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:

Brussels with Friends

After two months of hotels, hostels, and B&Bs, we decided to try Airbnb. Hotels always feel unnecessarily fancy, overpriced, and actually provide few services other than a place to sleep. With Airbnb we could get a kitchen and a more comfortable place for down time (i.e. to write blog posts).

We decided to rent a small apartment for 4 days near the center of Brussels. We showed up at the appointed location and time. Met the owners and got the keys. They were very friendly and helpful---pointing out the nearest grocery store and offered to answer any questions we had. The place was as-advertised. We were very excited.

Sadly, their alarm system malfunctioned the first morning of our stay. It kept going off and they were unable to disable it. Not their fault, but definitely a little stressful for us. They found us a hotel to stay in our second night, drove us there, and refunded us the entire stay. Can't complain about that!

We then moved to another Airbnb apartment for our final two nights in Brussels. Again, the owners responded quickly to our inquiry and were extremely welcoming. We loved it.

My gradschool friend, Nico, is from Belgium. He connected me with his father, Jorge, a resident of Brussels. Jorge offered to personally show us around town. After spending some time with Jorge, I now know where Nico got his hospitality and love of food. Jorge insisted on giving us a driving tour North of the city our first night. I later went back with the metro and took some photos:

The Atomium.

Brussels basilica.

He also pointed out the residence of the Belgian king, although I didn't get a picture.

He then took us out for an excellent Italian dinner. The food was wonderful.

The next morning he met us bright and early and took us on a 12 hour walking tour of the city. We saw beautiful guild halls from the 1600s, ate the famous frites, drank cherry (Kriek) beer, saw parks, goverment buildings, EU buildings, and had a delicious traditional Belgian dinner (mussels and carbonade flamande).

Cookies!

Cherry beer (Kriek) at "La Mort Subite" (the subtle death), which is an old bar that's been run by the same family for four generations.

Guild hall.

Art Noveau architecture.

King's office/palace.  It's good to be the king.

Frites! (Thick fries fried twice to make sure the vitamins are sealed in.)

The next day we met up with our friends Nels and Brianne to visit Antwerp. We went to the modern art museum. Brianne helped us understand what we were looking at.

We had more beer (Belgium is famous for beer) and walked around town.

An interesting public art display.

The Antwerp central train station is a really neat building. There are several floors of train tracks under the building.

On our last day Kate wasn't feeling well, so she stayed at our Airbnb place to rest while I toured the city on my own. I dropped in on the Google Brussels office (everyone was super friendly. Thanks!), and went back to a few sites to take pictures (included above).

Castles, Dali, and Picasso, oh my!

We visited a castle on the top of Montjuïc in Barcelona. It had some neat stuff, including a big gun:

a lovely garden:

and a great view of the shipping port:

It's unbelievable how big that place is.  Thousands of shipping containers, and many ships out at sea waiting to pick them up.

We also took a day trip out to the Dali museum.  That was certainly an interesting place!  From shiny things:

to paintings of rock people:

to Abe Lincoln's "cheeky" (look closely, folks) portrait:

We also visited the Picasso museum, but weren't allowed to take photos.  Paul and I concluded that we like Picasso's earlier work - you know, before he was about 19 when he still painted and drew quite realistically.  The first piece of artwork they had by him was a drawing that Picasso did when he was 9.  Pretty neat!

Odi et Amo, Firenze

I visited Florence (Firenze in Italian) in high school.  I don't remember a lot about it, but I do remember I didn't particularly like it.  I was curious to see what my impression would be this time.

Turns out, just about the same.

We arrived in the train station and found our way to our hotel.  On the way, we discovered that we were in Florence for a gelato festival!  +1 point!

Then, we discovered that the space above our hotel (it's in a large building) was under construction - not particularly wonderful, but they only worked on it from 9-5, so we were not around for much of the noise.  Our hotelier was welcoming and friendly and more than happy to answer our questions.  This equals out = no points.

Next, we went in search of food.  On the way there, I got bird poop on my pants (my best guess is that I walked into it as it was falling out of the sky).  -3 points, Florence.

Rick Steves recommends a small grocery store near the train station for the quick salad/pre-made foods section.  Clearly, the store owner has caught on and has jacked up the prices.  It cost us 15€ for some extra salty, extra al dente pesto pasta; some pickled eggplant; and two small roll things.  We were also grumped at multiple times by the employees, who seemed pretty fed up with foreigners. -4 points. 

To comfort ourselves, we partook in the gelato festival.  For 10€, we got 5 dishes of gelato, a gelato inspired beverage, and a tote bag (the gelato was redeemable over several days).    +4 points

It's always a sad thing when the gelato is gone.

After that, we let Rick Steves take us on a tour of the city and regale us with fun facts and corny jokes.  We started at the enormous basilica:

And checked out the famous baptistery doors:

Afterwards, we wandered around for quite a while, during which time someone dumped bread crumbs out of a window and onto my head.  Awesome.  What the heck, Florence!?  -2 points

It's not quite as bad as being spit on at the Colosseum, I suppose.  Yes, I got spit on - apparently some teens thought it would be hysterical to spit off a high spot, and I was lucky enough to be right below them.  It landed in my hair and on my cheek.  Lovely.

But I digress.

We went back to our hotel and consoled ourselves with some limoncello that we purchased in Assisi.  Limoncello is one of my new favorite alcoholic beverages.  In fact, I'm drinking some now as I edit this post! (Maybe unwise?  How's my spelling/grammar?)

On Friday morning, we found the food market.  Everyone was super friendly, we found lots of great foods for making meals in our hotel room, and had delicious cheap sandwiches.  +5 points  

Here's a sample meal from our food market bounty (I'm peeling an orange).

After dropping the food off at our hotel, we went to the Uffizi.  This was a mixed bag.  Boticelli's Birth of Venus is truly lovely in person, but no photographs are allowed at all, and a large chunk of the museum was closed.  We saw nothing by Raphael, which was disappointing. And it was rather expensive, given how much was closed.  -2 points.  I did cheat and take a picture of the Ponte Vecchio (bridge with lots of jewelry shops on it) from the Uffizi though:

We went out to dinner.  The plates were huge, but for whatever reason, we weren't given free watermelon for dessert like everyone else.  -1 point

Saturday it rained and rained and the high was 59 degrees.  Brrrr.  I won't deduct points for weather, though.  We went to the Galileo museum, which was good overall, although we both would have liked more explanations of how things worked, not just who acquired them and when they were constructed.  +2 points

Some science-y thing from the late 1500s.  More info here. 

Hopefully, Paul will write a more complete post about some of the stuff in this museum - there really were some very cool things, like the above armillary sphere built when people still thought the earth was the center of the universe.  All those wooden circular belts you see would have moved. Really impressive!

Then, with a recommendation from our hotelier, we found a coffee shop where we could actually sit for a while and read, taking refuge from the pouring rain and cold weather. Paul says, "It was super close and awesome!" +2 points

Tomorrow we leave for Venice, city of expensive lodgings. :)

So, odi et amo ("I hate and I love," in Latin, from a poem by Catullus) Firenze. For those of you who did the math, I think Florence came out with a +2 score overall.

I should probably add a few points for the spectacular sunset we had the pleasure of viewing one evening:

A bit darker:

And of course, sunset plus Kate and Paul:

24 Hours in Assisi

We spent about 24 hours in Assisi from May 22-23.  Architecturally, Assisi is a very well-preserved medieval town.  It has tons of cute alleyways, many of which are decorated quite nicely with vines and flowers.  I believe Rick Steves said that there is a contest every year for best balcony flowers.  We certainly saw many fine examples:

and another:

Since the main attractions in so many cites are churches, we've seen tons of Christian iconography.  I've been intrigued by the fanciful scenes of the end of times, hell, and many others, but I think the picture below is my favorite.  That, my friends, is a lion eating a Christian outside the Church of San Rufino.

Assisi is built into the side of a hill, and there are some great views:

And, of course, the main attraction of Assisi is the Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi.  No pictures allowed inside, but here's what it looks like from the outside!

And yet more Rome

On Saturday, we took a day trip out of Rome to Ostia Antica - the ancient Roman seaport.  It's an entire city of ruins, including an amphitheater:

Lots of great mosaics:

And this cool statue tucked away in a tunnel under the ground:

It was like being a kid again - exploring a landscape of ruins, always wondering what cool thing could be right around the corner:

Paul found the mills very interesting (as did every other single tourist there - this is by far the most people we saw in one place in all of Ostia Antica, and this was our second attempt to take a photo, too).  The millstones have holes in the top where for the whole grain and the flour came out the bottom.  Donkeys or humans pushed them in circles:

Saturday night was Rome's free museum night (just once a year!), so we went to the Capitoline Museum.  The line was long, but moved pretty quickly: 

The Dying Gaul is justifiably famous, down to the calluses on his foot:

And the pieces of the impressive statue of Constantine, originally in the Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine in the Roman Forum, were quite neat to see:

On Sunday, we wandered around, ate delicious pizza (we ate a lot of pizza in Rome!), and sunbathed on the Spanish Steps: