So, despite the fact that Germany is my home base here on this trip, it's not exactly one of my travel destinations, but we've done a few fun things I thought I'd mention. Aaron and Rebecca live in Dusseldorf, which is in the northwest corner of Germany, about equidistant from Brussels and Amsterdam, and nowhere near just about any other major German city, haha. It's not really a tourist destination, but they have a fun little canal running through the center of town, and it sits right on the Rhine River, so there's also a nice waterfront. I spent my first few days here mostly just chillin and working through jet lag. We got out to run errands a few days, and one of the days Becka took me down to the canal and "altstadt" (old town), where we sat out by the river and had lunch (KFC, haha).
When we got back from Spain, Aaron had the day off work because of a bank holiday, which was excellent, so the four of us went downtown again. We found the most adorable little spot, it's a bar, I guess, but it's done up like a beach, with sand under the tables and potted palm trees all around, and they serve virgin margaritas, so we each got one, and it was absolutely delightful. The weather is starting to get warmer here, and it was a lovely day. Also, one of my favorite surprising things about Germany—they have rhododendrons here! I fell in love with rhodies on my mission, and they only grow in two places in the United States because they require a very specific soil pH level or something. But it's the perfect time of year and they're all in bloom!! Not as much color variety as in Washington, but they make me so happy.
On Saturday, Matthew and I went out to Lippstadt, about an hour and a half northeast of Dusseldorf, to visit with his friends the Herbers. The Kennedys hosted Lea Herber as a foreign exchange student, and Matthew had been to visit her family when he was in Europe before, so since they were not too far away (you'd be surprised how far apart many things are in Germany...), he wanted to get out to see them again. Only the parents, Thomas and Barbara, were at home this weekend. The children are all off at school now. But they gave us a little walking tour around Lippstadt. There's a ruin of a 900-ish-year-old church that used to be a monastery; it was torn apart for the stone after the monastery fell out of use, but the main shell is still standing and I guess they have concerts there now. In the main part of town, there was a farmer's market, and there's also another big church, but this one is still in use. Apparently it's been used as both an Evangelical and Catholic cathedral over time, so the style is somewhat mixed. And the town square has the most charming little fountain, with a whole bunch of statues that have joints you can move, and they're all on platforms that spin, almost like one of those German clocks, but made of stone. The Herbers also took us to this delightful little ice cream parlor, where they serve ice cream in the shape of spaghetti! It was so weird! But delicious. They also do pizzas made of ice cream. We finished up walking along the river—apparently Lippstadt is known as the Venice of Westphalia, because there are several offshoots and canals around the main river. Also, they have the most beautiful backyard. They created a little pond, and they keep fish and bees and birds—canaries that all look like various kinds of creamsicle—and it's just this little microcosm sitting behind their house, but Matthew and I were both inspired by it.
After that, we spent some time in a parking lot with Matthew re-teaching me stick shift driving... I drove home part of the way back to Dusseldorf, but we switched when we had to stop for gas. I had to learn it then, though, because Becka's friends were all getting together that night for a party to watch Eurovision (apparently a yearly international singing contest?) at a place about 20 minutes from Becka's house, and I was our ride, haha (Matthew and Aaron were busy with their weekly D&D, which is usually Saturday afternoon for Matthew and I, but evening in Germany). I actually made it the whole way without stalling once (woohoo!!), and the party was really fun. It was neat to meet all Rebecca's friends, they have a pretty great group here in the ward, and there were several who I had mutual friends/acquaintances with, so that was neat. Also, I won both Eurovision bingo (by being the first to get a bingo) and the "sweepstakes" (we all drew countries out of a hat, and the winner of the game was the person whose country they had drawn won the contest—mine was Israel, lol).
And now we're back to home base again, after our latest adventure. We got in this morning on the overnight train from Munich—I'm not sure if this last one was better or if I just started getting used to the hard mattresses, but I felt like I slept a little better. We were on the top bunk again (see Austria), but this one had a net spread across the opening, so it made me feel better about not falling. Also, we somehow found ourselves in the middle of some kind of bachelor party—I remembered later that it was Friday night (time's been a little difficult to keep track of, haha), so I guess it makes sense. They weren't entirely raucous though—they were congregated in the halls until after I went to sleep, but they were relatively quiet, so it worked out.
I do have one last funny story to share, although it's possible you simply had to be there. Europe has this problem where coins are much more difficult to acquire proportional to their necessity in the general exchange of currency. There are no 1 euro notes, only 1 and 2 euro coins, and there are so many machines that will only take coins, but the ATMs only give bills, which has been frustrating—as a traveler, at least—on more than one occasion. Rebecca has a washing machine in her kitchen, but the dryer is in the basement and only takes 1 euro coins (not 2 euro, very specific). So we went to the grocery store today to acquire some coins so that I can do some laundry before going home. Becka had a stack of bottles to return—there's a machine at the store that spits out a receipt that you can redeem from the cashier—but because we specifically needed 1 euro coins, she did them in batches. After getting the receipt from the first batch, she sent me up to redeem the receipt while she finished up the rest. So I went and stood in line, and when I got to the front, the lady gabbled at me in German, which I understood none of, but then she gestured at the groceries that were up next on her till (from the person behind me), and I understood that she wanted to know if the stuff was mine, but no, I was just redeeming my bottle receipt. So by this time, Becka had made it to the back of the line with her other two receipts, so I joined her. And then we got all the way almost to the front when she suddenly realized she'd forgotten she needed to actually buy one thing, so she gave me one of the receipts and dashed back into the store. And I got up to the front and felt like a revolving door comedy sketch, just like, "Hello, it's me again!" And the lady looked up and did this massive double take—which Rebecca saw just as she was getting back in line again—and the whole not speaking English (or German, in my case) thing just made it that much funnier. So I went to rejoin Becka in the back of the line (again), and we just dissolved laughing and could barely get a hold of ourselves enough to conduct the third transaction. I was tempted to go up with the third one and pretend I wasn't with Rebecca after all, but I couldn't have kept a straight face, haha. So, you know, we're just up to our usual sister shenanigans here in Germany. As much as she drives me crazy sometimes, I'm going to miss this girl...
Saturday, May 19, 2018
Neuschwanstein
The last day of our trip, we came back to Germany to visit Neuschwanstein Castle. We took another overnight train, and this one went worse for Becka, slightly better for me—at least we were on the bottom bunk this time, and I also learned from experience to take a nap on the subsequent bus ride from Munich, where our train terminated.
I tried to learn from my mistake with the Alhambra and book tickets ahead of time, but the reservation I made on Monday apparently never went through, which was kind of annoying, but fortunately, it’s not top tourist season yet, and I guess even then they don’t tend to run out till about noon. Our bus arrived at 10:40, so we were in good shape to just get in the regular line and buy tickets for the 12:35 tour. We spent probably more time dawdling than we should have, because we suddenly realized as we were ready to go up that the carriage ride we’d been planning on might not get us to the castle on time—there was a long line, and no indication of how long the ride takes. So we decided to take the bus, which was somewhat less fun, but it got us there on time.
I personally thought the castle is (even) prettier up close/in person than the faraway view you usually get in pictures. They let tours in every 5 minutes, and you have to wait for your group number to be called, but once it is, everyone storms the gate, haha. The inside of the castle was different than I expected—I think I honestly was expecting it to look like the interior they show in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang... but apparently only 30% of the rooms were ever finished, since King Ludwig died pretty young. The man definitely had an unrivaled passion for luxury, as apparent by the rooms he did finish. The throne room is decked out all in gold with a huge crown-shaped chandelier that I kind of got a kick out of, and a huge mosaic floor. The walls of the rooms are all covered in paintings of scenes from German folklore, and the wood carving on all the furniture is so intricate. He had a slew of modern amenities that you don’t even realize were even available in the 19th century, a room made into a synthetic cave complete with fabricated lightning and dripping water, and a large ballroom where he would simply sit and imagine what it would be like to live in medieval times (I believe he was known as painfully shy). Every inch of the rooms was painted some bright color. It was waaaay over the top, but actually not in like a gaudy way. My favorite part was the crown-shaped chandeliers—there were more smaller ones in the ballroom. Our tour guide was pretty fun, too. He was very soft-spoken, but still full of character. He ended the tour with, "Me? I think he [Ludwig] was a little bit special" (in his soft German accent, lol).
Just as we were about to leave the castle, it started pouring down rain. Since it had been sunny all morning and seemed similar to the storm in Granada, I figured we could wait it out, so we just hung out in the tunnel at the exit for about half an hour. Finally I agreed that maybe the storm wouldn’t be letting up soon and agreed to let Becka run back to get our stuff (they make you leave backpacks in lockers but it’s all the way at the other end of the castle, and there’s no indoor way to get back there...). By the time she got back, though, our ponchos has worked their magic and it was basically done raining. So we hiked up to the bridge that overlooks the ravine and gives a spectacular view of the castle. Rebecca was not convinced it was safe, and I have to admit, the wood did give a little under all the feet and it was a little nerve-wracking, but it is reinforced by steel, and hundreds of people walk across and stand on it every day, so I persuaded her to come out and take a picture with me.
It started raining a little as we were heading back down, so we decided to have an early dinner at the restaurant up near the castle. It was a cute little place where the waitresses all wear traditional Bavarian outfits, and I had some kind of pork and noodle concoction with mushroom sauce (no, it was not stroganoff). Our dinner outlasted the rain, and we wanted to take the horse carriages down since we’d missed them on the way up.
There was a bit of a line, and also people weren’t really observing it anyway, but it worked out for us because we ended up with an awesome driver. He had a great little Bavarian hat, and we sat up front and Becka made instant best friends with him. He told a bunch of jokes and also a lot of information about the horses and the whole carriage business. The rain hood was up on the carriage, so I couldn’t tell if there was any kind of view of the castle from the trail, which would have been neat on the way up, but it didn’t really seem like it anyway.
After that we had about an hour and a half to kill, so we went and sat out by the lake, which is very beautiful, surrounded by mountains and trees on almost all sides. Very picturesque.
And that’s it! We conquered Europe!
I tried to learn from my mistake with the Alhambra and book tickets ahead of time, but the reservation I made on Monday apparently never went through, which was kind of annoying, but fortunately, it’s not top tourist season yet, and I guess even then they don’t tend to run out till about noon. Our bus arrived at 10:40, so we were in good shape to just get in the regular line and buy tickets for the 12:35 tour. We spent probably more time dawdling than we should have, because we suddenly realized as we were ready to go up that the carriage ride we’d been planning on might not get us to the castle on time—there was a long line, and no indication of how long the ride takes. So we decided to take the bus, which was somewhat less fun, but it got us there on time.
I personally thought the castle is (even) prettier up close/in person than the faraway view you usually get in pictures. They let tours in every 5 minutes, and you have to wait for your group number to be called, but once it is, everyone storms the gate, haha. The inside of the castle was different than I expected—I think I honestly was expecting it to look like the interior they show in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang... but apparently only 30% of the rooms were ever finished, since King Ludwig died pretty young. The man definitely had an unrivaled passion for luxury, as apparent by the rooms he did finish. The throne room is decked out all in gold with a huge crown-shaped chandelier that I kind of got a kick out of, and a huge mosaic floor. The walls of the rooms are all covered in paintings of scenes from German folklore, and the wood carving on all the furniture is so intricate. He had a slew of modern amenities that you don’t even realize were even available in the 19th century, a room made into a synthetic cave complete with fabricated lightning and dripping water, and a large ballroom where he would simply sit and imagine what it would be like to live in medieval times (I believe he was known as painfully shy). Every inch of the rooms was painted some bright color. It was waaaay over the top, but actually not in like a gaudy way. My favorite part was the crown-shaped chandeliers—there were more smaller ones in the ballroom. Our tour guide was pretty fun, too. He was very soft-spoken, but still full of character. He ended the tour with, "Me? I think he [Ludwig] was a little bit special" (in his soft German accent, lol).
Just as we were about to leave the castle, it started pouring down rain. Since it had been sunny all morning and seemed similar to the storm in Granada, I figured we could wait it out, so we just hung out in the tunnel at the exit for about half an hour. Finally I agreed that maybe the storm wouldn’t be letting up soon and agreed to let Becka run back to get our stuff (they make you leave backpacks in lockers but it’s all the way at the other end of the castle, and there’s no indoor way to get back there...). By the time she got back, though, our ponchos has worked their magic and it was basically done raining. So we hiked up to the bridge that overlooks the ravine and gives a spectacular view of the castle. Rebecca was not convinced it was safe, and I have to admit, the wood did give a little under all the feet and it was a little nerve-wracking, but it is reinforced by steel, and hundreds of people walk across and stand on it every day, so I persuaded her to come out and take a picture with me.
It started raining a little as we were heading back down, so we decided to have an early dinner at the restaurant up near the castle. It was a cute little place where the waitresses all wear traditional Bavarian outfits, and I had some kind of pork and noodle concoction with mushroom sauce (no, it was not stroganoff). Our dinner outlasted the rain, and we wanted to take the horse carriages down since we’d missed them on the way up.
There was a bit of a line, and also people weren’t really observing it anyway, but it worked out for us because we ended up with an awesome driver. He had a great little Bavarian hat, and we sat up front and Becka made instant best friends with him. He told a bunch of jokes and also a lot of information about the horses and the whole carriage business. The rain hood was up on the carriage, so I couldn’t tell if there was any kind of view of the castle from the trail, which would have been neat on the way up, but it didn’t really seem like it anyway.
After that we had about an hour and a half to kill, so we went and sat out by the lake, which is very beautiful, surrounded by mountains and trees on almost all sides. Very picturesque.
And that’s it! We conquered Europe!
Thursday, May 17, 2018
Austria/Hungary
The forecast for this trip was rain, rain, and more rain. Now, I’m finding that it doesn’t really matter how determined you are to have a good time despite the circumstances—nothing is fun in the rain. Such was the case, unfortunately, with Salzburg. The city was a bit of a let down overall, but I really think that had more to do with the rain than anything else. It also didn’t really help that I somewhat overestimated my ability to sleep on the overnight train in my condition... Becka slept fine, but being on the top bunk made me nervous, and I also don’t handle hard mattresses as well as I used to. Our stop in the morning was not the terminal stop, so I set an alarm to make sure we’d have time to get up and ready—it turned out this was unnecessary, since they brought breakfast in at like 6:30 (our stop was at 7:30). So we ate, and I went to the tiny little train bathroom to change (Becka slept in her clothes), and when I got back, suddenly we were at Munich station—early!! Rebecca had very astutely gathered all our things and was ready to run out the door, but the door was closing right as we got to it! ...and then it turned out the train wouldn’t be leaving the station until its scheduled time of 7:30, haha. We felt a little silly, but I was impressed with Rebecca’s resourcefulness nonetheless.
We had to catch another train to Salzburg, and we got in at about 11, dropped our things off at the hostel, and headed into town! Salzburg is quite a bit smaller than I was expecting. The Sound of Music makes it look like a sprawling metropolis, lol, but all the touristy stuff is in an area basically the equivalent of like a small town... We stopped first at St Peter’s monastery. It’s a filming location for The Sound of Music, I couldn’t tell you which part, because none of it looked familiar, but the church had to be one of the most beautiful I’d ever seen. It reminded me a little of Ein Kerem in Jerusalem, since it was painted in an almost porcelain style, but I think St Peter’s does it better. There’s also a beautiful cemetery in the back, and “catacombs,” which sound more exciting than they ended up being—basically a couple of caves in the side of the cliff it’s nestled into.
We had lunch at an Italian place, haha, Becka’s choice. Then we headed over to the Horse Pond, which was actually pretty neat. It’s a big fountain with a horse statue and a bunch of murals of horses around the outside. We also went to an overlook where you could see all of Salzburg, which was in fact a neat view. Then... we went back to the hostel. It was only about 3, but our nap break in Brussels had been so successful, and I was thinking we would want to spend at least a good half day at Mirabell Palace, so it didn’t make sense to tack it onto the end of the day. I also thought maybe we’d venture out after a nap.
I was mistaken on several counts. We were just too tired, and I think it started raining again, so we just called it a night and hung out, watching shows on Becka’s phone. I was also mistaken about Mirabell Palace. Turns out there’s really not much there—that’s probably why it’s free to visit. What is there is beautiful, but it was raining pretty hard when we went out in the morning, which made the gardens (kind of the main attraction) more difficult to enjoy. Also, we found out that there’s a violin concert in the marble hall we could have tried to go to if we’d known about it the day before, which felt like kind of a bummer to miss once we saw the hall. But the parts that are available to see—the marble hall and staircase leading up to it—are very beautiful. I’m consistently amazed at the amount of statuary a single building can contain. It just seems like so much work goes into a single sculpture, to see dozens or even hundreds of them as simply decoration is kind of mind blowing. The garden was very pretty, and we doggedly wandered around. This time it was my feet that got wet—I mistakenly thought my boots would be more waterproof than my tennis shoes, but I was wrong. Fortunately, my sister, paranoid after her traumatic experiences in Spain, insisted on bringing an extra pair of shoes—I gave her a hard time about it, since we’re essentially backpacking, but I was grateful to have dry feet as we set off for... Vienna!
This was not a planned stop, but since it was raining in Salzburg and we felt like we’d pretty much covered what we wanted to see there, we decided to make an impromptu stop! It made me pretty glad that the train is tried to schedule from Salzburg to Budapest ahead of time didn't work out—the payment was rejected for some reason so I just left it to deal with later, because it gave us the flexibility to visit an extra city! (Vienna is literally en route between those cities.) I also finally tried some actual German food—a wurst (aka sausage) croissant. Not bad.
Our dad had previously mentioned a Versailles-like palace in Vienna, and we’d told him it wasn’t on the agenda, but it did sound interesting, and it turned out to be the closest tourist site to the central train station, so we decided to give it a shot. Belvedere Palace is essentially an art museum now, but there’s still enough palace left to it to appreciate for its beauty, as well. Becka basically fell in love instantly. I think she’s decided to move in, haha. It truly is a gorgeous place. Also covered in statuary, and halls adorned with gold and marble and chandeliers and mirrors. And the gardens are marvelous—there are some beautiful fountains, and it’s all laid out in classical Baroque style, but best of all... the sun was shining! I was so, so happy to see sunshine, seriously. It made going to Vienna seem like a great idea. I also got a(nother) good nap on the train, which completed my recovery from the overnight train.
So we ended up getting to Budapest earlier than I’d initially planned for, which was good because it took much longer to get to our hostel than I’d anticipated, probably because one of the subway stations didn’t seem to be in service. I’d had hopes of maybe getting out to Fisherman’s Bastion to see the city all lit up, since we were earlier than expected, but by the time we got in, it was like 9:30 and we still needed dinner. Our hostel had this voucher for a three course meal at a traditional Hungarian restaurant nearby, so we took them up on it. The food wasn’t bad—a little hit and miss, and the courses were so heavy they were hard to finish, but my tarragon chicken came with this jasmine rice/spinach risotto thing that was to die for. Chocolate, here, though, tastes a little weird, so the desserts were kind of interesting. Oh, also, this was our first time dealing with a currency other than euros, and it was definitely disorienting, haha. I figured the ATM would have some standard amount offered that was reasonable, and I withdrew 60,000 HUF (the smallest number on the main page) before realizing that was like, over $200. So we just paid for everything in cash for a while...
Now, all that being said, when we got out today, Budapest was absolutely everything I hoped/expected/imagined. It is such an incredibly gorgeous city!! (It was mostly sunny today as well, thank goodness—I’ve never been so grateful for a disproven weather forecast.) We started the day by taking the metro out to our farthest sights, Heroes Square and the Szechenyi bath house, which are up in the north end of Pest (Budapest is technically two cities) and relatively far from all the rest. We sort of decided to splurge on massages at the bath house... I figured it cost about as much as any of the other tours we’ve done, and it was a unique experience—plus it got us access to see some of the interior of the bath house, which is basically a bunch of public pools, saunas, and hot tubs, but in a very beautiful building. I was too pregnant for the regular lying face down, so my masseuse had me sit on a stool and lean up against the table. She also had me smell the oil beforehand just in case I was sensitive to smell. I really haven’t been at all my whole pregnancy, oddly enough, and the cinnamon orange massage oil smelled delicious. :) It also was super worth the amount of goodwill it generated with Rebecca, haha, who’s not always as gung-ho about running around seeing all the things as I am. ;)
After the spa, we rode the metro back down to St Stephen’s Basilica. I said before that the church at the monastery in Salzburg was the most beautiful I’d ever seen—it was very quickly eclipsed by St Stephen’s. My first thought walking in was an awed, *There’s so much gold...* Absolutely every surface was gilded, and it was stunning. But more than that, I actually really loved some of the iconography. Instead of Christ on the cross at the head of the altar, they had a pure white statue of Him dressed as the pope, with a spotlight shining on it, and it just struck me as so much more the way I, and Mormons, I think, picture Christ. And there were several beautiful paintings—my favorite was of Mary and the child Jesus accepting gifts from (ostensibly?) one of the wise men—and an enormous organ. Rebecca asked me why there was such an elaborate church in a country that’s so unimportant on today’s world stage, and it reminded me that Hungary used to be part of the Holy Roman Empire, making this basilica probably second only to Rome in its prime.
We saw a sign on the corner as we exited the metro for a Cat Cafe just a block away from St Stephen’s, so we went there for lunch. It’s literally a cafe with cats wandering around! They’re pretty well trained, actually, and they must know they’re not allowed on the table, because no matter how hard we tried, none of them would come near while we were sat there. But we ate and then stayed after to play for a few minutes. It was really fun!
We then walked across the bridge to Buda, and I absolutely could not get over how stunning the river bank is in that part of the city. With the royal palace ahead, the parliament building to our right, St Stephen’s behind, and the river flowing beneath... Breathtaking. Also, they have a funicular, which is basically like a vertical trolley, to take you up from the river bank to the palace (also the level of Fisherman’s Bastion). It was so neat! It sort of thought about raining on us as we explored around the exterior of the palace, but every time we put on our ponchos, it would immediately dry right up. The royal palace is where Katy Perry filmed her music video for Firework, which I pulled out to watch with Rebecca this morning to get her amped up for the day. It also has beautiful views of the river bank.
Around this time, I remembered that Gellért hill was on my list... except the only way to get to it was to go back down. We probably should have done Fisherman’s Bastion first as long as we were already up there, but I was still hoping to catch that a little closer to dark (the view is less impressive from Gellért). We got to ride the funicular again, though, which is always fun. Gellért hill seemed to be mostly a nature hike—we didn’t really explore too much of the park, just climbed up to the arches and statue, but it was a neat little climb, and there was a gorgeous waterfall, as well.
We finally made our way over to Fisherman’s Bastion, which is a verrry cool place. It’s basically just a bunch of turrets lined up across the top of the hill, and there’s also a church next to it. The church had closed by the time we got there, and we had realized by now that our overnight train back to Germany was leaving too soon after sunset to stay for the city lights, so we didn’t spend a ton of time up there, but it was still very cool, and you have a perfect view of the parliament building, which is also stunning. I think that’s the word I would use to describe everything in Budapest—stunning. My only regret is not getting to see the riverbank at night, but as Matthew likes to say, “Leave something undone so you have something new to see when you come back.” I would say Budapest has joined Cairo and Pisa on my favorite cities list, so I’m certain I’ll be back one day. :D
Monday, May 14, 2018
Brussels
So... I did kind of a crazy thing, haha. We decided to rent a car this weekend because we wanted to take a couple of day trips, one of which was to Brussels, where Matthew's flight left from this morning, meaning I would have to drive back to Germany by myself. Well, we got to the rental place, and it turned out all they had were manual transmission cars... Now, to be clear, I had learned how to drive a manual, once upon a (long) time—but the last time I actually made any kind of attempt to actually drive one was about 12 years ago, and I was never really road-proficient. But I really wanted to go to Brussels! So I was like, "Sure, I can do this... it'll be fine. Probably." (Sometimes I feel like that's my life motto: "It'll be fine... probably.") So that was Friday evening, and I had to drive back through 3 countries and on the famous Autobahn Monday morning, so I had approximately two days to relearn how to drive stick and get good enough to do it long distance, solo. *Nervous laughter*
It actually was not as difficult as I worried. I had always kind of suspected my aversion to stick shift was more of a mental block than actual inability, and I was right—with sufficient motivation, I didn't find it too hard. I spent some time practicing on Saturday (including driving with just Rebecca out to her friend's house about 20 minutes away, haha), then actually drove about 2/3 of the way to Brussels on Sunday morning, and by the time I was on my own, I was basically an expert (or, you know, sufficiently capable...). I even hit some stop-and-go traffic—oh, and I wasn't actually certain I would have GPS navigation, but it turned out I randomly had data in Belgium (even though I had none in Germany..?)—and it only made me stall a few times, and never more than once in a row (which is the real issue when driving stick). Also, I've decided I'm really a fan of the Autobahn (I only ever got up to about 95, sorry...), or maybe just European freeways in general (it was kind of rough heading into the Netherlands, you know, with speed limits and all, haha). Everyone is really good about observing fast/slow lane etiquette (I mean, you kind of have to be), and they have gas stations right off on the side of the freeway, none of this driving halfway into town nonsense. Oh, ya, I also very nearly ran out of gas on the way back, lol. It kind of ran out quicker than I expected toward the end, and by then I was already in Dusseldorf (sort of) and there were no gas stations until I got back to the rental place. But I made it! And now I feel pretty awesome, not gonna lie. :D
But I am SO glad I went for it, because Brussels was absolutely wonderful! It was technically Mother's Day, but our anniversary is coming up, and it's not like we're going to do much after spending 3 weeks in Europe, so we took this opportunity to celebrate. And you know what, Brussels was actually surprisingly romantic! It was raining when we got in (and most of the way there, actually—ya, when I was driving stick on the Autobahn, because that's a thing that I did). We'd gotten a really good last-minute deal on a hotel that was right near the main sights, so we checked in and then went to wander over to the Grand Place, which was gorgeous. All the buildings are gilded with gold overlay, and there's a giant ornately carved building that looks like a church but is actually the city hall. We got waffles for a late lunch—we split a ham and cheese lunch waffle (apparently savory waffles are a thing in Belgium) and a chocolate and speculoos liege waffle. We walked over to the mannequin pis, which I'd heard Matthew talk about (he lived in Belgium for 3 months), but wasn't expecting to be literally exactly what it sounds like—it's the statue of the little boy peeing. It's much smaller than you'd expect, and they'd dressed it up for some holiday, but there was a chocolate shop next door that had a much larger one made out of chocolate out front. I made Matthew stand next to it to show the size, haha. Since it was raining and Matthew didn't think there was much else to see, we went back to the hotel for a nap (and to call our mothers since, you know, Mother's Day).
We woke up around 6, and the sun sets super late in Western Europe, apparently (probably because the time zone is weirdly enormous), meaning we still had a few hours of daylight, plus it had stopped raining! So we decided to walk out a ways to see the Palais de Justice (which was disappointingly completely covered in scaffolding) and the royal palace. There were some youths kind of loitering outside the Palais de Justice as we were walking around, but they turned out to be surprisingly friendly. They greeted us and wished us "une bonne journee"—I totally blanked on the French word for thank you (ironically, since French is the only language I sort of speak/understand), after traveling through so many countries, but I finally managed to call back a belated "merci," haha. Our walk took us through the high end shopping district before we found the royal palace, which I think is probably one of my favorite palaces in Europe (the one in Salzburg is supposed to be pretty great, though). It had these cool gardens out front and the architecture was very classic. Apparently they usually do tours during summer months, but for some reason it's closed right now till August. We also walked through the park next to it.
By then it was time for dinner, and Matthew knew exactly where all the restaurants are, so he led us straight to the street, and we picked one where we could get a bucket of mussels (in Brussels—apparently that's a thing). We also tried Burgundy snails—Matthew had never had escargot—which I didn't really care for, but having had escargot before myself, I'm pretty sure it was just the sauce that I didn't like. Snails don't actually really taste like much themselves, they're just chewy, kind of like clams. The mussels, though, were soooooo delicious. They were in a garlic and butter broth, and I couldn't get enough! After the restaurant, we went in search of some Belgian chocolate to finish up the evening—there were chocolate shops everywhere, but it was pretty late when we finished dinner, so we almost missed it, but there was one last place still open, so we took them out to the Grand Place. I asked Matthew as we were heading back if it was pretty at night, like if they lit up the buildings, and he was like, "Um, ya, it's lit up, but I don't know if it's necessarily prettier than during the day..." He was wrong. We walked into the square, and I literally gasped. I was expecting like, just floodlights at the base of each building, kind of like they have on temples, but there were smaller lights in each nook of each building, and it gave them the most beautiful glow. It was the perfect way to top off a romantic evening. Traveling with Becka's been fun, but it was nice to share something special with just my sweetheart. :)
It actually was not as difficult as I worried. I had always kind of suspected my aversion to stick shift was more of a mental block than actual inability, and I was right—with sufficient motivation, I didn't find it too hard. I spent some time practicing on Saturday (including driving with just Rebecca out to her friend's house about 20 minutes away, haha), then actually drove about 2/3 of the way to Brussels on Sunday morning, and by the time I was on my own, I was basically an expert (or, you know, sufficiently capable...). I even hit some stop-and-go traffic—oh, and I wasn't actually certain I would have GPS navigation, but it turned out I randomly had data in Belgium (even though I had none in Germany..?)—and it only made me stall a few times, and never more than once in a row (which is the real issue when driving stick). Also, I've decided I'm really a fan of the Autobahn (I only ever got up to about 95, sorry...), or maybe just European freeways in general (it was kind of rough heading into the Netherlands, you know, with speed limits and all, haha). Everyone is really good about observing fast/slow lane etiquette (I mean, you kind of have to be), and they have gas stations right off on the side of the freeway, none of this driving halfway into town nonsense. Oh, ya, I also very nearly ran out of gas on the way back, lol. It kind of ran out quicker than I expected toward the end, and by then I was already in Dusseldorf (sort of) and there were no gas stations until I got back to the rental place. But I made it! And now I feel pretty awesome, not gonna lie. :D
But I am SO glad I went for it, because Brussels was absolutely wonderful! It was technically Mother's Day, but our anniversary is coming up, and it's not like we're going to do much after spending 3 weeks in Europe, so we took this opportunity to celebrate. And you know what, Brussels was actually surprisingly romantic! It was raining when we got in (and most of the way there, actually—ya, when I was driving stick on the Autobahn, because that's a thing that I did). We'd gotten a really good last-minute deal on a hotel that was right near the main sights, so we checked in and then went to wander over to the Grand Place, which was gorgeous. All the buildings are gilded with gold overlay, and there's a giant ornately carved building that looks like a church but is actually the city hall. We got waffles for a late lunch—we split a ham and cheese lunch waffle (apparently savory waffles are a thing in Belgium) and a chocolate and speculoos liege waffle. We walked over to the mannequin pis, which I'd heard Matthew talk about (he lived in Belgium for 3 months), but wasn't expecting to be literally exactly what it sounds like—it's the statue of the little boy peeing. It's much smaller than you'd expect, and they'd dressed it up for some holiday, but there was a chocolate shop next door that had a much larger one made out of chocolate out front. I made Matthew stand next to it to show the size, haha. Since it was raining and Matthew didn't think there was much else to see, we went back to the hotel for a nap (and to call our mothers since, you know, Mother's Day).
We woke up around 6, and the sun sets super late in Western Europe, apparently (probably because the time zone is weirdly enormous), meaning we still had a few hours of daylight, plus it had stopped raining! So we decided to walk out a ways to see the Palais de Justice (which was disappointingly completely covered in scaffolding) and the royal palace. There were some youths kind of loitering outside the Palais de Justice as we were walking around, but they turned out to be surprisingly friendly. They greeted us and wished us "une bonne journee"—I totally blanked on the French word for thank you (ironically, since French is the only language I sort of speak/understand), after traveling through so many countries, but I finally managed to call back a belated "merci," haha. Our walk took us through the high end shopping district before we found the royal palace, which I think is probably one of my favorite palaces in Europe (the one in Salzburg is supposed to be pretty great, though). It had these cool gardens out front and the architecture was very classic. Apparently they usually do tours during summer months, but for some reason it's closed right now till August. We also walked through the park next to it.
By then it was time for dinner, and Matthew knew exactly where all the restaurants are, so he led us straight to the street, and we picked one where we could get a bucket of mussels (in Brussels—apparently that's a thing). We also tried Burgundy snails—Matthew had never had escargot—which I didn't really care for, but having had escargot before myself, I'm pretty sure it was just the sauce that I didn't like. Snails don't actually really taste like much themselves, they're just chewy, kind of like clams. The mussels, though, were soooooo delicious. They were in a garlic and butter broth, and I couldn't get enough! After the restaurant, we went in search of some Belgian chocolate to finish up the evening—there were chocolate shops everywhere, but it was pretty late when we finished dinner, so we almost missed it, but there was one last place still open, so we took them out to the Grand Place. I asked Matthew as we were heading back if it was pretty at night, like if they lit up the buildings, and he was like, "Um, ya, it's lit up, but I don't know if it's necessarily prettier than during the day..." He was wrong. We walked into the square, and I literally gasped. I was expecting like, just floodlights at the base of each building, kind of like they have on temples, but there were smaller lights in each nook of each building, and it gave them the most beautiful glow. It was the perfect way to top off a romantic evening. Traveling with Becka's been fun, but it was nice to share something special with just my sweetheart. :)
Thursday, May 10, 2018
Spain
The second part of our Southern Europe tour was Spain! We were less efficient in Barcelona than in Rome. Part of this had to do with the fact that none of us had been to Barcelona before, and part of it is that Barcelona is kind of a more complicated city—Rome only has two metro lines, and they each go to the main sites in the city, but Barcelona is not that way. Also, for the record, bus tour is not a very effective way to get around, I’ve decided. It is, however, a pretty decent way to spend a rainy morning, which is exactly what we did on Sunday. It was raining pretty steadily when we woke up, and for about half the day I was worried it wouldn’t stop. Matthew (he’s here now!!) and Rebecca had wandered out a bit the night before after he met us at the hostel, so he took me over to the Barcelona Cathedral while Becka was still getting ready. It’s quite close to our hostel, and the main building was closed for mass, but there was a neat little courtyard in the back that we got to see.
Then we all went out to get tickets for the bus tour we had decided to do, and we ended up spending an hour in the most infuriating line I have ever participated in... Matthew actually did most of the line-standing while Becka and I found a place to sit (apparently they do not have a pregnancy policy in Spain...), but I swear there were only like 10 people ahead of us, and they all took an absurdly long time getting their tickets! To be fair, it was actually a general tourism office, but they should have had some kind of express lane for “I just want the bus tour.” When we finally had purchased tickets, it was still raining. My hope was that we could ride around on the bus tour for a bit and it would eventually stop raining, but there was definitely a point where I despaired of anything but rain during our entire stay in Barcelona and had thoughts of trading my firstborn child for some sunshine... fortunately for Squishy (Becka’s nickname for the baby), it finally cleared up, right as the bus tour reached the pier. This was excellent because it was also lunch time, so we got off and had a nice seafood lunch. We also visited the mall that was there, quickly, to get poor Becka out of her wet shoes that she’d been enduring for the past three days...
My biggest interest in Barcelona all along, of course, has been the Gaudí buildings. We passed Casa Batlló early on in the tour, but there was a line outside there, too, and I’d had it with lines for the day, so I decided I’d try to get tickets online when we got back to the hostel. So after lunch we went up to Park Guell, which was my other big stop, but when we got there we learned that they sell tickets by time slot and were already full up for the afternoon... so we bought tickets for the next day, but by this time it was suddenly 4:00, and I was feeling like we hadn’t done anything at all that day. We did spend some time wandering around the free portion of the park, which was nice. And Matthew, at least, was enjoying the bus tour for itself.
Once we’d finished the second tour loop (we did one in the morning and one in the afternoon), we decided to get out to Sagrada Familia. The thing about Gaudí— half his stuff is extraordinarily gorgeous and brilliant, and the other half is wtf/looks like it belongs in Wonderland. Personally, I would put Sagrada Familia in the second category, but it was also cooler in person, actually, than pictures I’d seen. The outer stone was much lighter than I expected, for one. Also, what I could see of the stained glass from the outside looked like it might be worth viewing from the inside—it’s very expensive though (everything is Barcelona is...), and Matthew and Becka weren’t really feeling it, so I decided to go in by myself while they explored the lower portion, which is free and also used for regular church services. Except, it turned out they had closed entry for the day. I wasn’t totally married to the idea, so it was fine. The lower part was also neat. They had this beautiful white statue of Mary with Baby Jesus.
Matthew wanted to walk back to our hostel, which didn’t sound like a great idea to me, since my feet have been in like a constant state of complaint since about the end of or first day, but since I didn’t really know a better way to get there (the metro seemed too complicated to deal with, all the different lines, and the tour bus had also stopped running, but it wouldn’t have made sense to go all the way around the city again, since it only goes one way...), I agreed. Everything in Rome looked closer together on the map than it felt to walk, but thankfully the opposite proved true in this instance. But overall, by the end of the day, Becka and I both felt like Barcelona was not meeting our expectations, which was kind of lame.
Fortunately, Monday went better. We had all our tickets ahead of time and a better sense of where we wanted to go. Becka had been really hoping to make it to the beach while we were there, so Matthew took her down while I repacked our bags (they’d been getting increasingly higgledy-piggledy over the course of our travels, and with the lockers in our hostel, we basically had given up). Speaking of the hostel, this one in Barcelona was probably my favorite so far. They had a kitchen with free hot chocolate (and coffee and tea), and some common spaces with tables and couches, and they also provided shampoo (communally, but still) for showering, and individual lockers that were big enough for our backpacks. We slept in a 10-person room, but I didn’t even mind. Also, they had neat murals in the stairwell. And they didn’t try to push their parties on us.
Anyway, our plan for the morning was that Becka would stay at the beach or otherwise entertain herself while Matthew and I did Casa Batlló—it was far too expensive for her to join us when she wasn’t really that into it. So I packed up, checked out, and made my way to the Casa. Matthew ended up being a few minutes late, which made me nervous because it was also linked to a time slot, but it worked out just fine. The house itself was very cool. Matthew said, when it was finished, “I didn’t get the Gaudí thing before, but now I do.” They also had this REALLY cool guided “smart tour.” They hand you basically a cell phone, which you use to look around each room like a camera while the audio plays, and it superimposes images onto the space. So there was digital furniture in most of the rooms, but they also turned windows into sea turtles (illustrating the sea-themed inspiration of the design) and other neat things like that. The house is probably one of the best examples of Gaudí’s duality—it has this really cool art nouveau vibe going up two-thirds of the exterior, then a random gingerbread-looking roof that just doesn’t seem to quite fit... the interior is basically all gorgeous, though. It has a light well in the middle that’s just blue tile from top to bottom and a skylight at the top of the six(?)-story house. Plus, in the very top window, they’ve created a photo booth out of this little balcony, and we got a really great photo of the two of us (without all our gear, which they make you leave outside in a tub).
Becka texted that she was outside waiting just as we were finishing up. Apparently she went to the Disney store after the beach, so she was in a good mood. It also helped that the weather was now cloudless and in the upper 70s. We got back on the bus to get to our time slot at Park Guell—and here is where my idea to use the tour bus as our main source of transportation once again failed us, because it took almost an hour to go like, three stops. But we had plenty of time. The park is absolutely stunning. It has a couple of Wonderland houses out front, but the sweeping staircase capped by the hypostyle columns is just breathtaking. The “monumental section” (the part you have to pay to get into) is relatively small, so it didn’t end up taking the rest of the afternoon, and we weren’t rushed, which was good.After the park, we went to Barcelona Stadium for Matthew. The tour didn’t really seem worth its price, but we had a fun little look around. Then we finished up another loop on the bus and had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. Rebecca accused me of starving her in Italy, but she didn’t want to eat at any of the places we’d dined so far in Spain, so we let her pick out something nice and familiar. (Hard Rock gave us the pregnancy pass, too—it was only going to be a 10-minute wait, but according to Matthew, our translator, the hostess told the guy to bump us up.) Also, this was the first day of our trip that we didn’t get rained on once. Cross fingers for the remaining three days!!
Bonus—funny story about Matthew translating: we did a little bit of souvenir shopping on our way to and from the park that first day, and Matthew had noticed that Rebecca and I didn’t respond very well to the aggressive shopkeeper in the first spot, so at the second one he pulled the guy aside and told him in Spanish, “You’ll get farther with these two if you just hang back and let them browse. If they have questions, they’ll ask you.” And then he chatted with the guy. I did end up buying this neat crystal suspension of Sagrada Familia, and Matthew said the guy gave him an impressed/knowing/thankful look as I was pulling out my money. Becka and I got a kick out of it, anyway.
I made a mistake in Granada. A classic blunder, if you will. Apparently, one does not simply buy tickets to the Alhambra on the day of one’s visit—it seems they sell out about 2-3 days in advance. Unfortunately, that’s kind of the entire reason we came to Granada, so it put somewhat of a cramp in our day. We tried to see if we could adjust our schedule a bit to get tickets the next or something, but the only ones available would have been too late to make our flight home from Seville. Early in the morning, Matthew and I walked up to see if there was any possibility of remedying our situation.y weather app said it was raining when we woke up and would be for most of the morning, but when we got outside, it actually was clearing up and not unpleasant. We found out from the ticket office that we could try to purchase separate tickets for the outer gardens and the night tour of the palace, which might not be sold out, but we would need to do it online. So we made our way back to town, but along the way Matthew discovered a bridge of which the gatehouse was open, so we decided to take a look inside and see what we could. It led up into a decent portion of the complex, and I wasn’t entirely sure whether we had somehow managed to sneak in or there are just parts of it that are open (we learned later that it was the latter). Then we went back to the hostel to collect Rebecca and buy some tickets. It turned out that the night palace tickets were also sold out, which was really disappointing since that was kind of our last hope, but we bought the outer garden tickets and went up to see those. It was something to do as long as we were already there, but not really worth coming so the way to Granada for. That took up most of the rest of our day, but just as we were getting ready to leave, the skies opened up and it legit thunderstormed on us. It was the one time we hadn’t brought the ponchos, and I really didn’t want to get soaked, so we waited under an arch with a bunch of other patrons, hoping it would let up, until Becka finally made a run for the gift shop and bought new ponchos and an umbrella—the rain was so hard we really kind of needed both. Matthew had gone to return his audio tour up at the top (the taxi stop we were using was much further down the complex), but we actually ran into him waiting under an awning—apparently he has his limits. We gave him the umbrella when we got in a cab (ironically, the price was similar to if not cheaper than the bus). By the time we got back down to the city center, though, it had significantly cleared up. We went to a Churrería and had authentic Spanish churros with hot chocolate, which was fun. Then we browsed souvenirs until it was time to catch our next train. Matthew assures me we’ll come back someday to do it properly, but I’m not sure how much it lessens the sting of disappointment right now. :/
Seville, however, exceeded my expectations and made for a lovely final stop on our trip. Of course, we somehow managed to time our visit to the one day of the year that it’s NOT 80+ degrees and sunny, which some of us (Matthew) very much enjoyed, whereas others (Rebecca and I), less so. Matthew and I decided to join the free walking tour advertised by our hostel—who had held a free dinner for us for when we checked in, btw—since we didn’t really know much about Seville or have any idea what we wanted to see there. Becka opted to stay out of the rain and chill at the hostel.
We very much enjoyed the walking tour, though. It was tip-based, rather than entirely free, but our tour guide was very knowledgeable and pretty fun. I enjoyed his accent—he’s Italian but said he’s lived in Seville for 8 years. We started off at the main cathedral, which is one of the biggest churches in the world, and is actually part converted mosque— the bell tower actually still looks very much like a minaret, which I found interesting. We also stopped by Alcázar Palace, which was on my list of possible things that looked interesting, and we decided to circle back to that for a visit later. Some other highlights included an old maritime university that was later used by a French noble family as an opulent home, a gold-capped tower that used to be prison, and Spain’s second-largest building, a former tobacco factory that now houses the University of Seville. Our last stop on the tour was Plaza de Espana, which had also been on my list but totally blew me away. It is this huge, gorgeous plaza—it kind of reminded me of the courtyard at St Peter’s— and it’s not really a building or anything, but it’s gorgeously outfitted in brick and tile, with bridges over a small moat... so beautiful. I knew Rebecca would like this, but probably better if it were sunny out, and it was also all the way across town from our hostel, so we put it on the agenda for our second (half) day.
We went back to the hostel to collect her, which may or may not have taken an hour and definitely involved getting pretty lost—we’d neglected to get ourselves a map before leaving the hostel in the morning. I guess I didn’t really expect the walking tour guide to just cut us loose halfway across the city? Once we finally got back and got some lunch, we decided to visit Alcázar, and we bought tickets online so we wouldn’t have to wait in line—I’m beginning to appreciate the superiority of doing it this way. It’s really not that hard and saves a lot of time and waiting.
Alcázar kind of made up for missing the Alhambra, since I believe the styles are pretty similar, even if the Alhambra is supposed to be far grander. Matthew passed on an audio guide in order to keep from holding us up, but he looked so lost and forlorn that we made him go get one, and he shared its tidbits with us as we went along. It’s a very interesting place, since parts of it were built by Moors and others by Catholics. The whole first floor hardly felt like an indoor space at all, despite the audio guide’s pointing out bedrooms and such, and was covered in Islamic carvings, which I personally find very beautiful. Then the second story was much more enclosed and very traditionally European. There were some neat tapestries that I really enjoyed. There also is a massive stretch of gardens surrounding the palace. There was a hedge maze that we explored, and some peacocks were roaming around. Becka found the spot where a certain scene from Game of Thrones was filmed. The gardens were definitely more impressive than the ones we saw at Alhambra.
After the palace, we decided to try and see a flamenco show. We briefly pondered one that would have been far too expensive, but we were more relieved to learn from our hostel receptionist that there’s a bar that offers a free show not too far away. We also needed dinner by this point, so we stopped at a tapas restaurant near the bar. The food was excellent—even Rebecca was pleased. Tapas are small, more or less appetizer-sized plates, and you order a bunch to share. We had duck, salmon, a tiny burrito, and a Spanish omelette (also called “tortilla”). Our favorite was the duck. Then we headed over to the bar for the show, and there was only one male dancer, which was not quite the lady in the red dress you would expect, but he was very good. His ability to snap his fingers in time with the music was particularly impressive. Also, there was this adorable toddler across the room who watched with wide eyes for a while, then started clapping along with the performers, then full on dancing—she was SO CUTE!!! I wanted to take a video but they’d asked us not to photograph or video the performance, and I didn’t want to cause a misunderstanding and get in trouble or something... good fun, though.
This morning, we took Rebecca out to Plaza de Espana. They have rowboats you can rent in the most. It’s pretty shallow, but a nice way to soak in the atmosphere and enjoy the plaza. It was also sunny—the sun actually finally made an appearance about 6:00 the previous evening—but still not too hot. That was kind of our one thing today, since our flight back to Düsseldorf was at 3 and we walked there and back. Before we left, though, I also made an extravagant purchase, as I am wont to do when in Europe... We bought a blessing dress for our baby girl, in the traditional Spanish style usually used for baptisms/christening. It’s very beautiful, and we thought it would be nice to have something meaningful and unique (unique in our circles, at least).
So that concludes our (first) tour! Now we’re back, home for Rebecca, which I know she’s happy to see. I’m definitely looking forward to doing some real laundry, haha. Also, I highly recommend the vacation-within-a-vacation method of travel. You get back and you’re still on vacation! :D
Then we all went out to get tickets for the bus tour we had decided to do, and we ended up spending an hour in the most infuriating line I have ever participated in... Matthew actually did most of the line-standing while Becka and I found a place to sit (apparently they do not have a pregnancy policy in Spain...), but I swear there were only like 10 people ahead of us, and they all took an absurdly long time getting their tickets! To be fair, it was actually a general tourism office, but they should have had some kind of express lane for “I just want the bus tour.” When we finally had purchased tickets, it was still raining. My hope was that we could ride around on the bus tour for a bit and it would eventually stop raining, but there was definitely a point where I despaired of anything but rain during our entire stay in Barcelona and had thoughts of trading my firstborn child for some sunshine... fortunately for Squishy (Becka’s nickname for the baby), it finally cleared up, right as the bus tour reached the pier. This was excellent because it was also lunch time, so we got off and had a nice seafood lunch. We also visited the mall that was there, quickly, to get poor Becka out of her wet shoes that she’d been enduring for the past three days...
My biggest interest in Barcelona all along, of course, has been the Gaudí buildings. We passed Casa Batlló early on in the tour, but there was a line outside there, too, and I’d had it with lines for the day, so I decided I’d try to get tickets online when we got back to the hostel. So after lunch we went up to Park Guell, which was my other big stop, but when we got there we learned that they sell tickets by time slot and were already full up for the afternoon... so we bought tickets for the next day, but by this time it was suddenly 4:00, and I was feeling like we hadn’t done anything at all that day. We did spend some time wandering around the free portion of the park, which was nice. And Matthew, at least, was enjoying the bus tour for itself.
Once we’d finished the second tour loop (we did one in the morning and one in the afternoon), we decided to get out to Sagrada Familia. The thing about Gaudí— half his stuff is extraordinarily gorgeous and brilliant, and the other half is wtf/looks like it belongs in Wonderland. Personally, I would put Sagrada Familia in the second category, but it was also cooler in person, actually, than pictures I’d seen. The outer stone was much lighter than I expected, for one. Also, what I could see of the stained glass from the outside looked like it might be worth viewing from the inside—it’s very expensive though (everything is Barcelona is...), and Matthew and Becka weren’t really feeling it, so I decided to go in by myself while they explored the lower portion, which is free and also used for regular church services. Except, it turned out they had closed entry for the day. I wasn’t totally married to the idea, so it was fine. The lower part was also neat. They had this beautiful white statue of Mary with Baby Jesus.
Matthew wanted to walk back to our hostel, which didn’t sound like a great idea to me, since my feet have been in like a constant state of complaint since about the end of or first day, but since I didn’t really know a better way to get there (the metro seemed too complicated to deal with, all the different lines, and the tour bus had also stopped running, but it wouldn’t have made sense to go all the way around the city again, since it only goes one way...), I agreed. Everything in Rome looked closer together on the map than it felt to walk, but thankfully the opposite proved true in this instance. But overall, by the end of the day, Becka and I both felt like Barcelona was not meeting our expectations, which was kind of lame.
Fortunately, Monday went better. We had all our tickets ahead of time and a better sense of where we wanted to go. Becka had been really hoping to make it to the beach while we were there, so Matthew took her down while I repacked our bags (they’d been getting increasingly higgledy-piggledy over the course of our travels, and with the lockers in our hostel, we basically had given up). Speaking of the hostel, this one in Barcelona was probably my favorite so far. They had a kitchen with free hot chocolate (and coffee and tea), and some common spaces with tables and couches, and they also provided shampoo (communally, but still) for showering, and individual lockers that were big enough for our backpacks. We slept in a 10-person room, but I didn’t even mind. Also, they had neat murals in the stairwell. And they didn’t try to push their parties on us.
Anyway, our plan for the morning was that Becka would stay at the beach or otherwise entertain herself while Matthew and I did Casa Batlló—it was far too expensive for her to join us when she wasn’t really that into it. So I packed up, checked out, and made my way to the Casa. Matthew ended up being a few minutes late, which made me nervous because it was also linked to a time slot, but it worked out just fine. The house itself was very cool. Matthew said, when it was finished, “I didn’t get the Gaudí thing before, but now I do.” They also had this REALLY cool guided “smart tour.” They hand you basically a cell phone, which you use to look around each room like a camera while the audio plays, and it superimposes images onto the space. So there was digital furniture in most of the rooms, but they also turned windows into sea turtles (illustrating the sea-themed inspiration of the design) and other neat things like that. The house is probably one of the best examples of Gaudí’s duality—it has this really cool art nouveau vibe going up two-thirds of the exterior, then a random gingerbread-looking roof that just doesn’t seem to quite fit... the interior is basically all gorgeous, though. It has a light well in the middle that’s just blue tile from top to bottom and a skylight at the top of the six(?)-story house. Plus, in the very top window, they’ve created a photo booth out of this little balcony, and we got a really great photo of the two of us (without all our gear, which they make you leave outside in a tub).
Becka texted that she was outside waiting just as we were finishing up. Apparently she went to the Disney store after the beach, so she was in a good mood. It also helped that the weather was now cloudless and in the upper 70s. We got back on the bus to get to our time slot at Park Guell—and here is where my idea to use the tour bus as our main source of transportation once again failed us, because it took almost an hour to go like, three stops. But we had plenty of time. The park is absolutely stunning. It has a couple of Wonderland houses out front, but the sweeping staircase capped by the hypostyle columns is just breathtaking. The “monumental section” (the part you have to pay to get into) is relatively small, so it didn’t end up taking the rest of the afternoon, and we weren’t rushed, which was good.After the park, we went to Barcelona Stadium for Matthew. The tour didn’t really seem worth its price, but we had a fun little look around. Then we finished up another loop on the bus and had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. Rebecca accused me of starving her in Italy, but she didn’t want to eat at any of the places we’d dined so far in Spain, so we let her pick out something nice and familiar. (Hard Rock gave us the pregnancy pass, too—it was only going to be a 10-minute wait, but according to Matthew, our translator, the hostess told the guy to bump us up.) Also, this was the first day of our trip that we didn’t get rained on once. Cross fingers for the remaining three days!!
Bonus—funny story about Matthew translating: we did a little bit of souvenir shopping on our way to and from the park that first day, and Matthew had noticed that Rebecca and I didn’t respond very well to the aggressive shopkeeper in the first spot, so at the second one he pulled the guy aside and told him in Spanish, “You’ll get farther with these two if you just hang back and let them browse. If they have questions, they’ll ask you.” And then he chatted with the guy. I did end up buying this neat crystal suspension of Sagrada Familia, and Matthew said the guy gave him an impressed/knowing/thankful look as I was pulling out my money. Becka and I got a kick out of it, anyway.
I made a mistake in Granada. A classic blunder, if you will. Apparently, one does not simply buy tickets to the Alhambra on the day of one’s visit—it seems they sell out about 2-3 days in advance. Unfortunately, that’s kind of the entire reason we came to Granada, so it put somewhat of a cramp in our day. We tried to see if we could adjust our schedule a bit to get tickets the next or something, but the only ones available would have been too late to make our flight home from Seville. Early in the morning, Matthew and I walked up to see if there was any possibility of remedying our situation.y weather app said it was raining when we woke up and would be for most of the morning, but when we got outside, it actually was clearing up and not unpleasant. We found out from the ticket office that we could try to purchase separate tickets for the outer gardens and the night tour of the palace, which might not be sold out, but we would need to do it online. So we made our way back to town, but along the way Matthew discovered a bridge of which the gatehouse was open, so we decided to take a look inside and see what we could. It led up into a decent portion of the complex, and I wasn’t entirely sure whether we had somehow managed to sneak in or there are just parts of it that are open (we learned later that it was the latter). Then we went back to the hostel to collect Rebecca and buy some tickets. It turned out that the night palace tickets were also sold out, which was really disappointing since that was kind of our last hope, but we bought the outer garden tickets and went up to see those. It was something to do as long as we were already there, but not really worth coming so the way to Granada for. That took up most of the rest of our day, but just as we were getting ready to leave, the skies opened up and it legit thunderstormed on us. It was the one time we hadn’t brought the ponchos, and I really didn’t want to get soaked, so we waited under an arch with a bunch of other patrons, hoping it would let up, until Becka finally made a run for the gift shop and bought new ponchos and an umbrella—the rain was so hard we really kind of needed both. Matthew had gone to return his audio tour up at the top (the taxi stop we were using was much further down the complex), but we actually ran into him waiting under an awning—apparently he has his limits. We gave him the umbrella when we got in a cab (ironically, the price was similar to if not cheaper than the bus). By the time we got back down to the city center, though, it had significantly cleared up. We went to a Churrería and had authentic Spanish churros with hot chocolate, which was fun. Then we browsed souvenirs until it was time to catch our next train. Matthew assures me we’ll come back someday to do it properly, but I’m not sure how much it lessens the sting of disappointment right now. :/
Seville, however, exceeded my expectations and made for a lovely final stop on our trip. Of course, we somehow managed to time our visit to the one day of the year that it’s NOT 80+ degrees and sunny, which some of us (Matthew) very much enjoyed, whereas others (Rebecca and I), less so. Matthew and I decided to join the free walking tour advertised by our hostel—who had held a free dinner for us for when we checked in, btw—since we didn’t really know much about Seville or have any idea what we wanted to see there. Becka opted to stay out of the rain and chill at the hostel.
We very much enjoyed the walking tour, though. It was tip-based, rather than entirely free, but our tour guide was very knowledgeable and pretty fun. I enjoyed his accent—he’s Italian but said he’s lived in Seville for 8 years. We started off at the main cathedral, which is one of the biggest churches in the world, and is actually part converted mosque— the bell tower actually still looks very much like a minaret, which I found interesting. We also stopped by Alcázar Palace, which was on my list of possible things that looked interesting, and we decided to circle back to that for a visit later. Some other highlights included an old maritime university that was later used by a French noble family as an opulent home, a gold-capped tower that used to be prison, and Spain’s second-largest building, a former tobacco factory that now houses the University of Seville. Our last stop on the tour was Plaza de Espana, which had also been on my list but totally blew me away. It is this huge, gorgeous plaza—it kind of reminded me of the courtyard at St Peter’s— and it’s not really a building or anything, but it’s gorgeously outfitted in brick and tile, with bridges over a small moat... so beautiful. I knew Rebecca would like this, but probably better if it were sunny out, and it was also all the way across town from our hostel, so we put it on the agenda for our second (half) day.
We went back to the hostel to collect her, which may or may not have taken an hour and definitely involved getting pretty lost—we’d neglected to get ourselves a map before leaving the hostel in the morning. I guess I didn’t really expect the walking tour guide to just cut us loose halfway across the city? Once we finally got back and got some lunch, we decided to visit Alcázar, and we bought tickets online so we wouldn’t have to wait in line—I’m beginning to appreciate the superiority of doing it this way. It’s really not that hard and saves a lot of time and waiting.
Alcázar kind of made up for missing the Alhambra, since I believe the styles are pretty similar, even if the Alhambra is supposed to be far grander. Matthew passed on an audio guide in order to keep from holding us up, but he looked so lost and forlorn that we made him go get one, and he shared its tidbits with us as we went along. It’s a very interesting place, since parts of it were built by Moors and others by Catholics. The whole first floor hardly felt like an indoor space at all, despite the audio guide’s pointing out bedrooms and such, and was covered in Islamic carvings, which I personally find very beautiful. Then the second story was much more enclosed and very traditionally European. There were some neat tapestries that I really enjoyed. There also is a massive stretch of gardens surrounding the palace. There was a hedge maze that we explored, and some peacocks were roaming around. Becka found the spot where a certain scene from Game of Thrones was filmed. The gardens were definitely more impressive than the ones we saw at Alhambra.
After the palace, we decided to try and see a flamenco show. We briefly pondered one that would have been far too expensive, but we were more relieved to learn from our hostel receptionist that there’s a bar that offers a free show not too far away. We also needed dinner by this point, so we stopped at a tapas restaurant near the bar. The food was excellent—even Rebecca was pleased. Tapas are small, more or less appetizer-sized plates, and you order a bunch to share. We had duck, salmon, a tiny burrito, and a Spanish omelette (also called “tortilla”). Our favorite was the duck. Then we headed over to the bar for the show, and there was only one male dancer, which was not quite the lady in the red dress you would expect, but he was very good. His ability to snap his fingers in time with the music was particularly impressive. Also, there was this adorable toddler across the room who watched with wide eyes for a while, then started clapping along with the performers, then full on dancing—she was SO CUTE!!! I wanted to take a video but they’d asked us not to photograph or video the performance, and I didn’t want to cause a misunderstanding and get in trouble or something... good fun, though.
This morning, we took Rebecca out to Plaza de Espana. They have rowboats you can rent in the most. It’s pretty shallow, but a nice way to soak in the atmosphere and enjoy the plaza. It was also sunny—the sun actually finally made an appearance about 6:00 the previous evening—but still not too hot. That was kind of our one thing today, since our flight back to Düsseldorf was at 3 and we walked there and back. Before we left, though, I also made an extravagant purchase, as I am wont to do when in Europe... We bought a blessing dress for our baby girl, in the traditional Spanish style usually used for baptisms/christening. It’s very beautiful, and we thought it would be nice to have something meaningful and unique (unique in our circles, at least).
So that concludes our (first) tour! Now we’re back, home for Rebecca, which I know she’s happy to see. I’m definitely looking forward to doing some real laundry, haha. Also, I highly recommend the vacation-within-a-vacation method of travel. You get back and you’re still on vacation! :D
Saturday, May 5, 2018
Italy
We’re off on our whirlwind tour! We got up absurdly early Thursday morning to get on our flight—it truly astounds me how long it takes to get in and out of airports though, because by the time we actually got to any sightseeing, it was about 1:00.
We decided to start with the Vatican, since more of it is indoors than the Roman Forum, and the weather called for rain in the afternoon both days we were here. So it turns out that in Rome (at least), if you’re pregnant, you don’t have to wait in any of the lines, which at the height of tourist season are quite long... we didn’t find this out, of course, until after waiting in the St Peter’s basilica line for about an hour, but it was actually not too bad, because I had my stool and it was kind of fun to soak in the experience, since the line forms around the outside of the big courtyard in front of it. It also started raining when we got there, but I was prepared—Matthew thought I was silly to buy cheap ponchos at Walmart before I left, but they were excellent. We stayed pretty decently dry, except for poor Rebecca’s shoes (mine didn’t get my feet wet at all, actually). So I had been to the basilica before, and I remember it being very grand, but goodness, I’d forgotten how MASSIVE it is. I guess I didn’t have much to compare it to before, but having been to Jerusalem since, i found the sheer size to be very impressive. It’s also beautiful, of course.
After the basilica, we went around to where the Vatican Museum entrance is—I had figured out by this time that some of the people standing around shouting at us were simply informational and not actually trying to seek anything, so that’s how we found out pregnant people don’t wait in line. However, about 30 feet later we got stopped by a tour guide who told us that there were no more single entries for the day, and you could only get in with a guided tour—which of course was about $50 each... I mean, it was after 3:30, and I did figure that the museum would probably be closing altogether by about 5, and he made the point that there WAS no ticket line anymore... so we may or may not have been suckered into paying an absurd amount of money for a tour we didn’t need, but on my last visit, we got right up to the entrance of the Sistine Chapel, and they closed it because the pope was in town. And I didn’t want to get up to the ticket counter just to be told it was too late and then also miss the last tour. So, we paid the man—Becka was pretty convinced he was leading us away to some other shady business, so she got pretty tense, but once we got back to the museum (they had to take us to their tour office across the street to buy the tickets), she calmed down. We weren’t really that interested in the actual tour, and they told us we didn’t have to stay for it once we were in, but after paying the big bucks, we figured we should get our money’s worth, right? Unfortunately, between the guy’s accent and the poor quality of the headset, I only got about 10% of what he was saying, and about half of that was his catch phrase, “Can you imagine?!” (which he seemed to be confusing with something like “Can you believe it” lol). Becka and I got a pretty good kick out of it, though. And she listened a little more than I did, as well. Most of the museum either hadn’t made it into my long term memory from before or we must have skipped parts, because it honestly felt mostly like a new experience, which was fun. And the Sistine Chapel was truly magnificent. Such an incredible work of art.
Our guided tour actually got us back around to the basilica again, too (eye roll), but we left our guide there, since we’d already had a pretty good look around and it was dinner time. We walked out along the big avenue in front of St Peter’s, where we met Luigi, who was giving out coupons to his restaurant for its 25th anniversary. It actually sounded like a pretty good deal (dinner, drink, and dessert for €11 instead of €20), and we were looking for a nice authentic Italian place to eat, so we said, “Sure! Why not?” He wanted to walk us personally to the restaurant (which he said he owns with his brothers), which for my American sensibilities was a little overkill, and he also gave us a card for his taxi service, lol, but the restaurant was truly charming and exactly what we were looking for. I had lasagna and Becka had carbonara, and we had gelato and tiramisu for dessert, and it was just perfect. Our last stop for the day was the Trevi Fountain (where you wish to come back to Rome), and unfortunately by then it had really started to rain. Showers up to that point had been scattered, and actually the worst of it was while we were inside the museum, but toward sunset it started really coming down. The fountain was still very impressive—I’m pretty sure it wasn’t on when I went before (probably because it was the dead of winter)—and we threw in our coins. I actually wished for my daughter to come back to Rome one day, so I hope she will. :)
So Thursday was Vatican, Friday was Roman. :D This is what I was excited for. We went down to the Colosseum, which I was still kind of undecided about, but I knew I really wanted to explore the Roman Forum. Well, turns out it’s one ticket for it all. This time we did skip the lines, and it was excellent. I highly recommend Rome while pregnant. Straight to the front, no wait at all. The Colosseum was actually very cool. We probably spent a little more time than we needed to, and I definitely spent most of it taking pictures of the view through the arches, haha (I’m so obsessed with arches and columns), but it was very cool to explore. And the Roman Forum was everything I hoped for and more. :D It’s basically downtown Ancient Rome, and you just kind of wander through it all, and there are ruins of temples and gardens and arches... plus there’s also a kind of medieval-era recreation of one of the buildings that is pretty neat, with its own gardens. The complex is actually massive, and we hiked through a good portion of it, although after yesterday, my feet were killing me before we finished it all. Becka wasn’t feeling it as much as the Vatican, but she was a pretty good sport. When we could go absolutely no farther, we made our way over to a cafe to eat and sit. Becka really wanted pizza with ham on it, and we’ve found that most restaurant entrees are about a good size for us to split (our dinners the night before were actually too much for us, haha), so we did that. It also rained again while we were inside, which we were able to wait out. It had sprinkled on us a little toward the end of our Roman tour, but this was the worst of it for the day.
When the rain had abated, we made our way over to the cat sanctuary, a random stumble-upon-find from my last visit. It’s basically a sunken square with a bunch of unearthed ruins, and they’ve made it into a space for feral cats to just hang out. I was afraid there wouldn’t be any cats out because of the rain, but they were there! And we also went down to their little office, which I swear was much smaller and/or they didn’t let you into where the cats hang out, but today we got to see a bunch of them and pet them and it was excellent. :D Since we had about an hour or so left before we had to hear back to catch our train to Pisa, we also decided to walk up to the Pantheon, since it’s not far from there. I got some gelato, and we once again went to the front of the line to get in. It wasn’t quite as exciting as the other stuff we saw, but a nice diversion. And thus ends our whirlwind tour of Rome! On to Pisa!
My favorite thing about Pisa is that it’s so much more than you even expect. In fact, the tower was never meant to be an attraction at all—the jewel of Pisa is its cathedral (which is indeed stunning, and also huge). We got in pretty late at night, so it was actually pretty neat to walk past the square with all its buildings lit up on the way to our hotel. (We stayed in the same places here in Italy that I did before :D) We neglected to take pictures because being out after dark with all our stuff made me a little nervous, but in hindsight, I kind of wish we had. It was beautiful. We got up early in the morning to get out to the square, which was a good choice, because the crowds started descending roundabout 9:30, and we had some time to get to the ticket office (no lines to skip here), have our Italian breakfast in the shadow of the tower, then be the first in when it opened at 9. I’m so glad Rebecca agreed to go up with me. It really is a singular experience, and she made it so hilarious, too. Whoever put a circular staircase in the tower was an unintended genius, because you really get the full effect of the lean as you sway back and forth going around and around and around. Also, the stairs were pretty decently shallow, which made for not a bad climb, even six months pregnant. There were also landings, although I made it about one flight from the top before I felt like I even needed to take a break. There are two observation decks, one higher than the other. Ironically, the lower one gives you more of a sense of the lean, with that sliding-off feeling I remember. They also rang the bells while we were up there (an electronic message plays just before, to warn you, haha). Going down was even funnier to watch Rebecca do than up. She kept bracing herself on the sides and I swear I just giggled the whole way down.
We had left our bags in our hotel room, since checkout was at 10:30, and we still had a few minutes once we reached the ground again, so we visited the crypt before retrieving them. Becka was a little dubious at first, but they have some really neat sculptures and these gorgeous (faded, but you can still tell) frescoes on the walls, and there’s also a courtyard that’s nice. After that we checked out and then went to the cathedral and baptistery. The cathedral is incredibly impressive, especially considering how small of a city Pisa really is. It’s not as big as St Peter’s, but the ceiling is just as high, and it feels nearly as big. The baptistery has two levels, and actually the stairs to the second level were harder than the tower, which is three times as high—these were steeper. While we were inside, a woman stepped up to the front and shouted for silence, then started to sing. It was just chords on an “ah,” but with the acoustics in the place, they blended together into this really amazing harmony— and it was only her one voice! After that we had to catch our flight, but I think we got everything we wanted to out of our short but sweet visit.
We decided to start with the Vatican, since more of it is indoors than the Roman Forum, and the weather called for rain in the afternoon both days we were here. So it turns out that in Rome (at least), if you’re pregnant, you don’t have to wait in any of the lines, which at the height of tourist season are quite long... we didn’t find this out, of course, until after waiting in the St Peter’s basilica line for about an hour, but it was actually not too bad, because I had my stool and it was kind of fun to soak in the experience, since the line forms around the outside of the big courtyard in front of it. It also started raining when we got there, but I was prepared—Matthew thought I was silly to buy cheap ponchos at Walmart before I left, but they were excellent. We stayed pretty decently dry, except for poor Rebecca’s shoes (mine didn’t get my feet wet at all, actually). So I had been to the basilica before, and I remember it being very grand, but goodness, I’d forgotten how MASSIVE it is. I guess I didn’t have much to compare it to before, but having been to Jerusalem since, i found the sheer size to be very impressive. It’s also beautiful, of course.
After the basilica, we went around to where the Vatican Museum entrance is—I had figured out by this time that some of the people standing around shouting at us were simply informational and not actually trying to seek anything, so that’s how we found out pregnant people don’t wait in line. However, about 30 feet later we got stopped by a tour guide who told us that there were no more single entries for the day, and you could only get in with a guided tour—which of course was about $50 each... I mean, it was after 3:30, and I did figure that the museum would probably be closing altogether by about 5, and he made the point that there WAS no ticket line anymore... so we may or may not have been suckered into paying an absurd amount of money for a tour we didn’t need, but on my last visit, we got right up to the entrance of the Sistine Chapel, and they closed it because the pope was in town. And I didn’t want to get up to the ticket counter just to be told it was too late and then also miss the last tour. So, we paid the man—Becka was pretty convinced he was leading us away to some other shady business, so she got pretty tense, but once we got back to the museum (they had to take us to their tour office across the street to buy the tickets), she calmed down. We weren’t really that interested in the actual tour, and they told us we didn’t have to stay for it once we were in, but after paying the big bucks, we figured we should get our money’s worth, right? Unfortunately, between the guy’s accent and the poor quality of the headset, I only got about 10% of what he was saying, and about half of that was his catch phrase, “Can you imagine?!” (which he seemed to be confusing with something like “Can you believe it” lol). Becka and I got a pretty good kick out of it, though. And she listened a little more than I did, as well. Most of the museum either hadn’t made it into my long term memory from before or we must have skipped parts, because it honestly felt mostly like a new experience, which was fun. And the Sistine Chapel was truly magnificent. Such an incredible work of art.
Our guided tour actually got us back around to the basilica again, too (eye roll), but we left our guide there, since we’d already had a pretty good look around and it was dinner time. We walked out along the big avenue in front of St Peter’s, where we met Luigi, who was giving out coupons to his restaurant for its 25th anniversary. It actually sounded like a pretty good deal (dinner, drink, and dessert for €11 instead of €20), and we were looking for a nice authentic Italian place to eat, so we said, “Sure! Why not?” He wanted to walk us personally to the restaurant (which he said he owns with his brothers), which for my American sensibilities was a little overkill, and he also gave us a card for his taxi service, lol, but the restaurant was truly charming and exactly what we were looking for. I had lasagna and Becka had carbonara, and we had gelato and tiramisu for dessert, and it was just perfect. Our last stop for the day was the Trevi Fountain (where you wish to come back to Rome), and unfortunately by then it had really started to rain. Showers up to that point had been scattered, and actually the worst of it was while we were inside the museum, but toward sunset it started really coming down. The fountain was still very impressive—I’m pretty sure it wasn’t on when I went before (probably because it was the dead of winter)—and we threw in our coins. I actually wished for my daughter to come back to Rome one day, so I hope she will. :)
So Thursday was Vatican, Friday was Roman. :D This is what I was excited for. We went down to the Colosseum, which I was still kind of undecided about, but I knew I really wanted to explore the Roman Forum. Well, turns out it’s one ticket for it all. This time we did skip the lines, and it was excellent. I highly recommend Rome while pregnant. Straight to the front, no wait at all. The Colosseum was actually very cool. We probably spent a little more time than we needed to, and I definitely spent most of it taking pictures of the view through the arches, haha (I’m so obsessed with arches and columns), but it was very cool to explore. And the Roman Forum was everything I hoped for and more. :D It’s basically downtown Ancient Rome, and you just kind of wander through it all, and there are ruins of temples and gardens and arches... plus there’s also a kind of medieval-era recreation of one of the buildings that is pretty neat, with its own gardens. The complex is actually massive, and we hiked through a good portion of it, although after yesterday, my feet were killing me before we finished it all. Becka wasn’t feeling it as much as the Vatican, but she was a pretty good sport. When we could go absolutely no farther, we made our way over to a cafe to eat and sit. Becka really wanted pizza with ham on it, and we’ve found that most restaurant entrees are about a good size for us to split (our dinners the night before were actually too much for us, haha), so we did that. It also rained again while we were inside, which we were able to wait out. It had sprinkled on us a little toward the end of our Roman tour, but this was the worst of it for the day.
When the rain had abated, we made our way over to the cat sanctuary, a random stumble-upon-find from my last visit. It’s basically a sunken square with a bunch of unearthed ruins, and they’ve made it into a space for feral cats to just hang out. I was afraid there wouldn’t be any cats out because of the rain, but they were there! And we also went down to their little office, which I swear was much smaller and/or they didn’t let you into where the cats hang out, but today we got to see a bunch of them and pet them and it was excellent. :D Since we had about an hour or so left before we had to hear back to catch our train to Pisa, we also decided to walk up to the Pantheon, since it’s not far from there. I got some gelato, and we once again went to the front of the line to get in. It wasn’t quite as exciting as the other stuff we saw, but a nice diversion. And thus ends our whirlwind tour of Rome! On to Pisa!
My favorite thing about Pisa is that it’s so much more than you even expect. In fact, the tower was never meant to be an attraction at all—the jewel of Pisa is its cathedral (which is indeed stunning, and also huge). We got in pretty late at night, so it was actually pretty neat to walk past the square with all its buildings lit up on the way to our hotel. (We stayed in the same places here in Italy that I did before :D) We neglected to take pictures because being out after dark with all our stuff made me a little nervous, but in hindsight, I kind of wish we had. It was beautiful. We got up early in the morning to get out to the square, which was a good choice, because the crowds started descending roundabout 9:30, and we had some time to get to the ticket office (no lines to skip here), have our Italian breakfast in the shadow of the tower, then be the first in when it opened at 9. I’m so glad Rebecca agreed to go up with me. It really is a singular experience, and she made it so hilarious, too. Whoever put a circular staircase in the tower was an unintended genius, because you really get the full effect of the lean as you sway back and forth going around and around and around. Also, the stairs were pretty decently shallow, which made for not a bad climb, even six months pregnant. There were also landings, although I made it about one flight from the top before I felt like I even needed to take a break. There are two observation decks, one higher than the other. Ironically, the lower one gives you more of a sense of the lean, with that sliding-off feeling I remember. They also rang the bells while we were up there (an electronic message plays just before, to warn you, haha). Going down was even funnier to watch Rebecca do than up. She kept bracing herself on the sides and I swear I just giggled the whole way down.
We had left our bags in our hotel room, since checkout was at 10:30, and we still had a few minutes once we reached the ground again, so we visited the crypt before retrieving them. Becka was a little dubious at first, but they have some really neat sculptures and these gorgeous (faded, but you can still tell) frescoes on the walls, and there’s also a courtyard that’s nice. After that we checked out and then went to the cathedral and baptistery. The cathedral is incredibly impressive, especially considering how small of a city Pisa really is. It’s not as big as St Peter’s, but the ceiling is just as high, and it feels nearly as big. The baptistery has two levels, and actually the stairs to the second level were harder than the tower, which is three times as high—these were steeper. While we were inside, a woman stepped up to the front and shouted for silence, then started to sing. It was just chords on an “ah,” but with the acoustics in the place, they blended together into this really amazing harmony— and it was only her one voice! After that we had to catch our flight, but I think we got everything we wanted to out of our short but sweet visit.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)