We in Wien

March 20th-23rd: Vienna is such a beautiful, cultured, historical city! The weather was very incooperative, with snow and cold and wind at random intervals, but we saw enough of the city to make us fall in love with it. Highlights were the Lippizan horses and Schloss Schonbrunn, (a beautiful Hapsburg palace), the clock museum, and Apfelstrudel, (which is Austrian apple pie).


The front of the Hofburg complex, which includes the Spanish Riding School and the beautiful Lippizan horses.


Shaina's favorite kind of clock in the clock museum: can you see the clock?


Can you see shaina in this clock's mirror? zoom in, that's her face!


The lovely concert hall where we saw a Mozart and Strauss highlights concert. After seeing the ballet couple dance here, Jeff tried out some of the lifts on his wife later... they are actually quite painful when you don't know whaat you're doing!


Shaina in front of the Neue Berg building


Us behind the Schloss Schonbrunn...the first and last time we saw the blue sky and sun in Vienna!

Prog Blogue...no, wait...Prague Blog

March 15-18: We flew from Athens to Munich (2hrs) and then took a 7 hour train trip to Praha, switchin trains every hour or so. If Jeff wasn't so good at finding his way around train stations, we would have been either lost or very very late for our trains! The train that took us across the German border had only 1 car, so it was more like a bus on tracks! The hostel was rather odd, with bedspreads that were too short for our long legs, and no sheets! The only way to bear it was to not think, just sleep! We really enjoyed church at the mission branch on Sunday. Jeff joyfully saved a set of Czech crown coins for his fast growing coin collection. Oddly enough, we found a few great Chinese food places in Prague, and ate Chinese every night! Don't worry, we still tried Czech sausage too!


The lovely buildings near Prague Castle


The crowded graves in the old old Jewish Cemetary


Jeff completing his "pilgramige" to Tych Brahe's house


The changing of the guard in the whirlwind snow at Prague Castle. It was sunny right before this, and it got sunny 15 minutes later! Those patchy snow storms plagued our freezing fingers all day!


The cathedral in Prague Castle, right after the 15 minute snow storm... nice, innocent blue sky, huh?

"Ruined!"

Outside of Athens and the Parthenon, we visited 3 other ancient Greek ruins: Delphi, Mycenae, and Corinth. We found that the natural beauty blended quite well with the fallen temples and big rocks. Shaina again adored the many different kinds of wild flowers, (although she resisted posting the plethora of pictures she took of all the flower varieties), and Jeff, as usual, enjoyed exploring dark cave-like rooms underground and taking artistically balanced pictures.

Ancient Delphi:
Saturday, March 9th, we stopped at Ancient Delphi on our way to Konitsa in Greece. It was such a warm, beautiful day, and we loved the beautiful scenery. We made a bathroom dash right when we got to Delphi, and when we came back, they were just barely swinging the gate closed! We missed seeing the actual town ruins by a few minutes, but luckily there were still quite a few things to see without the admission ticket. Have you ever seen such a blue sky????

Shaina loves big, rocky mountains!


In the ancient gymnasium of Delphi-I wouldn't want to lose a ball off that cliff!


Jeff in the Delphi ruins


Us by the reconstructed remains of Athena's temple at Delphi. That is one bright, warm sun!!!


Ancient Mikines-better known as Mycenae:
Wednesday, March 12th, we went to the lovely, windswept hilltop of Ancient Mycenae. The wind made the clouds move super fast-one second it was sunny and the next it was cloudy. That sure made picture-taking interesting!

Up on top of Mycenae


At the entrance of Mycenae.


Mmmmm, the place was covered in these yellow flowers!


More Mycenae ruins


Mycenae's outer wall... see the purple fleurs on it?


Ancient Corinth (Korinthos) and Acrocorinth (Akrokorinthos):
Friday, March 14, we went to see ancient Corinth and Acrocorinth, the huge fortress ruins on a tall hill behind Corinth. We were utterly pooped from the previous day, when we hiked the Lousios Gorge, so our wanderings in Corinth were rather slow and sleepy. Our lethargy did not diminish the beauty of the flowers or the great views from Acrocorinth, though!

The walls of Acrocorinth


Shaina walking in Acrocorinth-it got really warm up there!


The view of Acrocorinth from its highest point. That's the Bay of Corinth in the distance!


Jeff in an underground room in Acrocorinth


A "Jeff special" picture of the temple of Apollo

GORGE-ous!

A walk on the wild side... We hiked in 2 gorges in Greece: the Vikos Gorge up north near the Albanian border on Monday the 10th, and the Lousios Gorge down south in the warm Peloponesse on Thursday the 13th. The wildflowers, the rugged, breathtaking views, and leaping down hills were Shaina's favorite parts. Jeff liked the lizards, climbing big rocks in the middle of rivers, and exploring off the beaten trail.

LOUSIOS GORGE!!



VIKOS GORGE!

The Classics

March 4-7: The longest leg of our trip included: a 4 hr train from Rome to the shore in Ancona, 10 minute bus to the port, 22 hr ferry (5pm-3pm the next day), and then a 4 hr train ride to Athens and finally a 15 minute walk to our hostel (we named our heavy orange backpacks Fred and George after the Weasly twins in Harry Potter, in hopes of making their 40-lbs seem more funny than painful).

An interesting thing about Greece is they use a different alphabet than us, and the transcriptions into our alphabet have no consistent spellings, so the road names on our GPS map were quite different than those in our guidebook, which were in turn different from the actual names written on the road signs. That problem only came up later, though, because when we first got to Athens around 9pm, tired from that all night boat ride with no bed, (in our 36th straight hour of travel time since we left Rome), the signs were ONLY written in the Greek alphabet, and our GPS device ran out of battery power. Exercizing great inginuity, along with some pretty sweet guesswork, however, we found our little negative 5-star hostel and collapsed into a very firm bed. Victory!!!!


In front of the temple of a greek god whose name starts with an H...forget the whole name right now! 2. At the 2500 year old cemetary of Kerameikos, we counted 15 turtles! How many do you see in this picture??


1. On top of a big rock with the ancient acropolis behind us. 2. Jeff in the Kerameikos cemetary... peek-a-boo!


1. Us in front of the Parthenon... we were a tad sad to see all that scaffolding in the way of truly great pictures, but history must be preserved some way, I guess! 2. These are some daisies behind the Acropolis-nice artistic picture!

Rome-ing around the town

The next stop on our excellent adventure is none other than the eternal city of Romulus, Rome. Just as a warning to future visitors, don't be fooled by the presence of only two metro lines... this city is packed with 3 million people and not a single building is permited to surpass the Vatican in height, which makes for one sprawling metropolis. Let's see some highlights!

Speaking of the Vatican, say "Hello" to one of Pope Benedict's colorful bodyguards. If the bright pajjamas aren't enough to stop potential assasins, the beret of the Swiss Guardsman is enough to stop anyone.
















Behold the wonderous Trevi fountain. Legend has it that if Jeff and Shaina were to drink some of its waters and then throw a coin in while putting their backs to it that they would definitely return one day to Rome. Perhaps that is only a garauntee that the water won't kill you.








In the 1700's, Romans complained the the ancient pagan pantheon gave them the heeby-jeebies, so the Catholic Church turned it into a Christian Basilica. Shaina thinks that's a sad fate for such a long lastiing building to be stripped of its true nature, so she is giving it a hug to make it feel better. Isn't she sweet?











There aren't many bronze statues left frrom the Roman era because they were just too easy to melt and reuse for swords, spear heads, and armour. Perhaps with particular piece located in the Capitoline Museum, located conveniently next to Jeff, they decided that a mind is a terrible thing to waste and left this giant head alone.







Hey, those life-like statues seem to have weathered the centuries better than anything else on the Palatine hill. Oh, wait a minute. Those aren't statues, they're just Shaia and Jeff.













Does anything say romance quite like the ruins of the ancient Collosseum where thousands upon thousands of people and animals suffered a terrible and painful death for the entertainment pleasure of Romans? No?








Don't worry Shaina, you don't have to hide when your around the Collosseum, they stopped killing Christians there centuries ago.










Shaina is enjoying a pleasant break to enjoy the view overlooking the Spanish Steps.