Barcelona and Madrid, Spain

Hola!!!!
Ellen and I are about to get on to a night train to my last stop, Lisbon! We have already walked through Spain.
After a very long travel day for Ellen--her plane ride sounded absolutly terrible with turning around after the plane was already air born--she finally arrived about 10 hours late, just as I was checking the status of her plane on the computer and growing increasingly worried!
However, she made it in time for us to see the big light show at the fountains by a museum in Barcelona-thanks to Jenny for the tip! We celebrated her arrival with sangria and chocolate con churros! Basically we continued our trip through Spain with a little walking, a little eating, a little walking, a little eating. I really enjoyed the Gaudi sights in Barcelona, as well as the view from the various mountains we were at the top of! Unfortunatly the cable car we were dying to take was not operating the whole time due to wind, and, in a bizarre circumstance, the power was out, (causing great confusion at every intersection,( all over Barcelona!
We absolutly loved Madrid! I didn't think I would like it as much as Barcelona, but I did, and perhaps more! The parks here are amazing! On our first day we walked the wrong way, and rather than end up at a the major Placa Mayor, we arrived at a great Park. We took a row boat around the lake and the weather was gorgeous. With Ellen here I was able to muster the strength for another great Palace--the Real Palace and museum--the Prado.
As I said, the weather has been spectacular, very warm but nice breezes and much lower humidity than I expected.
Well, I must be off, my time is up!
One more stop!
Adios!

Prague, Vienna, and Venice

A little late in coming, but here is the much anticipated Prague, Vienna, and Venice blog! I know that with the great anticipation for this blog, there will be a tough competition between it and the Harry Potter Book VII release! By the way, I could have purchased the book 6 hours before you in the States, although, perhaps not in English...



So I apologize in advance if these notes are rather short. I am writing as I am waiting for Ellen, who had some major flight delays. Boo.



Prague

Vic's visit was like a vacation! I know some of you are groaning that I am already on vacation, but there have been many times when sightseeing and getting from point A in Country 1 to point B in Country 2 has seemed like a difficult job! It was so nice to be able to rely on someone else for a bit and relax!

Vic arrived on Sunday, July 1. Is it terrible to say that I was pleased that he, too, had a little difficulty navagating the metro? I wouldn't want him to outshine my month of traveling skills on his first day! We went to a church for Mass where the main attraction is an infant Jesus people come to pray to and send in costumes for all over the country! (Perhaps the Prague's competition to little Manakin Pis of Brussels.( Of course, I made Vic climb a tower right away. We went to St. Nicholas' Cathedral for this, and the tower was suprisingly empty!

One of the things I loved most about Prague are all the beautiful gardens. There are so many of them! We climbed up around the Petrin gardens on our first day. At the bottom of them Vic found a monument to the victim's of Communism. Leave it to Vic to find that on our first day.

Throughout our next few days we made it to the Church of Tyn, where I was thrilled to finally find Tycho Brahe's burial, (a man I remember well from my 9th grade world history class for the detailed story of how he died when his blatter burst!( Imagine the excitment! We saw the Astronomical Clock Tower "do its thing" which involves some Monks circling around the clock... I must say not nearly as impressive as Munich. The clock TOWER was great though! We went to the Prague Castle, (of course,( which was an all day event. Our museum repitoire included The Communist Museum, (that I liked just as much as Vic!( and the Kafka museum, which was a little on the pretencious side, (imagine that.( Of course we strolled across the bridge several times, during various times of the day, and it was nearly always bustling! For a day trip we went to Karlsteijn Castle, rather similar to Neuenschweinsten, but Vic hadn't been to a place like it before. And good news CWers, there was an English tour in person not the little audio guide!



I was impressed with the food, although by the end we had overloaded on meat and dumplings... just preparing for my future Lithuanian holiday celebrations! It was great having Vic to go to places to eat with, I expanded my meals past cheap sandwich stands! In addition, Vic turned out to have a great passion for picking out places to eat from guidebooks, (they weren't always opened...( but aside from that, he was an expert.



One of our more exciting adventures included finding a dance club one night! We went to one place that had all the lights on and a few kids sitting on the ground who said it was closed but they didn't know why. ...Hmmm, we really didn't want to ask too much. The next place had a line with little teenagers being frisked for weapons... I suggested maybe it wasn't our style. We were about to leave when we noticed a laid back place with an odd combination of a window dancer, soccer game on TV, and dancing to pop music. The conclusion to the evening consisted of racing around for two hours searching for the mysterious Night Bus 53. Don't worry, we obviously found it as we are not still wandering the streets of Prague. We arrived home at around 3 30 am, which was ironically the time that we had to leave for our train to Vienna!



Vienna

The trains to Vienna at any normal hour of the day were all sold out, so we took a 5am train. (But at least I can say that I had the experience of taking a Czech Taxi Cab and paying for it... who knows how much more than I should have(

On the plus side, we arrived in Vienna pretty early, and had the whole day to start our sightseeing. I loved Vienna for its history, and especially music history. I think the Mozart Museum is one of the best museums I have been to in Europe. It just opened recently. We also went to Scholss Schoenbrunn, Maria Theresa's palace, which meant a lot more knowing the family a bit better from the Marie Antoinette Biorgraphy. The Schloss has an amazing garden with a maze that, I must say, is better than CW's Governor Palace. It took us, (and everyone else,( forever to make it through. At the end/middle there is a little tower that you can climb to see everyone else struggle to make it through! Also in Vienna I saw my favorite Chruch/Cathedral I've seen. Not the huge St. Stephen's, (way too many people there,( but a much smaller one, St. Michael's with an original organ, and a wonderful ambience. I should note though, St. Stephen's did have a great Tower!

We went to a show of a selection of Mozart and Strauss pieces at the Opera House! The Opera House is amazing. I was not the only tourist snapping tons of photos. And, they played the Overature to the Marriage of Figgaro, which Vic and I saw on our first date. We never expected to see it again a year and a half later in Vienna!!

On our last day we rented bikes and biked around the whole city, which included finally finding the Danube, and a downpour at the end of the day.

I certainly ate my fill of schnitzel and Rider drink, beer mixed with Sprite. Oh, and how can I forget the best chocolate ever... Mozart Chocolate!



Venice

The ride through the Alps to get to Venice was beautiful and rainy. Arriving at the train station in Venice was amazing because we walked right out the there was the sun and water right in front of us!
I absolutly loved Venice! It was the most wonderful town just to stroll about in. The buildings were not as I expected. I thought they would be a little more "made up" but they showed their age and at the bottoms of many houses you could see where the water had worn much of the house down. I wondered how many of them looked on the inside, because I imagined some were in quite a state of disrepair.
Our hostel was in a great location, an easy walk from the train station, but in a nice little "campo" with its very own church and tower. We could see our San Geramia tower when we went up to the top of San Marco tower and looked out. San Marco square was huge by Venice´s standards, where there is hardly space for even the tiniest of squares. There was a free English tour of San Marco, which with its domes was unlike any other Church I had seen yet in my European travels. We decided should at least do one museum, so we went to the Academia, which turned out to be great because it wasn´t overwhelming, but just enough. They had paintings of events at Venice done in the 15th, 16th, 17th centuries, and it was amazing to see how much we could recognize from being in the same locations. Indeed one guidebook said that you could still use a pre-WWII map with great accuracy in Venice. (A good thing for us, with Vic´s 4 year old guide book that had caused a slight problem or two before.) The best part about Venice was just walking through the alleyways and getting lost weaving our way from one place to the next. At one point coming home from dinner we had a following of several families, obviously thinking we knew where we were going. Our following kept growing until a road we took ended in a canal... so we had to do an about face and walk back through them as they all wondered what to do next. I was shocked by all the families in Venice. I thought it was all for couples, but there were tons of families, with kids running all about!
I was in heaven with the amount of journals and leather bags being sold... Vic gets points for the number of journal and bag shops he went into!
Of course we went on a gandula ride... although during the day not at night for the sake of price. We shopped about for our gandula purchase... I had it in my mind that an older, jolly gandula driver would be better than a young guy. We found an old man, but he wasn´t exactly on the jolly side... perhaps this was after Vic got him down in price a bit!
Vic once again was on "operation where to eat" duty, and aside from the two or three places we searched for, and then turned out to be closed "for vacation" when we arrived, it all turned out great. Perhaps the most interesting meal we had was at a local spot without menus and very few tables. Vic ordered by pointing at the bar while I saved our two seats at a shared table with a Belgian couple who were artists. It turned into a rather interesting but enjoyable evening having dinner with the Belgians, who had never been to America but had quite a few things to say about the environment and how the Americans treat it. As I said though, they were super friendly, especially in letting us share their table, and we had good food, wine, and conversation.
On our last night there I finally tried the Venetians famous sardines, which were not bad. And I had a few glasses of their Bellini, a peach cocktail type of a drink. Also, the Venetians happened to be celebrating their big feast day on our last night there. We went down to San Marco, along with tons of other people to see one of the greatest fireworks shows I´ve ever seen. The fireworks were perfectly synced to a crazy collection of music. It made me think that perhaps I might want to be a firework choreographer if the film school thing doesn´t work.
To take a break at the end of our sightseeing we spent a day at Lido beach, (Vic has read Death in Venice, but I haven´t.) For those of you who know the reputation we have with beach weather, you will be shocked to hear that there were no storms and the weather and water were beautiful!

I cannot say which place I liked best. All three places were pretty different from eachother and I wish I could put pieces of each into all one location, but then it just wouldn´t be its own city I suppose! Anyway, of all the places I have been I think these three places were my favorites, and I know what many of you are thinking... "of course they were because Vic was there!" But actually the whole trip started with me wanting to go to Prague and Venice for the past few years, and I had looked into Vienna to be an au pair in at one point several years ago when I was trying to figure out how to get myself to Europe! So, these three places were a long time in the running as my top choices to visit, and I am so glad I did!

(Again, sorry for all the mistakes and typos, but as I only have 45 seconds to finish, post and log off ii have to run!!!)

Nice, France and Monte Carlo, Monaco!

Hello from the Cote d' Azur. (For once I'm on an English computer, so that o should be owith a ^, for all of you who are keeping up with my poor grammer and spelling.)
When I planned for this leg of the trip I knew that I wanted to see some part of the French Rivieria and that I needed a place between Venice and Barcelona. I picked a great spot. Nice is has been an excellent spot to relax for a bit, because I know that once I arrive in Barcelona and meet Ellen it will be a whirlwind eight day adventure before I board the plane!
My hotel location is amazing, just a short walk to the beach! So, I spent a great deal of time yesterday reading (HP VI again in preparation,) and writing in my journal on the beach. With my amazing travel sense I left my wallet and everything at home so with my key pined to me, I could get in the water! It is the brightest blue I have ever seen. The beach is rocks, not sand, and although my guidebook described how this could be unpleasant, it is actually great for traveling because it means no sand anywhere! Amazing!
The promenade, (which rather reminds me of some places in Southern California, perhaps I am just getting ready to think about moving,) is filled with pine trees and is beautiful at night. Also, my hotel is right next to the famous Hotel Negresco. I know some of you like to see if you can sneak into hotels to use the bathroom, but I haven't tried it with this one yet.)

Today I went to Monte Carlo in Monaco! (Thanks for the tip, Alicia.) I suppose I should have expected a super clean, chic place, but I thought it would be a little more 50's-esque. I found the Casino, but wasn't dressed to the standards of entering, and seeing that my funds are slowly going, it was probably good that I didn't spend the day gambling. For those of you who have seen me play poker, you will understand:) It was a picture perfect place, but it took me a while to find the area they push all the low price tourist outdoor cafes into for lunch. But guess what? I found a cheeseburger place... okay, call me lame, but I have been traveling for almost seven weeks, I deserve a cheeseburger. Also, I have noticed that I cannot keep track of what language I am supposed to be using anymore... I am so confused of where I am at what time anymore!!

Hopping on and off trains feels pretty routine now, I went to the station at Nice and to Monaco, (its own country, by the way,) and back without even really thinking!

I did have one first on this leg of the journey though... my laundry was going so well until now.
I have a new wardrobe of a greenish tint to an ivory color of shirts, underware, and even my new leggings! Well, at least I only have ten more days... and it was time for a change anyway:)

I still hope to take some time to update my blog with Prague, Vienna, and Venice... we'll see!

Tuscany, Italy-- Florence and Pisa

I am still alive!
Yes, in case any of you were worried, considering the two plus week blog absence, I am still alive and traveling.
I had a vacation from my vacation when Vic came, so I also ended up taking a two week vacation from my blog.

Now I am in Florence--Firenze Italy! It was a change to my plans when Ellen decided to fly into Barcelona to meet me for my last week, thus giving me an extra few days before heading to Barcelona, as I had previously scheduled.
I arrived in Florence on Sunday July 15. I was excited about the hostel I am staying in-- a 17th Century restored mansion in the heart of Tuscany. Of course, I realized the ideal is a bit better than the reality, because with sharing a large, extremely hot room with a dozen other people on a small bunk bed and seventiesoriffic bathroom tiles it doesnàt exactly feel like an old mansion. The outside, however, is gorgeous.

Today I went to Pisa. When I left Venice yesterday I still had not decided if I would take the trip. (Only about an hour away, unless the train is late and slow...) There is so much to do in Florence, yet the lore of the European travel destination hotspot of the Leaning Tower was too much, so I ventured to see it. I am certainly glad I did. As a lover of climbing towers, Pisa was the best one yet. You can actually feel it leaning when you go up! You are throw down one side and then have trouble getting up the next when climbing! Of course, I took the obvious pictures of trying to push the tower back up... along with the fifty other people doing the same thing.

Florence was entirely too much to see in an afternoon. I barely made it to the Duomo in time, and climbed its tower. After two climbs in a day, I had a huge gelato cone in the gelato capital of the world. (I made sure to hit that.) No art museums, but there are statues of naked Romans all over. It was a great city to walk around, but I will have to come back to see it all.

Tomorrow I go to Nice to rest before Ellen comes to Barcelona!