Brian Visits

Our son Brian was already in Florence when we returned from Ireland, and we met him in the train station and had a nice dinner in town. After a few low-key days locally, we set out on a wine tasting and dining day trip to two of our favorite spots in Tuscany. The first stop was Radda in Chianti and the Castello di Radda winery.

Our good friend, fellow photographer, and budding travel writer Sandy Swanton accompanied us.

After sampling wines and topping up our supply, we had lunch in Radda at our favorite little osteria, La Bottega di Giovannino, where our friendly waitress Monica always remembers us.

Leaving Radda and these funky twin lion gargoyles, we headed for Cortona. We chronicled our first visit to Cortona in our post of 5 July, and our primary idea was to end up our day trip with dinner from Ristorante Nessun Dorma's eclectic menu. Now well into the warm summer, our dinner was delightful out on the patio. Before dinner, we had visited again the church of Santa Margherita (where I realized this time that Santa Margherita's remains were in a glass sarcophagus in the nave of the alter) and the Fortezza di Girifalco.

Church of Santa Margherita viewed from Fortezza di Girifalco

On Brian's last full day with us, we went into Florence with tickets to see the Medici Chapel. Whole history books are written about the Medicis, whose influence spanned the 14th to 18th centuries.  The chapel is testimony to both their power and their patronage of the arts.  The first room is a museum of small artifacts such as this reliquary:

I for one was unfamiliar with the concept of reliquaries before my first trip to Italy nine years ago, but they are quite common in churches all over the country. They typically encase in glass a "relic" of a saint, pope, or other notable. Santa Margherita's sarcophagus in Cortona is an extreme example. We did not do a good job of noting descriptions to go with photos, so I don't know whose relic is in this one, but given the size, I would guess it is a finger bone.

The chapel itself is dramatic in its use of a wide variety of colors of marble and stone, and usually for the statuary in wall alcoves. Unfortunately for our timing, most of the statuary was under renovation and removed, and there was a lot of scaffolding up.

And of course there was the art that the Medicis so vigorously supported.

Next to the main chapel is the Sagrestia Nuova, which despite its name predates the main chapel. The Nuova was designed by Michelangelo and contains much statuary by his hand.  The centerpiece is Michelangelo's tomb for Lorenzo the Magnificent.

I have always wondered if historically famous persons always had grandiose titles such as "the Magnificent", but one needs to look no further than Lorenzo's firstborn son, Piero, to refute the idea:  he was totally incompetent and became known as "Piero the Unfortunate." But another of Lorenzo's sons, Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, fared better and has an equally impressive tomb on an adjacent wall. It was Giuliano that held our fascination and led to our plan to see the Medici Chapel with Brian because, when we visited nine years ago, we were amazed by the resemblance between Giuliano and Brian. We have been planning this moment for nine years!  What do you think?

Brian is our last visitor, and il nostro anno Italiano will be over in two weeks. We still have one adventure planned here, and we are sure we will return again, if only for short visits. Brian will return someday also, as ensured by rubbing the nose of the bronze cinghale.

Our Visit with Ellen - the West Coast

In the middle of our visit with Ellen Bonnell in Ireland, we headed off to the west coast for a couple of days in a rental car. This was a gut-wrenching adventure for all three of us because we had never driven on the left side before. Going in, you think the problem will be moving into the right lane and risking a head-on. When you actually get behind the wheel, that isn't the problem; instead you can't get used to your position at the right side of the lane, and you tend to drift left. But with two vocal passengers helping, we all got the hang of it. In any case, we never hit anything, and rolled into Galway for lunch.

After lunch, we headed for the scenic Cliffs of Moher, and promptly got very lost on a little country lane with rain coming down. After some incredibly good directions from two ladies standing under umbrellas, we finally got to the Cliffs. The rain let up a bit as we walked to the first observation point and we got to see the Cliffs. But before we could get the cameras out, fog rolled in. I found this picture online which pretty much looks like what we saw for a few minutes.

(from http://www.skibbereeneagle.ie)

That night in Galway we did a pub crawl for dinner and music. You can always find live music in Ireland. The next morning we headed for the Connemara district, known as where old Ireland lives on: cottages with thatched roofs, small plots of land divided by stone walls, and everyone is a redhead. It wasn't quite that way, especially on the drive west along the coast, where the road was lined with modern homes with roofs other than thatch. Turning inland, our objective was Kylemore Abbey, but (can you guess?) we got very lost.  We ended up at a small park with little pockets of beaches on a windswept coast.

We made friends with the locals...

...and small plots with stone walls were quite in evidence.

After our journey, we identified this locale as Bothar Gear. A small plaque in the park identified it as the location used for a movie we had never heard of, but whose claim to fame was it was the first film done entirely in the Irish language. Which may be the reason none of us had heard of it. 

We always say that life is a journey, not a destination, and we were glad we made a wrong turn and got to experience this wild, blustery little corner of Ireland. But eventually it was time to move on to Kylemore Abbey.

Originally built as a family estate by a wealthy Englishman in the Victorian Age, it was acquired by the Irish Benedictine Nuns in 1920. The Nuns ran a boarding school for girls until 2010. It is now open to tourists with the proceeds maintaining its historical heritage. After touring the castle itself, we walked along the lake to the chapel.

The other big attraction at Kylemore Abbey is the Victorian walled garden.

Our plans were to return to Dublin that evening, but after our wrong turn to unexpected delights and giving Kylemore Abbey its proper amount of time, it was getting late. We decided to see if we could find lodgings in any of the small towns on the Connemara road. We rolled into Oughterard, which we had never heard of before (and certainly could not pronounce), which was so quaint and cute that we just had to stay. There were rooms available at the Connemara Lake Hotel, and we prepared ourselves for sticker shock on the room prices. When quoted prices, we all kept our poker faces but exchanged quick glances that expressed our amazement at how inexpensive they were. Best of all, it was less than 50 meters to the local pub--one with a thatched roof!

At the risk of repeating ourselves ad nauseam, every night in Ireland we were in a pub with live music. Pub night in Oughterard was particularly unique: the music happened if the locals decided to bring their instruments and play--which they were welcome to do, and which they did the night we were there. Then, other patrons got up and sang. It was open-mike night, but live without the karaoke machine and without the mike. Bert, you would have loved it!

Our Visit with Ellen - Dublin

Our good friend Ellen Bonnell is finishing up a Masters Degree program at University College Dublin, and we have been meaning to visit her while she was still there. We finally did it last week.  

We had trouble finding a hotel and we didn't know why until we got there. It was Dublin Horse Show week, a huge event that draws an international crowd. We had to settle for a hotel that was a bit above our usual price range.

It's a long walk to Reception

After two months in Italy with temperatures in excess of 35 degrees, it was a joy to go someplace where it barely got up to 20. BTW, if you don't react to the hotness or coldness of that, it may be because you live in one of the few countries (specifically, Bahamas, Belize, Cayman Islands, Palau, and the U.S.) that does not use the Celsius scale. But I digress. Ellen had a major paper to finish on our first day there, so we toured Dublin on our own. With rain coming down intermittently, indoor venues were welcome, such as...

It was very educational. We learned how to properly pour Guinness. Carmen showed some flair--hers is the one with the little bump on top. The Guinness people have made their brewery into a mini-theme park. The picture to the right is at a big waterfall where they extoll the virtues of the water they use.

After Ellen was done with her class, we headed for the west coast of Ireland for the weekend. That was so different than Dublin that we will report that in a separate post. Returning on Monday, it was already early afternoon when we set out for Trinity College and the Book of Kells. Late for lunch, we found a welcome pub.

Since it was almost three o'clock by then, we asked the waiter near the door if they were still serving food. He said, "Yes, but..." and hesitated, not sure if he should tell us more. He finally decided to go ahead, and said that in five minutes, the place (which now was totally empty) would be mobbed with students getting out of class at Trinity. That sounded like a recommendation instead of a negative, so we sat down and ordered. On the bar, the bartender was filling and lining up pint after pint of Guinness in anticipation. Like clockwork, the place was mobbed five minutes later.

The entrance to Trinity College

The Library at Trinity College is home to the Book of Kells, regarded as the finest example of an "illuminated manuscript" and as Ireland's finest national treasure. Pictures of it are not allowed, but you can see an image of one of the pages we saw here. Climbing up to the main floor known as the Long Room, we found the oldest known Irish harp, the model for the coat of arms of Ireland. Legend has it that it was the harp of Brian Boru, high king of Ireland in the early 11th century, but scholarly research places its origin around 1500. Photography is allowed, but it is a difficult shot due to the reflections from its glass case, and here is the best we could do, with our apologies, along with a shot in the stacks:

Just about everyone who comes to Dublin has to have their picture taken with the statue of Molly Malone. We are sure you know the song that has enshrined Molly in Irish lore, but if not, we will arrange for Ellen to sing it for you--she has learned it by heart from many a night in an Irish pub.

On the subject of Irish music, every night we were in a pub listening to great music, Irish and otherwise. The first night was the rowdiest: dancers were pounding the floor of the upstairs room so hard the bartender kept threatening to throw them out, and finally did, only to have them run back into the room for one last hurrah, to the cheers of the crowd. On our last night, the six-man band below, Mutefish, was busking for free on a street in the Temple Bar district. They played for about three hours. They are an incredibly tight band and bill their eclectic instrumental music as "progressive techno folk". 

Barcelona

Our Great European Tour seemed to organize itself into separate themes for each place we visited.  If Amsterdam was about paintings, Copenhagen about castles, and Switzerland about natural beauty, then Barcelona was about architecture.  We knew virtually nothing about Antoni Gaudi before coming to Barcelona, but left with a huge appreciation for his genius as well as his eccentricity.  There are many Gaudi buildings in Barcelona, but far and away his magnum opus is the Sagrada Familia basilica.  

Work on it started in 1882.  When Gaudi died in 1926, only a fraction of it was complete, and there were no known techniques for finishing it.  Work continued as ways were found to implement Gaudi's original design.  When we were at the site, there was major activity: cranes in action, workmen swarming over the building, construction noises, scaffolding..  

All of the tiniest details passed through Gaudi's examination.

One of Gaudi's innovations, that he repeated in many projects, was the use of parabolic arches instead of semicircular ones.

Gaudi also worked on the designs of interior treatments and even furniture.

While his designs are structurally efficient and living spaces ergonomic, he seemed to enjoy adding whimsical elements to usually ignored parts, such as here with the tower and chimneys on the roof of the Palau Guell.

Barcelona has a long tradition of dramatic architecture.  We spent a day at the palatial Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya.  By the way, if you think that name is badly spelled Spanish, think again--most landmarks, place-names, streets, etc. are in the Catalan language, not Spanish.  The Museu is fronted by the huge and impressive Font Magica de Montjuic.

The museum is gorgeous inside also.

Nearby is the National Theater, another fine work of architecture.

To close on a note completely different than architecture, we are happy to report that the tapas in Barcelona were excellent, and we enjoyed many fine meals there.

Switzerland

The plan for Switzerland was different:  instead of hanging in a big city, we would do a mini road trip to small towns and the countryside.  Our first stop was Bern, the capital of Switzerland, and a quaint town besides...

...complete with clock and glockenspiel.

For dinner, we had fondue and our Swiss food discovery, rosti (if I had a German keyboard, that "o" would have two dots over it).  Rosti is shredded potatoes roasted with whatever meats and vegetables you choose.  Don't plan on dieting in Switzerland.  The next morning, we bid Bern good-bye and headed for the Alps off in the distance.

It was a hot day, and we stopped at a swimming beach along the lake named Thunersee.  We couldn't resist dipping our feet in the water.  Fed by melting snow, the water was a lot warmer than we expected.  We might have had a different opinion if we actually went swimming in deeper water.








We climbed up into the mountains, past a roaring stream, to Grindelwald for lunch.

After lunch, we were heading for the town of Murren and our hotel for the night, through beautiful countryside that looked like a postcard.

Looking at our maps, we were puzzled by the fact that we could not find a road that actually went to Murren, west of the valley we were in.  Our puzzlement turned to concern when the valley became defined by a sheer cliff to the west, with spectacular waterfalls.

Reading the fine print on our booking, we saw for the first time that Murren is only accessible by cable car.  We found the cable car base (with its huge parking lot) and thoroughly enjoyed the ride up to Murren.  In one way, this made our Great European Tour complete:  we had traveled by airplane, train, bus, boat, trolley, car, and now cable car.

We checked in to our hotel and then walked around the town.  Gary wanted to play chess, of all things!

We have never before had a hotel room with a balcony and a view this good!

...with a spectacular view of the mountains...

...and paragliders going by--below us!

It is so wonderful just standing in the Swiss Alps that it makes you want to burst out in song!