Posted by Tchy on May 10, 2010 in
Architecture,
Blogging,
Food,
People,
Personal,
Travel Hello internet! It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Travel blogging is really not my thing, huh? More on that later. Today I am going to talk about what I’ve been doing for about the last month or so, including things that I have not yet written a blog post about (which I will not be going over in detail in this post because that’s just too much – they’ll get their own post in hopefully not too long).
So, first of all, last month was Shona and Tristan’s final school break, and we took that opportunity, as we are wont to do, to go travelling! This is the part I’m not covering in detail right now – we went to Paris for a few days, then Edinburgh, and then London for a whole week, and that is just a lot of stuff and I still haven’t even sorted through my pictures yet, so it’ll be covered later. Suffice to say it was very exciting and very lovely, I really want to visit Edinburgh again, and I took over 1,200 photos, which is more than I have ever taken in the span of two weeks, ever. Some of those will be up on Facebook when I can finally force myself to sort through them.
So! There was a two week vacation. But there have been two weeks since then! So what have I been doing?
Well, first of all, my lovely cousin Emily is here. She’s been visiting for the past week, and will remain until next Sunday. We haven’t been doing a lot of intense stuff, and she’s been going out with Shona more often than she has with me, but it has been good! I’ve shown her around the city a bit, and we went to visit the big parks (twice, in fact, because she wanted to come back) and we saw lots of strange and hilarious birds and ate delicious pizza and wandered around markets and various other cousinly things.
Speaking of cousins, my mom’s cousin Kara and her husband, Steve, are currently in town as well! They’re only here for a few days, and they’re staying in a hotel, but we’ve been seeing them and they’ve already been over for dinner twice. Yesterday, Kara, Steve, mom, me, Shona, Tristan, and Emily all piled into a rented van (and European vans are smaller than the typical North American minivan – sure, it had seven seats, but damn was it crowded) and went off on an adventure to visit Albi, which is more or less the next decent-sized town to the north. In typical organized fashion we managed to time our arrival for exactly when both places we wanted to visit were closed for their lunch break, so we tracked down a decently-priced restaurant and ate pasta (except for Kara, who decided to be adventurous and order cassoulet off the menu du jour). Dessert was spectacular as well.
Once we’d finished up at the restaurant – and stalled enough that the places we wanted to visit were open again – we went to visit the Cathedral of St. Cecilia, which is the most massive, fortress-like church I have ever seen in my life. It was built up partly as a defensive fortification by various bishops who were unpopular/threatened/paranoid, but also as a reminder after the Cathar crusades that the Catholic church was all powerful, damn it, and that these Catholics weren’t gonna take any of your heretic shit. They were clamping the fuck down, and St. Cecilia’s is there to prove it. It is very beautiful on the inside, though, despite the almost military look of the exterior – and there are a good deal of interesting murals and walls decorated with various 3D designs and other exercises in perspective. A little odd for a church, but definitely interesting.
It’s also positively cavernous inside. I’m not even kidding, I didn’t think it was possible to build a building that tall and that open inside out of brick and not have it collapse around your ears – especially not in the 1200s.
After the church we went around the corner and down some stairs to another part of what used to be the cathedral complex to visit the Toulouse-Lautrec museum. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a famous French painter, born in Albi, who worked in Paris painting scenes of the decadent theatre culture, most famous for his poster work and paintings of the daily life of the prostitutes and showgirls who worked at the Moulin Rouge – and, aside from anything else, is also the namesake of Toulouse, the orange kitten in Disney’s Aristocats. The museum was very interesting, if small, and I loved looking at the poster work he did, but I was also very tired by this point and ended up falling asleep in the auditorium while watching a film about his life. Unfortunately I missed all the scandalous details.
After the museum, we went to look at a riverside garden and get a nice view of the river and the bridge; then we went back to the car, ate some chocolate, piled in, and were on our way. We took an alternate route home, driving through Cordes Sur Ciel (see July’s blog posts) and a gorge in a mountainous area that is known for having a lot of old castles and such built on hills (I swear, go anywhere in France and if you see a hill chances are some lord or bishop or knight or local minstrel has built something on top of it). I spent most of the drive listening to music and staring out the window; I’d forgotten just how pretty the French countryside is.
All in all, yesterday was a very enjoyable day and I am pleased to have finally seen Albi, and I figured I would write it up now before I forgot and put it off again just like everything else I seem to write about in this blog. The problem, as I stated earlier, is that I’m just not very good at travel blogs. I don’t really enjoy writing reports too much (though I am going to continue updating the Wanderer Chronicles – sporadically – until I get home in July, rest assured). I am most likely going to try to find a slightly more enjoyable format to write in, or, failing that, I’ll just grin and bear it.
However, I do like having a blog to write things in – and to that end I have set up another one, a more general sort of blog, called the Pen and the Sword! This one I intend to keep as my longterm blog for more or less the rest of my time occupying the “blogosphere,” so if you are interested in reading my ramblings I suggest you bookmark it and/or add it to your RSS. For the next couple of months or so I will be updating both the Pen and the Sword and the Wanderer Chronicles, but I expect by the time I return to Canada I will be switched over to the Pen and the Sword pretty much completely.
In the meantime, I will try to make myself go through the twelve hundred photos I took on vacation, and maybe get a blog post up sometime before the end of the decade. Thanks for bearing with me, despite my flaky sort of attitude towards this thing, and I hope you’ll enjoy my new blog. Tchy out!
What would a cruise be without the shore excursions? There were a lot of them. I’m going to try to go through them all as best I can, in point form, because it more or less all sticks in my mind as bullet points. You’ll probably see why by the time I’m through with it.
Any day I don’t make mention of was a sea day, and therefore we were on the boat. (It’s worth mentioning that we spent all of Christmas at sea, and on Christmas morning we convened in mom and dad’s room to open presents under the vaguely-tree-shaped-green-Christmas-shirt.)
Also, because we are cheap-asses, we didn’t buy shore excursions anywhere except Egypt (where it’s more or less a necessity) and even when we did, we didn’t get the super expensive packages from the cruise. So most shore days we spent doing our own thing, wherever we ended up.
Shona and Tristan in front of a church in Civitavecchia.
December 22nd: Civitavecchia, Italy
Civitavecchia, aside from being incredibly annoying to spell right, is the port city at the mouth of the Tiber River, and is therefore the gateway to Rome. It was about an hour drive into Rome, so we elected to wander the city we hadn’t been to yet.
It was rainy. That kind of put a damper on things.
Shona seems to be very good at talking Tristan into giving her a piggyback. Occasionally this combines with the rain in undesirable ways (i.e.: he slips on a metal grate and crashes down to one knee, leaving an impressive bruise).
My family really likes markets. “Wandering around in a market for an hour or two” quickly seems to be becoming a theme.
Also, Italians really like their churches.
“Church of the Japanese Martyrs” is perhaps the best name for anything ever. Even if the church itself is just a regular church with some Japanese-style paintings of religious figures.
We didn’t really spend too much time in Civitavecchia. It wasn’t really a great day, and there wasn’t too much we wanted to see (or much to see, to be honest). We wandered around and looked at stuff for a couple hours, then wandered back to the boat.
December 23rd: Naples, Italy
We’ve been here already! It’s almost like coming home. It was even comparable weather to when we were there back in October. Sunny, beautiful, and in the mid teens.
Italians apparently aren’t used to these temperatures, because they keep asking me if I’m cold while I wander around in my sleeveless shirt.
I have discovered the eleventh commandment: “And the LORD said, in Naples, to ensure thy survival, thou shalt form a pack of pedestrians, for together, thou art mighty, and the tide of cars shall part before thee.” We have got this pedestrian-in-Naples business down.
Those guys with the knockoff bags are still everywhere. They’re still ridiculously flirtatious, too. Even with my hair buzzed to an inch long. “Ciao, bella!” starts to lose its impact after the fifth time.
We wandered up through some of the shopping areas to get to this street where they sell nativity scenes and the supplies to make them. These are seriously detailed things, too. Like dollhouse miniatures. They make whole scenes for it.
We visited the castle, too, the one we hadn’t got to last time we were in Naples. Chapel, statues, stateroom, art museum upstairs, fairly standard – except for the Roman crypts that were discovered underneath the castle. Seriously cool stuff. They had glass floors installed and you could look down to see the bones underneath you.
Paintings of pretty girls are made infinitely more awesome when the top layer of paint has peeled off and they seem to have a smooth layer of skin where one of their eyes used to be.
Mom and dad wandered through a bit more of the art museum than I did. I went back to the boat to watch Up. Because Up is awesome.
December 26th and 27th: At port in Alexandria, Egypt. Visiting Cairo.
Egypt is probably the dirtiest, noisiest, smelliest, and most exciting place I’ve ever been to. Also, the most dangerous. Because of Egypt’s history of political terrorism, some of which has been directed against tourists, all tour groups are required by law to have an armed guard with them. Dad said ours had a fully automatic gun. I didn’t see, and wouldn’t have been able to identify it anyway.
So there was us, a couple, and another family with two younger girls, our tour leader, a guide, avery stoic armed guard, and a driver who didn’t speak English, all hangin’ out in this little van-bus for a couple of days. It was hella fun.
Tour got off to a slow start because it was insanely foggy that morning – too dangerous to drive. We were supposed to leave at 8:30, ended up on the road by 11:30. But hey, at least I was awake by then.
There do not seem to be many traffic laws in Egypt. See: family in the flatbed of a pickup on the highway; three men on one motorcycle; camels apparently count as vehicles and can walk around on the roads; ditto for donkeys loaded down with clover; ditto also for horse or donkey pulled buggies. Also, there are guys biking around delivering giant platters of bread, which they get from place to place by tying them to their heads and balancing them there.
Egypt was the first country I’ve ever been to where the majority of women had their hair, and often their whole bodies, covered in the Muslim style. Different, but interesting.
The Great Pyramid of Khufu, as seen from the base.
Most of Cairo has this odd look, like it’s starting to crumble before they’ve even finished the buildings. We discovered that this is because, if a house remains “under construction,” you don’t have to pay tax on it – so Egyptians never seem to both putting roofs on their houses.
If the apocalypse hit now and everything was destroyed, Cairo would be the city and culture that would spring up from the ruins. Amazing, and very lovely, in its own way.
The pyramids are huge. End of discussion. They don’t look that big in photos, and when you compare them to all the taller buildings we’ve made now, they don’t seem so impressive – then you get out of the bus and go stand beside them. Those blocks of stone that look like bricks in the picture? Yeah, they’re the size of a car. These things are massive, solid, enormous piles of stone.
The Sphinx, too, is massive and impressive. There’s a lot of romanticism and mystique attached to it. All those hokey ideas don’t really do it justice. People always try to paint it as the almighty guardian, most trusted of the Pharaohs, the watcher who will remain long after civilization has crumbled – and I guess it is, or was, at least, at one point, but the Pharaohs are gone, there’s nothing left for it to guard anymore, and its civilization has already fallen. It looks more lonely to me.
Camels are ridiculous. Also, I no more trust them than I trust llamas. They’re great to take photos of, though. As long as you avoid stepping in the camel dung.
Guided tours are more or less giant tourist traps, but there isn’t much of another way to get around Egypt (see: laws regarding tourists and armed guards). I did buy a couple of things, but not nearly as much as they tried to foist off on me. And what I did get was entirely worth the money I spent.
This is why I just want to take pictures of camels forever.
The Sound and Light show is not nearly as impressive as it’s billed as. I also didn’t get much out of it, since I pretty much knew every bit of historical and mythological information they supplied. Ditto for what the guide said – but she was more interesting than the show. Her name was Rehab (REH-hab), and she was an absolute sweetheart.
Nile dinner cruise would be more impressive if we could have seen anything outside the windows. The shows were pretty cool, though, even if the bellydancer did have some weird non-authentic moves (according to my mother) and wore a bra top that made her chest look freakishly large. The whirling dervish dancer was amazing, though.
Mom and dad told us it was probably a bad idea to eat anything uncooked while in Egypt, due to the risk of contamination and the fact that the germs there are different. This made buffets difficult. I wanted salad and fruit, but had to content myself with potatoes and cooked carrots.
No pork anything at any of the buffets. Most noticeable at breakfast. Tristan missed the bacon. I, however, was pleased enough with the hibiscus juice that the loss didn’t bother me.
Our hotel was super ritzy, what the heck. Unfortunately we were too tired and out of there too fast to really enjoy it. It was seriously nice, though. Beautiful construction, and a gorgeous courtyard. Also, I think the floors were marble.
A lantern at our fancy hotel in the misty morning.
Morning arrives! It is extremely misty, for the second day in a row. Rehab apologized – she said it was really abnormal weather for Egypt, and she was sorry we had to come on bad days.
By the time we got to the Citadel of Saladin, it was mostly burned off, though. We went inside the Citadel to visit the Alabaster Mosque, which is very pretty – a lot more decorated than is typical for mosques. We took our shoes off. This is the rule in mosques.
There were guys standing outside selling these little plastic bags people could put over their shoes if they didn’t want to take them off. They also had these big draping robes for people (mostly women) not covered up well enough. I saw a woman in high heels, with the shoe-bags on, putting one of the robes over her short, sleeveless sundress. I wanted to laugh at her. Give it up, lady. Stop trying to look glamorous while you’re a tourist, in a Muslim country, no less.
After this we went to the Egyptian Archeological Museum. I wasn’t allowed to bring my camera in, but we ran around looking at things. We saw the mask of King Tutankhamon, and most of the other things that were found in his tomb – beautiful stuff. The room with the mask and the other important artifacts was so crowded. We literally spent five minutes jammed shoulder to shoulder with people trying to inch our way out of the room. Shona didn’t come in, because she was sick. She spent the museum time sleeping on the bus. In the Tutankhamon room, I was grateful. She would have been miserable.
The most amazing moment in the museum, for me, was when I spotted a statue of three gods – Horus, a Pharaoh being crowned, and Set. Set. He’s my favourite of the Egyptian gods, as well as being my star sign and associated god in Egyptian astrology. Because he was painted as the aggressor and the villain in some of the most well-known Egyptian myths, there isn’t much art of him around. But I saw a statue of him. I stood right in front of it. I think this is a moment I will carry in my heart for the rest of my life.
A woman making flatbread. Delicious, delicious flatbread.
After the museum, we went out to Memphis. We saw the giant statue of King Ramses II, the famous one, and we saw the Step Pyramid, which I’ve always loved – more so even than the Great Pyramid and the associated pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure. Picked up a package of postcards, too – I’ll probably save a few to give to people.
I really, really like Egyptian flatbread. It is delicious. We had a bunch of it with our lunch, which we picked up at a restaurant and ate in the bus on the way back to Alexandria. There were musicians playing outside, and mom danced with them for a bit. Also, women at these big stone and clay ovens, cooking the bread for the restaurant. I took a few pictures.
All in all, Egypt was amazing and exciting, and I would love to go back to visit again – but I very much doubt I would ever want to live there.
December 28th: Rhodes, Greece
We were supposed to stop in Rhodes, but it was too windy and the port was closed. We were at sea instead, heading to Izmir. Shona was sick; I don’t remember what I did specifically.
December 29th: Izmir, Turkey
Where do I even start? Izmir is beautiful. Especially after the dirty brokenness of Cairo. The streets are clean, the buildings and architecture are amazing, the port is beautiful, and there’s lots and lots of green. The weather was amazing, too. Not a cloud in the sky.
Remember what I said about markets? Yeah, pretty much the whole time in Izmir was spent in a market. In our defence, the market is enormous and historic. Also, full of shiny things.
We got lost for a while. It was actually ridiculously entertaining. We ended up getting led to the caravanserai, the oldest part of the bazaar, and showed into a shop, which we left almost immediately. We found our own way back to the bit of the market we were interested in.
The Turks (and the Greeks, as well, but especially the Turks), sell all kinds of things with the symbol of the evil eye on it – it’s supposed to protect you from malicious things. It’s normally a round thing, often done in glass. The main body of it is dark blue, with a ring of white, then a smaller ring of light blue, and a dot of black at the centre. Sometimes it has yellow in it, too. They also sell it in loads of other colours, but blue is the most traditional.
I was going crazy for a pomegranate all day. We got one just before getting a taxi back to the port (taxi, in Turkish, is apparently spelled “taksi,” by the way). I ate the whole thing. My hands and my face were absolutely covered in juice. GLORIOUS.
The Turks are apparently very big on rings. Shiny, shiny rings. There were a lot of shiny things there. Pretty much anything you could imagine in a bazaar was there, and many things you couldn’t. I would love to go back to visit again – five hours is not enough.
Pillars on the Acropolis.
December 30th: Athens, Greece
Athens is not as pretty as Izmir, but it is quite nice, and is much cleaner than Cairo. Not to mention safer. So, bonus all around. Even though apparently the taxi drivers are brats. We tried to get a taxi from the port to the train station (five minute drive, half-hour walk), and the taxi driver decided he’d rather keep his place at the port and get a bigger fare – so he told us it was only ten minutes away. We believed him, until we’d been walking twenty minutes and weren’t there yet.
Metro in Athens is crowded! Dad got pickpocketed – bye bye iTouch. Luckily he had his data backed up, along with several spares. Still, not a cool way to start the day. At least it wasn’t his wallet.
We got off downtown and went wandering up towards the Acropolis. It was not very well signed, but we figured it out eventually. They gave us this big long string of tickets to get into a bunch of different things. Ultimately I think we only used two or three.
Fresh-squeezed orange juice is amazing. There is absolutely no contest about this. I don’t much like the stuff from concentrate (i.e.: anything you can buy in a store) but give it to me fresh and I just can’t get enough of it. My. God.
There seems to be a trend of us visiting monuments while things are being restored. The Parthenon is much less impressive when half of it is covered in scaffolding. That’s okay though! It was still really cool. And the view from the Acropolis is astounding.
At the foot of the Acropolis, looking up.
They say of the Acropolis where the Parthenon is… is still the funniest thing I’ve ever seen on Youtube.
After we wandered around a bunch of ruins and saw lots of ancient Greek buildings, we headed up into downtown to do some shopping. Lots of tacky tourist shops but lots of cool things, too. Also, a shirt that says “Oedipus: the ORIGINAL motherfucker.” No way you can lose with this.
Encountered a street vendor selling chocolate and vanilla coconut sticks, coconut juice, and fresh coconut. Fresh coconut is yummy. Om nom nom nom.
Biggest Christmas tree I’ve ever seen: in the square in front of one of the metro stations in Athens, Greece. Who’d have guessed?
Metro still crowded on the way back. Most taxi drivers still jerks. One of them heard where we wanted to go and just drove off with no explanation. We managed to flag down another one and it turned out he was fluent in English – lived in North America for a while. Made it back to the port safely – even though dad decided he was going to walk, while the rest of us drove. Silly man.
The view off the back of the Palace of Knossos.
December 31st: Iraklion, Crete, Greece
It just figures that New Year’s Eve would be the sunniest and most beautiful day on the whole trip. Visiting Iraklion was absolutely lovely that day.
Cheap bus tickets out to historical sites are a win. We went to visit the Palace of Knossos, the ancient palace of Crete, where the legend of the Minotaur supposedly took place. We didn’t get to go into the labyrinth, though. There’s still some debate over whether it even actually exists. Palace was pretty cool, though. A lot of it was reconstructed – apparently the archeologist who worked on it was big on that.
Nice little cafe outside the palace. Delicious baklava and fresh orange juice is a brilliant lunch. Don’t let anyone ever tell you differently.
Saw a cat just wandering around the grounds. There pretty much always seem to be strays at every major historical site we’ve been to. I can’t remember one where I didn’t see at least a stray dog.
Went back into the city via the same bus, but got off before the port to go wandering around downtown and – you guessed it – into a market area. I bought an excellent new messenger bag to replace my somewhat too large one that’s kind of dying anyway. The woman who sold it to me was very careful to stress that it was “original, made in Greece, no imitation.” I guess they have a problem with a lot of people doing knockoffs of big brands.
A reconstructed part of the palace.
Our map was written with Anglicized Greek names on it. The street signs are all in Greek letters. Lucky for us, dad spent some time in Greece before I was born, and knows how to read most Greek letters. Otherwise we would have been hopelessly lost.
The city is nice. Similar atmosphere to Athens, but a bit calmer, less touristy, and smaller. Also, less likely to pick your pockets. It was almost depressing to leave. Our last shore excursion of an amazing trip. Still if things had to end, it was a good way to end them.
Posted by Tchy on Nov 20, 2009 in
Architecture,
Culture,
Travel Hello again my loves! I am a forgetful, spastic person and once again I forgot to update the blog. I don’t even have Spore as an excuse this time. I just forgot. But it’s all okay because here I am again! On with the show.
We left off in the train station after arriving in Rome. There, we collected our baggage from the baggage compartments and headed out into the city. After a rather amusing incident where we took the wrong road and ended up going in the opposite direction from our apartment, we found the place we were going to and dragged our luggage up five flights of stairs to collapse on the very squishy and comfortable couches.
After resting for a bit, we headed out to see the Colosseum, since it was nearby and we had no other pressing concerns at the time. We wandered down in that direction, observing the differences between Rome and Naples – Rome is very clean, and the streets are overall quite wide and straight. And the drivers are positive saints compared to the Neapolitan drivers. We came up the street to get our first view of the Colosseum – and was it ever magnificent. Seriously, that thing is huge, even with more than half of the outer wall knocked down. We headed down the stairs to ground level, passing numerous cheap tourist junk stands and a group of incredibly talented dancers performing on the street to do a circuit of the Colosseum and check out the Arch of Constantine. Upon finishing our circuit, we went to buy some groceries (pasta again) and returned to the apartment for dinner.
Here, I will pause for a moment to talk about our physical state at the time. After over a week of steady travelling and spending most of our days on our feet, we were quite tired already by this point. On top of that, mom was already somewhat ill, and I seemed to be picking up the edges of her sickness. Adding fuel to the fire, the beds in our Roman apartment, or at least the one I was sleeping on, were quite uncomfortable. It was also at this point that I really started missing Nami and various other people I’m in regular contact with. Altogether, it made for a rather exhausting few days, and for this reason, our adventures in Rome were not quite as energetic as they had been in Naples and Venice.
Once mom and dad had picked up our museum and transport passes, we spent most of the first full day in Rome simply exploring the city. We visited the Spanish Steps, climbing up all of what we think we remember as 176 steps to the church at the top of it. We wandered down to look at various historical buildings, then made our way slowly back towards the Pantheon, which we investigated with great enthusiasm. There, we found Jason, a very enthusiastic tour guide from Louisiana who has been living in Italy for the past nine years, giving tours. He was doing a free tour of the Pantheon, and took us around, explaining the significance of the cross-capped Egyptian obelisk out front (Christ’s triumph over “pagan influence”) and detailing some of the history of the structure. It was from him that we learned that Michelangelo had been so impressed with the Pantheon that, when he designed the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, he deliberately made it half a metre shorter than the dome of the Pantheon, in honour of the “perfection” of the ancient structure – a building so stable that the earthquakes that knocked down the outside walls of the Colosseum had no discernible effect on it. Finished with the tour, we wandered back towards home, checking out the Trevi Fountain along the way, then buying groceries (more pasta) and turning in early in preparation for our visit to the Vatican the next day.
The next morning, we were out early (for us) around eleven to visit the Colosseum in the morning. Thanks to our pre-purchased museum cards, we got to skip the lines and go straight in, whereupon we climbed very steep stairs to check out the artifacts they had found (mostly sculptures, bones, and gambling paraphernalia), then went around the inside walls to get a good look at the arena floor, which had been destroyed and showed the underground rooms and corridors where they had kept the slaves and allowed entrance to the warriors and animals who rose up from the floor in the games. Then we caught the metro across the river, arriving promptly in St. Peter’s Square for our 1:30 tour of the Vatican with Jason.
And I must say, he’s both hilarious and a great tour guide. He told us about the history of the building, as well as the belief that St. Peter himself is buried under the basilica – a belief that may have been confirmed by some excavations in the last few decades, when a team discovered what they think are the bones of Peter. We headed around the outside of the square, checking out the wall that saved the Pope’s life when the Protestants sacked the city in the 1500s, as well as the area of housing that had set up to be a safe place for the pilgrims who came to visit the Vatican. Along the way to the museum, Jason told us about Michelangelo’s belief that sculpture was a superior art form to painting, and the sculpture project he was hired for that never got completed, because the architect of the Basilica talked the Pope into employing Michelangelo in the painting of the Sistine Chapel in order to keep “his” Basilica from being dominated by Michelangelo’s sculptures. However, his plan may have backfired, since Michelangelo’s paintings became some of the most famous works of the Renaissance, and his sculpture, Pieta, is still on display in the Basilica.
We headed through the museum relatively quickly, checking out various Renaissance-era and ancient sculptures of Greek Gods and Goddesses, including the rather famous sculpture of Laocoon and His Sons, beset by snakes when he tried to strike the Trojan Horse in suspicion. We also saw various ancient mosaics, a statue of the Artemis of Ephesus, tapestries, paintings, and an entire room of paintings by Raphael, including his famous School of Athens – absolutely incredible, and one of my favourite Renaissance paintings. Its colour is beautiful, the perspective is incredible, and the thing is huge – an entire wall of fresco. From there, we proceeded to the Sistine Chapel itself, where we witnessed the Last Judgement, the Creation of Adam, and all the other paintings on the ceiling and those on the walls.
No visit to the Vatican, however, would be complete without taking a look at St. Peter’s Basilica, so, after the tour finished, we headed inside to see the most magnificent, opulent church in the world. And it truly is incredible – even the “unimportant” sculptures and works of art tucked into corners and around pillars are amazing. And then, off to the side, we saw the Pieta. It was so incredible that I cried.
After that, it turns into a bit of a blur. Small moments stand out – hearing the choir sing as the evening mass started; the sculpture of St. Peter with the foot worn smooth from millions of worshippers over the course of history rubbing or kissing it for luck; the young woman who came in for the mass who crossed herself with tears of joy in her eyes. By the time we left, I had cried myself out. My last memory of the Vatican is looking up at the building where the Pope lives as we left and seeing that two of his lights were on.
The next day was much more relaxed. We wandered around more of the city, checking out a tiny museum of decorative art, a (somewhat out of place) stone pyramid, a monument to the victims of Italy’s fascist regime, and the old bathhouses, which we unfortunately arrived too late at to enter. Then we headed back to the apartment for dinner (pasta!) and one more night. The next day, we packed up for the last time and headed off to the train station, catching our train to the airport and getting on a plane back to Toulouse. We arrived home in the afternoon rain and collapsed in welcome rest, our holiday finally over.
Posted by Tchy on Nov 9, 2009 in
Architecture,
Culture,
Food,
Travel Oh hello again internet! I forgot about the promised blog posts because I am a spaz with a short attention span who plays too much Spore. But that is okay and I am back now. So here we go, onto the next leg of the Italian adventure: Naples and Pompeii!
We arrived in Naples late in the evening after leaving for Venice, where we caught a taxi from the airport into town. This was my first introduction to the knowledge that Italian Drivers Are Crazy and Naples Drivers Actually Drive With Their Horns, Not Their Wheels. Everyone beeps their horn constantly – but it’s not because they’re angry (even though, with the way everyone drives, crossing lanes and cutting you off all over the place, they have plenty of reason to be). No, it is in fact because they just want to let know know something – sometimes simply that they are there and you should take that into account, and sometimes that you are a bastard motherfucker with the driving skills of a pig. It’s occasionally hard to tell.
Anyway, after a somewhat terrifying drive through the city, we arrived safely in our apartment, where are very short, adorable landlady who didn’t speak any English tried to explain to us how the appliances worked and get us settled in. Then we headed out to hunt down a restaurant, as it was rather late by this point, and by sheer luck stumbled onto a rather nice place that made wonderful pizza and even better salad. Despite a mixup where dad’s calzone didn’t arrive until substantially after the rest of the food, it was rather enjoyable. My favourite part was probably the wandering guitar-playing musician who sang to us for a while.
That’s another interesting thing about Italy – people sing everywhere. They’re not shy about it at all. You can walk into a grocery store and half the time one of the employees will be singing while putting out the stock. It’s actually rather awesome.
Anyway, the next morning, we got up and headed out to explore the city, investigating a palace and an old church while mom and dad got some tourist information. Then we ran around a bit looking for places to buy our city passes and transport cards. Upon our success, we headed into the historical heart of the city, where we didn’t see much of significance except for the oldest marble statue in Naples, but did have a good time looking at bizarre churches, monuments, and old buildings squished between modern apartment buildings.
Also, deep fried spaghetti. Weird, but strangely delicious.
The next day, we got up early and caught the train out to POMPEII!
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Sorry, I had to pause there to pose dramatically.
Anyway, these trains were a bit more like metro trains than the kind you’d actually want to travel in, but Pompeii was relatively nearby. After a bit of a mixup that saw us waiting at a graffiti-covered station in the middle of the poorer neighbourhood and inspired Shona’s and my next photoshoot, we got on the right train and came out in Pompeii.
And holy shit, it was incredible. If you ever get the chance, GO. There is nothing like it in the world.
We wandered all over the city – to the amphitheatre, the coliseum, the forum, the temples, the houses, the streets, the vineyards, the bathhouses. We hopped across the stepping stones placed at crosswalks to keep the ancient citizens’ feet out of the mud. We investigated ancient Roman fast food joints. We saw pomegranate trees growing in places that haven’t yet been excavated. We saw the bones of people who died in the eruption. We went through the brothel, giggling at the rather well-preserved frescoes of bedroom acts. I swiped a couple lumps of pumice stone for a friend. We crisscrossed the whole city, or at least as much of it as we could without dropping from exhaustion, before finally making it home to collapse.
Our third day in Naples was mostly spent hopping around on the cable cars and the metro to ultimately get us to the archaeological museum. There, we witnessed a vast and rather wonderful collection of statues, mostly of gods, muses, and heroes, a giant gallery of paintings, mosaics and artifacts from Pompeii, and the “secret cabinet” – a room dedicated entirely to the sexual artifacts of the ancient Romans. There, we witnessed several… interesting… frescoes, some rather bizarre statues, many small stone penis charms, a few odd brass sculptures (I kid you not, there was a flying penis with a pair of legs and a penis of its own, and one of a hero fighting against his own penis, which had apparently turned into a vicious monster of some sort), as well as a rather amusing mosaic of the god Priapus, whose erect penis is about the length of one of his own legs and twice as thick.
I could not make this stuff up if I tried.
We had our final dinner in Naples – pasta, again, we ate rather a lot of it and none of us got sick of it because pasta is AWESOME – that night, then once again got everything packed up and ready to leave for the morning. Then we said goodbye to our rather wonderful apartment with its marvellously comfortable beds, and headed off to the train station to get on the train to Rome. The ride was generally uneventful, except for a hustler dragging us and our suitcases onto the train at top speed and demanding money for his service (dad gave him five euros instead of twenty). We pulled into Rome in good time – finally starting the last leg of our adventure.
Posted by Tchy on Nov 6, 2009 in
Architecture,
Culture,
Travel Hello again, Canada! Here I am, back from Italy, and as promised, I will present to you a full report of my adventures there. This is the first of three parts: Venice! Photos from the first three (and a bit) days of the trip have already been posted on Facebook, so make sure to check them out.
The start of our adventure was early afternoon in Toulouse, when we rolled our suitcases down to Jean Jaures station and caught the airport bus out to Toulouse-Blagnac. Barring a minor setback at security (where they took my craft scissors – seriously, my freaking CRAFT scissors) the trip went smoothly, we caught our connection in Lyon, and arrived safe and sound in the Venice airport that evening. Then we took a waterbus into the lagoon, where we got installed in our apartment (which was super ritzy, by the way – the one we were supposed to get needed repairs so they offered us another apartment at a seriously reduced rate – and it overlooked the Grand Canal!) and then went out to get dinner at a nice pizza place our landlady recommended.
The excitement didn’t really start until the next morning, when we got up (at a decent hour, for us) and headed out to explore the city. I say we, but I really mean me, mom, and the siblings – dad had to go pick up his race kit for the marathon the next day. So we wandered down the main street, checking mask shops and trinket booths all the way, until we eventually came to the Rialto Bridge and, from there, to St. Mark’s Square.
And let me just say, it is absolutely incredible. Venice is possibly the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen, even with all the tacky tourist crap. I got some lovely photos in the square while we wandered around, looking for a place to buy waterbus passes and museum cards.
We were eventually successful in our mission, and so, pausing to get some midafternoon sandwiches on the way, we wandered back to the apartment.
The next morning, dad was out long before any of us, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, for the marathon. The rest of us got up at a more leisurely pace, catching the waterbus down to the finish line, where we cheered him on. Eventually, we met up with him in a park full of nifty statues and big trees, to decide on our plan of attack. It was concluded that he would head home, while the rest of us (despite some whining on the brother’s part) would go to investigate the Correr Museum.
Unfortunately, once inside, I learned that we weren’t supposed to be taking pictures by being yelled at in Italian by a very stern museum curator, but other than that the visit was quite enjoyable. The museum was full of historical artifacts, old books, paintings, maps, statues, sculptures, frescoes, glass chandeliers, and weapons. It really drove home Venice’s unique history as an independent city-state. By the time we had finished wandering through there, we were quite tired of walking, so we caught the bus back to the apartment.
On our third day in Venice, we went out to Murano, the glassmaking island – several centuries ago (I forget exactly when) all the workshops were moved out there to prevent them from setting fire to the city. Our first stop was the glass museum, where we learned about the process of blowing glass – which is awesome, by the way – and looked at various pieces from all stages of Venetian history. Then we wandered down towards the foundries, investigating shops all the way, until we got to an open workshop, where we sat and watched a professional glassmaker and his assistant make parts for a chandelier, as well as a little glass horse sculpture that they knocked off for fun (and tips). On the way home, we tried to stop at the cemetery island, but unfortunately it was closed, so we got back on the boat and headed back to Venice proper, taking the scenic route through the ghetto area – the oldest ghetto in the world. In fact, the word “ghetto” is believed to come from a corruption of geto or “foundry,” as the Jews were forced to live in the area that had been vacated by the glassmakers moving out to Murano. Today, very few Jews actually live in the area, but there are synagogues, a museum, points of historical interest, and many kosher shops.
The next morning, our last in Venice, we went down to St. Mark’s again to visit the Doge’s Palace – the former seat of government from Venice’s days of independence, and the residence of the Doge, or elected duke, who governed the city in its early years and served as a figurehead in the later centuries of the republic. We saw his private quarters, the council rooms and state areas, and the prisons, as well as many paintings by famous Italian paintings of the Renaissance, including the widest canvas painting in the world. There were so many details flying past my face that most of them, at this point, have completely slipped my mind.
After the Doge’s Palace, we headed back to the apartment for the last time, picked up our stuff, and caught the waterbus to the only area of the city with access by car. Then we got on the airport bus and headed across the causeway to the airport. Our last view over the Venetian lagoon was a spectacular sunset as we took off.
Naples and Pompeii are on the agenda for tomorrow, but for now, I will say, ciao, and goodnight to all!
