Archive for the ‘Photos’ Category
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January 30, 2008
Our last day in Venice and in Italy. We were flying back to Paris that night. We left our bags at the hotel and went out to explore since we had all afternoon.
We went up the Campanile:
And Venice gained a few points with me, which it lost on food quality, since this actually did not involve stairs. There was an elevator! I was one happy person about that. My vertigo generally isn’t nearly as bad if there are no stairs. (Stairs are evil.)
Venice from above was pretty darned nice.
From above you can also appreciate just how large Basilica di San Marco is:
We went to Palazzo Ducale di Venezia:
Part of which involved walking across the Bridge of Sighs. This picture is clearly taken from outside. But we also went through the prison that is on the other side. Actually Palazzo Ducale was pretty interesting. I’d recommend it.
There were still lots of people in costume about.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned it but our hotel room in Venice was pretty freaking big. Keep in mind we’re talking about European hotel rooms, which are traditionally tiny. And of course we went from being in Venice with the wonderfully large hotel room to the tiniest hotel room ever in Paris.
That’s a queen bed. The bathroom is behind that wall that’s in the foreground.
And here’s the other half of the room.
Huge!
It was the most we paid for a hotel room, but not by a lot. Maybe 10 Euros?
We went out for one final meal, where I finally got some risotta (alas not very good risotto) and a “mixed grill” that inexplicably included half a hot dog. (Something we probably should have taken a photo of…)
I choked most of the meal down with a good helping of wine which gave me the liquid courage to go plunk down a lot of money for the ultimate keepsake – a really expensive pieve of Venetian glass.
Coincidentally the shipping weight on it was 10kg. That’s approx. 22 lbs. And you know what? The shipping was less and faster than the shipping for my mask. Go figure. (And no, I’m not telling how much I paid for it. In Euros or CAD. Suffice to say that if it ever breaks I will get very, very drunk.)
Then we hopped on a water bus, grabbed the bus (one with wheels) to the airport in the middle of nowhere to take another Ryan Air flight to an airport in the middle of nowhere in France. When we tried to hop on the bus to Paris Lee stopped to let a nun go before him and then they tried to put him on a different bus than the one I had already boarded (just ahead of the nun). This did not go over so well with Lee. Or with me. In the end he got on my bus and we got the last two seats way at the very back. We got Paris, grabbed a cab to our hotel. We checked in only to disover the elevator? It wasn’t just not working. It was not there because it was being replaced. We were on like the fifth floor. And had luggage. It was 1am. Fun!!!
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January 29, 2008
I think that after having a quiet day on the 28th we felt like we should actually do things on the 29th. And on the 29th I went shopping. Aside from buying some books in Paris (and Lee’s suitcase in Rome) we really hadn’t bought much. Mostly post cards that we sent out to people along our travels. I was overdue.
While I didn’t shop here I did think it was neat to see a Lush in Venice. I really wasn’t expecting that.
We passed a lot of places like this.
I did buy one but I also shelled out the Euros for a handcrafted one that I didn’t take a photo of and had it shipped back to Canada for me. I still don’t have a picture of it but it’s sitting on my mantle. I also bought a Venetian pen and some ink. I don’t have a picture of it either but if you got a Christmas card from me that had green ink then I used the pen for it. (I stopped using it after awhile. It was fun but slowwww.)
That evening we took the plunge and went for our gondola ride. Holy moly was it expensive (no, I am not telling you how much. If I did I’d have to cry.) For our money we got a “tour” of the canals that mostly involved listening to the gondola guy talk on his cell phone.
It’s very hard to take a self portrait on a gondola at night. This was as good at it got.
Took some photos at the Rialto Bridge.
When we were at dinner (which was surprisingly decent…while mine was, Lee didn’t like his), we were chatting with an older British couple who told us that they had read in the papers there was going to be a drag queen competition in Piazza San Marco. I was all over that.
So I put on my mask and we bought Lee one (which totally reminds me of an old school hockey mask and I can’t quite explain why except that it looks like it could handle a slapshot – I don’t think we’ll test that though) and headed out.
There was a pretty good crowd.
And there were drag queens of course.
Fabulous Italian drag queens.
Italian drag queens have fabulous hats.
It was the first Carnaval drag queen competition and I can’t think of anything more perfect for Carnaval. As fantastic as it was though, standing in crowds makes me tired and cranky so I have no idea who won.
We went back to the hotel and I took photos of the quite street at night. There were times during our stay where it was wall to wall people and you could hardly fit though. Not at night. At night it was quiet.
Which is good. I like quiet.
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January 28, 2008
I honestly don’t remember anything particular on this day. I know at this point I was getting tired of travelling and would have beaten someone with a stick in exchange for a truly good and satisfying meal. There comes a certain point where one (at least if one is like me) just wants a good solid home-cooked meal. Hell, I’d even have done the dishes and everyone who knows me can tell you I loathe dishes.
We went to the Guggenheim.
Some of the art was wonderful. Some of it was just plain odd. Lee…well, let’s just say it didn’t make him a modern art fan.
I thought it was kind of neat to be in a room with multiple Pollocks.
As tired as I was with many things I still found the canals enchating. (It probably helped that we were there when it was cold so they weren’t too stinky).
People have interesting door knockers in Venice.This one was almost too clown-like but not quite.
We found more churches.
It was a quiet day really. We just wandered around and saw stuff. We needed a quiet day.
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January 27, 2008
Oh this day was off to a lovely start. We had to leave the hotel around 4am and walk through the lovely vaguely sketchy area to the bus station. A few blocks into we were pretty sure we were going the right way but someone wanted to stop and look at the map. I had firmly stated before we left the hotel that there would no map checking on the sketchy street. It was just not happening. So um. yeah, I may have slightly freaked when he said we should check the map. What part of no map checking did he not get? And what part of me saving for days that I didn’t feel safe in that area did he not get? Well, he’s a guy. He just didn’t get it. So I blew up at him, we kept walking, found where we needed to go and then later in the day I apologized. (I still don’t think he totally gets it mind you.)
But we found our bus and took it to an aiport in the middle of nowhere where we got on a plane to take another plane to the middle of nowhere and then a bus to Venice. We got to Venice early in the morning.
Venice was totally different from any other city we’d been in. You felt it instantly. It probably didn’t hurt that public transit = boats. Or that we were greeted to sights like this.
After the breakdown in Rome that morning I was loving Venice. Even if it was cold.
It had cool art.
As you can see from where the sun was, it really was pretty early.
We were able to check into our hotel when we arrived, which was a totally unexpected bonus. Furthermore we *found* our hotel easily. It was just a block off of Piazza San Marco. Realllly easy to find, and nothing is ever really easy to find in Venice. We were supposed to get lost three times before we found anything. I was totally loving Venice.
We went exploring.
We got lost. Well, not really. We weren’t really trying to get anywhere specifically. We were trying to move in a certain direction and somehow managed to go the opposite way.
This would happen a lot, but since Venice is rather small it wasn’t a big deal. We always found ourselves in some piazza or near some church.
We were quite happy to be there though.
And look! The bags under our eyes disappeared. Trust me, Lee’s did too.
Did I mention that were in Venice during Carnaval? We were treated to characters like this coming out of alleys.
And then something happened that made Venice lose it’s luster a bit. We went for lunch. We had been warned about two things in Venice – as tourists we would be charged more than locals (true) and the food was often not very good (very true). Sure, there are good restaurants in Venice but unfortunately they were really not in our budget. And we didn’t want to go to the local bars and order snacks (guide book recommended) as well, we wanted meals. We didn’t want to sit in bars. So we stopped for lunch as someplace right along one of the canals and had one of the worst. meals. ever. And it cost as much as good meals in Paris. When I say it was bad, it was bad. It was horrible.
The streets in Venice are neat…but narrow.
We mostly just wandered around Venice that day. In the evening the lights come on. It was purty.
When we went out to dinner that night we decided to pony up for a more expensive dinner. And it was quite good. Unfortunately they brought me the wrong main course (which I didn’t send back) and the wrong dessert (which I did). At least cheap wine followed us to Venice. And this place had a lovely homemade limoncello. And I got a bit tipsy. But somehow our hotel in twisty-turny Venice was way easier for me to find than our hotel in Rome.
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January 26, 2008
Vatican Museum day. That was all that we had on our agenda for the day. Unless it was the day that I made Lee buy a new suitcase. It might have been…
You see, Lee had a lovely suitcase. Except for the fact that it didn’t turn so well and the handle broke on the way to Paris which made wheeling it almost totally impossible. We sort of improvised using one of the extra straps from mine but it didn’t work so well. We talked about it for several days. The conversation went kind of like this:
Me: You are buying a new suitcase.
Lee: No, I am not. Mine is FINE.Walking by a place that sells suitcases:
Me: Oh look! SUITCASES! Only x euros. You should buy one.
Lee: I am not. buying. a suitcase.He bought a suitcase. And perhaps I should note that at this point we were not, nor had we discussed, living together. Now the conversation goes something like:
Me: Just buy the damn suitcase already because if you don’t I’ll point out every single suitcase for sale that we see. And probably some that aren’t for sale.But right, Vatican Museum. Where people line up outside to hock knockoffs to tourists. I’m sure the saints love it.
Inside the museum though, are many wondering things.
Like mummies. That weren’t really blurry.
And baboons.
And funky faces.
And a big gold thing.
And really big awesome maps.
And stuff we were really not supposed to take photos of (oops – in my defense their “no camera” drawing looks A LOT like their “no flash camera” drawing).
And nowhere near the Museum we saw a cat that I made Lee take a photo of because I was really starting to miss Piper.
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January 25, 2008
Today was Vatican Day. We had a lovely walk there along the river.
And crossed over at Ponte Sant’Angel.
Entered Vatican City.
Where the flag at the Canadian Embassy did not want to be photographed.
Lee posing at the Vatican where, yes, they still had a nativity on display. Many of the churches we saw in Europe did.
The thing about the Vatican is that you can’t appreciate just how huge it is until you see it. And after even “large” churches seem small and insignificant.
We took a lot of pictures trying to capture domes in Europe.This one didn’t turn out too bad.
Then it was time for lunch. But first another self-portrait.
We had picked another place from our guidebook for lunch. It was open, still serving (we did occasionally miss lunch because people had finished serving) and not too expensive. It was pretty good too. After lunch we headed back toward the Vatican only to get there and realize I’d forgotten my camera at the restaurant. Lee ran back and found it safe and sound.
It was time for him to go up the dome. After reading in our guidebook that a trip to the dome is really not recommended for people with vertigo I decided to opt out. I felt like an ass doing it. I wanted to see it. Yes I did. But I really didn’t want to burst into tears again either. Sigh. So I sat while Lee went up.
There were narrow hallways.
And tight winding stairs.
But when he got to the top he was treated with a fantastic view.
I’m wayyy down there. I’m the blurry blob sitting on the edge of the second from the right column, surrounded by French teenagers on a school trip. Joy.
Lee found a Chinese tourist to take his photo.
When he got back down he told me that not going up was the best decision I had made the whole trip and that I would have hated it. I still felt horrible. A bit relieved perhaps, but horrible.
We had originally thought about going to the Vatican Museum that day as well but they stopped letting people in too early for us. So we slated it for the next day.
We stopped by the river to buy some ink sketches of Roman sites as a souvenir. We wandered down by the water and considered taking a boat tour (but didn’t). It was a nice walk.
We slowly wandered back in the direction of the hotel. I, yet again. got lost on the way. We were pretty tired from the last few days of walking so rather than go out for dinner we stopped at the local supermarket and bought some bread, meat, and cheese for dinner. And more water. Always more water.
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January 24, 2008
This was my day to be a picture fiend. Old stuff, lots and lots of old stuff!
After grabbing breakfast at the hotel (one of the few upsides of it is that it did have a complimentary breakfast, too bad the coffee sucked) we headed back down to the Roman Forum. The pay before we had bought a combo ticket for the Colosseum and Palatine Hill and it actually works for two days as long as you get there before 1. No problem. Before wandering into Palatine Hill though we did the Roman Forum. I was smitten with it.
I probably could have spent the entire day there.
I also started wishing I had a much better camera.
Mine just wasn’t doing it justice. But it was handy for self portraits.
We did eventually venture past the gates and into Palatine Hill.
And we did lots of walking.
Sometimes through tunnels.
Sometimes in the sunshine.
And I feel in love with Italian trees.
And we realized we were really, really hungry and were really wishing we had packed a picnic like the guidebook suggested. Eventually we pried ourselves away from the old stuff to go in search for food. This is when we discovered the problem with going to Italy at the end of January – a lot of restaurants are closed as people go on their own vacations. So while we actually found that restaurant the guide book recommended it was closed. We we wandered figuring there had to be something else close by. We found this little trattoria that was full of locals and tourists. We headed in and I really wish we knew the name to it because it was awesome. We were bad tourists and ordered totally, on purpose. We sampled a bunch of smaller dishes and they were fantastic. I know there was soup, and I think gnocchi. And the wine was the cheapest we ever saw. I got 1/4 litre of the house red for 1.25 Euros. Lee does not drink so usually ordered water and my wine was usually cheaper in Italy. Sucked for him, was fantastic for me.
As we were wandering along after lunch we passes a jewelery store and I hopped in to buy Cat her birthday gift. This involved not understanding how the security doors worked but hey, we eventually got in. And back out.We had hours of wandering time left. We found more churches.
And the Pantheon.
We saw fountains.
Lee continued his love affair with Roman streets.
We found Piazza Navona.
We had to stop and figure out exactly where we were.
We found Piazza del Popolo…
and its twin churches.
And then the Spanish Steps.
And then we were tired and hungry so we headed back to the hotel and then out for dinner. We were feeling adventurous (and like sticking close to the hotel) so we tried an Ethiopian restaurant. It was pretty good but half way through the dinner I figured out what the meat dish tasted like – Puritan meatballs.
We didn’t really mean to see so many sites that day. Our plan on our trip was to plan two things each day and see what else happened. In Rome we just found ourselves really close to things and there was always something to see on the way. And we walked everywhere in each city we went to. It was great.
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January 23, 2008
We got up obscenely early in the morning and took at cab to catch a bus to take us to an airport in the middle of nowhere so we could fly to Rome. Yes, our first experience with RyanAir. Where the bookbuying came to bite us as our luggage was overweight. Oh well, we just paid the darn charges.
It was after 2pm by the time we landed, caught a bus to Rome (because again, middle of nowhere), got dropped of at the central bus station, checked into our hotel and then were off to find food.
I do not recommend staying near the bus station. I hated it. I hated our hotel (it was cheap and clean but I disliked it). Someday we are going to go back to Rome and stay someplace better.
After we ate we wandered. We were surprised to find just how many things we saw just by walking around.
But first we headed to the Colosseum.
We got there near the end of the day but had plenty of time to explore and take photos.
And after I got home I had fun making some of them look older.
We stayed until they kicked us out. It was too early to go back to the hotel (we tried to spend at little time there as possible) so we did some more wandering.
We found this little church near Palatine Hill.
Which wasn’t really a suprise because we were tripping over old churches constantly in Europe. But this one had a priest that was so old and each step he took moved him forward about an inch. He was quite adorable.
I was fascinated by the parts of the Forum they were still escavating. My inner archaeologist wanted to go play.
My inner archaeologist and historian generally had a blast in Rome. Ruins! Old stuff! All those things I had read about where right there! It was all kinds of awesome and I took pictures of every little thing the next day when we did the the Forum and Palatine Hill
I was not fond of crossing the street here.
We were trying to find our way to Trevi Fountain. This involved many wrong turns and map consultations. Lee became enamoured with Roman streets.
Eventually we found our way there thanks too…a McDonald’s sign. Yes. Really. It pointed us in the right direction and told us how far we were from it. And yes we felt dirty about it…but since we didn’t go to the McDonald’s we mostly just laughed about it and shook our heads while commenting on how sad it was. (My rule was no McDonald’s on the trip.)
So we threw our coins in the fountain and found some other tourists that didn’t look like they’d steal our camera to take our photo.
We’re starting to look less and less tired as the vacation progressed.
We ate dinner and froze our butts off while trying to find our hotel again. After getting lost once or twice (if it hadn’t been for Lee would have gotten lost everytime, I had a mental block on the hotel) we found our way and crashed.
It was also in Rome that we found out about Heath Ledger’s death. We were greatly confused. We kept seeing his name everywhere and couldn’t figure out why. After staring at the tiny scrolling news on the tiny tv in our room we finally figured out what was going on. It was…surreal. We knew it had to be huge news back home but we were disconnected from all of that. It was very weird.
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January 22, 2008
Our last day of the first trek in Paris. We’d hit it again at the end of the trip.
We went to Sainte Chapelle.
Beautiful stained glass. My mother would have loved it.
Then to Notre-Dame Cathedral and another incident with those pesky stairs and vertigo. I did manage to enjoy myself up top thanks to the fact that I fell in love with the gargoyles. Ok, so most of actually weren’t gargoyles.
Example: See this is a gargoyle. It’s spouting water off of the building.
This is not a gargoyle, but I love it.
And this one:
And this one:
And every other one that I took photos of, which is to say all of them. They were also a nice distraction from the vertigo.
I also took one of the better trip pictures of Lee from the whole trip wayyyy on top of Notre Dame.
The trip all the way down the stairs to the bottom was. not. fun. In fact it was awful and when we got down to the bottom I burst into tears. Stupid vertigo.
So we walked across the bridge to go in search of food and wine. (After those stairs I seriously needed a drink.)
And we found this:
Shakespeare & Company! Woohoo!
This is how bad those stairs were – I said I needed food and wine first. Yes, I had accidentally found one of the places on the top of my list for the whole trip and I needed a drink first. Stupid stairs. But after a quick (and late) lunch of wine and onion soup I was back.
Me in my natural habitat.
One’s first trip to Paris is not complete without a boat ride on the Seine.
Mr. Monkey Mitten approved.
We saw a glorious sunset.
And then that evening ate a truly fantastic meal at a restaurant that I have not uploaded a photo of.
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January 21, 2008
That day was the Louvre day. As much as one needs to see the Louvre it is overwhelming. And large. And overwhelming. The Louvre does have a pretty great cafeteria though. I must say we were pretty impressed with their selection.
That was me at the end of the day. And don’t be fooled by those shoes. Sure they were green and looked cute. They made my toes bleed. I ended up stuffing my socks with cotton balls so they’d stop cutting into the tops of my toes. They also had no arch supports which wasn’t so wonderful when one is walking everywhere. We unceremoniously tossed them in the garbage last spring.
That’s pretty much all we did that day. Oh, and ate street crepes.
Mmm crepes. We went back to the same stand the next morning and had some for breakfast.
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