Europe in April

Frankfurt: The End

2009-05-02T13:36:00.000-07:00

Our last two days in Europe were spent in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany. Unbeknownst to me, I booked a hostel in the Red Light District :O Prostitution is legal in Germany and Frankfurt is a big town for travellers and the like, so there were "Eros Centres" (legal brothels) and strip joints everywhere. It made for some interesting sights!

Grayson and I walked along the Main river that flows through Frankfurt

and saw an interesting sculpture in front of the Museum of Communication (though I would have thought it was some Modern Art museum) he's a tv-robot-samurai!

We went to the Museum of Filmmaking and saw the entire history of film (with no English descriptions!) and a bunch of work by the Swiss artist HR Giger (Google at your own risk) who was on special exhibition for the design work he's done for many movies, including Alien and Species. They also had some of his paintings and drawings and furniture designs.

Here is a poor picture of a recreated camera obscura in the museum, the view is the river outside the front of the museum...we could even see runners jogging across the wall, upside down!

Frankfurt is also the home of the European Union bank, commemorated with a huge Euro sign in front of the building. Why isn't there a big dollar bill sign on Wall Street?

We also walked around through other parts of town and found this crazy mall that looked like it had a hole through it, and that ended up being this tube of glass that moved through the whole thing, it was some of the craziest architecture ever!

View from the front...is it a hole?

View from the inside...no, it's not a hole, it's a long cylinder of glass moving through a mall. Okie-dokie!

And for Jenny, a German copy, finally!

Following our last day in Germany, we got on a train and hung out in the airport for three hours, then sat on an airplane for ten hours (but I finally got to see The Reader and Slumdog Millionaire, Lufthansa is awesome) and then we arrived in SUNNY Seattle! Don't worry, it's back to rain today, and the rest of the week apparently, but it was certainly nice while it lasted. And Grayson and I are still working on getting our sleep set straight. All in all an insane, huge, amazing trip with far too much for my brain to process. I adored Europe and can't wait to return! (And see more, with longer time in each city! By the time we got a city figured out we were gone for an entirely new one. Kept things interesting though.)

Norway

2009-05-02T13:01:00.000-07:00

We flew from London to the Land of the Vikings, or, an airport a couple hours outside of Oslo, Norway. We stayed with a friend of Grayson's in a town called Drammen, and spent a day in Oslo, the capital. Norway is a lot like the Alaska of Europe, and it was the first time we saw overcastness on our whole trip. Clearly, Europe was ready for us to return to Seattle :) We went to the National Gallery that had paintings by Edvard Munch (including the Scream), and also to a museum commemorating the resistance efforts of the Norwegians during WWII, when they were occupied by the Germans. That museum was in the middle of a huge fortress overlooking the harbor. Another crazy thing about Norway is how expensive it was. People tell you this all the time, but we really had to experience it ourselves to believe. $20 for McDonald's double cheeseburgers, small fries and soda for both of us. $30 for a little copy of Alice in Wonderland. $60 for three people to play two rounds of bowling. Free for me to cry as our budget was wiped out by lunch time. On to a few pictures:

Grayson hugging a huge tiger statue in Oslo

Oslo town hall - we were there on some special day, as there were Canadian flags everywhere...

Oslo harbor

Norwegian bookstore with an awesome awning!

Norwegian Troll soda

Norwegian Troll candies - these tasted like caramel snot. No joke.

Calvin and Hobbes in Norway is "Tommy og Tigern," or "Tommy and Tiger"

Crazy bridge in Drammen, Norway

My new favorite drink that will be impossible to find! Villa (pronounced Wee-la in Norwegian), the "champagne soda," it tastes like subtle cream soda.

London

2009-04-30T14:44:00.000-07:00

From Nottingham we took a train to London, where on the first day we saw Big Ben, Parliament and Westminster Abbey (where Queen Elizabeth's tomb was!). We then took a boat ride along the Thames river.

The next day we went to a recreation of Shakespeare's Globe theater and saw Romeo and Juliet. It was SUPER awesome, and despite being a tragedy, the actors were really funny.

The next day we went to Bloomsbury and saw the British Library, which holds the Magna Carta, the Gutenberg Bible, a piece of paper written by Shakespeare and one of Virginia Woolf's handwritten notebooks containing Mrs. Dalloway. After that we went to the location of my favorite British show ever, Black Books. Then we went to the British Museum, which among a million awesome things had the Rosetta Stone. NUTS!

The next day we went to Buckingham Palace. After that we mostly milled around.

Here's a helpful sign to remind tourists which way to look when crossing the road:

Nottingham

2009-04-30T14:34:00.000-07:00

After Paris, we flew to Nottingham, which is in central Britain, mostly to see the birthplace of one of my favorite authors (D.H. Lawrence) but also to see a bit of smaller-town, country-ish English life.

Nottingham, home to Robin Hood

Grayson had a traditional English breakfast (blech!)

We read some funny Brit papers

Went to the town of Eastwood to see some DHL stuff, including his birthplace museum:

and went to my first ever Ikea, where we ate some exotic Swedish cakes.

You'd think our first time in a country that speaks English would have been a little less foreign, and it mostly was, but around Nottingham, which is in the Midlands, the accent was so thick I sometimes couldn't understand people!

Overdue/unsorted pix, Part 3, Paris

2009-04-23T14:00:00.000-07:00

Holy crap, I don't even know where to start. Paris was AMAZING. We had the most number of days there than any other city and it still felt like too few. We even got to meet with a friend of Grayson's and some of his friends and family, we talked politics, living in cities, and ... children! It was actually pretty funny because we got to play with his very young son, and his French was running circles around me. AND he could speak some English! Quelle tristesse! (How sad!)

One of the cafes that cool people hung out in during the 30s, including Einstein!
Grayson looking existential in front of Albert Camus' favorite cafe in Paris. I ate a croque monsieur here and a seven-euro soda!
Shakespeare and Co., the bookstore started by an American in the thirties where Hemingway and James Joyce, among a million other amazing writers hung out.
The green boxes belonging to the left bank booksellers, they had amazing old books and postcards.

Notre Dame!Me as Quasimodo in front of Notre Dame!

Awesome metro stop, one of the few remaining originals.
Grayson got his haircut in French!

The Amelie cafe in Montmartre!
Moulin Rouge!
The view from Sacre Coeur!
Sacre Coeur itself, atop the Montmartre hill...

The Seine!
Napoleon's tomb!
Banana nutella crepe at a cafe!
A new view of the Eiffell Tower!
Space Needle wannabe!

Grayson has a head growth!
The Louvre!Lady McLadington
The obelisk that stands where Marie Antoinette became a head shorter on the top! :O

We walked from the Louvre, through the Gardens, past the Obelisk (at Place du Concorde) up the Champs-Elysees to the Arc di Triomphe,
Where we saw them rekindlee the flame of the unknown soldier...
Grayson's friend's kid, with boundless (even the camera couldn't stop it) energy!

Overdue/unsorted pix, Part 2, Rome

2009-04-23T13:40:00.000-07:00

Outside the Vatican

Entry to the Vatican Museum, so much crazy art in here, I can't begin to post photos. Also, it's blurry because they don't allow flash, so I'll fix it in photoshop one day :)

Spanish Steps
Pantheon
Trevi Fountain, from La Dolce Vita!
Roman Forum
Lounging on the Palatine hill, like the wealthy Romans of old! ;)
Inside the Colosseum
Outside the Colosseum, as soon as we got into the Rome train station, we hopped a Metro (subway) and went a few stops, leaving the station to walk a couple blocks to our hotel, as soon as we came into the daylight outside the station, there stood before us this HUGE, ancient thing! Too insane.

Some overdue and out of order pictures... Part 1, Florence

2009-04-23T13:16:00.000-07:00

Death mask of Dante Alighieri, at Palazzo Vecchio.

Outside the Palazzo Vecchio
Picture for Jenny! Master and Margarita in Italiano! FYI-I couldn't find it in Prague, forgot to look in Paris and in England they all look the same as here, they're fond of that blue cover with the mask. Couldn't find it in Munich but I'll look again in Frankfurt. :)

Outside of the Uffizi Gallery
Santa Croce - with no Baedaeker!

Ponte Vecchio
il Duomo
Grayson scopes out the Dome
Casa di Dante - museum of my favorite Florentine, Dante Alighieri

Finally, real, Italian gelato! It tasted softer and creamier than all the kinds I've had before. This is tiramisu flavor. Mmm!

Rome and Paris

2009-04-15T08:44:00.000-07:00

Rome was really cool, we saw the Colosseum, the Forum, the Palatine Hill, the Vatican City and Museums, the Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain (from La Dolce Vita), I promise pics this weekend because we have internet in Paris! Yay!

Arrived in Paris this morning (it's 7pm right now to me), it's great and crazy and the metro system is the best we've encountered so far. I did get us lost and we wasted a lot of time looking for our hotel, and then we went to the Cemitre Pere-Lachaise, and now are probably going to call it a day out of exhaustion. Things close up pretty early here anyway. We saw some amazing tombs at the cemetery: Marcel Proust, Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde and a lot more.

Whirlwind! Tomorrow we're definitely going to the Louvre, and beyond that I'm not 100%, either the Eiffel Tower or the Arc di Triomphe and Champs-Elysees.

Munich and Florence

2009-04-11T07:52:00.000-07:00

Internet has been hard to come by recently, but I thought I would give a pictureless update, just in case.

We spent three days in Munich, taking day trips to Dachau Concentration Camp, Castle Neuschwanstein (which inspired the Disney castle), and hung out in Munich, seeing the Glockenspiel, hanging out at the English Gardens (bigger than Central Park!) and having a beer at the Lowenbrau biergarten!

Florence has been crazy, we saw the Duomo, the David, a museum of Dante Alighieri, the tombs of Dante, Macchiavelli, Galileio, and Michaelangelo, and then to the Uffizi gallery where we saw some da Vincis, Botticellis and more. Crazy times, off to Rome tomorrow, pictures some day :)

New Blog

2009-04-07T09:38:00.000-07:00

Update:

After a little discussion, Natasha and I decided that most people would just like a quick and dirty rundown of what we're doing with lots of pictures of us in action. However, since we would also like a more detailed narrative, including our thoughts on what we've seen and experienced, we are creating a separate, unabridged blog here: http://apriliseuropau.blogspot.com/

The posts on the new blog will have quite a bit more writing and opinion, so feel free to stick with this blog unless you really like my writing (yeah right!) or have the time and inclination for a more in-depth account of our trip.

Guten Tag aus München!

Czech-ing things out

2009-04-05T11:11:00.000-07:00

We spent yesterday and today on our whirlwind of Prague, in the Czech Republic.

Prague highlights

Mucha Museum - museum of one of my favorite artists, Alfons Mucha, who is from Prague.

Communist Museum - a museum about the Communist regime that held power from 1968-1989 in the Czech Republic...

Kafka Museum - a museum of one of Grayson's and mine favorite authors, who was born in Prague.

Old Town Square and Astronomical Clock

Walking across the Charles Bridge

Prague Castle - we went to get a peek at Obama giving a speech today, and instead saw his head on a screen about a foot from where his head actually was. The Czechs apparently love Obama. But also, many hate the nuclear defense system the US wants to build in their backyard.

Changing of the guard

After Obama cleared out we got to wander through the Castle grounds, to St. Vitus' Cathedral, which had an interior stained glass window made by Alfons Mucha.

We also went through the Picture gallery, and a tower that used to be a dungeon, complete with grotesque torture instruments.

After that we walked to the Strahov Monastery, which has one of the world's most massive book collections in their library.

We went to the Czech post office,

milled around Czech book stores, tried out the subway system, and mostly got around by tram, which is pretty fun. It amazes me how similar EVERY public transit system is almost exactly the same. While waiting for the tram, we saw Obama's procession out of Prague, which was a ton of police cars with lights and sirens going and a bunch of black tinted cars and SUVs.

We've been trying a lot of awesome food: yesterday we had soup, then pork with dumplings, gravy and sauerkraut, and then this crepe-like thing with whipped cream and chocolate sauce, a full three course meal, plus beer for $7 USD!

We've also had a thing that was a lot like a German brat, and nummy Czech breakfasts, which is a lot like the stuff on the train, and then this dessert that seems to be everywhere here, called trdo, which was a cylindrical pastry with cinnamon and sugar on the outside. Num!

Tomorrow morning we're off to the land of biergartens--Munich, Germany!

We're heeeere!

2009-04-04T00:18:00.000-07:00

Ten hour flight was long, didn't sleep, spent the next day in Germany on trains and falling asleep in broad daylight along the river in Heidelberg...jet lag kicked my butt! Real vacation starting now, in Prague. Now I'm well rested and our hostel is super rad.
On the airplane

Heidelberg

Prague:

Czech it out!

Inside Prague hostel

Hostel outside

Packing, Part Deux

2009-04-01T01:46:00.001-07:00

1. 2 sets of clothes!

2. The toiletry bag ended up in my backpack.

3. Travel towel

4. Poster tube for posters bought in museums, cool menus, etc.

5. Ziploc baggies. Apparently difficult to come by in Europe, these will come in handy for storing wet things, etc. Stored in my backpack sans box.

6a. Moneybelt!

b. 2nd moneybelt, with photocopies of important documents, safety pinned in secret backpack pocket!

7. Plastic sleeve with printed out confirmations, reservations, maps, directions, etc.,

8. Books! Europe art history to finish on plane and TOSS...Dante's Paradiso (for Florence!) Forster's Room With A View (for England and Italy!), phrasebook.

9. Homemade guidebook! See below.

10. Walkin' shoes!

11. Ultra tiny digicam (in its tiny case)

12. iPhone!

13. Camera cords

14. Power adapters

15. iPhone charger

16. Water bottle

A propos of my homemade guidebook, I cut out all the relevant pages from about three different guidebooks and had them bound together at a print shop with a plain black vinyl cover (incognito!) I pasted in extra phrases and maps on the cover and blank pages inside.

Everything Grayson and I will own for 30 days, all packed up:

How To Pack For a Month in Europe

2009-03-31T23:18:00.000-07:00

It's not as hard as it sounds to pack everything you need for a month-long trip into a single backpack. Here is more or less everything I'm bringing with me:

1. Money Belt - contains credit cards, passports, cash, etc.

2. Clothing - two pair pants, three shirts, belt, two pair underwear

3. US cash for bus fare

4. Toiletries bag (medicine, toothbrush, etc)

5. Glasses and accessories

6. Netbook (Asus EEE PC 900HA, power cord, thumb drive)

7. USB mouse, hub

8. Power adapters for Britain and Europe

9. Keys, including keychain compass

10. Cellphone/PDA

11. MP3 player

12. Poncho

13. Travel towel

14. Reading material (small book size but dense material, good longevity for the space)

15. Flipflops for showers

16. Walking shoes

17. Two pair socks

Since one change of clothing can be stored conveniently on the body, the remainder can easily be stored inside a single backpack, with room for purchases and miscellany.

The Full Itinerary

2009-03-31T22:34:00.000-07:00

2 April: Arrive in Frankfurt, travel to Heidelberg, Germany for the day.

3-5 April: Prague, Czech Republic.

6-9 April: Munich, Germany, with day trips to Dachau and Castle Neuschwanstein.

10-11 April: Florence, Italy.

12-14 April: Rome, Italy.

15-20 April: Paris, France.

20-21 April: Nottingham, UK.

22-26 April: London, UK.

27-29 April: Oslo & Drammen, Norway.

30 April-1 May: Frankfurt, Germany, then home!