Terrorist attacks in England

I have much admiration for the English sensibility and stoicism. It is sad to watch yesterday and today's terrorist events unfolding in England.

May 29, 2006 - Return home

[Note: This post is for a past event.]

We returned home yesterday evening after spending 4 nights in London.
London is a very livable city with lots to see and taste. We walked around the city
quite a bit and I got big blisters on my toes. We took a one-day tour to visit
Oxford, Stratford (the birthplace of W. Shakespeare) and Warwick a
well-preserved English's Middle-Age Castle.

May 21, 2006 - Venice

[Note: This post is for a past event.]

We took the wrong train yesterday afternoon; instead of jumping into
the high speed EuroStar train from Firenze to Venice (a 3 hours ride)
we rode a different train the opposite direction to Rome. My only excuse was
that we were in a hurry: the very short - couple of hours - Italian-style railroad
strike was over and we had to hurry to catch our train. We managed
to get to our hotel in Venice at about 1 am dead tired. We just
climbed into bed and was attacked by a couple of mosquitoes: I was
glad that I took the insect spray with me! One should remember this if
ever planning to travel to Venice.

Venice is as crowded as Rome. It is sad to see such a glorious city
almost abandoned and decayed. Only parts of Venice do now have
residents. We walked the back streets this morning and had a wonderful
brunch of Italian panini, coffee and fresh grapes. The table next to
us sat a couple from Australia and we had a good time chatting with
them.

The San Marco piazza had thousands of pigeons which are so used to
people that they climb on their heads and arms begging for foods. The
city is going through a major renovation so hopefully it will continue
to live on for another 500 years.

We are off to London tomorrow to return home so Ciao for now.

May 21, 2006 in Cinque Terre

[Note: This post is for a past event]

We were in Cinque Terre. It is a beautiful, interesting Italian region.
We hiked really hard yesterday for about 3 hours up the mountain
to a height of about 1000 feet.

The Mediterranean sea breezes helped cooling the hot and muggy air
quite a bit. Our feet still feel the blistering sores from yesterday. The day before we
were in Sienna. It was very hot and humid even in the shade. The train
rides were exciting listening to the simultaneous chatting of the
Italians without understanding a word of the conversations. The
Italians seem able to understand continuous and simultaneous
conversations without any problem.

We will be traveling to Venice tomorrow. It will be a long (about 7 hours)
train ride since we have to backtrack through Firenze.

May 17, 2006 in Italy

[Note: This is for a past event]

We took the high speed EuroStar from Rome to Firenza yesterday.
The 90 minutes train ride was interesting; we watched several older
European couples arguing quite passionately about something. They went
on for the most of the train ride until a conductor came by with an
intepreter. We still did not know what it was all about except that
they showed their Romanian passports to the conductors.

We checked in to the Degli Orafi hotel. It is about a hundred feet
from the Vecchio bridge. I blamed it all to the Internet. Before the trip
I checked many Internet sources for hotel and many had reported
about unsavory characters loitering near the hotel. I then remembered
that one of the rooms in the  Degli Orafi - which I assumed to be in a
safer neighborhood - was used for the movie °Room with a view" so I
sent them emails and made the reservation. Well, all Firenze hotels
have loitering unsavory characters. Degli Orafi has them across the street!

Degli Orafi is a very nice hotel. We had two rooms and two baths! The decor
is quite amazing. After checking in we walked to the Duomo and were
very impressed with the famous church and its Dome. Everything costs
money in Italy nowadays. We paid to get in to climb the 414 steps
leading to the top of the church. The view was spectacular there to
most of Firenze, 92 meters down.

I had made the Uffizi museum reservations so we did not have to wait
to get into the museum this morning. As we strolled through the two
wings of  paintings and statues I was thinking that a PBS DVD of the
Uffizi may not be a bad idea unless one prefers to justle with the
zillions of tourists ooh-aahing about art. By the way,
we now know the difference between tempera and tempura.

Susan did look at the previous email today and claimed complete
innocence. I had provided her with deniability for all the grammatical
and spelling errors.

We will be going to Siena tomorrow and will travel to Cinque Terre a couple
of days later.

First day, May 15, 2006 in Rome

[Note: This is for a past event.]

Susan and I arrived in Rome yesterday evening. It was a very nice
flight: when told that we were on our first anniversary we were
upgraded to first class on British Airways. It sure was high flying:
the foods were good and on real china with real silverwares. And the
seats were converted into a twin-sized bed after dinner. Still we were
somewhat tired when we arrived in Rome. We checked into our hotel, the
Belle Suite Rome and after a short nap we walked several miles to the
Spanish Steps which are underwhelmed, the so-so Travis Fountain and
had some gelato which is the Italian version of our American ice
cream! There are absolutely so many people, tourists packed in Rome.
Millions of tourists.. the subways were so packed that we lost the
fear of pickpockets; there was no way anyone could move so picking
someone pocket is - I was sure - out of the question.

After a long night of sleep we felt a bit ambitiously adventurous: we
took the very early subway to the Vatican and to visit other places
later. I had made reservation ahead of time so we did not have to wait
for several hours in hot Italian summer to get into the Vatican
Museum. The Sistine Chapel frescoes had been cleansed so they looked
very bright and almost fake. Again, people are everywhere. Tour groups
from every country on Earth were here today. We then walked several
miles to the Pantheon and were awed by the incredibly fine example of
early first centuries Roman architecture and engineering inside. We
have with us a Rome map, one of the very best but still were lost
several times. Many Roman streets change name quite abruptly.

We took several buses later to travel to the Colosseum and to the
Roman ruins near by. The Colosseum looked much larger when we climbed
upstairs to level 1. It made ones paused thinking about all the bloody
sports that took place there and the thousands of people died there
for the entertainment of the Romans back then. We took the subway back
to Termini, the main train station and walked to our hotel dead tired.
Dinner at Del Giglio - recommended by our hotel manager was excellent.

The hotel's computer does not have an Xd card reader for me to
download our pictures. We will be travelling to Firenze (Florence,
Italy) tomorrow. Hopefully, we will be able to report to you our
travel as we progress.

So Ciao for now.