Random Tidbits

Most surprising: I spent three weeks in Europe and only paid for a bathroom once.

Most challenging: Staying awake and trying to function after traveling for 20+ hours

Most impressive: The Chinese gymnasts on uneven bars and balance beam.

Most precarious: The steep and narrow staircases to reach the top of the Duomo in Florence.

Most beautiful: Venice canals at dusk

Most annoying: Having to pay for water at restaurants.

Most consistent: Eating gelato every day in Italy!


Most exciting: Watching Clint practically jumping up and down after we bought tickets to Wicked.

Most delicious: Indian food in Covent Garden our first night in London.

Most anticlimactic: London Bridge

Most amusing: In Venice, an American woman with a southern accent repeatedly yelling out the window (in English) for a couple that was arguing loudly in Italian to "knock it off".

Bus By Boat

Clint and I took a little day trip to Murano island yesterday to see the famous glass factories. Immediately after disembarking from the vaporetto we were ushered into an old building (which looked like it might fall apart at any minute) to watch a "demonstration" of the glass blowing process. This consisted of watching three guys smoking cigarettes and casually twirling quasi-molten glass in varying states of completeness in very hot stoves. At some point we were encouraged to start clapping and thereafter we were ushered back out the way we came. I'm still slightly mystified by the whole event, but some of the glass pieces really were amazing.

On my last night in Venice I decided to ride the vaporetti on the canals at sunset/dusk, then have a nice dinner while Clint went out and had his own adventures exploring the island. During the preceding evenings I had figured out which of the cafe orchestras I liked the best in St. Mark's square, and I was planning to splurge and have a nice late dinner while listening to the music. As it turned out, I arrived at my chosen restaurant just in time for the orchestra to take a break, but the servers assured me that they would continue playing shortly. So I sat down and looked at the menu, which consisted of drinks and desserts. Deciding that dinner is generally overrated anyway, I changed my plans and turned this into a "dessert for dinner" event. I ended up sitting there for two hours, long after I had finished my very expensive dessert and hot chocolate, listening to miscellaneous classical selections, themes from musicals, etc. The evening was perfect, although I kept feeling colder and colder despite an outer layer of fleece. Around 11pm it was time to head back to the room to meet up with Clint, but I stopped by to give the orchestra members a tip and thank them for the lovely entertainment this week. The pianist was confused and thought I had a special request, so I tried to clarify that I just wanted to thank them, and mentioned that I'm a violinist. He thought this was great and invited me to come play with them. At first this sounded crazy so I started to decline, but changed my mind after a bit of encouragement. The violinist handed me his instrument and bow and the group played a selection from Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik with me, cold rusty fingers and all. Totally random, but one of the coolest things that has happened on this trip. A lady from LA even took pictures and hopefully she'll email them to me in a few weeks.

We made it to London today...finally! Even though the actual flight from Venice to London only took two hours, somehow it took us from 8am-6pm to get from there to here. Insert four hours of delayed flights and a few more hours of riding public transportation and there you go. But we took a walk and found a great Indian restaurant in Covent Garden, where Clint tried a plate of random Indian food...and liked it...and actually got full! Mostly I think he was just humoring me, because I really wanted Indian cuisine tonight, and I was fully expecting to stop by Subway on the way home to finish off his dinner. For those of you who know Clint, you may not believe the food that was consumed from his plate tonight. I really should have taken pictures. Oh wait...I did! Hooray!

It's funny how much I appreciate being able to read signs and use complete sentences in English again. The sequence of Germany, Italy, then England has provided me with a variety of opportunities to compare and contrast the different cultures and systems for doing things. Maybe I can expound on that more when I return home.

Finally a country that has chai and Dr. Pepper. I guess I am starting to miss home. :)

Actually I think three weeks of traveling to different places every few nights is a little bit long for me. Next time I might want to stay a bit longer in fewer places, but this has been an excellent introduction. We just have two more days of sightseeing left, and I have over 2 GB of pictures to download when I get home. Both Clint and I are losing steam on museums and touristy things (standing in lines for hours with tons of noisy clamoring tourists gets old pretty fast, and I mean, I can only digest so much art per week.) If we had more than two days in London I would probably be inclined to sit in a coffee shop for half the day tomorrow and continue reading To Kill a Mockingbird, which I have rediscovered on this trip. The usage of words and well articulated descriptions is delightful. Now I want to watch the movie. But since we're leaving Sunday morning, I think we will probably get up by 10 tomorrow and actually see some things tomorrow. Maybe we'll go to a musical tomorrow night if we can get tickets for less than an arm and a leg.

Two night owls traveling together actually makes for a nice travel schedule. We sleep in until somewhere between 9 and 11am, while all the tour groups are out standing in lines to see all the sights in their guidebooks, then we wake up in time for lunch, eat some gelato, and enjoy the cities later in the day when those same groups are tired and taking their afternoon naps. The only problem with this plan in Italy was that half the places in the city seem to close down between 1-4pm for lunch/nap/chilling breaks. It's a nice concept though, once you get over the fact that it means you can't do half the things on the list in the afternoons.

If I don't manage to post anything else from England, check back sometime next week for pictures (which I will hopefully post in a few days after I sort through them and recover from jet lag.) My journal is full of thoughts and activities and memories, so there will be more general recap blogging happening over the next few weeks. Thanks for reading. It's been fun to write!

Fastest Vivaldi Contest

Little known fact: Venice has streets.

After crossing the bridge to Venice on the train Monday night, we took a vaporetto (water bus) ride from the station to our hotel at the opposite end of the Grand Canal. Clint watched my bags so I could sit in the back of the boat and watch the city glide by in the twilight. The lights reflecting off the water create a magical atmosphere, which was enhanced later in the evening by wandering around St. Mark's square listening to dueling restaurant orchestras that play familiar classical and show tunes on outdoor stages.

Venice is definitely a tourist town, but I have been happily surprised by the number of non-couples here. This morning while eating breakfast in the hotel (it sits at the corner of two canals), I watched four gondolas float by in a row that were packed with Asian families.

We actually got around the city entirely on foot yesterday. You really do need a good map here, because I don't think there is a major street (or one that goes in a straight line for any length of time) on the entire island. So far we haven't gotten lost, which is actually sort of disappointing because we have done a lot of wandering around.

Yesterday we had a fantastic sun, rain, hail, and thunder storm in the afternoon. We have a corner room on the third floor of a cute hotel with shining marble floors and confusing stairways, which is also at a canal intersection of one of the gondola routes, so we got to sit in the room and watch very wet people in gondolas floating by in the sporadic rain showers. They actually make gondola covers, which seem to serve a much more practical purpose than car covers (since they have plush seats in many of the gondolas). I think I might wait to pay a lot of money for a gondola until I am rich and/or famous, or until someone else is doing the bargaining and paying.

Okay, this has been a happy post until now, but I have to spend a few of my very expensive internet minutes ranting about something. Although this trip has generally exceeded my expectations, last night was a bit of a let down. We went to see Vivaldi's Four Seasons performed by a local chamber orchestra in a random concert hall near St. Mark's cathedral in Venice. The tickets weren't cheap, so I was expecting it to be a pretty good concert. That was my first mistake. Keep your expectations low and it's hard to be disappointed. First of all, everything in Venice is expensive. Second, this chamber orchestra plays the same two programs on alternating nights for 4 months in a row. Third, Venice is known for being a tourist town, not for being a major music capital. Granted Vivaldi was born here, but that doesn't mean music lovers flock to the town to see the Vivaldi museum (I've tried to go twice and it's been closed both times.) I sat there wondering if I was watching my high school piano quartet play our favorite Rondo as fast as possible, every man for himself, rushing to the end, neglecting any kind of phrasing, rhythmic accuracy, or ensemble togetherness. I'm not kidding. I could have sworn that the first and third movements of every single concerto were marked Vivace Molto. Just to give you an idea, this group played six concerti and an encore in less than an hour. It actually hurt me to watch. But the rest of the crowd seemed to be impressed. In my opinion, if Vivaldi looks difficult to play, it's because you're not playing it well. It should look beautiful and singing and effortless. Sigh.

On to London tomorrow. :)

Vacation Within a Vacation

Riomaggiore. The Cinque Terre. The Italian Riviera. Peace.

I reached a significant milestone in my life this weekend: I figured out where I want to go on my honeymoon. These villages are nestled among the cliffs of coastal Italy, inhabited by locals who understand the beauty of taking life slowly. I also love this place because:
a) I always love the coast -- water, breeze, waves crashing on the rocks
b) I love sleeping in
c) People are happy and relaxed and they smile back
d) There is plenty of gelato

We are staying at a private room owned by a lady named Anna who speaks almost no English. It has a private patio with table, chairs, and umbrella, is located way up the hill of the main road, and has a refigerator (I am learning the value of being able to chill our own water.) Yesterday we rented kayaks and paddled around until all the muscles in my shoulders were screaming for a break, which took all of about 45 minutes. But we managed to not roll our kayaks, which was good because we were already getting wetter than anticipated just by sitting on the seats!

Later we took a ferry from the southern-most town (Riomaggiore) to the northern-most (Monterosso) and had a nice dinner. I even drank a glass of local wine! Clint and I decided a few days ago that we had to try the wine in Italy, even though neither of us really likes alcohol in the first place, so yesterday was wine night. And we ate at this super cute, and very affordable, restaurant that sits above the beach with a clear view of the ocean, just in time for sunset. Could I ask for anything more? It is also good, I think, to have a few days off from sightseeing, because my brain is very full of museums and needs time to actually have a vacation where I don't feel obligated to do anything in particular. Today I'm going for a long hike on the trails that follow the coastline from town to town, and I think Clint wants to do more kayaking and go running. I'm looking forward to a calm day of walking, listening to music, reading, and taking pictures.

Life is too short. Tomorrow we move on to Venice! But this also means that I have only a week remaining until real life comes upon me once again. Next year I think I will be making several trips across the ocean. It brings a refreshing perspective on normal life.

Home Is Where The Pizza Is

Welcome to Florence, where the locals are riding mopeds, drinking coffee, and kissing their sweethearts on street corners, while the tourists are eating gelato, pointing at street signs, and clutching maps and guidebooks between their remaining fingers. It's interesting to keep walking through these cities where tourists and local people coexist in a weird sort of equilibrium.

We saw Michelangelo's most famous sculpture today, David, in the Accademia museum, which also houses a musical instrument section with instruments by Stradivari and Amati. David is seriously like 20 feet tall, and one of the most impressive things I have seen in a museum ever. The artists during this time were amazingly good at representing the human anatomy in a realistic way. Yesterday we climbed the 463 steps to the top of Brunelleschi's famous dome in Florence, which was exhausting and sweaty but provided a great view of the city.

Clint and I got lost in a non-touristy part of town today (our map ended without us noticing...hehe.) It was kind of fun to see people going about their normal life and not necessarily speaking English or being inviting toward tourists. Tomorrow we're off to relax in Cinque Terre for a few days. We're enjoying the train travel so far.

No Hablo Italiano

We made it to Florence on the train today, after spending half the day in Vatican City. I mailed a few postcards from the Vatican Post Office (it's a different country, you know!) and did some people watching in the Sistine Chapel. They don't allow photography of any kind, and they also ask you not to talk, but people have surprisingly little self control. The noise level would start at a low hum and get progressively louder until one of the guards would clap his hands with a loud "SHHH" and the noise would die down for about five minutes until a new group filtered into the chapel.

We're loving the Italian food and the staff at the restaurants -- they have been so nice despite our lack of speaking Italian. I have actually used (or tried to use) Spanish quite a bit the past few days to communicate with people at restaurants and hostels who don't speak much English. The two languages are similar enough that it kind of works.

Roman Walking Tours

Impressions of Italy...

Apparently people like their soda very flat here. If you order a Sprite at a restaurant, first of all it will cost you upwards of $4, and basically you will get hydrated, slightly flavored sugar. I guess they like their water with bubbles and their soda without.

The traffic patterns in Rome are still a complete mystery to me. The "walk" sign seems to be more of a guideline than a strict rule. People pretty much cross the street whenever there seems to be an opening, and sometimes when it's your turn to walk, you better watch out or you might get hit by a bus. There also seems to be a very different concept here about what is a safe distance between a pedestrian and a car. Much more "intimate".

Graffiti is everywhere, including all over the sides of the subway trains. The Roman Forum has a big cat refuge and adoption program. People let their laundry dry from their balconies, next to the rooftop garden terraces.

There are lots of little pizza/pasta eateries along every major and minor street. Based on the number of restaurants around here, Italian life must revolve to a large degree around food. It's really funny to walk along the streets near touristy areas at night, because the people working at these places literally walk out to you and try to recruit you to come to their restaurants. And random accordion players will walk up to play a few tunes and then walk to your table and literally ask you for money. Some guy also walked up to our table within the same 10 minute window and put a couple of roses in front of me, and after I handed them back to him he put them back down in front of me again, asking for a Euro or so. Very persistent.

In other news, Clint and I thinking about developing a "gelato map" for all the starving tourists, because we always seem to be able to find plenty of gelati stands when we have just eaten but can't find any when we're hot and thirsty and REALLY want some gelato.

Okay, one of my favorite little things in Rome is that they have these public drinking fountains all over the city. But they're not quite the same as in the states. They run all the time, first of all, and they point downward, which is good for filling water bottles. But if you block the output spout with your hand, the water will be redirected to a spout that points upward. Very manual system, but it works.

The ambulance sirens (which I hear quite frequently) are sort of friendly, with alternating tones in 6ths. Very musical, if slightly out of tune. :)

Today I bought a baseball cap that says "Italia". It was made in China.

Smile If You Love Italy

The German portion of my trip has been brought to you by the letters "sch" and the word "entschuldigung" (slang for I'm a klutzy American).

Yesterday was my third of the past four weekend days that I have been up before the sun. This is so wrong. But I did get to see the sun rise from the west side of the plane. On the way into Rome I was casually looking out the window, when suddenly there was the Colosseum, just looking sleepy down below.

When I landed at the airport in Rome, people literally started clapping and cheering. I also noticed more smiles on people's faces as I walked through the nonexistent customs check in Rome's smaller airport (Ciampino) and made my way out to the bus. Italy has a very different vibe from Germany/Austria. More relaxed, more casual, more dirty, less perfectionistic, and more smoking. However things still seem to operate fairly efficiently (although I'm not sure how!) The laid back atmosphere reminds me somewhat of Mexico).

Yesterday Clint made it to Rome to join me, and after a lunch of pasta we wandered around the city for most of the afternoon and evening. More walking. Maybe I will lose 5 pounds on this trip, despite all the carbs and gelato. Oh yeah, I had three servings of gelato yesterday. What can I say, it's good stuff. :)

The hostel is run by a girl from Colorado and another girl from Brazil. It's really cute, just a few rooms in an old building that faces a side street. I slept like a rock last night. Off to see the Colosseum for real today!

Don't Pet the Snake

I think that I may be turning into Dad. I have started reacting to each new challenge and adventure by thinking...heh, this will make a great story. Thanks Dad! I hope things are good in China.

As y'all may have noticed ... the US women won the gymnastics team competition yesterday!!! It was very exciting and completely surreal to actually be there in person. This is the biggest sporting event that I have ever attended live, and I kept suddenly remembering that fact at various moments and just having this big goofy smile on my face. Fortunately there were thousands of other people there and I will probably never see any of them again, so I don't really care if I look like a crazy happy tourist.

I fell in love with Austria at my first glimpse of Salzburg from the train. Although it was raining a lot during most of my 24 hours there, I still had a chance to do a few things in the city. I was thankful to have tossed my umbrella into my bag at the last minute! The Dome (huge church) in Salzburg is huge, beautiful, awe-inspiring, and incredibly ornate. It is also heavily decorated with fire extinguishers. There was literally one every hundred feet or less. This struck me as highly amusing...like brandishing a plastic knife if God were to send fire from heaven to devour the building.

Ooh, one of the coolest things that I did in Salzburg was to attend a violin/piano sonata concert in one of the rooms of an old palace. The concert was echoey and glorious. Again, one of those surreal moments when I want to pinch myself to see if it's really happening.

The hostel in Salzburg was actually part of a dorm for music students, attached to a beautiful old church. You walk through an archway to get there (actually there are stone archways everywhere -- I really like them.) It was also in Austria that I figured out the restaurant protocol is to just walk in and sit down somewhere. Apparently you look like a dumb American tourist if you wait for someone to seat you. It could be a long wait. But I got my food and sat in the smoking section in order to try to blend in ( i.e. not be the only person in the non-smoking room) and listen to the conversation of the locals. Not that I could understand much of anything, but it felt less weird anyway. There are some awkward things about traveling alone, and eating at restaurants is one of those things for me. It just feels sad and lame always asking for a table for one and sitting there with nothing to do, or reading a book and being completely disengaged.

It's interesting to see the multi-lingual, multi-culturalism of Europe first hand. Apparently I don't have 'American' stamped on my forehead, because people keep addressing me in German and don't switch to English if I can manage a sufficiently convincing Guten Tag. One of my roommates from Canada said she would not have guessed that I was American. In an odd sort of way this makes me happy. My current challenge is to conduct all of my transactions related to food without having to resort to English.

Public transportation is extensive, relatively cheap, and very efficient over here (at least in Germany and Austria), which is totally wonderful. I just get a pass for as many days as I need when showing up in each new city and it totally relieves the stress of buying tickets all the time or taking the wrong train and having to backtrack for an extra fee. But I still do a LOT of walking. I finally realized today why I seem to get hungry every few hours -- I probably walk 5-6 miles on an average day. And it's great. My shoes are comfortable, walking is slow enough that I get to see the city in more detail than I would on a bike or in a car or on a train. Bikes are actually very popular here (I saw about a dozen of them at once, with their owners, getting off the subway in Munich!)

I keep waking up around 2am feeling wide awake for no apparent reason. Actually that was my exact routine for the first three nights in Europe. Dad, does this happen to you too? Last night was my first time sleeping all the way through the night, and I proceeded to go to breakfast in my pajamas. hehe. A couple of girls from Munich even invited me to sit with them, despite the sweats and the crazy curly hair that had yet to be tamed. The humidity does interesting things with my curls.

There are many signs of environmental friendliness in Germany. I already mentioned that people ride bikes and use the trains/subway regularly. Many people also have those tiny smart cars that can parallel park by turning perpendicular to the curb. So cool. Also, you don't get plastic or paper plates/cups almost anywhere. When I ordered my food at the gymnastics venue yesterday, the lady handed it to me in a napkin and gave me my Sprite in a plastic cup. Then she informed me that I would get the 'cup deposit' of 1 Euro back when I returned the cup.

I had a day off from my regularly scheduled activities today, so I decided to go to the zoo. Now I know what you're thinking... 'you go all the way to Europe and you want to see animals from everywhere else in the world?' Well, this wasn't just any zoo. It has all the standard animals, but it also has a full-on aquarium, a rain forest building, an insect house, a reptile building, a nocturnal animal house, and gorgeous botanical gardens. The tigers were wrestling, the chubby gorilla was flirting with the crowd, the chimpanzee was curled up in a corner looking like he was pondering the meaning of life, and one of the elephants was slamming sticks into its neck to break them into 'bite sized' pieces. And I don't understand much German, but I think the skull and crossbones is an internationally recognized symbol for 'don't pet the snake'.

I'm having a great time getting lost, finding things that I wasn't looking for (like great falafel today), meeting new people, eating new things, being surprised and intrigued by all the little differences between how things work here and how they work in the US. Having a monetary denomination of 2 makes a lot of sense. I'm not sure why we don't have a $2 bill or coin in America.

If you are still reading... I love you guys and I know I will miss the family a lot when I get back home to Boise and life returns to its normal, comfortable, occasionally boring routine. But it has been really good for me to have left at the same time as Mom and Dad so I can adjust to your absence more gradually.

Ciao!

Safe in Stuttgart

The weariness from my previous blog entry has subsided and I'm having a great time. It's very liberating to travel light, and to be able to carry all my belongings for 5 miles trying to find my hostel without collapsing. The hostels are working out great so far. I have ended up in all girls rooms of 4-5 beds, to my pleasant surprise, and have met gals from France, New Zealand, Germany, Toronto and San Francisco.

Every day brings new adventures... What am I going to eat for breakfast (and lunch, and dinner)? Why doesn't my ATM card work? How can I take a nap if my room won't be ready for 3 hours? Seriously though, my courage and comfort are growing by leaps and bounds every day. And although many people speak some amount of English, I have been grateful to know a few key words and phrases in German.

It turns out that my stomach is a most obnoxious and insistent traveling companion. It's one of the few things that seems to want to be on a schedule despite the fact that I am on vacation. Never before have large quantities of meat of questionable origin seemed so palatable as they have these past 4 days.

Oh, did I forget to say... I am having a perfectly fabulous time!!! After the first day when I didn't even know which way was up, I have my energy back and a big smile on my face most all of the time. Somehow it seems pretty easy to just go with the flow, laugh when things don't follow the perfectly laid plans, and not feel obligated to do all the touristy things unless I feel like it. The whole fact of being here still seems a bit surreal, and I have to keep reminding myself that it is not a dream. The countryside is beautiful, the people are friendly, the churches are AMAZING, and the escape from normal life is much needed. Today I am heading off to watch the women's team final of the world gymnastics championships in Stuttgart and I am SO excited!!!

There is so much more to write but my internet time is almost up. I'll try to post more blog entries as I go, where possible.

Lindsay

munich

i got here safely but yesterday was quite the adventure. apparently long flights on almost no sleep that arrive first thing in the morning local time does not agree with me. also i cant figure out the local keyboards so some letters may be wrong on this post. many of my sightseeing plans have not turned out the way i expected, but i am trying to just go with the flow and not have too many expectations for myself. so far i have not eaten at any restaurants whose names i recognized, so i consider this to be a small victory. now i am off to catch the s bahn to see a castle on the outskirts of munich before i make my way to salzburg. still have to figure out the train schedules. every day is definitely a new adventure. nothing is comfortable yet. but hopefully that will be half the fun. if i can keep myself hydrated and fed!