The Yeagers’ Experiences

We couldn’t leave Europe without first scoping out the art in Florence and seeing what all the fuss was about with the canals in Venice.  Let me preface by saying we had only arrived back home from Athens 4 days before we set off for this trip, which explains a lot.

We found Florence to be a lovely town with just a few too thousand American tourists.  I would REALLY like to know why more Europeans don’t go to Italy because it is really a lovely country.  In most other places we have visited we have been surrounded by Brits and Germans, with a smattering of Americans thrown in, and perhaps the odd Frenchman.  In Italy however, without exception every single city we have been to has welcomed Americans in abundance and been entirely lacking in Europeans.  Anyway, this isn’t necessarily a problem, but it does dilute the real Italian culture that we want to be a part of.  Given that we are part of this phenomenon as well, I can’t really complain

Back to the story though.  So when we arrived at night we thought Florence was beautiful.  When we awoke the next day we realized that even though it was mid-October, the tourist season in Florence knows no bounds.  We went to the Uffizi Gallery and had to fight our way through the crowds.  When we got out, we had to fight our way through more crowds to get to the nearest gelato stand.  After we ate our ice cream, we had to fight our way through even more crowds to see Michaelaneglo’s “David”.  It was all very exhausting.

Florence is an art mecca; everywhere you look you can usually find high quality sculptures or frescoes.  In fact, we had to reserve timeslots just to get in to the Uffizi and the Accademia.  In the Uffizi (the most important Renaissance gallery in the world), we beheld such wonders as Botticelli’s masterpiece “The Birth of Venus”, Roman sculptures, and works by Leonardo Da Vinci, Raphael, Donatello, Michaelangelo… yes folks, we did see masterpieces by all of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!  The art was glorious, but in the end we are not art people so we didn’t linger for too long.  The “David”, in the Accademia, is absolutely stunning, as are the various violin and cello Stradivari.  We also went to the Santa Croce church, which is unremarkable except that Dante, Michealangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, and Marconi are buried here.  What an allstar line-up!  

Annie, a family friend, hooked us up for dinner with reservations at the restaurant of one of her Italian chef friends.  We dined for nearly 3 hours at Trattoria Icche ce’ c’e, courtesy of Chef Gino and his wife Mara.  They were a wonderful couple and the food was even better.  Thanks Annie!  You might think up until this point that we were very productive in Florence.  WRONG… as I mentioned before, I had virtually no time to prepare for this trip, and as a result we ended up missing a lot of things altogether (Donatello’s “David”), getting lost, or not knowing what we were looking at.

On top of our disappointment, the apartment we rented had bed bugs… I suppose it was inevitable given all the travelling, but it is still really gross.  Good thing we only stayed there 1 night, because Joe was really eaten up.  I’m not sure why, but bugs don’t usually fancy me so I was left relatively untouched.  To add insult to injury, our taxi driver ripped us off and doubled our fare.  I wouldn’t say this trip was as bad as our Berlin trip, but it is definitely in second place.  We were glad to be out of Florence by the end of the second day.

Venice, I am happy to report, was an entirely different experience.  Well, not entirely, but in most of the important ways at least.  There were no bedbugs or crappy taxi drivers.  In fact, Venice is the world’s only pedestrianized city, so we didn’t really have to worry about traffic of any kind.  We arrived at night and were absolutely enchanted.  Venice’s many charms only get better at night, when the day-trippers leave and the alleys and canals are quiet and romantic.  We had the best gnocchi ever, then went to San Marco Square to hear the dueling orchestras.  After wandering around for an hour, we didn’t really know what to do until we found a small shop open late that sold alcohol to go.  We grabbed a bottle of Prosecco (complete with 2 plastic cups) and walked around until we found a quiet canal-side piazza in which to pass the time.

The next day we grabbed a map and set off.  What was really nice is that in Venice’s tiny alleys you actually feel like you are in Italy, not the cheap, commercialized shell you experience in many other places in Italy.  One of the major highlights was just getting lost in the backstreets, having only the slightest idea of where we were.  We had a really good, detailed map, but I still manged to get us lost a few times, which suited us just fine.  It was only when we got close to the Rialto Bridge that we remembered that we are in fact tourists sharing this lovely place with tens of thousands of others just like us.  We passed on the gondola ride (€80 for 45 mins), and opted instead for the stripped out versions that serve as ferries crossing the Grand Canal (€0.50 for 2 minutes).  It wasn’t exactly romantic, but it gave us the basic idea and saved us a wad of cash. 

We somehow found the tucked away gondola workshop, complete with alpine workmen.  We also made it in to San Marco Basilica (after nearly stepping on about a million pigeons), with its wall to wall glittering gold mosaic ceiling and mosaic tile floors.  San Marco Square was entirely different during the day.  I have never seen so many pigeons in my life!  Lots of people fed them and became covered in a mass of frantic, flapping wings.  One even landed on my head for no reason, but I saw to it that it didn’t last very long!  Other than that, I can’t really recall most of the things we saw because we just wandered a bit aimlessly, and managed to soak up the atmosphere and just enjoy ourselves a little better than we usually do.

Unfortunately on the vaporetto (waterbus) to the airport I caught a really nasty bug which involved me losing my voice and showing symptoms of a cold for almost 2 weeks.  I missed 5 days of work (thank God for unlimited sick time!), but the trip to Venice was still worth it. 

Pictures are now up; there are some particularly beautiful shots of Venice.  Coming up, our last 2 trips will be to Istanbul, Turkey, and Egypt (Cairo and Luxor), so be sure to tune in next month!

Normally when we travel to a new place we struggle with the typical things like: what should we order from a restaurant? where is the hotel? Do you tip taxi drivers? In Athens, however, we had an entirely new problem to contend with… Greek. I never thought having to memorize the Greek alphabet as part of my initiation into my business fraternity would actually be worth something. Turns out that all those days of reciting the Greek alphabet backwards and forwards really paid off here. My only regret is that they only taught us the capital letters. Thanks ΔΣΠ!

Test your Greek alphabet knowledge and sound out this phrase: BUΛΛΔOΓΣ PUΛE!

Yes, I am aware that even if you understand the alphabet you probably still can’t communicate with the natives. But it is really difficult just reading street signs and maps if your brain cannot process how a word is pronounced. The Greek alphabet just looks so foreign and strange that sometimes the only thing I could do to navigate is to sound words out on the map and on the street signs and see if they sounded the same. A lot of the streets signs were in Greek, and the map I had was only in English.

For those who don’t know, the Greek alphabet goes something like this (yes, it is in order): Α (alpha), Β (beta), Γ (gamma), Δ (delta), Ε (epsilon), Ζ (zeta), Η (eta), Θ (theta), Ι (iota), Κ (kappa), Λ (lamda), Μ (mu), Ν (nu), Ξ (xi), Ο (omicron), Π (pi), Ρ (rho), Σ (sigma), Τ (tau), Υ (upsilon), Φ (phi), Χ (chi), Ψ (psi), Ω (omega). Whew! Now throw in the lowercase letters: αβγδεζηθικλμνξοπρσςτυφχψωf, and you can see where it might get very difficult to decipher. All of these letters are pronounced in ways that for the most part correspond to pronunciations in English, only they are represented by different symbols. For example, Φ is pronounced like ‘f’ or ‘ph’, while Λ is pronounced like ‘L’.

It helped a lot to be able to pronounce Greek words, because by sounding the words out we were often able to guess the meaning.  As a result of our efforts we discovered that a lot of words in the English language have Greek roots, like Pharmacy (ΦAPMAKY).  I have always been interested by language, and have often thought that if I had a second calling it would be as a linguist (too bad I don’t know any foreign languages, but that is a minor detail).  For anyone with similar interests, Greece is certainly a boon for armchair linguistics.

The answer, by the way, is a simple truth – Bulldogs Rule!

P.S. Joe should be posting about our experiences in Athens any day now!

What’s better than the party city of Madrid? The beach town of Barcelona, of course! To add to our conquering of Spain we headed off for a weekend of fun in the sun. Anything to beat the British cold and rain they call summer! And boy were we pleasantly surprised — it was sunny for the whole weekend, and a perfect 80 degrees.

The beaches of Barcelona are some of the best in the world. They have a boardwalk, many shops and cafes, great sand, and beautiful people with hardly anything on. The last point is the one I will focus on, because it was what stood out in my (and Stacey’s) mind the most. The men are in fairly good shape, with about half in speedo trunks. The women were all very skinny, with very small bathing suit bottoms… and nothing for a top. We didn’t go to a nudist beach or anything, but about half of all the women had no top on. Many were even sitting up, chatting, and walking to and from the beach. It was the oddest thing. Then, when it was time to go, all the clothes went on. Almost as if there was an invisible line between the beach and the boardwalk, no one went past the beach without at least a t-shirt, pants, and shoes. There were also people that came onto the beach towards the end of the day with no bathing attire. They would simply sit on the beach and chat… oddly though the women always took their tops completely off.

We didn’t have much time to party Spanish-style in Barcelona. Friday night we got in real late from the flight, and Saturday we ate dinner until 1:30am and, while this is early for Spaniards, we were exhausted after a long day. We pretty much got all of it out of our system the week before in Madrid anyway. We did take in the relaxed culture though and had a great dinner at this authentic (we were surrounded by locals) tapas restaurant — it really was the best food we’ve had in awhile!

Some of the must-see things in Barcelona are Gaudi’s creations. Gaudi was a famous Spanish artist and architect who created magnificent buildings that were out-of-this world. For example, one of his most famous buildings is supposed to look like a dragon… and it does. He hated straight lines – he thought they were boring – so all of his buildings have winding shapes and creative uses of space. He also designed an entire park (Park Guell) that is filled with winding paths and very colorful structures. The largest one is a large market square surrounded by wonderfully decorated benches, and the entire market square is elevated by 100 large columns. His greatest work though is a cathedral called La Sagrada Familia that is still not done. It has been under construction for over 120 years with an anticipated completion date of 2026. What we saw of it was absolutely fantastic!  There were 8 towers that soared into the air, and the inside was stunning. A lot of it is completed but the scaffolding and construction bits around leave a lot to the imagination, not including the fact that several more large towers are left.  One of the most significant pieces is the main steeple that will tower over 500 feet in the air and shows no sign of construction. We’ll be sure to put Barcelona on our calendar for 2026

One more thing to note — don’t ever plan on checking out of your hotel, going to the beach, and then catching a flight home. We were absolutely disgusting after the beach (sweat, sand, & seawater) and then picked up our bags from the luggage store of the hotel. There wasn’t anywhere to shower so we had to head to the airport and fly back in desperate need of a shower… and the “mini shower” in the airport bathroom’s sink didn’t help that much.

Barcelona is definitely on our list of places to return to someday. It’s a nice, enjoyable city with some really unique characteristics that you can’t find anywhere else. The relaxed Spanish atmosphere combined with the great beaches and the party-crazy culture make it a great place for a “holiday.”

Pictures have been up for a bit.

Pharoahs and Pyramids!!!  the capstone trip of our stay here

Fans of bullfighting tend to liken it to a beautiful dance, or a match of wills, or a fiesta nacional (national party) etc etc. having witnessed it first-hand, I can say that there are some aspects that are fascinating, exciting, and maybe even beautiful; however, the bulk of it is just gory and indefensible. For an obviously biased, but very informative article detailing the in’s and out’s of this “art”, go to this site: http://www.lostgeneration.com/article6.htm

Joe and I arrived at the bullring very excited. We knew that bulls die at the end of a fight, but we didn’t really consider this as we waited for it to start. Call it willful ignorance. We were carrying on, taking pictures, remarking on what good seats we had. I told Joe a little bit about the 3 different “acts” of a bullfight. There are pretty names for these, but it really boils down to teasing, wounding, and killing.

Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of a bullfight is the first part of the wounding sequence. Two horses enter the ring completely decked out in what look like heavy quilts. These quilts sure come in handy, because the bull is encouraged to attack these horses. The quilts apparently provide protection from the bulls horns, but the bulls can be so strong that they actually lift the horses off their feet. I wouldn’t exactly call these horses willing participants, since they are blindfolded, have their ears plugged, and may even be lightly sedated. Apparently in years past the horses didn’t get any padding, and frequently died. We saw two horses fall over from the force of the bull’s attack, which can be really dangerous for both the horse and the rider. The point of this whole exercise is to get the bull close enough that the rider spears him in the back. This serves to weaken the neck muscle and tire out the bull, which obviously gives the matador an advantage.

Basically 2/3 of the bullfight is designed to weaken and tire the bull so it is not as dangerous for the matador to do his capey thing. Yes, they actually do use a red cape, but by this time the bull is so tired that sometimes it wouldn’t even run at it. When the bull is heaving and about to collapse, the matador gets a different sword and thrusts it through the bull’s back and pierces the heart. When done improperly, the sword punctures a lung and the bull drowns in its own blood. Apparently fans of bullfighting look down on this because the bull deserves respect and is entitled to a “quick, painless death”. I’m sorry, but how exactly is a 20 minute spectacle quick, and how exactly are the multiple injuries sustained painless?

I have never really seen a large animal die; it was horrific. By the end of the first fight I had tears in my eyes and wanted to leave. Unfortunately 5 other bulls met the same fate that day. By the end I was hardened to the grim realities, and I could even still enjoy the first 2 acts. I never got over my disgust with the third act though.

We have pictures set up in a separate album for the bullfight. Don’t say I didn’t warn you: there is lots of blood and it made my stomach turn just to edit these.

Obviously you can see where I stand on this issue. In the end, I am glad I went because some parts of it are indeed fascinating, and it was educational to say the least. I would never classify myself as an ardent animal welfare activist, but I will never, EVER go back to another bullfight.

Culture and Gondolas…

The Classic City