planned not to have any Euro left, so we had about 13.70E out. Didn’t really make sense to take any more out – especially since this was an $800 day already – so we set about trying to make do on it. The problem was that the hotel is in a pretty suburban area, as the airport isn’t exactly in the center of town, so there’s not much around. The guy at the front desk told us we could take a taxi to a supermarket... yeah we weren’t going to do that and add a 5E+ surcharge to our yogurt purchases. We haven’t taken a taxi yet, why start now! So we started to walk around and lo and behold, we found a little supermarket right around the block. What a dumbass (when asked later, he said “well that one isn’t very super.” Oh thanks…). Time for supermarket dinner #2! This time we got nice meats, cheeses, crackers, 1.75E wine, yogurt/apples for breakfast tomorrow, cookies and some magnum ice cream for about 11E. HaHA! That means we had about 2E left for the internet when we came back even. It ended up being a pretty fantastic dinner and we both got legitimately full and wine-happy (it tasted like cheap wine but hey, it was, and at least it was a rioja). Which meant we passed out for about 7 hours before we got online to make sure our plane reservations had changed…but that’s ok. We confirmed the change so we should be making it tomorrow (fingers crossed). Here’s to hoping. Gonna get a few more hours of sleep now.

Addendum – that’s what I was *going* to post, but the guy at the front desk decided to be a jerk and tell me it was impossible to use my own USB at the computer (the port was in plain sight in the front but admin protected for some reason). I tried to post a smaller version but their computers didn’t support Blogger sites. I don’t really understand the paranoia considering they were only running Internet Explorer and presumably have the resources to fund tech support considering their per-hour charges are horrendous. On top of that, on the way back to our room we saw a little lizard skitter up the walls. Four star hotel fail! At least the room is clean, I guess.

Last day in Crete

Not much going on this morning – just packing, eating leftover baklava, and attempting to reheat our leftovers in the bright sun. That last one only worked ok for one of the dishes from last night…the other one tasted terrible lukewarm so we didn’t eat it. Oh well. Then we headed to the bus station and arrived in Heraklion a few hours later. Thankfully, our hotel this time is much better, with excellent AC and a nice bathroom (although again, no shower curtain). I’m a bit mad at myself that I didn’t book this one before, but can’t do anything about it now. I guess I just know which to avoid for next time.

After we were done marveling at our luck in rooms we headed back to the Four Lions Square to do a very important thing – eat more gyros. These are definitely the best we’ve tried in Crete! And then we bought more pastries for tomorrow morning, and a European coke to test against American coke when we get home (we suspect the one here has real sugar). Mmm food. After a bit of waiting we were picked up by Kostas to go for coffee (ie 2-hr chat), and he also picked up another greek girl who was very nice. Again they told us the place we were going was very near but it ended up being about 20 minutes away. No matter, it was riiiight on the water – any closer and you would be wet. Pretty cool! It seems that they don’t really care if the drinks are overpriced or touristy as long as it has a nice view. Kind of interesting. But more than that it was time for some good conversation, about politics and Crete life and a lot of things. The unfortunate part is that Kostas has to stay on the army base tonight so he can’t drive us to the airport tomorrow morning…foo. So I guess we are braving the busses once more. I hope it works. In lieu of that, the afternoon ‘coffee’ (Peter got a milkshake and I got a chocolate drink haha) was really scenic and very nice. I really do hope I get to come back again sometime when Kostas is not in the army. I do want to see Santorini someday, and maybe some other islands, so perhaps making a stop in Crete will be possible. As they say, Crete is the best island as far as they are convinced! Not only is it the only island that brews raki, which is of dubious importance to me, but they also are the only ones (they say) that bring dessert and raki with the check as a gesture of hospitality. It’s definitely won a permanent place of honor with me and hopefully I can convince Peter to come back as well. =)

After that we weren’t very hungry but tried to follow some of Kostas’ recommendations all the same. I was enticed by the idea of a nice last meal but when I told the waiter that we weren’t going to be ordering very much, he told us that would be a problem. So we left. He had plenty of open tables, so I guess he was just being a jerk for his own sake. Kind of a put off, but we went to Ismir Kebap again and got delicious cheap pitas anyway so it wasn’t really our loss. Not exactly the ideal notion of a last night on vacation but it works!

Now we have printed out some of our boarding passes (but not all, grrrr BA) and will be waking up all too soon to do the final final packing and ship out. I’m not too excited about our three-connection day of travel but at least we don’t have to navigate any (outer-airport) metro systems. Hopefully all goes well…by the next update we should be in the states again!

Beach day!

What a nice day this ended up being! Not quite as much for Peter, who has a sore stomach, which is suspected to be something like a hernia – bad bad. So after our yogurt and baklava breakfast – nom – he went back to bed and I got the opportunity to walk around by myself since I was too awake. My initial goal was just to look at the west beach (as opposed to the east beach, which we saw yesterday) and then shop, but I ended up walking all over the old town. I went up a fortress remnant and saw the back of the old Kasteli quarter, but it wasn’t super impressive. I was sort of on a hunt for souvenirs for myself, clothes or otherwise, and when I didn’t find anything other than tourist shops and pretty streets I returned back to buy some ceramics at the shop across the street from our hotel. Now our apartment has a pretty pretty pitcher and a cool candle thing…in addition to the napkin holder I bought yesterday from the same place. Too many cool things! And they weren’t very expensive at all either, which was very nice.

By the time I got back it was super hot out, but I woke Peter up and we made use of our terrace by making ourselves drinks and lying out. Well, I laid out, and Peter sat in the shade and did sudoku. Considering that this is probably the last (and only) day to work on a tan that doesn’t just include my arms, I think I did pretty well. After cooling off in the room (<3 AC) we went out for a nice lunch at Tamam, a recommended place. I got apaki again (the smoked pork) and Peter got baby goat with roasted potatoes…both ended up being excellent – the goat fell apart when we poked it – and we again got more raki. By the end of it we were both pretty tipsy, which was a bit embarrassing considering that it was lunch but not so bad because it was our second-to-last day. The meal was delicious anyway!

Then it was beach time! Earlier today I saw signs for sun chair rentals at the western beach so we decided to go there, to minimize the sand exposure probability for Peter. Also we don’t have any full-sized towels, so that would have been irritating. Instead we used some of the spare hand towels from the hotel – sufficiently large enough for wiping off / protecting butt and back at least – and picked a pair of seats around 4pm. There was supposedly a 5E charge, but we stayed until sunset (~8pm) and no one ever asked us for anything. Free things hooray! Also the water was excellent, really clear and warm. There were even little fishies in, although some of those would try to nibble on you if you stayed too still in the water. Pretty relaxing for sure though! Even the usual beach noise was pretty entertaining – there was one lady that would shout “donuuuuuuuuuuuts!” every so often as she walked along the beach, and it was in such a tone that we cracked up each time. Sunset was very pretty too, although there were again no clouds to make it a bit more interesting. Oh well, I’ll take clear skies over rainy ones! Hooray for our first and only real beach day…

After four hours plus in the sun it felt pretty good to shower. It was certainly time to eat dinner by the time we were done, so we went to To Xani with high hopes. Unfortunately we ordered too much food for our sun-shrunken stomachs, so for the first time this trip we ended up with take-away boxes. Considering how many places we’ve eaten out, I think over-ordering once is pretty good. Thankfully our hotel room has a fridge, and I think the kitchen has a microwave or toaster oven, so we have lunch for tomorrow! Pastistsio and a zucchini-potato-mint thing is what we have now, and they were both pretty ok. We were too full from the salad and the staka, which is a local cheese served warm (think fondue with olive oil, very good), to properly appreciate them though. Maybe tomorrow. For now we are too sleepy! More silly TV and drinks for us until we decide to fall asleep.

Today we were thinking that 36 days was probably the maximum amount of time that we could have lasted on this trip. We are pretty art’d- and museum’d-out, our feet have sub-callus blisters on the heels (which is very upsetting), our backs hurt from the crappy hotel beds/pillows, and it’s simply time to go home where there are clean bathrooms and sheets you can trust and drawers instead of backpacks for all your stuff. It might be less exciting but will definitely be easier on us. Especially since the spare suitcase is now jam-packed with stuff and is hella heavy (thanks Kostas for the 4.5 L of liquid). Plus the Greeks seem to have something against shower curtains, as this place doesn’t have one either. Water pressure isn’t great either. Grr. I’m ready for home, and just in time! Hahaha.

GRR I JUST KILLED A COCKROACH GRR GRR HOTEL EL GRECO! At least it is asploded now. And they gave us the nicest room (terrace-wise, anyway) so far as we can tell. But grr anyway. Maybe I go clean up now. Hopefully we will be able to update tomorrow night – it’s theoretically possible – but we have to wake up super early for the flight so we will see. I’m sure there will be follow-up posts either way. PS we really appreciate the comments so if you are so moved please post one! Kbye!

PPS - some pictures are up!

Harbour night!

All right, one of our last pack-up days! Made it over to the baklava guy in time to see him in action. Pretty cool, although I was hoping he would start up the machine he uses to make the little furry baklava (the stringy ones) and he didn’t. Oh well! We did manage to get some loukoumades from a recommended shop, and this time we got chocolate syrup…at this particular place (Kanakakis, I think) they cook the little balls and then pump each one individually with some chocolate sauce. Very good! I wanted to try the honey versions as well but we were too full. All that was left was to go to Chania! We learned that we could catch a bus to the bus station, which was infinitely easier than dragging all of our crap across the city again. We had to wait quite a while for the right bus to come, though, which was a bit frustrating. But we got there and got to the right bus and all was well. I took a good nap on the way over, and the hotel wasn’t too bad to find. Chania is probably more touristy than the rest of the cities we’ve been to – or at least so thinks Peter – but it is still nice I think. Our room has a really nice terrace that’s almost as big as the inside, which is cool, and we’re very near a bunch of good restaurants I looked up.

Once Peter finished his Sudoku puzzle (an excuse to soak up some AC I think) we were ready to walk the city. We passed a lot of handcraft shops that were really interesting – the position of our hotel is excellent for that, which I’m happy about. Then we walked the harbor and noticed that a lot of things were shutting down, including the famous mosque and the huge bazaar that seems to be behind it…oops, it’s a Monday, in the afternoon all the shops go to sleep. Oh well, we’ll hit them tomorrow perhaps. We continued to see a bunch of side streets and some things that had stayed open, tried some Chania gyros that were disappointing (probably got them too close to the harbor) and continued to the old city walls and towards one of the beaches. It’s tiny but cute! Then we found a supermarket because Peter wanted some rum and cokes to drink on our terrace, and headed back to do so. Like a lot of Crete, the harbor is pretty awfully touristy but the backstreets are quite pretty – either that or superresidential. But it was ok!

Some drinks later we were out the door towards the harbor, hoping to catch it by sunset. There was a bit of running involved – and a lot of sweating – but we made it! And it was very nice. Kostas laughed at my inclination towards sunsets but I think if you have the free time to enjoy them then you should. During Regular Life Time (TM) one doesn’t really pay mind to them, so during Vacation Time I think one should! Anyhow on the way back, the big outdoor market celebrating local foods from all over Crete – I think the signs said it was only active during August – had opened back up, and it was hopping. We passed by one big guy that shoved two kinds of pastries and two shots each of raki at us – for free! We later tried to pay for some for breakfast tomorrow but he just told us those were free too. Pretty great! The rest of the market was pretty awesome. Most of the booths were sent by different municipalities in the Chania district, with their own raki, honey, meats, pastries, and cheeses. I’m very impressed with the amount and variety of stuff they can produce without any outside help…true local food! Such a cool little experience. We got full enough on the free samples, some spanikopita and some rice thing that we didn’t even go to a restaurant for dinner. I am pretty happy about the whole thing.

Now there is a Clint Eastwood movie on tv and we are relaxing … although I did see a cockroach skitter into the wall, which was not so relaxing. Hopefully there is just one. Otherwise tomorrow should be pretty nice and when it is over we shall sleep!

Forts and moussaka

Yay sleeping in! The sheets are really soft here at the Astali Hotel and they also gave us soft candies with the towels yesterday. I am a fan. Also the breakfast – comes included with the room – was pretty awesome as hotel breakfasts go! There was bread, blackberry and peach jams, honey, yogurt, cheese, hardboiled eggs, cereals, and milk that was actually cold…a good start to the day for sure.

Then it was time for walkin! After a brief stop at the apparently overhyped Archeology Museum (we weren’t impressed) we got to the Fortezza, where our student cards got us in for freeee. We’re back in a country that gives students a break, thank goodness. I also got a pamphlet guide this time that described all the sights within the fort walls, which was helpful. Peter insisted that we hit all the sights, and we saw a lot of things I hadn’t seen in the winter. There were some underground caves and storage rooms, some ready for exhibitions and some with fragments of old stones with Arabic carved onto them. That was cool. We found a little nook behind some out-of-control bamboo (I took a picture for you, Dad) and ate the second little tin of baklava that we bought yesterday. It was quite nice, and the breeze coming off the ocean was much appreciated. As dead as the grass is, the place is still really interesting for me, especially since some parts look rather Myst-like. So, a success.

After we checked off everything we descended back down to the old town once more. I got a spice set and Peter found a cheap Sudoku book – hooray! Then we got gyros to test the difference between cities (more tzatziki here, different spices) as Kostas had recommended, an idea that Peter really embraced. Then we headed back, intending to change to go to the beach. The hotel proved too comfy, though – Peter fell asleep and I didn’t really want to strike out on my own. Plus I seem to have a little sunburn so I just took it easy and looked up Chania stuff and balanced some expenses. Woo hoo. Fortunately Peter woke up just in time for us to get out and see the sunset at the harbor, which was very nice! Then we started walking towards some recommended restaurant destinations but in taking some back streets we found a place offering salad, wine, and 2 moussaka for 15E – not bad, so we stopped. The moussaka wasn’t fantastic but it was steaming hot and very filling. The salad was as good as ever – I’m so glad sad lettuce is a problem that has been eliminated here – and it was a good little place. I think we have evolved to the point that we can at least detect bad wine by now. It was homemade but not very exciting at all. But an okay meal, and we returned pretty sleepy!

Food and Rethymno

Uh oh, only 6 days left! Well, really 5 if you don’t count the 6th, which is entirely a traveling day. Trying not to think about that one quite yet. Anyhow we got off to a leisurely start, doing laundry and getting our last cream boughatsa and last Iraklion gyro (Kostas says they’re a bit different in each city) before heading down to the bus port. Getting on the bus and getting to Rethymno was fine up until we got into the city, where we didn’t know to get off before the big bus port. As a consequence of our confusion we had to walk all the way back across the city to get to our hotel. Oops. Oh well – it’s not an exceedingly large city to have to cross. And we’re here! In a nice hotel! We celebrated having a nice room with effective AC and a shower curtain for a while…oh the little things. Also our internet appears to be better (in that it exists) so hooray for that. Hotel Rea was probably the worst hotel we’ve been to. Sigh.

But anyway, we went back out and walked around the old city for a bit. Specifically, we looked at some very pretty sidestreets (Rethymno has a lot!) and scouted out the place where the baklava guy makes phyllo dough. Thanks internet for giving me the address! He doesn’t do stuff on Sundays but we learned from his wife that we can come back for a demo on Monday. That puts off our departure for Chania somewhat later than expected but it’s definitely worth it to see this guy. We bought some little tins of baklava to see what was in store for us (hint: delicious) and then happened upon Veneto, a restaurant that had been recommended by a few sources. It was very pretty both inside and outside – boasts being a restaurant and hotel for 700 years – and had free wine tasting, so we stopped in. It was way too early to eat but we took our time with the wines (white was dry, rose was great, red was kind of boring) and it finally was a respectable time to order food. And the food was very very good. We got a Greek salad of course, then a mincemeat and cheese pie that had mint mixed in and was good by itself, but then the last ‘appetizer’ came and wow. It was apaki, which is Cretan smoked pork, and it was seasoned really well – tasted like excellent saucy barbecue. We were happy! Probably could have stopped there, but as usual we ordered a bit more than we needed because too many things looked good. The last dish was veal marinated with some eggplant dip in the middle. It was pretty darn good too. Peter and I both think that, although it was a bit overpriced, it was probably the best meal we’ve had since Bea Vita, or at least one of them. Yay!

By then it was pretty late so we decided to head back. Unfortunately we seem to have gotten lost in a wormhole or something and ended up a lot further off course than we thought. It doesn’t help that the map we have isn’t great and the street signs are often nonexistent. Eventually we made it though, and now we are quite sleepy. Time to get all these posts out the door and go to sleep…a nice cold, quiet sleep…yayy…

Shopping and sunset

Slept in today…it is very loud in our room at night because we’re at ground level and have to keep the window open in lieu of having AC. As Kostas said, during the day the little kids play, then at night the big kids ride around on their motorbikes. Wah. Oh well, shouldn’t be a problem after tonight. Also we rewarded ourselves in the morning by going to get loukoumades and the cheese version of boughatsa, which I hadn’t yet tried. The loukoumades were pretty good, if a little cold, but I definitely prefer the cream boughatsa by a lot. Cheese was interesting but more like having some ricotta-derivative for breakfast. At least we tried it! We followed up by going back to the bakery for a few more things…I think by now we have tried most things in there. Yum.

Then we started our day of shopping! Having time to shop is pretty nice. We went up and down the market roads, into some supermarkets, checked out some clothes shops…ended up with a pretty good haul of gifts, clothes (for Peter..I’m still not having a ton of luck), and airplane-secure containers for the olive oil and raki that Kostas brought us. I now have three whole liters of olive oil so I guess I am cooking a lot! I also have 1.5 L of raki, unfortunately, but we’ll find some way to use it up I hope. At least when we’re done with both we will have nice mason jars for things.

For lunch we went to Ismir Kebap (kebap kebap!) and got souvlaki and lamb kebaps… deeeelicious. Peter and I lamented that we would like to continue eating Greek foods while being back at home. I’m just glad he likes the food (not that I really had doubts). Afterwards we went down to the Venetian fort on the harbor to check it out from the inside. I hadn’t realized it was open to the public last time! So we got to enter and it seemed a lot larger from the inside than I would have expected. There wasn’t really any information about the various rooms but it was still pretty cool, although windy enough that it was dangerous in a skirt. Ah well – a sight I haven’t seen, hooray!

I wanted to watch the sunset from the breakers but it was a bit early, so we walked down the ‘mall area’ on the coast. Didn’t find anything good to buy so we just got drinks and sat and watched the world go by, as the Greeks are so good at doing. Us fastpaced Americans only lasted 45 minutes but that was pretty good for just one drink (for us, anyway). Finally it was time for me to change into shorts so we could walk down the pier unflustered. I have to say the repeat experience of walking the whole pier was quite excellent, and although there weren’t any clouds to exaggerate the sunset it was still very nice. Lots of pictures taken also, of course. So relaxing! We then went to the restaurant by the pier that Ismat had taken us to the first night for dinner…ordered lots of things, including prawns and meatballs, and it was pretty good. They were a bit slow and missed bringing us one plate but we were full by that time anyway. A pretty good night in all!

Unfortunately the internet is out completely at the hotel – they’re having lots of issues with it – so we went to the big pedestrian street and used the municipality signal. It’s nice that Iraklion has so much free wifi signal! Having to surf in the presence of some creepy street performers was less than awesome but they went away fairly quickly. I didn’t have the posts ready in time so we just did mail and left it at that. Plus we were very sleepy!

First strike of the raki

We started the day off well – there’s a large bakery between the hotel and the supermarket that has all manner of tasty interesting things. We got some baklava, a chocolate-filled croissant, cheese danishes and a few other things for really cheap, and they were GREAT. It’s a chain, but it’s fresh stuff and still probably better than a lot of the bakeries we’ve been to thus far. Ah greek food. Peter observed that Greece had the most plump locals that we’ve seen in Europe and I would have to agree…it’s probably because of all the delicious food available!

After some walking we decided to do at least a little sightseeing, to the much-advertised CretAquarium that had just opened the last time I was here. That required taking a bus a half hour out of town but we managed it – the busses that run are actually coach busses, which is really nice. The exhibit was about the same, maybe a bit bigger, but it made up for not going to the zoo in Rome in terms of pacifying our inner little kid. The more interesting part, I thought, was the other part of the dual ticket – the Leonardo da Vinci exhibit. Why it’s in Crete, I have no idea, but I didn’t know much about the guy before we went so it was pretty informative. I didn’t know he was such an engineer, or that he dissected cadavers at night…guy was wicket smart but also a bit strange. But the museum did it well, and had some real models based on sketches he had made. Pretty ingenious stuff. We had to wait a while for a bus back into town but it was all right – cool exhibits accomplished.

In a very short time after we got back to the city we met Kostas to go to the beach. Since it was so windy he opted for a more protected place, which ended up being about a half hour “close” to the city by car. I think it was part of a resort, and it wasn’t actually a traditional beach – it was a concrete platform built over the sharp rock dropoff to make some oceanfront property. The water was really clear but really strong, especially when it starts out being about 10 ft deep. The swim was good and the view was great though! Definitely a novel kind of beach we wouldn’t have seen otherwise. In the ensuing time we talked a lot and sipped whatever we had ordered, as is customary. Very good!

Since he has to get up early to report to the army, Kostas opted out of dinner but we found a nice place anyway (after showering of course!). It was the Traditional Cretan Restaurant around the bend from the Irini and it ended up being a very funny night! The food was pretty good – best salad we’ve had in Europe possibly – but the desserts were also excellent. Got the sweet yoghurt with candied carrots again, which was just as delicious as I remember, plus some fruit. Yum! I really enjoy being in a place where a filling dinner is less than 30E and dessert comes with it. Greece is probably one of the cheaper places to eat I think. Also the owner recognized us, or at least the story I told him about being here, and gave us two little things of raki instead of one with the check. Oh dear. So I was pretty unprepared to write the post after I got back, oh well! Sitting with the only other customers plus the family just watching TV (Worms and then some nazi movie) and sipping wine or raki was very nice. In five years again, I told the waiter, maybe we’ll come back. It’s still strange to be back but it has been worth it for the food alone I think. Hooray!

Mainland to island

After a breakfast of a Subway sandwich and a coffee roll from a street vendor we tried to say goodbye to Athens, but it took us a little more effort than we thought. As we walked towards the bus stop we could hear megaphone shouting and there were police everywhere…I have no idea what was up, but the bus stop street was blocked off so we were informed that it wouldn’t be coming through this morning. Fantastic. So we got to experience the metro of yet another city in order to get to another bus stop. Protip: the Athens metro is really nice! And hopefully by the time we come back, if we come back, you’ll be able to ride it straight to the airport (under construction now). But for now we stopped a ways away and got on another sardine-can bus. Thankfully we got on early enough that we grabbed seats, what a luxury. After that, check-in and security went smoothly, although I realized I hadn’t written down the address of our Iraklion hotel. Ooops. I guess Peter isn’t the only one who does that. Fortunately the information desk when we landed in Iraklion was able to look up the address and give us a map – hooray!

After the bus ride into town we were at Eleytheria’s Square (freedom square), but it took a while for me to reorient myself. Therefore it took a while to figure out how to get to our hotel…we took a lot of back roads trying to go the shortest route that we later found out were unnecessary if you took a few easier main streets. Oh well! But our hotel is pretty … budget this time. It may be the least we’ve paid per night but it also feels that way. There’s no AC, just a fan, but we’re on the ground floor – almost eye level – so we can’t keep our window open overnight. Aaand it’s pretty hot in here. Foo. Also there isn’t a shower curtain or even any sort of door for the stall – the ‘shower’ is just a raised part of the bathroom, more of a suggestion of a place for your water to go than any real demarcation. Good thing I hadn’t yet booked our last night in Iraklion before the plane home…the next three nights will be interesting enough, I don’t think we will be back.

The decision was made to spend as little time as possible in the room, so we headed out so I could find some of my old stomping grounds. I found the old hotel and a few key restaurants pretty easily, eventually found the supermarket and laundromat, and most importantly, Four Lions Square. Peter was superhungry so we got some gyros – hooray! Then we crossed over to the boughatsa place and started with one serving, but Peter liked it so much that we got another. Greek food nomnomnom. A lot of the places we’ve crossed look about the same – lots of half-finished construction of course, just some in different places now – although the fountain is done and the square with awesome graffiti has been painted over. It’s nice to have a small sense of ‘returning’ or at least familiarity with where we are…plus it’s warmer now that it isn’t winter!

After some wandering we met up with Kostas in front of the old hotel Irini. A familiar face! He showed us where to get the bus out of town before stopping for a very Greek thing – coffee. We all got things to sip at a café and we talked our way through them for the next hour or two. He’s just as funny as ever and I’m glad this worked out, although I wish I had known he had a bit more free time from his army duty on the weekends so I could have planned the excursions better. Oh well! Maybe we just have to come back. =) I think we are going to the beach with him tomorrow afternoon which would be nice! My goal for the Greek leg of the trip is to just relax… I think we are pretty museum’ed out, and I know my feet hurt, so perhaps some chilling is in order.

Dinner involved a return to Veggera, the restaurant that served me baked feta last time. We ordered it again this time and it didn’t seem to be the same kind of cheese, but it was still good. On Kostas’ recommendation we also got eggplant/bacon/cheese rolls, which were baked and very good as well. And of course raki came with the check, welcome to Crete! Now it is time to sleep, although I am a bit worried about all the street noise here. Oh boy budget hotel. PS our advertised free internet is pretty crappy so we will see about the regularity of updates.

I feel like Homer. But which Homer?

THIS IS PETER'S POST AND IT IS GREAT! TAKE THAT BELINDA~!!!!

Today we woke up early (7:30AM) for our trip to Athens, quickly dressed, and were the first ones in the hotel down to breakfast. Because it was a traveling day, I decided to stock up on food and ate a big breakfast, which took a little longer than normal, but we still managed to get out by 8:15ish. Melissa opted for a normal sized breakfast, and returned to the room to pack her things.

After having a moderately confusing conversation about postcards and express trains with our Flemish desk clerk, we headed off to the Metro. One stop later (yes, we're lazy) we were at Termini and heading for the "Leonardo Express", which our desk clerk talked with us about at length. Unfortunately, somehow the only useful piece of information we gleaned from the entire conversation was that the express train definitely existed and it definitely went to the airport from Termini (both of which our map told us). So, we headed to the nearest train information booth to find out other nonessential things like: "How do we get tickets?", "How much are the tickets?", and "Where does the train leave from?" She answered the questions twice (once with the mic turned on, once without) and then we were off! She told us the train left from platforms 24, 25, or 26, and that tickets could be purchased nearby for 11 Euro each. With the tickets in hand, we headed to try and find platform 24, 25, and 26. A short way (maybe 20 meters or 61 feet for those of you still in "standard units" land) away from the ticket shop, we ran into a conundrum. It seemed Platform 25 and 26 were one way, and platform 24 was entirely another way. Fortunately there was a departure board nearby (with the 8:52 Leonardo Express listed and platformless), so we just sat and watched it to see what platform it would end up being. Well, actually my delightful travel companion watched it while I watched her unconsciously do the nervous dance. Shhhh... don't tell!! This paragraph now has to be long, because I know she secretly doesn't read middle sentences in long paragraphs. After a while, the platform showed up as 25 and we headed off down the correct corridor. It turned out that 24, 25, and 26 actually were next to each other, along with 1-23, but for some reason the signs sent you opposite directions only at the point we got stuck at. I had a lot of time to ponder this oddity of Italian public transport as I travelled down the incredibly long corridor to the train, which we were in plenty of time for. It left 5 minutes late, which puts us at 8:57 for those of you keeping track at home.

The train ride was generally uneventful and got us to the airport just after 9:30AM. Now, the one thing that I've thus far avoided mentioning is our scheduled departure time. It was 11AM for an Italy -> Greece international flight. This meant that the whole train ride Melissa was stressing out about how we weren't going to make it. Arriving at the check-in line with a bag 1.5 hours before the scheduled departure time had me a little worried as well, but I'd like to think I avoided stressing out as much!

Thus begins the nicest check-in/security experience in all my travels so far. As soon as we got off the train, we found our flight was going out of Terminal B, so we headed over and down the stairs. The general mood between us was "PANIC" at this point, so we were looking around frantically for Olympic Airlines at the check-in area. After a minute or two, we find their three checkin aisles and run up to them with our one bag and two giant backpacks, documents out and speaking rapid English to the Greek woman behind the counter, who seemed to understand our situation entirely better than we did. Three minutes later, we were on our way with our bag checked and boarding passes.

Security was basically a massive set of those line-forming fabric rope things set up like a snake that dumped you out by 8 X-ray machines with 4 metal detectors. No lines were more than 5 people long, and we were through with security in under 5 minutes. It really took us longer to go through their fabric rope gauntlet than it did to go through the rest of security. I guess if you can survive the gauntlet then you're safe to fly!

So here it was, 9:45 and we were at our gate. Not expecting to have free time and with the reality of our situation setting in, Melissa and I both slowly tried to find something to do to kill time for the next hour. I listened to a WNYC Radio Lab episode (thanks mom) and Melissa got a pretty good cured ham and cheese sandwich and sort of listened to radio lab with me.

One gate change and an hour later, we were standing in line with the mass of other people hoping to board the Athens flight. ...And there we stood... for about an hour. When we finally got on our jet and off the ground, we were a solid 50 minutes late, putting us in to Athens at about 3PM. (At least they fed us on the plane, although the fare was somewhat mysterious. -m)

Getting from the airport to the hotel was something of an Odyssey (yuk yuk yuk). They'd shut down part of the line we needed to go directly from the airport to the stop near our hotel, so we decided to take the bus to a nearby stop and just walk a little ways with our luggage. It seems a lot of other people had the same idea, because the bus was absolutely packed. I've now been closer to half a dozen Greek strangers than I've been to most of my friends. Not only was it an uncomfortable and bumpy ride, but it also lasted nearly an hour and >80% of the people got out at the very last stop with us.

Now, something as simple as "taking the bus to a nearby stop and walking to the next stop" sounds easy, but doesn't account for two things. First, neither Melissa nor I can really read the Greek alphabet. We also don't have a map of the city and only have secondhand access to an English map held by someone else on the bus. Obviously, this causes all kinds of navigational problems even when you're just three blocks away from where you want to be.

We must have looked desperate and helpless enough as we paced the square we were dropped off by the bus, because eventually an old man pointed us in the right direction. Ten minutes later (if even that) we were checking in at the front desk and heading up to our room at Hotel Attalos.

By 5:30 we were bouncing back out to the Acropolis (which closes at 7:30. Though the Parthenon itself was entirely covered in scaffolding, the view from the Acropolis was amazing. You can see all the way across Athens from up there, and there's a nice breeze. I can see why the ancient Greeks chose to build there even though they had to haul the materials up the hill and carve their foundations into the rock. After the Acropolis we went down and saw the Agora.

The Agora consisted of lots of big pillars and heaps of rocks that at one point were parts of buildings. From the Agora museum's explanation, it seems the people who raided Athens during the dark ages enjoyed leveling the Agora to the ground a little more than Rome's raiders enjoyed leveling the Forum. Either way, it was pretty cool to walk through ruins over 2000 years old. It honestly seemed a little small compared to the ancient forum, but more on that later.

By this point in our rapid tour of ancient Athens the sun was on its way down and our stomachs were talking, so we headed back in to town for some food. During Melissa's previous trip to Athens, she'd been to a lookout point from the Acropolis with a nice view at night (the Rock of Areopagos) so we decided to get food we could walk with and head up there. Walking through the shops at dinnertime, the restaurant greeters tried to lure us in as they always do and we stoically ignored them until I found a delightful Greek man with a respectable moustache and pretty good English. I asked him if we could possibly just get takeout (two gyros wrapped up). He agreed, and 5 minutes later we were on our way with two really delicious gyros that had only cost us 1.90 Euro each. (a guy in a tourist trap area didn't try to screw us!! -m)

Due to our stroke of good fortune, we decided to splurge on some drinks and grapes, bringing the total cost of dinner to somewhere south of 10 Euro. Best of all, it was delicious! Well, I should qualify that. Everything tasted delicious, and we both enjoyed our gyros and drinks thoroughly. Unfortunately, the US supermarkets have left us utterly unprepared to deal with foreign grapes. It's slightly embarrassing to admit, but we'd both forgotten grapes normally have seeds. They were delicious, but neither of us knew if we could eat the seeds or had to spit them out, so we were spitting out 1-5 seeds per grape. It was kind of fun, but turned into a hassle after a few dozen grapes.

After our ascent to the Rock of Areopagos (I just like saying that), we watched the sun set and all the lights slowly turn on. The view really was fantastic. A few more clouds during the sunset would have made it perfect, but it was pretty nice just the way it was. Shutterbugissa was clicking away, and I contented myself peoplewatching. One guy was squatting like a baseball catcher for almost half an hour talking at his beer can (into his cellphone). I was impressed both that he could hold that position for half an hour and that he could talk to someone for half an hour on a cellphone while nursing the same beer. But alas, eventually Melissa's picture frenzy petered out and we had to descend and return to our hotel.

It turns out our hotel has a nice rooftop bar with a pretty great view of the Acropolis, which we visited. Though Melissa won't know until she reads this, it was there that I decided to start measuring prices not in Euros or Dollars, but in delicious Gyros. 1.90 Euro or 2.66 Dollars per delicious Gyro. 3.42 delicious Gyros per mixed drink and glass of wine at the rooftop bar. We got tired of their musical selections, so tired and unwilling to sacrifice more delicious Gyros for alcohol we wouldn't need, we returned to our room.

Then I announced I was writing this post! She protested and will probably censor me tomorrow, but for now she's asleep.

Art Stuff:

Now that we have seen plenty of art in Europe and I've pretty much hit all the major art museums I know of, I can see how people can artistically credit the Greeks with so much and the Romans with so little. Just walking through the Borghese and Vatican Museums, it's pretty easy to see how advanced the Greek sculptors were compared to the Romans. Roman statues were generally marble copies of Greek ones with added supports (unnecessary tree stumps, clubs, capes, etc.) because the Greek originals were Bronze and the Marble isn't hollow so it balances differently. I'm not sure I saw a single worthwhile Roman statue that wasn't actually originally Greek. The famous Greek statue of Laocoon probably isn't artistically or technically rivaled until the Renaissance. Romans regularly assembled their statues from multiple pieces of Marble, while the Greeks carved from a single block. This technique, along with the depth of expression in the statue, would be lost until the Renaissance.

What I think we can credit the Romans with is making everything bigger than the Greeks. The Greeks made the Parthenon. Okay. I can think of easily a dozen Roman ruins much larger than the Parthenon. I doubt they were any more functional than the Greek architecture (in fact, I'm not sure the Romans had even mastered the split level house) but still, it was many times bigger. Also, the Pantheon is pretty impressive.

(Well I guess he did a pretty good job huh guys! The only thing I want to add is that it is definitely a bit strange to be back in Athens, and to have been able to do so much awesome sightseeing (some repeat, some not) in less than 24 hours. What a good intro to Greece for Peter and a really fun coming-back for me! Hopefully the rest of the trip goes this smoothly! -m)

Dial C for Classy

The goal for today was to hit the odds and ends that we hadn’t seen yet. After breakfast we walked over to the ancient part of the city (well, the major, excavated part) to check out the Capitol building and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The building is massive and impressive and there was a nice treat – the museum inside is free, and so is entrance to the church up there. The main exhibit was about Italy during the late 1800s up to WWI and the bringing back of the Unknown Soldier, so that somewhat rounded out our knowledge of Italy. Ancient ruins first, the 16th – 19th centuries mainly yesterday, and the 20th century and on today. Not that the instruction was super extensive since the exhibit was mostly in Italian, but still. There was also an exhibit in the midlevel of photos taken by different photographers of different Mediterranean countries, which was nice. My favorites were from a guy named Ivo. A few floors (and another small exhibit with a really old recording of an exuberant Italian song) later, we finally reached the exit and set off towards the Pantheon.

Happily, it was not closed today! Admission is actually free as well, which is awesome. The Rick Steves audioguide was cool to listen to again, so I’m glad we brought those. The building itself is pretty intense – the dome is as wide as it is tall, 20ft thick at the base and 5ft thick at the top, mathematically perfect before calculators and computers and formal engineers. Steves noted that this year is the 1400th birthday of the Pantheon being a church, I think – it’s about 2000 years old in all. Some of the decorations have changed, and it’s officially gone from a polytheistic to monotheistic crowd, but it is essentially the same as it was in Hadrian’s time. Pretty cool. And watching the sun stream through the hole in the dome is very picturesque! As a bonus, Rafael is buried there, and some kings. A pretty classy place.

We relied on Steves again for lunch, going to one of his recommended places (Miscellanea) because he suggested we would get fragolino if we set the book out on the table. I don’t think we would have stopped there without knowing that bit of info, because it was jam packed and the food didn’t look super awesome from the menu. But eventually our food came, it was massive and good, and sure enough, we got two little glasses of fragolino at the end. Hooray! It was lighter and fizzier than the one at the Osteria but it was refreshing and smelled pretty much the same. Not sure how they got around whatever laws surround it, but we picked up a bottle just in case we don’t have the opportunity again. Pretty exciting!

Killed some time shopping, waiting for the churches to open back up from their midday nap. Peter had wanted to go to the church of Saint Ignacio but wouldn’t tell me why, so finally we got in (no fee yay!) and I figured it out. As you walk in, the first fresco has a lot of perspective and adds the illusion of another floor up there, but it’s pretty obvious that the ceiling is only curved. There is one darker circle ahead, though, that is painted in such a way that you completely don’t notice that it doesn’t lead up into a domed ceiling until you’re right underneath it. Very clever! It looks like it really needs some cleaning but it tricked me even without it. Optical illusion church, very good. The rest of the place is none too shabby but I guess they wanted an extra something. By the entrance they also have wooden replicas of a lot of famous churches, which was cool.

The last stop in this area was San Crispino, a much-lauded gelateria near the Trevi fountain (which was near some unsuccessful attempted shopping we did). They are the ultimate in gelato purists, using no artificial ingredients and serving only in cups, as the cone might interfere with the flavor of the gelato. We tried honey, melon, raspberry, blackberry, chocolate and straticcella (that would be three cups…) and they were all very good. They succeeded in freezing honey, something that the grade-school me with an ice cube tray of cold but unfrozen honey appreciates. I have to admit it wasn’t as tasty as the blackberry or the chocolate, the two winners this time, but it was novel. Full, we headed to the subway and negotiated our first post-Roma pass entrance to get home. I’m pretty impressed that we did so well without the Roma pass today – I was worried we’d hit a bunch of things we’d have to pay for, but apparently not. Given, one of the museums takes Mondays off for some reason, but still, the lack of a metro pass was the bigger loss.

After a long nap and a good shower it was time to eat again, but after sweating all day in capris (so the churches wouldn’t get angry looking at my knees) and needing them for our travel day tomorrow it was decided to do another load of laundry. Very exciting I know! But it gave us an opportunity to go back to the big supermarket, where Peter decided we would eat dinner. We got some meat rolls from the ready-made section, some yogurts, and some prepackaged tiramisu. The meat we ate while walking back to the Laundromat – very romantic? – and the rest we ate on the steps outside, waiting for our clothes to dry. Our last night in Rome, watching the moon over the Italian streets and drinking yogurt like hobos without spoons (actual hobos are probably more prepared). We then took our laundry, went back to the room and used some cookies we had bought previously to spoon out the tiramisu. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know how many calories that was but it was pretty good at least. The whole dinner elevated us to a whole new level of classy traveling, but it was pretty entertaining. After that was some packing…I’m glad we took the suitcase now, as it’s full of fun stuff. We also finally booked the rest of the hotels for our trip – one entire expenditure finalized! I suppose we are drawing into a close, as we’ll reach our last country tomorrow. But we still have a week or so. Pretty exciting – but it’s superlate, so time to sleep!

Laundry and gardens and things

Laundry day once again! We probably couldn’t have gone very much longer without doing it this time. The Laundromat near us had a lot of washers and even some dryers so that was exciting. Our plan was to get it started and then get some money from an ATM, but we walked around for the washing cycle and couldn’t find a single machine (we tried four) that wasn’t exclusively dispensing 50E bills. It’s sort of inevitable that you get those when you withdraw so much money but it’s really annoying to break them, so we try to have at least a few twenties just in case we need something cheap and don’t want to steal all the store’s change. It’s ridiculous not to dispense anything lower…if you round up the exchange rate to the nearest bill it would be like ATMs in the US dispensing only $100 bills. Outrageous! But so it is. We chased down another recommendation in the drying cycle but couldn’t find it; instead, we found a huge supermarket not too far from our hotel. That was a good find – even the nuns were loading up their minivans out front. We will have to return when we have money.

With our laundry clean and ready (hurray!) we returned to the hotel to drop it off. The receptionist told us that there was an atm in the opposite direction that we had looked that would probably work, and it did. All that fuss, ah well. It was definitely more walking than we had anticipated for the morning but I guess it was just warming us up for the day to come. Our first stop was the Spanish Steps, where we watched some rose peddlers (pun not originally intended) run away from the cops, which was fun. Then we climbed them and wandered around the Borghese gardens, where there was great sights AND great shade. We tried to go see the biopark, but our Roma pass didn’t bring down the admission as low as we would have liked so no zoo for us! Just outside the complex, though, they did have lots of Frigo items and a little shop with excellent sandwiches for only 2.50E. That’s super cheap in these parts and it was totally unexpected, coming from a super touristy located joint. An appreciated surprise though!

From there it was time to hit the Borghese gallery. Originally the lines looked like we probably shouldn’t have prebooked because they were short, but the museum is weird in that it only lets in so many people per two hour limit. So the people standing in line in front of us probably weren’t getting tickets to get in immediately, and being able to go to the gardens only once (without leaving after purchase and coming back for valid wandering time) is pretty useful. This was one of the few sights that Peter hadn’t seen, apparently, with a lot of works he recognized from his Latin books and a lot of grand rooms. So we saw the Rape of Persephone and a lot of famous works. My favorite was Daphne and Apollo, showing the moment that she starts turning into a tree to avoid Apollo’s advances. The sculptor spent a lot of time making leaves, and they all connected very delicately and well (just like the rest of the statue). Very cool. My only issue with this museum is that everything looked a little too perfect – I mean, it was originally a museum, so naturally everything has been well preserved. But in Rome something that is only (only!) 200 years old is less noteworthy, especially if it looks like it was only made yesterday. Interesting!

We tried to get to the Pantheon afterwards but people were getting married in there (“oh yes, well we just got married in the PANTHEON!” …wtf.) so we raced around on the 3rd day of our Roma pass trying to find another place to get into so it pays itself off. We ended up finding the Museo di Roma, which was nice. Info, photos, clothes and furniture from Rome between the 18th – 20th centuries…just another museum with cool stuff as far as I’m concerned but Peter seemed to enjoy it. I liked our following trips through the Piazza Navona (tall buildings, large statues, big fountains, very impressive) and the Trevi fountain (huge carving, huge pipes, one bricked-in window at the top?) better though. Lots of tourists but it made sense since there was a lot to see around. Walk walk walk.

But tiiiired. We’ve decided that Rome has the most steps and hills of all the cities we’ve experienced and so it makes us more tired faster, and therefore grumpy. Grr grr. We went back to the hotel and showered but didn’t take naps this time, which might have been bad. But instead we went and got pizza because Peter was very insistent on it. We got the whole ‘pay by the gram’ (aka whatever you tell them / they decide to cut) experience and the food ended up pretty okay. Fortified, we used our Roma pass (on its last day of life, very sad) to get to the Colosseum again to see it at night. It was definitely a cool view and I finally remembered to bring my jobo tripod, which was definitely helpful. Looks very different at night, I’m glad we checked that off.

Got some gelato on the way back but that was a temporary perk - Peter’s faaast asleep by now and I keep falling asleep midsentence, woo hoo. So it is sleepytime. May tomorrow be full of less crankiness!

Ruins of an empire

Today was Ancient Rome day, and our first stop was the Colosseum. Unfortunately the line was horrendous but we got sucked into a tour group in order to avoid the hours of waiting. It was 10E/ea over the ticket price, which actually wasn’t that bad to save us so much time. The tour guide we could have taken or left, but he did seem to enjoy describing the various and sundry animals that would face off with hunters in the arena. And he had a few amusing quips so it turned out pretty well. We could have gone on to the other ruins with another guide (included in our ticket) but we weren’t quite done with the Colosseum yet. Good thing we went back in too, because there was a whole exhibit on the royal family that ordered the structure. That was cool. Also Peter got to look more extensively for the place where Bruce Lee fought Chuck Norris in Return of the Dragon. We thought it was on the second floor somewhere and after coming home and watching it on youtube I think we’re on the right track. Anyway it was pretty impressive even in its tumbled-down state, so I’m glad we got to get in.

Between the Colosseum and the Roman Forum we got hungry, but got tied up unfortunately in a supertourist trap. Even though it was recommended online it was not very good, and we got price gouged even after perusing the menu (damn bread and tip prices). Boo. At least there was a supermarket at the corner, and we went there for a box of Magnum bonbon equivalents (nomnom) for much less than they’d be anywhere else. Our new lunch rule is that if we see a supermarket we should stop if we want the cheapest lunch available. We are perhaps somewhat embittered but that’s all part of the experience!

With food in our tummies we headed to the Roman Forum, armed with our free audioguide from Rick Steves. Apparently they have changed the entrances to all these places to put in ticket offices (according to Peter) so it’s very different than how he (and Rick) expected us to get in. Eventually we made it though, and although it was terribly hot it was also very cool to be there. Not every day that you get to see Cesar’s tomb and other 2000 year old buildings. The Palentine Hill was also included so we headed up there to see a panoramic view of the Forums in addition to a few other cool things – the gardens, some cool ruins, a neat fountain room, all sorts of things. The sheer size of what the Romans did without any formal construction equipment other than slaves was quite impressive. Imagining what it would have looked like in its heyday was really something! Without the audioguide I’m sure it would have been a bit less exciting – it does look like piles of really old rubble, after all – but knowing the significance of said rubble was very interesting.

That was quite enough to cover for today, though, and the typical shower/nap kick occurred after we got our sweaty selves back to the hotel. Peter has a pretty fantastic v-neck tan due to the lack of serious sunscreen application but oh well, another souvenir. Dinner again was on our same street – boy are we getting lazy – and this time we went to Pugliamonti, which was actually very good. We finally tried (kind of by accident) the fried pumpkin flowers which have been recommended in more than a few guidebooks/maps, and they were surprisingly alright! Other things we ordered were also good, including the recommendations the waitress had and the dessert with little fried half moons of dough filled with strawberry preserves on top of a lot of chocolate sauce. Hooray tasty food, finally. Tonight’s waitress was great too, but she didn’t have the one-liner I forgot to include from last night’s waiter, which was “No bills, I have only Barack Obama” in response to us asking for the bill. Pretty cute.

Alright very sleepy! Tomorrow we absolutely must do laundry…exciting I know. Probably there will be a bit more to it than just that. See you then.

A visit to Popeland

We got up really early to make it to the Vatican tour appointment, probably one of the earliest days we’ve had. Nevertheless, it was already mobbed when we got there, so we were very happy that we had booked a tour. Our tour guide Janette, an art history major from FL who now studies in Rome, told us that there were nine miles of stuff to see in the Musei Vaticani and if you looked at every piece of art for 60 seconds you’d be there for 12 years. So a lotta stuff, a lotta people (bottlenecked in some places), and too much information – perfect situation to have a tour. Probably the best opportunity for one thus far. And she was an excellent guide, really spirited even though she does two of these three-hour things a day. We got a very informed welcome to Popeland, complete with pope treasure, a story about a pope punch (how the pope convinced Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling, even though he was a sculptor), lots of pope bling (huuuge diamonds on some chalices), etc. Eventually we made it through the museum, the Rafael rooms, the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter’s basilica, and the papal crypt. Whuf! The Chapel was cool, even cooler with some story behind the way it was painted. One of my favorites was when a cardinal opposed the painting of the Last Judgment, and ended up getting his likeness painted in the corner with donkey ears and a snake running around him. Michelangelo seems like a pretty depressed weird dude, but he did good work! The basilica was simply stunning, gigantic and impossibly decorated (7-foot tall letters in gold? No problem!). That whole section of Rome (technically its own country) was really just larger than life. Crazy popes.

In the end the only thing we didn’t get to was the climb up to the cupola, because we didn’t have enough change and they didn’t take credit cards. I probably wouldn’t have made it anyway, as my legs were already whining about having done Vatican City in sandals. But we did see the Castel Sant’Angelo / Hadrian’s Tomb next, and saw Rome’s skyline anyway, which is not actually as exciting as I would have thought. But it was even free because of our Roma pass – we’re half paid off already, woo hoo. Walking around the fortress was pretty cool too, although by then it was pretty darn hot and it was even more exhausting. I really need to find another pair of capris…wearing a skirt to cover my knees for churches necessitates sandals but that makes walking harder. Oy. On the plus side, I assume I must be getting more into shape. I felt like I petered out really early at 5pm today but then I realized we’d been walking since 8:30am, so it wasn’t so bad.

Going back for a shower, even in our tinier-than-life stalls, was perhaps just as great as sightseeing at that point. Sweaty tourists. We took a nap but it was already time to get dinner so it wasn’t that long. We didn’t feel like walking very far afterwards, but there seem to be plenty of ok restaurants on our street so we picked one at random and got some unimpressive but very edible things. I suppose this is a short update for the amount of stuff we saw today, but I am pretty much on sightseeing overload and I assume that I will fall over as soon as I finish this. Zzzz.

Stops and starts

Well Siena was definitely our laziest stay yet. I think it was because it was so hot, and the house was so nice, that we didn’t feel bad not doing much. Also our new neighbors yesterday included a young violinist and his mom, and the guy has been practicing classical music – and well! – in the afternoons so we feel classy doing nothing. It didn’t help that neither one of us was feeling particularly awesome stomach-wise – might have been the water we had at a fountain, or too much heavy food. So lots of reading and such. We thought the trains to Rome ran every hour or so, so we weren’t really in a hurry, but it turns out we had forgotten that we had to switch trains – there’s nothing direct from Siena. So we got a local train to Florence again, which was tiny outside but nice inside at least. Then we had some waiting time in the train station, or thought we did until we noticed that reservations were compulsory on all trains to Rome. We got through the line with our ticket with 4 minutes to spare and jumped on the train. Whew! The consequence of all that was a lot of sweatiness for the next two hours on the train, sadly, but at least we made it to Rome (a few hours later than we expected).

Finding our hotel involved a similar level of adventure. Peter hadn’t written anything out, so we got on the right street only to reach a dead end. We turned around and must have looked really confused, because some guy carrying two beer bottles asked if we were looking for Hostel Ivanhoe. We thought we had booked a hotel, but the Ivanhoe part was right, so we followed him into a building and up to a floor with low weird lighting and pumping music from the reception desk. The guy there had to turn it down three times before he could hear us, and then told us that we had made a mistake – there *was* a Hotel Ivanhoe, and it was right across the street. Ooops. Well at least it made us glad we weren’t staying at the hostel. Turns out we had missed the hotel because it was buried under some scaffolding, although the front desk assures us that the construction is over. We will probably not get any natural lighting in the room, though, because of it…so I guess we are doing a lot of sightseeing to avoid feeling depressed by dark fluorescent lights. I think it seems shady but Peter assures me that everything in Rome is kind of this way. Good to know?

The room itself is ok, I guess. They did the push-together-two-twins trick again (we’ve seen that before) to make a double, and the shower stall is small enough to be a veritable challenge, but it’s supposedly very conveniently located. We tried to go and see the Coliseum at night because it was close, but we got lost and just ended up looping back and stopping at a restaurant to eat. Nothing special, just some pasta dishes, but enough. It did remind us that European bacon is sadness – the idea of crunchy has sadly not come over the ocean yet. Ah well. Tomorrow we have the Vatican tour so it should be a pretty serious day! We’ll see how the internet updating works as there is only signal in the lobby, which is four flights down…but now at least you know we made it.

Laaazy day...

Laazy day! Had breakfast and kind of lounged about until we got hungry enough to look for lunch. We’d noted a cool looking pizza place yesterday and returned to get one slice with hot dogs and one with iberico ham (or some derivative) plus a sandwich. Nom! This was actually thick pizza crust too, much more than we’ve seen thus far. So a good experience! On the way back we went into a wine store looking to get some Fragolino, but the owner – who seemed very legit – told us that it was actually illegal to sell Fragolino but was ok to produce or give it away. The reason for this had something to do with an inability to determine the amount of methanol in each batch, which can lead to blindness or even death. So unless I run into someone who wants to gift me a bottle (or if I go to a restaurant that goes against the rules again) I pretty much can’t buy any. Interesting! Which means that our favorite osteria was really going the extra mile, or something? Or maybe I misheard? Kind of confusing but I guess it adds to the trip!

That done, we stopped by a pharmacy to get a refill on Advil…yup, it’s chores day. Unfortunately they don’t sell the name brand here, or even bottles – I got a 24 pack of individually separated ibuprofen tablets for 8.23E. Bah! Next time I travel to Europe I’ll know to bring a huge amount of Advil. Similarly, Peter was looking for paperbacks to read and they all cost between 10-20E – insane! Imagine paying 11E to read “T is for Treason.” It’s that bad. We walked away pretty defeated but what can you do. Fortunately we were by the cool candle place from yesterday, and this time they were making one of the really complicated candles – peeling and styling and all. Very fortuitous! So we stayed and watched for a while and it was quite cool to see the tools they use and hear about the process. They heat up the dip-dyed block and then have about 15 minutes to slice and style (for the big ones – less for smaller candles) before it hardens too much again. Hooray for neat demonstrations.

A bit further down we saw an bunch of escalators with no clear signage as to where they were going. This being our lazy day, we figured we would take the ride…at least four sets of escalators later, we were at the park by the Fontebranda! Kind of random, kind of magical…definitely strange to find an escalator in the middle of a medieval city such as Siena, but I guess someone thought it was a good idea. We got to spy on the weird fish again so it worked out ok! After a while we headed back up, got some more things for breakfast tomorrow, and headed back to do some more laundry and nap. We might have done some cool things but it was still primarily a lazy day!

After a long while it was time to go out and eat again. We (well, mostly I) thought it would be fun to be gourmands for a night and go to this really fancy, “best meal of my life” rated place (by food mag editors no less!) in Siena. We passed a full band playing in Il Campo, which was cute, and then entered a very nice but homey feeling restaurant called Cane e Gatto on one of the older streets of Siena. After some dried fruits and house prosecco, which was probably the best we’ve had thus far, we got an appetizer plate of all sorts of regional specialties – chicken liver, cheese in honey, melon and prosciutto, some kind of quiche, and bruschetta. All of them were great, and I never would have thought to pair honey and cheese so that was cool. Next was a mushroom cream soup, which tasted ok to me so I assume it was excellent for those who like mushrooms. Then they brought out some handmade gnocchi, which were melt-in-your-mouth excellent with a fantastic pesto-tomato sauce. Probably the best gnocchi we’ve had! Then came the meat course, with beef and truffles on one half and chicken in a very flavorful sauce on the other. Both were very, very good – definitely a highlight of the meal. Then it was dessert time, and after they poured a fruity white dessert wine they brought out a plate with tiramisu, strawberry shortcake (ish) and the kicker – mint mousse. Thus far I had been trying to just enjoy it without comparing to Osteria Bea Vita but this made it a direct comparison…and (shh, don’t tell) the Osteria’s was better. So yeah, we left positive reviews in their guestbook because they brought it over for us to sign, but the end verdict was that it wasn’t three times as good (maybe even not AS good, for some things…although on par for other things) as the Osteria. It was a lot of tasty food, great service (all the ladies got orchids!), and tasty wine pairings though. In the end we decided that we were kind of done with the fancy expensive gourmet experience, but now we know what it’s like and it’s not like it was a waste of a meal – it was great, just not as good of a value as Bea Vita. Oh well, now we know! And as Peter says, we can eat pizza for the rest of the trip. Maybe not, I think, but it seems like laying off impulsive things might be a great idea for now. I’m appropriately sleepy though so that’s enough for tonight!

Super tourists!

Woo hoo breakfast with a view! Not nearly as good as in France but it is pretty darn good for Italy. Unfortunately the milk carton I bought (from a nonrefrigerated aisle, for it is superpasturized as the Europeans and Mexicans are wont to do) contains stuff that doesn’t taste like it does at home. This happens every time I travel…I have to give up milk unless it’s with something like cereal because it tastes too weird plain. Blast. Oh well, I tried, and it wasn’t expensive.

After we were fortified we walked over to the Jewish quarter…since I found it I figured we had to visit. It also coincides with some of the oldest roads in Siena, and they were appropriately cool looking. We followed one to the Duomo here, which may have been smaller than the one in Florence but it was way more interesting inside. There were marble frescoes on the floors that depicted scenes from the bible, some very complicated, and the pillars were green and white striped marble which was neat. Since we got the “My name is Duccio” pass (apparently famous artist that did lots of work around here) we got admission to several things in the area at once, which paid itself off very quickly. The nearby crypt was cool – they filled it in originally to help support the weight of the new Duomo, and the paintings sat for several centuries until they were unearthed again. The colors are still vivid and what they could get to was in pretty good condition. They also excavated the former church connected to the crypt, and had places where you could look through the floor and see that there was a whole extra level downstairs. The brickwork on some of the old entrances also held up very well…we got the impression that if the Duomo and the crypt were to be abandoned, while most modern buildings would perish these old ones would stand forever. Very cool. Also visited another baptistery with works by Donatello and a pretty cool floor inlay – this one had skulls! A good morning all in all!

After all that we got pretty hungry again so we wandered around looking for cheap sandwiches. On the way we found an awesome candle place where each is made by hand, and some are layer dipped and peeled back for a cool effect. So we did a little shopping before ultimately finding a nice place with good sandwiches. Stomach savior! Then we were ready to finish off our Duccio pass, which involved going to the medieval Museo dell’opera (the treasures and bishop hats were cool, everything else was kind of just ok) and climbing the very narrow stairs to a panoramic overlook of Siena. That part, called the Facciatone, indeed had a great view but the people flow was pretty badly planned. Some people would selfishly try to go against the flow of traffic even though the stairwells were pretty much one lane only. Ah well, tourist trap traps stupid tourists, kind of silly. Once we finally got down we headed back to do our laundry so we could hang it out in the heat of the day. The washer was unfortunately really slow so it took us a bit longer … but that just gave us time for naps.

When we were finally ready we set out on a path recommended by one of the walking tour pamphlets that the apartment owners had left for us. It tours the Camollia section and we first went to the Santuario di Santa Caterina (St. Catherine of Siena), which was free to the public but unfortunately all in Italian. She is one of the Patron Saints of Italy apparently, a kind of local figure who died pretty young of a stroke (says wikipedia). The place was very pretty, all done up in frescoes of her life, although we didn’t really understand what was happening. We did see the stone pillow she traditionally slept on, which was strange. After that we walked to the Fontebranda, which is a big fountain dating back to the 1300s that, while heavily used, was suspected to cause traits of insanity for a while. The water isn’t potable now but it does house a large variety of strange looking fish – huge blue ones, one crazy yellow one, a few abandoned goldfish, etc. It was pretty cool!

Next was a climb up to the basilica di San Domenico, which is the primary scenery object outside our window so we figured we should pay it a visit. We hit it at the right time, when these awesome fat rays of afternoon sun were streaming through the windows and hitting all the dust in the air. Although it had some wood and wasn’t all marble it was just as impressive, and looked like it was actually used quite frequently. It did have the relic of St. Catherine’s head, though, which was partly mummified and wrapped with a nun’s habit. That was really spooky, and people were praying to it – a severed head (her body is somewhere else >.>)! The whole sainthood thing is pretty strange.

Anyway, the Fortezza Medicea was our next stop, and we walked all around it to check it out. It had cool corners that were kind of spat out by lion heads…pictures to come later. Eventually we figured out how to get up top, although the Enoteca Italiana, which houses 1600 kinds of Italian wine to test and buy, had been rented out for the night. So wine tasting was out, but we walked around the top anyway and the sights were pretty good.

Then it was almost time for dinner! We headed back to collect our clothes off the line (maybe we’re getting better at hanging them, maybe not) and change. Tonight we ended up at Osteria Le Logge, which was another internet recommendation, and we were pretty happy with the choice finally! They served spaghetti with bacon and onions in a great sauce. I would have been happy with just more of that, but we also ordered the bistecca alla fiorentina, which is “the most famous steak in Tuscany from the meat of the white Chiania cattle” according to the Florence map we had. We figured we had to try it, as huge and expensive as it is, and it was definitely delicious. Perhaps even too much meat, although Peter (who heartily enjoyed the meal) might disagree with me. I had developed a pretty bad headache over the course of dinner actually, so I probably enjoyed it a bit less, but it was still interesting.

After our day of power-tourism, tomorrow will be a day of relaxing, I think! We have hit most of what we wanted to see so perhaps we will just lounge about or go looking for that delicious dessert wine from Bea Vita. The waitress told me it was Fragolino but when I looked it up i learned that the real kind isn’t readily available. Foo! So I will look…although if I don’t find it that will just contribute to the memory of Venice. Ah well!

(headache is better this morning but still not gone. Booo. Hopefully we will either relax enough or do enough things to distract it.)

A view in Siena

This morning turned out pretty much how we had figured. After getting some more sandwiches we wandered over towards Grom again (through some not-so-nice smelling streets…maybe Monday is pee in an alley day). Peter got a peach, apricot, and raspberry cone and I got the dark chocolate again with mint and the “crema di grom” which had biscotti and chocolate pieces. All the flavors were most excellent! So now we have tried 10 of the 24 flavors offered…not bad! We checked out the website last night and found out that there is a branch in NY…perhaps we will have to stop by someday.

In the hour we had left in Florence we checked out some bookstores (where English texts were VERY expensive, but there was a kid’s book about Dante somehow) and the big indoor market. That was pretty cool – they had a huge variety of pastas, some of them multicolored or strange shapes. I wish we could bring some back but I’m certain that they would be crushed to bits. Maybe we’ll see a more travel-ready package somewhere else.

Speaking of which, the train ride to Siena (which normally costs 12E, free for us, very local train) was uneventful. Finding out how to get the bus to the city center took us a while but with a little help we figured it out. Also whipped out a ghettomap (on the computer) to figure out where our lodgings were, since we were not pre-equipped with a map for Siena. It was definitely worth it though…our booking with Siena B&B Hospitality, which shuffles you to sort of apartmentlike rooms, came through and we have a GREAT room that connects to a huge common kitchen with a balcony overlooking the Basilica di Santo Dominico (very picturesque) and a lot of nice landscape. The owners didn’t speak a lot of English but everything went fine and we are very impressed. A good surprise! A good fridge meant that we could go get some nice breakfast things like milk and OJ and yogurt…hooray!

After making a quick supermarket trip, we walked around for the afternoon, hitting Il Campo (a large square) and seeing the outside of a few cool churches. Everything is much more medieval-looking here, and quieter (thank god!) than Florence which was a tourist bonanza. I think we will get to like it! Unfortunately our dinner was again only okay, although it was in a palace built in the 1200s so that’s worth something. Tourist restaurant check! Man Bea Vita spoiled us. Haha. Oh well! Went and got some more gelato for dessert and it was quite good – Peter got limoncello and “ace” flavors (I got more chocolate variations…nom) and it was entertaining. We ran up with them to our balcony to watch the sun set over the western part of the city…very nice! The nighttime view is also great, and I suspect that we’re high enough up that the mosquitoes may not chase us. At least that’s what I tell myself when we go up the five or so flights of stairs.

We were given a lot of maps and suggestions so I’m now sifting through and seeing what we might want to hit tomorrow. I’m also stockpiling restaurant recommendations from The Internet, although that hasn’t worked spectacularly thus far. Maybe next time! Should be a good next couple days.

PS our internet is finally good so I am going to post some pictures until I get tired. =)
PPS - all caught up!

Hiking in Florence

Our first and only full day in Florence! After some sandwiches for breakfast we set off to sightsee/kill time until our ticket date at the Accademia gallery. We wandered in and out of a few nice plazas on the way to the Bargello, an old prison and police headquarters. We intended to check it out but their armory was closed AND they wanted to charge a lot. Since we have been spending kind of a bit lately we decided to tone it down today…too bad, museums! Italy is horrendous for student discounts in that there are few to none available, and they always want to charge way more than any other country has for their exhibits, even the small ones. Pah we said! So we set off towards the gardens and Forte al Belvedere across the bridge, because our map says it’s a nice place to see the city. It was definitely a steep climb to get up there, but the streets were very pretty. The area leading into the gardens, however…well, the first thing we saw was the fortress entrance not only closed but taped up. Oh joy. Also a lot of the grass was dead and there was a lot of construction going on (well, set up to go on – hey it’s a Sunday, no one does anything). The kicker was that they wanted 10E each for garden admission…and we had 19.85 collectively. Ooops, forgot to hit the ATM, and the ticketman was kind of a jerk about it. Since we had seen so many gardens in Spain we decided to forget about it, and see if we could get to another high point that the guy from the hotel recommended.

After wandering around a bit – educational, as we were in the super-rich-Florence-resident area with tall gates and mansions – we found a street the map said would lead us to the other spot. Little did we know that the street we took would go almost all the way back down, with the pedestrian path often being no more than a non-pavement area near the fortress that little spindly trees took over. But it was scenic and interesting! Then all we had to do was go back up again, but at least there were stairs this time. And then we were suddenly on a large overlook on Monte Alle Croci, with vendors and restaurants and a bronze recast of the David. Quite a difference from the remote-on-purpose hills that we had just left! And the view was great and FREE! The ice cream prices weren’t half bad either so we got a lemon Frigo product (actually Algida here, and Miko in France, but still the same great stuff) and enjoyed seeing the whole of the city after hiking around some backroads in Florence. As an added bonus, there was a big church (San Miniato al Monte) and a huge cemetery at the top as well, which is apparently where the author of Pinocchio is buried. We didn’t see (or at least recognize) his grave but there were tons there, each of them pretty interesting, ranging from relatively small ones to huge family mausoleums that were practically mini-cathedrals (some even styled like the Duomo!). A very impressive find overall, and no admission except for the 60 cents I had to pay to use the bathrooms (boooo…but at least they were clean unlike some of the smelly ones we passed). Woohoo!

Surprisingly, we still had some time left, so we grabbed a pizza for lunch (medium with a small coke for 6E, pretty good deal to feed both of us…yay nontourist sections) and walked back towards the Duomo. One of the girls that had gone to Greece with me had recommended a gelato place there via facebook, so we figured we’d check it out. I am SO happy I remembered to update my facebook status this time because it was GREAT! Most of their ingredients are relatively organic or free-trade, the prices aren’t horrible, they weren’t artificially colored like a lot we’ve seen, and the flavors were delicious. At first we just got one cone with bacio, dark chocolate and nougat flavors – the dark chocolate was by far the best, although the others were delicious as well. Peter decided he needed more (we were both fighting over it haha) and went back to get a vanilla, lemon, and peach one. Again everything was fantastic and the peach tasted especially great on a hot day. Probably the best food in Florence yet!

After that we finally were on schedule to see the Accademia, and pretty disappointed to see that the line was actually not horrendously long. We were kind of hoping it would be bad so we would feel better about prebooking but oh well. I think the descriptions of the paintings in the Accademia were the most informative of the many museums we’ve gone to, sometimes even with details about the restoration of the painting – what had been painted over or changed, things like that. We were there for a special addition of Robert Mappelthorpe’s photography as well for some reason, and that was pretty cool. Of course the most popular exhibit was the David – not the plaster or bronze but the finished marble one. I thought his hands were huge, but otherwise it’s a nice thing to have I guess. Maybe I will read up more about it but knowing that it was a symbol of bravery and intelligence for the city was nice enough for now. …yep, still not really art people. But we try.

Headed back to see what room we’d be in after that. We got switched over to the place we thought we would stay at, which was ok – again, our room has been upgraded to ensuite and there is a lot of extra space (even an extra bed, which is kinda odd). Not really sure what went on with our reservation but I suppose it turned out alright! Sadly, the internet is much slower here than at the other hotel, but we are surviving.

After a bit of a break, dinner was next! I had a series of recommendations from The Internet to help us in our search of good food, and the second one was actually open and looked good. Called Il Santo Bevitore, it was a pretty nice place with English-speaking waiters and a willingness to seat us in a presreserved table as long as we were out by a certain time. Our table was amusingly in a wind tunnel, so our unprotected candle sputtered down very quickly and we had fun trying to help it last a bit longer. The food itself was merely ok…the tomato soup was excellent but the ensuing entrees were less exciting. The desserts – dark chocolate soufflé and a white chocolate “dome” – were also great. So not bad, but not necessarily as good as it had been made out to be. Ah well, at least it wasn’t terrible! I’m just hoping Siena is less touristy and therefore cheaper…this eating well thing is hard on the wallet.

Tomorrow we will take a train to Siena around 1pm…we’ve hit all the major sites in Florence at this point, really, so we’re thinking we might just shop around and, most importantly, go back to Grom. Nom! =D For now, it’s another relatively early night, but my legs are tiiired from all the walking so it is about time. Hopefully all the bug bites on my feet from wearing flipflops in Venice (Bea Vita was on the water…but so worth it!) will fade soon. Otherwise, Peter says “grom grom grom, nom nom nom” and goodnight! I will try and post some pictures (I realize I’m pretty behind) but the connection is so bad here I doubt it will work. Maybe tomorrow!