Well, here we are friends. We’ve arrived, at last, at our fourth and final destination of our little European adventure from a few weeks ago–Rome.
Now, you know my love of Rome. The ancient architecture. The amazing artists. The un-replicatable (is that a word?) food. It’s all just amazing. But you know something that’s kind of even more amazing than all that? Sharing a place that you really love with someone you love.
Awwwww–aren’t I so sweet? No but really, guys–I was beyond excited to visit Rome with Chris and to see if he would fall as in love with it as I did.
Sorry it’s taking me so long to wrap up our little European adventure–you know how I feel about writing my last post about a vacation. It just makes it so real that it’s over (not that being home for the past week hasn’t made it real, as well).
Anyway, I’ve been a bit busy, but I promise, promise, promise to get to my fourth and final post–Rome! Sweet Rome!–written some time this week.
Until then, look at this pretty, pretty picture while you wait …
So back to last Wednesday morning, Chris and his dad left the hotel early to pick up our rental car so that we could get on out of Munich. We would be driving about 2 hours from Munich to Salzburg to drop Chris’s parents off (it was so sad to say goodbye!), and then Chris and I would be continuing on to Venice.
We knew that we were starting off with an expensive journey, since renting a car in one country and returning it in another is, you know, not that cheap.
So part deux of our European adventure story starts off in Munich, where we stayed at the Citadines, which are more small apartments than hotel rooms (meaning we had a little kitchen and a living room, but no one to clean the place up when we left for the day.)
The location was perfect for Oktoberfest–it was just a short walk to the grounds where the tents are. It’s not the best location if you’re in Munich mostly for the city center, though, like to visit Marienplatz or stroll through town. (For that type of trip, I’d highly recommend the hotels I stayed in during this trip to Munich a few years ago.)
Lucky for us, we were there for Oktoberfest, and our adventure began that Sunday night …
It’s hard to believe this wall ever divided Berlin. So sad.
Hey friends! So it’s Monday, October 8th, which can only mean one thing–Chris and I are back from Europe.
Cue the violins.
Seriously though, this was one stellar, awesome, amazing trip. In what amounts to 9 full days, we managed to cover Berlin (where Chris ran a marathon), Munich (where we had so much fun at Oktoberfest!), rent a car and drive from Munich to Salzburg to Venice for more than $700 (that story will come later), see Venice in less than 24 full hours and hit up Rome for all the classics.
That’s a lot.
But despite the fact that it was a whirlwind…it really didn’t feel that way. I felt like we were able to spend a good amount of time in each place, and I actually did end up feeling rested and relaxed when we arrived back last night.
So anyway, without further ado, how about I take you on back to last Friday, when Chris and I arrived in Berlin at around 8:30 a.m…
Welcome my friend Amy, who just returned from a well-deserved trip to Italy.
Thanks for the post, darling!
I just got back from a five-day trip to Florence, and one of my favorite parts was a day trip to Tuscany. I booked the trip (Tuscany in One Day Sightseeing Tour) through Viator, and the tour guide, Becky, was awesome. We left Florence at about 8:30am and drove through the countryside.
Our first stop was in Siena, a beautiful medieval town. We walked through the town, first stopping to see the Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the oldest surviving bank in the world. We also ventured through the Siena Duomo, where four statues are attributed to Michelangelo. We also saw the Piazza del Campo, which our tour guide told us is the third most beautiful square in the world. (Piazza San Marco in Venice is supposed to be the second most beautiful, and I can’t remember what No. 1 is!) We got a bit of free time to walk around the city, and I bought a beautiful cutting board made of olive wood and some homemade doughnuts. Yum!
We then drove to an organic farm and vineyard called Poggio Alloro, in San Gimignano, another small Tuscan town. We did a wine tasting of four wines and had an amazing lunch of homemade pasta, cheeses, and salads. The food was so fresh, and we had a typical Tuscan dessert (almond biscotti dipped in dessert wine). After lunch, we drove to the town of San Gimignano and had some free time to walk around and view the amazing scenery.
Our last stop was Pisa, which is much more touristy than the other towns—but it was so much fun to see the Leaning Tower. All in all, the day was filled with great scenery and great food. I definitely recommend taking this tour if you have an extra day in Florence!
Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (the oldest surviving bank in the world)
So here we are in 2011, and in February it will be my one-year anniversary with this site—very exciting. I have definitely become a big believer in writing down the things that you hope to accomplish in a year, not so much as New Years resolutions, but more like mini-life goals. Last year London, Paris, Rome, and Oktoberfest trips were all on that list. So here I am on January 3rd, writing down my new travel goals for 2011. This year I hope to visit:
Cabo San Lucas, Mexico in AprilSwitzerlandGreeceJamaica in November
Let’s see how many of those travel resolutions I can keep!
The author and the object of her affection on a work trip in Brussels
Welcome my second guest blogger, my good friend (and travel buddy to Oktoberfest) Carla. After sharing this flamenco story with me via email, I felt like it needed to be shared with the rest of the world as well. So without further adu, here’s to Carla…
I’m currently sitting in my hotel room in Seville, setting of the famed opera Carmen. This, one of the most famous operas of all time, centers on a feisty young woman whose name also begins with “C-A-R”. There are slight differences between Carmen and me, as she works in a cigar factory, is known for her loose morals, and quite notably, stabbed her coworker in the face (actually, let that be a lesson…).
Anyway, aside from Carmen (and its famous barber, to cite another opera), the city is renowned for its flamenco. So, I made sure to take in a flamenco show last evening, as it was my final night in the city.
But as I watched the dancers, my mind wandered back to New York City and back to a certain man, Stuart.
There comes a time in your life, my friends, when you realize that you cannot possibly afford to take every single fantastic trip offer that finds its way into your dreams.
This is, unfortunately, one of those times. With all the trips for this year over, I’m looking forward to next year, but at the same time starting to think—at what point should I be putting this travel money towards something else? Something important. Something like a house. Or a new computer. Or any of the other myriad of grown-up ways that I could spend that money.
Anyway, I digress. I can’t afford to take this trip, even if it seems like a great offer, but maybe you could. Thank you Frommer’s newsletter for sharing this interesting deal with me:
Gate 1 Travel is offering a five-night trip to Costa del Sol, including round-trip airfare from NYC, for a starting price of $729 (if you depart on Dec. 28 your price will be $729, other dates include mark-up fees). The fee also includes the choice of two tourist/budget-class hotels, daily breakfast and airline fuel surcharges.
If you’re still looking for New Years Eve plans, it’s definitely worth checking out.
About a million years ago I traveled to Salzburg from Munich with my friend for a day trip. And even though I feel like I’ve waited way too long to share all of the long-forgotten details, I still wanted to share a few tidbits of info and some photos.
The first thing is a recommendation for the hotel we stayed—Annex Der Salzburger Hof.—because I loved it. Even though we stayed in the annex part of the hotel, which was across the street from the main building, the room was huge and very nice, and it was super close to the train station, which was exactly what we were looking for since we both had to take an early train back to Munich to catch our flights home. The breakfast was fantastic, and included in the price of the hotel, and the fact that the hotel had a channel that played The Sound of Music 24/7? Well that was just icing on the cake.
So for our first and only day in Salzburg, I was a bit skeptical when Carla recommended purchasing the Salzburgh day pass for 25 Euro. With that pass we would get free entry to all of the big attractions (cable cars, Mozart’s house, castles, a river cruise), and all public transportation would be free as well. But unlike the tours that I was used to, that meant that Carla and I would be in charge of finding our way around the city.
Turns out it was a great option. We got a ton done in just a few hours, and the money we saved on just the first two attractions made it worth it monetarily.
So, in photos, here was our day:
The hills really are alive in Salzburg
The view from the cable carThe view of the town from the castleSpatzle is delicious
Mirabell Gardens
After a full-on day traveling around the city, Carla and I decided to make a pit stop in one last store before heading to dinner—except that when we came out of the store every restaurant was closed. Seriously. EVERY restaurant! We ended up back at the hotel for dinner, which was fine, but it’s just a note of advice for anyone else planning on traveling to Salzburg—don’t wait too late for dinner. Apparently everyone in Salzburg is done eating after 7 p.m.
Munich has more to offer than you could ever imagine
About three weeks ago now I set off on a trip that was really special to me for a bunch of different reasons. Firstly, I would be taking my first ever solo international flight. And on top of that I would be spending a good day a 1/2 in Munich all by my lonesome, and I was a bit nervous, to say the least. I wasn’t sure how I would end up reacting to that. Here in the city I never go out to dinner by myself. I never see movies by myself or get a drink all alone. Would I be able to pull myself out of my comfort zone and actually leave the room, by myself, in Munich?
Turns out, I learned a lot on this trip about myself. Firstly, taking an international flight all by your lonesome is totally easy—if not pleasant. When you’re with someone on a flight, depending on who said person is, you’re always left wondering how much of a conversation you’re going to have to make. Can you sleep when you want to? What if I just want to listen to my music or read my book or watch the same show on the free in-flight television over and over again? The only time that you can truly do all of this without any worry is when you’re by yourself.
And then, when you actually get to your destination, you alone are in charge of your itinerary. Feeling a big jet lagged and want to take a nap, even though you just arrived in this fantastic new place? No worries. Want to take a shower to wash off the plane before you head out into the bright new world you’re about to discover? No worries, take your time.
All of that was fantastic. The thing that I did miss, however, was the ability to share in the fantasticness with someone. When I arrived at the airport in Munich and heard the German announcements and saw the lederhosen and dirndls (yup, even in the airport), I was ecstatic. I was in MUNICH! And yet, there was no one to share in the excitement with. I remembered arriving in Heathrow with Stephanie back in May and how excited we had been. It’s great to be able to take in a new surrounding with someone. That part I really missed.
For the rest of it, though, there wasn’t a single thing negative I can say about it. In the end I totally made it out of my gorgeous hotel (after the jet lag nap and shower), and ended up discovering quite a bit on my own that first day:
Heading to Marienplatz, or the town center
The fantastic open air markets in the town centerAdvertising in Munich=lots of pretzels and beerBeer garden haven
After a Friday afternoon and evening discovering bits of Munich by myself, I headed over to the Deutsche Museum on a rainy Saturday morning. Thanks to my handy-dandy Foder’s Munich travel book I know that if you were to spend just 1 minute checking out every single exhibit in this amazing museum, it would take you over 300 days to get through everything. Anything you can think of—physics, automobiles, flight, kites, shipping, planets, animals…you name it, there was something in the Deutsches Museum pertaining to that subject. I even took in a planetarium show—in German. Can’t say I learned a lot from that, but it was pretty amazing.
After spending a good 6 hours in the museum I headed over to my first hotel, Hotel Advokat, (I seriously recommend this hotel, absolutely everything about it was great. The rooms were tiny, but super clean and very nice—and the breakfast, which is included in your hotel fee, is absolutely on par with any restaurant breakfast you’ll get) to pick up my stuff and make the walk to our second hotel, Novotel Munchen City, where Carla would be meeting me in the afternoon.
I’d like to take some credit (any credit, really) for the hotel bookings, because both hotels were pretty great. Perfect locations, perfect prices, nice people, the whole shebang—but really, that was all Carla. Luckily this friend of mine does a lot of traveling in Europe and had been to Munich many a time before, so she was a bit aware of what we would need and want out of a hotel, and she did a great job picking them. (Also, we booked in February. Prices were drastically more expensive the closer it got to Oktoberfest, so who knows if we could have afforded the same hotels had we booked at a later month).
So Saturday night Carla and I met up and took a walk through the town center again to find a place for dinner. Being that Germans aren’t exactly known for their vegetarian fare, we ended up at an Italian restaurant, which was just as fab. It was also the site of my first ever “mass” beer:
Just trust me my friends when I tell you—it was nowhere near as delicious as it looks. I honestly don’t even know what type of beer it was, but let’s just say I had much better at later times in the trip, thank God.
After dinner Carla decided she could navigate our way to the Oktoberfest grounds, which she did very well (despite my teasing her whenever we would take a wrong turn here or there). What we found at the Oktoberfest grounds around 9:30 on that Saturday night was not for the faint of heart:
It had been raining for the majority of the day on Saturday, and the tents open around 11 a.m., so you can only imagine what thousands of drunken people can do to a campground by 9:30 at night. Still, despite the fact that it was muddy and we couldn’t get into a beer tent because they were all full and we were being groped by drunken men, I’d still say that Carla and I were happy to have at least seen the place lit up (neither of us knew that Oktoberfest is basically one big, huge fair ground with food and rides and games, and interspersed with 20 or so humongous beer tents).
So we stayed for a while and then headed back to the hotel, intent on starting over early in the morning and making it into a tent and having a fabulous time at Oktoberfest on Sunday before we headed off into the night on our train to Salzburg for our day trip. And that’s what we did:
Lowenbrau tent
Kiss, Yes! Cigarettes? No!Prost! Drink! Yes! Cigarettes? No!The first group we sat next to—the Italians
Part of the second group we sat next to—13 British boys on a bachelor partyThe beloved pretzel lady who passed out the biggest pretzels you’ve ever seen in your lifethe band
Oktoberfest is, in a nutshell, unlike anything else I’ve experienced anywhere. After our experience on Saturday night I was a little worried that it would just be one big drunken madhouse (which, to some extent, it was), and that Carla and I would have to be worried and on edge the entire time we were there—but it wasn’t one bit like that. At all. We met the most amazing and friendly people. We sang German drinking songs and danced in the aisles in between beer and pretzels. We screamed “Prost!” with thousands of others in our tent and cheered to everyone and everything. No one fought. No one was gross. The boys were all lovely (no, really!). I have decided that Munich is a place I could find myself living some day. And although my trip in Munich was short (only two and 1/2 days), I long for more of Munich, and I hope to get back there some day very soon.
But Sunday night found me pulling Carla away from the adoring Brits as we made our way back to the hotel (the second hotel in as many nights for me), to get our bags, grab a cab and head to our train to Salzburg.
But I’ll do Salzburg in another entry, because it certainly deserves that.
Well, my friends, tomorrow is the day of all days—the day that I’m heading off to Munich for Oktoberfest. So, in honor of the big trip, let’s do a little bit of research on the history of the festive event:
Oktoberfest is a 16-to-18-day festival held every year in Munich. It runs from late September to the first weekend in October, and it is one of the most famous events in Germany, and the world’s largest fair, with approximately six million people attending every year.
The festival is held on an area named the Theresienwiese, often called Wiesn for short, which is located near Munich’s centre South East of the main train station.
At the festival, participants eat Hendi (chicken), Schweinsbraten (roast pork), Haxn (pork knuckle), Steckerlfisch (grilled fish on a stick), Wursti (sausage), Brezn (pretzels), Knodel (potato or bread pancakes), Sauerkraut or Blaukraut (red cabbage), among other (a bit odd) things.
The original Oktoberfest occurred in Munich on October 12, 1810. It was part of a public horse race commemorating the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hidburghausen. It was so successful it was renewed in 1811.
Since 1950 there has been a traditional festival opening: A twelve gun salute and the tapping of the first keg of Oktoberfest beer at 12 by the incumbent Mayor of Munich with the cry “o’ zapft is!” meaning “It’s tapped!”. The Mayor then gives the first beer to the Minister-President of the State of Bavaria.
Horse races ended in 196o (that’s a shame!)
By 1960, the Oktoberfest festival had turned into an enormous world-famous festival. Since then, foreigners (such as myself) began to picture Germans as wearing the Sennerhut, Lederhosen, and the girls in Dirndl (which, by the way, I wore when I was born in Germany).
In anticipation of my first ever solo trip to another country [yes, I know. Technically I can’t really consider it solo if I will only be alone for a little over 24 hours, but still…], I’ve spent the past two hours studying my Fodor’s ‘Munich’s 25 Best’ book, its maps, the subway…everything. And seriously—I’m getting pretty excited about it all. I’ve mapped out the route from the airport to the hotel, and then from the hotel to where I will start my walking tour for the day. And in honor of my new-found independence, let’s all marvel at the subway map that I figured out all on my lonesome:
It's not so scary when you stare at it for two hours
Due to some unforeseen circumstances, it turns out that I will actually be spending a bit of time alone on my trip to Munich next week. I’ll be flying out myself, checking into the hotel myself, spending from Friday at 11 a.m. until Saturday at 6 pm. alone…
When I first found this out, I did everything I could to try to make it not happen. I tried desperately to convince sisters and friends to pick up the extra ticket and come with me. Last minute. Next weekend. To Munich.
As any sane person would mostly likely deduct, no one could make this happen that quickly.
And so, here I am. Traveling alone for the very first time. And I gotta say, as scary and daunting as it first seemed, I’m beginning to finally come around to it. So it will be an adventure. So I’ll be forced to figure out everything from flight transfers to directions to activities all by my lonesome. It will be the beginning of a new era—and if all goes according to plan, maybe this will become a new thing for me. Vacations just for me, only taking into consideration where I want to go? Could be that I’m on to something new….
Bis bald, my friends! (And I think I’d better learn a bit more German before I head off to Munich by myself next week than just that one phrase…I’ll have to work on that).
In honor of my upcoming trip to Munich for Oktoberfest, I thought I’d find out a little more info about the place where we have (half) decided to take our day trip to—Salzburg, Austria. Here goes nothing:
The Republic of Austria is landlocked in central Europe, with borders including Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, Slovenia and Italy, Switzerland and Liechtenstein
The capital of Austria is Vienna
2010 marks the 150th birthday of the famous Austrian musician, Gustav Mahler. To honor him, a special CD edition of his work has been compiled
Austria is a federal republic state with a parliamentary democracy, consisting of 9 independent federal regions
Austria has a strong economy with machinery, metallurgical products and textiles, but the most important industry is tourism
Salzburg itself has approximately 142,662 inhabitants and lies 436 m above sea level
Salzburg is divided by the river Salzach. On the left side of the Salzach you will find the “Old Town” of Salzburg, while the “New Town” lies on the right side of the river
As a person who has just recently arrived back in the United States after a trip abroad to the fantastic, magical ancient city of Rome, this recent article in the New York Times really struck a nerve with me.
“As Rome Modernizes, Its past Quietly Crumbles,” the article boldly pronounces in its title. Excuse me? What now? I was just there, I thought when I first saw this. I never want Rome’s past to quietly crumble. There are still far too many people out there who have yet to make the trek to this place that is unlike any other, still so many people who have yet to be changed by said trip, like I was.
According to the piece, collapses this past spring at ancient sites have caused archaeologists to warn about other “imminent calamities” that threaten Rome’s architectural birthright.
Unfortunately disasters like that— the natural degradation of architecture that has lasted for hundreds of years—seems unavoidable, if we are to keep these structures untouched by modern ways of preservation.
But there’s also the little problem of certain people who feel that Rome would be best served with upgrades, like modern art museums, and spruces to make the city appear more “presentable” for a potential bid as the site for the 2020 Olympics.
It’s all a bit much to comprehend. In my own humble opinion (you know, as a traveler, and not someone who has any more specific ties to Rome than that), Rome is perfect as is—sans modern museums and spruces. I love the fact that there is hardly a subway system in place in Rome for the simple fact that the Romans want to preserve their underground integrity and the “city” that lay beneath the streets. What a novel idea.
All I can say, really, is that if Rome is to advance towards a more modern age, I’m certainly happy that I had a chance to see it in all its current splendor.
I’ve avoided writing this last post for longer than necessary, mostly because I was sad to have to truly bring the trip to an end, (and a little bit because I’ve been crazy busy.)
But if you can put up with me for one last Italian time and think back to two Sundays ago, Steph and I were about to spend our last full day in Italy before heading home…
On the train home from Florence to Rome Steph and I fought over who got to take pictures out of our tiny window
Last Friday Steph and I started our day off with a blank slate.
Or, it was a blank slate in the fact that we didn’t have a tour planned or meals that would be fed to us at their specifically designated times. Other than that I had my map, and my list of suggested places to eat from my co-worker, and my own list of all the places we hadn’t hit yet on our tour from the previous day that I had decided we absolutely had to see before we left.
So I suppose it wasn’t totally blank.
Happiness is a new, gorgeous city with nothing but a map, yum food and all the time in the world.
A little Italian countryside on the train from Rome to Florence
Last Thursday, at around 11 p.m., Steph and I had made it to our final European destination—romantic, wonderful, beautiful Rome, and as tired (and sweaty and dirty) as we were, we were really excited to be there.
So remember that backpack that I mentioned back in Paris? The one that had all the travel documents in it? It also had detailed directions of which train to take from the airport into Rome, and walking directions from the Termini to our hotel, hotel Le Petit, which was only about an alleged 7 minute walk.
But the thing was, had our flight left on time, we were supposed to have arrived in Rome around 7:30 instead of 11 p.m., which would have made it a bit less sketchy for us to fumble our way around a foreign country, and find our way from the train station to our hotel (I can now tell you, having lived through this trip already, that it’s laughable how close our hotel was to the train station. Make a right, walk five minutes, make another right and you literally walk right into the train station. But at 11:30 p.m. on Thursday, after picking up our luggage, we had no way of knowing how easy it would be).
So as we entered the main part of the airport (no customs, no luggage check, no passport stamp. What’s up, Italy?!), I started to wonder if taking the train was really the best idea, still (despite my detailed notes….thanks to you, Chris!).
Turns out, I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it before we were approached.
“Need a ride?” a man with a thick Italian accent approach myself and my sister.
Okay, now let’s pretend like we’re back to last Thursday, which would make it our last morning in London, before catching an 8 am. train to Paris, before flying out of Paris later that afternoon to Rome……
Steph and I had seen a concert Wednesday night and didn’t make it into bed until around 1 a.m., so we weren’t exactly sure what it would be like getting up at 5 a.m. to catch the train. With jet lag. To a new city where neither of us spoke the language.
Turns out it wasn’t too terribly awful. Must have been the excitement. We knew we would only have a couple of hours in beautiful Paris (or so we thought), so we had decided to hop on the subway from the train station and take it immediately to the Eiffel Tower. After that, we’d cop a squat at the closest cafe we could find near there and pack in all the coffee and crepes that we could….
Lucky for me (and Steph), my thoughtful boyfriend had lovingly printed out the Paris subway map for me, highlighting which stops we would need to take to get to some key places—the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Louvre and our airport, etc. And that fantastic little map stayed tucked in my backpack with a ton of other important documents—print outs of flight confirmations, hotel address, maps of other cities, etc.
Eeeeek—subway map madness
And then, as soon as we stepped off the train and into the train station and were enveloped in “crying” women (seriously, mobs of them), asking if we spoke English and shoving pieces of paper in our faces asking for money, the subway map was promptly forgotten.
There have been very few times in my life when I’ve actually been surprised by something. I live in New York City. I’ve seen a man with a top hat traveling down 42nd street on a pogo stick. I’ve seen a boy getting mugged. I’ve seen a person literally hanging out of a 12th floor window to clean it, with nothing even remotely holding said person in place besides shear strength. I’ve stumbled upon movie sets, routinely walked past cops with machine guns in Grand Central and, every day, depart my subway stop for work to the sounds of a lovely lady who, painstakingly, takes the time to alert me that “Jesus is coming.”
I’ve seen all of this, and yet, at this train station in Paris, within 4 minutes of stepping off the platform, I was surprised. These women were swift. They were relentless. And another person, perhaps a person who has not been through the craziness of living in a city such as New York, would have been in a worser position than my sister and I were.
Still, it threw me off a bit. Then I couldn’t find the subway map. And the map that I was looking at on the wall, yeah, that one seemed a bit different than the one I had studied (seriously, studied) that was somewhere hidden in the eternal blackness of my backpack. And this, my friends, is where my sister and I got into our first (and if I remember correctly, last) traveling tiff.
Standing at the map next to my sister, not understanding what I was looking at (and becoming ever more frustrated that I couldn’t understand what I was looking at), I glance over at the little one, who is not even looking at the map.
“You’re just standing there!” I’m exasperated.
Sister looks at me, in surprise. “What?”
“You aren’t even TRYING to help me at all!”
I unleashed all of my frustration at this stupid Paris train station right then and there on the little one, and she took it like a pro. “Cheryl, I don’t know how to read these things, and I think we should just ask someone,” she said calmly.
Fine, point taken. But I’ll be damned if I asked someone how to read a subway map! So after another five minutes of studying the wall, I finally figured out where we needed to go. Then, the ticket machines were broken.
So we stood in line for another half hour waiting to buy our ticket. But that was okay, because in that line I got a chance to calm down. Take in my surroundings. Realize it’s all going to be okay? (and that it wasn’t Stephanie’s fault).
On the subway, however, we had another trying moment. After waiting for another half hour for the subway to even arrive, Steph and I jammed our way (backpacks, purses, suitcases and all), on a subway that seriously is one of the most busy ones I have ever been on. Then a woman got on with a stroller, and at the next stop, the shouting began. People couldn’t get on (because of the stroller, of course), so shoving and French yelling ensued. Of course we didn’t know what was being said, exactly, since neither one of us speaks French, but we could get the gist. And it wasn’t fun.
After that, things were uphill. Well, besides the pouring rain and three-hour delayed flight to Rome, that is. Still, figuring out the subways after that were easy-as, and we made it to the Eiffel Tower. And we found our little cafe and we ate our crepes (mine Rum soaked, Steph’s with blueberries). And all was right with the world….
At around 2:30 we made our way back to the subway so that we could get to the airport to catch our what we thought would be 5:45 p.m. plane. It was not a 5:45 plane. A strike of airport workers backed up all the flights, and so Steph and I spent a few extra hours in the airport that would have gladly been spent in another part of Paris—but it was okay. In the end we got on the plane around 8:30, and landed in Rome around 11.
It was a really, really long day, but finally, after all of that, we were in ROME!
Bis bald, and the best to come, friends!
A stormy sky couldn't keep us from hamming it up in ParisRum soaked crepes taste exactly as you would expect them to
So let’s pretend that we’re back to last Sunday, as my sister and I were boarding our Icelandair plane for London. It’s the day that our whole Euro-adventure began…
Trafalgar Square
With our layover in Iceland, we started a little worried that a certain volcano might erupt and ruin the whole wonderous time that we had planned (and paid for). Lucky for us (and everyone around us…trust me), that didn’t happen. We spent three days in London, a few hours in Paris, and three days in Rome, with a couple hours in Florence stuffed in there as well. In order to give this trip the full importance that I feel it deserves (because believe me, it deserves importance), I’m going to break the blog entries into three shifts—London, Paris and Rome. So let’s get started across the pond….
My sister and I finally set off into the sunset on our Euro-Adventure this Sunday—although I feel like we should have been there and back about a thousand times already, with all the planning.
From back in February, when we really started searching for flights and hotel reviews and travel plans, our itinerary has morphed into something that we’re pretty happy with—but planning certainly didn’t come without its stresses.
Now this is the way to eat! When I first read this NY Times article, I immediately thought of the hidden bar in the East Village (Phone Booth? Telephone Booth? What was it again?) that everyone keeps trying to get me to go to. Apparently you go through a hot dog joint to the back of the restaurant and say some code into a telephone booth to gain entrance to this (probably not so anymore!) private bar.
You can’t make this stuff up, kids.
However, what Braden Perkins and his girlfriend Laura Adrian have created in Paris with their Hidden Kitchen seems infinitely more classy.
According to the article, the couple created their secret restaurant with the plan of offering up food once a month to “invite some cool strangers, get some cool people at the table, strike up a conversation and from that meet some new people.” Apparently these “cool” people loved the idea though, and passed the word on—the pair now serves two dinners a week to a small group of hungry travelers for roughly $100 each. And the menu—which they dubbed as “new American, pan-European”—changes every month.
A quick peek at their web site shows that their menu for March 26 included house-made linguine w/ radish leaf pesto, raw milk ricotta, shaved radish and crispy pancetta, as well as black olive encrusted pork roulade w/ roasted garlic and red wine barley risotto swiss chard and pickled beets.
And that’s just the “Amuse.”
Yum!
Sounds like the next time you’re in Paris, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to try to book this place ahead of time if you’re interested in great food, good company, and a little intrigue.
Lucky for us, we can avoid the ‘Hey, I’m a tourist and I have no idea where I’m going’ look when searching for the hidden restaurant. NY Times writer Seth Sherwood hints, “Look for the building with the red door and small sign for a gynecologist’s office.” Thanks, Seth.
