Trip to Málaga, Spain, Sun., April 12 through Mon., April 20, 2015

Our hotel was the Atarazanas which is on the western edge of the old city and within about twenty minutes walking of almost everything.  Importantly, there were five good bakeries within about ten minutes of the hotel.  The hotel was very comfortable and the bathroom was modern albeit with a small shower.  Much of central Málaga is pedestrian only and has many restaurants.  It was nice to sit outside to eat and watch people.  Málaga is not overrun with beggars, but there are enough that if you do sit outside on the perimeter of the seating area, you are likely to get approached.  And of course we had to have churros and chocolate one evening outside at the most popular churros place in Málaga.  We also saw a protest for human rights in Venezuela which was interesting.  No one bothered them.  Additionally, the Málaga film festival was to start soon and so the city was preparing by rolling out a long red carpet on the main shopping avenue, Larios, and by setting up some displays at the Plaza de la Constitución.  In our hotel room in the evening, we did enjoy watching one of the Spanish TV game shows called “Boom!” which was actually developed in Israel.  There are two teams and each team is given a question with 4 to 7 possible answers.  You then cut one by one different colored cables that correspond to different answers and are connected to a pretend black bomb.  The idea is not to cut the cable to the correct answer.  If you do, then you get sprayed with a colored slime.

Victor Garrido who owns “We Love Malaga” was our walking tour guide the Monday evening of our arrival.  We met near a bronze statue of Hans Christian Andersen who loved Málaga.  We walked through the central mercado, several plazas, a tapas and wine bar with kegs of wine, and other sites.  Interestingly, we entered one of the buildings of one of fraternal organizations that build and maintain huge ornate floats that they carry around during the festivals during Holy Week.  The float had a lot of silver on it and there is a tall handsome garage door to get it in and out of the building.  We mentioned to Victor that we heard a lot of squeaking tires from vehicles, and he told us that this was from the candle wax from all the candles carried through the streets during Holy Week.  We also viewed the Roman amphitheater which is a semicircle built into the side of a hill.  Regrettably, most of the stones had been taken for other construction after the Romans left.  One could also see some of the archaeological excavation that exposed layers down to Phoenician times.  Victor posed the question of how far does one excavate because one is destroying the later layers. We also talked with Victor about the economic situation in Spain.  He said things are getting better and that the 24% unemployment rate was misleading in that there is a very large underground economy.  This irritates Victor because those people don’t pay taxes.  However, the high unemployment rate for the young was a serious problem.

We took several day trips through Viator/Julia Travel to Ronda, Seville, Granada, and Tangier, Morocco.  It was impressive that Jose, our guide to Granada, Paco, our guide to Seville, and Damien, our guide to Ronda, spoke fluent Spanish, English, French and German.  Paco also spoke Italian.  Maria, our local guide in Seville, learned her English in school but also from spending a year in Fort Madison, Iowa.  When asked why she chose Ft. Madison, she said there wasn’t any particular reason; she was just looking for somewhere in the U.S. to spend some time.  Our local guide in Tangier, Hassan, also spoke several languages, Arabic, English, French, and Spanish.

We did take a day trip to Ronda which is famous for its gorge and bridge.  The city is split by a deep, narrow river gorge with a massive stone bridge stitching the city together.  There are several restaurants and hotels on the rim of the gorge with great views of the bridge and gorge.  One of the hotels with the best view is actually government owned.  Our guide said that is typical for a government-run hotel to have the best location.  We also toured the bull ring.  Bullfighting is very important in that region and very famous matadors come from Ronda.  Notably, to start our trip, we had to meet at a bus stop at 7:30 AM but then we stopped at many hotels along the coast west of Málaga.  It was impressive to see all the development.  There are miles and miles of posh hotels and condos west of Malaga along the Costa del Sol.  On the way back from Ronda, we stopped at Marbella (Beautiful Sea) to have time to walk along the promenade next to the beach and to see all the nice shops and restaurants.

Our day trip to Tangier was very much an experience.  The bus did take us by the Rock of Gibraltar.  The view from the east is the most dramatic since that side has the sheer cliff face.  Unfortunately, the highway views are very distant from that side.  The view from the west is much better but that side is a forested slope.  The Rock of Gibraltar and the Jebel Musa on the African side are the Pillars of Hercules.  We had a great view of Jebel Musa driving back from Tarifa, which is where we took the ferry over to Tangier (Tanger in Spanish).  In Tangier, we had a local guide named Hassan, who interestingly wore a silk suit.  The central commercial area of Tangier had many tall buildings, but it looked somewhat seedy.  There was a great variety of dress especially for women.  Some dressed very western while others, especially older women, wore black robes and headscarves.  Sadly, the dental care in Tangier appeared to be poor with many missing teeth, especially back teeth.  Even our guide who seemed well educated was missing most of his back teeth.  We drove to a park on a mountain overlooking the city and passed many very nice neighborhoods of expensive looking homes.  At the overlook, there were several vendors of jewelry, belts, scarves, fossils, etc.  We also drove to a spot where tourists could pay two Euros to mount a camel and ride a short distance.  There were also vendors there who were quite aggressive in selling their wares.  They would not take no for an answer and followed you around offering to lower their price.  There was a young boy who was selling packs of chewing gum for two Euros who followed people almost into the bus.  We drove back into town and  walked through the casbah (or kasbah) to a restaurant to eat lunch with a detour to watch a snake charmer with a live cobra.  Casbah is just Arabic for a fort or city.  (Medina also means city in Arabic).  After lunch, we went to a large building that sold artisan products that were part of a cooperative.  They gave us a nice tutorial about Moroccan carpets and then proceeded to try to sell us one.  One lady did pay $1,000 for a beautiful large one.  From there, we walked through the bazaar and were assailed by street vendors following us and trying to sell us watches, shirts, jewelry, belts, etc.  They would follow people for a long way trying to get people to buy.  And there were so many street vendors that you had to fight your way through the very narrow alleys.  Also interesting was that we saw many cats.  Hassan told us that cats were somewhat revered and that killing one was very frowned upon.

Another day trip was to Seville where we saw the Plaza de España which is a large beautiful semicircular building and plaza constructed for an exposition.  It was also used as the set for the British HQ in Lawrence of Arabia when Lawrence returns from the desert with his Bedouin friend.  It was also the set for Naboo in Star Wars Episode III “Attack of the Clones.”  We also toured the main cathedral and saw the tomb of Christopher Columbus.  The remains were verified as his by doing DNA testing and comparing with the known body of this son.  And we got drenched from a downpour even though we had umbrellas.  On the road to Seville we saw so many olive trees.  In the U.S.’s Midwest it’s horizon to horizon corn and soybeans.  But in Andalucía, it’s mountain to mountain olive trees – some are centuries old.  There also so many white villages – i.e., all the buildings are painted white.  One village is unique in that the cemetery is laid out in the same pattern as the town.  So where you are buried depends on where your house was.

Our third day trip was to Granada to see the Alhambra Palace.  The palace and the gardens are quite beautiful and any travel program on Spain will highlight it.  The history, of course, is that this was the last area conquered from the Moors and was accomplished by Ferdinand and Isabella who are buried in a chapel in Granada.  There were extensive gardens with fountains and pools and running water features, e.g., arching jets of water and channels and cascades in the walkways.  There were also intricate stone fretwork and characteristic Moorish arches all in a white or reddish stone.  Unfortunately, we were told that most of the original tile work on the walls had been stolen and that any white tile one saw was a reproduction.  One fun part of the Granada trip was going to a small antique and coin shop called Juno.  We bought a 19^th century Spanish silver coin and three 1966 coins with Francisco Franco’s image.  The owner spoke no English but it was fun communicating in our broken Spanish.  He kept trying to point out little stars on the Franco coins that had a number inside them.  He kept saying “estrellitas” which we didn’t understand until he drew a picture of a star.  We also browsed a long line of kiosks selling books.  The kiosks were on a tree filled center of a broad boulevard and went on for a block.  We then enjoyed sitting at an outdoor café and having a pastry and Coke.

We did meet a very nice couple from Inverness, Scotland, on our Tangier trip.  They were not in favor of independence and were afraid that the leaders of the movement were now trying a back door approach.  The couple’s opinion was that they were much stronger united.  It was also funny that when we told them we were originally from Iowa, they immediately said “American Pickers” – one of their favorite shows.  They also loved “Pawn Stars.” We also met several other nice people including a Grant Kelly and Pat from near Orlando, FL.  They were both retired and had both lost their spouses.  They lived in the same community and met and found that they both loved to travel.  So they do travel together although they aren’t married.  He was a civil engineer from Toronto that worked for the U.S. Corps of Engineers and actually wrote many of the permits for the “Big Dig” in Boston.  Pat was from the Bronx.  Unfortunately, she had just developed hip problems and was having difficulty walking.  We also met a Peggy from Denver who had worked as a prison warden and was interested in retiring soon and then volunteering in anti-human trafficking work.  When asked about the new legal marijuana legislation in Colorado, she thought it was working fine and she had bought some herself although doesn’t really use it.

On our last day we visited a glass museum.  The museum is actually a large old house owned by three fellows.  Our guide was an older gentleman originally from Lancashire England who had lived in Málaga for many years.  He is descended from minor aristocracy and has been collecting works of glass for decades.  Some of their earliest pieces go back thousands of years and were produced by making a clay form and then dipping the form in molten glass.  The clay is then removed.  He gave an interesting history of making glass products and they had beautiful plates, bowls, glasses, and pure artistic objects.  Interestingly, the glass business was hit hard in WW I when many of the skilled artisans went off to war and never came back.

Another site in Málaga that we visited was the Alcazaba on the east side of the old city.  It has been a fortified area for millennia but the Moors build a palace with courtyards, Moorish arches, and water channels and cascades running in middle of walkways.  It was like a mini-Alhambra.

Trip to Vienna, Austria, Mon., May 12 through Wed., May 21, 2014

Vienna impressed us as a very livable city. There are so many parks and green spaces in the central city – about 1/3 of which is green as we were told. Except for the Danube canal on the northwest side, central Vienna is bound by the Ringstrasse which is a wide boulevard constructed in the late1800’s when the emperor ordered the old city walls torn down and replaced by the boulevard. The Danube canal is an old arm of the Danube River which has been progressively more regulated since the 1500’s to protect against flooding and ice jams. Vienna also has an exceptional interconnected transportation system of trams, buses, and subway. The Ringstrasse and other streets have charming classic style trams powered by overhead electric. (It was fairly easy to navigate, and in fact, we took the number 8 bus from the airport to Schwedenplatz for 8 Euros apiece or about $11. Schwedenplatz was only about ¼ mile from our hotel. The subway is a little different than many subways in that you get a ticket from a self-service machine and then stick the ticket into a device that stamps a date and time at the entrance to the subway lines. There aren’t any gates that would prevent you from riding for free, but rather there are supposedly ticket checkers on the subway trains that randomly check. However, we didn’t see any of them. Vienna also has an extensive system of designated bike lanes and one has to be careful not to stand in these lanes at intersections while waiting for stop lights. Vienna itself has about 1.7 million people and the urban area somewhat over 2 million. About 25% of the 8.5 million Austrians live in Vienna.

Almost everyone we met could speak English and most spoke it fluently. We only encountered a couple of people that did not speak any English. And of course many we met spoke three or more languages. Our guide to Prague, Claudia, who was born in Vienna but lived several years on the Adriatic in Italy, spoke German, Italian, English, French and Spanish. And our guide to Budapest was born in Bogota, Colombia and thus spoke Spanish, German, and English fluently. Interestingly our Spanish was useful. On our guided day trip to Budapest there was a couple from Argentina and two women from Mexico, City and so we could practice some of our Spanish. There was also a server in a gelateria that spoke Spanish. Also, in general, we saw very few overweight Austrians. They seemed very fit and not slovenly dressed except for maybe some teenagers. It also seemed like there was a noticeably higher percentage of blue eyes than in the U.S. Regrettably, we didn’t get to speak to many Austrians except the guides. The hotel staff was always busy as well as the coffee house/bakery servers. But I did have the impression that the Austrians are a bit more reserved than Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Brits, or Irish. They seemed similar to the French in “reservedness.” The more talkative people seemed to be foreigners working in Austria. And interestingly, the two people I asked about Ukraine didn’t indicate much concern about Vladimir Putin’s actions.

As for our flight to Vienna, it was uneventful. We did go through Washington Dulles, and we have to say that that airport is an embarrassment to the U.S. - so old, undersized gate areas, and just out-of-date. On the other hand, the Zurich and Vienna airports were very nice. And Austrian Airlines is the nicest airline we have flown in a long time. The service is like airlines used to be - the plane was so clean, and for better or worse, they don't mind practicing age and looks discrimination in hiring hosts/hostesses who were all young, slim, and attractive. Although our trip to Vienna was smooth, our return trip home was torture. The airports at Budapest, Vienna, and Frankfurt were all having computer problems. For boarding, the gate attendants just kept a tally sheet since the computer system was down. The airport operations were affected to some extent so that we were 40 minutes late leaving Vienna. Frankfurt was having the same problems and so we were 40 minutes late leaving there too. Unfortunately, this meant that we were probably about 30 minutes late arriving in Chicago. This should not have been a problem since we still had about 90 minutes to make our Knoxville flight. But frustratingly, it took us 90 minutes to get through immigration. We waited probably 15 minutes just to get to another line where we waited another 15 minutes. Then we used the new computerized kiosk machines into which you insert your passport. If the system sees no problem, then you get a ticket which you just show someone and then you’re done. However, many people received a big X printed on their ticket which meant you had to wait in another line that only had two TSA agents to check out the problem. It took about 1 hour to get through that line since so many people got an X. I got an X apparently because my name is a common name and there must be another person with the same name that sets off alarms. The agent said that it wasn’t even TSA’s computer system. Ironically, it looked like the non-U.S. citizens didn’t use the kiosk system and so didn’t have nearly as long wait. The upshot is that we just missed our Knoxville flight. My flying partner was quite distraught since we were facing the prospect of probably having to stay overnight in Chicago because the other two United flights to Knoxville and all other airline flights directly or indirectly to Knoxville were booked. The two United flights had standby waiting lists. We took our chances and flew standby and were numbers 3 and 4 out of 8 on the standby list. We felt so relieved when we were able to get on the flight by sheer luck. We suspect that so many people were having such long waits in immigration that many people were missing their flights. And to top it off, my partner’s luggage arrived with our flight, but mine was pulled off by TSA for inspection and didn’t make it until the following day.

Unfortunately for our trip, it rained the first six out of eight full days that we were in Austria with highs in the low 50’s and lots of wind. But we did indoor activities including museums and took day trips to Bratislava and Prague where it was not raining. The Vienna weather was not typical for that time of year, but was part of a low pressure system stuck over the Balkans that caused a significant amount of flooding there.

For the first evening in Vienna after arriving that day, we took a walking tour which was of course very interesting. We started in the Naschmarkt just outside the SW corner of the Ringstrasse. It is a long outdoor market of stalls selling many food and produce items including some bakeries, some clothing, and many restaurants. It was very crowded and seemed maybe a step below the Boqueria in Barcelona. We did walk past many of the important buildings in central Vienna including the opera house, St. Stephens Cathedral, several museums, and the Hotel Sacher – home of the famous Sacher torte which is a single layer chocolate cake covered with a thick ganache. We wanted to have a Sacher torte there, but the price was about $10 apiece, and so we had a Sacher torte at two other cafes. Interestingly, Vienna was bombed around 50 times in WW II completely destroying the opera house. But it was rebuilt after the war from the original plans. Part of St. Stephens was also hit and rebuilt.

We did go to Bratislava, Slovakia on Wednesday and had a nice exposure to the city although it was rather cool and windy. Our guide was just slightly younger than us, and she talked some about the old communist days. Slovaks were allowed to travel to the west only once every ten years and everyone took Russian in school. As soon as the communist regime fell, no one wanted to learn Russian but rather English. Bratislava has so much history. It was the capital of Hungary and was called Presburg when the Ottoman Turks controlled Budapest. Also the treaty following Napoleon's victory at the battle of Austerlitz was signed in the town hall there. Bratislava is not a large city with only about 400,000 people and Slovakia itself isn’t very big. Countries don’t spend a lot on their embassies in Bratislava. The Japanese embassy is in a building shared with a souvenir shop. The U.S. embassy is more substantial apparently for security reasons. We did see many wind turbines between Bratislava and Vienna but wind energy provides less than 2% of Austria’s energy. About 2/3 comes from hydropower and 30% from coal fired power plants. Austrians voted not to have nuclear energy after Chernobyl. But best of all, upon our return to Vienna we had our first Sachertorte along with an apple strudel and Viennese espresso. Interestingly, our Vienna walking tour guide from the night before told us that most young people would rather go to Starbucks than the numerous Viennese coffee houses (they don't use the term cafes). So disappointing. In years past, people would sit in coffee houses for hours and hours even if they didn’t buy more than one cup. There was no pressure to buy or leave; that was the tradition.

Thursday, May 15, was our first full day in Vienna itself. We took the subway to Shoenbrunn Palace. It was rainy, cool, and very windy and so we did not go through the gardens. The palace was of course interesting to go through but we could not take pictures. There were so many rooms and it was fascinating to see the office where Emperor Franz Joseph worked everyday even during WW I and the room where he would have audiences. We also learned a lot about his wife, Elisabeth or Sisi, who was assassinated in 1898. She was very beautiful and her hair was very long, more than waist length. She was very obsessed with her figure and never ate dinner with the family. The Palace was an interesting contrast to Versailles which seemed much more opulent. From Shoenbrunn, we took the subway back to central Vienna and went to the National Library. One can visit two impressive huge rooms that had a second level balcony encircling the rooms giving two levels of tall bookshelves stuffed with fat old tomes. Since 2014 is the 100th anniversary of the start of WW I, there was a display of diaries, photos, letters from soldiers, posters, etc. from the war. After the National Library, we went to the globe museum a couple of blocks away. It was so windy, that we gave up on using our umbrellas even though it was raining. The museum had a very large collection of antique globes with earliest being from before Columbus’s expedition. It was so interesting to see the development of geographical knowledge of the earth from very little knowledge of the new world all the way to modern times. Some globes were at least six feet in diameter. From the globe museum, we of course had a pastry and coffee at a café and then went back to the hotel after collecting a couple of sandwiches, pastries, and a coke on the way.

Friday was our trip to Prague with Claudia as our guide. The countryside was beautiful with fields of canola making wonderful lagoons of yellow. There were also vineyards and fields of hops and lavender – the Czech Republic drinks lots of beer. Much of the landscape reminded us of Iowa with dark brown rich soil and rolling hills and a few forests here and there. The towns seemed compact and the houses were neatly tended to and kept up. Houses generally had a stucco finish and tile roofs. In Prague we picked up our local guide, Jan, since the Czech Republic apparently requires local guides. We started at St. Vitus’s cathedral which was of course beautiful, and then we made our way through the adjoining castle to a rampart overlooking the city where we could see the Donau River, the Charles Bridge, and old Prague. We were fortunate to see the changing of the guard at Prague castle which was a bit underwhelming. There were just two guards, one on each site of the entrance gate, and they were so young and cherubic looking. They didn’t look very serious or threatening. Two other guards marched out led by their presumed officer and went through a formal change. It just seemed like a poor imitation of other changing of the guard rituals. After the change, a middle-aged man got up and held aloft a sign and said something. Our guide said he has been doing that for years. Something about him being treated unfairly by the government. From there we went to the previously mentioned rampart with the great vista of central Prague. Somewhat regrettably, there was a Starbucks café right there. Its architecture fit in well and was probably a renovated old building, but still, it seemed sacrilegious to have a Starbucks on an ancient historical site. In our eleven trips to Europe, Starbucks and McDonalds seem ubiquitous.

 But back to Prague. A wide, stone staircase hugged the curving castle walls leading down to a charming old neighborhood, and we were soon at the famous Charles Bridge. This medieval stone bridge is featured in every travelogue about Prague. It is has stone porticos on both ends and statues line both sides of the bridge. It is pedestrian only and was packed with people. The bridge connects to old Prague and is a short distance from the old City Hall which has an amazing medieval astronomical clock on the outside tower wall (Prague Orloj). The clock was was installed in 1410 and has two faces. One face gives the time of day and the position of the sun and moon in the zodiac, while the hand of the other face points to the day of the year that is on the circumference of a large circle. There is also a mechanical movement in which apostles exit from two doors. We walked over to Wenceslaus Square which is a long, wide pedestrian plaza with lots of shops around it. We had about 90 minutes of free time and so we walked around window shopping and admiring the many crystal glass displays. And of course we had some coffee and a pastry at a café on the square. The café had an interesting wall treatment. The wall was covered with what appeared to be wicker bread baskets. I also used the bathroom which was an interesting system to prevent non-customers from using it. You get a code number with your receipt and then enter the code in an electronic lock on the bathroom door. There are not too many free restrooms. The highway rest stops where the bus stopped had a system where you had to pay about 50 cents and then got a token. In one of these places, you put the token in a slot on the bathroom entrance to get in.

We started Saturday by walking over to the weekly flea market at the Naschmarkt. It was a bit disappointing; there were a lot of clothes and trinkets but we were hoping for books and small antiques and coins. From the flea market we went to the Art History Museum. It is a very large museum and we spent a couple of hours there until our eyes started glazing over looking at so many paintings. It would have been better to take a guided tour in order to help us understand the importance of various works and the changes over time, but the next tour required too much of a wait. Unfortunately, we didn’t discover that there was a whole floor of sculpture, jewelry, etc. until we were ready to leave. After the museum, we enjoyed some window shopping, and naturally, had another pastry and coffee. We also visited a couple of bookstores including the Shakespeare book store which is packed with a lot of English language books in a small space. The books had no prices so you had to take a book to the teller to know the cost. One of us collects Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles” in several languages and so bought an edition in German. We headed back to the hotel to eat and then went out later to an organ concert at St. Peter’s church. The church was very ornate and lavish inside. However, although the concert started out with a nice piece, the rest of the pieces were a bit modern in the sense that they were strange without enough melody and not very harmonious. Probably a third of the people left before it was over. The concert was free, but a donation was requested to help restore the organ. We gave 5 Euros but would have given more had the music been more agreeable.

On Sunday we went to the Natural History Museum which was very nice. The Museum had a large collection of minerals including a large gold nugget worth millions of dollars. There were also many stuffed animals, birds, and fish as well as insects, spiders, and some preserved animals. The highlight was probably the dinosaur exhibit which had full-size skeleton replicas of a saurapod and tyrannosaurus. There was also a nice photo exhibit on the present day Chernobyl area. It was very sobering to see how much damage was done to such a large area that is still uninhabitable although some elderly people have returned to less dangerous towns. Vienna is pretty dead on Sunday since all the shops are closed except for tourist shops. So after the museum we just had another pastry/coffee (big surprise) and went back to the hotel.

Monday was a clear blue sky day with highs around 75 for our day trip to Budapest with Marco, our guide. There were eight of us in the van plus Marco. Interestingly, we got to practice our Spanish since Marco was born in Colombia and moved to Vienna several years ago. He spoke at least English, Spanish, and German fluently. There was also an older couple from Buenos Aires, Argentina who did not speak any English and seemed a bit reserved. Additionally, there were two women from Mexico City, and ironically, a couple from Nashville who were born in Ghana. He was a pharmacist working for a hospital and she was a nurse. They were on a several week vacation in Europe and had visited Spain, France, Switzerland, and Austria and were heading next to Italy and then England and Ireland. One of their daughters was at Emory University and they were paying a hefty tuition, but complained that the daughter still could not get some classes due to insufficient capacity. It was about a 2 ½ hour drive to Budapest. One can’t tell where the national borders are except that there is usually a gas station, restaurant, and quick shop there. In Budapest our guide took us to Buda side first which is on the west side of the Danube River. We ascended to a bluff overlooking the Pest side which is much flatter. It was a great view and we took plenty of pictures. From there we went to another bluff or hill farther north and more or less directly across from the parliament buildings and an old bridge. Beautiful Matthias Church inhabited this hill as well as some shops and residences. We could take great pictures of the impressive Hungarian Parliament building from the bluff; the Parliament building is the second largest after the British parliament and is often seen in pictures of Hungary. We drove over to the Pest side and past some landmarks and stopped at a monument to the founding Hungarian tribes - not really very interesting. We also stopped at a cathedral in central Pest and then had time to walk around the shopping area of Pest. We ate a great lunch of pork loins and new potatoes in a delicious sauce at a restaurant. After walking around awhile we found a charming café where we had dessert and a coke. On the way to and back from Budapest we had opportunity to talk to one of the Mexican women. Her English was very good, since she attended a bilingual school while growing up. She now worked at a small school in Mexico City that tries to focus on drama and the arts to get students more engaged in those activities rather than computer games and texting. She and her boss were in Vienna for an international conference on a particular psychology technique.

Tuesday, May 20, was our last day in Vienna and we spent it taking the subway over to the military museum, and then walking back to central Vienna via the Belvedere Gardens. The military museum had nice displays of medieval and modern weaponry including many uniforms, pikes, sabers, and rifles. There were also huge paintings commemorating Hapsburg victories. And there was also a tank park that included about twenty armored vehicles although many were modern. They had only a couple WW II Soviet tanks including the famous T-34, a U.S. mobile artillery piece called the Pulpit, but no WW II German tanks. There were very few signs for the tanks and all the other signs in the museum were in German only and the audio guide tended to talk about important leaders and not so much about the weapons. However, the cost was only about $5.50 (4 Euros) to get in plus another $2.80 (2 Euros) if you wanted to take pictures. From the military museum we walked through the nearby Belvedere Gardens which were very pleasant although not much was in bloom. The Gardens had several fountains and a great view of Vienna. After walking to central Vienna, we spent several hours shopping. I bought three antique Hapsburg and Austro-Hungarian coins from a dealer who had been in business for about 30 years. She and her husband had started the business, but said that these days the young folk are not so interested in coin collecting. We also went through several bookstores that had some books in English, had a chocolate truffle from a Neuhaus shop in a very nice galleria, went through a couple of souvenir shops (we bought a cute coffee cup with whimsical cats on it) and had a gelato. To wrap up, the Hotel Stefanie was very nice and quite convenient to sites in central Vienna and close to a subway station in order to travel farther away. The staff was very pleasant although always busy. The breakfast buffet was very good, and between the two of us, we usually chose scrambled eggs, cantaloupe slices, blueberry yogurt, cheese slices, wienersnitzel (sp.?), bacon, orange or pear juice, several types of pastries, and crescent rolls with jams. The TV stations available in the rooms included CNBC, CNN, BBC and a couple of other English stations, two Spanish channels, an Italian channel, RTV (Russian TV) which always had an interesting story critical of the U.S., and finally several German channels. Our room looked out over a courtyard and a nearby church tolled the quarter hours and tolled the number of hours on the hour. We didn’t come close to see all we wish including visiting the Hofburg Palace, taking a trip to Salzburg, enjoying the outdoor concerts, touring the Opera House (the lines were so long when we tried), and taking a cruise down the Danube.

Trip to Lisbon, Portugal Saturday, Dec. 7-Sunday Dec. 15, 2013

Lisbon was a really a nice city. The people were so friendly and nearly everyone spoke English quite well especially the younger Portuguese. The weather was pleasant with high temperatures around 60, normal for Lisbon in December, and only about a half day of light rain during our week there. The old central city is very walkable with many interesting shops to browse and of course lots of good bakeries and roasted chestnut vendors (about $2.70 for a bag of about 12). All the sidewalks and plazas are paved with alternating small black and white tiles – the white tiles are local limestone and the black local basalt. And Lisbon is also famous for its many buildings with beautifully tiled outsides. Interestingly, much of the old city is relatively new for a European city having been totally reconstructed after the devastating 1755 earthquake that destroyed about 85% of the city and killed tens of thousands from collapsed buildings, fires, and a tidal wave. That earthquake was one of the largest in recorded history.

The metro (subway) and tram system were very easy to use for taking longer trips and cost about $4.00 for a round trip. We used the metro one evening to go to El Corte Ingles a couple of miles north of our hotel and used it one morning to go to the aquarium on the northeast side of Lisbon. El Corte Ingles (“The English Cut”) is a huge department store with stores in nearly all the major cities in Spain and Portugal. It was fun to browse their large book store, toy section, home section, and grocery/gourmet store. Of course in the book store 95% of the books were in Portuguese with only a few titles in English or Spanish. As far as the aquarium or Oceanarium, it was claimed that it is the second largest aquarium in the world. We did enjoy the Oceanarium, but we were skeptical of the size claim and have noticed that several aquariums claim to be the largest or second largest. Besides the metro, the tram was convenient for going to Belem several miles west of central Lisbon. The tram is an old street car system that runs on rails and is powered by overhead electric cables. It did take some help to learn how to use the ticket dispenser on the tram but the conductor was friendly and helpful. Belem has several interesting sites including the Monument to the Discoveries and an old fort guarding the entrance to the harbor; these two sites are often shown in any program about Lisbon. But we were there primarily to see the Maritime Museum which was full of beautiful ship models as well as artifacts from Portugal’s nautical history. Belem is also where Portugal’s national dessert was invented. It’s a small custard pie called a nata and is very good.

While in Lisbon, we also took two day trips. One to see the Royal palaces around Sintra and another to the small city of Evora with side visits along the way to a cork forest and also the site of some 6,000-8,000 year old stone monoliths reminiscent of Stonehenge. Winter is a good time for guided tours since you get almost a private tour. We were the only couple on one trip and there was just one other couple from Australia on the other. Near Sintra we saw Pena Palace which looks like a fairy tale palace built atop a hill on the site of an old convent. In Sintra itself we toured Sintra Palace whose most distinctive feature is two tall tapering kitchen chimneys. Sintra was a summer retreat for the king and queen to escape the heat of Lisbon. The higher altitude meant cooler temperatures. Naturally the aristocracy wanted to be near the king and queen and so built many nice houses in Sintra. A side benefit of the trip to Evora was leaving Lisbon via the 24th of April suspension bridge at the mouth of the Tagus (Tejo) River and returning over the many miles long Vasco da Gama bridge. The 24th of April bridge is so named after the date of the overthrow of the last dictatorship. The Evora trip did have a side trip to see a cork forest and we learned a little about harvesting the cork. The bark is stripped part way up the tree trunk but not enough bark to kill the tree. The year is painted on the trunk to indicate when the bark was harvested. The bark regrows and can be harvested about every seven years. In Evora we also visited a chapel whose walls, arches, and ceilings were covered with old bones – very creepy. But the best part was ending up in a wine, olive oil, and cheese shop for sampling some of each.

One morning and part of the afternoon, we took a walking tour of Lisbon and spent some time in the Alfama district which is the oldest district of Lisbon, spreading on the slope between the Saint George Castle and the Tagus River. It was not as damaged during the 1755 earthquake so still has the labyrinthine streets and walkways. We stayed very close to the guide since it would have been difficult for us to find our own way out! We spent a good part of our last day in Lisbon walking up to the Castle of Saint George which is about two miles by walking from our hotel. Thankfully there was a free seven story elevator as we started up the hill to the caste that we could take to avoid the hardest part of the climb. Central Lisbon has several elevators and funiculars since there are several hills. The Castle and its grounds had great views over the old city and the Tagus River including The 24th of April Bridge. An anecdote is that the Castle is home to many cats and peacocks. We met a fellow from Brooklyn that was feeding the cats and had been living in Lisbon for years - he really enjoyed the climate. Shortly a tourist from the Bronx stopped by and we talked a little. Ironically the Brooklynite told the fellow from the Bronx that he had never visited the Bronx. One of the neatest parts of the Castle was its camera obscura. This was a round room about fifteen feet in diameter with about a six foot white convex disk in the center. An image from a periscope on the roof could be projected onto the disk and focused by moving the disk up or down. The image was magnified by the lens system, and the periscope could be rotated and tilted to show different sites in Lisbon. The guide gave a quick visual tour of Lisbon via the camera. It was also enjoyable to “walk the parapets” of the castle to paraphrase Mel Brooks in “Blazing Saddles.”

Our trip to Lisbon was very enjoyable. Our days started with a hearty breakfast at the hotel’s breakfast buffet. Then we typically went out for our grand adventure of the day which included day trips to Sintra and to Evora, a walking tour of Lisbon, trips to the Oceanarium and to Belem, and walking up to the Castle of Saint George. Then we would typically return to the hotel after grabbing a coke or snack along the way. We always tried to be at the hotel between 5 and 6 PM for the complimentary glass of port or moscato and peanuts in the lounge area. In the evening we would usually walk down to the old city and stroll around, visit shops, and buy a pastry from one of our three favorite bakeries... It seems that we were forever running into a group of students from a local medical school that sang songs, danced a little, and asked for donations. And in the afternoon or evening we would have to also have a bag of roasted chestnuts. Supper was often a sandwich although we did have two larger dinners. We never felt insecure any place we went although we didn’t go into any “seedy” areas. We were warned though to beware of pickpockets especially on the trams which can get crowded. The pickpockets are hard to identify since they can be dressed as tourists or businessmen or other. We did see a fair number of beggars – maybe one every other block in the center city – and almost every church had one at the door.

Regrettably, we didn’t come close to seeing everything we would have liked to in Portugal, but we did get to talk with some of the Portuguese and learn their perspectives on their economy (bad but probably has bottomed), the European Union (more good than bad), and the Euro currency (bad idea to have joined). Regrettably, as in so many places, the youth have little faith that they will get much from Social Security and feel like politicians are incompetent – imagine that. Portugal itself is actually one of the oldest independent countries in the world having been established in 1139. Today it has a population of about 10.5 million and Portuguese is about the 6th most spoken language in the world thanks mostly to Brazil. Portugal is very proud of its history of navigation and discovery and especially of Vasco da Gama who was the first known European to sail to India. Lisbon has a Vasco da Gama bridge, a Vasco da Gama mall, Vasco da Gama Avenue, and more. An armillary sphere is part of the Portuguese flag and a caravel is part of the symbol of Lisbon (Lisboa). The Portuguese language is similar to Castellano (Spanish) but sounds quite different with lots of “sh” sounds. It does sound lovely but it was difficult to make out many words. The grammar and vocabulary also has some differences and so we could only read about 50-70% of written Portuguese. Most Portuguese could understand Castellano.

Trip to Las Vegas , Sunday, August 4 – Friday, August 9, 2013.

When we arrived in LV at 10 AM, we decided to see what it would cost to rent a car although we had been thinking to just use the LV bus and monorail system. But since Hertz offered a compact car rental for $300 for five days including the collision insurance, we decided to go with that. And since we were then able to eat and play blackjack away from the strip, these savings probably cut the cost in half. Notably the airport is still relatively new and all the car rentals are one large complex about one mile or so south of the airport. One humorous observation was that in the “old days” when one is trying to connect with arriving visitors, you held up a sign with their name on it. Now people just hold up their i-pad with the name displayed.

We stayed at the Paris Hotel, which is very nice although not as plush as the Bellagio or Venetian. By avoiding Friday and Saturday, the average rate was $100/night for Sunday through Thursday night. (Note that there are about 150,000 hotel rooms in LV and about 3,500 conferences per year.) Avoiding Friday and Saturday probably gave us a cheaper car rental as well. LV looked more busy and prosperous than our last visit of seven or eight years ago which was in July or August. Walking up the Strip was like swimming upstream against a relentless current of people. There did seem to be more beggars and more people, mostly Hispanic, selling cold bottles of water on the strip. There were also a couple of new casino/hotels that were very opulent with beautiful architecture. And there are so many upscale shops, but regrettably the old bargain buffets are almost extinct unless you go off the strip, but then the quality goes down. Breakfast buffets were typically about $20/person, and lunch/dinner $30-$50 on the strip although we did finally find a breakfast buffet in Bally’s for about $12 but the quality was mediocre with dried out leathery pancakes.

There were a lot of Chinese and Spanish speaking tourists which probably reflects the growing wealth of these regions. The TV channels in our hotel room echoed this with about 25% of the channels in Chinese, 25% Spanish and 50% English. Of course most of the low wage staff jobs are Hispanic. Penn & Teller was the highlight of the trip, but we did see a couple of other magician/comedians including Mac King at Harrah's and Murray at the Tropicana. Tickets for P&T were about $105 apiece but Mac King and Murray were about $20/ticket. You have most likely seen King and Murray on cable. P&T describe themselves as ardent libertarians and don't even like having to be searched by airport security. In fact they sell a copy of the Bill of Rights printed on a steel card the size of a credit card. Thus when you walk through the metal detector and Homeland Security takes your steel card away, you can tell them that they are taking away your Bill of Rights, especially amendment IV.

Another highlight for me was stopping by Baumann Books which is an antiquarian book store in the Venetian/Palazzo. They allowed me to hold a first edition of " Alice in Wonderland" which has an asking price of $16,000 - we didn't buy it. We did play some blackjack in Vegas and did find a casino off the strip, the Longhorn Casino that only had a $2 minimum. Altogether, we lost less than $100 gambling but had fun doing it over a total of about 7 hrs each. Blackjack is fun because of the social aspect of talking with other players and dealers from around the world. One dealer was from Cuba , who left Cuba 50 years ago and has no desire to visit, and another was a 4th grade teacher that works as a dealer during the summer. It is always fun to talk with the other players and observe people betting $25 or more per hand when they don’t know the basic playing strategy. Interestingly, there were many more women Blackjack dealers than our last visit and some casinos seem to put very good looking women dealers at the tables near the entrances. It is difficult though to find Blackjack tables on the strip that have table minimums of $5, and those that do, paid 6:5 on Blackjacks rather than the standard 3:2 plus they had other rules favoring the house such as the dealer hits on a soft 17. Thus we felt fortunate to still find a $2 table. One casino advisor discourages casinos from changing the rules fearing that long term it will turn off customers. But one understands the big casinos’ desire to keep a minimum cash flow per hour at the tables which means increasing the house odds for cheaper tables. It also did seem that there were fewer table games and more slots. And also regrettably, the casinos seemed to all look the same more so than the last visit with most of them being darkly lit with dark colored carpets. The Tropicana was an exception that had a bright interior and tan carpets.

The food was great but we didn't splurge on every meal. We did eat at Wolfgang Puck's Spago and had a really good pizza and a pasta dish. Also ate at a tapas bar just off the strip. And we had to stop at the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop of "Pawn Stars" fame. Of course none of the stars were there. I did buy a few coins. If you don't get there early though, there is a very long line to just get into the store since it's not all that big. Janis's Vegas souvenir was buying a pair of small dragonfly earrings with ocean (blue) opals and amethyst at a shop specializing in Native American jewelry and pottery. It was a third generation owner whose grandfather lived on an Apache tribe reservation and started out in leather work, such as belts and saddles.

Overall, we enjoyed our Vegas trip especially just walking around which we did a lot of, 7-11 mi/day.

Trip to Moab, UT, Arches N.P., Canyonlands N.P., Monument Valley, Page, AZ, Glen Canyon Dam, Horseshoe Bend of the Colorado R., Rattlesnake slot canyon, Upper Antelope slot canyon, north rim of the Grand Canyon, and Bryce Canyon

We flew into Salt Lake City on Thurs July 26, 2012, arriving about 1:00 PM, rented a car, and drove down to Moab, Utah.  It was a pretty drive over the mountains on highway 161 (?) and took about four hours.  We stayed at a very nice B&B with a nice view over the valley and red sandstone bluffs on the far side.  It had a very large commons area for the guests to relax and watch TV, play pool, and drink complimentary wine or soft drinks.  The owner, Keith, and his wife build the B&B about 15 years ago and then she unfortunately died a couple years later.  They designed and built it themselves except for pouring the cement foundation.  Keith is also a pretty good artist and designed a lot of the art works in the house.  A lot of his work is metal work.  Sean the cook came every morning to make us a great breakfast.  Our first morning he made “desert flowers” which is a flour tortilla put into a muffin tin and baked and then filled with essentially a quiche with sausages.  We stayed at the B&B four nights and hiked several times in Arches National Park, and the Islands in the Sky division and the Needles division of Canyonlands National Park.  It is so beautiful in that area.  We also met interesting guests at the B&B.  There was a young Italian couple from Venice.  Her English was pretty good and his was maybe just a little weaker.  He owns two fish/seafood shops in Padua.  They were in the U.S. for about three weeks and seeing many sites in CA, NV, AZ, UT and CO.  There was another couple from Henderson, KY – Bill and Paula although she is originally from Boston.  He was a retired chemical engineer.  And then there was one other couple from the San Francisco area – Carl and Katherine.  They were both retired chemical engineers too that worked for Chevron.  She was actually a Romanian Jew that had defected during the communist regime.  She didn’t defect for religious or economic reasons since as a chemical engineer she enjoyed a good salary, car, and apartment.  She just wanted freedom and so she defected when she was able to take a trip with her son to a conference in Italy.  She had been out of the country on a previous trip and when she returned, her friends asked her why she had returned.  But she couldn’t leave her son behind.  She was granted political asylum in the U.S. but had a hard time getting a job here since her chemical engineering degree wasn’t really recognized in the U.S. and she didn’t know the English technical language.  So she started at the bottom at Chevron as a technician and went to school after work to get a U.S. degree.  She eventually rose to a high position. 

We did several hikes in Arches and Canyonlands.  Since Arches was closer and had more scenic hikes, we went there several times.  It was only about 10 minutes from our B&B.  We did try the Delicate Arch trail our first day but we didn’t get there until about 10 AM and it was already pretty hot.  The trail has a significant elevation change with no shade.  We got probably 80% of the way and most of the elevation change out of the way but Janis thought it would be best to turn back due to the heat.  The rest of the days weren’t as hot but we still tried to go early or late.  Since breakfast wasn’t until 8 AM, we could get up early and do a hike first.  We did a hike in the Window area, hiked to Landscape Arch which was neat since you hike through some narrow passages between big “fins” of sandstone, and also did the Park Avenue trail.  Then on one morning we went out to the Islands in the Sky section at Canyonlands where we did the Mesa Arch trail which is very popular and frequently photographed and also did the Upheaval Dome trail.  The next day we went down to the Needles section of Canyonlands with a brief stop at Newspaper Rock which is covered with a lot of petrographs.  In the needles section we did the Slickrock loop trail.  It was interesting and pretty.  The trail is pretty much all solid rock rather than sand and you have to be on the lookout for the next Cairn which were the only signs of where the path was.  The trail is not particularly hard but it is a lot of up-and-down and very exposed.  There isn’t a good trail map or signposts so you aren’t really sure where you are or how much farther things are.  There were a lot of pretty views.

From Moab we drove down to Monument Valley, AZ.  The buttes were beautiful and we started down into the “valley” to drive the loop road.  The person at the information desk at the visitor center said that it shouldn’t be a problem for cars to drive the loop but after going about ¼ mile, the road was so rutted, potholed, and bumpy that we turned around.  We were afraid of damaging the car.  All in all Monument Valley was a bit of a disappointment.  It looks great in the old John Wayne movies but Arches and Canyonlands were more enjoyable.  We also stayed two nights in Page, AZ.  We toured the Glen Canyon dam, went to the scenic overlook of the Horseshoe Bend of the Colorado River and another often-photographed view of the dam and bridge.  We also drove over to the north rim of the Grand Canyon which was spectacular, of course.  It was 55 degrees there at 2 PM.  Monday July 31 was a real highlight though with guided tours through the Rattlesnake and Upper Antelope slot canyons - incredibly beautiful and everyone has seen photos of Antelope Canyon.  The canyons are about 20 feet or so deep and very narrow with near vertical walls.  The walls are sandstone that has been scoured by the flash floods so that the walls are very smooth and have a flowing feel.  We had Rattlesnake Canyon all to ourselves but there were probably about a hundred people being herded through Upper Antelope.  (Lower Antelope Canyon is where 11 tourists were killed by a flash flood in August 1997.  Most were foreigners and the guide survived by knowing a little about kayaking rapids.)  Our guide was Josh who is a Navajo.  He gives guided tours in the summer and goes to a community college the rest of the year in Mesa, AZ.  He ultimately wants to open a camera equipment shop and photo studio.  He was very good a setting our cameras for the best color and brightness and giving us the best angles.  We stayed at a B&B the first night in Page and at a Best Western the second since the B&B was booked.  That was just as well since the B&B was not what we hoped.  It was just an old split foyer house that used the bedrooms in the bottom level as guest rooms.  There were two shared bathrooms which we didn’t care for and not really a common area.  But the hosts were very nice. 

We left Page Tuesday July 31 to drive back to Salt Lake City with just a brief stop at Bryce Canyon which we had visited before.  We stayed at another nice B&B in SLC just north of downtown, Ellerbeck Mansion.  We walked to a great bakery called Gourmandise and also saw the new downtown redevelopment called Creekside.  It’s an urban mall built around a creek.  Before leaving for the airport the following morning, we had to revisit the bakery and go to a rare and used book store where Janis bought an old mystery book and I bought a first edition book of Charles Addams cartoons from the New Yorker.  

Ironically, it rained four out of the six full days that we were in the southwest but it was generally sunny.  The first day in Moab was very hot but it wasn’t too bad after that especially if we did our hiking early or late in the day.  It was also interesting that there were so many European tourists.  We heard a lot of German and French.  They must be fascinated with the U.S. west.  In our group of seven at the Antelope Canyon tour, there was a French family from Versailles, France (another engineer although an electrical engineer this time).  They were on a month long visit of the west and this wasn’t their first trip.  There was also a couple from Spain and one person from Slovenia although she now lives in the U.S.  We asked about whether most Parisians can really speak English and just refused to do so which is what so many people have told us.  Our tour companion said that most of the older French really do not know English but the younger generation mostly does.  This is consistent with our experience.

Paris, France with a daytrip to Brugges, Belgium Thursday, May 10 – Friday, May 18, 2012

Our flight left Knoxville about 11:15 AM on May 10, 2012 but we had about a three hour layover in Charlotte.  The Charlotte airport is fairly nice and we had a sandwich at Quiznos and a truffle apiece at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and a yogurt at another place.  Our Paris flight left around 5:30 PM.  Regrettably, we had an older model Boeing 767 without individual monitors so we couldn’t amuse ourselves watching movies.  Moreover, the screens for the cabin movie were very small and the movie wasn’t something that interested us.  We arrived in Paris around 8 AM.  Customs was very perfunctory and they just stamped our passport without asking any questions.  The Charles de Gaulle airport itself was very modern when it was built but it is dated now.  The design is odd with several circular terminals and off of each terminal there are about six satellite terminals that are reached by moving underground walkways.  These walkways in turn are accessed in the main terminal by several transparent tubes containing moving walkways in the inner atrium.  We took a taxi from the hotel for about $95 since we weren’t familiar with the train/bus system.  But now that we know a little more about Paris we could take the train/bus and save some money.  Besides, the traffic was just horrible going into Paris and was at a crawl much of the way.  A non-rush hour trip is about $20 less.

Our hotel room at the Hotel Tour Eiffel was very small with no end tables nor chairs and the bathroom was so small that the toilet was set at an angle so that you could actually sit down.  The TV only received about 12 channels and the only English channel was CNN.  The room did have a safe to keep valuables but when I tried to operate it, I promptly broke the aluminum key off in the lock.  Hotel rooms are small in the inner European cities but this one was much smaller than other rooms we had stayed in.  However, the room was clean and functional.  And there were five bakeries within a block of our hotel so that partially made up for the small room.  We always had at least one pastry per day and sometimes had a large meringue as well.  Fortunately we walked 6-12 miles per day to burn off the calories.  The hotel was about 1 mile from the Eiffel Tower and we tried a couple of times to go up in it.  However, the lines were always incredibly long since only one of four elevators was working to go to the top and we would have had to wait a couple hours in line.  There are stairs to the 1^st and 2^nd level but you can not take the stairs to the 3^rd level, i.e., the top.  Our hotel was also next to the Romanian embassy and we had a nice view out of our 4^th floor window into their garden behind the hotel. 

The highlight of our trip was ironically a daytrip to Brugges, Belgium.  This is an old city a little ways inland from the coast and did not see industrial development of 19^th and 20^th century nor much war damage so its many old buildings are very well preserved.  The are also many canals and it is called the Venice of the north.  Interestingly, the southern part of Belgium speaks Walloon which is really French and the northern part speaks Flemish which is dialect of Dutch.  The two groups don’t get along and our French guide said she is better off speaking English in Brugges which is in the Flemish part of Belgium even though people can speak French and usually English too.  As another side note, the border into Belgium is pretty much invisible although there is a border control point and the Belgiums do occasionally check identity of people entering.  Hence the reason for our tour company, CityRama, saying that everyone should carry their passport.  One fellow didn’t and so had to get off the bus in Paris before we started and run back to his hotel.  He delayed our start by about 10 minutes.  In Brugges our guide took us through the city and talked about the history of the city and many of the beautiful old buildings.  Her English was very good.  Then we had a couple of hours on our own to shop, take the canal boat tour which was included in the tour price, and eat.  We did take a canal boat tour which was fun.  We also had some truffles at the Godiva Chocolate shop.  Godiva was originally a Belgium company but then was bought by Campbell Soup and then sold to a Turkish company a few years ago.  We ate our main lunch at Casa de Patatas (Spanish for House of Potatoes) and had a big hamburger and French fries.  Of course we had to stop at the one bakery and have an Apfelflap.  There weren’t many bakeries but lots of chocolate and lace shops.  We also met a nice retired couple who live in Charlotte, NC.  He used to be president of University of Montana and we had a nice talk about life in academia.  To get to Brugges, we took a double decker bus and we sat in the top level to have a nice view of scenery.  We made one stop half way to Brugges and then again coming back to Paris.  France is like Britain in that along the freeways there aren’t shops, gas stations, etc. at the exits but rather there are little built up areas periodically along the freeway itself with a little shopping center containing restaurants, groceries, gift shops, a hotel, and gas station.  Our group was mostly Americans but with about 30% Spanish too.  When we got off the bus in Brugges we were told to be back at bus by 3:45 and that the bus would leave at 4:15.  One couple didn’t get back in time and even though the bus waited for 10 minutes, they didn’t show up and were left behind. 

We enjoyed walking around Paris.  The area we stayed in was a richer area since that’s where many embassies are located and government workers live.  There were also lots of small shops and cafes.  Interestingly, it seemed like all the small bakeries and sandwich places sold only a few soft drinks but always had Coca Cola.  It seemed like Coke was very popular.  We also soon found out that the scale of the city was much bigger than we had realized.  What looked on the map to be not too far away were usually a couple of miles.  Paris is very big and 12,000,000 people live in the urban area. It has many wide boulevards, many trees, large beautiful stone buildings and was very clean.  To get around, the metro (subway) was essential and relatively easy to use.  What would have taken 1 ½ hours to walk took only about 15 minutes by metro and tickets were about $2.20 for one trip. 

Here are some day-by-day highlights:

·         Friday:  We got to the hotel about 10 AM but the room not ready until noon.  So we tried to walk to meeting place for a walking tour Janis had found on the web and that started at 1 PM.  It was raining and chilly and we realized we couldn’t easily make sure that we had our room and also make the tour so we had to abandon the tour. 

·         Saturday:  We went to Louvre and saw some of the famous works including the Mona Lisa, which was surrounded by a throng of people, the statue called Winged Victory and the Venus de Milo plus Hammurabi’s Code.  As much as we love art (though not at all experts) it does get to be too much after a while.  We also saw the famous glass pyramid which was designed by I.M. Pei and serves as the museum entrance.  It is in the central plaza of the museum and surrounded by wings of the Louvre.  It received a lot of criticism when it was built but it seemed to work as a design to us.  Ironically, the Eiffel Tower was heavily criticized too when it was built.

·         Sunday:  This was our Brugges trip and we had to be ready to be picked up at 6:30 AM and did not get back about 9 PM.  Regrettably we woke up the hotel clerk when we left since he sleeps on the couch in the lounge area.  Since we got back to Paris so late, we had the tour driver drop us off at the Eiffel Tower to enjoy it at night.  At night it has a beautiful orange glow from lights on it.  At the top of the hours it has hundreds of bright white lights that go off randomly and look like hundreds of camera flashes and make the Tower sparkle.

·         Monday:  We did the Notre Dame cathedral on this day which was sunny and the temperature was in the high 60’s.  It was a lot of walking even though we took the metro to Louvre in order to buy a tour ticket for Versailles and then walked over from there and then back to the hotel.  We did find a used book store that stocked only English titles but we didn’t buy anything.  We also ate lunch at one of the street cafes although we ate inside and had omelets.  All the parks were full of people taking their lunch and soaking up the sunshine.  Interestingly we did see several soldiers with automatic weapons walking around and also saw some at the airport and around the government buildings.

·         Tuesday:  We took the subway to one of the big shopping streets and went to the Galleries Lafayette.  This is a huge upscale department store similar to Harrods and has a beautiful atrium in the center.  The food court had incredible selections of meats, cheeses, desserts, etc.  From there we went to the Centre Georges Pompidou which is devoted to modern art.  It is a museum often shown on TV which is distinguished by having most of the mechanical equipment and escalators on the outside.  There were some interesting works on display but had a lot of works that we just didn’t get.  We did have a nice savory chicken pastry on the way there though.  We took the metro back towards our hotel but stopped on the other side of the river in order to see the Grand Palace which has a big glass atrium.  But it didn’t seem like it was open to the public without paying.  But we did find ourselves in the midst of dozens of police vans full of police and many others milling about.  We didn’t realize that this was the inauguration day for France’s new president, Francois Hollande, and that the Elysee Palace was just north of us.  For dinner we went to a nearby grocery store and bought some lettuce, sliced cheese, and slice turkey to make some wraps.

·         Wednesday:  We took a guided tour of Versailles in the morning.  Travel again was by a double decker bus and was about a 40 minute trip to the south.  The Versailles Palace and gardens are magnificent although all the furniture was sold off during the revolution and so the furniture there are pieces from that period but not the original.  The Hall of Mirrors is of course the most impressive part.  The palace is huge and we saw only a part of it during our two hour tour.  Both at the Eiffel Tower and at Versailles there are dozens of what seemed to be immigrants from former French African colonies selling trinkets – mostly little colored Eiffel Tower key chains that were stored on a big steel ring.

·         Thursday:  We tried to go to the Maritime Museum since we’ve had good luck with enjoying such museums.  But it was closed since it was a holiday (Ascension).  We did walk around the nearby Passy Cemetery which is an above ground cemetery with many famous people buried there.  The above ground vaults were quite striking and “hauntingly” beautiful.  We also went to the Hotel Invalides which was built by King Louis the XIV so that his wounded and old soldiers could be taken care of.  It’s now a war museum and we toured the WW I and WW II museums as well as the museum of old armor and weapons and also saw Napoleon’s tomb.  For dinner we had probably our only authentic French meal at a brasserie nearby.  We shared a pumpkin and chestnut soup, a salmon club sandwich for me and a potato omelet for Janis.  They were all exceptionally delicious.  Our other meals included Italian restaurants, Panini’s, and sandwiches.

·         Friday:  We left the hotel at 8 AM for our trip back to the U.S.  Although our flight #787 was uneventful, the same flight four days later was the one on which a woman told a stewardess that she had a device implanted in her body which caused the plane to divert to Maine escorted by two F-15 fighters.

Some further comments:

·         Most people in the small shops did not seem to know much English.  Many people have said that they really can speak English but just don’t want too.   We’re not convinced that is true.  From our experience, it is very hard to learn another language if one isn’t immersed in it.  But most of the restaurants and tourist areas had fluent English speakers.  So we were disappointed in not being able to talk with Parisians and French people about their views of what was happening in France and Europe.  Our hotel clerks were very nice and polite but just weren’t very chatty unlike other countries.  And even if the bakery shop clerks could speak English, there were always lines of customers.

·         We also read that the French are very well dressed but that was misleading.  There certainly were many well dressed Parisians but there were also many dressed very casually but not as casual as Americans.  There also not very many obese French.

·         We had visions of dining casually at an outdoor café but the streets in the area we were in had a lot of car traffic and narrower sidewalks than imagined.  It didn’t really seem that much fun.  Admittedly, there are a lot of restaurants in the areas we visited.

Rome, Italy - December 8-15, 2011

Trip to Rome, Italy - December 8-15, 2011

The flight from Philadelphia took 7.5 hr with a dinner of cheesy penne pasta and then a sweet roll before landing. The plane was an A330 which must have been a recent version since we seemed to have just a little more knee room and the TV screens were larger than older versions. We did watch the movies Cowboys and Aliens, Rise of the Planet of Apes and the last Harry Potter plus Janis watched Solaris too. We landed about 8:30 AM and went through customs which took just a couple of minutes and was very perfunctory. The customs agent barely opened our passport and the waved us through. She didn't even stamp it nor enter anything into a computer. (We did though have to show our passports at the hotel and they registered us with the police – it’s the law in Italy.) The airport is about 17 miles west of central Rome on the Mediterranean coast and so we didn’t get to see much from the air on the way in. One negative is that the shuttle to the hotel cost about $53 plus a $6.50 tip. There wasn’t an obvious tourist info booth nor bus service. Also, the train or metro was probably cheaper but the closest stop to our hotel was about one mile. It did take a long time to get to the hotel by limo since the freeway ends before Rome and it was all busy local roads from there and in central Rome the streets are very winding, narrow, busy, and it was often necessary to dodge people. The trip back to the airport was even more expensive since we used the hotels service to arrange transportation – it cost about $81. And going through U.S. customs at Philadelphia was a nightmare. We had a 1.5 hour layover between our flight from Rome and our flight to Charlotte but the plane was 1/2 hr late (10 ½ hr flight) and then it took 40 minutes to get through customs and another 30 minutes to get through security. We were told that it often takes hours to get through customs in Philly. Fortunately US Air got us on a 9:05 direct flight to Knoxville

We stayed at the Hotel Abruzzi which was very nice and clean albeit small. The shower was extremely small and difficult to even turn around in. The staff persons at the front desk were very nice and friendly and we enjoyed chatting with them. The hotel is just across from the 2000 year old Pantheon. Our hotel window looked right at it and also overlooked a nice little piazza with a fountain. Restaurants pretty much surrounded the piazza which seemed pretty typical for Roman piazzas. We took a nap for a couple of hours and then explored the Pantheon and the area around our hotel. The Pantheon was built by the Romans as a temple to all their gods but was converted to a Catholic church; indeed there is a small worship area and altar on the side opposite the entrance. The tombs of a King of Italy and of Rafael are also in the Pantheon. A distinctive feature is the oculus, i.e., circular hole in the domed roof that lets in light. We later went over to the Trevi fountain, walked through a few stores and admired the Christmas lights along the Via del Corso. They were strings of red, green and white lights hung over the street and running lengthwise.

For dinner meals, we ate at restaurants close to the hotel on three nights. We generally had pizza Margarita, spaghetti bolanese, or ravioli. One restaurant was particularly memorable since we sat at tables in the narrow street outside the restaurant and enjoyed watching all the people go by. Plus our waiter was very friendly. It was funny to us that pizza Margarita is supposed to have basil so that the three colors of the Italian flag – red, white, and green - are represented. But there was never any basil. We specifically asked for basil one night and so they put three small leaves on top. It was also funny that we happened to talk with one Italian while waiting in line for customs at Philadelphia. Since there were so many pizzerias we asked whether that was typical of Italy or just of the tourist areas. He said pizzerias are very common throughout Italy but that he preferred Pizza Hut. Two other nights for dinner we just bought sandwiches and ate them in our room and the other night we bought bread, lunch meat, lettuce, sliced cheese, and yogurt at a small grocery store nearby. It was an interesting experience to feel like a Roman shopping for food. Breakfast was always a buffet of scrambled eggs, cheese and ham slices, chocolate croissants, and orange juice, coffee or hot chocolate at a restaurant across from the hotel that the hotel had contracted with. We usually didn’t eat a lunch per se, but rather had a gelato after walking in the morning. We really liked the gelato and the variety of flavors was tremendous although I usually went for either the tiramisu or stracciatora (vanilla with chocolate chips). It was about $3.25 for a small cup. There was even a gelateria that offered 100 flavors. We also usually had a pastry at one of the many numerous bakeries. And twice we had roasted chestnuts. We had never had roasted chestnuts; they were so good although a bit pricey at $6.50 for 10 large chestnuts served in a brown paper cone. There were lots of vendors standing over their large, shallow, circular pans with charcoal bricks. Interestingly, none of the vendors looked Italian but rather looked like either Indian or North African with darker skin. In some places we had to run a gauntlet of such vendors selling various toys or, when it rained, umbrellas. There were also numerous beggars sitting up against building walls asking for money.

English was not much of a problem where we were. There was almost always someone who spoke some English in the stores and shops we went to. We also felt pretty safe everywhere we went. There were always lots of people almost everywhere and lots of activity well after midnight. The piazza outside our hotel had street musicians that would play or sing until about midnight. One night there was a very good opera singer. (Fortunately our room windows were very sound proof.) The streets are typically very narrow and full of people and there are many tourists and lots of little shops and history. We enjoyed just walking around and window shopping.

The upper and lower houses of the Italian parliament were just a couple minutes walking from our hotel – the senate to the west and the lower house to the east. The buildings are right in the midst of all the other buildings with no buffer zones. You can walk right by them and not know what they are and cars can drive pretty close to them. There are some pop up posts in places to prevent traffic getting too close and there are some police, but in general, the security looked minimal. Since we were in Rome during the euro crisis and the Italian government was proposing further budget austerity, we did see small demonstrations against austerity measures the last three nights. They demonstrated in the piazza outside our hotel in front of the Pantheon or in front of the lower house. The ones in front of our hotel started with classical music or American pop music. We talked to two of our hotel desk clerks, a young worker in one of the bakeries, one of our tour guides, and an older professional that we met in line in Philadelphia. No one was happy about the economic situation. The young man didn’t believe he would get a pension (equivalent of our social security) when he got older. Another felt like it was a manufactured crisis and if the Italian government would sell some of its gold reserves or other assets, then there wouldn’t be a problem but he also said that the retirement age needed to be raised to something similar to the U.S. – “no more of this retiring at age 50. Italians are getting a dose of reality.” Two people felt that joining the euro zone was a mistake. And two people felt that people just needed to stop complaining and get a job. Of course two people pointed out that the financial crisis started with mortgage problems in the U.S. but didn’t actually blame the U.S. for Europe’s problems. Since they didn’t actually blame the U.S. for their problems, we didn’t pursue it. They were probably just trying to say that the U.S. is having its problems too.

On Saturday we walked up to the Spanish Steps to see what they were. (See photos.) They are very wide steps that go up about a 100 foot hill. There was lots of activity there since they are famous and there is a piazza and fountain. They we walked up to Piazza del Popolo to see where our tour started on Sunday. Then we crossed the Tiber River and walked down Cola di Rienzo which is a wide boulevard with lots of shopping. We ended up at St. Peters Square at the Vatican. We wanted to go into St. Peters Basilica but the line stretched 2/3 of the way around the Square so we went to the Vatican Museum. The museum contains many art objects, tapestries, and of course the Sistine Chapel. It was very crowded and goes through so many rooms that we really didn’t get as much out of it as we should have. It was awesome to stand in the Sistine Chapel and look at Michelangelo’s work on the ceiling. It was humorous though that the famous painting of the finger of God stretching out to meet the finger of Adam is much smaller than we thought it would be since it’s just a small part of the overall ceiling but pictures in magazines and on TV focus on it and give an impression that it’s very large. We headed back to the hotel. That night we went over to the Christmas fair in the Piazza Navona which was a circus in Roman times. All the lights and all the people were neat. There were two long rows of boots selling Christmas ornaments, toys, food and other trinkets. Not much high end stuff and again most of the vendors didn’t look native Italian.

Sunday was our big day since that’s when we went on the Angels and Demons tour. That is described at the end of this narrative. There were six Americans, five Germans, and four Italians on the tour. Monday we went back to the Vatican to go through St. Peters Basilica. We went on a tour and our guide was very good. We did see the sculpture La Pieta by Michelangelo which is a stature of Jesus’ body in the arms of Mary. There is a Plexiglas wall in front of it since several years ago a crazy guy took a hammer to it and did some damage before he could be stopped. You can’t see the repairs from far away. They never could find part of Mary’s nose. Regrettably, we could not go down in the crypt under the main level to see the tombs of the popes and St. Peter.

On Tuesday we went over to the Colosseum. The column of Trajan, Trajan’s market, and some ruins are on the way. Regrettably, it looked like Trajan’s market was closed to tourists for some renovations. It was neat to go into the Colosseum and try to imagine the 40,000 or so people in the stands watching the games. We rented an audio guide which was helpful but a guided tour would have been better. We also walked over to the Roman Forum. There isn’t much left of the Forum since much of the stonework was reused in other buildings. But it was still interesting to be at the heart of the Roman Empire of hundreds of years ago.

Wednesday we just walked around and shopped. We were hopping to find a purse or something for Janis but they were so expensive. We did go to a yarn shop and Janis bought a skein of yarn. There aren’t any large department stores in central Rome just many, many small shops. Throughout the trip we saw many beautiful Christmas lights, ornaments, and large trees. One tree was decorated with Mercedes Benz symbols and the nearby street had lights and decorated with Mercedes Benz symbols as ornaments. There are also so many churches and it seemed that the majority were called Santa Maria something.


Interesting facts from the Angels and Demons tour in Rome with Roberto Sunday, Dec. 11, 2012

Note: Our guide’s name was Roberto. He had an American father and Italian mother, but he grew up in Italy and his first language is Italian. He spoke English like a native with a very American accent. He had also just found out that his wife was pregnant with their second child and that there was some concern whether their parents would be happy about it because of the financial implications (or was it a story to bring a bigger tip?). Roberto got a B.S. degree in geology and a master’s degree in archeology. He had been doing the tour for eight years and keeps adding new tidbits of information. Interestingly, since the Euro crisis was ongoing, Roberto also said that the Italians were initially enthusiastic about joining the euro but that the prices of things went up a lot when the euro was introduced but that wages did not go up and hence many think it was a mistake to join. Below is what he told us on the tour.

o “Angels and Demons” is just a book and Dan Brown took considerable license to pick and choose and invent things to make a “page turner” of an adventure. One purpose of the tour was to reveal the “truth.”
o A basilica (coming from root word for bishop) is the seat of a bishop whereas a cathedral (coming from root word for cardinal) is the seat of a cardinal
o Capella or chapel in English means a small church but in Latin it means a tomb. The chapels in churches in Italy are generally family tombs and of course were built by wealthy families. Each one has a crypt below and is covered with a slab that is part of the floor and looks like a circular or elliptical manhole. The bodies are put in the crypt and just decompose. Hence, there can be quite an odor of decaying flesh which gave rise to the term “Demons hole” which was part of Dan Brown’s book. In particular, the church Santa Maria del Popolo was the first church in Brown’s book where an executed cardinal was found and was the church where we started our tour. It was built by the Chigi family whose wealth came from banking. Their family crest is six vertical shields in a pyramidal stack with an eight pointed star on top. In their chapel in the church are two pyramids on each side which symbolize the family crest. Dan Brown took poetic license to say that the pyramids stood for something else. The Chigi family was also responsible for funding much of St. Peter’s Square and you can see the family crest in several places. Also interesting is that the church was supposedly built on this site because there was an old forest of poplar trees with a legend that Nero’s ghost roamed the forest. The word for poplar is also “popolo” so the church means either Saint Mary’s of the People or Saint Mary’s of the poplars depending on your taste since no one knows for sure. The construction of the church there over 1000 years after the death of Nero, who is loathed by Christians, was a way to purify the site.
o Nero was loathed by Christians because he executed St. Peter on the site of a hill and possibly an ancient Etruscan village called “Vaticum” whence the name Vatican. Nero cleared the Etruscan ruins and built the Circus Nero there. Nero hated the Christians whose religion had been outlawed. After the fire that destroyed most of Rome, he blamed the Christians although it is often believed Nero started the fire himself. He also later executed Peter on this site and Peter is buried there. Legend is that, out of respect, Peter asked to be executed in a manner different than that of Jesus. So Nero had Peter, then around 70 years old, crucified upside down. Nero was very eccentric and used to bath in public with his three (??) wives and two (??) husbands, yes husbands, in a large shallow red stone bath filled with warm goat’s milk.
o The plan of St. Peter’s Square is in the shape of a keyhole which is a symbol of the lock and keys to enter the kingdom of heaven. Two crossed keys (our Basilica tour guide said one is silver to symbolize power on earth and the other gold to symbolize the power in heaven) are of course symbols of the papacy and has an origin in the symbolic Jesus giving Peter the metaphoric keys to the kingdom of heaven. There were of course no physical keys but rather just the metaphor. The Catholic Church’s “conclave” to choose the next pope comes from “con clave”, i.e., “with keys.” Peter is, of course, waiting with these keys at the gates of heaven.
o Peter was the first pope chosen centuries after his death by the Council of Nicea. The phrase “on this rock I will build my church” is also interesting. In Aramaic, a dialect of Hebrew, one of Peter’s name meant rock which was translated into Greek and then into Latin as the word meaning rock from which we get Peter, e.g., Spanish ‘piedra’ (rock), or petroleum, petrology, or petrograph, etc. (There is of course some dispute about this derivation of “Peter.”)
o It is also interesting that Rome is full of obelisks from Egypt from the Roman Empire days. Saint Peter’s Square has a large obelisk that is 4,000 years old. Regrettably, it used to have hieroglyphs but at one time the Church became concerned that the hieroglyphs might be witchcraft symbols and so had them “sanded” off. (Note also that this obelisk is also called the Pope’s p****.) But we must resist making judgments with today’s standards. The Catholic Church would certainly not do this today but would simply not display the obelisk there. “Angels and Demons” also refers to a plaque in the Square with a cherub blowing wind to the next church site. However there are actually 16 such plaques blowing wind from all directions symbolizing the central importance of Rome. Dan Brown chose the one blowing from the west because it suited his purposes.
o St. Peter’s basilica is actually the fifth basilica on the site. Bernini had a large role in the design including the 140 statues of saints and martyrs adorning the top of the colonnade. There are over 3,000 (??) statues designed by Bernini in Rome alone. Bernini of course didn’t sculpt them all but rather designed them and then supervised their construction by his workers and pupils.
o The tour also visited the church Santa Maria della Vittorio which was also a site in “Angels and Demons.” This church of course contains the beautiful statue by Bernini the “Ecstasy of St. Teresa.” This was apparently a scandalous work at the time since it put into stone the vision that St. Teresa wrote about in which she seemed to be saying that she had sexual intercourse with God although the statue is much more modest. St. Teresa was a nun from Spain whose family was Jewish at the time of Isabel and Ferdinand who gave Jews and Moors two simple choices – convert or leave. Her parents converted and wanted to marry her to a well off Christian family to help solidify their position. She did not want to marry the man plus she also wanted to be educated and so chose to become a nun. The statue is baroque as evidence by the emotion and movement. The statue is famous for the flowing robes and emotion in the face.
o The tour also included the Piazza Navona or Plaza of the Navy which was a Roman circus in which mock naval battles were sometimes staged. In “Angels and Demons” the protagonist, Robert Langdon, finds this obelisk with a dove with an olive branch in its beak, i.e., the angel of peace, which supposedly points to the next site. The olive branch doesn’t really point in the correct direction and the story invents the reason that the direction was changed which isn’t true. Also, the obelisk stands in the middle of a fountain and one of the kidnapped cardinals was chained and dumped into the fountain to drown. In actuality, the fountain is fairly shallow.
o The last stop was Castel Sant’Angelo. This was originally the mausoleum of Emperor Hadrian but was plundered in one of the barbarian invasions. “Barbaros” meant any foreigner to the Romans but came to be associated with the red beards, ‘barba ros,’ of the Teutonic invaders. The mausoleum was originally lined with marble as were many of the old Roman temples, etc. but the marble was stolen in the invasions. The marble was hung on the walls with iron pins and was simply pulled off by invaders and that’s why so many walls of Roman ruins have walls full of little holes. The crypt of Hadrian within the monument contained a golden urn of Hadrian’s ashes but the urn was taken and the ashes dumped. The Catholic Church built on top of this building as can be seen by two distinct architectural styles. The papal library is at the top and was where the kidnapped cardinals were kept and branded in “Angels and Demons.” Interestingly, Pope Paul IV was the pope who had all the ‘private parts’ of the Vatican statuary chiseled off and replaced with fig leaves. But the papal library which Pope Paul IV used frequently was decorated with a mural all around the top of naked figures. Hypocrisy?? It also interesting that the ‘private parts’ that were chiseled off were saved and that the Vatican does plan to restore them eventually. This paints a curious image of boxes of these body parts lying around somewhere in the Vatican. Notably, it is a very strong tradition for centuries that once a work of art is unveiled you don’t change it. But Pope Paul IV violated that rule. Michelangelo’s work in the Sistine Chapel also had many nude figures and the Pope waited until after Michelangelo died and then had some of the figures painted over with clothes. The Castel Sant’Angelo gets its name from Saint Michael, the patron and protecting saint of Rome. One part in “Angels and Demons” was a secret underground passage from Castel Sant’Angelo to the Vatican. There never was such an underground passage but there is certainly an aboveground passage that is atop a wall stretching between them.
o Our guide also reminded us of the pagan origins of the Easter Holiday although Easter is now associated with the Resurrection. I don’t remember everything our guide said but a quick web search (http://landscaping.about.com/cs/pests/a/easter_rabbit.htm) indicates that the name Easter comes from the pagan Saxon goddess Eastre who was the Teutonic god of the dawn, spring and fertility. (The sun indeed rises in the east at dawn.) The first full moon after the vernal equinox was associated with rebirth and pregnancy and of course the egg and the hare were symbols of rebirth and fertility.
o Our guide also touched on the existence of an ancient society called the Illuminati. There apparently no evidence for such a society but there was a Bavarian Illuminati secret society of freethinkers founded in the 1700’s. There is no evidence that Galileo, etc. belonged to such a society as portrayed in the book.
o Our guide also claimed that there were many similarities between the Christian belief in resurrection of Jesus and other older religions such as the Egyptian god Horus but that discussion seemed speculative and a little out of context and best left for those wishing to pursue it which can easily be done through Wikipedia and other sources.