Baltimore and DC

Clearly we're no longer in Europe, but last weekend I travelled to DC so I thought I'd post some of the photos. I also spent an afternoon in Baltimore with my mother-in-law and father-in-law. We walked around the Inner Harbor -- I think the last time I was there was at least 4-5 years ago. There are several new restaurants and shops in the area.

Here is the Baltimore Aquarium, though we didn't go inside:


This is the U.S.S. Constellation, which is a restored Civil War sloop-of-war:


Picture overlooking the Inner Harbor:


And here is Joanne:


The next morning I walked around D.C. and did a little shopping. Zara and H&M now share the old Woodward & Lothrop building at the 1000 block of F St. NW. I was meeting some friends for lunch at Dupont Circle, so I decided to walk there and pass by some of the sights. Fortunately, there aren't as many tourists in November.

Here is the Treasury Department with a statue of Albert Gallatin. I've learned that he was a Congressman and one of the earlier Secretaries of the Treasury.



Nearby is Lafayette Square. I'm not sure who is commemorated in the statue on the southeast corner of the square:


Lafayette Square is across the street from the White House. I decided to take the picture from across the street, partly because of the small crowd of tourists and partly because I prefer to keep my distance from the current administration.



It only took about 45 minutes to walk to Dupont Circle, thought it probably would have been faster if I'd taken a slightly different route. On the other hand, I'm sure I saved time by jaywalking with impunity. :)

One random post

These prunes returned with us from Europe. As you can see, the label is German. We bought them at a grocery store in Opatija, Croatia in case we needed a snack on the bus ride to Rovinj. We never opened them and they travelled with us to Italy, London and then back home. We kept carrying them just in case we needed to eat.

What's ironic is that the plums were grown in the U.S. :)

Passed the Bar!

It's not about our travels, but it is good news - they posted results from the bar exam this morning and I passed!!!

A friend told me that they were posting results sometime after midnight, but I decided not to stay up. Even so, despite the fact that I felt pretty confident that I passed, I did not sleep well at all. Amusingly, when I looked at the results in my dreams, I passed there, too. So, apparently my subconscious was pretty confident.

London Again

On Tuesday morning, we flew from Rome to London, giving us one last (part of a) day in London. We spent it shopping. Mostly, I thought Debbie would enjoy seeing Harrod's, since they are (according to their website) the world's most famous department store. It did not disappoint, although we didn't actually buy anything there. We did buy a few things at H&M, around the corner. We also had a snack at Starbucks.

After the shopping, we met my English cousin Greta for dinner. (I sometimes call her my long-lost cousin, but I'm pretty sure she doesn't think of herself as lost, so I'm trying to break the habit.) In keeping with tradition (Greek time), she was a half hour late. We forgave her, of course, and proceeded to have tapas in Soho.



Like me, Greta is shy and retiring, so we didn't talk much. We basically spent 3 hours staring at each other. It was awesome. :-)

Gallery of Self-Portraits

As promised, here's a collection of the self-portraits I took on the trip. This was Cookie's request in one of the comments. Note how my technique improves as the trip goes on.

London, in front of Buckingham Palace:



London, in St. James' Park (with the London Eye in the background):



Rovinj:



In the Roman amphitheater in Pula:



In Murano, Venice:



Gondola ride in Venice:



In Florence, with the Ponte Vecchio in the background:



Siena, in the Piazza del Campo:



San Gimignano:



Rome, in front of the Fountain of Triton in Barberini:



Rome, in front of Trevi Fountain:



In the Roman Forum:



In the Roman Forum, with the Colosseum in the background:



In the Colosseum:



Rome, in the Piazza Navona:



Vatican City, St. Peter's Square:



So, what do you think? What's your favorite?

Rome Day 3

Day 3 in Rome was also the last full day of our trip, so we weren't able to do as much touristy stuff as we would have liked. We did spend an excruciatingly fun 1.5 hours in the Italian post office trying to ship some of our stuff back. Thus, the glaring omission in our day, which just means that we're going to have to go to Italy again. Next time, I think we'll start in Rome and work south.

For the touristy (i.e. fun) part of the day, we went to Vatican City. Here we are in St. Peter's Square.



Debbie in front of St. Peter's Basilica.



And me in front of the fountain.



Happily, there's no charge to get into the basilica. Of course, that means it gets pretty crowded, but what can you do? Here is the view of the interior from just inside the front entrance.



Michelangelo's Pieta is just to the right of the entrance (and behind bulletproof glass).



The Basilica is in the form of a cross. (Byzantine style, I think.) Here is a view of the cross, from near the altar.



Since we missed out on climbing the dome in Florence, I insisted on climbing up into the dome here. Some of the people reading this know how much I like a good stair climb, but Debbie insisted that we take the lift for the first part of the climb, reducing it from 550 stairs to a mere 320. The lift doesn't really take you all that far, as you can see from this picture, which is after the lift and before the stairs.



The first stage gets you up into the interior of the dome. They have a fence up, so I couldn't really get any good pictures below. Here I am, though.



The remaining 250 steps from there were about as much fun as you might expect. I didn't take any pictures on the inside. The view from the top was very nice, though. For example, the Sistine Chapel and Vatican Museums (in the background just behind Debbie).



And me, with a view to the east.



And that was it for the day. Both the post office and the Sistine Chapel have ridiculously limited hours, so we had to skip the Chapel. Next time we're in Rome...

Anyway, the remainder of the day was packing and shipping stuff. We flew back to London on RyanAir the following morning.

The Awesomest Thing on Our Trip

As we came out of the Forum, we heard Italian music blasting from somewhere. We went looking for it, because it sounded like something fun was happening. We found the source of the music in front of a church in the square. It looked like this.



That's a wooden tower with a papier-mâché facade. And there's a band perched on the tower, with all their equipment, amps, speakers, etc.





The band was doing traditional music, I think, including Volare (which we also heard a gondolier singing in Venice). They also did a traditional Italian version of "Obladi Oblada" and of "The Sound of Silence". Sometimes, a big crowd of people would pick the tower up and bounce them to the rhythm. In two hours, they moved about 50 feet. Anyway, it was just one of those wonderful things that you run across on a trip, if you're lucky. I took a short video to give you an idea.

They Followed Me to Rome, Too

That pan flute band that followed me to Japan earlier this year followed me to Rome, too.

Rome Day 2

Our second day in Rome started badly, as we spent 40 minutes wandering around Termini Station trying to find the people that sold tickets for the shuttle to the airport. During that period, I had the time to ponder some of the negatives of Italy, like the damned smoking and the inadequate signage. After a long search, we finally found the tourist information people (surprisingly difficult given the fact that this was the train station), who directed us to what we were looking for. It was, of course, on the exact opposite side of the train station. Happily, the day was about the get better.

We next headed off to the Colosseum area to see the sights of ancient Rome. Of course, it was pretty crowded.



It was getting near lunchtime, so we decided to save the Colosseum for later and instead to walk through the Roman Forum (which is free) and look for some food on the other side. The Forum was pretty great - like the Agora in Athens, but better preserved.





The other side of the Forum has one really enormous monument that I unfortunately don't remember the name of.



It was a hot day and it looked like a lot of stairs, so we skipped the climb. We did take a break to get panini from a street vendor. It was at this point that we saw the single awesomest thing we saw on the whole trip, which is so awesome that it deserves its own post.

After lunch, we walked down the main road to the Colosseum. It was Sunday, so the road was closed to traffic.



There was still a sizable line for the Colosseum so we tried a trick from the guidebooks and went to the Palatine first, because they use a combined ticket. The Palatine is supposed to be where Rome was founded and was the site of the palaces of several Roman emperors. As a lucky bonus, tickets were free because that day was a "European Day of Patrimony" (or something to that effect).

There was a pretty cool fountain halfway up the hill.



And ruins at the top.



There was also a tunnel that Nero built under his palace. Unfortunately, I didn't get a good picture of it. After that, we went to the Colosseum.







Apparently they used the arches in ancient times to store really large beach balls.



In the evening, we went to the Centro Storico for dinner. That area was the center of Rome around the 1500s and 1600s. (Possibly later, too. Sorry to be so vague, but we shipped the guidebook back with some of our other stuff. It's somewhere between here and Italy right now.) We took the bus down to the Piazza Navona at twilight.





Then we had the best pizza of our trip. Sadly, that was the only time we made it to that area. On our next visit, we're going to have to spend more time there.

We walked back to the hotel after dinner and took some pictures of St. Peter's Basilica as we crossed the river.