Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own personal opinions, not those of the Fulbright Commission or the U.S. Department of State.
I hope that your new year is off to a good start. Ours has been mostly splendid so far, with lots of good companionship from daughter Sarah and her boyfriend Alex and a lot of sightseeing with them.
I'll start with a brief list of the things we did on our whirlwind tours, then talk about each place in more detail.
- Sarah, Suzanne, and I flew to Rome on New Year's Day, spending two days and two half-days seeing a few of the major sights and just enjoying the Roman ambiance.
- We flew back to Vienna on the 4th and Alex also joined us from Sofia, where he had spent New Year's with his grandparents.
- We spent the 5th and 6th sightseeing in Bratislava and the surrounding area.
- On the 7th we drove to Vienna in the morning, walked around the streets for a few hours, and then dropped Alex at the Vienna airport to fly back to Sofia.
- Sarah left this morning (the 8th) from Vienna.
Sarah has an excellent new camera so this post is going to be very photo-heavy; either enjoy the wonderful sights that we have experienced this week, or scroll through them quickly if you want. I've included 118 of the more than 1,200 photos in my folder!
Rome
We arrived in the afternoon of New Year's Day at our hotel in a lovely residential neighborhood near the Villa Borghese. The first thing we wanted to do "when in Rome" was the exact opposite of "doing as the Romans do:" we wanted to go out to see the sights!
One of the first things we noticed in Rome was the truly overwhelming security presence in response to the Paris attacks. Any time that we were near a significant attraction or in a crowd of people, there were at least two and often three or four pairs of police officers, conspicuously brandishing automatic weapons. The NRA would have been proud; we were moderately discomfited.
Being a holiday, most museums and attractions were closed, but the marvelous park of Villa Borghese is always open. We roamed along the tree-lined paths among the statues and monuments for a couple of hours, with Sarah and Suzanne snapping dozens (hundreds?) of photos.
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| View of St. Peter's Basilica from above the Piazza del Popolo |
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| Piazza del Popolo with St. Peter's in the background |
Sarah absolutely loves pasta, and she was looking forward to great pasta for every meal. We struggled to find a restaurant on the holiday. The hotel clerk recommended one nearby, but we were hungry at 6:00 and they didn't open until 7:30. Then he recommended Pizza Go-Go, which sounded awful and looked even worse when we got there. But there was an open restaurant on Piazza Euclide that had an excellent orecchiette with pesto. Suzanne had reached her walking limit for the day, so Sarah and I explored restaurants and brought pasta back to the hotel along with a nice bottle of local shiraz. (I thought only the Australians called syrah "shiraz," but I guess the Italians do, too.)
Our visit to Rome was a little tricky. Everything was closed on Friday because of the New Year's holiday, then all of the Vatican sights were closed on Sunday because, well, it was Sunday. So our strategy was to visit the Vatican on Saturday and the ancient sites on Sunday. But of course this was everyone else's plan, too, so the queues were, if not quite eternal, at least monumental. The only tickets available for the Vatican Museums on Saturday were for a 3:00 entry, so our plan was to see some other sights in the morning and go to the Vatican in the afternoon.
Powered by our three-day transit tickets, guided by Sarah's mastery of Google Maps, and protected by our trusty umbrellas, we set out for the Pantheon. This is a good first-sight to visit in Rome because it is wonderful and spectacular, but still pales in comparison to the opulence of the Vatican so it might be disappointing if visited later. Here are some photos of our visit there:
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| A church we passed on the way, with police in front |
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| The girls by the fountain in front of the Pantheon |
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| The "oculus" that lets light (and rain) into the Pantheon |
The Pantheon is not far from another must-see Roman landmark, the famous Fountains of Trevi:
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| We were able to swap photo-taking with another tourist |
After finding lunch at a little trattoria, we headed for the Vatican. Our plan was to walk through St. Peter's Basilica first, then go to the Vatican Museums with our admission ticket at 3:00.
But when we saw the incredible lines at both the basilica (where you have to queue to go through metal detectors before entering the square) and the museums, we decided we could not do both and joined the queue for the museums. Maybe it wasn't such a great idea to visit the Vatican on Saturday, January 2nd, when it was closed both the day before and the day after.
We eventually discovered that the quarter-mile-long queue at the museums was for people without tickets, and that we only had to suffer a still-significant but much shorter line. We reached the front of the queue at 2:10, but of course they wouldn't let us in with a 3:00 ticket until 2:30, so we had to kill twenty minutes and time our re-entry into the ticketed-visitor queue so that we arrived at the front at 2:30, which we managed to do.
To try to describe the truly incredible opulence of the rooms and art in the Vatican Museum would be futile. The popes through the ages made a travesty of any "vow of poverty" they may have taken.
We made our way, along with thousands of other tourists, through the sections of the museum that were open on the day. We wanted to see as much as we could, so we did not hurry through; we must have been passed by at least a thousand people who rushed through the rooms, presumably to get to the Sistine Chapel as quickly as possible.
These few pictures are the tiniest sample of the magnificent art and frescoes. It truly is sensory overload; by the time we arrived at the Sistine Chapel with Michelangelo's amazing ceiling frescoes we were exhausted, overwhelmed, and really tired of being jostled by hundreds of people crowding their way through the rooms.
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| Looking out over Rome from the Vatican Museum |
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| Wonderful sculptures ... |
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| ... and ceilings ... |
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| ... and floors ... |
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| ... and doors ... |
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| and stairways! |
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| Even maps, to document the known geography of Italy |
We spent two hours in the museum, but we did not get to St. Peter's Basilica on Saturday. Instead we returned early on Monday morning when the queue was very short. I'm going to anachronize and put those pictures here with the other Vatican photos.
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| Facade of the basilica |
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| For me, Michelangelo's Pieta is a most moving piece of art, but less so now that security barriers keep you far away |
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| Many popes are buried in St. Peter's, including ... |
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| ... this "Dead Pope under Glass" |
After an exhausting Saturday, we embarked early Sunday for the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. We anticipated (correctly) another day of crowds, queues, and cops, especially because the first Sunday of every month is admission free at these sights. Of course, as any economist can tell you, you "spend" the "saved" admission fee in the time cost of the queues, but we had little choice as this was our last full day in Rome.
We arrived at the Colosseum around 8:00 in anticipation of its 8:30 opening. The queue was only 200-300 meters long when we arrived and after 8:30 it moved slowly but steadily through the security screening. We felt lucky to have only stood in line for an hour; the line was 2-3 times as long when we left an hour later.
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| Arch of Constantine: the warm-up act you get to enjoy while waiting to get into the Colosseum |
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| The "platform" on the right is at the level the floor of the Colosseum was. The rest is now open, but was below the floor in ancient times. |
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| Subterranean rooms where the beasts, gladiators, and slaves were held in preparation for events |
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| Reconstructed seating area |
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| Senators had personalized seating areas |
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| The diagonals once supported sections of bleacher seats |
We made a wise decision by seeing the Colosseum (long, long lines) first and then the Forum (not-so-long lines) later. We first went into the Palatine Hill area with the ruins of the Roman emperors' palaces.
One of the most famous and beautiful solos for English horn (which Sarah played with one of her orchestras in high school) occurs in Respighi's Pines of Rome, inspired by the magnificent "umbrella pines" that dot the landscape. Here are a couple of them from Palatine Hill:
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The emperors' palaces were probably as opulent as the Vatican rooms in their day, but now they are mostly just stone foundations and a few surviving walls.
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| This is a "stadium" in the palace |
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| Landscaped garden with foundations of a fountain |
At the north end of Palatine Hill are the Farnese Gardens, which overlook the ruins of the Forum
Down below, one can walk through the Forum and appreciate the majestic size of the ruined buildings up close.
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| Cool place for a marimba concert? I'll bet the acoustics are amazing |
Monday, after our trip to St. Peter's, we headed to the Rome airport, which is probably still in Italy but is a very long way from the city---and of course waited in a long queue to get through airport security. Although we all enjoyed Rome a lot, it's easy to see why Italy struggles to keep up with its E.U. partners. I cannot imagine Germany putting up with the inefficiency of such long queues!
Snowy Bratislava
Sarah's boyfriend Alex arrived in Vienna about two hours after we did on Monday evening. Suzanne and I went ahead on the late-afternoon bus back to Bratislava and Sarah and Alex took a later one.
Bratislava was snowy when we left on Friday and was snowy and really cold (under 20 degrees) when we returned on Monday. In fact, for the first time our apartment was actually chilly. With the radiators stone-cold regardless of the thermostat, we finally had to figure out what was wrong. The apartment manager (and neighbor) came over and discovered that the master valve letting hot water get to the radiators was closed, which is why we have had no heat in the apartment since September. He opened the valve and helped us calibrate the thermostat and radiator settings; the apartment soon began to warm up.
Alex had never visited Bratislava, though he lived until age 11 in socialist and post-socialist Sofia so he had a good standard of comparison. He assured us that, despite being much smaller Bratislava, is ahead of Sofia in transforming to a modern, Western capital.
On Tuesday we explored the old city together, then Suzanne and I headed home and let the youngsters explore on their own for a while.
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| Man at Work is the most famous of the modern bronze statues that dot the old city. Touching the top of the hard hat of the working emerging from the manhole is supposed to be good luck. |
They climbed to the top of the tower at Michalská Brana (Michael's Gate) to take pictures of snowy rooftops.
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| St. Martin's Cathedral with the UFO bridge on the left |
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| The armor-topped gates at Bratislava Castle take on a special hue at sundown in the snow |
Winter at Červený Kameň
If you are a diligent reader of this blog (and have an amazing memory), you may recall that Suzanne and I visited the castle of Červený Kameň (Red Stone) in early September. (See the "Getting Settled" post from 7 September.) It is a beautiful castle that is intact and nicely furnished inside.
We drove out there on Wednesday both to give Sarah and Alex a taste of rural Slovakia and to see the castle. The 75-minute tour in Slovak was very nice, if not as informative as an English tour would have been. Alex's fluency in Bulgarian allowed him to understand some, but the guide spoke quickly and he struggled to keep up. (They have a four-page English handout that describes every room, so we were not totally lost.)
The original castle heating system is still in place, but they do not light the stoves and fireplaces in the winter for the tours. It was very cold inside and out!
Although Sarah took many wonderful pictures of the interior rooms, I am not going to include them here because this post is already very long. But the trees in the castle grounds were magnificent ice sculptures, many having needles of ice clinging to every branch. So here are some of her pictures of the grounds and courtyard.
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| On the road up to the castle |
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| Suzanne and Alex had to stoop to get through the hobbit-sized door. Sarah didn't. |
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| Castle courtyard |
We were all ready for the now-toasty-warm apartment when we got back to Bratislava!
Vienna
Alex was scheduled to fly back to Sofia on Thursday afternoon from the Vienna airport, and neither he nor Sarah had ever visited Vienna, so we wanted to squeeze in a quick trip to the center of the city for them. Suzanne had come down with a nasty cold, so she stayed home as Alex, Sarah, and I headed to Vienna in the morning for four hours of sightseeing.
I had never seen Vienna in the snow; it is different and lovely. Here are a few of our pictures from the day.
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| The penguin statues seem right at home in the snow! |
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| The Waltz King! |
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| The magnificent home of the Wiener Statsoper |
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| St. Stephen's Cathedral |
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| Inside the cathedral, rebuilt after war damage |
After walking through the cathedral, we stopped for lunch at the touristy but tasty Aida conditorei. After lunch we brought home a sachertorte for the ailing Suzanne. (Translation of the frosting: hearty luck-wishes.)
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| Only Vienna (and maybe Salzburg) would have a souvenir shop entirely devoted to Mozart |
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| Partially frozen lake in Stadt Park |
After a whirlwind tour of some of the highlights of Vienna's First District, we retrieved the car and headed for the airport. Alex made his flight and Sarah and I made it home to nurse Suzanne back to health.
This morning, Friday, we drove Sarah back to the Vienna airport (we are getting to know that road all too well!) and things are getting back to "normal" after a wonderful week of visits and travel.
With classes ended (except for administering exams to a few students), we will have more flexibility to travel, so you can expect a few more "travel posts" before we start our northward trek to our Swedish portal back to Portland in early February. Until then, dovidenia!
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