planes, aves and taxis

a more modern update on the "planes, trains and automobiles" my mother and i used to get from zurich to zaragoza. honestly, spain's fast train (ave) from madrid to zaragoza had to have been goin upwards of 200mph. pretty cool. and it was one of the smoothest voyages i have been on in my life. i slept the entire way, well i guess that really doesn't speak to how smooth it is considering i also have no trouble sleepin through take-offs and landings on prop planes to/from peoria. well, we'll use a rico-ism from his last trip there. it was so smooth that it didn't even knock over the bottle of wine sittin on our table. talk about smooth.

anyway, we arrived at our pre-arranged lodging tuesday around 10am, were kindly greeted at the door by espe and luisito (susana and luis' kids), and then promptly set out to view what has changed from this city over the past 15years since we lived there. to be honest, i was there 2 years ago on my last excursion, so not really that much has changed in two years. but it was kath's first time back in 12 years, so she noticed a LOT of stuff had changed.

i guess now would be the appropriate time to mention the most drastic change over the last two years. you sitting down? well, you're reading a blog, so i hope you're not standing. the world famous, plaza espana mcdonalds CLOSED! yea, i know what you're saying. "why is THAT mickey d's world famous?" well here's your answer, cause it was the first place i ever had a big mac. every child should remember this momentous occasion for their entire lifetime. and unfortunately, i can never again go back to that same place and enjoy a juicy double stack with pickles, relish, and special sauce. *big tear* i kinda emotional right now, i don't know if i can continue this writing... wait a second, keep waiting, wait for it... so we went to gino's for lunch and had a pizza. ok, i'm better now.

pretty much this stop was a relaxing "see your friends" stop as we've already been to the 3-4 touristy things in that city (those things happen when you live there for 3 years). but it was good to catch up with susana and luis (and their two aforementioned children), ricardo and teresa (and their children, who are actually my age, paula and bea), marcos (and his gf patri) and a couple of old friends from one of my previous excursions back to aragon. unfortunately, besides marcos and paula, i didn't get to catch up

with any former juan de lanuza classmates or anyone from my apt bldg :(

sorry to be boring now, but this is the last entry in a 5 week project and i'm gettin ready to pack up all my junk for DTW. but first i gotta make a stop-over in london for a quick night. listen to this, so my flight out tuesday morn is really early, so i needed to get into london the day before. but the only reasonably priced flight i could find gets me in at 9pm, not early enough to meet up with any friends there, but just early enough that i can traverse the city (i arrive at gatwick and leave outta heathrow; which is almost a 2 hr ordeal once i wait for trains and whatnot cause they're on opposite ends of the rather large sprawling city) before gettin 4hrs of sleep. well, hey, what else did i have to do on the flight besides sleep. i'll catch up on it then.

well, this is my last entry from abroad as i'll be returning to the states shortly. don't worry, i don't start workin yet so i've packed a lot of stateside traveling into much of the next month. who knows, maybe you're one of the persons i've scheduled to see - if you're lucky.

interlaken is apparently in between lakes...

let's say that you have an open weekend coming up and aren't sure what to do. what should you do??? well, mom d and i answered that question by booking a hotel room in interlaken, a few hours drive from zurich. so as we're researching things to do up there, we notice that there is a Harley Owners Group festival that weekend. ahhhhhhh........... bikes, burgers and... brats (what?!?! did you think i was gonna say somethin else???) what an american weekend. to be honest, it was kinda refreshing seein as how we were up there for the weekend of the 4th (well, friday night at least). we embark on our expedition shortly after lunch on friday afternoon, with a plan to stop off at luzern on the way up (it's about halfway there and only has a few things to look at). so we jump in the car and make our way outta the city. after goin all over the mountainside (apparently sally - the GPS - wanted us to avoid some alleged traffic back up) we finally end up on a country highway in the correct direction. sooooo, we get to luzern and it's beautiful out. we find an underground parking structure, by the time we get to street level it's pouring rain. well, we didn't really have much invested in this city, so we jumped back in the car and took off to interlaken.

for those of you that know mom d, she doesn't get along too well with narrow mountain roads that have little or no guardrail stopping you from a 300ft drop. so after noticing that she's a little more than nervous, i relieve her of her chauffering duties and take over (for those keeping score at home, that's 2 countries i've driven in so far, 2 sides of the road and two cars) for the remaining 90min. well, when we get to interlaken (by the by, we might have forgotten to inform rico that there was this HOG festival that weekend) the whole city is packed. streets are blocked off, made gettin to the hotel quite difficult. but we did prevail.

so we spent the night waltzing around the main square (it was more like a 2 block grass field) lookin at all the variants of the american classic lined up and painted in great detail. they had red ones, blue ones, short ones, tall ones, fat ones, loud ones, and... and.. pink ones??? really, pink??? that's not too biker-ish in my mind, but who am i to question this... so it was pretty cool to walk around all this americana in europe. we even found a place that had a decent american burger. so what if it was a hooters, we were in the mood for american style burgers and they had them gosh darn it. anyway, pretty cool atmosphere in the streets. live band playing at one end of the town. apparently it was a rammstein cover band... yea, rammstein as in the late 90s classic violent anthem "du hast"... apparently they're too busy these days producing.... well, i really couldn't tell you what they'd be doin right now, but they're big enough where they have a cover band playin a harley festival. needless to say, we didn't quite fit in with the crowd. so once we were done people watchin, we retired to our hotel.

the next morning brought beautiful sunshine and an early morning walk throughout the city. it was a lot more quiet considering the main participants prolly hadn't awoken just yet. we made our way over to where a funicular takes people up 750m to the peak of a nearby mount. well, we had nothin else to do so we bought tix and headed on up. just a quaint 8min ride and we were at the peak lookin out over the entire valley. which is where we saw two lakes with the city in between them, ahhhhhhhh..... somethin clicked. the city was in between (or inter) the lakes = interlaken.... GENIUS! anyway, we spent a bit of time up there observing the oodles of paragliders landing in the main park (we couldn't quite figure out exactly where they were departing, but got sidetracked from that question quickly). after a while, we saw this group of high school kids (we figure it's an american school from somewhere in the region) walk up the other side of the restaurant than where we came from. so we asksd them how they got up there. turns out that they left from the funicular station at the bottom and walked up in an hour. it was gettin about time to leave, and rico and i wanted to get some exercise. so we figure that if these kids could walk up the mountain in an hour, then we should be able to walk down in an hour. mom d and li'l miss molly jumped on the funicular down whilst rico and i made our way along the path. to make a long story short, it took us an hour and a half and we were EXHAUSTED! looks like we just fit our cardio in for the next 3 weeks. talk about burnin in the front quads...painful! lucky for us that we had a 2hr drive directly ahead of us and didn't need to use our legs for a while.

seein as how it was saturday, july 4th. we decided to head to a 4th of july party held by one of my frat brothers from undergrad who's workin in zurich as an expat. although i'm not quite sure i'd call him an expat, he grew up in frankenmuth. that's pretty much the same thing as switzerland, right??? i'll have to say it is. anyway, we headed over to jared's for some brats, american music, euchre and people who don't speak with funny accents. ahhhhhhh... such an enjoyable time.

sunday brought out an hour's worth of a tiny motorboat on lake zurich (yea, we were on a boat again. i just can't get rid of the t-pain jokes!). took in some sun, helped out some damsels in distress, grabbed dinner and made our way home. what a relaxing way to end a holiday weekend.

next up.... back to the city of my youth, zaragoza. more reports once i get back into zurich.

it's all greek to me

ok, a little corny. but come on, did you really think i was gonna put something else as the title? really??? don't you know me better than that??? anyway. snap back to reality. the pseudo-impromptu trip to greece began last tuesday when i met up with tanya (another friend from school) and mom d in athens. keep in mind that this was kinda thrown together hap-hazardly and we didn't really have ALL the details figured out. we knew we were gonna hit a 2-day tour of delphi and the monasteries at meteora (tanya was kind enough to book that ahead of time). from there, we figured that we'd spend a day checking out athens the city and then the rest of the days checkin out some greek isles (which ones you ask??? yea, we didn't know either). WARNING: THIS IS KINDA LONGso we jump on the bus tour early wednesday morn to get up to delphi. long trip filled with random stories from tour guide (mostly aesop's fables type stuff and some mythological stories). these were stories that sometimes provided useful background for the objects we were going to see (i.e. the story of apollo and the titans and/or apollo slaying the python) and sometimes were just time filler on the 4 hour journey (the story of oedipus). anyway, we finally reached the base of where all the artifacts were so we got out. i'm guessing that back in the day, this would have been an imposing structure to look at. all built up, many statues around, but now it's all crumpled. but there are still some pretty good indications of what might have been. so as tradition goes, delphi was neutral ground for all the greek city states. none of them owned it, but all of them were allowed equal access to ask the oracles questions. since it was a place of common ground for everyone, they used this area to commemorate their military conquests. they did this by adding monuments or buildings. pretty much antiquity's version of "my xmas lights are better than your xmas lights - a la clark griswald". so we went up there and saw the various temples, statue locations and whatnot left from the different city states. as part of tradition, the oracle only gave predictions once a year (apollo's day, if you will) so people would line up a few days in advance in hopes to be able to hear the oracle's advice. turns out that the order people stood in didn't necessarily have to do with when they got there. it had more relation to where your city-state ranked in the order of panhellenic importance at the time. i think that's a pretty fair way to figure this out. but there was a trump card (i believe this to be the first trump card ever played, the right bauer, the big winner, the godfather of all trumps), the main altar used by the "priests" was built by the chians around 500BC and they wisely inscripted on the base of it "this altar was built by the people of chios, the line to meet the oracle starts after them." how do you say "dibs" in greek? cause i think they just called it.

so after our time at the delphi site, we jumped back on the bus and headed up to meteora - but first, we would make a stop off near the thermopylae pass. yep, you heard me. the place where king leonidas defied the odds and battled the millions of persian soldiers with just over

a thousand total greeks (the 300 refers to the 300 spartans that were there, he had about 1000 from other city-states at that battle). when asked by xerxes to give the persians their weapons and they wouldn't be harmed; leonidas only had one response "COME AND GET THEM!"... pretty bold if you ask me. well, we've all seen the movie (or can wiki it), so i won't bore you with the details. but the statue of leonidas is pretty cool.

from there we made out way up to the mountain dwellings of the ancient monks. the monasteries of meteora. pretty much these started off as hermit dwellings on top of weird shaped mountains that just jutted out from the ground without much bulid-up around them. back in the day there were about 20, due to seismic activity only about 7 remain. so we climbed up there and checked out their buildings, the views from outside and the inside of their churches. i'm gonna say this, greek orthodox churches are pretty ornate. i'll post a couple pics here to show you what it was like, but won't waste too many more words on it.

the next day brought us to the unknown. but before we get to that, let me tell you about what happened wednesday night. so when the bus dropped us off at the hotel our guide told us to write the name of our hotels in athens on our bags. this way the driver could figure out the best route to drop people off at and also it was a better marker for each piece of luggage. when she said this, the three of us looked at each other and were like "ummm... what hotel??" soooo, we spent a fair amount of our "leisure time" before dinner huntin down a decent hotel to stay in for the weekend. but since we didn't know exactly what we'd be doin, we didn't really know which area we wanted to stay in. so after a bunch of confusion and worryin, tanya found us a place near the port (this way we were close for any day trips we wanted to do). keep in mind that we haven't quite figured out what we actually wanted to do. we even spent most of the 5hrs on the bus askin around to see what other people had done and what seemed worthwhile. so we wake up friday mornin to see if we can grab a ferry out to a nearby island for a day-trip. mom d was leavin saturday mornin and wanted to see an island. we tried our mightiest, but were unable to come up with a trip for friday as all the ferries had either left already or were full for the day. stupid procrastinating!!!!! tanya and i promptly booked tix for a weekender to santorini (with all that everyone was sayin, this seemed to be one of those "if you miss it you'll regret it" places).

all wasn't lost, we decided to use that day for our tour of athens. we did your standard "hop-on, hop-off" tour around the city. we stopped at the acropolis (which has the parthenon) and the temple of zeus. after a while, it just all looks the same. so when we finished we decided to pull the trigger on the one remainin day we had: monday. we decided on Hydra. it was a close 1hr ferry (compared to the 6hr "fast" ferry and 7hr "slow" ferry to santorini - which is why it's a weekender and not a day trip , but i digress), didn't allow cars on the island and seemed to have a pretty decent history. more on that trip later, on to SANNNNNNNNNNTORINI!

here's my advice on this island, if you wanna go to a place that's undisturbed by mainstream tourism and you can just hang out for a week on the beaches and not really do anything big, then go here. it's mainly a 2day attraction for most people, cause there's only one or two things to do: 1) check out the hot springs/volcanic craters just off the shore, b) watch the sunset from the northwestern city of ia. after that, it's all about being lazy on the beach and maybe walkin up and down the streets that are lined with store vendors selling a whole bunch of artisan craftwork, clothes and jewelry. the place also has some historical significance too. this is one of the prime candidates for the location of the real atlantis. they have a museum over there about it, but it has been under construction for the past 2 years so we didn't get to see it. which means that you'll have to deal with my version of the story. so the grouping of islands called the cyclades (yep, as in cycle) look as if they could have been all the same island at some point. there's a huge basin in the middle of them with volcanic craters coming up to form a small island.

as you stand on this crater and look around you, the edges of all the islands are not smooth,

planed out beaches but sheer cliffs. looks almost as if someone just took a knife and cut out the middle of the island... well, the main working theory is that the volcano erupted around 8000BC and along with a well timed earthquake caused the inner part of the island to sink to the bottom of the sea. in some of the remaining cities they have found traces of advanced sewage and water transport systems that date back to 9000BC. i don't know about you, but that seems like it'd be a lost civilization if i ever heard of one.

anyone, less of atlantis and more of santorini (means st. irene in greek). so we did the touristy thing and jumped on a boat to head out to both the hot springs and the volcanic crater in the middle of the cyclades. don't worry, they've been inactive since 1956 and they have seismic readers on them to notify people in advance if anything's gonna happen. (editor's note: after they let us off at the docks, i passed on using the cable cars to get back up the cliffs to the city and took the really long path up the hill.

they told me it was 628 steps, what they didn't say that the parts between the steps were on a 35 degree incline) later that nig

ht (our only one on the island) tanya and i jumped on a bus and headed 20min north of the main city of fira (or thira, depending on whom you ask) to watch the sunset in the city of ia. we walked around for a bit and found a rooftop restaurant that had a great view. so we pulled up there and asked for some menus.

to be honest, it was pretty cool watchin the sun set into the horizon on the water. pretty darn cool. the next morning we got up and took a bus down to the "black beaches" on the south shore of the island. it was pretty cool. from what we can tell, the beaches are made up of volcanic ash that, over the years, has smoothed out somewhat. very interesting feeling between your toes. not quite sand, not quite pebbles. anyway, we jumped on the ferry that evening and caught most of the 2nd half of USA-Brazil. we docked with 23min left (and up 2-1), so i figured we won until the next morning. d'oh!

final day in greece, mission: hydra. so hydra is a tiny little thing just off the pelaponessian coast and about an hour south of athens. this island is just a large ROCK and almost impossible to grow anything on that terrain. so based on this, the inhabitants turned to the waters for their living. becoming some of the most respected and well-renowned seafarers of the middle ages. they would hire themselves out to outrun pirates and blockades (english blockade of france, turkish blockade of russians). this gave most of the citizens a fair amount of $$ which they in turn used to make beautiful mansions overlooking the sea. because of their love of seafaring vessels, and their limited land, they have not allowed any motorized vehicles on the island (basically, this is how you say mackinac island in greek). so we get there at 9.30am and immediately think "what are we gonna do here for 10hrs???" anywho, we walk around the waterfront for a bit (pretty much densely populated with restaurants' waterview seating. so we go to the maritime museum (turns out hydriots were big in the war of independence from the turks), checked out one of the mansions (this dude lazarus gave his mansion so it could be a national museum), and then looked for the big church in the middle of the town. unfortunately, when we got there it was closed to visitors.

looked pretty cool from the windows outside, but we couldn't see inside it. after a 2hr lunch spent learning backgammon, we decided that we wanted to go see the next major attraction (and only remainin one) the monastery for the prophet elias (i think this may mean elijah, but i'm not sure - who knows, maybe this is where they invented big boy??). we look on the map, doesn't look too far. tanya had said that the research we did said that it was about an hr walk from the city, so we set off. one thing leads to another and it turns out that the monastery is actually at the summit of the highest peak on that island. and we spent a solid 65min climbing up it at steep angles and poor roads. talk about tiring. so we got up there and spent about 20min inside of the thing (which was pretty cool, silver lined paintings and whatnot) and then tried not to kill ourselves on the descent.

with the final ferry back to the port of pireaus that night, we marked our final night in athens. not a bad week for somethin that was thrown together about 3days before it was completed. next on the agenda for joseph p is to head back to zurich with the 'rents for a relaxing july 4th weekend and then hopefully make my way back to zaragoza to visit some old school friends. yup, that's another last minute excursion. we'll see how that one works out. good night to all and to all a good night.

makin it rain

no seriously, we were. well, not in the pacman jones kinda way, but in the literal sense. shubha and i couldn't go anywhere in zurich without mother nature following us in a bad way. hey, let's take a ferry to rappers-ville (yea, i said it, rappersville... like where biggie and tupac live/produce posthumous albums)... mother nature replies "not in the sunny weather you don't!" hey, let's walk around the city a bit and enjoy a relaxing day on the streets... mother nature storms back with some lighting and raindrops bigger than my foot. (foot?!?!??! yea, head just sounded too normal)... anyway, shubha is wrapping up his stay here in europa with a final few days with kathy and rico near the zoo.

not much to say that i haven't in the previous paragraph. just wanted to wish safe travels to shubha on the rest of his journey (he's goin to asia for another month or so). for me, it's on a last minute expedition to greece with tanya perkins and mom d. well, mom's only stayin for the first part of it. t-perk and i will be island jumpin over the weekend on our own. look out for those postings coming next week to a computer near you.

roman coastal paradii (split & dubrovnik)

after audibling outta the hrvaskan capital early tuesday morning, we arrived in split a day early... the goal was to hopefully see if our "hotel" (don't worry, i'll get to that later) was available for an extra night. so we send a barrage of emails and text messages to the contact we have at this hotel to see if we can stay a day early. since we don't hear anything back, we store our luggage at an internet cafe and take to the streets. we figure that we'll give her a few hours to reply whilst we take in some sites. first thing's first, lets grab lunch. rumor has it that this country is a carnivore's paradaise, and you know what, they didn't disappoint. we took in a local version of sliced meat in bread from a street side cafe on their main thoroughfare. a street called the Riva upon which whose western edge is actually the adriatic. pretty cool place to sit and chill while enjoying a brat and a beverage. from there, we make our way through the confusing streets of this 3rd century roman emperor's summer palace (erected by roman emperor diocletian) and somehow find ourselves near a shopping mall on the other side. not exactly sure of where we are, we pull out my handy dandy OCD booklet with all my maps. after a fair bit of sign searching, we figure out that we're 2 blocks from our hotel. so we decide to walk up there and talk to whomever is working there (the emails referenced an employee named marina on the 2nd floor of the building). we find our "hotel" which is apparently located in an aparmtent building (one of the tenants on the first floor was kind enough to direct us to the "lobby"). so we knock on this door labeled as the lobby (it kinda looks just like any other apartment in this building) and an old lady answers. if i were to say she was wearing a babooshka, most of you could imagine a good approximation of who she was. well, after trying to discuss terms with her, she pulls out her daughter from the kitchen (cause yes, the "lobby" was actually their own apartment) who negotiates the deal and lets us up to the room a day early for the same daily rate we're paying the other nights. ummmm...giggity.

so we get up to this place, and realize that we had just booked one of the rooms in a 2 bedroom apartment on the top floor (effectively it was a 3 BR cause the kitchen had been turned into a room as well). well, hey, i'm fine with sharing a bathroom with 2 other groups i don't know... i mean, when in roman palatial ruins....

ok, so we tour the city again... not much to see there. a couple clock towers, a couple church steeples, a couple random statues and more than enough blind alleys in the place to scare even the bravest aussie backpacker. after such an arduous day, we decided that a rest period was in order. so power naps were taken after which we headed out to dinner on the town. so we wander our way around to the "black cat" restaurant. know, i was taught that if a black cat crosses your path you should turn around... eh, we decided to stop and eat. not only did they provide us with a hearty meal, they also provided us with sufficient directions on where to find the nightlife in this town. and then they asked us to go to tripadvisor.com and fill out their survey about this restaurant to boost their ratings. eh, they scratched our backs, we could scratch theirs.

next day, decide to hit up the beach for some rays. i've been in europe for almost 3 weeks and have NO tan whatsoever to show for it. so we pull up on the beach for a couple hours during the gruesome daylight for some R&R. (mental note: when laying out in the sun for extended periods of time and wearing a cross from a chain on your neck, don't be surprised if that image is actually visibly apparent when the rest of your body is either tan or burnt). well, we decide to stay outta the sun the rest of the day, so we head to the basement ruins of the palace. not much there except for natural a/c and a few artifacts.

after dinner that night, we went to the "let's go" recommended bar called Puls. it's basically an outdoor bar with seats on the steps of random alleyways in the city. but not a bad place to meet up with other anglophones. apparently aussies are trying to take over the world via backpacking. who'da thunk. so after making fun of our money for a while (i.e. "how do you know how much you have if it's all the same color?" "umm... we look at the numbers..." or "why do you have paper money, you can't take that into the water" "umm... i've washed more money in the laundry than you've spent this trip, honey") they decide we're legit enough to trade travel stories and suggestions with. cool beans... meetin people is fun, even if they do have funny accents... oh, speaking of accents. they were trying to teach us a few nuances of their languages. specifically the term for "chugging" beer. after a while of trying to emulate what they were saying, one of them turned to me and asked me how i pronounced "all". i tell her, so she tells me that the word is spelt "skall"... i say it, they agree that it sounds right. then i inform them that i had thought the term originated from keeping the beverage near your head, or skull. they said "yea, the bone in your head, your skull. i just spelt it that way so you'd pronounce it correctly"... and i thought midwesterners didn't have accents... shooooooooooot....

anyway, we'd had about seen the end of the city of split (it ain't that big, although it'd be the perfect place to go if you wanted to get away to an unknown beach side paradaise, but i digress). we jumped on the early bus down to dubrovnik. i'm not sure how many of you know where dubrovnik is located, but it's the southern most region of croatia. in fact, it's so far south that you have to pass through 10miles of bosnia&herzegovina to get their. and we were wondering why our "let's go" book had told us not to stray away from the beaten path there cause of the very real possibility of walking into unexploded landmines left over from the balkan war - i believe the section was called 'hop scotch kaboom'. we take the bus, get our passports barely glanced at by the customs guy... seriously why'd they stop the bus if they only barely glanced at the cover of our passports?!??!?!

well anyway, we finally get down to our hotel (turns out we had to take a bus into the city from the port and then one back out to the hotel.. oh well). but, it had the best view from any place we've stayed at. right on the adriatic, picturesque view, pretty much woulda won some photo contest if i knew how to take pictures correctly. so we get our stuff straightened out and head into the city. jump a bus down there, meander around town a bit. not much to see there....uhhh, another walled city that butts up to the adriatic. stopped off in the church (that's for you grandma), passed through some museum about historic documents (BORING), then sat down in the town square and did what the locals do... relax.

lemme give you a little sidebar now. the whole reason we're in dubrovnik was because a friend of mine (shout out to amee joshi here) mentioned that this tv show from the states (3 sheets) had gone there and enticed me to watch that episode. well, during said episode, the owner of a bar/pizzeria had said that anyone who goes down to dubrovnik and mentions that show gets 15% off their meal. well, it seemed like a cool city, we had an extra day of things to do, so why not.

anyway, whilst meandering around town, we find this pizzeria, note the location and decide that we're heading back there for dinner. so we go home, change outta the day-time scrubs, shower then head back in for dinner. as we approach this pizzeria, we ask the waiter "are you the place from 3 sheets???" to which his prompt reply, in heavy croatian accent, was "you're in dee big shit now!!" 10 seconds after sitting down he had placed grappa shots in front of us. awwwwwwwww, snap. apparently since filming the episode, they had gotten rid of their pizza guy and had turned into a legit restaurant. so shubha asks the guy which is the best chicken he has... he gives us quite frank answer. shubha orders it up. i ask him about the pizzas, he tells me "you don't want-a the pizza"... so i ask him, "what do i want?" he replies, "do you like calamari?".. i nod... he says, "then i know what you're getting."... i ask him what it is, he replies "you won't know until i bring it out." but hey, i gotta say, the calamari stew (i think that's how i'd describe it) was THE BEST meal i've had on this trip - and maybe in the last 3 years (aside from mom d cooking... ok, and besides aunt jan cooking too). sooner or later, we finish our meals. he brings out another grappa shot, but tells us that we need to consume it over at another table. we weren't the only ones who had gone there that night based on the tv show. newlyweds jamie and dan had come here as part of their honeymoon. so a celebration was in order. we even got the owner (Viktor) out for a few rounds of grappa. well, one thing led to another and lemme just say that the 5am bus ride back to split (so we could catch the flight to zurich) came pretty early.

next on the list, 3 days with rico and kathy at hotel digirolamo (zurich location). and some hmmm hmmm good home cooking.

venice / zagreb

so now we get to the ADHD portion of our trip. early AM flight to venice (cheapest way to get to croatian coast), followed by overnight train to zagreb (ONLY way to get to croatian coast) another overnighter to split (split for a few days) and then bus to dubrovnik. i'm in split now, so the last two cities will get posted when i get to zurich. anywho... let's start in venice.

i'm gonna say this, interesting, interesting place. along with the heavenly ski resort in tahoe and the entire island of aruba, venice is one of the few places where JoePS (r) doesn't work that well. but thankfully, we had our map and could kinda figure out which streets we'd walked on. so anyway, we got into the city and checked our luggage at the train station (no use in walkin around all day with it?) shortly after we bought our tickets for the midnight train to... zagreb? ok, maybe it was a 9er, but who's gonna argue with me for a lousy rounding error??

took the vaporetti from the main train station to plaza san marco. figured that's where it all goes down. once on these crowded, crowded streets we bounced around looking for lunch (at the crack of 3pm). found a good place, AND they served pizza, so we pulled in and grabbed some nourishment. after walking around for another hour, we decided it was too hot and grabbed some gelato (oddly enough it wasn't that hard to find, no really, it was so easy even a miller could do it! - ouch, sorry buddy... i take it back. it was so easy, even an MBA could do it.) after strolling through the gazillion (yea, that's a technical term. they teach us those at ross) side alleys, we managed to stumble upon the rialto bridge. got some souvenirs (azurri jerseys) and pulled into a bar to get some grappa. certain things you have to do, and i believe buying cheap soccer jerseys is one of them (the inside of the collar reads "non-conforme to specificazione" or somethin like that). turns out that the rialto has been a crossing point on the island since the 1100s... and now we're down with the educational portion of this blog.

grabbed a lite dinner cause, well, we'd just eaten lunch 4hrs prior and we're poor kids in a rich man's town. finally got on board the NIGHT TRAIN (notice a musical theme here anyone??). we made the smart move to pay the extra $20 for a sleeper cabin (just hopin that our cabin-mates wouldn't be annoying old ladies that --- sorry, that was a rant for last time i took one). turns out that our cabin mates were two young ladies from texas (don't worry, we didn't mess with them) that were back-packin through europe for 5 weeks. oddly enough we found common items to talk about. (insert shout-outs to emily and michelle here). so our train was supposed to arrive at 4.30 so what do we do??? stay up till 1 chatting it away. great way to stay refreshed for the day's walk around zagreb (the ladies were off on a 6.30 bus to the beaches). after cordially escorting these ladies to the bus station and grabbin breakfast with them at 6am, we head on out on our mission to view zagreb. turns out that we got really bored, really fast. stopped off for an OJ near the main cathedral, and walked straight to the bus station to grab a bus to split for an extra night. turns out, i think we made the right choice. not much to see in zagreb, and we dominated all the sites by 8am anyway.

ain't that hel-stinki over here anyway...

so we correctly navigated the waters from tallinn, estonia to helsinki... or better said, the ferry boat captain did. we did a good job of purchasing the correct tickets. so what do you do on a 2 hour ride through international waters??? if you answered eat a slice of pizza and grab a beer, then you're totally right. bear with me, i do have pics to prove it but this internet cafe here in split won't let me hook up my camera. (grrrrr!!!!!). anywho, we docked at the port, located our bearings and made our way off to the hotel. as we turn the last corner of what should be our hotel, i notice this HUGE brick wall encompassing what appears to be some sort of correctional facility. i stop, look back down at my notes (possibly gesturing a little), and then shubha says "oh, did i forget to tell you that our hotel is a renovated state prison?"... yes, yes you did shubha. so turns out we're in the right place. pretty sweet inside (hotel restaurant/bar is called "jailbirds"). it's only about 3 years old so it looks nice. they kept the correctional facility theme going by keeping bars on the large windows at the ends of the hallways (which have a space in them to see the floors below you, just like shawshank). actually, it's the nicest beds we've had all trip. all around, i give it 6 stars.

we head out of the hotel to grab some eats. made it to the town square, trying to find a place that's still open and serving dinner at 10pm. we ended up grabbing a bite at "texas". cause after all, what's more authentic than a tex-mex place that seems to think the entire continent of south america is considered texas (and somehow includes cuba, which totally boggles my mind). fortunately, they DID have a local beer on tap. so there was some savoring of the finnish experience. turns out most of touristy stuff was already closed (shocker), so what do we do on a friday evening in a new town??? if your hand is raised and you said "go to the famed matchmaking bar 'molly malones'" then you're spot on. why not go to an irish pub in finland??? who wouldn't??? liked the place, had live music 5 nights a week. overall good time.

saturday was a lazy day of laying in bed (did i mention how awesomelly comfortable those beds were?) followed by pizza dinner (grabbed whatever was the "special" at the restaurant we went to, not sure what it was actually called but it was named after the restaurant and the ingredients were in finnish and russian). one funny thing to mention, turns out that saturday was the brazil-finnish parade. apparently there's such a connection between the two countries that they've dedicated a whole funny clothing, samba line for a winding 4-5blocks through the city streets. pretty interesting, quite peculiar as to why, but nonetheless interesting.

on sunday we went to the island fortress of sveaborg. it was built back in the 1700's as the primary defence for the city. besides seeing some sort of war re-enactment and checking out the canons, not much else to see on the island. oh well, went back to the port and enjoyed fresh fish from the fishmongerers whilst sittin on the dock of the bay...

up early for a 6am flight out to venice the next day, so we kept it relaxed sunday.

oh WAIT, i DID figure out how to hook up the camera without them knowing... there's no stoppin jack bauer...

estoni-creepy

we landed at the tallinn airport, got to our hotel, and then headed into the walled city of "Old Town" Tallinn for dinner. we strolled up the huge staircase that lined the wall, and then traversed back down a steep street to enter the town square of Tallinn. like any other old (tallinn was first charted on a map in 1154, by an arab cartographer) euro city, the streets are quite narrow. the roads are cobbled stone and the buildings are fairly dark. so we get to the main square, there are outside tables abound. it appears that at 10.30 on a tuesday, most places have either closed or are getting ready to. so as we're wondering about the many places in this town square, what should we happen upon??? yep. molly malones. i think rico's right, there's one of those in every city in the world.

so we stop in there for a pint, guiness of course, and ask if their kitchen is still open... the bartender looks over to the kitchen area, see's that the lights are out and informs us that they have just closed it. oh well, where do we go now??? it appears that all the touristy trap-ish stuff are closed down in the city square. luckily for us, tomato tom (a former coworker from ATK) had lived in estonia for a year studying their economy and had given us the name of his favorite watering hole in tallinn. more of a locals place than a touristy place. so before we abandon all hope of a good meal in search of a kebab place or mickey d's (by the by, i'm beginning to think that mickey d's is taking over the world.... seriously, they're everywhere. no joke.), we decide to check out this place Hell Hunt (apparently it means little dog or something like that).

we make our way through the winding streets to this place. step inside and definitely woulda caused the juke box to stop playing if there was one. but we snipe out a table in the corner and sit down. the waitress meanders on over and, oddly enough, asks us in english what we would like. was it that obvious sweetie??? i guess it was. first question we ask, is the kitchen still open??? delightfully, she replies that it is open until 1am every night. Sweetness!!! we order a round of the bar's own micro-brew. sure, why not. and then decide on a set of local heavy apps (meatballs with spicy sauce - aka ketchup - and meat dumplings). eh... they weren't that bad, just didn't have any flavor. the taste kinda reminded me of communist buildings, just blah!!!

on our way home, we noticed a heavy fog in and around the old town. talk about scary. we almost thought that they were filming a new dracula movie here and had used dry ice to make that stuff. it really was kinda scary walking through those winding, small, cramped streets.

the next day we set off to do touristy shit. parliament, churches, high steeples, museum of occupation, laundry - hey, it's important. so we found the full-service laundry (shoot, you didn't think we'd actually spend time doing it ourselves, did you??? - plus, it only cost us $5 or something like that) and then made our way to the other destinations.

first stop, the steeple at the church of St. Olaf. this thing is really really high up in the air. it provides such a good line of sight of the city, the KGB used it for surveillance back in the day (and possibly still do, we're not sure). so we get over there, then walk up what seems to be about 18.3million steps winding clockwise, counter-clockwise, straight, backwards, up, down until we finally get to the tippy top of the square portion. luckily for us, they had ropes on both the inside and outside of the stone built staircase to help us from falling. they were also kind enough to box in the platform so there was no possible way we'd fall off. great view of the city, you can see for miles and miles up there. anyway, 10min later and we're done. on to next things... short version of the story is that we covered everything we wanted to in about 2 hours. so we head to the tourist office and inquire as to what the city of Tartu holds for us (tomato tom actually lived in tartu, it's the main university in the country). we plan to head out in the morning as soon as we get outta the hotel...

well, touring takes its tolls on your body. and although we had been surviving on 5hrs sleep for the last couple weeks, it finally caught up with us. so we didn't end up leaving the hotel and venturing out to the bus station until the butt crack of 2pm. so we got round-trip tickets for one day (returning on the dreaded 3am bus). we thought tallinn was small, shoot, tartu was even tinier. luckily they had some sort of cultural festival goin on in the town square, so we just pulled up a table at one of the outdoor restuarants and enjoyed the atmosphere. we walked around a bit, but there really wasn't much to see. they had a pretty cool lit up bridge, but besides that not too exciting. so we gathered ourselves and stopped off at the mickey d's driver-thru before jumpin on our return trip to tallinn.

our final day there, we just walked around a bit and then headed off to the ferry docks to take a boat over to helsinki... you are now welcome to cue up "on a boat (ft t-pain)" in your heads right now... cause i am

how swede it is...

another one down, another one down, another one bites the dust...

so let's be honest, i'm still not really getting used to it being light out until 11.30 and then gettin light again at 3.30, it just doesn't seem right. but i'm glad that i'm here during the summer and not winter (not sure if i could handle only 4hrs of day light). anyway, we were fortunate enough (or unaware) to land in stockholm about 30min after the Denmark v Sweden world cup qualifier finished (i.e. the game was going on the entire time we were sitting on the plane, but we couldn't watch any of it) so that made our commute into the city pretty easy considering we were goin against traffic. not a bad call, really... ok, that's a lie.

anywho, on the first day we decided to check out this big sunken ship (apparently it sank on its maiden voyage in 1526 - who designs a ship so it tips over from the qualls in the open sea)... great time, really. after that, we went to the WORLD FAMOUS absolut ice bar... yea, you heard me. absolut sponsors a bar - in their home town - made completely of ice. definite tourist attraction with definite tourist prices, but we had to do it. so maybe we look like extras from a p.diddy music video, but we also drank out of glasses made of ice... yea, you're speechless, i can hear it.

the next day, we checked out the Old Town.. not bad, tiny streets, lots of souvenier shops, lotsa people. pretty normal euro city feel to it. ended up stoppin off at a pizza/kebab place to grab lunch. it helps me fulfill my pizza requirement, plus it helps shubha feast on more kebab. so i get up to the front to order, but can't really read what the toppings are on any of the pizzas. what would you do if this happened to you??? yep, order based on the name. i went with the Viking Pizza (j rob went with the de niro). turns out, the thing came out shaped like a boat... I ATE A BOAT! TOMATO & CHEESE & HAM ON A BOAT! actually, it was pretty tasty. not bad for a hole in the wall.

when we were in old town, we decided to check out the changing of the guards (TOTALLY touristy, but hey why not). lotsa music, lotsa hoopla, lotsa people dressed in funny hats... but don't worry, they looked kinda like the dane guards... so they got that goin for them... which is nice.

there were too many people to get a good look at the actual changing, but afterwards we stopped by this guys post and took the requisite Block M pic... on a good note, these guys ain't like the beefeaters (or the marines in the simpsons) and no ross alumni were harmed in the filming of this picture. (ADHD: anyone else picturing homer right now? "now i'm in australia, now i'm in america, australia, america, australia, america.")

on a more somber note, i wanted to apologize to one Kris Kringle, aka Mr. Claus, aka Father Christmas, aka Papa Noel, for not even thinking twice before devouring a lovely dish comprised of his buddy rudolph. really, reindeer is amazing. i implore you to try it any time you are given the chance. simply exquisite.

and with that, i'm going to leave some milk and cookie out as i lay off to sleep. good night to all and to all a good night.

to infinity... AND BEYOND!

so i don't really know what buzz lightyear has to do with copenhagen, but j rob said it the first day as we went out to dinner... oh yea, traveler update: shubha and i explored our options in free agency and determined that our best option for the next two legs of our trip was to trade one Jacquelin Corr for a Jason Robinson. i'm not saying that jackie did anything wrong, but she was just... how do you say this... dangerously approaching the end of her college kid career and we are looking forward to her entering the next stage in her career, adult. apparently peter pan was wrong, some people DO grow old.... don't worry jax, i'm sure i'll be there quite soon.

on to copenhagen... soooooooo... i'm not feeling extremely ingenious today as a wordsmith (partially because i'm using a swedish keyboard and the hotel people rigged it so i can't change the language), so i'll just stick to a few stream of consciousness thoughts from those three days, in no particular order.

first off, the city is actually more expensive than we expected. we had read the big mac index and everything so we had expected it to be pricier than other european cities, but it cost about 15 bucks for a double whopper meal, 15 bucks??? really???

point b) the hotel, if you can call it that, was awesome. i guess technically we stayed at their apartments, but it was still sweet. a 1 bedroom, with a kitchen (fridge, sink, electric range, and all the flatware and cookin utensils you could dream of), living room and dining table. not bad, not bad at all.

iii) when meetin up with people who (GASP!) don't have cell phones to communicate, meeting up at the hard rock cafe is definitely the best way to go. you KNOW everyone there speaks english, plus you won't stand out as a tourist because everyone there is. and then they also serve food, in case you're gonna be there for a while. thanks for toughin it out over there j rob.

fourthly, tivoli gardens is not too impressing... it's a tiny mix of city park and amusement park. but not big enough to do either well... it kinda reminded me of that 'amusement' park on top of that hill in zaragoza (over past romareda and the hospital). just kinda 'blah'. but we did ride the 'odin's express' which was a spinning seat thing that went up high in there, gave a great look of the city... even if you couldn't control how long you looked at each part of the city (i.e. how fast it was spinning). they did have a decent selection of eyewear, as modeled by j.

v) they have interesting adds over here in scandanavia, do they really wonder that much while we call them weird???? here a few of my favs, the first is from a random clothes shop we went in to. the second is a poster we've seen up a few places. from what we can tell, it's their interpretation on UM-OSU couples...

sixthly (yes jon, that's for you), the pizza i had here was GINORMOUS. easily the biggest pizza i've had in europe at a restuarant. easily two meals, good thing we had the cook where and electric range.

point g) the little mermaid is pretty cool. although it's tiny and crowded by a bunch of people at all times, it was a good touristy thing to go see. and that lasted all of about 3mins.

lastly, lots of bikes in this city. in fact, they have their own lanes and traffic signals. and people don't mess around, they'll run you over. seriously, they will. i'd venture to say that there is more surface area dedicated to bikes along the streets than there are to pedestrians... simply weird, that's all it is... just weird.

aight, i'm off for my last night in sweden. posts and pics to come in a few days... hope all is well with my loyal followers...

the land of the leprechauns

it was a dark and cloudy night, and i was handed the keys to a 3 door opel astra... wait a second, who gives the dyslexic kid the keys to a car on an island where they drive on the wrong side of the road??? national rent-a-car, that's who.

after getting behind the wheel and acquainting myself with this new setup, it took me a grand total of 3min to get pulled over by the cops. i'm guessing he thought i was drunk driving (possibly not stayin in the lane too well, it's hard to judge the far side of the car when it's the wrong side) but then once i opened my mouth he pretty much said "oh, you're a yankee... take it easy"... after that less auspicious start, we started off to the west side to visit galway. but first, the cliffs of moher and random tiny roads with people buzzing around the blind corners at about 50mph... WOW! talk about nerve wrecking. but we made it, and i even pulled a tokyo drift-like move on the switchback climbing on a few of the roads up there. fun times, fun times indeed... just don't ask my two passengers. all in all, the cliffs are amazing. 200m (600ft) high and straight down to the atlantic ocean.

that night brought us to galway where, unbeknownst, to us, the volvo world race was in harbor on a fortnight break. town seemed kinda packed, but without all the tourism there for the race it woulda been a pretty cool place. off to ring of kerry next.

so the ring of kerry is a beautiful drive along the coastline and through mountainous ranges of south-western ireland. breathtaking views, awfully small roads. now, i've been to this area before. i was here back when i was 11 on a family vacation before we went on home leave one summer. i don't remember seeing much, but i do remember that a rock "jumped out" at our car and took one of her tires with it. i remember this cause i remember hanging out with lynn and paula lopez hernandez in the tall grass fields amongst the sheep. i mention this cause i wanted to go on record as saying that i was able to navigate these roads without such incident. just an fyi...

the next day, we made our way to cork and the nearby blarney castle. and yes, we were all able and willing to kiss the famed blarney stone. not much else to say about that besides that it was pretty cool to walk up and down the castle and read all the interesting tidbits (but i'll save you from the verbal diarrhea at this point). that night we found ourselves in cork (awesome place) right after their annual bank holiday marathon (i'm not exactly sure which bank holiday it was, but everyone kept on calling it a bank holiday weekeend). next up???? dublin.

and no visit to dublin is complete without a guiness factory tour. i'll let the picture speak for itself.

with this, we wrapped up our time on the emerald island and parted ways with jackie. next up for shubha and i, copenhagen. more to come in a few days. stay thirsty my friends...

Late London

ok, so maybe i might be a little out of sorts with this time change thing, but i had completely forgot to speak of my time in london before i blasted off to ireland... so here it goes... Hil (from my last trip) was kind enough to put me up for a night during my 28hr layover in london. i attended a class at the London Business School (basically the same as Ross, just with stiff upper lips), attended their happy hour (we have bigger glasses, they have theirs in the courtyard of their school), and then had some thai food at a pub (yea, who knew pub food = thai food???). kinda boring, but thought i'd give Hil some proper respect for the love.

we had originally decided that i needed a new running theme in this blog (fyi all the running themes are the same as last time), so she suggested that I somehow incorporate the letter Q into at least one picture at all locations... i accomplished this in england and ireland, but completely forgot in denmark. :( and i'll probably forget in sweden too, so maybe we should just K.I.S.S. and stick with the old ones...

everyone thank Hil for letting me crash at her place. Hil, tell your roomies that if they're ever in CHI, i have a couch waiting for them.