Road trip to the Alps

I started out pretty early on Friday June 12th, to try to avoid the traffic in Holland. It is 7.5 hours of driving time to Munich, I think I spent 9.5 hours, because I took a lot of breaks (driving alone can be tiring). I managed to avoid queues so I had a fairly OK drive down there.

I also found it enjoyable to watch the exotic cars speed by when I got close to Munich. I see a lot of exotic cars in The Hague, but they're usually parked or stuck in traffic like the rest of us. Warms your heart a little to see them zipping around at high speeds on the freie fahrt-zone on the Autobahn.

My hotel in Munich was pretty easy to find, it was just off the Frankfurter Ring. The only complex thing about it was that they had one of those parking garages with car elevators, so I found it slightly tricky to park. You had to build up speed to get climb onto the ledge of the elevator and then slam on the brakes before you hit the wall. I managed to do it without incident, but I had to go back and forth a few times before I hit the spot. With the car safely stowed, I went for a brief sightseeing in the center before going to a haxenhaus to get my dinner. Munich has a lot of tourists, and the haxenhause was a predictably industrial and expensive tourist machine. They had good food and beer, though, so I was happy.



Saturday morning I drove towards Hohenschwangau, through lots of small towns, and in the end I drove on the last part of the Romantischer Straße, which had very good views. I arrived around 10.30 in Hohenschwangau and had no problems getting a parking spot. I bought tickets for the guided tours of the castles, and walked around for a bit while waiting for my first tour to begin. The royals building these castles had a thing for swans, so there were swan-paintings, swan-statues and swan-fountains everywhere. The Hohenschwangau castle had a huge swan on top of it which made the castle look funny to me, like it was the lair of a super-villain or something...



Both the castles had pretty good English-speaking tour guides, although it wasn't always that easy to hear what they said, because some of the tourists brought along screaming kids. Neuschwanstein is the impressive one, the one that inspired the castle in Disneyland and apparently it was so expensive it almost bankrupted the Bavarian state. The mad prince building all of these castles had an unfortunate drowning accident in very shallow water, so the castle was never finished. What they did finish there is still pretty impressive (Though not on the same scale as, say Versailles or Dolmabahce Sarayi)

The scenery is pretty nice around the castles with pointy mountains, valleys, lakes and streams. It was a very sunny day, so I took a detour down to my car from Neuschwanstein, escaping the crowds of tourists by walking down some unmarked trails. I had a nice 45 minutes walk down through the forest before getting into the steaming hot car I had left at the parking lot. Airco at full blast and driving with open windows for a while mostly took care of that, but it was still not very comfortable driving in the heat. I also got very drowsy, and almost fell asleep at the wheel. I freaked when that happened, pulled the car over to the side in a small village and slept in the back of the car for 15 minutes. That helped a lot, and I was able to do the rest of the four hour drive to Austria without being too tired.

Having a navigation device in the car is pretty handy, but sometimes it takes you for a ride to places you would rather not be. This day, it took me on a scenic detour through the Bavarian countryside, sometimes on single-lane farm roads. As a result I got in pretty late to Hallstatt, my destination in Austria, supposedly the prettiest one of the lakeside villages in the Salzkammergut region (Here's the video, Lukasz :-).



Driving was more entertaining in Austria, with very active driving on the last part past Gosau. The roads are very windy, and from the road you can see the Gosaukamm, which is just gorgeous. There's no cars in Hallstatt, so you have to park your car in the parking lots outside the village, but I got lucky and found a spot on the closest one. I had some trouble finding the gasthof I was staying in (only had the printed address, and no directions to get there), but after calling the owner I managed to find it, just off the main square. I spent the evening relaxing with a weissbier on my balcony while sorting my pictures of the day on my laptop.

Sunday morning I drove to the other side of the lake, to get to the gondola taking me up to Krippenstein. From there I walked the touristy path to the "five fingers" viewing platform overlooking Hallstatt. After doing the touristy thing, I did a small hike (four hours or so) around Heilbronner Kreuz down to the bottom lift. It was still early in the season, and there was lots of snow, so I spent a lot of time walking in snow. It was nice to walk around and look at the Dachstein-mountains, but large parts of the path were really skiing areas. I enjoy more hiking in unspoiled nature. I forgot to bring sunscreen up there, so I got horribly sunburnt. In general, there was not a whole lot to do in the evenings in Hallstatt other than drink beer on the balcony and admire the great view.

Monday June 15th, I got up early, paid my bill and took off towards the Grossglockner Hochstraße, one of the most scenic roads in Austria. The weather was very gray and it was not a very good day for crossing the pass. The road itself is pretty windy and steep, so I had to switch to manual gearbox to get up at a decent speed. The road had lots of nice stopoff points, so it would have been a really nice drive if the weather had been better. I didn't bother to take the side trips to the major viewpoints, since the weather was so bad I couldn't see the view anyway. I saw a bunch of marmots on and next to the road, and that was probably the most interesting part of the drive.

Going down to Heiligenblut was very nice. There were very steep valleys filled with postcard-perfect features like snow-covered mountains, flowery meadows and lots and lots of cows. I did the touristy thing and stopped to take THE picture in Heiligenblut - the church in the middle of the valley, unfortunately not with the classic snow-covered mountain backdrop (because of the fog).



I kept on driving through Lienz, going past some really impressive mountains into the Hochpustertal, crossing into Italy. I found my hotel in Dobbiaco pretty quickly, but had some problems checking in at first, because the clerk did not speak English or German. As luck would have it, I had printed the confirmation from the hotel before leaving from The Hague, so everything was resolved when I pulled out the piece of paper. The weather was still pretty shitty, so I spent the afternoon shopping for pasta, Limoncello and maps. This was pretty much off-season, and I had a hard time finding a place to have lunch. I ended up buying some stuff at a supermarket, and imbibing it and a Paulaner in my room. Luckily I had booked a hotel with food, so dinner was taken care of. They had decent food at the place, and I got a three-course dinner every evening. The waitresses mostly spoke Italian, but I know enough of the touristy basics to get served, so it worked out. Overall, the hotel was amazingly cheap. I paid 53 EUR a night for a decent room with breakfast and a proper dinner included.

Tuesday was the day I had planned to go see the Tre Cime di Lavaredo. I had been wanting to see this since I was in the Western Dolomites two years ago, and just like thoughts of a woman you could never get, my thoughts of this mountain had grown to an obsession. I was really in despair the evening before when all I could see were clouds. I was a lot more positive in the morning, when I could see some blue between the clouds. This could work out! I drove over to Lago di Misurina and started driving the incredibly steep toll road leading up to Rifugio Aurunzo, at the foot of the Tre Cime. The road was so steep I had to drive most of the way in first gear. At first it looked like the clouds were lifting. When I got up to the parking lot at the top, though, the fog was enveloping everything. You couldn't even see the base of the mountains. I was in a bad mood starting the walk around the peaks, but I figured I'd make the best of it. At least I would be getting some hiking in. I walked around, exploring some WW1 Italian trenches on the way. This was the front line in WW1 between Austria-Hungary and Italy, so there's trenches and bunkers criss-crossing these mountains. One of the trenches was also the entry-point to a via ferrata. I didn't have climbing gear and besides, I'm really not fond of heights, so I chickened out. I saw lots of other people walking it, though veery slowly.



When I arrived at Rifugio Locatelli, the wind suddenly picked up, and the clouds around the Tre Cime cleared up. I was able to see all of them from the perfect viewing position. I was ecstatic, snapping photos like crazy and taking in this amazing view. Half an hour further down the trail, the heavens opened, and I was hiking in the rain. I didn't mind too much, I had brought gore-tex clothing, and I had seen what I came for - the Tre Cime. The thunderclouds made them seem even more dramatic, so I had a very nice hike around them, going back to the car. In total, the hike was about four and a half hours. It was still only 2 o'clock, so I figured I could go sightseeing and have lunch in Cortina D'Ampezzo. Before departing from the Hague I had briefly considered staying there, but Dobbiaco was cheaper, and closer to the trails, so I ended up there. I'm glad I did, because Cortina was a real ghost town out of season. Everywhere I went they claimed they were "chiuso per mangiare", so I couldn't have lunch anywhere. I ended up driving back to Dobbiaco. There were some really nice mountains around Cortina, but I'd rather go there in winter, in season.



I had no internet access, no weather forecasts, and the weather looked really gloomy, so I decided to leave for Switzerland the next day.

The next day, the weather was perfect, and it would have been a nice day for hiking. Instead I wasted it driving for six hours to Interlaken...hmpf! The scenery is pretty nice in the northernmost part of Italy, with lots of really picturesque villages. This changed when I went through the Brenner Pass, going into Austria. Italy looks better, for sure. On the other hand I was, for a moment, very impressed with Austria when I discovered that in places they served Schweinhaxe and beer at the gas stations. If only I had been driving with someone...

I drove through Arlberg and then through Liechtenstein, before going across Switzerland to get to Interlaken. I spent a lot of time paying road tolls, stopping four times for toll booths and one time to get the sticker for the Swiss road-tax. Also, I had to look out for speed cameras in Switzerland, since my navigation device does not do cameras for Switzerland (it is illegal...)

I had no hotel room booked for Interlaken, but I was hoping for the best. I was visiting slightly off-season and there's a large number of hotels there. Turns out, there was no problem getting a decent hotel with parking and wi-fi. This being Switzerland, it was almost twice the price I paid in Austria and Italy.
Interlaken is the hiking capital of Switzerland, and the tourist machine is well oiled with lots of restaurants, hotels and easy access to the hiking paths through trains to the starting points of the lifts. For me, having a car, it was even easier with large, cheap parking lots right at the bottom of the lifts.

Having internet in my room, I had finally been able to check the weather forecast and it was not good. It looked halfway okay for Thursday and really bad for Friday, so I decided to go to the top of the Jungfrau on Thursday. It would have been bad to go up there and not have a view.



At first I balked at the price for the tickets to go up to the Jungfraujoch - 110 euros just to take the train from the valley floor to the top of the mountain. (Incidentally, that is more or less the price of a return ticket to Paris from The Hague...)
The trains are very crowded, and people come from all over the world to see this. Every year 500.000 tourists go up to the Jungfraujoch in these trains, so it's pretty much one of the most popular tourist attractions in Europe. It's pretty crowded at the top, but the view from the sphinx observatory was pretty good. From the observatory you can also access the Aletch glacier. I walked for about one hour to get to the Mönch-hütte, below the summit of the Mönch. It wasn't a very inspiring walk, but it was nice to "hike" at 3600m, and I was pretty eager to do something after having been cooped up for an hour with hundreds of Indians on the train.
The train ride down was very long and boring. It took about an hour and a half to get back down to Grindelwald. I spent the rest of the afternoon shopping for hiking gear in the excellent shops in Interlaken, and had a couple of beers on the hotel roof watching the sunset over the Jungfrau.



The next morning it was raining and there was fog covering all the mountains around Interlaken. I figured it could be different once I got 1000m further up, so I drove to Grindelwald and took the gondola up to First. Up there, I was just above the clouds, and I started walking towards Faulhorn, a popular hike around Grindelwald. Unfortunately, the weather changed quite rapidly, so soon I was hiking in wind and rain, and by the time I got to the top of Faulhorn I was walking in thick fog, rain and heavy side-wind. So much for seeing the fabulous view from Faulhorn. The benefit of bad weather, of course, was that there were no other tourists out, so I walked pretty close to several grouses on my way up to the summit. The hike only lasted about four hours or so, and it was only 600 meters or so of elevation, but it felt more strenuous, because of the bad weather. I drove back to Interlaken and spent a fair amount of time heating up in the shower. I decided then and there that there was no point in moving on to Chamonix, since the weather forecast for the next couple of days looked pretty bad. Luckily, I hadn't booked any hotels, so I could just drive home whenever I felt like it.



I tried to send my mother a text message but couldn't get through. I was pretty upset over this. In the period when I was traveling, my mother was hospitalized, so I had been sending her text messages every day (since I could not call her, see earlier blog post about Dutch phone service...), but for some reason inside Switzerland I could not send messages, with any carrier. I wrote a complaint to T-mobile customer service, but they just replied that for certain countries they had no reciprocal agreement for text messages, and they couldn't list which countries these were. I'm really starting to regret switching cell phone carrier now.

I spent the evening having dinner at a really excellent Italian restaurant close to "Interlaken west". They had really good food and it was also fairly cheap.

Saturday I got up at 8 and started driving back to Holland. People were driving really slowly in Switzerland, but the pace picked up when I crossed the border into Germany. I drove past Schwarzwald before my navigation unit routed me through France, Luxembourg and Belgium. I was back home around 19.00.

Overall: I did 3000 km driving in 9 days - way too much for driving alone. I managed too see most of the stuff I wanted to see, like the castles in Bavaria, the Tre Cime, and the view from to the top of Jungfraujoch. I did manage to go hiking in the Salzkammergut, but it wasn't as good as I expected. Will definitely try Carinthia instead the next time I go hiking in Austria. The Dolomites is my favorite region for hiking, but the weather was bad the days I was there. Better luck next time, hopefully. The Jungfrau-region was pretty crowded, and "industrial", so not my favorite kind of hiking. Also, the weather was really bad the one day I hiked there, so overall I didn't get to do as much hiking as I wanted to. I guess I was just trying to fit too many destinations into my trip. It would probably have been better to just pick two destinations and have one fallback destination if the weather had turned bad.

Unfortunately I did not make it to Chamonix either, so I will have to save that for some time when the weather is nicer...

Here are my pictures from Bavaria, Austria, Tre Cime and the Jungfrau area.

Krakow

I went to Krakow for a long weekend trip with Lukasz between 4 June and 8 June. We went there to go to the Selector music festival and to visit Paulina, Kuba and Dominika. Unfortunately, there were no longer direct flights from AMS to Krakow, so we had to fly via Warzawa. After five hours of traveling, Paulina picked us up at the airport.

At 20 past eight in the evening, there was a celebratory drink to celebrate 20 years since the fall of communism in Poland. We did our part, and had a couple of celebratory shots, while a slideshow of "Solidarnosc"-pictures was playing on a big screen TV in the bar. I missed some singing of the national anthem or something like that. Or...maybe they did. Maybe "Na zdrovje" IS the national anthem of Poland... Later on we had a nice dinner at a traditional Polish restaurant at the main square, where we also linked up with Dominika. We spent the evening boozing it up in some cellar clubs in the center.

Lukasz and I spent most of Friday hanging out with Dominika, drinking wine and vodka at various downtown cafes. We met up with Dominika's friend Ula, and together with Paulina and Kuba, we made our way down to the festival area - Krakowskie Blonie. Kuba had this idea that we should stay away from the watered down beer at the festival, so he bought some bottles of wine, so we could get properly drunk before entering the festival area.



It was a nice festival area, with almost no queues. The only exception was the beer area, which quickly became very crowded. There were lots and lots of Norwegians there, and I found it very strange to hear so many people speak Norwegian at a random festival in Poland. They were probably there for the Røyksopp-concert. We first saw Fisherspooner - a very artsy electronic act with lots of interpretative dance and strange video stuff. Next up was Franz Ferdinand, who played a very good concert. Their set was also very long, more than one hour and 30 minutes. I was mostly waiting for the Røyksopp concert, but I was pretty disappointed when they finally started playing. Their presentation was pretty messy, they seemed unprofessional, and for the singing parts they brought Anneli Drecker. She couldn't really pull off some of the songs, and she missed a lot of notes, so it sucked pretty bad. We left early, went back to the apartment and sampled some other Norwegian culture instead - Norwegian Viking Fjord Blåbær (blueberry) vodka.

Saturday we spent the morning hanging out at various bars in Kazimierz, having dinner at an Italian place. Kuba was making fun of me, as I was not entirely present. I had come more or less straight off an exercise to this trip, so I was pretty tired and backed up on sleep. Somehow after a few good chugs of wine on the way over to the festival area, I started waking up, and suddenly I was teaching various people how to shout "Visa pattarna!!" at concerts (I told them it meant "good concert, play more!" >;-)

The first band we watched was a Brazilian band called CSS. Next we rocked out to a DJ set by a German duo named "Digitalism" - it was pretty good! We tried to go to the chillout lounge, but it was overcrowded, so we tried the next tent where some crappy DJ was playing (I forgot the name). We didn't want to hang around for the last band, so we went back to the apartment for some more blueberry vodka. After a couple of shots, things got weird. Details shall remain classified, but they include the ritual spilling of coke zero, Schnappi - das kleine Krokodil, exotic underwear, large quantities of vodka, listening to Max Raabe and Franek Kimono.



Sunday morning Kuba got up at 10am to go to a wine tasting. We thought he was just kidding the evening before when he mentioned this. Where do you get the stamina to go to a wine tasting at 10am after drinking until 4am the night before? Respect!

The rest of us were in no shape to follow him, so we didn't get to the wine tasting until 12 or so. Nothing like being slightly hung over and put in a room with lots of upper class people doing a very formal tasting of Hungarian wines. Also, the wines were pretty bad, but I'm picky about wine. Also, I think drinking large quantities of vodka the night before did not do wonders for my palate. After the wine tasting Paulina & Kuba went off to vote in the european elections. The rest of us were rebels and chose to drink instead (not to mention that I am not eligible to vote).



Apparently this was a Hungarian day in Krakow. We were tasting Hungarian wine in the morning, there were various stands at a square letting you taste Hungarian wine from various producers, and they also had a stage with various performers playing Hungarian music while some dancers were doing some traditional Hungarian folk dances. To top it off, we had dinner at a Hungarian restaurant.
In the evening we went to see Terminator- Ocalenie (Terminator Salvation, thankfully they didn't dub the movie in Polish, they only had subtitles. It still sucked, though) .

Monday Lukasz and I spent the day being touristy in the center before flying back to Holland.

Pictures are here.

Cell phone issues

I'm getting pretty used to living in Holland by now, but every so often, something reminds me that I am, indeed, in Holland. One thing I am never getting used to is regular, "respectable" companies trying to screw you over whenever you sign a contract. Contracts here are often complex, and you may need a lawyer to read through before you sign, especially if you're buying something big. I'm not used to this from Norway. In Norway, a contract may be declared illegal if the company tries to violate basic consumer rights, or tries to get you to sign away rights you are afforded by law. Companies trying to do these things in Norway would be considered crooks. In Holland this kind of behavior is considered normal.

When I first moved down here, I tried to get by with a "pay as you go"-phone. That didn't work out very well, since KPN charged me about 1 Euro per minute whenever I tried to call the service hotlines of my cable company, IKEA et al. (0900-numbers). Also, I managed to run out of cash after waiting for half an hour in line at the Casema help line. I figured, the way to end this was to get a subscription.

This turned out to be easier said than done. At the Mediamarkt, the girl at the cell phone section refused to accept my "not so filthy foreigner"-card (happens a lot, Dutch people don't like foreigners, and my id card has a different color than the regular "filthy foreigner card"), so I had to go back and get my passport in order get a subscription. A couple of weeks later, I received a friendly letter from KPN stating that they could see I was a foreigner (since I had to identify myself with a passport, probably), so they refused to give me a cell phone subscription. This, however could be rectified, if I would kindly pay my subscription in advance for the next THREE YEARS!

Naturally, I didn't go for that, so I walked down the street to the Vodaphone store, which was very happy to give me a subscription right away. One thing I didn't notice until after I got the subscription was that Vodaphone was very expensive. Cell phone subscriptions in Holland work differently from a lot of other places in that you have a relatively high monthly fee, but you can potentially get some of that back in the form of a pool of cash that you can use for calling. This pool of cash is called the "bundel", and there's usually a lot of rules for when and how you can use this. Typically it can only be used for calls within the Netherlands, sometimes only in evenings and weekends, sometimes some types text messages are not included, and there are lots of other rules that may apply. In the case of my Vodaphone subscription, I had a high monthly fee, but the "bundel" went away automatically after two months. Also, the bundle was almost useless to me, as it could not be used for foreign traffic (calling abroad, being called while abroad) and data traffic. This is about 99% of my phone bill in general, so it was pretty significant. I ran up some pretty big phone bills. In Europe there are laws regulating how much the cell companies can gouge customers on international calls. This applies, of course, only within the EU, so after I came back from a trip to the US, I had a phone bill that was three times the normal amount. I decided to do something about it and ditch my provider.

First I had to wait until my contract period with Vodaphone expired. Next I went to a T-mobile shop, and they told me I could get this subscription which lets you do absolutely everything from the "bundel", which meant I would cut my monthly phone bill by about 75%. Naturally, I signed up, but getting rid of my Vodaphone subscription would take THREE MONTHS. I've never experienced it taking so long to port a simple phone number!

My number was ported, my sim card was working, everything seemed pretty good, until I went for a weekend trip to Krakow, and discovered, I could not call my sister in Norway. On every network I tried, I got a voice in Polish telling me that my phone was blocked from calling this number.

When I got back to Holland, I called the T-mobile help desk to figure out why my phone was blocked. They told me that since I was a foreigner I could not be trusted, so they had blocked my phone from making international calls for the first two months. I told them that this was the first time I had heard such a thing, and they replied: "It's in the voorwarden.". Essentially they had sold me a cell phone subscription that was useless outside of Holland, without telling me so.

But, being very helpful, they could turn off the block if I paid my subscription in advance FOR THE NEXT YEAR!!

With your sim card you get a small booklet with terms and conditions, I read through this, and found no mention of the two month blocking period she had mentioned. I did, however, find a mention of a 15 euro fee per incident if you complain too much about your phone bill.

In Holland, there is always another clause...

Madrid & Andalucia

I went to Spain from Wed 29 April to Tue 05 May, flying into Madrid and using trains for ground transportation.

My hotel in Madrid was far to the North of the city center, about half an hour by metro. I only had three trips to the city center throughout my stay, so I felt it was worth it, considering it was half the price of the more central hotels. Thursday morning I took the metro downtown, walking around the historic center of Madrid. I didn't bother to wait in line at the royal palace, but I visited the Cathedral. I was very impressed by the ceiling. This cathedral has white walls and a multicolored ceiling with really bright colors.

Next I visited the bullfighting arena at Ventas. This is a very nice building with Moorish-style arches and a bullfighting museum. I figured there's not that many bullfighting museums around, so I checked it out. It had a range of exhibits featuring famous bullfighters' suits, stuffed heads of particularly brave bulls and bullfighting equipment. It was pretty small, and the museum smelled funky from being located above the stables of the bullring, but it was different, and free.




There's a couple of must-sees in Madrid, and those are the Reina Sofia museum and the Prado museum. The Reina Sofia has contemporary art, while the Prado has classical art.

The Reina Sofia museum wasn't that interesting to me. It had a messy presentation, lots of sections were closed off, so the posted museum maps were incorrect. Some of the sections I wanted to visit were closed off. Also, there were long lines to see the famous "Guernica"-painting by Picasso. I guess most people were there just to see that one.

The first thing that struck me about the Prado, was the disorganized entry hall. You had to go one place outside for tickets, then to the coat-check, then line up for security, but there was not all that much in the way of signs, so there were plenty of confused tourists around. There were lots and lots of tourists, the whole place felt crowded. Not as crowded as the Louvre, though. I spent my time there looking at the Goya paintings and the ones by the Dutch painters.


Next I walked around the park and stopped to look at the Satan-statue. The statue of the "Angel Caido" is supposedly the only public statue of Satan in Europe. The statue could have been cooler, though. He looked just like a regular angel, with some snakes added to make him look bad.

In the evening, I had my dinner at an "American Restaurant" downtown (Yes I know, tourist trap, but sometimes it's nice if the waiters speak English). Interesting to have coleslaw served with your steak, but in general the food sucked. I had a really horrible piece of meat that was supposed to be sirloin. Guess I should have gone outside the touristy districts for my dinner.

Friday morning I took the train to Granada. First time I had to go through security lines to use the train. Then again, after the terrorist train bombings of 2004, I can see why they're being careful. There was limited public transport in Granada, so there were huge lines for the taxis. Also, there were no taxi attendants, and people cut in line like crazy. I notice cutting in line seems to be a very Spanish thing, almost everywhere where there's a line I see people trying to cheat. I almost got in a fight with one guy that stole my taxi. I found this puzzling, the guy was willing to fight to spend about one minute less waiting for a taxi. Sober and in broad daylight...

I finally got to my hotel and walked up to the ticket office at Alhambra to pick up my ticket for the next day. I spent the afternoon walking around the old Arab neighborhood of Albayzin. There were lots of tourists walking around, but then again, Granada is one of the top tourist destinations in Spain, and this was a public holiday. I noticed most of the tourists were Spanish.




Saturday I got up really early and made my way up to Alhambra. Alhambra (from Al-Ambra, "The red one", or "The red fortress") was the final outpost of the Moors in Europe, and it is one of the main tourist attractions of Spain. It's a fortress containing the palaces of the Nasrid rulers and a huge garden (Generalife).

I got up there around 8 and I was almost alone in the fortress. It was pretty neat walking around the area with almost no other tourists around. For entry to the palaces they have time-stamped tickets, because they only let in 300 at the time. This is a good thing, because they estimate 8000 tourists visit the site every day, and throughout the year they have over 2 million visitors. Even with the restrictions, it was pretty cramped inside the palaces. The inscriptions on the walls and arches were very interesting, and so different from decorations in other palaces I've been to. I must say the experience was not that great because the place was so crowded. You have a very good view from the towers of the fortress. On one side you can see Granada below and the picturesque Albayzin-district, and on the other you see across the gardens towards the snow-covered Sierra Nevadas. I just had to snap a photo of having both palm trees and snow-covered mountains in the same view. Not too many places in the world you can do that... The Generalife gardens were pretty boring, just a bunch of trees and some rose gardens. I suppose I was there at the wrong time of year, maybe it's better later in the summer.

I spent the afternoon walking around the Albayzin, and had a crappy dinner at an outdoor restaurant. I don't know how I keep picking bad restaurants. I spend a lot of time doing it too, so it's usually easier if I travel with someone and just let them pick. Also, eating alone at restaurants sucks, so I try not to do it too much.

Sunday I got up really early and got on the train to Sevilla. I had a very good view of the Andalucian landscape from the train. At first you see very red soil and cacti along the side of the train track. The whole area reminded me of Sedona, and I can see why they chose this area to make western movies. Further to the east of Granada is the desert where they made the classic spaghetti-westerns like "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" and "For a fistful of dollars". As you get closer to Cordoba, you see endless rows of olive trees, filling the rolling hills as far as the eye can see. Also, dotted around the landscape are small villages of white houses, sometimes with a fortress on a small hill nearby. Getting closer to Sevilla, you start seeing palm trees and flocks of bulls grazing. This is where they breed the fighting bulls for the corrida.

My hotel was in the city center of Sevilla, so it was pretty convenient for walking around downtown. I visited the Real Alcazar, the royal fortress, which had a lot of the same types of decorations as they had in the palaces of the Alhambra. I liked the Alhambra more. There's some fairly big royal gardens outside. Looks like Sevilla gets a lot more international tourists , you hear people speaking English or French around you everywhere you go. It was a lot hotter in Sevilla than in Granada, afternoon temperatures were around 32-34 degrees celsius.




In the afternoon I went to see a bullfight at the famous Maestranza bullring. It was a lot more entertaining than I had expected, mostly because of the audience, with lots of back-seat toreadors shouting comments. This was the last bullfight of the spring festival (Feria de Abril), and it looked like they had some big-name matadors on the bill, so it was a full house, with TV cameras and press photographers. The star matador opened the show with an apparently stellar performance, and he received standing ovations from the crowd after the fight. In total there were three matadors fighting two bulls each, so six fights in total.

Each fight starts with fanfares as they let in an angry, confused bull. Then a bunch of guys with big pink capes run around and try to piss off the bull as much as possible. Next, there's more fanfares and they bring in a guy on horseback with a pike (a picador). They provoke the bull into charging the guy on the horse, and the picador rams his pike multiple times into the shoulder muscles of the bull. Now the bull is angry and wounded, and some guys run in with small colored spears (banderillos) , which they ram into the shoulders of the bull, usually with some flamboyant gestures and shouting as they stretch their arms into the air after stabbing the bull.



Then the matador emerges with the red cape. He provokes the bull by shouts and shaking the cape to make the bull charge the cape. He then swings the cape away just as the bull charges, or pulls it forwards and upwards, following the movements of the horns. Making the cape follow the horns up looks like the difficult part, as only the star matador was able to do it consistently, and the crowds were shouting "Olé!" every time he did it. This goes on for a while, and then the matador walks to the ringside to get his killing sword. He then makes the bull do a few more passes before he tries to stab the sword between the shoulder blades of the bull, trying to puncture the bull's heart. In some of the fights this was done, and the bull ran around for a while, before collapsing to the ground. Then one of the assistants would run up and kill the bull with a quick dagger thrust to the back of the head. The star matador did things differently. After ramming the sword between the shoulder blades of the bull, he picked up a different sword, used the cape to make the bull lower its horns and then made a quick thrust to the head with the sword, killing the bull instantly. The bull was then dragged out of the ring by four horses, while the orchestra played music.

In one of the fights, the matador had a good performance, so the crowd was waving white handkerchiefs and pieces of clothing at him, and he got the ear of the bull as a trophy. He then paraded the ring while people threw trophies at him. Someone threw a live rooster into the ring, to roars of laughter from the crowd. It took the groundskeepers a while to chase down the rooster to get it out of the ring. Also, in one of the fights, a spectator charged into the ring with a red cape, wanting to take on the bull himself. He managed a few passes before he was escorted off the field. They then switched bulls, tricking the other one into leaving by bringing a herd of bulls into the ring.

This was the first time I had ever been to a bullfight, and it was certainly an experience. It's obviously very important to the Andalucian culture. It's also the first time I go to a blood-sport event, where one of the participants doesn't leave alive. I accidentally stumbled onto watching the dead bulls from the previous performance being loaded on a truck by a forklift. It was a bit grisly to watch.

I can't help but feel sorry for the poor horses they use for the picadors. They have their vocal cords cut, to stop them from whinnying in fear when the bulls gore them, and they are blindfolded, to stop them from seeing when the bull charges. They have some sort of body armor to stop them from being seriously injured by the bull, but I can imagine it is no fun being gored by an angry bull.



This day was the end of the Feria de Abril (the spring festival), so around midnight I made my way down to the river bank. There I witnessed the most spectacular fireworks display I have ever seen. It was a huge, professional setup, and it went on for 15 minutes or so. I was only pissed off that I forgot to bring my gorilla-pod, so all my photos had to be hand-held. There was a big crowd of mostly young people watching, mostly local students, cheering and clapping. I had a good time.

Monday was a bit of an anticlimax after the eventful day I had the day before. I walked around the narrow streets of the touristy Santa Cruz district, before getting in line to get into the cathedral. The cathedral wasn't worth the wait, and certainly not the 8 euros they charged for entry. You get to go up to the top of the Giralda bell-tower, but Sevilla isn't that much to look at from above. I spent the rest of the day shopping, walking along the river bank and looking at the Torre del Oro (Moorish tower that defended the city) and Plaza de Espana. In the evening I had dinner at a nice restaurant close to the cathedral, finally having found a good one.

Tuesday I traveled back to Holland, taking the train from Sevilla and flying out of Madrid.

Madrid didn't have all that many attractions, and I was struggling to fill even a single day. Granada was OK, but crowded, and except for the Alhambra and the Albayzin, it doesn't have all that many attractions. Sevilla had a lot of attractions, lots of good restaurants, good shopping and lots of things to do. Also, the climate was more pleasant in Sevilla, than Madrid. I like warm places, so this was a nice change from rainy Holland. Being Norwegian, I have spent too much time in cold places. In general I liked Sevilla the most.

Pictures from Madrid

Pictures from Granada & Sevilla

Guatemala

I joined Diana & John on a trip to Guatemala from Mar 6th to Mar 15th.

Friday the 6th I flew in through Panama, which is the KLM hub for Central and South America. I had noticed my connecting flight from Panama to Guatemala would take very long. Turns out, it didn't just go to Guatemala, it was supposed to first go to Nicaragua and then to Guatemala. Problem was, once we arrived in Nicaragua, the plane developed a technical problem, so it couldn't take off again. They said something in Spanish over the speakers, and everyone got out of their seats and left. I'm sure I was the only person on the plane not speaking Spanish. When we got out of the plane, some guy collected our passports and ran off. Next we were herded into the terminal building, and we sat around for an hour. No one explained what was going on. I figured they were probably putting us on a different plane, and that they needed the passports in order to update the passenger lists. Turns out I was right, but it would have been nice if someone had explained as much. Finally, after 22 hours of travel, I arrived in Guatemala.

Saturday I spent the day walking around in Zone 10 in Guatemala City. This is the rich part of the city and also considered to be the safest part. I visited the Museo Popol Vuh, a small museum dedicated to Maya ceramics and a copy of the original manuscript for the so-called Maya bible, the Popol Vuh. It was strange to see guys with shotguns everywhere. Even the people guarding regular car parks had shotguns. People pass you in the street on motorcycles wearing bulletproof vests and carrying shotguns. Also, I was struck by the amount of razor-wire on the buildings. I also visited some shopping malls trying to get hold of a pay-as-you-go sim-card for my cellphone. It was not that easy since I didn't speak Spanish. My friend Diana arrived late, around 11.

John showed up at the hotel room the morning after. He had had a long flight and United had lost his baggage. We had breakfast in the hotel restaurant(a nice one, they had an indoor waterfall...) and got in a taxi to Antigua, after having managed to haggle our way down to 35$ for the hour of driving to Antigua. We walked around Antigua for a couple of hours before getting on a shuttle to go hike up the active volcano Pacaya. We got put in an overcrowded minibus. There were really crappy cobbled streets in Antigua, and the minibus had bad shock-absorbers, so we had a bone-jarring ride through the town picking up tourists from other hostels.



One thing about Guatemala, they seem to really like their processions. I think I saw four processions during the week I was there, and on the way out of Antigua we hit one. We were stuck in a very hot minibus for probably half an hour waiting for what was apparently the regular Sunday procession to finish. Ten minutes after finally getting out of town, the minibus overheated and broke down. The guy had forgotten to put fluid on his cooling tank. We were stuck on the side of the road for an hour and a half before another minibus came to pick us up. This minibus was, if possible, in worse condition than the previous one. Among other things, the seats in the back were not properly bolted to the floor, so every time the driver braked hard or went over a speed bump, we would tilt back, although we didn't go that far back, because the minibus was so crowded we didn't have space to fall over. It was such a relief when we finally got to the base of the volcano and were able to escape the minibus. At the start of the hiking trails there were a lot of kids selling walking sticks for 5 quetzales each (around 50 eurocents). The trick was to buy one right away, otherwise these kids would run after you and hassle you for the first kilometer. The hiking path was not very exciting, very dusty and it doubled up as a mule/cow path, so you needed to watch where you were going to avoid stepping in dung. After about an hour we got out of the forest and got our first glimpse of lava in the distance. Because of all the delays, we were there quite late, so the sun was setting when we walked the last bit up to the lava (or the "hot liquid MAG-MA" as John would say in his Dr. Evil-voice...). We were walking on volcanic rocks the last couple hundred of meters, and it was pretty difficult. The footing was treacherous, and the rocks were sharp, so we got small scrapes on hands and legs from the last bit of walking. The lava radiated a fantastic amount of heat, so it was intensely uncomfortable to be anywhere close to the stream. I had brought some cans of beer, so John and I drank beer by the lava stream and watched the sunset while Diana barbecued marshmallows over the lava. We walked down again in the dark. John and I had brought headlamps, so finding our way down was not a problem.



During the night we had a minor earthquake. I didn't realize at first, since I had never experienced one. Fun, as long as the building you're in is still standing...

Being tired from the volcano-trip the day before, we decided to sleep in Monday morning. We walked around downtown Antigua, and found a friendly travel agent that booked shuttles for us for the next days. He also booked a hotel for us in Coban and booked a minibus to take us to lake Atitlan. This minibus was in much better condition than the ones we used the night before, and the driver seemed more experienced. It was also a big difference to have a private shuttle just for the tree of us. It was a two-hour drive to go from Antigua to Panajachel, and the road over there was very interesting. Lots of twists and turns and the road ran right along the edges of cliffs with no guard rails in between.



Panajachel was dusty, pretty ugly and touristy. We had lunch before going on a overpriced boat ride to see the lake. We haggled for a while, but in the end we realized we needed to get on a boat in order to see something other than Panajachel before we had to return. We went to a small village called Santiago Atitlan, which is supposedly the most typical Maya village around the lake. It also looks like they have a lot of tourists go through there. There were shops selling Maya stuff everywhere. There was a kid at the docks who offered to take us to see the local deity Maximon. I talked Diana and John into going, because I find the legend of Maximon interesting. Maximon is a local deity worshiped around lake Atitlan. The story goes: He was some sort of holy man, the male villagers went off to fight a war. Maximon was supposed to take care of the women while the men were away, so he "took care of" the women, which enraged the men when they returned from battle. Furiously, they cut off his arms and legs, and somehow he was turned into a deity. In some stories, his hands were only tied up, to prevent him from grabbing women. The villagers worship a wooden effigy of Maximon in private houses, lighting candles and burning incense. Maximon likes to drink and smoke, and he also likes money, so villagers bring him gifts, hoping he will grant their wishes for fortune, favor with women or death to their enemies. This was a lot more interesting than regular catholic saints. I found the whole spectacle fascinating, and a nice tourist trap.




After leaving Santiago Atitlan, we bumped around in the boat for another hour or so, before going back to Panajachel where our driver was waiting for us.

Tuesday morning we got up really early to catch the minibus shuttle to Coban in the east. Luckily this shuttle was better than the ones we used the first day, but it was still very uncomfortable during the five and a half hours we spent getting to Coban. It was funny to see the difference in scenery between the western part and the eastern. At first it was very dusty and you could see cacti along the sides of the road, and condors flying overhead. After four hours the terrain turned into a very hilly, green jungle. We finally arrived in Coban, and I think every single passenger was in pain from the uncomfortable ride. We walked around for a bit and booked our shuttles for the next days. Coban looked very different from Antigua. We were definitely off the main tourist trail, very few people spoke any English, and we were struggling just to find basic tourist information.



The next day we got up early and got on the shuttle to Semuc Champey. Semuc Champey is a natural limestone bridge on a river in the jungle which has pools of very clear green water where you can swim. On the way, we stopped at the natural caves at Lanquin to look at stalactites and cave formations. It wasn't that interesting, as we didn't go that far into the cave. I must say I enjoyed the Skocjan caves in Slovenia more, not to mention the silver mines in Kongsberg. The last patch of road to Semuc Champey was very steep, so I was happy we were not driving on our own. It was funny to see how they had cultivated the land there, growing corn in very steep hills. Very different from the flat cornfields you see in the US. Also, it was fun to see cacao- and banana-trees in the wild. Our guide walked us down to the pools at Semuc Champey, and we jumped in for some jungle swimming. The water was very green and clear, but it was not cold. We swam around for a while before our guide took us over to a ledge were we were supposed to climb down using a rope ladder. I'm not too good with heights, so I decided to run back and get my camera instead to get some swimming-pictures. Diana and John climbed down and I think they both scraped their knuckles on the way up or down the rope ladder. On my way back, I fell and bashed my hand hard into some rocks. My hand was bleeding so I washed it with bottled water and rinsed it with alcohol, since I wasn't too keen on getting an infection from the stagnant water in the pools. Afterwards we hiked up to the viewpoint above the pools for a proper look at the entire natural bridge. It was very warm, and the path was quite steep, so we were very sweaty when we came down again. This of course was the perfect excuse to jump back into the water. Overall, I think this was perhaps the best day of our vacation. I had a suntanning accident at Semuc Champey, and managed to burn my shoulders pretty bad. This became a problem for the rest of the trip, since I was traveling with a backpack. Wearing my backpack after this hurt like hell. At least I'll remember to apply proper sunblock the next time.




Thursday was another travel day. We took a shuttle up north to the jungle province of Peten. Again the landscape changed a lot, turning into flat jungle and cleared farmland. We saw lots of palm trees and small farming villages, and also areas were they were cutting down and burning the rain forest. Interesting parts of the journey included crossing a river on a barge and being pulled over at a checkpoint by soldiers with automatic weapons, searching our backpacks for contraband fruit. We reached Flores around 14:00, went swimming in Lake Peten Itza and enjoyed the hot weather and the beautiful sunset from the terrace of our hotel.

We got up at 3 am Friday morning to catch a "sunrise tour" to Tikal - one of the more famous Maya pyramid sites in Guatemala. The shuttle was about half an hour late in coming to our hotel, so we felt we had been cheated out of half an hour of shut-eye, not to mention the sunrise at the park. We also had a pretty scary ride over there, as there were so many animals along the side of the road. We had three almost-roadkills on the way, almost hitting a dog, a pig and a cow on the way. The cow would have been bad because we were riding in a small minibus, and almost no-one had seat belts. The park wasn't open yet when we arrived, so we had to wait for 15 minutes or so at the gate. There was morning fog in the air, so it was quite moody driving inside the park. Lots of animals out as well. We went on an organized tour with an English-speaking guide inside the park. He walked us in a big loop around the compound, showing us plants and wildlife along the way. The first stop was the Templo IV where we had the famous view used for the rebel base in Star Wars episode IV. We then went on to walk up almost every other pyramid on the site, except for the two that were closed for safety reasons. I didn't find it that interesting, but the view from the pyramids was good.




Saturday morning Diana and I got up at 06.00 to go to the eco-tourism park Ixpanpajul outside of Flores, just to do something other than just travel on our last day. We had breakfast in the park, and went on to the skywalk, to walk in the jungle canopy. We were the only tourists in the park at that hour, so we had the trail to ourselves (except for a guy walking behind us sweeping leaves). The walk itself was just boring. We didn't see any animals at all, and the closest thing to wildlife we noticed were some howler monkeys shouting in the distance. Essentially it was just an overpriced hiking path. It wasn't very interesting, but at least we did something on our final day, rather than just sleeping in. We met up with John back at the hotel, and flew down to Guatemala City, where we had a nice meal at an Argentinian restaurant to celebrate the end of a nice vacation.



Sunday we flew back home, me to Panama then Amsterdam, and Diana & John back to the US.

I was having some difficulty sleeping properly on this trip, like I had in my trip last year to Utah. I'm not sure if it's jet lag or what it is, but I averaged maybe four hours of sleep in the nights I was there. Luckily I can function quite OK without sleep or food for extended periods, but my cognitive abilities and language skills suffer. I always find I have great trouble expressing myself properly after extended periods of sleep deprivation. Also, not speaking my native language at all over extended periods in combination with sleep loss seems to do something to me. Sometimes, at the end of extended exercises, I find it hard to find the words for a day or two when I speak to my Norwegian friends. I probably get crossed wires or something, and it usually goes away after a weekend of rest, but it's still strange to me...Luckily my colleagues and friends realize I get this way by now, so they tell me when I'm not making any sense.

This was my first trip to a third-world country. I didn't think about it until Diana made me aware of this. It was strange and kind of sad to see people living in really shitty tin-roofed huts and people bumping around in truck beds because they can't afford to go by bus.

We found very few people that spoke English in Guatemala, especially in the more remote areas. I think we would have been struggling a lot to get accommodation and to get around if we hadn't had Diana speaking Spanish for us. She called around and inquired about hotel rooms for us using my cell phone with the Guatemalan sim card. Guide books with hostel phone numbers were very useful.

In general, Guatemala was a really cheap country. Except for the flight ticket, this was one of my cheaper vacations.

My pictures

Diana's pictures

Crans Montana

I went skiing in Crans Montana from Jan 24th to Jan 31st

Initially, the plan had been to drive down there and visit Champagne on the way back, but we wanted to get back in time for the Dinner-Dance party at work, so we flew back early on Sat 31st.

I was sharing a chalet with Peter & Amy Lenk, Joe, Natasha & Tommy and Theo. There were also other friends in Montana: Karola, Koen & Ann, Peter van der Pouw & Jeanette, Roger & Pinar w/kids and Roger's parents.

Saturday we got up early to fly down to Geneva to go to Crans Montana. The flight took a lot longer than we expected, since they closed down the airport at Geneva due to "Weather". We flew to Zurich instead, waited for an hour on the tarmac, re-fueled the plane and flew to Geneva. Upon getting there, I noticed they had about 3 cm of snow on the ground there. Obviously they had no snow-clearing equipment or something. I found the whole closing-business ridiculous. Already late in getting to Crans, we took the train to Sierre, managed to get off at the wrong station, had to wait for the next train, and then, upon getting to Sierre, the funicular up the mountain was broken, so we had to do the long bus-trip around.



Sunday morning we went to the ground station at Grand Signal to buy tickets and rent skis. There were long lines and poor service, and in the end I got crappier equipment than I had last year at Laax. There had been several days of snow leading up to our arrival, so there was plenty of snow in the slopes, although there were also lots of moguls on the first day. Freakin' snowboarders!

Monday was the only day without brilliant sunshine, so we had really good weather for five out of six days. In the evening we had a wine tasting at a local winemaker, in their basement. We tasted lots of different types of wine, and by the end of the evening, we had tasted almost 2 bottles each, according to the guy hosting the event. Unfortunately, by the time we finished, there were no taxis to take us back to our chalet. Luckily, the guy hosting offered to take us home in his pick-up. Peter Lenk opted to sit on the truck bed to make sure nothing happened to the boxes of wine we had back there. Naturally, the next morning we had a very late start in getting up to the pistes.




We had most of our lunches at the restaurant at Bella Lui. We had split up into several groups, so we usually had a plan to meet up there at a set time. Unfortunately, some people had time management problems, and others wanted to do other pistes, so more often than not it took a lot of time to meet up with other people. Also, due to planning problems and people changing their minds, we spent lots of time waiting, so we did less skiing than the previous years.

Peter Lenk, Joe and Peter van der Pouw were really into off-piste, so they spent a lot of time off the sides of the main piste. For the most part, I didn't join them, since I'm not a very good skier, and I feel I need to build up more technique before going into all that loose snow. There were lots of snow, though, so conditions were good for playing around on the edges.

Resort-wise, I thought Crans Montana had pretty old infrastructure compared to other sites I have been to. We also spent a lot of time in gondolas, so it took quite some time to get up to the really good parts. Also, some chairlifts had design problems. dripping melted snow on the head and neck of the people on the outermost seats when it was sunny.

The ski food wasn't all that great, and they seemed to have very few self-service cafes. That meant lunches took longer, and I must say I enjoyed the food in Laax last year more. Laax was also cheaper. On the plus side, they had lots of places to get Vin Chaude on the piste.



Evenings were spent having dinner and reading for the most part. Not really a lot of after-ski in this resort. We did manage to have a pasta night with the traditional champagne tasting at the chalet. Peter made really good home-made pasta, and Theo cooked up a huge pot of his special pasta-sauce.

Friday evening we celebrated the end of the ski trip at a fairly good Italian restaurant downtown. We didn't stay too long, though, as we needed to get up really early to make our flights back. The trip back was uneventful, except for an unpleasant taxi ride from Schiphol (guy refused to drop us off where we needed to go - that's Dutch service for you...), so we made it back to the Dinner-Dance.

Pictures are here

Rome

I went to Rome from Nov 20th to Nov 24th to recover from a very stressful period at work.

I had some trouble pacing myself, so I rushed through all the main sights in two days, leaving me slightly bored for the last two days. At least I felt like I had properly explored the Eternal City, having spent the last two days just walking around, looking beyond the run of the mill touristy stuff.



Wanting to save some money after the insanely expensive hotel I stayed in in NYC, I had decided on staying in a cheap hotel in the center of Rome. What I didn't think about before ordering was that "cheap hotel in the center of Rome" translated to a backyard hotel, so I spent almost half an hour trying to find my hotel, until I finally found a doorbell with the hotel's name. I had to push the doorbell, say the magic password, knock three times, and then they would buzz me into the courtyard. OK, maybe not the password and the knocking, but you get the general idea.

These are some of the sights I visited:

Basilica San Pietro: The largest church in christianity (The dome is even bigger than Hagia Sophia, although smaller than Pantheon's), this is probably the main tourist attraction of Rome. It was also the only place where I had to wait in line to get in. I spent 45 minutes in line before I was inside, so it wasn't a long wait. That's one benefit of visiting out of season, I guess. While waiting in line, I saw some Nuns queue jumping. I bet they have to do a lot of hail Marys to make up for that. Inside, they have spent a lot of money on decorating the church, although in some places the donors have left calling cards to show who paid for the decorations. The bronze baldachin over the papal altar and Peter's tomb is decorated with bees, to show that the Barberinis paid for this. Sort of like a medieval sponsorship deal... I also walked up to the cupola which was less strenuous than a lot of other big churches. Up topside there is a great view of Rome and St. Peter's square.

Vatican museums: The private art stash of the popes, made available to the public. Mostly famous for the Raphael rooms and the Sixtine Chapel. The museum is so huge that it is hard to see it all in one visit. Also, I can imagine it is really crowded in the tourist season.

Fontana di Trevi: The biggest fountain in Rome. Lots of tourists at any hour of the day. According to tradition it is also a wishing fountain, so if you throw two coins over your shoulder into the fountain, the first is for your return to Rome some day, and you're supposed to make a wish upon throwing the second.

Scalinata di Spagna: A large staircase leading from a church to the Piazza de Spagna. My impression is that it is famous for being famous, so there's always a crowd of tourists on the steps.


Colosseum: Apart from the Vatican, this is probably the biggest tourist attraction of Rome. It's nice to have been there, but I got bored after half an hour or so. Basically, the site has been plundered and used as a quarry for palaces and churches elsewhere in the city, so there's not that much left to see. I was fooled by the audio-guide scam. You can rent audio-guides almost everywhere, costing 4-5 euros per two hours. I made the mistake of renting one at the Colosseum, and it had almost no content. What little content was there was exactly what you could find in any guide book. After my experience in Colosseum, I started noticing that they had audio-guides at a lot of smaller sites, like Terme di Caracalla and Castel Sant' Angelo. I wonder how many people fall for this.

Forum Romanum/Palatino: A big park of ruins from Roman times. This would probably have been more interesting for me if I had read up more. I was having trouble understanding what I was looking at. To me it was just a bunch of ruins, and one temple basement looked the same as the next one.

Museo Capitolini/Capitol: Nice museum with lots of famous works of arts like the she-wolf feeding the twins and the mounted statue of Marcus Aurelius (The oldest preserved mounted stature from antiquity). It was fun to see the actual Tarpeian Rock, which is just south of the museum. Also, the piazza outside the museum has a very cool pattern, designed by Michelangelo.

Terme di Caracalla: Ruins of Roman baths, able to service 1600 people at a time in its day. The site has been plundered and the artwork and decorations placed in palaces elsewhere in the city. Huge ruins, but not all that much to look at.

EUR: City part to the south built during Mussolini's reign, containing numerous examples of "fascist architecture" - huge white buildings with arches and columns housing museums and ministries.


Castel Sant' Angelo:
This is a very good vantage point. Too bad you have to pay 11 euros to use it. The rest of the building is really uninteresting except for the treasury room, where the popes kept their money. The bridge leading to the castle is lined with some fairly cool angel statues.

Trajan's Column: Huge column with decorations going in a spiral from the base to the top, celebrating the accomplishments of emperor Trajan. This design was so well received that it was also used for the column of Marcus Aurelius later on. It also inspired the columns of the Karlskirche in Vienna. I remember being very impressed by the Karlskirche, so it was nice to see the original column. To me this was the most interesting thing I saw in Rome.

Other places visited: Villa Borghese, Pantheon, Piazza Navona, Piazza del Popolo, San Giovanni in Laterano, Santa Maria in Cosmedin

On the last day, I walked along the river Tiber, visiting Isola Tiberina and Trastevere. I found it funny how different the city was once I got outside the touristy part.


In general I liked Rome, how there's fountains everywhere and cool details on the walls if you stop to look. Also, I had great fun going obelisk-hunting, chasing down the different Egyptian obelisks that have been erected all over the center. I also found the narrow, cobbled streets charming, but I suppose it's a different story in summer when there's tourists everywhere and everything's crowded.

Annoyances in Rome were the crazy people on scooters and the street salesmen, selling umbrellas, toys, watches, whatever. In some of the more touristy areas, like Fontana di Trevi and Campo de Fiori , they were almost outnumbering the tourists.

Pictures are here