November 2008
39 posts
Florence, day 2.5 (since I don't feel like writing...
Tess: so what did you today?
me: oh yeah, I should write a blog about it
me: let's see
the Uffizi gallery was my first stop
it's basically a walk-through of Renaissance art
lots of beautiful paintings
boticelli, michelanelo, rafael, etc.
Tess: nice
me: it's one of the places I had an audio tour for, so that was nice
Tess: all the ninja turtles?
me: I don't think there were any dontaello sculptures
but I saw a bunch of those at the next museum
I've actually been thinking about the ninja turtles since I got here
it took me 2 whole days to figure out that rafael was the turtle I was forgetting
Tess: haha
me: since this museum was the first place that had art from him
me: then I went to the Bargello
which had a whole room of Donatellos
me: including david and a reproduction with gilt that used to be on it
then the Santa Croce Church, with more art
(this is what I get for recycling my photocopied guide pages, I can't even remember what I saw)
I tried to go to the Science Museum, but it closed at 1
so I went to the museum of natural history, which had this weird parallel exhibit about art in Second Life (a virtual world)
made more strange by the parallel with the ancient artifacts from cultures across the regular world
Florence, day 1.5
Today was rainy like yesterday was sunny. It wasn’t raining when I woke up,
but it started shortly after my walk up the Duomo and with few exceptions it’s
been like that for the entire day. After a strange breakfast of a bacon and
cheese omelet (yes, the bacon was inside the omelet) I decided that I’d hit up
the sights that were closer to the hostel. I hope that...
Miro Monster - Homespun Harvest →
Florence, day 0.5
(This only gets a half day because I got into town at 1130)
Venice gave me one last kick in the teeth as it made me pay 15 for a
reservation on a train that wasn’t even close to full.
Right off the bat, Florence was nice. The weather was nice, sunny without
clouds, and warm. The first person I talked to, the woman at the tourist
office across the street, was friendly and helpful, and...
Happy Thanksgiving!
I’m sitting in the TV room of my hostel in Florence and thinking of pie. I went out looking for a slice of lemon meringue pie, but the bakery didn’t even have anything with lemon in it. Instead I got a lemon (limone) Gatorade knock-off, which isn’t really the same thing.
I hope all of you Americans out there are having a good Thanksgiving. I may get to an update about my...
Venice
(posted from Florence. Internet in Venice was too expensive. ( 2.50 for 15 minutes!))
Someone at the hostel in Gimmelwald told me that Venice was overrated. They
were right.
I had a bad experience right off the bat. Neither of the tourist information
people at the booths were helpful. One just told me to go to the other booth,
the other just gave me a book of hostels and hotels and said...
from52to48withlove :: zefrank.com →
I love you too, 48.
Vienna, days 2 & 3
The three main sights, according to Rick Steves (I bet you haven’t seen me mention him before, but I’m using a lot of his stuff) in downtown Vienna are the Hofburg (of which I saw parts on my first day), Stephensdom (St. Stephen’s Church) and Staatsoper (the State Opera).
My first stop on day two was Stephensdom. Without realizing it, I’d walked into church on a Sunday,...
I’ll be writing a post about the rest of my time here in Vienna soon, but I thought I’d post a different kind of update right now. A quick one.
I took a look at my BofA account this morning to see how I’ve been doing with money on my trip. Europe can be an expensive place, but I’ve been staying in inexpensive places (hostels and the train) and not eating out (groceries...
Vienna, day 1
Originally my plan was to spend today in Salzburg, but I decided to skip it and just spend an extra day here in Vienna. I rolled off the night train around 8am and walked down to the hostel. I’d had breakfast on the train (yogurt and muesli) so after dropping my stuff off and picking up a city map, I took the U-Bahn downtown.
In Rick Steves’ book, he says that the #2 tram goes...
Swiss Alps: day 3; Berne
Just from looking at the map of the area, I knew I wanted to go to Jungfrau. On the maps it’s labeled as “The Top of Europe.” It’s not the highest mountain in Europe, or even in Western Europe, but I think it’s probably the highest you can get in Europe without having to be a mountaineer.
Snowy and I left around 10 to walk up to Múrren to catch the lift/bus back...
Switzerland, days 1 and 2
(If you’re reading this directly from Tumblr and not
through an RSS reader, you
should go to the next page to read my post about Munich)
I’m writing this towards the end of my second full day here in Gimmelwald.
Gimmelwald is a small town (about 100 people) high in the Swiss Alps. There’s
a hostel here, aptly named the Mountain Hostel
that’s also pretty small.
To get...
Munich
(posted from Gimmelwald, in the Swiss Alps. The pictures above are one-per-day starting on the 6th of November, the start of my trip.)
Mostly, I visited beer gardens/hall. I’d heard that Munich was known for its beers,
and I wasn’t disappointed. The first thing I did when I arrived was to check
into my hostel. The second thing was visiting Viktualienmarkt for some fruit.
The...
Bacharach
It’s a small wine/tourist village on the Rhine River, between Cologne and Koblenz). Only about 1000 people live there. For me, the draw was 1) getting to spend a bit of time on the Rhine 2) getting to stay in a castle! At the top of the hill in town there’s an ancient castle, Burg Stahleck, that’s been turned into a youth hostel. To be honest, it was mostly that second reason...
Current location: Munich
I was in Bacharach for the last day and change, and I’ll try to get a blog post out about that soon. For the moment, I’m just glad that the mistaken Asian tourist has gotten out of my bed. i’m in Munich tonight and tomorrow, and I leave Monday for the Swiss Alps.
Berlin
(I’m posting this from Munich; it was written a couple days ago
My first lesson for the day was that even if the ticket says that it’s the same
train the whole way, don’t get scared when the conductor says that the train
you’re on is not going the whole way. Apparently, a train can stop, force all
of the passengers off, make them wait and then board another train (with...
Kobenhavn (Copenhagen)
My destination after the night train. First things first, I reserved my train out to Berlin. After that, I wandered over to the tourist info building to grab a city map and find a hostel. I ended up at a place called “Sleep-in Heaven” (although I’m not sure how anyone would sleep in here). To be perfectly honest, I picked it out of all the other hostels because it had free...
My Last Day in Amsterdam...
…was pretty much like I said it would be. After grabbing breakfast at the
hostel (and forgetting half of my soap in my room) I left on the bus to go back
to the main train station, Amsterdam Centraal. My night train required a
reservation, so I wanted to do that before anything else. Luckily I did,
because it turns out the train was an hour earlier than I thought it would be
because of...
Haarlem
After going to sleep around 2000, I woke up around 0200 and couldn’t get back
to sleep for a couple hours. I eventually got back to sleep around 0500 and
got a couple more hours in before I woke up.
The hostel provided breakfast, although it’s a bit meager (cold cuts?, yogurt,
cereal, muffin thing). I caught the bus back to Amsterdam Centraal and the
train into Haarlem. It’s...
Arrival in Amsterdam
My flight got in right on time, around 0730 Amsterdam time (GMT+1). For those
of you keeping score, that’s 6 hours ahead of Washington, DC, making my body
time 0130. Luckily, I got to sleep a few hours throughout the flight. Getting
through passport enforcement was no problem, and the nice young woman said I
looked “a lot better” with shorter hair (my passport photo is from my...
Ben Smith's Blog: Remarks of President-elect... →
Full text of Barack Obama’s victory speech at Grant Park
WorldChanging: To The Next U.S. President: 100... →
A bunch of people giving advice to the next president about what to do with his first 3.3 months
WatchVoting Machines Elect One Of Their Own As President | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source
Congratulations to President-elect Barack Obama!
“ Stop buying stuff you don’t need
Pay off all your credit cards
Get rid of all...”
– I’m also on step 4. Soon, I’ll be on step 7 for 6 weeks.
(via The pursuit of happiness [dive into mark])