Greece

Greece was a brief stop in Athens and then some lovely island hopping, with stops in Paros, Mykonos, Syros, and Santorini. Lots of hiking, eating, stomping ruins on Delos, and some hellish seasickness on the ferry from Santorini back to Athens for me. Eric, as ever, was a jolly sailor. Aaaaarrrr.

The meal above was a happy find when we kept climbing this hill one hot morning, famished, thinking we were out of luck for brekkies, and voila. Oh, and it came with some view.

On Santorini, we hiked from Fira to Oia (at the tip). Then, of course, we had lunch.



Ouzo in the making at Brettos in Athens.

Lausanne Switzerland and the Swiss Alps

Trina joined us for Dippies! at Cafe de L'EvecheRue Louis-Curtat 4Lausanne, Switzerland. I include the address because this is the best fondue in the world: Fondue a la Mode de la Chateau de Gruyere. Repeat that until you've memorized it and then get thee to Lausanne, for the definitive Gruyere cheese piped with whipped creme, which you stir into it for the most velvety, musky, delish fondue ever. Paired with this Valais wine, ooh la la. Seriously, it is thebiggest reason we went back to Lausanne (Lausanne is actually quite lovely with a nice seaside and is a pretty walking town), and Trina traveled from London to meet us there.

Fondue goodness photos courtesy of Trina Roy.

Munich Germany and the Bavarian Alps

Munich was one of the most beautiful cities we've visited, and has been voted the most liveable city in the world by Monocle:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2007/jul/07/saturday.travelwebsites

(Although some Bavarian peeps I've talked to in the US say "meh.')

But seriously, you can't go wrong with amazing Bavarian Alps, the legendary Mad King Ludwig and his castles (which were Disney's inspiration for castles and underground grottos and such), nekkid sunbathing in the park, and beergardens, like the one below. Note the oompah band in the bandstand.

In Which the World's Biggest Kid Finds a Luge in the Bavarian Alps

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

I . . . well, I . . . [hands clasped behind me, stubbing big toe into the ground] . . . I lost another camera. In my purse, along with my Treo 650 PDA/cell phone.

I left my purse (but not my eyeglasses nor wallet, thank goodness) at a bus station in Kamari on the island of Santorini in Greece. We took the bus to Fira, then took a taxi down to the port at Athenios, where we were to catch a ferry for Athens at 5 p.m (then catch a plane to Rome the afternoon of the next day).

At 3:50 p.m., I realized my purse was missing and we ran to the Port Authority police. There, a very dedicated young officer and his friend, through numerous very serious phone calls in Greek, miraculously found out that a couple had gone to the police in Kamari with my purse. These Samaritans then got onto the bus for Fira with the understanding that they would take my purse to the Fira police. The Fira police, once they had the purse, would call the Port Authority, and have it delivered to them. By 4:45 p.m. we had not heard back from the Fira police, and we agreed we had to get on the ferry to Athens. The officer and his friend consulted each other for a few minutes, made more serious phone calls, then said that if they get the purse that night, they could have it delivered to my hotel in Athens by 10 a.m. the next morning. The officer even gave me his personal cell phone number. Fabulous. Except that by the next morning, the Fira police still hadn't heard anything about the purse. So the officer promised if he got it he would have it shipped to our home in California. They were so helpful that I have no doubt that if he gets it he will send it to me. I'm just not holding my breath.

So that's why the following posts, up to Rome (where I am now and have bought yet another camera), contain no pictures from my camera. My angst over the hundreds of pictures from Europe knows no bounds. I couldn't make a turn on a trail in the Swiss Alps without taking another picture, and the pictures of my nephew Antoine are proof positive that he is the most adorable young man (of four years) in Paris. If by any chance the camera gets shipped home, I'll repost with pictures. Until then, you'll have to use your imagination.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update!

A lovely couple (he a retired pastor) found my purse at the bus stop in Kamari. They took it to the bus company, thinking I might return for it, but the bus company would not take it. So they took it to Fira, but the bus company there wouldn't take it either and the police department was some distance away. The couple found my mother's contact info (under Mom and Mel) in my PDA address book, and seeing that my mom and stepdad live very close to them in Washington, they took my purse home and contacted Mom. All four had a lovely lunch together yesterday, and my mom now has my purse, which she is shipping to me. Happy ending. Yay for the kindness of strangers. And moms and stepdads.

Ssssssrrrriiiiifffttt!!!!!!!!!! (Copenhagen, Denmark)

. . . That is the sound of the kroners being sucked out of your wallet in Denmark. Copenhagen is the most expensive place we've ever been. It's a pretty but unremarkable city. As we hadn't booked ahead, quality hostels were booked and we ended up paying around $200 USD /night for a hotel room comparable in quality and 1/2 the size of a Motel 6 room at home. This is fair for Scandinavia. Meals were also the highest we've seen in Europe. Our plan had been to head up to the fjords in Norway, but further investigation showed the same costs in all of where we wanted to go in Scandinavia. So we cut it short and headed back down to Germany.

While in Copenhagen, we visited the Danish Resistance Museum, which housed the pictures, stories, and war paraphernalia of World War II Danish resistance fighters. One of the most interesting bits from this was where someone had used a pin to inscribe their concentration memoirs into a long scroll of toilet paper. The resistance fighters often did not survive the war, dying in raids, from torture and execution, or from taking cyanide to avoid being caught and disclosing vital information.

Truck/Tank, Danish Resistance Museum

Underground Newsletter Press, Photos, Paraphernalia,
Danish Resistance Museum

The Famous, Serene Little Mermaid Sculpture
(what you don't see are the hordes of tourists jockeying for this same shot)

Lubeck, Germany

Traveling by train from Amsterdam on our way to Copenhagen, we stopped shortly in Lubeck Germany. There we walked around the picturesque town, visited the rathaus and Nobel prize author Thomas Mann's "Buddenbrook's House," and sampled marzipan.

The Bells of St. Mary's, Still Down From Bombing During World War II

Astrological Clock in St. Mary's

I Always Told My Kids They Were The Spawn of Satan

Lubeck in Marzipan

Current Schedule

9/10: We are currently in Grindelwald, Switzerland, hiking daily in the glory that is the Swiss Alps.

9/11: Eric's birthday! There will be more hiking, heady cheese, and sweet wine as the whole world celebrates.

9/12: Train to Milan

9/13: Flight to Athens

9/13 - 9/30ish: Greece, mostly islands

10/1ish - 10/9ish: To Rome, in Rome, leaving Rome, maybe Cinque Terra on the way to . . .

10/10ish - 11/10: Spain and Portugal

11/11: London

11/12: Flight home from London

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Amsterdam was much like Haarlem, only bigger and busier, with art museums, canals, wonderful pastries, lots of bikes (the Dutch ride bikes everywhere and are in great shape in general), rich history, and lax attitudes regarding some drugs and sex.

We walked through the famed Red Light District, where the sex workers, not unlike mannequins, appear in red-framed window displays. The womens' demeanor (men have tried unsuccessfully to get in on this gig) ranged from vacant and bored to sternly businesslike as they answered men's questions and conducted business. According to Lonely Planet, the average encounter lasts about 20 minutes and costs about $60 USD. Didn't look like much of a party to me. The Dutch aren't all that excited about it either, comprising only 2% of the business. Brits are number one, at 40%. Who keeps track of all this? Since prostitution is legal and taxes are paid, I guess someone is keeping records.

We also toured the Van Gogh museum, well done with sections of his art devoted to different phases of his lifetime. There was also an exhibit of Max Beckman's paintings done during his exile from Germany in Amsterdam during World War II.

We toured the Anne Frank House, where Anne Frank wrote her famous diary while hiding from the Nazis with her family in a secret annex above her father's shop. It was heartrending to stand in the rooms where the family had hid, and to see their possessions, pictures, and the notes and diary Anne kept. She wanted to be a journalist and for her experience and account to mean something, so she was true to her passion and wrote and wrote and wrote a book that has been published all over the world and translated into over a hundred languages. She is one of the most important journalists of our time, with a message as important today as when she wrote it.

The museum also contained an evocative interactive exhibit called Free2choose, which polls museum goers on morality conundrums such as what is right when freedom of speech conflicts with freedom to worship or rights of privacy. The audience votes on each situation and is given a breakdown on how the group and all participants voted. This was especially topical given the recent assasination of Theo Van Gogh (Vincent's grand nephew) by Islamic extremists over a movie he made about abuses of Muslim women, and the death threats against the cartoonists and paper who published the cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

For more info about Anne Frank and the museum, see
http://www.annefrank.org/content.asp?pid=1&lid=1&setlanguage=2

Amsterdam Scenes

Cannibas or Candy Bra, Anyone?

Okay, Then Howzabout a Friendly Game of Chess?

Haarlem and Leiden, The Netherlands

Haarlem in the Netherlands was a wonderful surprise, with everything good about Amsterdam, but it was much more laid back and even more friendly. In fact, the Dutch even have a word for people who are fun, warm, and cozy: gezellig.

Haarlem also shares the Netherland's relaxed laws and attitudes about sex and some drugs. Right off the train, you walk past adult toy and other sex shops, as well as shops selling cannabis and mushrooms in many forms. Not surprisingly, there is a high percentage of frat boyage and other aged groups of men traveling together in this country.

We visited the Dutch Masters at the Frans Hals museum, which used to be an old men's home, then an orphanage. We toured the windmill shown above, and saw from the inside out how a windmill works.

We daytripped into Leiden to see tulips, but it was the wrong season for full blooms of local fields. I did learn, though, that the Dutch went into tulipmania in the 1600s, when the tulip was introduced to Holland by a botanist who found them in Turkey. Tulips became all the rage and were sold for outrageous amounts, making fortunes for some traders. Today "tulipmania" refers to an economic bubble.

St. Bavo Church in Haarlem was one of the most interesting churches we've visited, containing a gorgeous organ that was once played by Amadeus Mozart. The reformed gothic-basilica church, dating back to the 1200's, also houses contemporary religious paintings and sculptures. The "floorboards" are actually the stone crypts of the town's former rich and famous. Story has it that there was some high odor in the church for some time, with all those folks laying head to toe and mano a mano. But they were all gezellig about it, the dust has settled, and that time has long past. Today it is an interesting mix of old and new, and a serene energy permeates the place.

St. Bavo Church

Organ Played by Mozart

Someone's Resting Place

Spanish Cannonball Still in Wall

Sculpture

Canal Life Totally Doesn't Suck

Our Nightly Quest -- Gelato

My Little Pony

Holland, Where the Appeltaart is Warm and the People are Gezellig

Current Schedule

... or, as our friend Robb (Robb Kane, a nice man) says, we make plans and God laughs...

July 24 to now: England, Lubeck Germany, the Netherlands, Copenhagen, Munich and Fussen Germany.

Fussen, Rothenburg, and Wurtzburg Germany: 8/17-28
Paris, France: 8/28-9/1
Lausanne Switzerland: 9/1-3
Interlaken Switzerland 9/3-?
Italy
Greece
Spain 10/12-11/10ish

Merrie Olde England

Leaving our family and friends in the US to move into Europe was made sweeter by meeting up with our loverly friends in England.

In London, Trina met us for coffee and din din at Bar Italia in Soho. The following day, we met to see the Monty Python musical Spamalot, which was indeed "funnier than the black death." Thinking she should dress for the event, Tough Trina wedged her arm into the door in the Tube and arrived smartly tattooed. (BTW, you can thank Trina for the technology behind the prophecy room scene at the end of the latest Harry Potter movie. How cool is that?!)

We were later joined by Emily and Mark. Emily took us to a couple of great pubs and a luscious (-ly naughty! :)) coffee house for yummy desserts. At one pub we met her friend who performed comic folk music that night, and is actually from San Francisco. He too was funnier than the black death. Fortuitously, Emily and Mark happened to sit below a love poem about "Em."

We went on to Northwich to visit our friend Richard, an old roller coaster buddy of Eric's. We went to see Richard's sister and her husband at their magical cottage in the English countryside, and his sister (after a workday of being a police sergeant over organized crime!) treated us to the most delicious ever homemade lemon shortbread and cream and fruit-filled cake. Traditionally, first-time guests are to blow the horn hanging on their ceiling. We're not sure why, but we did anyway.

Of course if Richard and Eric get together, there must be roller coasters. So we took another gorgeous drive through the countryside to Alton Towers, an amusement park built around the grounds of old castle.

Eric and Richard at Alton Towers

As we had more important people to see, we had to cancel on the Queen. But we did a drive-by on her house.

Obligatory Pics of Buckingham Palace and Implacable Guard

Tower Bridge

Rosetta Stone in British Museum

Pasties

Fish 'n Chips

Artist in Front of Northwich Cafe

Woman in Front of Parliament Building

Westminster Abbey

Olde and New London