Exploring Europe

[/b]Ok, so again, it´s been a while since the last update. For that I apologize, but to my credit, I did spend 25 hours on the train on Wednesday through Saturday, so it wasn´t like I had much free time. I think I left off after Venice... So I´ll pick up with our subsequent destination: Florence, better known in Europe as "Firenze."

• After checking into the hostel, we saw Michelangelo´s "David" at La Accademmia
  
• We took a stroll down the riverbank toward Ponte Vecchio with all the gold and silver jewelry shops on the bridge over the river. Obviously couldn´t afford anything but the view.
  

• Musei dell´ Uffizi
  
• Palazzo Vecchio and Musei Fiorentino
  
• Santa Croce Cathedral
  
• Duomo: we didn´t have to wait more than an hour to get in, which was nice -- and the interior was absolutely amazing (again, pictures will help describe)
  
• We took another CitySightseeing bus tour, which took us about 25 minutes outside the city up to Fiesole -- an expensive sort of resort town in the hills with a fabulous view of Florence and even better food! We had dinner at the Etrusca Bar -- probably the best meal so far.
  

• Piazza Michelangelo: on Sunday morning, Jenny dragged me across town, across the river, and uphill for 20 minutes to reach the plaza -- the view made the work worthwhile, we had an awesome panoramic of Florence and the Duomo stuck out like a sore thumb atop all the other rather level rooftops
  
• After we wrapped up in Florence, we hopped on a train to Pisa. I do have to say, that had they not built the tower so crooked, then there would be nobody visiting that town, ever. It was rather humorous to see the failed engineering and the attempt to build a large structure atop marshland -- hopefully they´ve learned their lesson in that town
  
• We then went back to the station and spent an inordinate amount of time to get to Rome -- something like 6 hours -- ridiculous
  

• First up on the agenda was the Vatican Museum and Sisteen Chapel -- despite battling a line 5 city blocks long, and too many tour groups to count, we made it in to see the fabulous frescoes on the ceiling -- it was worth the hassle
  
• We then made the short walk over from outside the wall of the city into the Piazza and Basilica de San Pietro, where, of course, it started to downpour as we waited to get in. We did get to see the enormous basilica, and even went down to the crypt (morbid, I know) to see the late Pope John Paul´s tomb -- it was busy down there
  

• Last day in Rome we spent checking out the ancient ruins and stuff. We started with a guided tour of the Colosseum (inside) which was pretty neat -- glad we got some of the historical background and information. Made things more meaningful I think. We then headed over to the actual Palentine Hill and walked around the ruins and took some pictures, making sure to dodge the huge groups of Chinese school kids everywhere.
  
• After another short bout of rain, we hiked over to the historic Circo Massimo to see where they used to have the epic chariot races -- the site was totally overrated -- I think that my backyard at home was more interesting, and at least the grass there is greener.
  
• We ended up doing another Pub Crawl (don´t tell Grandma), this time with a much bigger group of people, and I met a couple fellow Minnesotans: Austin from Hopkins and Robin from Red Wing -- fun times with them.

The next day, Jenny left me and I had to strike out on my own to get to Madrid and spent about 25 hours on trains the rest of the week to get to Madrid.[/u][/u]

So we did make it to Venice, thankfully. Though our train arrived promptly in the afternoon, we did have to wait for the Actv Ticket Booth (public transportation via boat-bus) to reopen to get our tickets and be on our way. Thankfully, the weather was gorgeous -- sunny and at least 80 degrees. It was a welcome chnage from our last couple of countries.
We made it to the "hotel" without problem -- though we had to dodge plenty of tourists near between Rialto and San Marcos Piazza -- but the digs weren't too bad. We had a nice balcony one floor up with a nice view of a (usually) quiet canal.
Thursday August 18
First up on the agenda was the Palazzo Ducale (or Doge's Palace) in San Marcos Piazza. It comprised the Doge's family apartments in earlier centuries, as well as gathering rooms for the senate and wealthy community leaders. We also walked across the "Bridge of Sighs," crossing a canal from the Palace to the Prison -- where the incarcerated would get their "last view of freedom." It was a bit eerie, but pretty cool.
After that we went next door to stand in line for Catedral San Marcos. The wait was only about an hour or so, but in the blazing hot sun out on the square it seemed like forever. Once inside the cathedral, with sparkly gold mosaics decorating the inside, we walked up to the top to get a better view of the mosaics outside and the piazza below. It was really pretty inside, and there must have been millions of tiny little tiles comprising all the mosaics both inside and out.
After a lunch break, we took a private boat out to Isola Murano, which was sponsored by a private glass blowing factory. Once we got to Murano, we got to see a demonstration (which was neat), and toured the family's shop. The work was gorgeous, but was totally out of our price range.
Later that evening we took a "romantic gondola ride" (ok not so romantic because it was just Jenny and me with 3 other passengers, plus 5 other full gondolas) through the Grand Canal and some smaller canals -- serenaded in Italian with a real live accordion player too! It was a bit toursity, but fun (except for when I spotted a rat, but I won't go into that).
We had a nice dinner after that and called it an "early night" to catch another train to Florence the next morning.

Ok so it's been a bit since I last updated y'all with our latest activities... mostly due to a lack of access to or connection with the real world.
SATURDAY
We got a train from Berlin to Prague (Praha) and arrived late Saturday night -- our first mistake (mine, probably). Most everything at the station was closed, and what wasn't definitely had no information in English. We only had €s for money, and couldn't get change to but a metro pass. But there was a cab driver nice enough to take us across town for our €s instead of the Czech Crowns. After checking into the hostel (no telephone available), trekking up 4 flights of stairs with our bags, we got to our room: cozy, since there were like 10 beds or something. There were also a couple of "hazards" in the ensuite bathroom on the floor -- most likely from water from the shower saturating the floor and then leaking through. Awesome. Other than that not too bad.
SUNDAY
We started the day on a quest to find either an ATM or money exchange place. After a lot of running around and not much guidance from the locals, we found an ATM and had to buy some junk from a convenience store to break the 1000 and 2000 Crown bills the machine gave us. Needless to say the woman working hated us. Eventually we had enough change to buy metro tickets and made it to the city center. We hiked up like a million stairs to Prague Castle (when it started drizzling): we visited the Toy Museum with a huge Barbie display, as well as Golden Lane (some homes built into the wall of the castle) where Franz Kafka lived and worked. They love their Kafka in Prague. After battling the crowds and seeing some of the awesome buildings within the castle, we headed back down and across the Charles Bridge -- littered with little kiosks of stuff. We also passed this sort of jazz/cabaret 5 member band playing at the end of the bridge -- they were pretty good!
In the afternoon we wandered around Old Town Squre and the Jewish Quarter... it rained some more and we got wet again. When the rain let up, we decided to take a little boat cruise on the river. It rained again, and we learned about the huge flood in 2002 -- really encouraging. At least we weren't staying near there. But we did see this huge metronome sort of moving sculpture up on a hill above the river. Our guide told us that some art students designed and built it to replace the massive Stalin statue at the end of the Communist era. That was pretty cool. Back in Old Town Square we went to a little Jazz concert in an underground basement beneath a restaurant -- it was pretty interesting music -- the band on the bridge had inspired us to try it.
MONDAY
When we woke up Monday, it was raining -- harder. So we decided to wrap things up in Prague and head to Vienna. Sure enough, the rain followed us along the four hour train ride. It took us about an hour and a half to find the hostel when we got to Vienna, mostly because their transportation system was pretty confusing: an underground train system, which was not the same as the actual metro/subway system, and some above ground trams. By the time we got to the hostel we were pretty exhausted and just had dinner at a restaurant around the corner.
TUESDAY
First up on the agenda, after cursing the rain of course, was the Schonbrunn Palace and the surrounding complex. We took a tour of the great palace rooms decorated by Maria Teresa in the 18th Century. She had something ilke 16 kids, including the ill-fated Maria Antonia (Marie Antoinette who married Louis XVI of France), which is pretty ridiculous. So there were an infinite number of portraits of similar-looking people all over the palace. Outside the palace there was a sort of amazing garden complex, with fountains, flowers, a hedge-maze, conservatory, and a zoo. It was pretty, even with the rain -- which may have worked to our favor in keeping the crowds away.
We subsequently made it to the city center to see the Kaisergruft, or Imperial Crypt, where pretty much all Maria Teresa's family and other royalty were. It was a bit eerie, but kinda neat. The building reminded me a bit of the morgue, sort of sterile looking I guess.
Since it was still raining on and off, we decided on an indoor-activity consisting of a Johann Strauss Waltz concert. Aside from the obnoxious and rude tourists nearby, I really enjoyed it.
When we got back to the hostel at around 11:30 PM the desk receptionist told us we had to change rooms... it would have been nice to have more notice since we actually had to be out of there by 5:30AM to catch our train to Venice. So we spent about an hour packing and moving and remaking beds before trying to get to sleep. That sucked. But we did make our 6:30AM train to Venice the next morning, so all was not lost.

After the headache in Paris... we took a fantastic train ride to eastern Europe -- Berlin, more specifically. We made sure to get reservations for a "couchette," since the train left at about 8:45 pm and arrived no less than 12 hours later in Germany -- we thought we'd try to get to sleep. Well, as luck would have it, we were stuck in a small room (and I mean small), with 6 beds (3 on each wall stacked up on top of one another with about 24" in between. Awesome. Actually, not awesome. It was hot (not to mention putrid) since there was marginal ventilation and we had the pleasure of a true Frenchman riding in our car. Sick. Next time I think we'll just go for the seats.
Once we arrived to Berlin, exhausted, we dropped our stuff off at the hostel and decided that since we had the whole day ahead of us we might as well make the most of it. In the last two weeks we'd spent more than our fair share on bus and walking tours, emphasis on the walking part, and thought it was time for a change. So we met a group for a 5 hour bike tour of the city. That did turn out to be pretty awesome since we got to see almost everything important in the city, and didn't have to walk anywhere (Thank God). I guess what surprised me most was how modern everything was -- and our guide told us that the government has been pouring money into East Berlin since the Wall came down in 1989 -- there are still cranes everywhere because of all the construction.
We visited Tiergarten Park area, a section of the Wall still standing, Reichstag (which we went in to see the next day), Checkpoint Charlie, the newly opened monument to the "Murdered Jews of Europe," which just so happens to be meters away from Hitler's bunker. Overall the bike tour was a blast and a great way to see the city.
Our guide assured us that although the Neo-Nazi Party still had support in recent elections, it was nothing to worry about. But on Friday evening, Jenny and I witnessed a Nazi/Skinhead/Punk/Aryan extremist march right along the street from the comfort of our hostel. While non-violent, it was disturbing enough to encourage us to leave the following day.
I am glad that we got to see Berlin, and experience a bit of what it really was and is, as hard as it is to conceive of "modern Communism" for a democratically-biased American. No doubt the divided city built character for the citizens and community alike -- it's neat to see Berlin rebounding from the years of oppression. Makes me hopeful for the situation in Northern Ireland.

Let me start with apologies for any blatant misspellings here -- as I write this, I am in Germany -- land with the mixed up letters on the keyboard (plus spelling in French is strictly for experts). So use your best judgement while reading.
So Paris...
France marked our first real "foreign language" experience thus far -- though some would argue that Irish and Scottish accents are actually entirely different languages.
MONDAY
We took a nice bus from the airport to the city center -- about an 1-2 hour ride -- where we were plopped down in the middle of Paris with no bearings. After making it to Mountmatre and checking into our hostel, the three of us hiked (and subwayed) over to a cafe near the Eiffel Tower to eat before we battled the crowds. We stood in the queue for only about 45 minutes to get tickets and a lift up to the second level for some quality panoramic views and more annoying tourists. If Germany is the land of mixed up keyboards, certainly Paris is the city of annoying tourists. The tower looked great lit up at night, and after walking on the Seine for a bit, we decided to call it a night.
TUESDAY
We got up early to go to the Louvre before the crowds -- unbeknowst to us that it actually isn´t open on Tuesdays. Annoying again. At least that brought us close to the Tourist Center where we had wits enough to purchase a 3 day museum and monuments pass for 36€ that would get us in quickly to most of the things we wanted to see (i.e. less interaction with annoying tourists). So our first real experience of the day was the Musee d'Orsay: sculptures, and paintings, some by Monet, and some other ambiguous artists that I can't remember at the moment. Before venturing into the Hotel de Invalides, we had a nice afternoon picnic on the lawn -- consisting of brie and bread (surprise, surprise). At the hotel we saw the Musee du Army -- recounting the French perspective on WWII; in another section of the building was Napoleon's Tomb. It was massive -- especially since he was such a small man in life -- but I heard it's due to his insistence to be buried with all his riches. Greedy bastard, if you ask me... You should see the size of the thing. We then took the subway over to Notre Dame where we got to skip another long line of toursists to get into the cathedral -- pitures to follow -- and went underneath to explore the crypt: or the preserved section of early Paris.
WEDNESDAY
This time when we got to the Louvre, we actually got in. Of course one could spend a lifetime there and either get lost in all the amazing art, or just get lost in the building itself. We picked the latter. We did get to see the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Monet's Water Lillies, and a ton of other stuff. But, as with many popular sites, it was full of obnoxious tourists and we couldn't stand to stay much longer than 4 hours. So we went over to Saint-Chappel, where the stained glass recounts the entire Old and New Testaments. Crazy.
no time left got to go!!!!