to market, to market...

May 31, 2011, Tuesday

Odessa, Ukraine

To Market, to Market…

Sometimes you will find the most interesting things just by looking down.  This was certainly true for us today.  Looking out of our seventh story hotel room at the Black Sea Hotel, we overlook the largest public market we have ever encountered.   We planned to spend our day checking out this wonderful piece of Odessa.

Many tourists prefer to spend their days shopping at upscale boutiques, touring a variety of museums, drooling over homes of celebrities or lazing by the poolside ordering umbrella drinks and working on their suntans. Our travel days do not fit into any of those categories.  Some of our favorite activities involve walking through residential communities and stopping at public markets and fairs. 

Odessa’s Privoz Market it quite famous for its size and variety of items and reminds us of pictures we have seen of the Lower East Side of New York a century ago.  Measuring an estimated half mile square and an amalgam of 1000 or more vendors, it is lively, fascinating, inexpensive, colorful, busy, loud and absolutely marvelous.   And best of all it is definitely NOT a tourist market.  You have to look hard to find any souvenir tee-shirts. Stands are small and large, covered and uncovered.  Speaking a babble of Russian and Ukrainian, many sell their items from blankets while sitting on the ground.  Young people and ancient Ukrainian babushkas all have something to sell, sometimes if only a few toothbrushes.

Everyday residents of the city hop off overcrowded rickety streetcars to do their shopping here.  You can find fish, fresh, smoked, salted or live!  Handmade brooms, reminiscent of the 18^th century, are also offered.  Bins and tables of produce include fantastically fresh and dried fruit, vegetables, seeds, flowers, spices and herbs.  Manufactured items from all over the world, thousands of shoes, toys, clothing, CDs abound.  Some stands just sold bottles, cans and kegs of beer which was cheaper than bottled water or soda pop.

Privoz Market is the real thing. Unlike bazaars of the Middle East of the mercados of Latin America, there is no pressure here. The salespeople are not trying to hustle you as this is the substitute for large supermarkets that we are used to shopping in our country.

We had not plans to buy anything, but couldn’t resist a few bargains and items of interest.  We purchased nail polish (about 75 cents), four wonderful fresh homemade kosher pickles (37 cents) and a CD of Russian/Ukrainian folk music (99 tunes, $3, © doubtful).  We also stopped at a bakery where we selected some rolls for about a dollar.  We don’t speak Russian and shop owners didn’t speak English, but we managed to communicate through our guessing and pointing and phrase book!

This unbelievable market experience seems to begin each morning at dawn and then the merchants begin to pack up their thousands of items when the sun sets. From about 6-10 pm, 50+ trucks and vans arrived on the scene and began to unload crates with 100 kilo sacks of potatoes, cabbages, tomatoes and other farm products. They placed these items on their dollies and appeared to be bringing these items to the small produce stands in order to supply them for tomorrow’s market opening, as the daily cycle of feeding the hungry citizens of Odessa continues in much the same way it has been done for probably more than a century.

A Memorial Day to Remember

May 30-Monday

Odessa Ukraine

Today is Memorial Day in the United States, but the chilling memories we will bring home with us of Odessa will never be forgotten.

After a small buffet breakfast, including traditional blintzes and yogurt, we met Natalya, our tour guide and our taxi driver, Sergei, in the lobby. We have been corresponding with Natalya for many months and we had been looking forward to the 4 hour tour that we had hired her to provide for us. She is a native of the city and very knowledgeable about the area, especially the Jewish history of Odessa. She said that her family has lived in this area for six generations. She is a local historian and an English professor so we had no difficulty understanding her.

Sergei drove us around this lovely historic city as Natalya provided the narration. We walked in some of the areas that we had read about and visited many buildings including the magnificent opera house and oldest synagogue left in Odessa as she relayed so many facts about the famous people in their history. Our heads were spinning by the end the 4 hours. Natalya continually tied in the Jewish history with each of the places we visited as she was aware of Donna’s family connection with this area through her grandfather.

The most touching part of the tour was near the end when she brought both of us to tears at the Holocaust memorial when she relayed the story of how 250,000 Jews were rounded up from Odessa and marched to their deaths early in WWII by the Nazis. We were touched by her personal account of her own family as she told how they escaped Odessa and the Nazis and also how many of the non-Jews in this beautiful city risked their own lives by hiding Jewish friends. It was truly a sobering story related to us by this Ukrainian woman.

After our four hours with Natalya and Sergei, we decided to venture out on our own in the city to view many of the areas that we had driven through for a closer first hand look. We walked for about 6 miles and stopped in one of the parks to buy something to eat. We had a wonderful experience with an older lady who was selling sandwiches that she had obviously baked herself. She knew no English and we knew no Ukrainian except for the alphabet so it was fun to see if we could communicate with her and buy her wares. We were successful and we each enjoyed what we bought. John’s was a large roll with an interesting cheese baked inside and Donna’s was a roll with poppy seeds baked inside. Donna was able to explain, in broken Ukrainian, that her grandfather was born in Odessa and this brought a smile to her wrinkles.

Rule for today: familiarize and practice the Cyrillic alphabet when visiting countries using this as it has helped us tremendously in a number of these countries. We had enjoyed reading the signs on the stores and streets and sounding them out loud has helped us many times even though we don’t speak the language.

Donna had a real closeness with the people of this cosmopolitan city and felt that her grandfather would be proud that she took the extra few days to visit his Odessa. She has finally had the chance to walk in the area of part of her heritage.

Photos: 

Donna & John at sculpture garden

Odessa Opera House

Holocaust Memorial - fountain of Tears

A Day in Transit

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Odessa, Ukraine

Can you believe it?  We were in three countries in one day!

We had to get up at the beautiful Bucharest Hilton at 2:45 am to catch our flight to Budapest.  This is the best hotel we have ever stayed in, located in the heart of the city and we got there late and had to depart early!  Originally, Malev Airlines (Hungary) had scheduled us a midmorning departure and a change of planes to Odessa, but we were notified a day early that our 10:30 flight had been canceled and the only other one available left at 5:35 am (ugh). 

On our way to airport Sunday morning, we sighted many young couples walking home, hand in hand, from a Saturday night on the town.  We were just beginning our day.

Arriving at Bucharest airport early Donna attempted to district the desk clerk while our luggage was weighed, hoping that neither bag went over its 20 kg limit.  We were right on the money, again as we were wearing and carrying everything we had that was heavy,  In the departure area we were surprised to see a large group of soldiers, wearing American uniforms.  We chatted with a few and found out they were on their way back from Iraq.  One even lived near us.

We boarded a small turboprop for our 90 minute flight to Hungary. 

Travel rule:  Trying to use the restroom in a small turboprop when you stand six feet tall is a good lesson in contortionism.

Arriving in Budapest airport, we were made to again to pass through security before we were allowed in the transit terminal.  We now had a wait of nearly seven hours before boarding our 90 minute flight east to Odessa.  What to do?

Sometimes things work out better than planned.  We found a table next to an electrical outlet and fired up our Dell Vostro laptop.  We discovered we had a wi-fi signal and it was free!  This has been the best connection we have had on our trip and were able to catch up on everything we had put off for the last month, including pictures, blogs and email.  We even had some time to surf the web.

Photo attached:  Donna blogging away at Budapest airport

Boarding our Malev jet for Odessa at about 1:00, we were pleased to be flying a Boeing 737.  Descending over Odessa, we spotted a wide river delta below us and the Black Sea in the distance.  Landing was an experience!  Perhaps Odessa’s runway was paved at one time.  Maybe Lenin ordered it. We fortunately were all wearing our seat belts or we would have been sitting with the pilot within ten seconds.  We were able to walk away, so it was a good landing after all.

As we landed, Donna had an emotional connection to this land of her ancestors. Locating the homeland of her grandparents has been something that she has been unable to do up until recently. All of her grandparents came from the area once part of the former Soviet Union but they all left during the progroms at the start of the twentieth century or face the atrocities due to their Jewish religion from the Tsar’s regime and cruelty toward her people. Those that were able to make the trip to America and survive those times soon were to face the Nazis and probable death in the camps so she is happy that she was able to find where at least one of her grandparents emigrated from in escape. She recently learned that her father’s father was born about 100 miles north of Odessa so that was the reason for this few day side trip. A personal contact given by American friends lead to numerous emails in the area with a woman named Natalya.

We checked into the Black Sea Hotel, in a busy, but not upscale, section of Odessa.  The city’s famous market is located right next to our hotel  We took a short walk through the busy neighborhood where we bought a few beverages at a local store and exchanged some dollars for the Ukrainian currency we have nicknamed the “kropotkin.”  Odessa is quite a beautiful, busy cosmopolitan city, which, except for the lack of hills, reminds us of San Francisco.  There are many young, busy people on the streets at all times of the day and night.

We had a nice dinner of traditional Russian food at a local café and turned in early. We are both trying to figure out the details of the Cyrillic alphabet, but are getting better each day. 

Impressions of Our Ten Days on the Lower Danube

Impressions of Our Ten Days on the Lower Danube

May 29, 2011

John and Donna Mollan

Historic towns and cities

Ancient churches of all shapes and sizes

Fertile plains, green hills

Empty synagogues, sad reminders of the Holocaust

Bullet holes, bomb damage, destroyed tanks

Market squares with wonderfully colorful and tasty produce

Women wearing babushkas

A myriad of strange currencies

Horses plowing the fields, donkey carts

Odd makes of cars

Roman Ruins

Wonderful music

Gigantic monuments to past despots.

Ugly gray concrete high-rises, legacies of communism

People just trying to get by

Stories of centuries of conflict; glory, occupation, revolution and hope for a better future.

The legacy of population decline

Empty factories

 A babel of languages

Lonely fortresses, reminders of times gone by

Forests reminiscent of the Brothers Grimm

Empty villages, blank windows staring outward

And still the river flows.

Off the Ship in Romania

Saturday, May 28th
Bucharest Romania
Our ship docked in a very small town on the Danube about an hour drive from the capital city of Bucharest. We all said our goodbyes to the Viking Primadonna and boarded buses for a tour for the day. We drove through very small villages with dirt streets and saw some things that took us back about a century. Lots of horse and donkey drawn carts loaded with hay and numerous farmers working in the fields plowing with wooden plows pulled by horses. It reminded us of pictures from the farms of the American farmlands of the late 1800's. We also saw a number of Gypsy wagons, as the population of Romania is about 20% Roma People (Gypsies). A real step back in history and cultural immersion for all of us.
When we got to the big city of Bucharest, it was quite a contrast as we saw more of the ugly Soviet style high rises and electric wiring just seemingly hanging everywhere with no regard to any planning.
Driving further into the center of the city we began to see a change in the architecture with lovely older buildings in the neo-classical style situated on wide boulevards with lots of traffic. Those were built prior to Communism. Our bus made a "mandatory" cathedral stop where we saw where much of the money has been spent in this city. This is the home of patriarch of the Romania Orthodox church resides since the fall of Communism in 1990. Very ornate but nothing compared to the Parliament Palace we toured. This is the second largest building in the world (over a 1000 rooms), second only to the Pentagon and was built as a palace for the former Communist dictator Ceascu (sp?) who was overthrown and given an ‘acute injection of lead bullets’ in 1989. He was a Mussolini type dictator who must have had an ego as big as this building as this took over a million of Romanians to build this building, all out of materials and labor from Romania. It also must have almost bankrupted the economy of this poor country with all of marble and gold used. This is one of the most garish examples of egotism that we have ever seen even though it is lovely. This building and numerous others in the same area are actually tributes to the Romanian artists with the beauty that they exhibited in their "forced" work. The dictator was assassinated before he was actually able to live there so later became the Parliament building of the new government. They have yet to complete the whole building but it is still lovely, if not overdone.
We checked into the nice Bucharest Hilton which was the final planned destination for all of the travelers on the cruise and we got the opportunity to walk around the city for a little bit. Since our flight leaving Bucharest today (Sunday) was changed from 10:30 am to 5:30 am, we decided to not stay out late. The taxi was scheduled to pick us up at the hotel at 3:15 am so we wanted to get a few hours of sleep so we went to bed at 9:30 after saying goodbye to many of the friends that we met on this cruise. We awoke this morning at the very early hour of 2:40 am. We took a small Hungarian plane from Bucharest, Romania back to Budapest, Hungary and are currently sitting in the airport with almost 7 hours before we board for our next adventure in Odessa, Ukraine.   Rule #? Many of the eastern European countries are a combination of "the good, the bad and the ugly" and this is especially true in Romania.

Photos:

Atheneum concert hall (next to our hotel)

John and Donna with Victory Flvd in background

Visitators badge to Parliament Bldg

More Bulgaria

Friday, May 27

Rousse, Bulgaria

This is our second day in Bulgaria.  Today’s excursion took us on a long bus trip to a town and a village in this part of the country.  It is more prosperous than the part we visited yesterday and we visited. The countryside is quite beautiful and reminds us of the Willamette Valley in Oregon, except that you seldom see donkey carts or shepherds tending their flocks in the traditional manner in Oregon.

The former Soviet-bloc countries all went on a housing construction binge, building hundreds of ugly concrete high-rises that offer the beauty of a cellblock at Sing Sing.

We had a nice lunch, visited ABC (another bloody church) and were entertained by some talented young Bulgarian folk dancers.  We also had a little time for shopping and managed to communicate with a few of the local merchants. 

Perhaps we are getting touristed out.  The Prima Donna sailed at 5:30 this evening for a short trip across the river to Romania.

Travel Rule:  Always yield the right of way to a person with a drink in her hand.

Pictures attached:

John relaxing

Soviet era housing in Rousse

Bulgarian folk dancers

Bulgaria and the Iron Gate

May 25-26, 2011   Wednesday - Thursday

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

We are back onboard the Prima Donna (what a great name for a river boat!)  We will soon be leaving Serbia for Bulgaria.   One more stop is necessary in Serbia to clear customs, so we have a few minutes to spend our Serbian dinars.  Two bottles of beer and some hair conditioner does it.  Although these villages are small, the prices are very good.  We don’t speak a word of Serbian, but money talks.

We then went down the Danube River gorge, which reminds us of the Columbia Gorge, but with different architecture along the side.  We pass the remnants of a Roman bridge, built by the emperor Trajan.  The more we learn of the Romans, the more impressed we are with their achievements. Even today, the Danube is quite hard to bridge! It is quite spectacular, and after miles of flat land upstream the mountains look good.  We approach the Iron Gate, which now has a series of locks on the Danube to drop the river level down 100 ft or more.

Thursday, May 26

Vidin, Bulgaria

Here we are in Bulgaria, the poorest country in Europe and we enter the poorest town, Vidin.  Many of the buildings in Bulgaria are left over from the Communist era and have the personality of the average warehouse.  They are functional, but ugly. Vidin is a clean town with quite a few stores, but not much for sale, with the exception of some fantastic looking farm produce.   These are the reddest tomatoes we have ever seen… and without chemicals!  We were surprised that Bulgaria has not developed its agriculture more, since it had a favorable climate and great soil.

We really had an opportunity to practice our Cyrillic alphabet today.  Donna had to be pulled away from a few signs!

The Bulgarian people do not smile, but, according to our tour guide, they are really happy people.  Smiling is not part of the culture.

Our bus took us to Belogradshick Fortress, located in the hills about 2000’ above the level of the river.  The Romans built the original walls, which are still intact.  Go Rome!  John climbed the treacherous steps 200’ to the top for a beautiful view of the crags, even with the ground fog.  It reminded us of a Scottish movie scene.  Donna decided not to risk her life and took these photos and bought a few items for souvenirs.  John got back in one piece with a big smile on his face.

We finally had some good news about the Holocaust.  When Germany ordered ally Bulgaria to transport its Jews to the concentration camps, the Bulgarians stalled and complained about bad trains and buses.  By the end  of the war, not one Jew had been transported by the Bulgarians to the death camps.

We had a wonderful dinner with some new friends and are looking to more of Bulgaria tomorrow.

Photos 

Danube Gorge watchtower

Danube sunset

Belogradshick Fortress

Roman Ruins on the Danube

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

We are still in Serbia, but today we had a great opportunity to visit a dig of Roman ruins at Viminaciaum, which is located about 40 miles from Belgrade.  After our earlier visit to Rome, last week, this really filled in a few spaces on the map.  It reminded us that the Roman empire covered the entire Mediterranean, to the Danube, all of Western Europe, North Africa, and western Asia, as well as England.

The archaeological work is intense.  As funding permits,  a large area of Roman baths and tombs are being unearthed.  We were able to walk right into the digs and actually touch structures that may have been buried for 1500 years.   (see attached photo)

Back on the boat, we were treated to a traditional Serbian lunch complete with salad, skewers, beer and slivovitz, a really potent plum brandy that both Serbs and Croats believe is the staff of life.

We got our first thunderstorm cruising between Romania and Serbia.   We had to clear the outside decks.  This is the first white water we have seen on the Danube, but our giant catamaran is very stable and you really don’t notice the weather.

Were the hell is Serbia?

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Belgrade, Serbia

If it’s Tuesday, this must be Serbia.

How many of us haven even thought of Serbia?  It really hasn’t made headlines since the start of World War I.  Today would give us a chance to look at the “other side” of the coin that we saw yesterday.   Monday we had a chance to witness the destruction and hear about the death that took place during the 1991 war for Croatia’s War for Independence.  Today we would see and hear from the Serbians, their opponents in this war.

Belgrade, the former capital of Yugoslavia, is a city of 1.5 million people located on a hill overlooking the Danube and one of its tributaries.  It is the first hill we have seen since leaving Budapest, all of the rest of Danube plain is a flat as Kansas.  There language is identical to the Croats, but they use both the regular and Cyrillic alphabet and are Orthodox Catholics, rather than Roman Catholics.

We had a great bus ride of the city and the great fortress that the Turks build during their 500 year occupation of the city.  There is still much in the way of hard feelings all over the Balkans and Central Europe about the Turkish invasion, even though it took place in the late Middle Ages!

We also got the chance to walk to the Sephardic synagogue in Belgrade. The woman who lives on the grounds invited us in to see the inside and it was very nice. Even though we didn’t speak each other’s language, we were able to learn that there are only 2000 Jews in this large city and that this is the only synagogue in Belgrade. It was a nice experience for us and the Israeli couple that we walked with after seeing so many churches.

We also witnessed bomb damage from NATO air strikes during the Bosnian conflicts, but the bombs were precision strikes that hit only the army headquarters and the ministry of the interior, which held Milosavic’s secret police. 

We also had a (mandatory) church stop, although the new Orthodox cathedral, still under construction after being started in the 1800s.  It is absolutely enormous and will not be completed in our lifetimes.

We had a chance to do some shopping and went to the ATM to get about $30 changed into dinars, the Serbian currency, as dollars and euros are not accepted most places.

Every day of this cruise has been an exciting learning experience.  The lecturers and entertainers that the ship provided really kept us informed.  There is no bingo, casino or stupid games onboard our ship (boat?).  We were also surprised how many other tour boats are on the river.  Twice, now, we have had to “raft” as dock space is quite limited on the river. We are usually docked with at least 4 other river boats. It is surprising that the guests from the other ships just use our lobby to walk right through to their boat as there is no security check or id required to board each time.

After learning so much about wars, won and lost, I have put together a new rule: Rule #12: If your country wins a war, it is due to the determination and bravery of your people.  If you lose a war, it is due to greedy and corrupt leaders.

Vukovar, Croatia

Monday, May 23

We visited a war zone today.  There was so much damage from the 1991 fighting between Serbia and  Croatia.  90% of the city was destroyed by Serbian bombs and tanks and much of the population was sent off to concentration camps or murdered outright.  This was a very sobering experience for all of us.  You can still see machine gun bullet holes in many of the buildings as well as bomb damage.
The people are rebuilding, now that Croatia has its independence and life is returning to normal.
We did manage to get haircuts, even though we didn't speak the language.  a great experience.
We will post more pictures later.
Our internet connection is very spotty..

Hungarian Horsemen and more!

Sunday, May 22

Kalocsa, Hungary

The first settlers in Hungary were Magyar horsemen from Central Asia about 1500 years ago.  Today we had the opportunity to experience a traditional Puszta horsemanship show. None of the horsemanship has been lost and the riding and costumes were fantastic.  The featured rider stood on the back of two large white horses as he galloped a team of eight circus-style.  It was all a great show

 The Hungarian plain is much like the Central Plains of the USA, but nearly all the local discussion is about paprika, although anything can be grown there.

We ended the tour with an organ concert in the local cathedral.   It was truly an astounding performance.

Another evening of great food and great entertainment.  We are really making friends on the boat.

Budapest - we board boat

Saturday, May 21-half way though our adventure

Last night we had a funny experience on TV here in Budapest. We were flipping through the international channels on Hungarian television and came across a Japanese movie about Samurai and Geishas, all of them dubbed in German! It is a “small world after all.”

Today we spent much of the day exploring Budapest by ourselves. We took the local bus over the Chain Bridge to the Pest side of the river and then walked along the riverfront for about 2 miles to the large Budapest public market. We were delighted with this old but very lovely building that looked like a large train station. Rule #10, after Rome nothing seems really old, even 900 year old buildings in Budapest.

The market building was clean and charming with tile floors and hundreds of stalls selling wonderful fruits and vegetables on one side. In the rest of the market, there were stalls selling nothing but paprika, the national export, in a variety of different forms from powders to pastes. There were also stalls selling nothing but salamis and goose liver in different varieties. It was crowded with locals and tourists but very orderly and quite an experience.

We walked back the 2 miles along the waterfront and stopped to have a picnic lunch in a riverfront park. We had fresh baked rolls from the market along with the local cheese and salami left from our picnic the day before. We savored this lunch and had some humorous experiences while eating. We watched a man nearby doing a crossword puzzle in Hungarian and chuckled at the thought of what it would be like to have to spell this words in this difficult language filled with way too many letter “z’s.  As we ate our traditional Hungarian sandwiches on rye bread we noticed two young local men walking by eating their lunch, Big Macs. This is what we called a real cultural experience. We then caught the bus back to the Buda side and up to the castle hill to our hotel.

This afternoon we boarded our riverboat, suitable aptly named PrimaDonna,  for our cruise down the Danube.  We were at first shocked at the small size and location of our cabin, which was at water level and with a sofa bed and twin cot.  We are not used to sleeping apart and tried to express our disappointment to the hotel staff, but to no avail.  This was quite different than the large cruise ships we are used to, but we decided to make toe best of the situation.

Dinner was excellent.  Our evening’s entertainment, a group of Hungarian musical comedians, was excellent, and our attitudes began to improve as the evening progressed.

Down the river tonight!

Buda and Pest

May 20, Friday  Budapest

We had our best night’s sleep in a long time at the Buda Hilton, although John did get up at 5:30 to make coffee.  Too bad, it was Nescafe instant, but we enjoyed it, nevertheless.

This was the first official day of our Viking River Cruise package.  Hungary is part of the EU, but does not use the Euro officially, although both it and the dollar are accepted.  We decided that we needed some Forints (HUF), the Hungarian currency, for various items over the next few days.  

Rule #8:  Always carry a little local currency, even if for pay toilets and bus fare.

The exchange is about 180 HUF to the dollar.  This makes $55 US come out to 10,000 banknote (see photo)

There is nothing quite like sunrise through over a beautiful city to start your day out right.  Today was the day for that.  The Danube sparkled as we looked across the river to Pest, the flatter part of the city where most of the businesses are located. 

We enjoyed a wonderful breakfast buffet at the hotel and loaded ourselves onto a bus for a city tour.  Our experiences on bus tours were variable, at best.  Today’s tour was to be one of the finest.  Our tour guide was a young lady who spoke grammatically flawless English.  She informed us that Hungarian is supposed to be the second most difficult of all languages to learn (after Chinese). It really doesn’t sound like anything we have ever learned before!

As we went from site to site, Kinga, our guide was able to give us interesting information without the phony jokes and meaningless statistics which are so often part of tour packages and she seemed to know everything about Budapest’s tumultuous past.

When Hungary was not being invaded by Huns, Tatars, Mongols, Turks, Hapsburgs, Germans and Communists, she had picked the wrong allies in a series of wars. We were saddened beyond words to learn that during a period of two months in 1944, all but 50,000 of Budapest’s 400,00 innocent Jews were sent to their deaths at the hands of the Nazis.  Yes, the churches and castles of the city are magnificent, but they cannot diminish the tragedy.

Rule #9:  Watch who you pick as allies.  It can come back to bite you.

The end of the tour was spent in the heights of Buda’s spectacular historic quarter, overlooking the city and the river.  We visited the president’s house, which had no guards posted today.  We resisted his temptation to knock on his door.  Surely, it would not be appreciated.

Attached photos

Hungarian 10,000 currency

John and Donna at Heroes Square

Buda from Pest

In transit

Thursday, May 19 Rome to Budapest

We spent the day in transit.  Our trip to Rome’s airport by taxi was nothing short of a wild ride at Disneyland.  The good news is that our driver didn’t run anyone down and we made it out of Rome will all our luggage and wallets intact.  The wallets were much lighter, due to Rome’s high prices, though. 

Since we couldn’t find a direct flight to Budapest that would work for us, we had to change planes in Frankfurt.  Our Lufthansa flight gave as a wonderful view of the snowcapped Alps, a first for both of us.  It was raining quite a bit in Frankfurt, but we made our connection on time. 

We landed in Budapest airport at about 7:00 pm and finally got a cab and took a long taxi ride to our hotel, the Hilton.  Fortunately, traffic here does not approach the frenetic level of activity of Rome!

Budapest is divided into two parts by the Danube, Pest, in the east and Buda, in the west.  We stayed in classy Buda in a location nicknamed the castle.  We were quite surprised at the view from our window on the 4^th floor of the hotel.  There was a magnificent view in Budapest at sundown.

The Buda Hilton is typical of so many luxury hotels nowadays.  It the rooms and views are quite nice, but they really hit you up at the little things, including internet, which is usually free at even cheap motels nowadays.

Rule #7:  The more you pay for your room, the more luxury hotels stick it to you for the other things that cheaper hotels give away.

Photo: view from our hotel room at sunset

Rome Day Last

Wed. May 18^th

31 years and 6000 miles away from the eruption of Mt. St. Helens.

Roaming in Roma (day 3 ½)

Why can’t I sleep longer later than 3:40?

We island folks just aren’t adjusted to the big city rush, although we gave it our best try.  We are learning a few things and our hands speak Italian just as effectively as a native Roman.

Since this is our second visit to the Eternal City, we decided not to repeat anything we visited on our 2007 trip, such as the Coliseum, Vatican and Forum.  We sort of followed through on this.

We are now veterans of the Metro system, with an entire of one day of experience!  How fast we learned.  We started one half your later and avoided the rush hour and actually got seats!  We rode to the Circus Maximus station and glanced at the enormous setting for the ancient chariot races on our way to nearby Plantine Hill.  The Pope spoke at Circus Maximus a few weeks ago about the canonization of John Paul II.

The Palatine Hill, one of Rome’s legendary seven hills, is the home of the palaces of the emperors.  As a matter of fact, the word “palace” comes from the hill.  It is the only of the seven hills that we native Seattleites would call a hill.

The Roman roads are still in good shape 2000 years later (no potholes), but don’t try to do them in heels or on a skateboard.

We visited the home of Augustus and viewed many other domiciles of emperors, famous and infamous.  Nero was so detested that subsequent emperors tried to remove his name from his accomplishments. Not only were the homes and the museum amazing, the view was spectacular.  There is also a beautiful garden at the top of the hill and the wonderful fresh aroma of mint was in the air.

Ancient Rome was located 20-30 feet below the present level of the city.  2000 years of letting rubble pile up and not dusting has raised the city to its present level.

Rome Rule #5: Always take out the trash or you can see what might happen!

When you want to visit the ancient areas, you must go down into lower areas that have been dug out.  We did visit the Roman Forum again, as our rushed visit on the previous trip did not give us time to explore it sufficiently.  There were hundreds of tour groups from schools, cruise ships and bus tours that we encountered.  We were on our own.

Another of our goals was to visit the Jewish Ghetto.  Rome’s Jews were tolerated until the late Middle Ages until the Church decided that the presence of a few thousand Jews among a population of millions of Christians was totally intolerable.  The Jews were locked into a ghetto on the worst land in Rome, publicly humiliated on a regular, required to wear special clothing, forced to go to Mass each week and tightly restricted.  Still, they survived.  Finally, after many centuries of persecution, the Jews of Italy were given equal rights with the birth of the state of Italy in 1870.  Unfortunately, 73 years later, the remaining Jews were marched off to the concentration and death camps, courtesy of Mussolini, Hitler and company.

The area that once held the Jewish Ghetto today has been rebuilt and has a number of shops, a synagogue and other facilities.  It is heavily patrolled by police, due to past actions by Palestinian terrorists in the area.  This is so unfortunate, since Jews have been living in the area since the second century BCE.

Another walk across the Tiber and another ride on the Metro subway brought us back to our hotel.  Only 5 hours of walking today and neither of us have been run over or had our pockets picked, although Donna sensed an attempt on her on our way to dinner last night.

Dinner:  the biggest calzone (as big as a dinner plate) and the best brochette we have ever experienced!

Off to Hungary tomorrow with a change of planes in Frankfurt.

Rule #6:  Rome is not handicap accessible.  You might have an escalator or elevator with a short flight of stairs at the end!

Photos:  John in front of Palace of Augustus, view of Coliseum from Palatine Hill

Rome Day 2

Tuesday May 17

Today we ventured out of Rome on two forms of public transportation. We walked over to the terminal and got caught in the crowds to board the Metro (subway) and ride out of the city for about 30 minutes, standing and holding on. We realized that we should have waited to ride the Metro after morning rush hour as we were squeezed in the car with everyone traveling to work and we now sympathize with sardines in a can.  Rule #3 for today: wait until after rush hour to ride the public transportation in Rome. Next we transferred to the train for another 30 minute ride to the ancient city of Ostia Antica, about 20 kilos SW of Rome. This was not crowded so we both got seats. This was Rome’s ancient seaport and was discovered in the early 20^th century. It was covered with mud for over a thousand years and is so well preserved that it is considered the Pompeii of the area. It is an ongoing archeological project. It took us about 5 hours to walk through the ruins of this massive city and we probably only saw about a quarter of what has been uncovered thus far. Much of it still has not been excavated. We even got lost in the ruins and realized that this was one BIG ancient city!

We reversed our travels and rode back to Rome and spent another hour or more visiting the National Museum. We were tired but still in awe seeing so many famous ancient statues, frescoes and mosaics. It was spectacular to say the least. It was almost sensory overload today but our Italian has sure been improving as we moved through the areas that we visited.

We were tired so we rested for a few hours after our touring and went out to eat at about 7 pm. We walked around the neighborhood until we found a trattoria (sp) where we ate outside and both of us ordered a small traditional pizza. These are so different than what we are used to in the US. The crusts are as thin as a tortilla and the topping is basically just tomato sauce and seasonings. Not all goopy with extra toppings so we really enjoyed being able to taste just the basic Italian pizza. How wonderful. Rule #4: don’t order water in Rome as they charge as much for water as beer. It is bottled water but the tap water is excellent in Rome.

When we returned back to the hotel, we forced ourselves to stay awake as long as possible hoping to sleep but unfortunately we both were awake much of the night again. Our bodies still have had difficulty getting used to the time difference.

Photos: ancient amphnitheater, Donna among the ruins.

All Roads lead to Rome Day 1

Rome wasn’t built in a day, but we tried to see it all in three days.

Monday, May 16

John had trouble sleeping last night.  He woke up at 3:00 and couldn’t get back to sleep.  We are 9 hours ahead of Pacific time.

On your marks, get set, GO!

Hitting the #64 bus at 9:00 am at the incredibly busy terminal, we know how sardines feel.  Watching out for pickpockets is essential in Rome.  We don’t carry wallets, only money belts and in busy areas, John wears his backpack in front.  So far no losses.

With 2700 years of history, we had to make some decisions.  Our first destination was the Pantheon.  We got off only one stop too late and had no trouble finding the building. This dome of all domes has stood since the first century BCE and is still one of the largest unsupported domes in the world.  It was done without electrical or steam power, algebra or computers.  The only math was clunky Roman numerals.  It truly has stood the test of time.

My Rome rule #1: If you turn around you will see a huge church.

Corollary:  You may not have to turn around.

What a day of walking we had!  Through the western end of Rome, over the Tiber to the very edge of the Vatican, back across the Tiber again.  We worked our way through innumerable piazzas, any one of which would have been a great monument for any other city.

We ended up passing the obscenely gross monument that Mussolini put of to Italy’s King Victor Emannuel that overshadows the wonderful ruins of the Roman Forum.  Most people agree that the monument was really to Mussolini’s ego.

We finally spent some time at the ruins of Trajan’s Forum and marketplace, probably the world’s first shopping center.  Those early Roman’s really thought of everything!

We found another #64 bus and worked our way back to our hotel.  A man even graciously gave Donna a seat on the bus.  Only 5 hours of walking through Rome’s busy streets.

My Rome rule #2:  If you don’t watch where you are going, you will probably get run down by a car, bus, or motorcycle.

Corollary: #1:  Even if you do watch out, there is no guarantee that you won’t get run down.

Corollary #2:  Crosswalks, stop lights and other traffic controls are only optional.

We dined at a neighborhood restaurant.  Surprise… Italian food! Donna had a bowl of minestrone and John had some home made ravioli.  No salads or side dishes included.  It ran us about $30 in US funds.  Rome is expensive!

We ARE getting somewhat city-wise.

Photos:  Donna with St Peters in distance, Piazza Navarona

Blogging on board

May 10, 2011

Santa Cruz, Tenerife, Canary Islands.

Land at last.  We haven’t touched land since May 2!  Everyone onboard is excited to go ashore.

Santa Cruz is a lovely city nestled between the mountains and the sea on the northeast part of the island of Tenerife.  We are about 100 miles off the coast of Western Sahara, Africa.

We really enjoyed the city.  It is modern, sparkling clean and has interesting architecture.  It is not hard to get around in.  We walked for four hours in the beautiful weather, visiting the African Market and the pedestrian friendly downtown area.  It appears to be a prosperous area and nobody pushes you to buy things.  Our Spanish served us well, although many people speak English here.  There was very little in the way of tourist goods to shop for.

We hit the ATM machine and now have enough euros for several stops.   Donna needed a new battery for her watch and we bought some toothpaste, a Spanish brand we will soon find out about.  WE found an internet café and got a few pieces checked, but did not have time to read any yet.  May 11-12 aboard the Navigator of the Seas. 4371 nautical miles completed so far.

We have continued to buck powerful headwinds since leaving Florida, leaving the open decks unusable much of the time.

We completed our last two of nine lectures with overflow crowds and rounds of applause.  Thursday’s lecture, Our roman Legacy, received many wonderful comments.  We are relieved to complete our lecture series.  Only one day off in nine days is starting to seem like work, but we love it!

Thursday morning we passed through the Straits of Gibraltar at about 7:00 am.  Everyone was up to see the Rock, but darkness, fog and high winds made it pretty much invisible. 

We are now nine hours ahead of Pacific Time. 

We are looking forward to visiting Mallorca tomorrow.

May 15^th-Rome Italy

We had two more wonderful ports of call for our final two days at sea. We visited Palma de Mallorca and it was lovely on this island paradise. It reminded us of a miniature Barcelona. We walked for about four hours throughout the town and enjoyed the lovely city and wonderfully warm weather. They have a lovely La Rambla with lots of gorgeous flowers for sale. We also found a central marketplace and a supermarket so we purchased some wine and gin at super reasonable rates. The wine cost about 75 cents for a liter! It was very good too. This was probably our favorite of all of the ports that we stopped at as it was so charming. It was also nice to be able to use our Spanish one more time.

Our next port was Ajaccio Corsica. This is a French owned island and is also very lovely. Lots of tourists here and lots of things to see on our walk about town. We spent abut 3 and a half hours walking around this lovely city trying to understand the language spoken here. It is a combination of French and Italian and Corsican so very odd sounding. They have some lovely beaches and great shopping areas but the prices are very high here just like other French areas that we have visited such as Tahiti so the only thing we bought was a loaf of  very good French bread which we had for our lunch as we walked around the city. There was a car rally in town which was part of a larger European rally so it fun to watch the cars from all over Europe as they left the starting gate right near our ship. We got back in time to have a few hours sun bathing on ship as the weather was perfect.

Our first part of our adventures ended today as we disembarked in Civiavecchia Italy and shared a town car with another couple into Rome. We have had so many great comments on our lecturers that we feel we had a very successful two weeks as lecturers on this lovely ship. We are now at the Hotel Montreal in the heart of Rome and will be here for four days of exploring the area.

We leave you with areviderce Roma,

Donna and John

When in Rome

We are currently in Rome and enjoying the many sights. We got off the ship yesterday after 2 successful weeks of lecturing. We visited Canary Islands, Mallorca and Cosica before we got to Rome and all three of these islands are lovely.
Today we walked about 8 or 9 miles and we were roaming all over Rome and it is spectacular to see so many sights. We dont have WiFi in our hotel as it not working so we are at an internet cafe right now and will not be able to answer any questions until we get WiFi back.
We will keep  you posted as we continue this spectacular journey Thursday we fly to Budapest Hungary to board the river cruise to Bucharest Romania so that will be exciting.
Best to you from Italy,
Donna and John