The Italian Riviera and Cote D'Azur

This year's summer vacation was spent in Italy and France. I went there from July 4th to July 14th. My goal was to make a long trip through Northern Italy and Southern France, finishing off with going with the TGV to Paris. Unfortunately, most airlines are unwilling to sell economy one-way tickets (for some reason), so I had to fly low-cost airlines in order to not pay a fortune just for the air fare. In the end this wasn't a problem, since nothing bad happened except for the usual Easyjet hassle.

I flew Sleazyjet to Malpensa late in the evening Fri 4th. Malpensa was a fairly messy airport with dubious transfer to the city center. There was supposedly a train to central Milan called "Malpensa Express" , but this was not running in the evening. There were no signs to buses to city center, so I spent some time finding the proper bus stop. I saw other tourists running around more confused. The airport also seemed to have a fairly badly planned layout. I could not help myself from chuckling at the policemen frantically trying to stop people from stopping in the bus lane to drop people off. Apparently they forgot to make a pick-up/drop-off zone close to the terminal. It was a long bus ride into the center (50 minutes), so I didn't get to my hotel until very late.



Saturday I took a morning train to Como, and continued by bus to Bellagio. I was glad I wasn't driving myself. The road was so narrow that it was only just room for two cars, so before every blind turn, the bus driver would honk the horn like crazy to warn other drivers that they need to brake. Other than that it was a fairly nice, one-hour bus drive with spectacular views of Lago di Como. This lake looks so much like a fjord, it's almost like being home in Norway (except that it's 15 degrees hotter and way more people, of course). Bellagio is located at the point where all the arms of Lago di Como come together, so it's supposedly the best place to see the lake. It's also a resort village with lots of upscale hotels and restaurants and private villas of the rich and famous. I spent a couple of hours there walking around looking at the great views - my pictures do not give them justice.

On the way back I had some issues with the bus driver not accepting my ticket, and not speaking a word of English. He could not tell me where to buy a different ticket, so I searched around the posted timetables and found something about "tickets sold in news kiosk in Piazza Massari". After locating a city map to find this piazza, I found that it was quite far away, so I had to run over there, get a ticket and run back. I made it just in time. On the way back the bus driver hit another car in the side when going around one of those blind turns, so the roads were very narrow indeed.

I jumped out in the center of Como to look at the huge Duomo. Como is a fairly small town, but for some reason they have a cathedral-size church in the center. I struggled a bit to get back, since there were hardly any signs to the railway station, and some people I asked for directions pointed me the wrong way. After asking some more people, I finally found it, but I think I really need to learn some rudimentary Italian. Unfortunately, I missed my train, since the ticket machines were out of order, so there was a huge line at the ticket counters. The cashiers seemed to have all the time in the world, and lots of Italians around me were really angry with how slow these people were. In the end I jumped on a regional rain to a station in the outskirts of Milano, and made my way to the center using the Metro.



I spent the evening walking around in the center and visiting the party district (Porto Ticino). Around two canals they have lined up an endless row of bars, pizzerias and clubs. They were all full, and the streets were incredibly crowded. At times it felt like being at the Koniginnenacht in The Hague (only that the women were way better looking, of course)

Sunday I took the metro to Castello Sforzesco and walked around the whole castle. I found it pretty uninteresting, except for an exhibition of anatomical drawings made by Leonardo da Vinci. I continued over to the Santa Maria del Graze. Turned out they were closed, even though the sermons were finished (Angry priest shouted "Chiuso! Chiuso!" and pushed tourists out. The outside plaques said they should be open, so I don't know what that was all about). Also, in order to see the famous "Last supper"-picture, you needed to book in advance, and time slots fill up two weeks in advance. I went back to the center instead, and climbed the stairs to the top of the Duomo. It had really nice views from the top, but the interior wasn't that interesting.

Monday I was supposed to continue south to Genova. I share my office with an Italian, so he had warned me about there being a train strike on this day. I had printed special timetables before going, to make sure I would find a train which was not part of the strike. What I didn't know, was that over the weekend the strike had been expanded to also include all buses and all metros, so suddenly I found myself staring at a closed metro station 4 km from the central station half an hour before my train was supposed to run. All the taxi-stands were jam-packed with people, so I was definitely in trouble. Luckily, I managed to grab a taxi waiting on a red light, so I made my train to Genova, but only just.



Tuesday I went by train to La Spezia, visiting the nice naval museum and walking along the harbor. I went by regional train back towards Genova to get to the famous national park called "Cinque Terre" (which is on the UNESCO world heritage list). Essentially this is five isolated villages, hugging the cliffs next to the sea. They have kept their traditional character, so it's a nice pointer to how Liguria used to be. I started walking from the first of the five villages (Riomaggiore) walking the "Lover's Path" (Via dell' Amore) next to the sea over to Manarola. From Manarola the path becomes more primitive, before ending in a series of steps (400 or so) leading up to Corniglia. I spent a couple of hours just walking between these small villages before taking the train to Vernazza, which is the biggest one (so...checkbox-wise I got four out of five villages).



The morning after, I took the ferry to Portofino, which is a very pretty small village on a very picturesque peninsula. Supposedly, it's also a hangout for the rich and famous, so they call it the St. Tropez of the Italian riviera. I walked around the pretty streets and gardens for an hour or so before jumping on the bus to Santa Margherita Ligure, a beach resort village further up the peninsula.
I spent the afternoon seeing the rest of the sights in Genova, like the San Lorenzo church, which had a nice relic museum filled with crusader booty. The relics included stuff like "splinters of wood from the true cross", "the plate which was used to serve John the Baptist's head", "John the baptist's ashes" and of course, the holy grail. A bargain at only four euros... ;-)
I finished Genova by visiting their aquarium, which is supposedly the biggest in Europe. I didn't find it all that interesting, since I found the Barcelona one with the shark tunnel nicer. Their penguin tank was kind of cool, though. I also liked the hummingbird forest, since I've never seen hummingbirds up close.



Thursday morning I went by train along the Riviera di Ponente to Ventimiglia, the border station to get to France. Inside the station the ticket machines were broken AGAIN, so I had to get in the long queue to buy a ticket for my train to Nice. I barely made my train, and I was really pissed at Trenitalia for not servicing their ticket machines. Almost every train station I walked into in Italy had broken ticket machines, and overall I think I spent almost an hour every day waiting in train stations. Not my idea of a nice holiday...

Since I was in the area, I decided to visit Monaco with the city of Monte Carlo. This is a tax paradise on the riviera, having an expat population of a whopping 80%. I stayed overnight in Nice, a fairly uninteresting travel destination. In general there wasn't all that much to see there, except the Promenade des Anglais which is a long street that runs next to beach. Definitely only for the party-crowd. In the evening, I had dinner at a nice Italian restaurant, finally being served some good food. For some reason I only found bad restaurants in Genova.



The next morning I jumped on the train to Aix-en-Provence. It was a very nice train journey. The railway hugs the coastline most of the way and you get a really good look at the Cote D'Azur. Also, the French trains were nicer than the Italian ones. Aix-en-Provence itself was a very nice city with a compact city center full of outdoor restaurants. It looked typical Provencal with all houses in the same colors and narrow streets. Lots of quaint little shops selling wine, confit and foie gras added to this very French atmosphere. Definitely a very touristy city, without it being over the top in any way. I really liked Aix.

Saturday I took the TGV-train to Paris. The TGV was very nice, but extremely expensive (The price was the same as my flight ticket Paris-Rotterdam). It was a very fast, comfortable train and a good way to get to Paris. It only spent about two and a half hours to get me from the coast in the south all the way up to Paris in the north, so I found that impressive. The scenery wasn't as interesting as I had hoped for, except for the first part through a very typical Provencal landscape with yellow sunflower fields and deep purple lavender fields.

My hotel in Paris was in the lively Marais district, very close to the Bastille-area.
On this visit to Paris, I wanted to do stuff I didn't have time for the last time I was there. That was mainly Versailles and the Louvre.

I took the metro over to the Louvre without any real plan for what I wanted to see. As luck would have it, I didn't have much choice in what to see anyway, because there were so many people there that you just had to more or less follow the stream of people floating through the museum. It was fun to see the Mona Lisa room where people were pushing and shoving and jumping up and down to get close enough to take pictures of the painting. Almost like watching fish jumping in a fish farm. I just walked past, threw a cursory glance from the side. Been there, done that. Check.

Overall, I didn't find the Louvre all that interesting. Probably I was jaded from looking at Italian church art for a week before. In addition, some of the older stuff, and the Egyptian stuff were way better in the museum in Berlin.

I spent the evening having drinks in different bars in the Marais. Some of the bars were really nice, with good clientele, good music, good themed decor and very nice drinks. Too bad they were really expensive compared to the bars in Milan or the Hague, but you can't have everything.




Sunday I took the RER-train to Versailles. Immediately I got caught up in the Shitloads of tourists streaming towards the palace. That's probably what I get for trying to do this in a weekend in the high season. Good thing I bought my ticket up front from the ticket office at the Louvre. The line for the ticket office in Versailles was amazingly long, so it felt really good to be able to skip the queue and go straight to the palace. Unfortunately, it was really crowded inside. I do not like big crowds, and I like even less to pay to be in one. I've been in my share of palaces by now, so it wasn't that interesting anyway. It wasn't that easy to see anything, with people in the way everywhere, so after an hour or so of being frustrated in the palace, I walked out to the formal gardens. They were nice, in a way, except that they hadn't turned on any of the fountains and they had hidden speakers blaring out loud baroque music everywhere. I found the end effect somewhat cheesy, really theme-park style. "Welcome to Cultureland! We have palaces with nice paintings! We have gardens which play classical music!". I escaped the crowds by taking the train back to Paris, going to visit the industrial park called La Defence. Lots of nice buildings and strange modernistic architecture.
In the afternoon I went by tram to the park called Buttes-Chaumont. This is a very nice park in a fairly central location with lakes, bridges, caves, waterfalls and good views of Paris.




The 14th of July is the French national day, so the night before they have live music performances and dancing in the streets at various locations in Paris. The police had closed off the streets leading to Place de la Bastille, so the whole area was turned into a giant open-air concert with different bands playing various styles of music.

I got up early on the 14th to try to get a good spot for watching the military parade at Champs-Elysees. I was there an hour early, but still I didn't get a very good spot. Lots and lots of people had turned up to see the parade, so it was really crowded. There was also a lot of waiting involved, so overall it wasn't that great an experience, although the overflights were nice. I tried to leave early to try to get a head start out of the crowd, but suddenly everything clogged up and no-one could get anywhere. Then some people started behaving like cattle and started pushing. It was like being at a really crowded rock concert, only with lots of screaming police officers failing to get people to move. It took almost ten minutes for the crowd to move in any direction...

I escaped to the subway and went to Jardin du Luxembourg to get away from the worst crowds. I spent the rest of the day exploring other areas where I had not spent that much time, like Ile de Cite and St. Germain before flying out from Orly to Rotterdam in the evening.

Milan pictures
Genova pictures

Cinque Terre & Portofino pictures

Nice & Aix pictures
Paris pictures

Warszawa and Bydgoszcz

I went to Poland from 27 Jun to 02 Jul.



I flew in Friday night, having an "interesting" taxi ride to my hotel. It felt a bit like being in Turkey, with the taxi drivers driving at two times the speed limit, without seat belts. I got to my hotel in one piece, so no harm done. I suppose that's what you get for riding fixed-price taxis rather than those with meters.

I took the morning train to Bydgoszcz, having no problems buying a ticket even though the cashiers didn't speak English. Luckily, I had memorized the line for buying tickets before going, so no big deal. It took me some more time to figure out their timetables, since they used text rather than numbers a lot. I had memorized the basic Polish numbers before leaving (after having been stuck in Belgium at one point without knowing the French words for weekdays, and the basic numbers, I make sure to get up to speed on this up front...)

I figured out that the word for station seemed to be "Glowna", which helped me to find the right place to get out. Bydgoszcz stretches out over a large area, so it has like five different railway stations, and the one you're at is not announced, so I was peering out through the windows to find out if this was my stop. I got off at the right station, and found my hotel. This was a supposedly four star hotel, which turned out to be rather crappy. I think the star system they use for hotels is flawed, because it only seems to take into account whether there is a mini-bar, or if the have laundry service. If you fill the services check boxes, it seems like the rooms can be as crappy as they like.



I spent the day walking around and had dinner at a decent Italian restaurant. I spent some hours in a "jazz club" before turning in. Overall Bydgoszcz seemed like a nice, but somewhat small city (The Bydgoszcz area is supposed to have like 370.000 inhabitants. Didn't really seem that way). It seemed a bit less developed than Warsawa or Krakow, with lots of derelict houses and run-down streets. It was a very long four hour train ride back to Warszawa.

I spent the next couple of days walking around the old town, which is on the UNESCO world heritage list. In the weekend the touristy area was very crowded, but on weekdays it was more tolerable. There were lots of aggressive gypsy beggars everywhere around the old town, but that's Europe for you.

I've spent a lot of time looking at all the nice palaces in this town, appreciating the fact that all of them were rebuilt, since they were razed during WW2. Some 85 percent of downtown Warszawa was in rubble at the end of WW2, so they had their work cut out for them rebuilding.



I visited the science museum in the palace which was ...unimpressive, except the steel works part, I don't remember ever seeing that in a science museum. I visited the royal castle, which was rebuilt from nothing - it was completely razed in WW2. Some nice rooms, but overall not that interesting.

Churches in Poland are different from the ones I'm used to seeing in Belgium/France/Italy, so I liked seeing how the interiors differed. Poland is a very religious country, though, so often there's people praying while you visit. These things always make me uneasy, as if I am not supposed to be there. The churches obviously mean a lot to these people, and to me it's just some nice buildings, so I suppose that's what makes it feel awkward.

I visited the Polish Army museum, which was very nice. On the ground floor they had a fairly large collection of medieval suits of armor, and paintings portraying important battles in Polish history. The suits of armor worn by the hussars were impressive. One funny thing about this museum was that they had very aggressive museum guards. In every room they would walk up to me and shout a long serious speech of some kind in Polish. I would reply back with "Nie rozumiem. Nie mowie po polsku." (I don't speak polish), they would go "NO FO-TO!", I would show them my entry ticket with the nice stamp saying I paid extra to be able to take photos, and then they would back off wih a muted "Dziekuje bardzo..". I swear this happened in every room in the museum, and it got really old after six or seven repeats. I guess they really wanted those 5 zlotych extra...



In general I felt that Warszawa would be nice for a weekend visit, but there just wasn't enough museums and such to keep me busy for the time I was there. Also, I was staying in an inconvenient location, so I was walking a lot. Some parts were prettier than others, and seeing the central station was an experience. The heat and nauseating smell in combination with lots of people, and the maze of narrow corridors made this a new experience. Railway stations usually smell like urine in combination with mold and steel. In this one there were kebab grills everywhere, bakers pushing pastry and butchers selling meat(!), and there seemed to be no airco, so it was probably like 30 degrees in the hallways. I had to walk through this thing a couple of times every day to get to the metro or the shopping centers or the palace of culture and science, so over time I got desensitized to the thing, not to mention really proficient in navigating the maze to get to exactly the street I wanted. Still, a new experience in the field of nasty public transport infrastructure...

I've eaten lots of traditional Polish food and procured a number of bottles of Polish vodka, so I feel I have been sufficiently "exposed" to the Polish culture. I will have to throw a party soon to taste all the different cherry-, honey- and mint-vodkas I purchased, not to mention the downright scary Sliwowica.

Pictures are here( Bydgoszcz ) and here( Warszawa )

Roadtrip to NV, UT, AZ

Between June 5th and June 15th I went on a road trip from Nevada to Utah, then going into Arizona before returning to Las Vegas at the end.

I landed in Las Vegas on June 5th. My plane between Detroit and Las Vegas had been delayed for an hour on the ground, but they upgraded me to business class, so they kept pouring me drinks all through the four hour flight.

I checked into the Circus Circus casino/hotel waiting for my friend Diana to show up. She was supposed to show up a few hours after me, so I explored the casino and found the horse-around bar (you know...the merry-go-round bar they used in the "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"-movie). I had this master plan of having a bunch of drinks in this thing and then try to get off, but unfortunately it was not open.

I spent a couple of hours waiting in the lobby for Diana. Being jet lagged, and having screaming kids all around (this was a "family casino", whatever the hell that is...) , I was having a fairly unpleasant time. To top it off, I was worried, because she didn't show up when she was supposed to. After an hour or so waiting I returned to my room to find a message on the hotel phone that she'd been delayed for one hour. I waited another hour. Still no-show. When calling her, I could only get answering machine. I started wondering what I would do if she was unable to make it. Just before 11PM she called me, saying she had just landed. Crisis averted.





Friday we started out early, driving from Las Vegas into Utah. After driving for a couple of hours, we arrived at Zion NP. We parked the car, and got on the visitor's shuttle. These were fairly well-organized shuttles, with drivers guiding over the speakers on what was to be found at each shuttle stop. There were shuttles going all the way up the valley, every ten minutes or so. We got off at a couple of the stops, making short walks and snapping pictures. They didn't turn out that great, as it was late in the day (difficult light down in the valley).

We drove onwards through the rest of the park. This was a very interesting drive. Lots of strange formations and interesting patterns in the red sandstone. We stopped at a road junction where the road from the national park hit the highway. We parked the car and went to have dinner at a local diner. This turned out to be a very bad idea, because I ate something that upset my stomach. I spent the whole night in the bathroom, and was sick throughout the next day.





Saturday we drove on to Bryce Canyon. We drove to the major viewpoints, snapping pictures at each one, and walked the Navajo Loop to see the main formations. Afterwards, we had lunch at a lodge in the park, going on towards Grand Staircase/Escalante. We were planning to see an arch close to the main road, so we stopped at the Escalante visitor center for directions.

We followed a small road south until we hit an unpaved road. After a while, the road suddenly crossed a small stream. This looked to deep for our Toyota Corolla, so we decided to turn back. We continued on through Escalante, across the "million dollar road" to Boulder, with the tightrope section being the highlight. Next we crossed a 9000 ft mountain before going into the Capitol Reef National Park. We stopped for the night at a small junction called "Hanksville" at a curiously overpriced motel, where the owner assured us he had "the last two rooms in town".

Sunday we drove north to the Interstate, before turning south again towards Arches NP. There were lots of people at the park, so sometimes we had to fight to get a parking spot. I suppose we deserved that for trying to hit one of the most popular national parks in Utah in a weekend.

We stopped at Balanced Rock, and the Windows section before going to the trail head to get to Delicate Arch. We walked the trail to delicate arch, the last bit being on a narrow ledge. Delicate Arch itself was absolutely worth the trip, but it was quite annoying with all the people "arch-hogging" (that is, to sit and stand directly next the arch for extended periods of time, blocking people from making "pure" shots).






Next we went to Moab and checked into a motel before having lunch at a local Mexican place. Moab was quite colored by being so close to the national parks. It had lots of motels and restaurants to cater to the hordes of tourists straming into the national parks. In the afternoon we drove to Canyonlands NP, stopping at the canyon overlook points.

Monday we started early driving back up to Arches to hike the Double O trail. I was anxious about the trail, since the route description said that the route was very exposed and absolutely unsuited for people with agoraphobia. It turned out the park brochure was crying wolf. Only a very small bit was narrow, and there were still lots of room for two people to pass each other. We looked at lots of arches, doing a big loop to get back to the car. I made the mistake of not bringing enough water so it was very tiring at the end, being hot and dehydrated walking in the sand. We crashed at the motel room after that, exhausted from the hike.

Tuesday was a transport day, taking us from Utah into Arizona. We drove from Moab southwards, stopping for some pictures at Monument Valley, and having lunch at Kayenta before driving onwards to Flagstaff. We got stuck for an hour outside Tuba City because of a nasty traffic accident right before we arrived. We had a nice dinner in an Italian restaurant in Flagstaff, before bedding down in a Travelodge motel.




Wednesday we got up early and drove north to the Grand Canyon (South Rim). We parked the car and took the shuttle down the Hermit Road. We walked the Rim Trail back to Angel lodge and took the shuttle back to the car to go see the Grand Canyon IMAX film. The film was very cheesy and not very informative. It was probably meant for kids. We drove back to the park and took the green shuttle to the east side of the park. From there we walked down the South Kaibab Trail, which was a very nice, if somewhat steep trail. We walked down to Cedar Ridge, about an hour's walk down before turning back to get to the rim in time for sunset. Overall it was a very nice hiking trail, the only problem was that it was also used by mules, so there were mule droppings in places. We stayed in the park until sunset and then drove back to flagstaff. The trip back was scary at times, because of the amount of deer along the roads. I had to keep my eyes peeled and brake hard from time to time to avoid hitting any. We counted 8 deer along the road. Pretty amazing.




Thursday we drove to Sedona. We had lunch downtown and did some shopping. I was pretty annoyed at all the timeshare-salesmen that were trying to pick us up everywhere we went. We drove out of town to a trailhead called "Fay Canyon". This turned out to be the most interesting hike of the whole trip. After a kilometer or so of regular, wide trail, the canyon turned, and the trail became much more primitive, hugging the canyonside. Finding the trail itself became more challenging, and we had to be careful to avoid cacti and loose rocks on the way. It was lots of fun.

Next, we drove to Tuzzugot National monument and looked at some pueblo ruins, before driving to Montezuma's Castle. We stayed overnight in a motel at the interstate junction at Camp Verde.




Friday was another transport day. We drove from Camp Verde in the morning, following the historic highway 89A. We got lost on the way, so we spent half an hour driving around some cattle ranches. We turned onto the historic route 66 and had lunch at the roadkill cafe in Seligman. I couldn't really figure out what was so special about route 66. Probably the length, but we didn't spend more than an hour or so on it. We spent the night in a motel at Kingman.

Saturday we drove back to Las Vegas. On the way we stopped at the Hoover Dam, which was distinctly unimpressive. We drove to Trump Tower to check in, and immediately hit trouble just trying to park the car. After a while, we discovered that Trump did not have parking, only paid valet parking. We managed to ditch the car temporarily, and went in to check in...only to discover that the hotel's booking systems insisted on that our reservation was for the night before. Instead of just giving us our room and clearing this offline, they instructed us to sit down and wait. 20 minutes later, the front desk guy came over and tried to make us pay for two nights. We refused...and five minutes later he came with a booking slip for the correct night.

Next we walked up to the room and discovered the second problem: The room was a suite, with only a single king size bed, rather than the normal two queen size beds. Diana walked down again to the front desk and explained that we were not a couple and would most certainly need two beds. Their response was that they just didn't have two-bed rooms available, and they could perhaps pull out the sofa to make a sofa-bed for one of us. At this point we were getting really frustrated. Two hours had passed since we entered the hotel, and we still weren't ready to go to the strip. I suggested we just cancel our reservation and walk out. On our way out we ran into a manager who seemed to be more clued than the rest of the hotel staff combined. He apologized profusely and walked us down to the lobby.

We were allowed to use their internet computer to look for new accommodation, so we made a quick list of hotels to check out. We drove from hotel to hotel until we found one that had a non-smoking room with two queen beds. The one we finally found was "Excalibur" - the cheesy medieval castle/casino.

We ditched the luggage and started walking the strip, visiting the big casinos like MGM, Bellagio, Caesar's Palace, The Venetian, Paris before walking back to our hotel. We spent the evening in the Luxor and the Excalibur casino, celebrating the successful vacation.

Pictures are here


Diana's pictures are here

Lisbon

I went to Lisbon from Thu 08.May to Mon 12.May.

I arrived late Thursday evening, grabbing a taxi to get to my hotel, which was some distance from the touristic center of Lisbon, but right next to the metro, so the distance was not a problem during the stay.

Friday morning I started off by walking around in Baixa.
At first I was surprised at the number of people selling fake sunglasses, jewelry and drugs on he street. There were people running around all the main squares, hassling tourists and trying to sell stuff.



I took the sightseeing-bus around town to identify the main sights. After spending a couple of hours on the sightseeing bus, I started walking the hill up towards Castelo de San Jorge. I had lunch at the Miradouro de Santa Luzia. Summed up, it had a good view, and crap food. i kept on walking further up to
Miradouro da Graca, getting a nice view of the castle. I walked down to the castle afterwards. It had a good view of the city, otherwise not too interesting. It was full of people selling stuff, and they charged for entry.

I spent the evening shopping at El Korte Ingles.

Saturday I wanted to go out to Belem.
I took the local bus to Belem, and looked at the outside of Mosteiro de Jeronimos. Unfortunately there was already a long line to get in to the monastery, as every guidebook on Lisbon lists this as a must-see. I decided to go check out the naval museum instead. Unfortunately, it was quite boring. I found it had too little about the age of discovery and too much of more recent stuff.


Next I visited the Belem tower and walked along the river to the monument to the explorers. I kept on walking to the restaurant area under the bridge. I had lunch at a Brazilian steak house a colleague recommended to me. Good food, but I felt a bit ripped off that the charged so much for the bread and olives that came with the table (probably 10 Euros off my bill or something)

I spent the afternoon shopping at the "Amoreiras" shopping center.
Now I was having a problem with my shoes. They had some seams near the front making them too narrow and squeezing my toes. I was really feeling all the hills in Lisbon at this point.


Sunday I couldn't really think of what to do in downtown Lisbon, so I took the train to Sintra, a small touristy town about an hour by train from Lisbon. I visited the Portuguese Royal Castle (Palacio de Pena). It had very nice architecture - lots of different styles.

I took the train back and went shopping at malls around the roundabout close to the hotel I was staying at.

Monday I just spent walking around downtown, killing time before taking the local bus back to the airport.

Overall I felt like Lisbon was a pretty city, but there wasn't all that much to do there.

Pictures are here

Skiing in Laax

I went on a ski trip to Laax between Mar 1st and Mar 9th together with Rune, Peter, Amy, Joe and Theo. We started driving from the Hague very early in the morning. Wouter was supposed to go with us, but he had car trouble, so he decided not to come with us.

The drive was pretty smooth until we hit southern Germany. We tried to beat the queues by driving several Umwäge, and by trying to use the traffic feature of the Navigation units in the cars to avoid the worst of it. Overall I don't think it helped us much. The road trip to Laax was supposed to take 9 hours. In the end we spent around 13, driving through Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein and Switzerland.

We were staying in a small family-run hotel, which was very cheap. We paid 722 Euro for a whole week for room and board plus lift passes. The food was OK, and the hotel wasn't out of the way compared to the other hotels around there, so overall it was a good deal.
One problem was that we had to take ski shuttles to the slopes every morning.This was less convenient than staying on the slopes like we did last year. Having to ride the bus probably took away half an hour of skiing on each end .

We were worried the first day as it was very windy, and they only kept the bottom pistes open. These had rotten snow and brown patches, so we accidentally did some mud skiing.
Luckily more stuff opened up on the next day, so we got to see more of the area. It turned out to be a fairly big resort, with lots of pistes at varying altitudes.


There was some hilarity with the naming of pistes and ridges in the area. Seemed like half the area was named something with "crap" in the name, so naturally everyone had to take a picture in front of the "Crap Bar".

Rune had to stop early on most of the days, because he had to do schoolwork (for his master's), but on most days the rest of us would wind down at the after-ski bars at the bottom of the pistes.

One nice thing about the Laax resort...they had bubbles on most of the exposed chairlifts, and the longest one actually had heated seats. This was a good morale-booster when it was foggy and windy everywhere.

We did a lot of traveling around the area, as someone in the group wanted to make sure he had run all the pistes (checked all the boxes, sort of). This was annoying, since we left some really good areas for crap ones just because these were areas we had not yet tried.

Weather-wise we had two days of bad weather, two day of gray so-so, and two days of extremely good weather. We had a perfect day on Thursday, and we spent all of it going down black pistes in the sun all the way until the pistes closed.

Lunch was always good. There were lots of very good food at the cafeterias - german style. Nothing like some bratwurst and beer to raise your spirits.


We moved beyond the cafeterias and ate at a "gourmet restaurant" on Friday . This was a mistake. They cooked our wine and didn't understand that this was a problem, their service was slow, but the food was excellent. Having imbibed lots of wine, we were really buzzed before going down towards the village of Falera. I'm not sure if it was the alcohol, or that we finally found our skiing legs, but the run was so good that we rushed back up to do one final run before the pistes closed. Truly a great day of skiing...

Memorably quotes:
"My buns feel happy!"


On the return trip we had decided to drive through France, through the Vosges, stopping in a small town called Epernay in the Champagne-district. We visited the visitor center of the Champagne maker called "Mercier" and got a tour of the cellars. In the evening we had dinner at a fancy restaurant, having a nice, if somewhat rushed meal (overzealous waiter almost hovering next to our table)

Next morning Rune and me drove back to the Hague, stopping for breakfast at a roadside cafe, rather than paying the 20 Euros that the hotel wanted to charge us...

Pictures are here

Washington D.C.

I went to Washington D.C. from Thursday 07 Feb to Monday 11 Feb to visit my friend Diana and to be touristy in the capital of the US.

As I had never been to the US before, and having heard lots of stories, I was somewhat worried about passing through customs and immigration. Turned out it was fairly painless, the only snag was having to declare exactly how many euros I was carrying. I know about the euro to dollar rate at the moment and all that, but sheesh!

Diana picked me up at the airport. She lived in a small town called Reston, about halfway between Dulles International and Washington D.C.
We had dinner at Diana's before going out shopping for cold weather gear. My internal body clock was telling me it was 02.00, so I was feeling very sleepy. I probably wasn't the best company.

Friday morning Diana drove me to the metro at West Falls Church before heading off for work. The metro into D.C. was very crowded, so much so that at one point it would stop running. The train wouldn't start moving again, and the train driver was screaming over the loudspeakers to get people to stop leaning on the doors. Living in Holland, this did not faze me...trams can be amazingly full here as well. I got off at Farragut West and started walking towards the White House. Diana had given me pointers on a standard "circuit" that some of her previous visitors had used when visiting Washington for the first time, so I had planned on walking that for the first day.

Walking past the White House, I was surprised that it was so small, and so close to the public sidewalk. I spent some time at the Washington Monument, trying to get a good picture. The size of the thing was very impressive, considering that it was built in the 1800's. The tours were sold out when I got there, though, so I didn't get to go into the monument. I carried on down towards the other memorials.



I walked down to the WW2 memorial, and past the reflecting pool to the Lincoln Memorial. The size of the Lincoln statue surprised me. I had thought it would be smaller. Next I visited the Vietnam war memorial, and the Korean war memorial. I continued the circuit around the small lake, stopping at the FDR memorial before ending up at the Jefferson memorial. I continued up the Mall to the US Capitol building. I didn't get to go inside, as there were no-one at the booth were they sold the guided tours. Maybe there were no tours that day... I walked back along the Mall, making a quick stop at the Museum of the American Indian. It was located in a fancy building, but the museum itself was fairly boring.

One thing I did find hilarious at the Mall was that they put small flags on the lawns around the monuments which looked exactly like the small flags you use to mark mines in a minefield. I'm probably slightly colored by the sort of work I do. While walking at the Mall I couldn't stop myself thinking what a great reference point the Washington Monument would be for artillery ranging.

I continued on to the Air and Space museum, spending a few hours walking around. It was a nice museum with lots of interesting items, although I was left with the feeling that they had prioritized presentation over information content.



At this point I was feeling really hungry, so I walked down to Chinatown to find some place to eat. I had a burger made out of buffalo at a specialty pub. I had never eaten buffalo before, so that's one more notch in the animal-counter. I felt slightly guilty for drinking Löwenbrau in the US, so I finished off with a Samuel Adams, just to taste some local brew (I was pleasantly surprised).

Before going back, I did some shopping at Macy's, although I was a bit confused as the sizes for clothes seemed to be very different from Europe. I took the metro back to West Falls Church, where Diana picked me up.

In the afternoon, we went shopping at Rei, which is a nice chain for outdoors equipment. I bought an amazingly cheap Mountain Hardwear soft shell jacket. During my stay over the weekend, I found prices for clothes in general to be very low. We finished off the evening by eating at Chipotle -a mexican fast food chain. Eating there was fairly unpleasant, since there were lots of screaming high school kids around us. I suppose hanging out at the mall is what they do on a Friday night.






Saturday morning we started off fairly late driving into Arlington to look at the Marine Corps memorial (aka the Iwo Jima Statue). We continued on to the Air Force memorial, passing the Pentagon on the way. After a brief visit, we drove on to Arlington National Cemetery, where american soldiers from all the wars since the civil war were buried. We walked around for a couple of hours, looking at the main monuments like the JFK memorial and the tomb of the unknown soldier. What I found most impressive about the cemetery is the size of the thing. It took a while to drive past it. Around 300.000 people are buried here. I wonder what they will do when they run out of room. Recycling plots is probably not very PC.

After visiting the cemetery, Diana took me on a small road trip to the outskirts of Washington D.C., and we had lunch at Great Falls Village. We walked for a bit in the Great Falls State park and looked at some rapids and some minor waterfalls.

Sunday morning we started off by driving into DC, parking at the Mall. I found it weird that it was so easy to drive into the very center of the city and find free parking. We walked over to the Spy Museum, which is one of the newer museums in DC. It's not part of the Smithsonian, so you have to pay 18$ to get in - expensive in DC, but if you compare it to prices at museums in Europe fairly normal. The museum showcased spy equipment through the ages and told stories about some famous spies. The museum wasn't all that big, so we finished it in about an hour. We made a quick run through the Natural history museum before walking over to the Botanical gardens. The botanical gardens weren't that interesting (I live in Holland, plenty more to see here...), but they were having a minor orchid exhibition, so I got some nice pictures from that. The gardens are probably more impressive in summer, when there's stuff also in the outside part.



We walked over to the Air and Space museum to watch an IMAX screening of "Fighter Pilot - Operation Red Flag". This was surprisingly cool. Good action-packed IMAX flick with some really nice shots. Better than the "Blue Angels"-thing they're showing at the Omniversum.

Later we drove back to Diana's place so she could pack for her trip to Whistler. We had dinner at a Korean barbecue place. I don't have all that much experience with eating with chopsticks, so I got some "Training wheels" for my chopsticks - a brightly colored orange plastic thing to keep my chopsticks apart. Hopefully I didn't embarrass Diana too much.

We finished the evening by going to a karaoke-place with private booths. This was the sort of place where you rent a booth with microphones and karaoke-equipment, and then you can sing without anyone else hearing how much you suck - which worked out for me...

Monday was the departure day, going back to Holland. We took a taxi to the airport, arriving around 10.00, which was a problem, as my flight wasn't until 17.55. I checked my suitcase and hopped onto the shuttle to the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space museum next to the airport. This museum had some fairly interesting exhibits, like the "Enola Gay" that dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, and a space shuttle. I managed to kill a few hours there before going back. I didn't see any of the IMAX movies as I had already seen the ones they were showing. I did try the "space walk" simulator. It wasn't a big experience. You put on some 3D-glasses, and get into a box, then they lift the box into the air and shake it for a bit while showing blurry pictures of the international space station.



I got back to the airport with the shuttle and went through the security gate without problems. Right behind me, though, they stopped a woman with a BIG folding knife in her purse. Scary stuff, good thing there's security checks...

I was a bit stressed out about not finding any "US-Visit" exit scan machines inside the terminal. According to the immigration and visa video they showed on the flight over it was mandatory to scan your passport before you exit the US. Information inside the terminal knew nothing about any terminals, so I checked out the homepage for tsa.gov on an internet terminal. Turns out they've stopped requiring that since may last year. I was fairly pissed at KLM for giving me outdated information on the flight.

Having never been to the US before, some things were strange to me. The way they organize their road signs is puzzling. They use lots of text on their signs, sometimes with some advertisement signs on top for good measure. I'm used to symbols instead of text on signs, and no superfluous signs.

Shopping was VERY different from Holland - customer service was good, they had a good selection of stuff for sale and the stores were not overcrowded. With the dollar to euro rate right now it was fairly cheap as well...

Overall, my first visit to the US was less hassle than I anticipated. I had a good weekend. It was nice to see Diana again, and Washington D.C. was a nice city.

Pictures are here

Trip to Vienna and Bratislava

In the extended weekend between Jan 31st and Feb 3rd I went to Vienna, to see the famous architecture of the Austrian capital.

I arrived in Vienna Thursday evening, checking into a rather basic hotel outside the ring.

Friday morning, I started off by going to see the Hundertwasser Haus, a colorful, artsy apartment block built as a protest against boring concrete tower blocks.I continued on to the center of Vienna, walking along the Kärtner strasse and seeing the Stephansdom and the opera building on the way. I watched the Hofburg palace complex from the outside, and made a quick stop at the "Schmetterlinghaus" to photograph some butterflies.They had some really big, tropical butterflies in there, but in order to keep the environment similar to the butterflies' natural habitat,they kept it fairly hot and humid in there (which shows up on some of my pictures).

I walked around in the center for a couple of hours, getting to see the major sights and a lot of the pretty buildings in Vienna. I spent a couple of hours walking around in the Museum of Natural History, which was fun, as it has probably been fifteen years or so since the last time I was in one. Especially fun to see a BIG chunk of salt crystals from Wieliczka, the mine I visited in September last year.

I finished off the day by doing some shopping, buying stuff like the Austrian rum - "STROH" and the famous Sacher-torte. The Stroh is for my collection of vile booze that will break anyone that gets too cocky during a session of heavy drinking. I seem to remember that the taste is quite overpowering.

In the evening, I had the feeling I had seen most of what I wanted to see in Vienna, so on a whim I decided to go to Bratislava the next day. This is not that difficult from Vienna, since it is only an hour away by train. The Slovak Republic is in Schengen as well, so I didn't have to worry about visas to go there either. The only problems were that they didn't use the Euro, so I would need to get some Slovak korunas, and I didn't have a map or a guide book. I found a big book store and bought a travel guide which included a really crappy map. The only problem was that it was in German. My German isn't that great, as I have not spoken much German since I had it in school when I was 17. In that respect, this was good exercise, and I spent an hour or so trying to piece together what the main attractions of Bratislava were.

Early in the morning on Saturday, I got on the train to Bratislava. The ATM at the station in Bratislava accepted my Dutch bank card, so there was no problem getting korunas. At the station in Bratislava I bought a "Kolbasa" for breakfast - a red sausage dripping red grease - it tasted different from what I expected, with a very smoky aftertaste. Since I had no proper map, I decided to follow road signs to "historic center". I walked in a very long half-circle until I managed to get to the city center. It was fairly cold and raining a lot at this time, and I struggled to find a shop where they sold umbrellas. It was hard to find anyone that spoke any English or German, but I managed to buy an umbrella, and I managed to get served in a cafe.

Finally, I found the historic center and the Castle. The castle itself was not that spectacular, although you have a very good view from the castle of most of the city.

I walked back to the train station and got on the train back to Vienna. There were trains going back every hour, so getting to and from Bratislava was fairly easy. I felt tired on the train back, having walked for almost seven hours straight. I was pretty pleased with myself going back to Vienna, having been adventurous enough to go over the border without speaking any of the local language. I still have a bunch of Slovak Korunas, though. Having to exchange currency sucks...

Back in Vienna, I looked at the Belvedere palace, and walked over to see the Karlskirche. The Karlskirche looked really spectacular from the outside, the inside wasn't all that interesting. (Perhaps I have seen too many churches in the last year to be impressed...). I also walked over to see the food marked, the Naschmarkt.

Sunday I took the metro to the outskirts of Vienna to visit the Schönbrunn palace. I found it to be not that impressive. The most interesting rooms were in the east wing, where you needed an extra ticket to enter. Being an imperial palace, I thought it sucked. The Dolmabahce palace in Istanbul for instance is way more impressive. Supposedly the palace gardens are nice, but this was February, so there wasn't much to see.

I finished my stay by visiting the Museumsquartier and having a sachertorte and some coffee at a cafe.

Overall, I found Vienna to be fairly boring. There were lots of nice buildings and supposedly lots of pretty parks. Only...the parks are not that pretty in February.

Pictures are here (Vienna) and here (Bratislava).