Venice

February 20-21: We went to the watery world of Venice! It was just like it looks in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and also in The Italian Job. There was a plethora of cute little side canals connecting to the Grand Canal, as well as plenty of fun little narrow streets to walk on. One part that we especially liked was that there were no cars in Venice itself, so it was nice and quiet with less pollution.



We went to San Marcos Basilica, which was quite fancy-shmancy. It was the most GOLD we have seen in a church yet! All of the ceilings were covered in gold tiles! The piazza (plaza) outside San Marcos was swarming with pigeons. It is actually against the law to sit or lay on the ground in that plaza, but the ignorant kid in this picture tried it anyway! SICK! the plaza had no crumbs on it, but it was covered in icky pigeon poo. People bought little bags of bird food and the pigeons would FLOCK onto them and LAND on their heads, arms, hands, etc just to eat the crumbs! Jeff found that if he stood still for too long in that plaza that the pigeons would land on you even if you didn't have food! Shaina enjoyed chasing them down to give the obese birds some exercise. We despise pigeons.




Shaina just couldn't get enough of the awesome canals and bridges, so we have over 200 pictures from Venice alone! The picture on the left is of the biggest, most famous bridge across the Grand Canal, called the Rialto. It actually has shops lining the whole bridge!





When we were in a restaurant for lunch one day, the waiter saw us looking at the pictures on our camera and offered to take a picture of us. So we let him. Venice was by far the most tourist-packed city that we've visitied yet, even in February!

This boat picture was Shaina's most artistic of allllll the many pictures taken. We went up this bell tower on our first day there but it was SO foggy that it was pointless, so on the next afternoon when it finally got sunny, Shaina went back up to take good pictures, while Jeff walked around the plaza below. It was like Where's Waldo trying to find Jeff from up high...

Can YOU see him in this picture? Hint: look in the middle of the rectangle on the right hand side of the pavement. Thank goodness for our camera's zoom!

This is a vaporetto, or water bus. We got passes for them and that's how we got from the island we stayed on (Lido) over to Venice every day. Shaina loved riding in the front of the boat... probably thanks to childhood experiences with Deep Creek Lake ski boats! That is US in a vaporetto on the right. It was SO COLD there! The fog just sank into our bones, so we wore all of our jackets and power walked plenty. Needless to say, we did not eat any gelatto in Venice!

Fair Verona

Valentine's Day 2008: we took a "romantic" all night train ride to fair Verona, Italy. The train left at 11pm, reclining seats and all. It arrived in Milan around 9am, where we eventually got on the train to Verona, which arrived around 1pm in Romeo's fair city. Sadly, we observed no thumb-biting.




The coolest part of Verona was the Roman Arena, which we climbed and admired, and I even gave a speech in Latin from the balcony... the only three words I know are good ole Caesar's: "Veni, vidi, vici," so it was a rather short speech.



Church in Italian was exciting and impossible all at once. We walked 2 miles and made it just in time for the second verse of the opening hymn, from which we learned how little we know about Italian pronunciation. From our experience in French and Spanish, we kept feeling like we could understand what they were saying, but we couldn't quite get it. So, by the end of the 3 hours, our brains were fried from trying! These pictures show why Shakespeare called this city fair Verona.

Climbing every mountain

Wednesday, February 13: we took a train to the small town of Villefranche, and ventured out into more remote territory--the hills and mountains of southern France. The Pyranees are breathtaking, rugged, rocky, steep, and HUGE!!

From Villefranche, we saw Ft. Liberia way up on the top of a large, steep hill, so we immediately began our first climb of the day. It was about a mile up to the fort on a steep path! The fort really was on the side of a mountain-look at that view!

One of the coolest parts about the fort was the exit, where we got to go down 832 underground steps to the bottom of the mountain! I never thought I'd get tired from going DOWN stairs!

Our next stop was St. Martin du Canigou Abbey. We planned on taking a bus to the next town over, which was 3 miles up into the hills, but the bus just blew right by us! We have each run farther than 3 miles, so how hard could it be to walk 3 miles? The whole walk was UP, UP, UP, with certain narrow spots between the guard rail and the speeding vehicles on the road, which we ultra power walked past to avoid being plastered to the guard rail by a car. We stopped in the village 3 miles later to find out where the abbey trailhead was, but it was lunchtime, so the place was dead and silent. After a 10 minute rest, we started walking UP a likely-looking road and after 30 minutes or so, the little white sign in the picture came into view. By this point, we were rather tired, so this miniscule sign seemed very inadequate... good thing Jeff saw it!

About 20 minutes up the trail, we came to a tiny village, where we saw a sign pointing to the abbey trail. It informed us that we only had 1600 meters UP to go! After all of our uphill power-walking, this last mile happened to be the steepest, because we really were in the mountains by then. Jeff improved our situation greatly by bursting into the cherished primary song, "pioneer children sang as they walked, and walked, and walked..." nobody really knows how many times to say that line, so, since we had the time, Jeff eliminated all possible faults by singing it about a million times!

St. Martin's Abbey appeared over the trees at long last. There was an obligatory tour given in French by a cute little old nun. Jeff was quite entertained, but Shaina barely managed to understand a few words of it. 6 miles of uphill walking for these rather good pictures... was it worth it? of course!

Carcassonne, France

Our first day trip from Perpignan was to Carcassonne, this cool restored fortified medieval village with a castle. The place was so realistic! We loved climbing and walking on the huge, long outer wall the most. The view was great!

Escape!

The hostel we had in Barcelona turned out to be the exact opposite of us, so after one unpleasant night in a smelly room full of 15 people in drunken slumber, we just had to get out! Sunday night around 11 pm, we realized that we really could not stay there any more.
Quickly, we drafted an escape plan: leave the hostel and see what sights we could on foot in Barcelona, stay out all night, and catch the earliest train to Perpignon France Monday morning (3hrs away). We reserved a hotel online, bundled up, and went out and about in Barcelona. Have you ever walked all night? It gets pretty tiring by 4am. We visited the Columbus monument and tthe Arc del Triomf and Sagrada Familia church in the dark.
We were starving around 2am, and, oddly enough, there was a Burger King open, of all places. So yes, we each had a Whopper at 2am. shudder. Well, to make a long night shorter, we got our train reservations at around 6am, got our stuff from the hostel, and left! Freeeee from Barfalona forever!

On Sunday afternoon at Montjuic castle/park. We took a pleasant stroll along the Mediterranean.

L'Arc del Triomf at around 3:30am.

Sagrada Familia just after 4am. Sadly, we couldn't go in and climb its towers at that hour.

Shaina out like a light on the train to France.

The Sunny South

Ahh, southern Spain in Febrary...60-70 degrees, bright sunshine all day, palm and orange trees everywhere... it's close to paradise! During our stay in Córdoba (Mosque/Cathedral and castle), we also visited Sevilla (Real Alcázar and Cathedral) and Granada (Alhambra). The best food we ate was in Sevilla: couscous and vegetables with cheese and herbs...who knows if it's actually Spanish, but it was sure good! We also loved the ice cream in Córdoba: super rich and full of flavor!!! We particularly enjoyed the massive gardens in all of the castles and palaces we visited. Many artistic photo opportunities!


Where's Shaina? This is in the Sevilla Cathedral, the biggest in Europe!


Jeff next to Columbus's grave in the Sevilla Cathedral.


The ducks in Sevilla's Royal Castle walked right for Jeff when he sat down!


Shaina in the sweet bushes maze in Sevilla's Royal Castle.


Another of Jeff's artistic photos. This one is at the Alhambra in Granada.


At a fountain in the Alhambra.


Jeff admiring another fountain at the Alhambra's gardens.


The view from the Alhambra's hill onto the old part of Granada.


Shaina in the castle at the Alhambra.


At La Mezquita (mosque/cathedral) in Córdoba. nice orange and palm trees!


Jeff in the Mosque/Cathedral in Córdoba. The arches were sweet!


Another Jeff masterpiece photo. This one is at the Córdoba castle.


In the garden of the Córdoba castle.

Segovia

On Jan. 31st, we went to nearby Segovia and visited El Alcazar~the castle. It's our favorite place so far! We loved climbing the 152 spiral stone steps up to the tower. We even found a super steep trail up to a sweet view of the castle. Segovia also had an old Roman aqueduct.


Peeking out of the aqueduct


Climbing up up up


up to the tower!


view from the top of the tower


Nice view...


Jeff's masterpiece picture


At the bottom of the tower staircase

First Stop: Madrid

Our ''well decorated'' hostel room... the bathroom is down the hall.

At El Palacio Real.

In front of El Palacio de Comunicaciones.

We had Kabobs every night!

Happy Holidays!

We had SO much fun with the Brown family in Seattle for the holidays. We all loved seeing sweet little Steve, playing classic games, eating Christmas treats, and watching our favorite movies. It even snowed on Christmas day! Our good friends from SVU, Jan and Jordan, got married after Christmas, and we went to their reception. 2008, here we come!