ITly? What the Heck's She Doin' in ITly?

Second France Stopover

Nice.  Nice was pretty nice.  It was nice to stay in Nice.  Okay, I'm done.  But though we weren't there long, we did enjoy ourselves.  True, it's a coastal town...nobody's perfect, but there were plenty of other things to do.  On our one full day, we took the bus up to Eze Village, and thence to Monaco/Monte Carlo.  Eze Village was quite charming, and we enjoyed walking around for a couple hours.  These are the exquisite crepes we sat down to enjoy, one with bananas, rum, and brown sugar, and the other with chestnuts, whipcream (or wipecream as their menus said), and hot chocolate sauce.  Mmmmm...
Here's Elizabeth looking adorable as always.
After our venture in Eze Village, we took a hike down the mountain to catch the bus to Monaco.  It was supposed to be a hike that poets and artists have taken for inspiration.  Well, here we're modeling the amazing scenery.  A fenced in construction zone...

...and a funky fire hydrant!!!!!  Okay, seriously, we did eventually break through the trees and see some lovely scenery of the coastline, but we were amused nonetheless.  Obviously.
These were two phone booths in Monaco.  Now bear in mind, that there are tons of people in every country in Europe we've been to so far who dress up as statues and stand there freaking people out and hoping for money.  But these are actually just statues.  Kinda cool.
Remember Elizabeth's obsession with blowing me up with cannons?  Well, unfortunately for me, she found more.  Here she is being smug...
...and here I am pleading for my life.  But since I'm sitting here typing this, I suppose I didn't come out too badly.  I also went hunting in gutters for stone disks...it's a long story.  Heh.  No, it's not a long story, I just like saying that (I think we've been through that).  It's just a thing from a computer game.  So I have an obsession with recreating stuffs from computer games.  Deal with it.  Anyway, aside from that, we walked around a little in Nice, saw the French Riviera for a second or two, and went back to our hostel.  This was a really fun hostel, where they made personal pizzas for you for pretty cheap.  Mine was chorizo, artichoke, and mushroom.  And cheese, of course.  Mmmm...

Okay, okay, yes we're in Italy right now, but it's hard to find time to blog.  So Italy should be coming up now, but I thought I'd post something on Nice while I had the chance, and before it got forgotten.  This being our second stopover in France (the first being when we flew in and took the train to Spain), I was excited to finally get away from the train stations a bit.  Once you get past that, the people are fairly pleasant.  One more time in France ahead of us...

Did ew know...?

Rule number 1: Get away from the train station.

Thank you for choosing Lod's Little Tidbits, and have a nice day.

Aforementioned Pics

La Alhambra (Nothing Else Matters)

Okay, that's totally not true.  Especially after seeing Flamenco last night.  But La Alhambra was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.  If I see anything more beautiful on this trip, I don't know if my heart could take it.  But enough melodrama.  I'll let you see for yourself, although I'm sure pictures could never do it justice.  Granada was amazing, and not just because of La Alhambra.  The city centre is just fine.  There's nothing wrong with it, but it's not all that special either.  Had we stayed in the city centre, our experience would have been decent.  But we stayed ten minutes away in the white city, with the quaint, white Spanish buildings and the labyrinthine streets.  It was infinitely charming.  It also had a perfect view of La Alhambra across the valley.  It was exactly what one wants to see when one goes to Spain.  Madrid, in contrast, is very western.  I'm glad we went, and it has a lot of history, but in a lot of ways it's very much like New York.  San Sebastian had its own charm as well.  It was very laid back, and a nice place to take it easy for a couple of days.  Of course, it is a beach town.  Not my ideal, but there was a boardwalk above where I could avoid the beauty without having to deal with the annoying sand and such.  But before you ask, of course I did suffer the sand a few times because Elizabeth enjoys it (silly girl).  What do you do?  The hostel we were staying in was friendly enough, but not really our type of place.  Of course, that could just have to do with the whole surfer town attitude.  Most of the time there wasn't someone at reception like there was supposed to be.  People were rolling joints out on the balcony.  Etc.  Anyhoo... Barcelona isn't as charming as Granada, but we did get to catch a flamenco show, which was amazing.  They are so intense the whole time!  The singers, the dancers, and the instrumentalists are completely into it.  We also saw La Sagrida Familia, designed by Gaudi, which is unbelievably detailed.  The guy was seriously insane.  He took on these elaborate projects and didn't finish them.  Still, even unfinished, this building was a sight to behold.

Okay, it's been really hard to keep up the blogging for the last little while.  We've either been too busy, or more often, without much internet access.  So I'll post this now, and hopefully Elizabeth will be posting soon after with her pictures.  As per usual, mine tend to be the silly ones or foody ones.  Hers will be the actual things we saw and did.  However, since I'm getting really sick of how difficult it is to work the text around the pictures, I'm just going to explain the pictures in this post, and then follow it up with a post of just the pictures.  Which means you will probably have already seen the pictures, since they'll be up above.  Oh well.  Look at them again with the descriptions.  So, here's my little summary of Spain...we're in Florence now, but Italy descriptions will simply have to come later.

The first few pictures are from Madrid.  Tapas is a traditional food in Spain, and you'll find tapas bars everywhere.  I think there are different stories about how it started, but basically people started bringing beers out with a plate and a snack on top.  So if you order a beer, they'll bring you some kind of a snack with it.  This bar is a little more formal about it.  You get a menu and mark the kinds of sandwiches you want, and the beer you want.  You get a glass of beer, and the finger sandwiches with some potato chips.  Their sandwiches are really good, and very cheep.  Oh, and the beer comes with it.  This particular beer (the lighter one) is beer mixed with lemon soda.  Even Elizabeth loved this one.  :-)=  The statue there is just one we thought was very cool.  Although there are tons of street perfomers in Spain posing as statues, this one was in fact a real statue, randomly positioned in the street.  In the picture of me, I'm supposedly standing in exactly the center of Spain.

Next is one picture of Toledo, which was a fun day trip from Madrid.  This is a popular dessert in Spain, with a few churros and some melted chocolate to dip them in.  Their churros are much thinner and crispier than ours are, but it was very good.

The food in Granada was a salad (not too fancy, but very good and large), and some potato cake type things.  And of course, I had to throw in my pictures of La Alhambra.  Only two, and believe me we have TONS more, but I just thought I'd provide a tiny taste of it.

The picture of the food with the fan is our very own Spanish happy meal.  We ordered it in the train station before transferring to San Sebastian, and it came with the sandwich, chips, soda, and our very own souvenir fan!  Of course, we had been craving those finger sandwiches and lemon soda/beer, so after this we stored our luggage and went hunting for that bar again.  Hee.

San Sebastian, although a coastal town, certainly had its charms.  We enjoyed the long walk along the coast, and took some fun pictures, such as the strange claw structure.  The other is just a random windy picture, somewhere near the claw thingy.  And then, of course, the food.  Our second day in San Sebastian, we were supposed to take a daytrip, but it didn't pan out, so instead we ate our way through San Sebastian.  These were very yummy cappuccinos and croissants with chocolate and whip cream inside.  So, there ya go!  That's Spain in my very little nutshell.

EDIT: And also, the pictures aren't in order.  It goes 7-11, 2-6, 1.  I think.  Frmp.

Did ew know...?

Prego is the universal Italian word.

Thank you for choosing Lod's Little Tidbits, and have a nice day.

Four Countries to One Post

Leaving Scotland was hard.  Harder than it should have been.  Staying with a family, a Christian family, was wonderful, and so hard to give up when I know how long the trip is ahead of me.  I wouldn't give up this opportunity for anything, but there was so much security and warmth with the Green family.  Sometimes the guitar would be pulled out and we'd get to sing along with worship songs.  And there's the conversation..about important things, like God, and end-times, and the Bible...and about equally important things, like clothes, and sweet shops, and actors.  Leaving home was emotional, and so of course leaving this home too was emotional.  Still, now that I'm sitting again in Dublin on my bunk in our latest hostel, I am excited about what's to come.  Excited and maybe just a little apprehensive.  I've been trying to gather as much French as I can from our Rick Steve's French book, and actually I'm rather pleased with what I've retained so far.  Still, I'm somewhat certain that once I'm in the position to use it, I will simultaneously lose it all, so I'll be keeping the book close at hand.  But enough of that. 

Let's talk about the walk to the US Embassy.  We had great fun!  I am quite sure that the Dublin city map is not drawn to scale.  It's been a wonderful map to have...we almost never have to ask for directions, but the distances seem to be off.  On this day, we had to go to the US Embassy so that Elizabeth could get new pages in her passport.  Problem A: It was pouring rain.  And when I say pouring, I am understating it.  Problem B: The passport area of the embassy closed at 11:30...and we were leaving at 10:45.  Which leads me right into problem C: The embassy was located at the very edge of the map.  Let's just say it was a longish walk in murderous rain to be pulled off in less than forty-five minutes.  We were absolutely soaked (except for a few dry specks here and there) when we passed it, and just as soaked when we realized our mistake, saw the embassy back across the intersection, and ran as fast as we could.  We must have looked pathetic when they let us in.  It was 11:30.  They sent us up to the passport people and we waited.  For about half-an-hour.  They took her passport, and then came back saying that their connection was down and they couldn't do it yet.  We were to come back at 3 o'clock.  That gave us a little under three hours to kill.  So, what to do?  Walk around in the pleasant weather?  Right.  We went across the street to a bistro, ordered cappuccinos, and sat there for about 2 hours and 30 minutes.  Of course, we got bored after about 30 minutes, so we pulled out my notebook and played MASH.  Hee.  Talk about a blast from the past.  

We finally were able to go back to the embassy and got everything taken care of.  Needless to say, we were relieved to finally get back to our hostel and stay there.  Until later that evening when we met Valerie and Emilio and a couple of their friends for dinner.  It was a fun evening.  Later on we had dinner, but first we had wine and cheese, as you see in this picture.  The guy right next to me was just some random guy who decided to be in our picture.  Anyhoo...

Hem hem.  Well, it's taken me a while to be able to type all this out, so now it's Monday, and we're leaving Ireland tomorrow.  We'll fly to Paris and from there catch the train to Madrid.  We're a little uneasy about working all the details out, but thankfully once we're done with this flight, we should be sticking mostly to train rides,

which will simplify things a bit.  Hopefully.  A couple days ago we went to Wicklow, which is a beautiful area just south of Dublin.  Don't have too much to say about it, but Elizabeth should have some pictures of it up soonish.  On our way back, we stopped in a small town for food.  We had brought sandwiches, so we just stopped in the restaurant for some coffee and garlic bread.  We came out with a fantastic picture that was on the bathroom door.  I thought you'd all get a kick out of it.  Of course you will.  Because I did.  Today we went to the Aran Islands just south of Galway in Ireland.  We went to the largest of the three islands, Inis Mor, which is still fairly small.  We rented bikes once we were over there and got to bike around the island a little, taking in the sights and enjoying shockingly good weather.  It was really very beautiful!  I'd love to stay there longer sometime.  Unfortunately I've gotten sick again (my body seems determined to get me sick once a month, and always when I'm preparing to do something physical, such as bike around an island or venture into the pyramids), so some of the biking was rather difficult, but I managed.  I'm feeling much better now, so I'm hoping today was the worst.  We had an excellent lunch after seeing Dun Aonghasa (that's a picture of me holding on the part of the fort...the cliffs were lovely), a semi-circular Celtic Stone fort built around 2000 B.C.  We felt this was acceptably old, since 500 year old buildings just don't cut it any more.

Not after dozens of ancient ruins in Egypt.  Anyway, I later decided I wanted to become a permanent attraction here, and therefore found a new home and proceeded to move in.  I know it looks a little small in the picture, but obviously that's just an illusion.  Of course, then Elizabeth reminded me that we still had a lot more traveling to do, so I agreed to postpone my move.  The lunch we had was at a little cafe that served homemade items.  We had tomato soup, a chicken sandwich, some bread, and a slice of chocolate cake.  It was by far the best tomato soup we've ever had.  And the other stuff was amazingly good as well.  They're not kidding when they say homemade.  So now we're back at the hostel, planning our stay in Spain, and taking turns reading Breaking Dawn (we bought the book in a book store

a few days ago and we've almost finished it

 now).  Pretty soon we'll go make some dinner and try to catch some sleep before our early morning tomorrow (catching a bus to the Shannon airport so we can fly to Paris...etc. etc.)

Toodle pip, sah!

Okay, well this post just keeps getting longer and longer.  Now we're in Spain.  Finally.  And quite a journey it was.  We arrived in Paris by plane and had to take the bus to the metro to the train station...I think.  Hurdle 1 was catching our final plane ride until near the end of the trip.  Piece of cake...we're practically experts at airports now.  Hurdle 2 was finding the bus route...not too hard.  The people at the airport spoke English.  We arrived at the metro and I had enough French to muddle our way to the right route there, completing hurdle 3.  Arrived at the train station where we were to make our reservations for Madrid.  This was to be hurdle 4, but we hit a bump: the train leaving that evening for Madrid was a different train station.  See, not only will they not allow you to reserve things online, but you actually have to be at the appropriate train station.  They want to make things as difficult as possible.  This led to hurdle 4a, taking the new bus to the new train station.  Again, rudimentary French kicked in, and we made it there.  Now for the fun part.  We got there and were told that there was a problem with their computer system.  If we went to the train twenty minutes before it departed, we could get our tickets there.  So we did that.  The man at the train said they were full.  No room for us.  Back to the ticket room we go and say they won't let us on.  "No," they say, "there should be room.  They should let you on."  Back to the train we go.  "Nope, we're full."  Back to the ticket office.  Man calls manager.  "Okay," says he, "they'll let you on now."  Back we go to the train.  No, we're full.  Back to the ticket office.  "Yes, sorry," says the man, "he called back and said they're full.  We can help you get another train tonight."  So I wait in line and get up to the desk again.  He can't get us one for that night, and he doesn't speak enough English.  Passes me on to his colleague.  Her computer isn't working right.  She passes me to another colleague.  At this point, I have long since moved from broken French to hysterical English, and by the time I get to this man, I'm completely losing it.  Don't you people understand?  I HAVE to get to Madrid!!!!!!  "We have one available tonight.  You'll have to transfer to Irun in the morning and will arrive in Madrid tomorrow afternoon."  Oh.  Gee.  That was so hard.  I can see why you people had to jerk us back and for fifty times before arriving at that brilliant solution.  Okay, you laugh now, but I don't think this situation will ever be funny to me.  It's the first time on this trip that I felt completely hopeless about the rest of our time here.  I just wanted to curl up into a ball and die.  It wasn't until we reached our hostel in Spain that I began to feel better.  And I now have a permanent complex over train stations.  We had to go to a few today to make some reservations and I thought I was going to hyperventilate.  And the best part?  We get to back to France later in the trip.  Oh goody.

Now we're in Spain.  It's actually September 11th now.  I know, this crazy post just spans tons of days.  Oh well.  We took a walking tour of Madrid today, which was laid back and fun.  Not a whole lot to say, since today was our first day.  Yesterday we just took it easy.  In fact, we even ate at Starbucks, which is right next door.  After all the craziness getting here, I just needed something familiar.  Tomorrow we're going to Toledo, and then the next day we're headed south to Granada.  That's all for now then.

Did ew know...?

King Phillip III of Spain died because he was too lazy to move his charcoal heater.  He had called for a servant to move it, and when no one came, he just sat there until it killed him.

Thank you for choosing Lod's Little Tidbits, and have a nice day.

P.S.  Yes, I realize that some of the pictures are not properly situated, and also that sometimes the words are arranged strangely.  It's a constant irritation...both Elizabeth and I have problems with pictures on this website, though they're completely different problems for each of us.  Without going into too much detail, let's just say we get the pictures arranged as closely as possible to what we wanted, and leave it at that.  If you try to fix it more after that...well, it's just not pretty.  And that's all for now.  Thank you for tuning into Lod's Little Venting Session.

Time Warp

Excuse me whilst I take you back into the past a few days.  I know I blogged a teeny bit about Edinburgh, but now I have a few pictures of it.  First off, since I know you all like to know how well fed we are, here are the food pictures I love to give you.  Here we have a picture of me in the barrel for the barrel ride.  We learned all about the fancy-shmancy Scotch Whisky making process.  Then we have the haggis.  This was very very good.  The haggis is on the bottom, mashed potatoes (tatties) in the middle, and mashed turnips (napes) on top.  But the gravy really made the meal.  I also have a Hot Toddy in that picture, which is whisky, honey, lemon...some other stuff.  The next picture is the tea we enjoyed at Clarinda's Tea Room.  There were locals there...always a good sign.  We had lovely scones with fresh cream, while Elizabeth enjoyed Blackcurrant tea and I had Jasmine tea.  It was a lovely environment.  Finally, we have a dessert made up of fruit, whisky, and whipped cream, plus a few other ingredients.  It was very tasty, and not too strong in any direction.

Of course, there was plenty of time for other things on the Royal Mile, some of which I've already mentioned.  But here are some pictures of our frivolity.  Meeting up with Valerie was lots of fun.  It's always comforting to see family.

This is us on the Royal Mile, her with her cashmere, made in Scotland, tartan scarf.  Elizabeth and I later got our own.  

The next two pictures are in Edinburgh Castle.

Clearly, Elizabeth is getting far too much enjoyment out of shooting off cannons, and I'm worried an intervention may be required shortly.  At least she didn't fire at anyone this time...like me.  We also saw my kilted man playing the bagpipes outside one of the museums.

As you can see, we got very friendly.  

Finally, when we went to Camera Obscura, we had a delightful time.  There are Camera Obscuras in other places, so it's not necessarily unique to Scotland, but it does give you a visual tour of Edinburgh (see Elizabeth's blog for description), and there are three other floors with tons of visual oddities and optical illusions.  There was a booth there where you could have your picture taken and then morph them into other things.  Here we have two lovely pictures of Elizabeth and myself in anime form.  I must say, I think we make adorable anime characters.  They could do other faces too.

 

Caitlin Story

Don't panic.  I know that title instills fear into the bravest of souls, but rest assured we are well and whole.  And Caitlin, before you get any ideas, we may end up with more of these stories than you have after this trip, but we'll end up with less than we would have if you were on this trip with us.  So this doesn't prove your point.  That's my disclaimer.  And now for the juicy news.

The plan was to take the train to Glasgow for the morning and early afternoon.  Although we've been enjoying Edinburgh, we were excited to get to see another town.  We've been in to Edinburgh three times now and didn't want that to be the extent of our experience.  A few days ago, Suzanne showed us how the keys work to the house.  There are two doors from the inside to the outside, and between them is a small, glassed-in porch where they keep their shoes.  None of these doors can be unlocked inside or out without a key.  The inside door has two locks, one which latches automatically when you close it.  This morning, the plan was for only the automatic lock to be done when we left, since we didn't have keys to take with us to lock everything up.  Assuming then that Andy left the doors unlocked, we headed out to our Galway adventure.  We stepped into the porch area, closed the door to the inside, and put our shoes on.  Then we went to unlock the outside door...eeeerrrrr...yeah, locked.  The door to the outside was locked.  The door to the inside was locked.  We were keyless, sitting in a small, glassed-in porch with the sun beating down.  The phone had not been working on local calls.  Panic sets in.  And we're going to be stuck in a porch until four o'clock when the girls get home.  It was almost funny.  Almost.  (Well, later it was hilarious, but I'm getting there.)  So I start pounding on the door and the windows yelling "Somebody help us!  Hello?" at the top of my lungs (which was honestly a phrase I never expected and never really wanted to be using).  Finally, across the street and a little bit down the road, there was a man walking into his house.  He obviously heard my pounding, and turned and looked around confusedly.  Finally he saw me and started walking towards us.  Now of course it should have been a bit embarrassing, but we were just too desperate to get out.  But by the time we were about to ask him to call Andy for us, Elizabeth had figured out what was wrong with the phone call, and she got through to him herself.  It took him a minute to understand our problem, but I think "Oh dear..." would be a decent translation of his response.  Sadly, he had taken the bus to work and not his car, and he had to turn around and come back.  We felt really bad, but on the other hand, we really didn't

 want to stay in there for seven hours.  So we thanked the man who had helped us, and then sat there.  For about an hour.  We listened to music.  The mailman came (at this point we were seeing the hilarity in the situation, and possibly the humiliation as well), and he just sort of...waved.  A white kitty came up to the glass, I'm positive just to torment me since I couldn't exactly reach out and pet it.  That's a picture of us cheerfully waiting.  And finally Andy got back and graciously offered us a ride in his car (the bus would have taken him another hour to get to work, and since, thanks to us, he was already late...) to the train station.

So, that aside now, we did go to Galway.  We had less time than we had planned, but we had enough to do a few things, and we felt pretty good about it.  The most important part was a sweetie shop that Amy and Elizabeth had found online called Glickman's.  Yeah, you laugh, but we did go there.  And it was really really cute... just like those sweet shops you see in old movies.  The shop was close to the city centre, but a little bit farther out, so we saw several locals come in and few tourists.  We got some fudge and chocolates, but the best part was how friendly she was.  And very Scottish!  We actually chatted for a little while.  She got some Utah history, and we got some Scottish history.  Other than that, we walked through Prince's Square, saw the St. Mungo Museum and Cathedral, the Necropolis (a cemetery that used to be where people lived in Glasgow), and a really fun museum with lots of history about Scotland (kind of geared towards kids, so very interactive).

And now, just for a teeny bit of older k-news, I realize I never told you about Loch Ness.  The drive through the Highlands was very beautiful, and rest assured, we will get a picture up when we get the chance.  We got to feed Hamish, the Highland cow, and he was really cute.  It's brilliant too because you pay for

little bags of food so you can go out and feed him.  So basically, you're paying them to feed their cow.  Genius.  Urquhart castle is on the edge of Loch Ness, and was pretty much in ruins.  It was really cool to walk around and explore though.  That's me reading the braille on one of the signs, and yes, I really was reading it with my eyes closed.  The Loch Ness itself was lovely.  I'm afraid we didn't take any pictures of Nessie, because she likes messing with people and doesn't want anyone else to know exactly what she looks like.  But she was very friendly and we chatted for a few minutes before we had to go.  She offered us a place to stay if we're ever staying in the Loch.  

Once back in Bolerno, we enjoyed some time with Amy and Julia.  To the left we're enjoying Innocent Smoothies, which they had recommended.  They were pretty good, unlike the Iron Brew.  The girls like it...the parents don't...we think it tastes like carbonated, bubble-gum flavoured cough syrup.  But the Innocent was good.  So, that's pretty much caught up then.  

So just to answer Caitlin's question...I'm going to assume you mean the socks.  Nice thick white socks and black shoes.  'Cuz otherwise...well, I didn't exactly ask.  Sorry.   ;-)=

And Sara...yes, I did think of our dear friend Haggis McMutton.  Glad you did too. ;-)=

Did ew know...?

Elephants can swim twenty miles a day.  They use their trunks as natural snorkels.

Thank you for choosing Lod's Little Tidbits, and have a nice day.

Q&A

Mother: Galway is on the west coast of Ireland, where you can take a ferry to the Aran Islands.

Daddy: The 'they' is Valerie and her boyfriend Emilio.  And yes, of course we kissed the Blarney stone!  And now we are supposed to be more eloquent...but I'm not sure it worked.  Although we are picking up phrases here and accent alterations there.  We're going to be quite a jumble of cultures when we get back.

Debbie:  Well, naturally we're drinking the Scotch Whisky!  I mean, I would not be accused of snubbing a culture and refusing to experience it to the fullest!  ;-)=

Cas*: I'm sure one or both of us will be posting more about Loch Ness later, but you must know we had a nice long chat with Nessie.  She's awfully fond of us.  She just loves toying with the tourists and the locals, the little skamp.