Historic Paris

Today we woke early and were excited for clear skies, though still cold weather. We walked around through our neighborhood and found a nice little cafe for breakfast. We had quiche and tea and coffee. It was very good and a nice little place. We then walked over to the Eiffel Tower and looked at it up close.

We bought our museum passes and then caught the subway to the Notre Dame. We walked around inside and then walked down into the crypt to see original walls and ruins of old buildings from the founding of Paris. It was very similar to the ruins at Pompeii and Ercolano that we saw in Italy, but it was completely underground, right beneath the Notre Dame.

Then we took the subway to the Louvre. It was pretty amazing as well. We saw the Venus de Milo, Winged Victory and the Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa is a bit strange. It is very small and is in this enormous room as the single item on a large wall. It is behind protective glass. Kind of weird for a small painting, but it is very cool to see in person. We also saw two old sculptures by Michaelangelo that were similar to his "Prisoners" sculptures that are in the Accademia in Florence.

We rode the subway again down to the Arc de Triomphe. It is large and magnificent at the end of the Champs Elysees. It was all lit up at night and had a huge French flag flying in the middle. The arc was actually closed when we were there for a special military ceremony, which we actually saw marching to the arc. They had the entire Champs Elysees closed and an old marching band was leading a parade of old military folks who were carrying old flags. It was cool to see, especially with all the traffic stopped behind.

We walked up and down the Champs Elysees and looked at all the shops and stores. They have just about every high-end store you can think of, as well as many car dealerships. The car dealerships are inside the buildings; it is quite odd.

After the military ceremony, we walked underground to the Arc de Triomphe and looked around at it. We saw the large French flag and an eternal flame that was lit, surrounded by bouquets of flowers.

We then took the subway home and found a nice take-away restaurant to get some late dinner before bed. We watched Marseille versus Monaco on TV. It is nice because since there is no English-speaking TV, if we decide to watch TV, then we watch soccer.

Tomorrow we have more sightseeing with the Musee d'Orsay, Eiffel Tower and others. It will be our last full day in Europe which is a little bittersweet. We have loved our time here in Italy and France, and would like for it to continue. But at the same time we are quite worn out and are missing our families and friends (and of course, Bruno). So while we are sad to have our time ending on this side of the pond, we are, in a way, ready to be baak home and share our experiences with everyone.

'Til then, au revoir!

M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E!

Today we made our trip to Disneyland Paris. We were so excited for this trip; Jessica LOVES Disneyland, and I have only been to Disney twice, and both were a long time ago. This was shaping up to be a great time of play and relaxation.

We left the hotel bright and early this morning, and walked to the Metro station. To get to Disneyland, we had to take the subway, and then transfer to an RER train. The whole trip took a little less than an hour.

The train station was right in front of the main gate for Disneyland, so we walked right in to the park. We loved it right from the start. Everything was already decorated for Christmas (can you believe that it is about a month away?!).

We started down Main Street U.S.A. and then headed for Frontierland. We rode Big Thunder Mountain first and got our first thrill-ride of the day. There was also a ride called Phantom Manor that was a scary ride. I got Jessica to ride it even though she hates scary things.

We then made our way to Adventureland and the Pirates of the Carribean, Indiana Jones and Swiss Family Robinson rides. Then on to Fantasyland and It's a Small World, Mad Hatter's Tea Cups and Peter Pan.

After a quick stop at Sleeping Beauty's castle, we ventured into Discoveryland. We rode Space Mountain, Buzz Lightyear and Star Wars rides and saw the Captain EO 3D show with Michael Jackson.

We went back and rode Space Mountain again because it was so awesome.

We also saw all the Disney characters and saw their Christmas parade and "end-of-the-night" parade. The production and attention to detail of everything at Disneyland is so amazing.

We also realized that going to Disneyland in the off-peak season is the best idea. The park was not super crowded though there were more people there than Jessica or I thought would be there. But even with the number of people who were there, we never really had to wait to ride any rides. Literally the longest part of the line experience was walking from the entrance to the loading area for the ride (five minutes at the most).

Toward the end of the day, we decided to splurge a little bit and have a nice dinner. There was a full service restaurant inside Pirates of the Carribean that was called Blue Lagoon. The seating area was "waterfront" and boats from the ride came right by the restaurant area.

We had a wonderful dinner. Jessica had a shrimp cocktail and carribean chicken with rice. I had a sampler platter appetizer and crispy mahi-mahi with large shrimp. We split the flaming creme brulee for dessert. It was wonderful and a great end to our visit at Disney.

We got back to the hotel and went to bed to rest up for a big two days of sightseein in Paris. We will see more historic sites tomorrow. Au revoir!

Welcome to Paris

This morning marked the end of our time in Italy. We enjoyed our last half a day in Venice before heading off for another whirlwind of travel to Paris, France.

This morning we really wanted to take a gondola ride. We woke up nice and early because we thought a sunrise cruise would be a good idea. The weather was a bit chilly but clear, but there were no gondoliers around. We checked several gondola stations, but there was no one to be found.

We found a small café and had some coffee and a pastry and then returned to the hotel. Our concierge said that the gondola rides do not start until 9 a.m. so we decided to wait until then. We walked around some more of backstreet Venice.

Around 8 a.m. it started raining. We continued walked around, and saw that a lot of the gondoliers were working on their boats, tying and untying them to each other, fixing the tarp coverings and bailing out water that had collected overnight.

It kept raining, so we decided that we would walk a little more. We saw some shops near the Rialto Bridge before we came back to the hotel. Our hotel has a little terrace off the main lobby that is situated right beside the gondolier station. There is enough room for two people on the terrace, so Jessica and I sat there and watched the gondoliers at work.

We decided not to go on a rainy cruise, but there were some people who were still doing it. The gondoliers were still pretty busy. We sat there and watched them for about an hour. We were starting to get hungry, and we wanted to get a quick lunch before we left for the train station. We found a little cafeteria and got some soup and pasta.

We said our farewells to Venice and boarded the No. 1 vaporetto back to the train station.

We rode a train from Venice to Milan, then took a chartered bus from the Milan train station to the Milan airport. Then we flew from Milan to Paris. We got to Paris and rode the train into the city from the airport, and then walked to our hotel.

It was indeed a whirlwind, but we are here in Paris. Our hotel room is a lot smaller than the ones that we have had previously on this trip, and we are in a double bed instead of a queen like our other stops. But we have an unbelievable view of the Eiffel Tower out our fourth-floor window, so that more than makes up for it.

One main difference is that today we are not only in a new city; we have done that change before. But this time we are in a new country with a new language. Right when I was getting used to using a tiny bit of Italian in conversation, now I have to totally switch my thinking to French. Luckily I took two years of French in high school so I have the most basic of ideas about the language, but it is tough switching from Italian to French in a matter of a couple hours.

Tomorrow we are having a fun play day and spending the day at Disneyland Paris. The tickets were my anniversary present to Jessica, and she is really excited about going. We are already planning to get up early to make sure we are at the park when it opens. Au revoir!

Lazy Day in Venice

Today we had the best, lazy day in Venice. We woke up this morning and decided that today was going to be a day to explore. We had no agenda, we had no plans, we were just going to walk and see where the city brought us.

We started out in St. Mark's Square. It is even more magnificent in the morning than it was last night when we arrived. The square is massive with buildings on three sides and the basilica on the fourth. The whole inside of the piazza is wide open with just some tables from local cafes set in the middle.

This morning we also experienced acqua alta for the first time. When we were taking our usual route to St. Mark's Square we discovered that after we crossed the only bridge between the square and our hotel, the walkway was completely underwater. Since Venice is at sealevel, and sometimes under sealevel (similar to New Orleans), when the tide is just right, and especially in the fall and winter, the water comes right up onto the streets.

We went back the long way around to the piazza and saw that most of it was underwater as well. There was a small walkway through the middle of the square that was dry, and then once we got right in front of the basilica, there were some risers that we could walk on to keep us out of the water. They led all the way from the basilica all the way down to the edge of the water.

We walked along the water for a little while, stopping to get some morning coffee and a breakfast sandwich. Then we continued on our walk. We were just wondering along, looking in different shops and glancing at the menu for different restaurants.

Eventually we came to the Rialto Bridge, the main crossing of the Grand Canal. Is is very similar to the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, in that the bridge has a lot of shops on it. We were able to look at the jewelry and clothes as we crossed the bridge. We also got some gelato and took some photos.

On the other side of the Rialto there was an open-air market. During the week there is a produce and fish market as well, but since today was Sunday we just saw the rest of the market. Tons of stalls were set up with people selling clothes, food and souvenirs.

We left the Rialto area and walked to an area called San Polo and Santa Croce. There was a restaurant in San Polo that we wanted to try. We walked to an area called Campo dei Frari and ate at a place called Frary's.

Frary's was a Mediterranean restaurant specializing in Greek and Arabic food. We had some wine to go along with hummus, keftes (spicy greek meatballs) and dolmades (rice wrapped in grape leaves). Ken Pettus would be so proud of us (Elizabeth, be sure to show this to him).

We walked on through San Polo and through the edge of Dorsoduro to the Accademia Gallery. We crossed the bridge across the Marina Grande and headed back toward San Marco.

We got back to St. Mark's Square and decided to be tourists for a little while. We took the elevator up to the top of the Campanile, the tall clock tower in the middle of the piazza. From there we had a wonderful bird's-eye view of the city. Even though it was overcast and starting to rain, we still had great views from the top.

We came back down and walked into the St. Mark's Basilica. This basilica was different than some of the others we had seen on our trip in that this basilica was in the shape of a Greek cross instead of a Latin cross. A Latin cross has one long end, and three smaller ends at the top. The Greek cross is more of a "plus-sign," with all of the edges an equal length. The entire ceiling of the basilica is covered in mosaics, small pieces of colored glass or metal put together like a puzzle to form a scene. The audio guide we listened to said that covering the ceiling of St. Mark's Basilica in mosaics would be like paving an entire football field with contact lenses. Pretty impressive.

We walked around some different areas of San Marco, and found a nice coffee shop where we stopped for a little while, and then a nice little restaurant where we shared a pizza for dinner. We walked back to Piazza San Marco and had a slowdance in the piazza before heading back to our hotel for the night.

Today is our final day in Italy as we head to Paris tomorrow afternoon. We have loved Italy, but are excited to see what Paris has in store for us over the next few days. Ciao!

On to Venice

This morning was our last in Florence, which is a little bit sad. We have really enjoyed visiting Florence. It has really grown on us in the last couple of days. We like that Florence is a little slower paced than the other cities we have visited so far.

For our last morning in Florence, we decided to climb the dome of the cathedral, the Duomo, all 463 steps. That’s right, there are 463 steps to get to the top of the Duomo.

I was really excited to climb to the top because of the way the Duomo was constructed. There are actually two different domes, one that is seen from the outside and one that is seen from the inside. When you climb to the top, you are actually climbing steps that are in between the two domes. It is really neat to see how the two domes relate to each other, but it is also a bit claustrophobic.

We made it to the top, but did work up a little bit of a sweat. We were greeted with a brisk Tuscan breeze and a wonderful view of the city. We spent about 20 minutes on top of the cathedral, looking across the whole city, taking in the landscape and taking photos.

It was absolutely beautiful, and we were able to point out all the sites that we visited the previous days. We took lots of good photos as well.

After the easier climb down, we walked around a little bit of the city center, one last time. Then we stopped at our little café beside our hotel to get something to eat and use the internet.

We then walked to the train station and boarded our train to Venice. Our trip was only three hours, a little less than the train ride to Florence, and we had some good time to nap and read on the way.
We arrived in Venice and boarded the No. 1 vaporetto to cruise the Grand Canal on the way to St. Mark’s Square. The ride took about 30 minutes or so, and we were able to get a quick glimpse of the city. We stopped at St. Mark’s Square and were wowed. It is very big and wide. It seemed to be a lot bigger than most of the piazzas that we have seen so far.

Luckily our hotel is close-by. Literally right across the “street” from St. Mark’s Square. We are about a 30-second walk down the street and over a bridge to get to the piazza.

We were able to walk around a little bit tonight after we checked into the hotel and got settled. We found a nice café to eat dinner. Jessica had potato gnocchi and breaded pork chop, while I had meat lasagna and scuttlefish Venetian style with polenta.

We walked back to St. Mark’s and took a few photos and are now retiring to the hotel after a long couple of days running around. We are looking forward to sightseeing in a relaxed manner on the island of Venice. We will start tomorrow morning with St. Mark’s Basilica. Ciao!

Bust a Move!

Today was a day on the go! We woke up early and had a fantastic breakfast. This breakfast was the best so far. We had fresh sliced ham and salami to go with freshly sliced cheese. Several types of cereals and yogurt as well as an assortment of croissants and other breads. We also had tea and coffee and fresh orange juice and grapefruit juice.

After breakfast we made a beeline for the train station. We were on a mission to go to Pisa to see the leaning tower. We had reservations to tour the Uffizi Gallery at 12:30 p.m. and we were planning to leave the train station around 9 a.m. for our side trip.

Pisa is an hour train ride from Florence and then the leaning tower is another 30-minute walk. So we knew that we were going to be a little crunched for time, but we also knew that the leaning tower was something that we definitely wanted to see.

The train ride was easy, and soon we were arriving at Pisa Centrale station. As we were walking the streets of Pisa, there were some local college students celebrating some type of festival. They were walking around with felt hats and blowing whistles. If they blew the whistle at you, they wanted you to put something (money or something else of “value”) into their hat. So for about three or four blocks we heard our fair share of whistle blowing.

We soon arrived at Piazza del Duomo in Pisa, home to the Leaning Tower of Pisa along with a cathedral and baptistery. The tower is unbelievable. It leans so much, you really think that it will fall down. We were trying to take photos to show how much it was leaning, but many of them just look like we were holding the camera off-center. The tower is leaning big time. Of course we took the cheesy photos of each of us “holding up” the tower, but so were 5,000 other tourists so it was ok.
We spent about 20 minutes looking at the leaning tower before we started heading back to the train station. Another hour later and we were back in Florence and arrived to the Uffizi Gallery just in time for our reservation.

The Uffizi Gallery is an art museum made up of a lot of the personal collections of the Medici family, who pretty much ran Florence during the Renaissance. There were mainly paintings, with a few sculptures mixed in. There were paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo and Brunelleschi, along with other popular Renaissance painters. There were some altarpieces that were as big as an entire wall. We were fascinated by the bright colors and attention to detail that is sometimes lacking from modern art.

We had a great audio guide from Rick Steves to bring us through the gallery, but unfortunately, the museum did not allow photos. Our memories will be enough for us though as we saw many masterpieces.

We left the Uffizi Gallery and walked a few blocks north to the Accademia Gallery. The Accademia is home to Michaelangelo’s David. There is not much else in this museum, but the David alone is worth the price of admission.

You walk through the main entrance and make a turn into a long hallway, and at the end of the hallway stands David. He stands on a five-foot tall base, but he stands 14 feet by himself, a lot taller than you would think by seeing photos in a book or online.

The attention to detail on the David is beyond compare. Michaelangelo has taken every detail into consideration, including veins in David’s hand, and the placement of the sling and rock that David will use to slay Goliath.

We sat in some chairs around David and just sat there for about 15 or 20 minutes, just looking and trying to take in every detail. We also took a few illegal photos with our iPhones as we pretended to listen to our audio guide.

There are also some unfinished works by Michaelangelo called the Prisoners. These four sculptures are still in a raw form, but allow you to see the process by which Michaelangelo created his statues. You can still see chisel marks in the marble as the people seem to emerge from the stone. Even in its unfinished state, these works are still a sight to behold.

We came back from the Accademia and decided to pack some of our clothes in preparation for our trip to Venice tomorrow. Then we left the hotel to go on our Florence night walk. We decided that we wanted to go for a walk like Florence natives would. We walked through a market of clothing, purses and jackets, and saw some other shops as well; we even got lost and had to ask for directions. But it was really nice to get out in the city and see it how a native of Florence would.

We went to dinner at a place called Trattoria Anita, which was a block behind the Palazzo Vecchio. We started out with Ribollita, a Tuscan bread soup, that was not very appealing to the eye, but was very appealing to the tastebuds. It was a vegetable soup that contained peas, spinach, cauliflower and beans that had been mixed with pieces of bread. The bread had soaked up some of the soup, so it was very thick. It was very good and we ate it all very quickly.

Our next course was a pair of spaghettis. Jessica had Spaghetti alla Carbonara that was spaghetti with egg, bacon and cheese to form a creamy sauce. It tasted a little like alfredo sauce in the United States, but with a little twist. I had Spaghetti alla Fiaccheraia, which had a spicy tomato sauce, onions and bacon. It was very spicy and the bacon gave it a nice meaty flavor.

We were stuffed, so we opted to leave without dessert. I grabbed some good gelato on the way home, pineapple and coconut (to make a version of a pina colada). We tried to find a canoli for Jessica, but were unsuccessful, so we will try again tomorrow.

Tomorrow we tour the Duomo and climb to the top of the dome in the morning, and then leave to go to Venice in the afternoon. We are excited for our next adventures. Ciao!

The Renaissance City

This morning we left Naples bright and early, and managed our longest train ride of the whole trip: a five-hour train from Naples to Florence. We arrived in Florence and immediately fell in love.

Coming out of the Florence train station was an experience unlike any other we have had on our trip so far. Most of the time, the train station isn’t in the nicest part of town. We saw that in Rome and Naples; we had to get away from the train station before we got to the “nicer” parts of the city.

But Florence was different. We came out of the train station to a nice little piazza with some grassy areas. There was some traffic, but not as much as we have seen in other cities. Instead of a plethora of buses and taxis we saw only a handful of each with a large number of bicycles.

Florence is the least motorized of the three cities we have been to so far. The main part of the city center, near the Duomo is pretty much vehicle free. The buses do not travel within the main city center, and there really are no cars to be seen. It is mainly people walking and riding bikes.

Our hotel is about a ten-minute walk from the train station. On the way, we passed right by the Duomo. It is way bigger than I thought it was. The dome and the attached church are so big, you literally cannot even see the whole thing. You can see parts of the church and the whole dome, or parts of the dome and the whole church.

Our hotel is about 20 yards from the main piazza. We really lucked into this hotel with about as prime a location as you can get. The posted room rate on the back of the door of our hotel room is 300 Euros per night. I will tell you that we didn’t even spend that much for the room for our two-night stay.
After we checked in, we decided to go exploring. We dumped our bags and took just a couple of cameras with us as we walked around the city center. We went past the Duomo and down to the Palazzo Vecchio (where the original statue of David once stood, and where now there stands a duplicate). We then walked over the Ponte Vecchio (a bridge that crosses the Arno river that is lined with jewelry shops) and made it across without Jessica making any purchases.

We caught a bus on the other side of the Ponte Vecchio and rode to the Piazzale Michaelangelo. This piazza is high up on a hill and overlooks the entire city. We got up there right as the sun was setting and it made for a picturesque view of the city. We snapped lots of photos and stayed at the piazza until the sun completely set. We then haggled a man down from 55 Euros to 17 Euros for a perfectly real and new Burberry purse for Jessica. I’m sure that it is as real as Jessica’s Fendi sunglasses.

We walked back down from the piazzale and stopped for some pre-dinner drinks at a little sidewalk café. We each had an Italian draught beer and I also had a Campari and soda (a famous Italian pre-dinner drink that is supposed to prepare you for dinner). The beers were very good, and tasted a little like a Blue Moon (but they didn’t have an orange because Jody wasn’t there to invent the idea), but the Campari and soda was not all that great. I think I will just stick to beer and wine.
We then walked a little further into the city and came to a restaurant called

Il Gatto e la Volpe (The Cat and the Wolf), a local eatery for college students. We had a half-liter of house white wine and an order of bruschette to start.

We couldn’t really decide what to get, so we decided to order three different pastas and just share all three. We had ravioli with ricotta and spinach Bolognese, risotto ai quattro formaggi and spaghetti “gatto e la volpe.”

The pastas were incredible. We ate every bit of all three of them. I think that the house spaghetti was my favorite. It had a meaty sauce that had a little bit of a kick to it. Of course the others were good as well as we basically licked the plate clean.

We came back to the hotel to grab the laptop to go in search of some internet. Our hotel does not have internet access, so we are going to be a little out of touch for the next two days. We will try to find a café somewhere that has internet access so that we can post our blog entries and keep in touch with everyone.

Tomorrow we are going to catch an early train to Pisa to see the leaning statue (and take the requisite photos of us pretending to hold it up) in the morning before we visit two museums in the afternoon.
We already love Florence and will get to see more of it tomorrow. Ciao!