A Merchant in Venice

Get it? I used to be a merchant?
...Nevermind.

Venice is like a fairy tale, like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It is gorgeous, with canals crossing through the city, and the sea all around it. It’s made up of 117 tiny islands (“islets”), and has 409 bridges.

We got the 3-day unlimited public transportation pass, which allowed us to take the bus to our Hotel in the neighboring town of Mestre (the only “land” bus we took), and allowed us to hop on & off the ferries all day. The ferries work just like buses, with multiple routes, stations, tickets, and a schedule.
Here’s a “bus station” on the water:

ALL of the transportation in Venice is done by boat, including ambulances, taxis, and even the DHL delivery boat (below). It is amazing to have a whole city with no cars.

So let me clarify – while Venice is in total a little slice of heaven, there is the tourist center which is a little slice of hell (at least during high-tourist time in the middle of the day). It’s called Piazza San Marco, the center with all the historical must-see sights. It has long lines, and it’s a sea of crowded chaos, with loud, pushing, shoving crowds... And tourist-trap prices. But it’s a must-see, so we got in there (and got out). The 4 sights listed (and numbered) below are on San Marco Square. Here’s the square from the water (from the Grand Canal) -

Here’s the inside of the square:

Here are the San Marco Square sights:
1. San Marco Cathedral (built in its current from in 1063 – Byzantine architecture). I must admit, I understand why the line is so long - mosaic marble on the floor, mosaic tile & gold on the ceiling & walls... It is pretty incredible. (No pictures allowed inside so that you'll buy a postcard. We bought a postcard.)

2. The Doge’s palace (built in 1324 – gothic architecture) - which was the main governing center of Venice, also included the residence of the doge (duke), the courts, and the prison and dungeon.
Exterior of the Palace:

This is the impressive “Golden Staircase” – real gold and real painted/carved art.

The walls & ceilings of the Doge’s Palace are covered in gold and priceless art – we couldn’t take pictures inside, but we bought a couple of postcards to remember it by.

3. The Procuratie, (3 buildings surrounding the square), which has a museum with rooms and rooms of ancient and priceless art.

4. The Clock and Clock Tower, built in 1496. We took a very cool tour of the tower with a native Venetian. She shared lots of local facts and explained the workings of the clock & the history of the tower. (The clock builder and the subsequent caretakers had to live in the noisy clock tower and manually pull/adjust the weights every 12 Hours.) In addition to telling the time, it gives the lunar cycle and an astrological clock – so sailors and merchants relied on it for timing of voyages.

The Clock tower:

Our tour guide on top of the clock tower, with one of 2 bronze statues that hit the bell every hour.

During the nighttime, this same square is a magical, dream-like place to be:

During the day, as soon as we were done with the sights, we got OUT of San Marco and went...

Here:

And here…

And here. (Arsenale di Venezia)

And here. Sigh. We really enjoyed Venice in the evening.

We have been enjoying gelato nearly every day in Italy (or maybe just 2/3 of the days), and we have found that (as one may guess), it is always more expensive in the tourist center than in the “normal” or residential parts of the city. This was especially true in Venice: If we were ever lost (as one constantly finds oneself in Venice), we could gage how far we were from the square by the gelato prices – it went up by 10 cents every couple of blocks. But as always, we found our 1 euro scoop of gelato.

This is Vince in front of the famous Bridge of Rialto (and a sweet boat).

We had a wonderful time in Venice, we loved the ferries, the bridges, the views, the markets, and the food… We look forward to returning one day when we can be a little splurgier and take a gondola ride, stay right in the city (not Mestre) with a reasonably-working shower, and dine on the Grand Canal.

Padua, Who Knew?

We continued our journey into Italy traveling to Padua (Padova in Italy), which is about a half hour west of Venice by train. We chose Padua as a next stop primarily because staying in Venice on the weekend was significantly more expensive, but we were pleasantly surprised with the city. It is a medieval town, surrounded by a river (a very small river) and old city walls in certain places. It is now a university town, so the place was buzzing with college kids and mopeds.

Our hotel was a bit outside the main part of the city. On our walk in, we passed by one of entrances into old city.

This is the Capella degli Scrovegni, built by Enrico Scrovegni, who was part of a wealthy local family. It is built next to a small Roman Arena (this picture is from inside the Arena) and there used to be a large residence attached to the chapel. Inside are floor to ceiling frescoes painted by Giotto, with 38 panels depicting the life of Christ, including an amazing Last Judgment scene (which was inspired by Dante; Hell is a scary place). No pictures allowed, and we had to acclimate in a room for 30 minutes before entering, so that they could control the environment for preservation reasons.

This is the Palazzo della Ragione, built in the 12^th Century, which now houses market stalls on the ground floor, and is an exhibition hall on the second. The second floor wall are intricately painted and has a huge exposed wood ceiling. On either side of the Palazzo are two squares that have markets everyday; one square is for produce and the other for clothing.

The church to the left is the Padua Cathedral and the structure connected to the right is the Baptistry. The Baptistry is intricately painted in the style of Giotto and the domed ceiling is decorated with many famous Christian saints.

This is the Astronomy Observatory that was used by the University to study the sky. Today it houses a library of astronomy books.

At another square in the city was this really nice clock tower. This city is full of squares and many of the streets are closed off to traffic making it very walkable.

In the southern part of the city is the Piazza of Prato della Valle, a circular man-made river lined with statues. In the background on the left is the St. Giustina Church, the interior pictured below.

This is the side view of the Basilica di Sant’ Antonio. Really wish that we could take pictures inside, so please click on the link that takes you to the Wikipedia page. Almost the entire church is decorated in frescoes, and some of the side chapels are incredible. It also houses the tomb of St. Anthony, which is a gaudy white marble that people line up to touch (he is the saint of lost things). There is another section full of St. Anthony relics, which include his tongue, lower jaw, and his voice box, encased in gold chalices and boxes with glass so you can see it (creepy).

Tirol

Our first stop in Italy was a German mountain town – technically within the Italian borders, but it’s filled with lederhosen-wearing, hiking, German-speaking Germans. It used to be part of Germany, but Hitler gave the town to Mussolini as a gift. That was thoughtful. And such it was that this German town is now in Italy.

We were still with Vince’s parents, Aunt Ophelia, and family friends Sonny & Fe (who we also were in Munich with). We had a very relaxing stay at a mountain resort with wonderful food and long mountain hikes.

Tirol is a 4-hour drive from Munich. There were castles EVERYWHERE along the way, just along the roadside. There are about 400 castles in the region. Not exaggerating when I say that we saw a castle like this every mile or so.



This is a view of Tirol – it’s surrounded by vineyards & apple orchards… Beautiful!

We visited this castle, “Schloss Tirol,” built in 1138 (and added to over the next few centuries)-

Vince loves “all things castles,” so he was in heaven –

The castle had a great museum with stories of Tirol’s history and cool medieval artifacts – including this shield from the 1300’s

And this iron mask – I guess “The Man in the Iron Mask” isn’t entirely fictional. But Leo wasn't around that day, we looked.

Everywhere we hiked, we had one gorgeous view after another.

We did one organized hiking tour that included champagne tasting, and we walked through pastures that had horses and cows, right along our path – not fenced off in many places. Those are the snow-capped Dolomites in the background.

Germans love hiking. And beer. This being a German town with lots of German hikers, there is a restaurant at the top of every mountain – with soup, coffee, cake, and of course beer. This one is a pretty typical one, most of the houses, hotels, cafes & restaurants are in the Bavarian style.

So, we had a wonderful first 5 days in Italy... kind of still in Germany.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Summary #1 - Eastern Europe, Germany, & Austria Wrap-up

Our first 6 weeks of travel have been quite a whirlwind. Here are the numbers:

- 5 Countries (Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Germany, Austria)
- 7 major cities (Frankfurt, Berlin, Prague, Krakow, Vienna, Budapest, Munich)
- 8 Towns (Auscheffenburg, Wurtzburg, Potsdam, Kutna Hora, Aushwitz, Wieliczka, Chiemsee, Tegernsee)
- 4 Currencies
- 4 Languages
- 0 Thefts, pickpockets, or stolen organs
- 2 and a half mild-ish cases of food poisoning

Observations, Opinions, and Gross Generalizations, so far:

- The further east you go, the more challenging the language gets (6 consonants in a row!)
- The deeper you go into post-communist countries, the bigger the gap from “capitalistic customer service”, the surlier the security guards, and the more minutes they close before “closing time” – even if you want to spend money there (winner: Budapest, consistently closed 20-25 min before closing time).
- Public transportation is surprisingly on-time and gets even easier the more cities/systems you try. In general.
- Favorite beers – Czech Republic
- Favorite new cuisine – CurryWurst (Berlin)
- Best stews/goulash – toss-up between Budapest & Krakow
- Best subways – Vienna (Berlin is a close second)
- Oldest subway – Budapest - the historic yellow line is the 3rd oldest in the world, very clean and pretty (1. New York, 2. London)
- Ugliest subway – also Budapest – the blue line doesn’t get the love that the UNESCO yellow line gets... so it looks like the NYC subways circa 1982, pre-clean-up (graffiti, peeling metal, missing bolts)
- Most Globally/recently historic – Berlin
- Most legends – Krakow (they have a dragon in their legends!)
- Most music halls & opera houses - Vienna

A couple fun memories left out of the blog posts:

PRAGUE: We accidentally erased all of our Prague pictures in the transfer from camera-to-computer. Luckily, this happened on our last morning in Prague, and our train wasn't until night-time... So, we spent the last day in Prague re-tracing our steps from the previous 5 days. So any pictures that we have or posted were actually taken in one day, when we saw everything for the second or third time. The only pictures that we weren't able to re-produce were the night-time ones, and the interior of the opera house (we got $5 opera tickets and saw Aida - it was awesome). Anyway, here we are in front of the St. Charles bridge with a view of the castle across the river.

KRAKOW: The city's history really does start with a legend of a dragon. This is a statue of the dragon (a little hard to distinguish from the trees in this picture) - It breathes fire every 5 minutes or so.

Well, that about wraps it up. We are currently in italy for 6 weeks (blogs coming soon). We are going to Turkey for 10 days in November, and then we are off to Australia & New Zealand for almost 3 months. Then the European adventure continues in mid-February, still working on the specifics.

Lots of Love to all of our family & friends.

Around Munich – Lake Cheimsee, Tegernsee, and Schloss Linderhof

Our hosts Sonny and Fe also showed us some of the wonderful places surrounding Munich, including a lake, a mountain, and a palace in the forest.

Lake Chiemsee is a large lake nestled along the German Alps. It is fairly remote and definitely beautiful. There is a ferry on the Lake that transported us to the various islands.

The biggest island on the lake is Herrenchiemsee, on which sits Palace Herrenchiemsee, one of the three palaces built by King Ludwig II (who also build the famous Neuschwanstein castle and Schloss Linderhof described below). It was an homage to Versailles, but was never completed and some of the areas of the palace remain just brick foundations. Other parts were completed, most interesting were a dining room with a dining table that could be lowered to the kitchen and giant bath tub room.

Another little island on the lake included a monastery and a bunch of cool Bavarian homes. We also got to eat some delicious freshly caught fish at a lakeside restaurant.

Another day, we traveled about an hour and a half outside of Munich to the area around Lake Tegernsee, where we took a ski lift up a apx.2000m peak, that is part of the Alps. During the winter, it is a popular ski destination.

At the top of the mountain, we had some the traditional German soups. Apparently every mountaintop in Germany has a restaurant, which makes good sense. From there we had some amazing views of the valley below and saw some paragliders take off and float down. Then we proceeded to hike for 3 hours down the mountain.

On our way back to Munich, we stopped by to check out the town around the lake. It was a really nice town with some traditional Bavarian buildings and homes, with expensive stores and clientele. The lake was especially pretty as it neared sunset.

We visited the town of Oberammergau, which is famous for the Passion Play they perform every ten years. The tradition of this play of the Passion of Christ started as an homage to the town being spared during the bubonic plague. The actors and everyone who puts the play together is comprised completely of town residents.

We also got the chance to visit Schloss Linderhof, a small palace built by Ludwig II in the mountainous forest about an hour from Munich. The setting is spectacular, nestled in the foothills and surrounded by a large park and garden. The palace itself is ornate, check out the interior photos found on Google.

Ludwig II bought this Moorish Kiosk that was initially built for the World Fair in Paris. Inside is an elaborate peacock throne and colorful Moorish decorations and stained glass.

No palace would be complete without a Grotto. Apparently Ludwig II would have musicians play his favorite music in the Grotto for him privately, as he sat in the boat. He was a little crazy to say the least. He mysteriously died in a boat with his physician and his brother that succeeded him was completely crazy, and was only the king in name. We were told that there was a lot of close family marriages which led to a lot of defects.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Munich, More Than Just Oktoberfest

After our time in Budapest, we took a train run by an Austrian company, that in the middle of the journey sat on the tracks for 2 hours without any explanation. We expected this out of maybe the Hungarian, Polish, or Czech trains, but not Austrian. We finally arrived at the Munich train station where our family friend Sonny and Vince’s aunt Ophelia were waiting. Sonny, his wife Fe, and daughter Janet put us up in their home in Aschheim, a suburb of Munich.

The next day we went to the opening day parade for 200th Anniversary Oktoberfest (had no idea there was even a parade). It included horses pulling beer barrels, marching bands, and floats with traditionally dressed Bavarians. There are tons of people walking around dressed in traditional Bavarian Lederhosen.

After the parade we went to the Oktoberfest fair grounds where the beer tents, food, and rides are. It was so packed, it reminded us of Hong Kong.

The beer tents were full so we walked to the famous beer garden Hofbrauhaus, which was also packed. But we got a seat and were able to enjoy the beer, food, and antics of drunken Italians.

From there we visited an outdoor market and walked by this, the Rathaus of Munich.

Another day, we rode bikes to Munich and were given a tour of all the major sites in the city by Janet, including the Chinese pavilion (note: old German dudes drinking beer at noon on a weekday fail to capture the entirety of background pavilions) in the English Garden, which is 10 times larger than Central Park, and the the famous, double-towered Munich Frauenkirche.

Vince’s parents came a few days later to Munich and we visited the Olympic Tower in the Olympic Park, built for the 1972 Summer Games. We also visited the adjacent BMW museum that had a lot of cool exhibits about “The Ultimate Driving Machine”.

Later, the youngins worked their way into the Spaten Beer Tent at Oktoberfest. It was an amazing time with the bands playing and people singing along, while drunkenly balancing themselves on the table tops. “Country Roads” by John Denver is a confirmed hit among Germans, even though they don’t really know the words.

The following day we visited Nymphenburg Palace, a main residence of the Bavarian Kings. The palace sits on 490 acres of impressively well-manicured gardens. It is one of the few palaces we could take pictures in, the interior picture is the Stone Hall. Also included is the Gallery of Beauties, a set of 40 paintings of Bavaria’s most beautiful women of the time, commissioned by Ludwig I.

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