Books, Food, and Tea

Yesterday, my tolerant husband joined me on a tour of two libraries and a bookstore. We started the morning with a stop at the Multnomah County Central Library, which is a large, lovely library full of many great spaces:

We followed that up with a visit to the library at Portland State University, which has an interesting shape that allows for lots of great study space near windows:

The next stop was Powell's City of Books, well known for being an enormous sprawling bookstore. We poked around for a while, but didn't take any pictures.

Then it was time for lunch. Since Portland has over 600 food trucks, we figured we'd better enjoy at least a few. There's one block with parking in the middle that is lined on all four sides with trucks. We did a loop before making our selections:

Paul's grad school roommate, Nico, lives in Portland and had recommended Nong's Khao Man Gai, which was delicious. We also got pad thai and mango bubble tea from another food truck. All in all, a delicious and filling lunch, which we carried back to our hotel to eat because of the rain:

Nico and his wife had also recommended the Lan Su Chinese Garden in Portland - both the lovely garden itself (just one city block) and the Teahouse within. Both were quite enjoyable. We managed to time things so that we were enjoying tea during the worst of the afternoon rain. The gardens were beautiful and very peaceful:

Finally, we ended the day with dinner with Nico and family, and Nico's cousin from Belgium, at a restaurant that served Indian street food. Definitely different from the Indian food we've had before. If there's one thing to be said about this trip to Portland, it's that we are definitely eating well! Luckily, we are also doing a lot of walking to balance it out. 

Much to do in Amsterdam

Let's start with our arrival in Amsterdam - the train station is quite a lovely building:

Amsterdam has tons of canals and is like a thriving Venice where non-tourists actually still live.  Many of the canals are lined with houseboats:

There are tons of things to do in Amsterdam.  There are museums for everything - Dutch artists (we went to the Rijksmuseum), cheese (we walked past one of these but opted not to visit), and houseboats:

Paul is right at home in the living room

This particular houseboat had an incredibly tiny living area for the skipper and family from the days when it was still used for shipping freight.  The sleeping areas were incredibly small.  You can't really tell, but I'm on my knees in this picture and the bed to my side would have slept two children.  It isn't much bigger than what you can see, and the double bed on the other side was only slightly bigger than that.  There's no way a person my height, let alone taller, could have stretched out in that bed.

While wandering around Amsterdam, Paul commented that Pittsburgh needs restaurant areas like these:

Nice, shady spaces lined with trees and tons of outdoor eating.  We opted not to eat there, however, because instead, we ate in the public library.  We had dinner on the 7th floor, complete with beer!

For the record, we shared the entire meal.  I did not eat an entire pizza and a salad!

The lovely view from the library that you can sort of see in the photo above:

And I just cannot help myself.  Here are a bunch of neat photos from inside the library:

And to end, a Kate and Paul picture:

The Lovely Lake Como

Lake Como is bellissimo!  No wonder so many people vacation there.  Unfortunately, our visit coincided with what locals told us is the coldest spring in a hundred years or more.  Normally, it's 75-80 there, I think.  We considered ourselves quite lucky on the third day when we neared 65 degrees.  The other days were more in the 50s and very low 60s.  It was also cloudy and rainy the first 1.5 days, although the rain mostly stayed away while we were out and about.

We had a lovely view from our hotel room at Eremo Gaudio, a former hermitage, in the town of Varenna:

This hotel has its own private funicular.  We were in a room on the bottom part but took the funicular up to the top part twice for the wonderful views from the terrace:

There are a variety of ferries that you can take to other parts of the lake.  I was amused by the ferries for transporting vehicles.  It's pretty amazing to watch a large bus drive off of a ferry!

On our first full day on Lake Como, we took a ferry to the nearby city of Bellagio - it's a little bigger and has a lot more touristy shopping.  From the ferry, we admired the views of the Alps.  The photo belowwasn't actually taken from the ferry but shows some of the Alps hiding in the clouds.  I think at this time of year, there should not be any snow on them - ha!

In Bellagio, we purchased windbreakers/water resistant coats.  It's certainly been windy and rainy.  Plus, with plans to visit the Alps, we felt we'd get good use out of these.  Also, we match:

I would like to mention that I picked the coat first, and then Paul decided he liked it, too.  He said he was already planning on a black coat anyway, but I think he's just making excuses....

We also found a cute little library in Bellagio.  It's only open from 5-6:30 in the evening (wow, how do you like those hours?) though, so we didn't manage to go inside:

Walking away from the main shopping strip in Bellagio gave us some really great views - of the flowers growing along the rock walls leading to the water (this photo is taken looking downward along the wall into the water):

And of the scenery:

On our second day in Varenna, we took a cooking class, which I'll write about in another post, and went for a hike with yet more views of this gorgeous mountainous lake:

So far, there aren't a ton of places from this trip that I feel I must return to in the future, but Lake Como is definitely my top pick.  Especially if it were warmer.

Also, we've discovered that Italians take their hot chocolate seriously.  That stuff is thick and chocolate-y!  At first, I was kind of sad that they only filled the mug halfway, but then I learned why - can you see the thick drip of chocolate dangling off the spoon?

That's what I look like when wired up on chocolate, by the way (or when Paul uses the flash in a dark room).

And lastly, they have some peculiar tree-trimming habits in Lake Como.  They cut off the large branches and leave only the water sprouts, which I've always called suckers.  However, while looking up the term, I learned that suckers originate from the root of the tree.  These are water sprouts, since they are shooting up from large branches.  Who knew?  This isn't the best photo of it, unfortunately, but hopefully you can see how the very thick branches are covered with leaves from the water sprouts:

Museums, Museums, Museums

On our last full day in Dublin, we hit a bunch of free museums.  We started out the day at the National Gallery.  It was okay but half of it was closed.  We did enjoy a Rembrandt painting of a spanking game.  There was also a beautiful sculpted Adonis whose hands looked so lifelike that I expected him to reach for me at any moment.

Then, we went to the Natural History Museum, which I didn't really enjoy.  It consisted of two huge galleries of cases full of taxidermied animals of all sorts.  And some skeletons.  Instead of curious, I really just felt sad about the lion and other cubs that were labeled as born at the same location and were therefore obviously killed to be stuffed.  And the many baby birds.  Give me fake animals any day.

Next, we stopped by the National Library (see, it says library above my head):

We couldn't see much of it, but the main reading room was very cool.  I always think I could get a lot of work done in an inspirational location like that - a huge domed room lined with books and filled with tables containing the traditional library reading lamps.

Then, we wandered around and looked at the outside of Christchurch Cathedral (you had to pay for a tour of the inside, of course):

Finally, we discovered my favorite museum in all of Dublin: the Chester Beatty Library (also free), located on the grounds of Dublin Castle (which is a governmental building that is closed to the public for 7 months due to some EU stuff).  The picture below is part of Dublin Castle and its gardens (Chester Beatty is off to the left, not in the picture).

If you're ever in Dublin, go to this museum.  Chester Beatty was a collector of many cool works of art, including tons of illuminated manuscripts from many different cultures, Asian scrolls and other materials, paintings, and more.  It's well laid out and not very crowded - at least when we were there.

And lastly, I'll leave you with a picture from this morning at St. Stephen's Green while we wandered around (freezing! I am wearing 5 shirts in that picture) killing time before we went to the airport to fly to Greece.

Tired in Dublin

After getting about 1.5 hours of sleep on the plane, yesterday was a very long day. I attempted to write this post last night but gave up.

We arrived at the Dublin airport at about 5am yesterday.  Immigration was fast and customs was basically non-existent.   We caught a bus to our hostel and enjoyed the view from the second story of our ride:

Given that we were up and about long before just about all the shops opened, we did quite a bit of walking around the city.  Then, hours later, Trinity College's Old Library and Book of Kells display finally opened.  You can't take photos of the Book, but we did get a few good ones of the Old Library:

It also had a cool spiral staircase, which Paul appreciated:

We also attempted the National Museum of Archaelogy.  However, since we had a tendency to fall asleep every time we sat down, we really didn't enjoy that one as much.  It's free, though, so we may go back.

Finally, last night we found ourselves a good Irish bar, had some fish and chips and beef stew, and enjoyed a couple of beers: