A Blog About Things We Do – Page 3 – Lindsay + Kevin

A Blog About Things We Do

(places and topics list)

Not Italy Come Kevin! (Rome)

We decided to get back to our backpacker roots (or something) in Rome and stay at a hostel. The hostel was OK, though the common area (the main reason to stay at a hostel in my opinion) was outside of the building and down the street half a block. This wasn’t a huge deal, except for the fact that when we asked the guy working at the front desk if there was a common area at all he told us no but that they were building one (there was construction going on). It was something of a confusing mis-communication. Oh well.

So, Rome. I feel like the past few blog posts are a bit boring in terms of listing things we did, and that’s mainly because we are following a pretty standard tourist path in some of these cities. Any photos you’ve seen of Rome pretty much sum up what we did in Rome.

For example…

We went to the Vatican Museum and saw all of the crazy/famous/interesting/old/plentiful art that lives there.

We were lucky that we didn’t have to wait in line for more than 20 minutes to get in, but that said, truly the Vatican is overwhelming. We read online that there is apparently 7km of stuff inside Vatican city to see. Crazy. So, we saw what we could see without wanting to kill ourselves and drank cappuccino out in the square when we thought we might. Squeezed through the Sistine Chapel and ooh-ed and ahh-ed in the map room (which was the coolest gallery by far, in our opinion).

The tapestry room

We sent some mail from Vatican city (get excited)

After seeing all we could really see in the Vatican (and walking down the awesome spiral stairway leading out)

we walked to St. Peter’s Basillica which was INSANE (this picture shows nothing). The line of people wrapped around the square was incredible. It must have taken them all day to get in.

We decided (after moseying around for a bit debating whether or not we should get in line) we would instead walk to the Coliseum, which was no small feat, instead. The weather was nothing short of perfect – blue skies and a small breeze to boot, so we figured we’d go for it.

The walk didn’t disappoint.

Not too far into our walk, the sun started to set, and it was magic.

And, we finally made it!

That night, we were starving. We decided to walk (a bit further :)) to a restarant we were alerted to by a chick we rode with on our way from Florence that she and her friends recommended. After arriving an hour earlier than it opened (damn Italians and their late night eating!) we sat in a nearby park and read. Our wait turned out to be worth it, as we had a bunch of amazing food, including carbonara which is something Rome is known for (we had it twice at two different restaurants)

three different types of bruschetta

and some other mushroom/pancetta pasta, which was pretty awesome.

The next day, after seeing all of the major sites we planned to see, we stopped to have a quick “breakfast”

Standard fare:

and cruised around the streets. After about an hour, we happened across a grocery store which enabled us to have one of the best lunches I’ve ever had. This grocery store was really amazing (not fancy), and it kind of felt like something in a movie. A bunch of dudes cutting meat from 15 different types of cheap, beautiful prosciutto. Fresh mozzarella (that is again) super cheap! but also amazing quality. The strange thing for us was that there were literally legs of animals sitting on the counter that you could have cured meat cut from. Anyway, the lunch was awesome. We bought fresh tomatoes, basil, mozzarella balls (again :)), 2 types of fresh-cut deli meat, 2 types of fancy fresh foccacia bread, a hard cheese of some sort, apples, and a bunch of peel-and-eat shrimp. It was a feast, to say the least (all for 15 euros).

So, I suppose those were the highlights of our time in Rome. We were only there for 2 days (short and sweet!) but I feel like we capitalized on all of the main attractions and really enjoyed ourselves.

March 3, 2015
Carnevale in Venice

From Ancona, as I mentioned previously, we decided that we’d go North to Venice. Actually, Lindsay decided that, and when she told me she had decided this was a good idea I was thrilled because it seemed “smart.” I imagine traveling to a new countries in the way that we are traveling to new countries is sort of like what it must be like for a novice sculpture (let’s say the goal is to sculpt a life size dog) to start a new project with a giant, huge, block of clay. It’s tough to know where to start, and it’s tough to know once you’ve started if you’ve started in the right way. But, once you REALLY get started, then things start to fall into place and you realize that at least you’ve started. Or at least that’s how I imagine us…or something.

Anyway, we decided to go to Venice.

We used Bla Bla Car (a website) and found a ride with two really nice guys (Pablo and Alfredo!). We met at Ikea (which was so awesome, because I love Ikea) and made the three hour drive with these two really nice Italian guys.
Lindsay drinking a beer in IKEA

Actually, one of the dudes was born in Argentina, but had lived in Italy for most of his life. Aside: there are a huge number of Argentinians in Italy it seems, or we just randomly keep running into them for some reason.

The drive was nice, and I technically was in Bologna (I stepped out of the car for 10 seconds, Lindsay did not. For the record – although she won’t let me count that) when we dropped Pablo off. Bologna being one of the “big” cities in Italy that Lindsay and I didn’t really visit.

On the drive, we found out that Carnevale (which is how they spell it, btw) was happening in Venice when we were going to be there. It’s a bit difficult to explain how awesome this was, but basically there wasn’t a better time to be visiting Venice than during Carnevale season. This also explained why it was so difficult finding a room (Lindsay did an awesome job and we ended up staying right near Saint Marco Square), and why the cheapest room we found was 70 euros.

Carnevale is a big deal it turns out in Venice, and when we got there at night after taking a train from the nearby city that our driver dropped us off at, it was like a totally different travel experience then we’ve had so far. In general, everywhere we’ve gone in Europe has been pretty dead as far as other tourists go, but when we got to Venice the streets were PACKED with people dressed up in costumes, throwing glitter and confetti, etc. The shops were all open, vendors were outside selling mulled wine, and in general it was a pretty big/awesome/beautiful party. It felt like we stepped into a movie about how cool Venice is on accident. It was awesome.

So we hopped off the train and wee walked a good 2 or 3 kilometers through the zig-zagged streets/canals/etc of Venice and eventually found our hotel. It was nice enough, though very loud (which actually was sort of nice itself) because of all of the people singing/laughing/yelling/talking on the streets below.

Here I am with all of my devices (compass, GPS and phone trying my best to be inconspicuous)

So, unfortunately the rest of our time in Venice was spent doing basically the same thing we always do: walking around and people watching. So, pictures will hopefully give an idea of what things were like.

Some memories specific memories include:

People watching…

Eating a pizza down by a canal one afternoon

Eating our first legit Italian breakfast (espresso based drink + pastry) – multiple times

Mulled wine and “spritz” with Campari and dancing to “Uptown Funk” in the city square…
Again, people watching 🙂

Lindsay had one fun night of dancing and drinking limoncello and watching the fireworks

Eating these ridiculously delish fried dough and cheese with (once prosciutto, once with sardines (not intentionally) while walking around partying ourselves to DEATH one night(and buying this REALLY cheap and terrible juice box wine and drinking it.)

Lindsay also went to a cool church one night for service and had a cool interaction with a tiny, little old man that was apparently like 4′ 6″ (inside the church)

Walking a long ass way to find get to the bus station we were leaving from (like 3-4km through those crazy streets with our packs). Here Lindsay is, stopping for sustenance (espresso + sweet treat) about 1/2 way to where we needed to be…

Here I am looking just awesome.

Going geocaching (easy cache!)

The truth is that most of what we did in Venice is what you’ve likely seen before in photos. The important thing (I think) is to note that Venice completely lived up to my expectations of what Venice is.

Leaving Venice was a slight pain on account of us having to walk 3ish kilometers from our hotel to the bus station. To make matters worse, on top of being an already (planned) hour early for the bus to make sure we had everything in order when it came, I ended up remembering the ticket time incorrectly and it turned out that we were actually 4 or so hours early. So we spent a long time sitting on the cement reading. Luckily we are no strangers to sitting on the street/sidewalk/dirt/airport/etc for hours, waiting for transportation. At least it was a pretty nice day.

March 3, 2015
Quick day in Ancona

Well, Ancona was our first stop in Italy. It is a port town, and it is not super touristy from what I can tell. Lindsay and I stayed in a super nice hotel (one of the most expensive places we’ve stayed on this trip), only because it was the only practical option for us as nothing else was available for a single night. The hotel, called the “Seeport Hotel” had a fancy worldpool shower, and we got a chocolate on our bed. And in general it was just really nice with a great view of the port. Also, the included breakfast was super fancy, with fancy cheeses and fancy other stuff. It was fancy. And fancy.

Ancona, well, sadly I don’t have many photos, and there isn’t much I can say that’s exciting. We were only there for a single day and Lindsay was tired as she didn’t sleep all night, and feeling a bit sick, so she ended up sleeping at the hotel. I left, and had quite the adventure. I didn’t do anything particularly exciting, but I did a TON of stuff. I actually tracked it, I walked something like 12 kilometers, and I walked to any and everything that I saw that looked interesting. I walked to old churches, I walked up big hills that overlooked the port where I read for a while in a bench, I walked through old city ruins, I walked into museums (though just through the door, I didn’t pay to actually go in). I even somehow found myself in what felt like the countryside walking through a VERY VERY old cemetery where all of the gravestones were written in Hebrew (?). And I got my first (at least on this trip!) Italian gelato.

Overall, it was an amazing day. It was also warm and sunny on this particular day, which was great and not the norm. I did take a few photos (film), so once I develop them I’ll try to post them here, probably.

For now, here is Lindsay looking great getting ready to move onto our next destination:

Our next destination being VENICE! Which we traveled to via blahblahcar where we first met up with our rideshare partners (Pablo and Alfredo) at IKEA, of all places.

Kevin with our train tickets in front of IKEA

Lindsay orders a BEER at IKEA

February 25, 2015
Ferry from Split, Croatia to Ancona, Italy

We took a night ferry from Split to Italy, in large part because Lindsay thought it would be fun to take a ferry somewhere, but also because it’s a pratical way of getting from Croatia to Italy. The original plan was to go to Arcona, then go to the South of Italy and then head back North, on the way down sticking to the East coast and on the way back up sticking to the West coast. That has since changed because we realized that it was probably a bit crazy to go in a circle around the country, so we’ve instead decided to go North to Venice, then work our way South to Sicily and then finally fly to France (Marseille) from there. Basically, only go South (except to go North to Venice from Ancona).

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We walked with our packs from our AirBnB apartment in Split to the port of Split, which was roughly one kilometer, not to bad. Then we walked around until we found the pier that our ship was leaving from.

The Ferry was sort of like a cruise ship, except the entire bow of the boat folds down and makes a huge ramp for cars and trucks to drive in. So it’s bit more utilitarian then a normal cruise ship, and holds more semi-trucks. Before we actually got on the cruise ship we had to wait and pass through imigration which is always sort of fun and exciting, especially when it’s with a new form of transportation (airports are all pretty much the same, but the ferry was a bit different feeling).

Getting onto the ferry is also a lot different then getting on a cruise ship because you walk through the GIANT part of the ship that is for cars (the bottom level), and again it feels very utilitarian. But then you walk up stairs into something that looks like the lobby of a cheap hotel, if that cheap hotel was on a ferry. There was a reception person and everything.

This was a bit strange for us, because as far as I could tell everybody on the boat had a reserved cabin for the trip. There are a few different types of tickets you can buy, ranging from ~70ish dollars to ~170 dollars a ticket. The cheapest are the “deck seating” which we had, and then there is the “cabin” which is what everybody else seemed to have. The cabin is basically, as you may have guessed, a cabin with a bed, etc. The “deck” is basically, as far as we could tell, “sit anywhere you want as long as somebody doesn’t tell you that you can’t sit there.” This sounds easy enough, but when you get on the ship it’s a bit disorienting and I felt what I imagine the third class passengers on the Titanic must have felt like. There were lots of people directing passengers to their cabins, but there wasn’t a person directing deck people to their decks, you just sort of had to figure out where you could/couldn’t sit.

We ended up walking up some stairs and findng a big room with a bunch of tables and chairs in it. It looked sort of like a mess hall or something, or perhaps a cheap restaurant seating area. We said, “maybe THIS is the deck?” Again, sounds simple enough, but it wans’t clear if this room with tables/chairs was the place we were supposed to sleep that night. But, on the end of the room was a big bench with a comfortable enough cushion, so Lindsay and I put our stuff on the cushion and made it home for the night.

One thing I’m sad about is that I didn’t really walk around the ship much, or go out and enjoy the brisk sea air. This was in part because I was worried that if I got up I’d give up my seat, and in part because it was freezing cold outside and we pretty much went straight to bed when we got on the ship to try to get a full 8 hours of sleep.

One highlight on the trip: the tables in this room ended up filling up with a bunch of men who ate dinner at the tables, and after dinner they all sang songs. For like 3 or 4 hours. It was slightly surreal. Lindsay and I are on the bench at the end of the big room on this boat, each in our silk sleeping bag liners, with eye masks on (the lights are on fullblast all night), and then the rest of the room is filled with men eating dinner and singing songs. I guess they were in some sort of choir, apparently traveling to Italy to sing or something. It was pretty cool. Eventually I had to put in earplugs, because these were not quiet songs, they were loud, full on choir songs until after midnight. Video/audio recording hopefully will be posted here.

Around 7:50 AM, after my alarm went off but I apparently didn’t hear it, somebody nudged me and said “Ancona” – and sure enough, we were docked in Ancona! Like magic! So I woke Lindsay up, we threw our stuff in our packs and ran down the stairs and got off the boat, while we were still waking up.

February 25, 2015
Croatia in words
Croatia in a few words

I haven’t been so great at writing blog posts lately, not for any really great reason, I just haven’t been spending the time. Part of the issue, I think, is that we’ve been in the mindset that when we move from one country to the next we’ll write a blog post, but I I think I end up trying to type too much or we don’t type nearly enough.

Anyway, hopefully I’ll starting writing more frequent blog posts. This one is not really one of those though, because it’s another “catch up.”

Croatia was a pretty great country. I’d recommend you visit it if you get a chance. Zagreb, the capital, where we started, felt like a small-ish city compared to a Paris or a Munich, but nice. It sort of reminded me of what I remember Prague to be like I guess. We did a few noteworthy things there:
- We went to the “museum of broken relationships” – basically a bunch of items from various failed relationships (most of them romantic, but not all). The stories behind the actual items were the most interesting part of the museum. I was/am very happy to have found that the museum felt “authentic” to me, not like people had edited a bunch of stories to make them incredible when they weren’t. There were just a bunch of real feeling, often sad, thought provoking little stories to accompany the items.
- The mushroom museum. This was difficult to find. We took two days to find it actually (not searching the entire time of course!). The first day we asked the tourist information area where the museum was and they drew the location on a map and said “Next to the Hypo Bank.” We found the bank easy enough (it was visibile from the tourist office), but found not a single sign that indicated that there was a museum there. We ended up walking around the building, but found nothing. The next day we went back, did the same search again, but this time we went into a random door that looked like it led to a closed down building. You walk in the door and it was dark, sort of like a large apartment building that was condemmed or something. But we walked up the staircase (the museum was supposed to be on the second floor), at this point having no idea if this was the correct place or not (having seen no sign). On the second floor, sure enough there was a sign that said something about the something-something society, not exactly “MUSHROOM MUSEUM IS HERE” or anything, but it sounded like something that might be related to a museum so we knocked and it ended up being the right place. The museum itself was small-ish (two rooms or so), but really really impressive. Hundreds of different types of mushrooms, all well preserved. Plus it was free.
Otherwise, in Zagreb, we spent a lot of time walking around the city, eating different foods (things were very cheap having flown from Netherlands), and walking more. I did some work on my website project, Lindsay and I watched a few episodes of Deadwood (a great show by the way).

We also went to see Interstellar in a movie theater. This was for us both I think a great experience because
1. It was the first American movie we’ve been to on this trip (we saw two movies in Hindi in India, but those were Bollywood films)
2. I had wanted to see the movie for a long time, in theathers, and had assumed I’d miss the opportunity but for whatever reason the movie was still playing in Zagreb
3. The movie was awesome I thought, and Lindsay thought
4. It was pretty cheap – I think we paid around 7 USD for two tickets
5. I very much enjoy going to the movies in general, and going to the movies in a different country is always an interesting experience I think. Sort of like eating at McDonalds in a different country, it’s similar but the differences make it so interesting
We ended up heading to Zadar next after Zagreb. Zadar is a small coastal town, and the photos if you were to google look amazing. Zadar was very beautiful, but for me at least more then most cities we’ve visited recently it wasn’t really well suited for tourism during the winter. There are a bunch of places we’ve visited that are sort of “dead” during the winter, and often time that’s OK (even nice sometimes as you feel like less of an annoyng tourist and more of a crazy tourist). But Zadar was really really dead.

Honestly I can’t exactly think what we did in Zadar at this point, except that Lindsay liked the city because she ran every day and there were a bunch of nice routes. I did a fair amount of programming I believe, and I drank some coffee and ate musli.

We also saw the Sea Organ, which is basically a cement structure created so that air is forced up over the holes in the concrete structure when waves come in. So it’s like an organ or some other wind instrument. The cool thing about it is that it’s quite large, and it’s actually built into the sidewalk that goes along the water.

Anyway, our time in Zadar we stayed at the “Sea Gallery” apartment, which was a small apartment with a bunch of water colors the owner painted hung up on the walls. It was a pretty nice little apartment. As I mentioned, I’m unsure of what exactly we did in Zadar, but whatever it was we did it for a few days and then moved onto Split.

Split was probably the easiest town to love, and probably the most popular tourist destination I’d guess, but that didn’t stop me from loving it. It’s on the water, there is a park right near the city area, the entire city feels like the sea/water is part of the everyday life, and in general it was just a cool town.

We did a lot of walking in Split, which isn’t abnormal, but we had a few days of beautiful, warm sunshine and it felt like heaven. I went swimming one day, which was great. Well, it was good, maybe not great. It felt great to get in the water, but honestly the water was the coldest I’ve been in in a while. The type of water that is difficult to stay in for long because you get a headache the second your face goes under. Still, even in the shallow water (2-3 feet max?) I brought my mask and saw a bunch of beautiful sea anemones (which is a nearly impossible word to spell by the way).

Lindsay and I ate out one nice meal in Split. The photos you’ve seen already, but we had the black squid ink risotto. I actually thought it was really really good. I also talked to the bartender/waiter for a while about it and asked him if it was just a tourist gimmick, and he said no, and that he didn’t eat it all the time but normally once a month or so.

I also really liked Split because it felt a bit like a gateway to other awesome water areas of Croatia. For instance, the island of Vis. We didn’t go, but I talked to a guy in a freediving/spearfishing shop about places to spearfish and apparently Vis is one of the top spearfishing and scuba diving places in Croatia. This I found exciting.

Another thing I really enjoyed about Split was sitting outside with all of the locals (mainly men) along the water drinking a beer at 1 in the afternoon. Seriously, there were guys that would sit outside all day long on these benches with their friends and their dogs and drink beer. I remember on day Lindsay and I sat outside and drank a beer in the morning, then we walked around all day and did whatever we did, and then on the way home that night, after dark, the same group of guys were sitting exactly where they had been before, still drinking beer and chatting.

There was also a fishing area (best way I can put it), where there were a bunch of small fishing boats and nets and things laying out drying, and there would always be a group of guys sitting around. One particularly memorable day there was a group of guys who I think had been fishing, and they were sitting around on a picnick bench in their fisherman gear, and somebody was grilling up some fish, and then they all started singing. It was awesome. It was like, a fisherman song, I like to think. Maybe they were singing about the sea, and how beautiful it is, and how they love fishing and the sea air. I have an audio recording of it actually, maybe I’ll try to post it.

In closing, let me say that I’d recommend anybody go to Croatia. I would likely recommend visiting in the summer (though I think Split in particular is crazy with tourists at this point, a bit different from the chill atmosphere we had!). I think I’d like to go back to Croatia one day, and when I do I think I’ll probably stick to the South and to the islands.

Next up, a ferry to Ancona, Italy.
February 25, 2015
Croatia in photos.

(***Forgive me in advance for the worst blog post yet, but we’ve already done so much since Croatia and time’s a wastin’! In the effort to get caught up, here’s a short and sweet version of our time – but I’m not going to do this beautiful country justice!***)

So, when Kev and I decided to visit Croatia, we went to escape the Schengen region visa restrictions, hunker down, save some money, see some beautiful sights, but again really, to avoid digging into our visa time. I have wanted to visit Croatia for years, since one of my best pals, Brian, mentioned it to me as a possible rock climbing destination during college. Croatia turned out to BLOW our expectations, and will be somewhere we without question visit in the near future (hopefully in the summer) to scuba dive, spearfish and enjoy the absolutely pristine, beautiful water. These photos are backwards given our (sadly!) very basic route due to the way they uploaded, but you’ll see a glimpse of what made this country so incredible.

Split:

Squid-ink risotto (a local delicacy) color created by, you guessed it, a perforate ink sack of a squid. Kinda made my stomach turn (seriously, imagine eating across from those lips pictured below). Kinda delicious.

Sunsets like you would not believe.A couple photos for our dear friend, Nicola.Kevin (being a bad ass), doing something even the locals refused to do…swim.

Zadar.

I told you, the sunsets, right?! I got to run on this boardwalk every day. Heaven. Heaven, I tell you.

Zagreb.

Mushroom museum.Museum of Broken Relationships (yes, you read that right). It was awesome.And another 2 weeks zip by, off to Italy we go!

February 19, 2015
Amsterdam

From France, we went to Amsterdam via bus which was uneventful. Lindsay slept the whole way, I did some programming stuff, I got a coffee, and we ate great salads that we bought at a grocery store in Paris (mine was some sort of smoked salmon + rice + wasabi mayo, Lindsay’s was some sort of quinoa/hummus/edamame something-or-other).

We arrived in Amsterdam around 8 in the morning and took a train from the bus station to the central train station. One pretty nice thing is we had some random guy come up to us and give us a train ticket that was good for a week (though only during non-rush hour) for free. I think he was a fellow backpacker. It was nice of him.

Amsterdam is a city that I really like, and Lindsay also really likes now. She says it’s the most beautiful city she has ever been in. Grated, she still hasn’t been to all of Europe yet, but still, I have to agree, it is pretty beautiful. For me, having never been to any of the Nordic countries, I imagine this is a taste of what it would be like. Everything is sort of, I don’t know, Ikea-ish, but in a super quality sort of way.

The food was great, there were bikes and young people everywhere, it was super walkable, and the Anne Frank museum was worth the trip alone (according to Lindsay). I didn’t go to the museum because she bought a special “Anne Frank tour” ticket online, and there only happened to be one ticket left during the days we were there. She had read online that there is typically a line wrapped around the building that people stand in for hours to get in (which it turns out there was, in the sleeting/snowing/crappy weather), and to avoid that, and get the most of her visit to the museum (she was really interested in it for her teaching stuff) she bought the ticket for herself and I decided I’d go hang out and do something else, which I felt good about.

So, below is a random picture that doesn’t really demonstrate what I’m talking about (in regards to the awesomeness of the city) unfortunately (we didn’t take many photos on account of there being a lot of snow/sleet and trying to keep the camera dry), but basically Amsterdam has what I imagine is a taste of what some of the Nordic countries have. BTW, I know we would both love to go to Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, etc, one day.

Anyway, upon arriving in the city proper we walked a kilometer or so to our hostel. This hostel happened to be Intersail hostel, which is a boat. I sadly didn’t get any pictures inside of the boat/ship, but it’s pictured here on the right side (you can’t see it super well :().

Before I type more, let me say that I agreed to not bitch too much about Intersail Hostel here. Lindsay told me “two sentences max as this is water under the bridge, and isn’t what we really care to remember about Amsterdam”, but it’s going to be a few more than that. I’m typing this out mainly in hopes that if somebody ever googles for Intersail Hostel Amsterdam Reviews they might find this and at least know what happened!

When we arrived at Intersail to check in, I was told by Christian (sp?) that we had booked two rooms. I said, “I don’t think so.. I’m pretty sure I only booked a single room for two nights!” Christian, being a nice guy, said, “hmm… ok!” and showed us around the boat. You can see me in this exact moment:

Click here for more about this, if you are bored or want to hear me bitch

Anyway fast forward a few hours, I came back to the hostel and Christian told me that he had talked with the manager/owner, Tommy, who had told him that no, I had in fact booked two rooms and that I needed to pay for the second room. At this point, I figured, "oh shit, maybe I messed up and booked two rooms somehow!" and so I got out my laptop and double checked. I checked my email (where I had a confirmation email from hostelworld.com showing the correct 1 room x 2 nights reservation, and only one!), I logged into my hostelworld account and verified that I only had a single 1 room x 2 nights reservation. I checked my bank account and verified that I was only charged the amount shown on the other communications/records (email, hostelworld.com account, etc) for the deposit for the 1 room x 2nights. I showed all of this to Christian, and he said he'd call the manager ("Tommy") who was on vacation to let him know.I want to be clear that I did and have sense absolutely racked my brain to try and figure out if there is somewhat I could have made a mistake and booked a second room. I tried to think of any way I could have made a mistake, because I WANTED to find out that I had made a mistake so I could just pay some money and be done with the whole issue. "Damn, I made a mistake, I guess I've learned not to do ______ from this experience. Oh well." But I could not figure out where my mistake was. And I can't. And not a single piece of evidence I can find points to any sort of mistake on my part! The next morning (our first and only full day), Christian told me that he had talked to Tommy, and Tommy said that he had two separate bookings from hostelworld.com and that, unfortunately I'd have to pay for the room for the first night (60 euros). Now, I'm not one to generally get angry, and I'm guessing for most anybody reading this the scenario I've setup wouldn't make you feel angry, but to be told that I was going to have to pay some relatively large sum of money for something I had seen no evidence (despite my best efforts) showing any fault on my part, I was super pissed! I told Christian (who for the record was a super nice, quality, cool dude who I felt super bad about him being in the middle) that I was sorry, but I just wasn't able to pay for something I had no evidence of having agreed to pay for, and that if I needed to I would leave the hostel if they wanted to refund me (else I figured I could always take it up with the CC company worse case) but I was sorry but I just wasn't going to pay for something I didn't agree to pay. So, Christian ended up calling Tommy (in Thailand) and have him talk to me on the phone about the whole situation. Now, for the record, I imagine a hostel like Intersail gets a pretty mixed crowd and I don't think that Intersail, Tommy, or anybody else was trying to screw me out of 60 euros, at least not on purpose. I said as much to Tommy. I ended up spending an hour talking with Tommy, walking him through all of the emails/account info/etc that I looked at to figure out what had happened, the process I went through on hostelworld.com, etc. He requested that I send him a copy of my bank statement (which I did, despite feeling annoyed to say the least to be agreeing to such a request!), emails, a screenshot from my hostelworld account, etc. I did all of this. And I told him that I would happily pay for my mistake, but he'd have to have hostelworld.com contact me and tell me exactly how I had made this mistake (because again, I just don't see how it's possible). Anyway, that's where it's been left. I've recently emailed Tommy again to ask him for an update because I wanted to leave a (generally positive, the hostel itself was great, Tommy himself was even a pretty nice guy, and Christan, our host, was super nice and friendly) review. So we'll see. And now, Amsterdam!
We were in Amsterdam for 1.5 days. It was amazing. We ate more fries with mayonnaise then I can believe. We walked around and explored the city. Lindsay bought "cute boots" at a flea market. She went to the Anne Frank museum and ran around the water canals. We ate pizza. We met a bunch of cool people and drank beers and chatted in the hostel. I found a sign that said ajax. We ate little "pancakes" with syrup on them We watched the sunset on the water We ate from one of those FEBO machines, even though I completely forget that they were a thing until I saw them. We ate a TON of stroopwafels, which (hello Mom, if you are reading this!) my Mom loves, or at least used to love (though I don't you've made them as much the past few Xmases? Perhaps they are a ton of work, if I recall correctly). They have since become Lindsay's favorite sweet treat. And, although Dave may not be reading this, I thought of Dave (who I went backpacking with through Europe in 2003 for 5 weeks after high school!) and found Vla, which many people don't believe exists (I've even talked to people I've met from the Netherlands who have no idea what I'm talking about). It's basically drinkable pudding, by the way, and I think it's great. This container was like, USD 0.90. We also did a lot of the standard Amsterdam things, like walking around the Red Light district which was as surreal as ever. Honestly I enjoy it because it's such a surreal experience and at least in my life it's a pretty strange thing to be walking next to a family with kids who are on their way home, past windows with nearly naked people in them. I feel like I've done a bad job explaining our time in Amsterdam. I'm sorry. It was short, it was beautiful and special and different from other cities. The food was great, the Anne Frank museum was great (again, according to Lindsay). And then, after this crazy terrible blog post, we flew from Amsterdam to Zagreb, Croatia.

February 11, 2015
Pariiiiiiiiiiieee

We arrived in Paris an hour earlier than planned (5:50 am) to pouring rain, a dark morning sky and garbage littering the streets (which thrilled Kevin beyond belief). We had another opportunity to stay with yet another awesome friend, Adrienne, who lived in the “red light” area of Paris, Piagelle. Despite the fact that we could have probably had a lot of fun at the Moulin Rouge, or cruising a dance floor somewhere nearby (which were quite possibly still open!), we opted for the lame route (not surprisingly :)), and went to get coffee at a little kebap place near her house. After making friends with the Algerian dudes working there, they refused to let us drink any more coffee (because it was bad for us) and instead loaded us down with the most sugary-sweet tea IMAGINABLE, which was definitely bad for us in a completely different way. On a sugar buzz like you would not believe, our morning turned out to be quite a lot of fun – a great start to the city that never sleeps!
After refueling with (yet) more coffee at Adrienne’s and settling down in her amazing flat, she took us on an amazing tour of the city, and was seriously quite the tour guide!

When I think about Paris, I imagine accordion players serenading the lovers walking along the Seine River, cute girls and little old men wearing berets, artists painting scenic landscape portraits, and people of all ages eating croissants. Turns out in January, only the croissant thing happens to be true. There was no music, there were no artists, and only the tourists wore berets. That said, despite the rain, and despite the cold, I could not help but gawk at the beauty of this city, and can only hope that we can visit again one day when the weather is warm, the skies are blue and when people (other than us!) are singing Aux Champs Elysees 🙂

One of our first stops was the beautiful, Sacré-Cœur, a beautiful Catholic cathedral, my first “real” one since being in Europe! It didn’t disappoint.

Walking down the Seine, we happened across the Pont des Arts bridge. In the city of Love, it’s no wonder so many people latched on to the idea of hooking their “Love Locks” to the bridge to leave behind in Paris… That said, these photos can’t even begin to display the INSANE number of locks on this bridge. Recently “Love Locks” have been banned because this bride is near collapse due to the extra weight of the locks, if that gives you any idea of how many locks are actually on this thing. It’s insane.

We were lucky to visit two of the most infamous museums in Paris, one being the Musee de Orsay, which just now happens to be my new #1 favorite museum I have ever been to . The museum houses the most impressionist and post-impressionists pieces in the WORLD. While we weren’t able to take photos inside the museum, we were able to stand literally inches away from masterpieces from Monet, Van Gogh, Seurat, Renoir, Rodin, Degas, and hundreds more. I mentioned this the day we went, but I literally got a bit teary eyed standing so close to such iconic pieces and was truly humbled and in awe of what we saw there. Mankind is truly incredible. This is a photo just as we left the huge Impressionist floor exhibit. It seemed like the perfect photo to capture our day.

Walking around the streets, there were amazing sculptures and random art pieces everywhere we looked.

Cool Mer-men Fountain

We also visited Notre Dame!

Dad, this photo is for you. Found literally one foot step outside Notre Dame.

The stain-glass work was INCREDIBLE. I can’t even begin to wonder how many hours went in to creating these…

And then, there was the food…the buttery, rich delicious food….

(Scary pic, but!) My first legit Crepe!Eating World’s best CroissantVoted best baguette in Paris.

Love Mural (taken for Corie Brown).

Outside Lourve (taken for Sai the dog).

The Lourve is the WORLD’S LARGEST MUSEUM. It was originally built as a royal fortress, but was officially opened in 1793 with an exhibition (of mostly confiscated church property). There are more than 70,000 pieces in the museum, and we could have literally spent 4 days there and not given it the justice that it deserves.

These were a few of my favorites of the day (which specifically reminded me of Anthea Marie Mitchell, for whatever reason :)):

One section of the museum was called “The Napoleon Apartments,” which (per Adrienne’s suggestion) we might have never even seen (again, the museum was THAT big). Room after room was insanely and decadently decorated. Honestly, no photo can do it justice. Can you imagine living in a space like this!? These are the times when the “1% holds 99% of the world’s wealth” becomes more tangible than I would otherwise understand – even if it is just a replica!

Also, I have to say, there were pieces THIS BIG in the Lourve. I mean, Seriously, look at Kevin next to that thing. I am not one for art history, but I would be VERY interested to know JUST HOW LONG something like this would have taken to paint. Not my style, but look at that detail!

And then, there she was. 99% of the reason we came to the Lourve to begin with, Mona.

Paris Highlights…..

On the street in Pigalle.

A romantic French dinner (per Corie’s suggestion!) celebrating us.

A “King’s Cake” night!

And I won (by finding this little guy in my slice :))

A bourbon and beer tasting extravaganza, courtesy of Adrienne’s guy, Paul!

Shakespeare and Company bookstore (no photos allowed inside, but damn. Heaven. on. Earth.)

Where Napolean was Buried.

And last but certainly not least! Paris wouldn’t be complete without the Eiffel Tower!!!!

All in all, despite the not-ideal weather conditions, Paris turned out to be pretty darn swell. For the life of me, I can’t seem to find the photos of the delicious Britannia food (fish soup, mackerel pate, etc!) Adrienne cooked for us, or the duck, but man, were they delicious! We were quite lucky to have had such a great friend host us (yet again) in such a beautiful city.

February 5, 2015
Stuttgart, Castles and Spas!

There are a number of popular ride sharing sites in Europe and we used one to book a trip with a guy to Stuttgart. Slightly mind blowing, but the guy we drove with ended up being a developer, and specifically he is an Intershop developer! Some may recall that last year I did a training with Intershop, which is not exactly a hugely popular piece of software. The company lives in a city called Yenna. The guy we drove with actually knew the guy that ran the class that I attended! It was crazy! Anyway, we talked about programming for about 2 hours (or at least as much as I could get him to talk with me about!) and it was awesome.

We arrived in a strange part of Stuttgart quite early (8:30 or 9 AM perhaps?) and spent a few hours trying to figure out exactly where we should go to find something to do. After a number of false starts (I think that’s the expression/phrase) (which included an awesome breakfast of coffee, breads and pastries in a little back alley, and a Burger King for a bathroom and ANOTHER coffee) we found ourselves to the city center and ended up going to a Starbucks to do some trip planning and to wait for Lars to get off work so we could go home with him. It ended up being quite a productive afternoon, as we ended up booking a number of things, including a bus to Amsterdam and a flight from Amsterdam to Zagreb.

(This would be a good point to mention that a friend of mine, who despite not having seen in many many years and even then only briefly, is likely one of my earliest childhood friends. Julia, whom I had really really hoped to visit in Berlin, offered to host us and I am incredibly sad that it didn’t work out. Julia is one of two daughters of family friends Wolfgang and Grobie (sp?) and these were the people who introduced me to Kinder eggs. Wolfgang visiting on a business trip was very near to Christmas for me as a child as it always meant a box of Kinder eggs. Those of you who know me know how significant this is to me! Anyway, I don’t know Julia well other then her travel adventures I’ve read about on facebook (I probably last saw her when I was in middle school or high school, and even then only briefly) but I have a feeling we may have been kindred spirits. I was really looking forward to getting to know her and perhaps having a connection as our parents did when they were younger. Anyway, I want to say this because I really am very sad that it didn’t work out to visit. Berlin would have been an amazing city to see of course, but most of all I was looking forward to getting to better know Julia. It’s on my list of important things to do, so I hope I have an opportunity to hang out some other time and perhaps we can host Julia and her partner if/when they visit the US next.)

Anyway, back on track. We met Lars at a train station (10-15 minutes late I think! The second time that we didn’t realize that there were multiple stops of the same name in slightly different places depending on the type of train you take (S-Bahn vs U-Bahn)). It was SOOO nice to see Lars at the station. Lars is a friend that I worked with at Infield Design, we spent a number of stressful nights together working on a Magento module and we like to consider ourselves core-committers ;). Anyway it’s been years since I’ve seen him, but it felt like we had just seen each other yesterday, it was so nice to see him once again.

OK, so a thing I have to point out: Lars and Saskia live outside of Stuttgart by an hour or so drive, near/in the Black Forest in a small town called Bad Liebenzell. After all of our travels, as I believe we’ve mentioned in other blog posts, sometimes it is nice to get away from a city and be somewhere smaller. Lars and Saskia’s place was 100% amazing and perfect for this. It’s difficult to describe exactly but basically driving to Lars and Saskia’s was (for us) like driving into what you picture an old small German town should be. Beautiful forests covered with snow, fresh air, old houses in the traditional German style (beams of wood with stones between in a checker sort of pattern). Bad Liebenzell is down in a sort of valley and surrounded by hills/trees and it just felt amazing. As you may have noticed this blog post is getting a bit long in the tooth so I feel like my words are failing me, but I hope some of the photos will give some idea of what I’m talking about.

When we arrived at Lars and Saskia’s place we were so excited to be there, and their apartment is awesome. You can literally see a castle up in the forest from our bed. It felt sort of like a combination of Houghton/Handcock and Germany, to me. The air was so fresh.

Anyway, again, the highlight here was seeing Lars and Saskia, but we also did a ton of fun stuff. For one thing, I walked to the bakery with Lars or Saskia every morning which was awesome. Walking through a small German town to buy bread for breakfast is basically like a dream for me and I got to do it every single day.

First night Lars and Saskia took us out for a traditional German dinner where I had snitzel and Lindsay had kase spaetzle. We also had a huge Radler beer (mixture of something like sprite and beer) made from the beer brewed at the restaurant.

Second day we had an amazing breakfast, then hung around the house for a while (Lars had to work, Saskia very kindly took the day off to hang out with us!) where Lindsay and I did a bit more travel planning for Croatia.

After that we went on a beautiful walk in the forest.

After this was a highlight for me: we went to a very awesome spa. Generally in the past when I thought of the word “spa” I generally though “girls go there and it’s expensive and I don’t want to go there” but in many parts of the world “spa” is sort of like “relaxing place where you can swim and sit in a hot tub or take a nice hot shower and sit in a steam room.” This particular spa that we went to was seriously crazy awesome. We don’t have any photos really, but the best part of the spa for me was an outdoor swimming pool that was really fancy with different bubble areas. It was heated, and there was a bit of snow falling, and it was very beautiful/clear/very little chlorine water. Lars and I did some “dive training” (swimming around holding our breath) while Lindsay and Saskia did a water exercise class.
Not a great photo of the outdoor area, but you get the idea. This is a view looking down from the apartment:

Honestly I could spend an hour explaining how awesome this spa was. In the end, it was sort of like the German version of an Onsen in Japan I’d say. Different, but similar in many ways and very relaxing.

For dinner Saskia made us a traditional awesome dinner, spatzle and sausage with a type of bean sauce on top. I forget the name, but it was amazing. We also drank a few new types of beers. As I hope is clearn, the theme throughout the last 2 blog posts is: “amazing hosts.”

We went to a bar the Lars used to frequent when he was younger and we got to meet the owner which is a friend of Lars. I drank my first beer with coke, which was good (though a bit sweet for me I think).

The next day we had another amazing breakfast and then took a drive to a Hohenzollern Castle. Honestly, it was like something out of a fairy tale. It was foggy, and snowing and that, coupled with our amazing walk up to the castle itself was out of this world. We had a great small lunch (soup, hot wine) at the castle and went on a tour which was really cool.

That evening Lindsay made some very great pasta for dinner and we finished the night hanging out, chatting, and watching the second Hobbit movie (which, and this seriously blows my mind, I somehow hadn’t watched yet. I normally see “big” movies like this in theaters, so I’m not quite sure what happened.).

Sunday, the last day, we had another amazing breakfast and then Lars/Saskia brought us back to Stuttgart as they had a vacation planned previously. We were very sad to say goodbye to Lars and Saskia. I truly hope we’ll get a chance to see them again soon, and as with Babsi and Peter I hope to do a better job keeping in touch with them.

We spent our last day in Germany in Stuttgart, coffee shop hopping. Sadly being Sunday there weren’t a lot of places open, so we ended up spending about 8 hours in various Starbucks on that day. It was good though as we got quite a bit of planning for our trip done, and also I got to do a bit of programming work…we even got a geocache in…

That evening we took another night bus to Paris! It was a bit stressful figuring out where we would go, and there was an hour period of panic when it wasn’t 100% clear if we’d make our bus (frustrating considering we had literally all day to get there but we misjudged the time it’d take to find the bus pickup).

Finding the bus was stressful as I mentioned above, but it got even worse when the bus arrived. The bus driver, who as far as I can tell was just a huge dick, point blank said that we couldn’t get on the bus without a ticket. The thing is, we of course did have a ticket, but it was an “eticket” emailed to us. I’m not going to play dumb, the reality is that it’s not crazy that the bus driver expected the ticket to be printed out, however generally if a ticket needs to be printed it will say so somewhere on the ticket “not valid unless printed” “please print and give to driver” “TICKET MUST BE PRINTED” or something of the like. But this ticket, which again was in large bold letters called our “e ticket” (to me even further making it seem reasonable for us to keep the ticket on our phone). Anyway I hate to be the person who comes off as immature because I feel like I’ve been wronged when I really haven’t, but there was just something about the way the guy spoke that made the situation what it was. He’d look at me, say something in German, scowl. “This isn’t ticket (pointing at the phone), this is ticket (pointing at a printed out ticket.” I said “Sir I’m very very sorry, it says “eticket” and we need to be on the bus!” He’d scowl and shoe us away. Then other people would get on the bus (all who of course had printed their ticket).

Eventually I literally begged the guy, with my hands in the begging position. I said “sorry” and “please” in my best German I could. Lindsay was honestly annoyed because (while understanding the situation) could not believe how we were being talked to/treated. He looked at us like garbage, and was unmistakably clear how stupid he thought we were. He eventually let us on the bus a solid 5 minutes of begging and him looking/speaking to us in very disgusted German.

I’d like to take a minute to point out that Lindsay and I have now taken a nearly countless number of buses, and have never once printed out the ticket. We generally show our passport, or show the ticket on our phone, or some combination of the two. This is the first and only time we’ve ever had any troubles, not to mention the first time in my life I think I truly had to be in such a pitiful begging position like garbage.

Anyway, the lesson is this: print the ticket, or don’t and hope you don’t have to deal with this sort of thing but realize you might.

And with that, we were off to Paris!

February 2, 2015
Deutschland (Munich!), and how we wish we could have stayed there longer

The title of this blog post is a work in progress. I was going to just say “Deutschland” because that seemed pretty cool, but then my fingers got itchy and I just couldn’t stop typing and I ended up with the title you see above.

Let me say this first: the absolute best part of Germany was seeing our friends: Babsi, Peter, Magdalena, Simon, Lars, and Saskia.

And now let me say this: We are incredibly grateful to these people for sharing their homes with us, feeding us, teaching us, and generally just making us feel welcome, warm, and like we were with family.

These things said, we had an awesome time in Germany :). To start at the beginning, I think, we traveled from Hungary to Germany via bus. The bus trip was a night bus, and as is somewhat normal the bus trip was not particularly pleasant, but also not particularly eventful. One special feature that made the trip somewhat notable was that the chair that I sat in had a broken “recline” button/mechanism. Basically the chair reclined or unclined (what’s the opposite of recline?) at will, which is to say when the bus accelerated the seat reclined, and when the bus decelerated the seat “unclined” (as I guess we’ll call it). This was very annoying to be honest, and cut into the already few hours of sleep I normally get on a bus. Additionally, the bus was blaring some terrible American movies with dubbed Hungarian so loud that with our ear buds in, we could hear the movie perfectly. Sometime around 3 or 4 AM I ended up switching seats with Lindsay because I wasn’t getting much sleep (given the movie (that was still playing) and my “fight” with the seat trying to get comfortable, which kept her awake and I could feel her ire even in the slumberish state I was in.). Anyway, once we switched I think I slept better. Small aside: I hear about people having blot clots from sitting too long in seats and such on airplanes and buses, and when I sleep on a bus I get a bit paranoid about this because I’m generally in some strange and uncomfortable position that results in my lower extremities falling uncomfortably asleep, and I imagine I’ve somehow cut off all blood flow to my legs.

So, after arriving in Germany I must say that we were quite excited. Our bus arrived at 4:57 AM (to make matters worse!), and we didn’t want to arrive at Babsi/Peter’s in the middle of the night, so Lindsay and I had a cup of coffee at the train station. Which reminds me to tell you, we were at a train station. I think it was Hacker-something station.

It was pretty exciting actually, because we got off the bus and there were real, live Germans coming out of a bar that was at/near the train station. They were drunk, which was great and added an air of festivity to our arrival. There were also a lot of slick looking people with skiing equipment, apparently catching a bus or similar to go skiing for the day. I’m guessing these details aren’t of particular interest to you, but I want to mention them anyway. We also spent some time this morning watching the floor sweeper do his thing, and I got my first look at a Germany grocery store (Ledl – spelling might be wrong?). We bought some museli at the grocery store which I’d like to add was one of our favorite foods in Germany on account of there being lots of non-sugary museli that tasted healthy.

Ok, small break for a joke:

Q: Why was the little boy crying?

A: Because he had a frog stapled to his face

OK, back to business.

We took the S-Bahn to Babsi and Peter’s house, which was so warm and welcoming. They have a great new fireplace which is super cozy and it was great to sit around at night and drink a glass of wine or the fancy beer. This was our first time meeting the kids, Magdelana and Simon, who were great. Magdelena taught us the names of a few different animals in German (my favorite being either Shark (“hi”) or squirrel (who’s name is fun to say but complicated so you’ll have to trust me). It’s worth noting that the house we stayed in was the same as the house that I visited 12 years ago when I came to visit in 2003 after high school, except they’ve moved down stairs to a larger apartment. We actually slept upstairs in an unconnected room (future Magdalena’s room) which I came to learn was actually the same room that Babsi and Peter used to sleep in when they lived on the top floor.
So, Munich itself we spent roughly 5 days in. The first two days were Saturday and Sunday and for the most part we hung around the apartment with the family. Babsi prepared a wonderful German breakfast the first day we arrived, and the second. (I’m typing this without internet but I hope a photo of this breakfast will go here.)

We babysat for Magdalena and Simon on Sunday evening which was actually a lot of fun (also, the easiest babysitting I’ve ever done as Babsi/Peter left around 7pm, and the kids bedtime is 7:30). We brought them a few little food kits/toys from Japan and we made them with the kids (mini doughnuts, slime that was supposed to be gummy candy, and chocolate mushrooms).

One other small memory: one night we were putting the kids to bed and I was supposed to read a bedtime story to the kids. Except it was a chapter book in German. So I tried to read the book but after two or three sentences trying to pronounce the words Magdalena had to help me out and ended up reading an entire chapter to herself and Simon, which was quite impressive in my opinion, and let me off the hook.

The next day, we explored Munich. I can’t say we saw everything, but we did do a few key things. We walked around a lot and walked through the English Garden where we sat next to a lake and split a beer.

We walked around the English Garden some more and saw a surfer (though we didn’t actually see any surfing happening unfortunately). Overall though, the sun was shining, and it was an awesome day.

**We had taken a lot of photos of the English Garden, the kids and a ton more on this day, but apparently they are no where to be found! :(**

Later that day while exploring Munich, Lindsay and I were very hungry. We actually (this is sad perhaps) walked 3 kilometers or so to a ramen restaurant that had great reviews (we both had been craving ramen) but just as we arrived it was closed until dinner. So getting slightly grumpy considering our hunger and the disappointment of walking for nothing we walked towards a train station. Then, out of now where, there was a huge bar/beer house/restaurant! It was fate I guess and we ended up going to eat there. We felt great about eating authentic German food, and it was fun to eat in a giant beer/food hall. It was not the cheapest food we’ve had on the trip but it was quite good. Interestingly, it turns out that years ago, I found a bunch of old slides that I scanned of some random guy and his travels (from the late 50s/early 60s, I believe). After talking with Babsi about the dinner, I realized that this guy had taken a photograph of the place we ate at during the Oktoberfest, as this place was a big brewery – so that was pretty cool.

On another day, we visited the Dachau Memorial (former concentration camp) which is in the town of Dachau and I’m not sure if it’s technically “Munich” but regardless we went there. We had an awesome tour guide (per Peter’s suggestion) who walked us around for something like 3.5 hours. Which is crazy I think, because 1) it was only 3 euro a person and 2) The tour is only supposed to last 1.5-2 hours 3) The person is actually a volunteer.

The lady who took us on the tour also talked with Lindsay a lot about various books that she might be able to recommend to her students next year, and was overall just really passionate about the subject, which made the time fly by. Also, she gave us a ride in her van to a bus station (which was super nice/sweet/awesome, although it ended up being a bus station that didn’t go where we needed to go so we ended up walking to a different bus station and getting lost on the way and then walking around for an hour or so – but I did manage to purchase some long johns en route).

Another day, we visited Christina (Babsi’s sister) and her husband Heinz (spelling?) and their child (whose name is sadly escaping me at the moment!) which was great. It was really nice to see Christina after so many years (I saw her last 12 years ago in Munich when I visited with Dave) and see her life. It’s a bit crazy to think about life when you have a 12 year chunk of time you’re dealing with. 12 years ago I visited Christina in downtown Munich in a very awesome loft apartment, and she was living by herself I believe. Now, she is married, has a child old enough to walk and talk and play outside, has an apartment that’s more like a house, etc. Christina cooked an awesome apple strudel also, and Heinz made us some great tea. We also got to see his knife collection and their place of work, which was really interesting (various clothes).

Another highlight, which I’ve sort of already mentioned, was the food that Babsi and Peter provided for us. One night we had a traditional German feast including meat and a sort of ham bit + cabbage + vinegar salad (which was awesome) and (spelling this phonetically) “ca-noodle” which are round balls of something or other. For those of you that don’t know I sort of enjoy collecting nicknames for Lindsay and canoodle quickly made the list.

We also went to a bunch of Aldi, Ledl, and other grocery stores. The general rule was “if you see an Aldi, go into the Aldi.” I’m not exactly sure why this is but Germany (and other countries, but especially Germany in my opinion) has amazing grocery stores. I mean, large fresh balls of mozzarella for .55 eurocents. Milk for less than 1 euro. Etc. AMAZING vanilla pudding of all sorts. And so forth. There is also a machine in Aldi now that when pressed spits out a croissant for like 0.35 eurocents. It’s crazy! And a HUGE selection of wine and beer most of which can be had for less then 2 bucks (wine) and less then a buck for beer. I would kill for an Aldi like this in the states. It makes Trader Joes seem like a joke in my humble opinion.

We also met another friend of Babsi/Peter’s named Michael, who was a German native living in NYC. We had a great soup and wonderful bread and again a wonderful night of talking and drinking wine and fancy champagne and beer. Keep in mind the cozy atmosphere and great friends and the fireplace. It was really nice :).

On our last day in Munich (based on Babsi’s recommendations) and we touched the lions (so we should be back to Munich soon we hope!), walked around the Munich Residenz, Marineplatz, ate more delicious food, and saw more awesome churches and grounds. We had such a nice time and will (are!) missing the family already. I’m hoping we’ll be able to keep in touch with Babsi and Peter better then last time around!

And then, before we knew it, our time in Munich was up, and it was time to go visit Lars and Saskia!

February 2, 2015
A small bit of Hungary: Budapest (or, “yes, we made our flight!”)

So, the last blog post I mentioned that we may not make our flight to Hungary. It turns out that I may have accidentally forgotten that our flight was actually a half hour then stated during the negotiation phase of planning our waking time with Lindsay. This turned out to be a good thing as Iberia was a very confusing airport. There was an incredibly long line, and all of the displays above the checkin counters said things like “Web Check In” which was not applicable to us, or other things that didn’t apply to us. This is a confusing sentence. Basically we had baggage but it wasn’t clear which line we should wait in, so we ended up splitting up and Lindsay waited in the longest line (we assumed it was probably where all of the poor people had to wait) while I checked in using one of the not so fancy check in things. Anyway, we ended up having 20 or minutes once we got to our gate before we had to board, so it wasn’t really so bad. But, I think even if we disagreed about some of the other details here Lindsay and I would both agree that it was slightly stressful when we got into the airport, had an hour and a half or so, and were running around trying to figure out where to go, only to find out we had to wait in an insane line.

Anyway, we made it though, and we felt that Budapest was awesome. I honestly don’t feel like I can say much about Hungary in general because the reality is that we barely explored the Pest side of Budapest (who know there were two different parts of the city, Buda and Pest!).

We stayed in a super nice apartment/studio. I sadly don’t have any photos from the place, but it was warm (which was awesome and a nice change!), and had a great view of the city.

What did we do in the city.

Note that there are not a lot of photos from Hungary, sadly. So the coolest things, like the ruin bars, aren’t really well represented

We went to the Penny Market which was a cheap grocery store and bought muesli, coffee, various dairy products, and we ate them and cooked breakfast.
Here is some muesli that I accidentally ate with a ton of sour cream.

We ate cabbage rolls (also I accidentally gave a 1000 percent tip accidentally). The cabbage rolls were not nearly as good as Lindsay’s grandmas (we both agree)

We went to a few “ruin pubs” which are basically old awesome buildings that were converted to sweet bars with lots of interesting art. This part of Budapest (and other parts) basically felt like the wet dream of a person who loved Oakland. Here I am ordering a beer (and then Lindsay’s phone died)

We went to one of the oldest public baths in Hungary certainly, possibly Europe. It was really beautiful, though sadly I can’t say it compares to anything that Japan or Korea has to offer. It was sort of like a crappier version of the jjimjilbang that we went to in Korea. Anyway, it was still pretty cool, and we had a “cabin” that we shared to change in. The baths were, in my opinion, hot, overcrowded, and very dirty feeling. Note that I’m not some fancy person who cares about clean stuff (I like to wash my pants once a month), but it just wasn’t a bath house type experience, it felt more like a tourist box to check although there were quite a few locals it seemed. Here is a crappy picture of our dressing cabin.

The night after our SICK ruin pub/bar hopping experience (secret: it wasn’t that sick, I think we drank a total of two beers between us), we went on a craft brewing tour of the city. We ended up going to 5 pretty sweet little bars that either served their own beer, or other craft beers from other parts of the world. I was pretty shocked to find Anchor Christmas Ale on TAP in Budapest. Although I didn’t drink it, I had some beer from New Zealand, because I hadn’t before. It tasted like beer, FYI.

I think you can read the Anchorsteam here

A beer angel

Our toothpaste from Japan finally gave up the ghost, which I’m still quite sad about. We replaced it with a different/new brand from Budapest, but this was my favourite toothpaste from the trip so far. The Japanese toothpaste had little things in it that I call (some other brand’s trademark I believe) the “scrubbing bubbles” which I liked to think helped with my developing tooth-rot.

We got some new craft materials for Lindsay, and spent quite a bit of time searching for new boots for Lindsay (without any success). We drank some crappy wine that was less then 2 bucks a bottle. I woke up most mornings and programmed for 2 or 3 hours and made some progress on Phapi.

Finally, we just saw a bunch of beautiful old amazing buildings.

And finally, we took another night bus (one of the worst yet!) to Munich!

January 23, 2015
Aegina Island and Nafplio (bonus: Lake Vouliagmeni)

Well, I just typed a blog post to tell all about Athens, but then I remembered that Lindsay already did that! So that was 30 minutes down the drain. This blog post will be much less exciting now because my life has taken such a terrible turn for the worst with this revelation!

While Lindsay was typing the last blog post, I was at a really, really awesome place called Lake Vouliagmeni. It’s a lake that maintains (according to google) a 24 C (75 F) temperature all year round. Sadly, I didn’t take any photos, but it’s a pretty magical place. Basically I took a bus South from Athens for ~1.5 hours, got off and walked 500 feet to this “resort” (which isn’t really a resort, though I bet in the summer it’s pretty fancy/happenin’). Keep in mind it’s relatively cold here, ~40 F, and I’m wearing 5 layers + hat + gloves. I paid my 10 euro (one of the more expensive things I’ve done on this trip) and put my stuff (bag, towel I brought, etc) at a table next to the water. If it was the summer, this would be where people were sitting out drinking wine, eating fancy foods, etc. But when I was there the tables were mostly empty. Anyway, I put my stuff down, stripped down to my trust Speedo, and jumped in the water!

The water, which I wish I had brought my gopro for, was beautiful, beautiful water. It’s brackish and there are a number of sea like creatures living in it (something similar to sea anemones?) in addition to these little man eating fish. I say man-eating fish, because they are man eating, but they only eat little bits of dead skin off your feet. It was like one of those fancy spas where the fish eat your dead skin, except it was in a very beautiful, clean, deep, crystal clear(ish) lake! But the fish were pretty awesome, and I have some serious (and slightly painful) calluses I’ve built up over the last 6 months or so, so it was actually pretty handy to have fish eat them for me. Also, this wasn’t a joke, there were literally 100+ little fish at a time.

But, the fish were not the coolest part. The coolest part was that I could swim out to a deeper area of the lake, and I was able to (sort of) do a bit of freediving practice. Quite honestly I had a chill at this point, so it was a bit tough for me to relax and really work on my breathing, but I was able to dive down to the bottom of the lake along a decent line to 35 or so feet, which was fun. I’ve been carrying a mask and snorkel with me for the past 6 months (through Canada, then through the rest of our trip) and this was the first time since Canada that I’ve had a reason to use the mask/snorkel.

Sadly I didn’t get any photos as I forgot my camera, but the lake’s website has a few photos, and Google image search has a bunch of photos that give a pretty good idea.

Anyway, the next day Lindsay and I left for Aegina Island. We took the metro down to the port in Athens, and then we took a ferry (the flying dolphin!) to the Aegina. It was a short trip really, only took us 40 minutes from the port to the Island.

Here is the town/port of Aegina near where we arrived from the ferry

When we got to the island, we were quite honestly thrilled. Lindsay and I both really love the water, and an island happens to be surrounded by it. Beautiful water in fact. The island of Aegina is (especially during the winter) very slow and quiet. This has been the case most places we’ve been because it’s the winter and quite honestly most places we’ve been are a bit more comfortable during the summer. Swimming and sun bathing and that type of thing are what this island would be great for, sitting out on a hot summer day and drinking a (cheap!) beer. But during the winter things are likely just as beautiful, we’re just more likely to be looking for a warm coffee in a heated cafe (more difficult to find then you’d guess!). Anyway, I’m sending mixed messages here. Basically the island was beautiful, but felt a bit “dead” because it’s the low season. In the summer I guess many rich people in Athens come to Aegina to live, and many tourists come to enjoy the sun/water as it’s a quick day trip from Athens. But none of those people were there.

various photos of the beautiful water

We stayed in an AirBnB apartment again, in the small town of Perdika. It’s about 15-20 minute drive by taxi/scooter. We were staying in a very cute/homey little studio apartment. It had a wood stove (which we were ironically too cold to use), a little propane stove for cooking, and a space heater for heat.

The road almost to the studio we stayed at in Perdika

Our kitchen

Lindsay cooking in the kitchen (recipe: mulled de la 2.98 for 1 liter wino rojo)

Me drinking coffee (?) and eating something (maybe dinner? or some garbage sweet thing?)

Our host brought me the night we arrived back into the marina (Aegina, the main town on the island) and she brought me to a friend who rents scooters. I rented a 80cc scooter (2 stroke though!) for 25 euro for three days. I can’t describe how happy I was about this, there is little I love more then riding around little beautiful islands on a scooter. The drive back from town to Perdika was something I hope I’ll remember because it was pretty magical. Cold, crisp, the sun setting, driving along the coast, passing a bunch of “cute” Greek fishing boats and various small harbors. etc. Very awesome.

Our scooter, parked at the studio

This is from a different night on the island, but basically is what I saw while scootering back home

Me with my trusty helmet about to set out home (except actually from the next day again, but let’s pretend)

That night Lindz and I slept well, but the next day we went outside and it seemed that there was a hurricane. There wasn’t really, I don’t think, but it was incredibly windy and raining a bit and very very cold. This was a bit of a “yolo” decision, but we didn’t want to sit inside all day so we decided to brave the weather and ride the scooter back into town so we could go to a cafe and get some coffee and some groceries to make dinner with. Anyway, on the ride I had one eye closes the entire time, and the other eye was squinting. If you clothes one eye completely, and then squint the other so that your eye lashes nearly completely keep you from seeing, that’s how I was driving. The trick was to go fast enough so we didn’t have to drive in the miserable cold with ice rain stinging our faces for hours, but slow enough that we didn’t outright die. This picture is probably one of the best memories from the Greece trip, and is 100% out of the camera and with as far as I can tell pretty reasonable white balance.

hella

Anyway, the next few days we basically did the same thing, except with better weather. Still bone-chilling after 3 hours or so out exploring around the island (we drove around MOST of the circumference), but not so bad that I had to drive with my eyes shut. We drove around the island on the scooter, went to get food at grocery stores (yogurt, chocolate, bread filled with chocolate spread, eggs, sausage, beer and wine and ouzo), and got a gyro every once in a while. Then we’d walk around the town a bit, then head back to our place and cook dinner, research the next leg of our trip, and when the internet worked watch Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

exploring, etc
(imagine some of these places during the summer… they’d look the same, but there would be tons of people sun bathing in bathing suits, and we wouldn’t be wearing gloves)

Lindsay being bad-ass (like Mac)

Dead sea urchin decorated by the ocean for xmas

The day we left Aegina we had to make our way down to Nafplio. As the crow flys our AirBnB place was only 60 kilometers-ish from our AirBnB place on the island, let me tell you, we did NOT travel as the crow flys. Instead we road the scooter back to Aegina port, then took a ferry back to Athens, then a bus to a larger bus station in the opposite part of Athens, then finally a 3 hour bus to Nafplio.

View of Nafplio from our guest house (I think..)

Nafplio is apparently the original capital of Greece. I’ll save some time by telling you that Nafplio felt a lot like Aegina did in terms of being out of season, but it was just as beautiful if not more so. Well, probably less beautiful actually, but more of a fancy sort of old town feel. Lots of fancy stores, etc, but also beautiful beautiful water.

water and boats, fancy stores, etc

On our first full day in Nafplio (actually we only really had one FULL day) Lindsay and I hiked up “999” stairs to Palamidi Castle. I use quotes because the claim of 999 stairs seems to be in question. Actually if I read the wikipedia article I could probably find out the actual number of stairs, but if I had to guess I’d guess 917 stairs. I counted 3 sets of 100 stairs, give or take, and that was far less then half of the stairs I’m guessing.

This is some of the castles and bastions (Ian, if you happen to read this, I can’t tell you how many times I thought of you on this day as every single little plaque thing that explained the history said “… something-something bastion was build in …”

A thing in the water

I guess the number of stairs don’t matter that much. The point is, we walked up this thing which gave us an awesome view of the city. The most important thing that we saw, from way up on this hill, was that in the beautiful water near our guest house (where we had talked about wishing it was summer so we could go swimming!) there were a number of people in the water, swimming! In the water! So we got up to the castle, explored a bit, took some pictures, then we raced our asses down those 999 or not stairs, ran back to our guest house, grabbed our swim suits and mask and snorkels, and went swimming!

Note that in this picture, I think that thing in the water is a person swimming!

Here is another picture of a different person swimming in the same place!

Let me tell you, for the second time, we really love the water. The water was so beautiful, very clear (I’m guessing 40-50 foot vis), and not all that cold. Thanks to Marc, I can tell you the water was 18 C, or ~64 F. The air was considerably colder (we passed a small pond that had ice on the surface while running to grab our swim stuff), but oh well. The sun was bright and warm. I found a octopus! And Lindsay found some fish!

This doesn’t really demonstrate how great the water was, but sort of I guess

The before/after swimming location

Bonus: after swimming Lindsay and I was going through the rocks on the beach (which reminded us a lot of a beach along Lake Superior in the UP) and we found something very similar (if not) agates! A bunch of them! I’m hoping to take them with me when we visit Nicola’s family so perhaps his Dad (or Mom!) can tell us if they are in fact agates.

After the swimming, I ate a bunch of baklava, and a bunch of different types of baklava. Note that “baklava” may not be the correct word, but if you saw what I was eating that’s probably what you’d call it.

This is a bite Lindsay gave me that I was selfish and greedy and took a HUGE bite

That pretty much brings us to today. Today we woke up and had breakfast (provided by our guest house), then we took the same bus we took down here back up to Athens. Then we took another few buses to the guy we are currently staying with (super nice guy named Chris). Now, we’re freeeezing in bed, typing this blog post and figuring out what time we need to leave to get to the airport. Lindsay thinks we’ll be fine leaving at 6AM, I would feel more comfortable leaving at 5:41AM. If the next blog post involves a “we missed our flight” then I guess we’ll know who was right.

So, tomorrow we go to the airport (ATH), and from there we fly to Budapest! Budapest for 7 days!

January 9, 2015
Athens, a Graffiti wonderland.

So, it turns out Athens is a graffiti wonderland, and it’s AWESOME. Literally every step of the way to the Acropolis and Acropolis museum was covered in graffiti. Of course, no pictures do it justice, but I can assure you, you would have thought it was awesome too. Every few minutes had me saying “Babe! Just one sec!” *snap* etc. which is why you’ll see him waiting for me in so many pictures….:)

BUT SERIOUSLY! LOOK AT THAT COLOR!

Even where there’s supposed to be NO color, there’s color.We had to walk straight up to get to the Acropolis museum (and to see the Parthenon) but it was well worth the climb. The museum was filled to the brim with pieces (4,000!) of every artifact found on the rock and on the feet of the Acropolis, from the Greek Bronze Age, to Roman and Byzantine Greece. While wisps of info about Athena and Zeus and Hercules wafted around in my head before the exhibits, it was incredible to see just how ornate and modern people were in regards to their art, language and architecture. Pictures weren’t allowed inside the museum, but we found a great view of our next goal for the afternoon: climbing Mt. Lycabettus to get a 360 degree view of Athens. (View from museum)Sweat. Nature’s blush.

We made it!

On the hike down, we decided to get some more delicious gyros (only $2 Euro!) and enjoy the city square at sunset. As you can see, it was pretty glorious. Just 2 days in, Athens has FAR exceeded our expectations in regards to the UNBELIEVABLE food, genuine warmth from the citizens of Greece and overall history and beauty. Pretty stoked to be here.Great view of Parthenon from the square.

January 3, 2015
Cappadocia.

We had quite the Christmas! Hours after picking Nick up from the airport, we jumped on an overnight bus to CAPPADOCIA, a region about 10 hours south of Istanbul because our lovely families PLANNED A SURPRISE CHRISTMAS EXCURSION for us there. Who does that? Honestly? Our families, that’s who. Talk about an incredible time.

On the bus!
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January 3, 2015
ISTANBUL.

Having too much fun (again!) to think much about blogging – but here is Istanbul, Turkey in a nutshell.

We were (and are!) beyond thankful to Ezgi and Mike (Kev’s childhood friend), who offered us their flat while we were in Turkey. Originally, we had planned to stop in and see them, as they live in Istanbul, but as luck would have it, they were both back in Grand Rapids (of all places!) for the holidays. Unbelievably, they offered their apartment to us during our stay – which turned out to be insane. The flat was absolutely BEAUTIFUL, Kevin continues to say probably the nicest apartment he has ever been in. Short of sleeping in all types of ridiculous accommodations after the last 6+ months, our time there offered us a reprieve we didn’t even know we needed so desperately. It was glorious – and we are (again!) beyond thankful. We met Ezgi’s wonderful sister Elif at their family’s cafe and she and her friend Pinar were unbelievably sweet, and short of driving us to the flat and showing us the ropes, they took amazing care of us. To have such warmth (especially over the holidays!) not to mention a clean, spacious BEAUTIFUL place to chill and relax was truly such a gift.
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January 3, 2015
Over and Osaka

In 5th grade (might have been 4th?) I started an origami club. I think there was one other member (Andros? Bob? ), and there were only a few club meetings (we were allowed to stay in during recess and do origami), but it was still a thing. I can’t tell you how many origami books I rented from the library at that point in my life – this is years before I even really knew what Japan was.

This is but one example of how Japan sort of just “fit” into my life, but there are many others (my hate for tipping, the fact that I so enjoy taking my shoes off when I go home, my love for gadgety/techy things, etc, etc).

All of this is to say that Japan was a place that I’ve wanted to go more then anywhere else for a very long time. And now Lindsay and I have gone, and as I type this I am at the Kansai international airport in Osaka getting ready to leave. I am quite sad about leaving to be honest. This is in large part because Japan has been everything I had hoped it would be. Every fantastic idea of what I thought Japan might be turned out to be pretty damn close to reality.

To finish up things with the trip itself, we just spent 4 awesome days in Osaka. We had few expectations of Osaka, but sadly it turned out to be one of our favorite cities. I say sadly because we spent less time here than anywhere else in Japan. Honestly, given the choice to stay in Osaka, Tokyo, or Kyoto (the larger cities we spent real time in), we both might choose Osaka. It felt slightly “grittier” and at the same time a bit more down to earth or something. I don’t know.

To start things off, we spent our first night in a capsule hotel. This was “one of those Japanese things” that I’ve sort of always idealized and wished I could experience, and as with other things it was as great as I had expected.

For those not familiar, capsule hotels are generally geared towards “salary men” who might stay too late working (or drinking) or are traveling and can’t make it home at night and don’t want to pay for an expensive hotel. So they are literally just “capsules” stacked on top of each other that you sleep in.

But it’s like being in outer space! Lindsay took these photos of her capsule (note the sexes are separated)

I had a SUPER drunk guy climb in on top of me sometime around 2am, but he was friendly (I think, based on the few motor skills he was able to use) enough. There are no locking doors, just a wood/fabric mat that covers your door. You can read a lot more about these things on the ol’ internet, but the point is we did this and it was awesome. Also awesome is the fact that you put your shoes in a locker when you enter the capsule hotel, and then you get another locker that has a robe in it that you wear for your stay. There was a Japanese style bath/shower/sauna/soaking area with “free” single use shavers/tooth brush. I would say that one complaint I had is that the common areas allowed smoking and I think my throat is becoming more sensitive to cigarette smoke. Anyway, it was awesome.

After the capsule hotel, we did what we normally did and walked around Osaka a lot. We had ramen, we went to the grocery store, we ate various snacks and drank various beers. We spent a good half a day (if not more) geocaching (though we went like 2/7), and more walking.

We saw the Osaka castle (the photo doesn’t nearly do it justice – it was in a beautiful park, and there was a “Sweet Marathon” going on)

But a REAL highlight for us was couchsurfing with a great new friend, Kyo. Kyo is a super nice guy and he introduced us to a great new friend Nia. Kyo made us a great hot pot dinner one night, and otherwise was just a really nice guy.

Kyo also took us to his office to show us where he works. His company (basically) restores/renovates traditional Japanese houses. I happen to love traditional Japanese houses, so it was pretty awesome. His “office” includes various show houses, which are basically my absolutely ideal/dream house. Think wood burning stoves, fresh mountain air, cut cedar planks everywhere.

And that was about it for Osaka, and Japan. Now we fly to Istanbul.

December 21, 2014
Kyoto (last day) + Etajima + Hiroshima

On our last day in Kyoto, we visited the Fushimi Inari Shrine. Fushimi is particularly famous for the 10,000 torii gates (honoring Inari, Shinto god of rice) which lead you to (and up!) holy Mount Inari. 10,000 gates! How crazy is that? You can walk for 2-3 hours straight up the mountain-side through these seemingly never-ending gates, to give you an idea of just how crazy of an experience it was. It was pretty intense. While I was especially excited to see the vibrant orange color, I didn’t expect to see such beautiful shades of orange. It was truly quite a magical experience.Prayer plaques adorning fox faces (foxes are thought to have been Inari’s messengers).

We tried raw horse meat and fatty mane sushi…And the infamous (sometimes lethally poisonous!) fugu (pufferfish) sushi – all three of which were surprisingly tasty, if not strange.Late that night, we took a night bus (10:40 pm) from Kyoto to Hiroshima, where we quickly boarded a cable car (at 6 am) to the Hiroshima port, and then from there a ferry to Etajima island and from THERE a bus across the island, where we then TREKKED up this ridiculous hill with our packs to get to our home for the next 4 days. Turns out, the travel was worth it.

Etajima turned out to be the perfect mix of a Marquette, Michigan + Portland, Oregon. It felt industrial, and close-knit, cozy and cold. The people were warm and remarkably curious about us (we saw absolutely no foreigners anywhere). We loved it. One night, Kev and I made our way an onsen (another public bath house) on the other side of the island. I wasn’t there for more than 2 minutes, when I was bombarded by about 12 old Japanese ladies trying to speak with me (again, while stark naked) SOLELY in Japanese. Lots of cave-lady sign language and laughter allowed us to communicate (albeit in a comically basic way :)), but it was experiences like this that made our time so wonderful.

We stayed in a 100+ year old traditional Japanese-style house which was built by the owner’s great-grandfather. Interestingly, he actually saw the “mushroom cloud” from the nuclear bomb across the sea in Hiroshima from this home. It was a balmy 39 degrees while we were on the island, and in an attempt to stay warm, we went through copious hand warmers (of which we had 2-3 stuck to various parts of our bodies or tucked in our socks at any given point throughout the day), drank enough coffee to shake for a 24-hour stretch and (if we weren’t walking around) sat literally inches in front of our kerosene+fan room heater swapping sides every few minutes to prevent one side of ourselves from catching fire while the other side froze like an ice cube. You wouldn’t believe it by my description, but it was glorious.

No shoes allowed in the house (worth noting, Kev was in good company with our host’s love of crocs :))Our backyard.Also worth noting that we truly had the best host ever. Yohei taught us about how to make delicious somen noodles, made us fancy bancha-bark tea, (after learning about our love for ramen) cooked us ramen eggs and homemade toast and overall was just full of great conversation and warmth. While we didn’t think our stay could have gotten much better in Etajima, Yohei was truly the icing on the cake.

Another beautiful feature of the island, was that it was full of mandarin and orange groves.There were these old-school rickity orange-moving carts scattered up and down the hills, which only added to the nostalgic feel.We collected awesome shells on the beach.

Walked through scallop farms.

Geocached through beautiful patches of cabbage and various veges in practically every yard.We tried lots of new snacks.Last night with Yohei.On our way to catch a bus to get to the ferry on our way back to Hiroshima, we happened across these two ladies cooking up Okonomiyaki, these strange cabbage + pancake + noodles + BBQ sauce things and decided to give them a shot. They were delicious and again, the women were unbelievably warm.On our ferry back to the mainland with stormy skies.Back in Hiroshima, we went to the museum. It was something Kev and I both felt really strongly that we wanted to experience, and truly (not that we expected much different), it was just unbelievably depressing. The entire museum was filled with stories of specific people (many of those showcased, children) who were victims of the nuclear bomb. There were melted skin fragments housed in jars, nails and hair and burnt clothing galore. Photographs of charred skin and gaping wounds rinsed with “black rain”. First-hand video accounts of victims remembering what that day was like for them, and all that they lost. Almost 140,000 people died that day. 140,000…This is the concrete slab that so many of us have seen pictures of in our history books of a person’s shadow “burned” on to the stone.A traumatizing diorama of children with melted skin.Hiroshima’s Peace Dome still standing from the bombings.I still have yet to process what it truly meant to me to be an American walking around the streets of Hiroshima and encountering so many people (on both Etajima and in Hiroshima) that must have been directly affected by the bomb. While everyone we met asked us if we were Americans, we were treated with nothing but kindness. Time and time again I am reminded that there are always two sides to every story – what we learn in history about our reasons for the bomb dropping and learning a bit about the story that Japanese tell their children about why we dropped the bomb in the museum, being a perfect example of this. I’ll never know what is the lesser of two evils, or what makes a time”right” to go to war – and am thankful that I am not in a position where I will ever need to decide, and that I have lived my entire life with my family and those that I love safe from the threat of it. Regardless of the story told though, it is abundantly clear to me what an appalling thing war is, and regardless of how it begins that it is most frequently the innocent that lose the most.

December 15, 2014
Quick post – video of our island home

And, here is a bonus video from a few days ago – just taking pictures walking around the island. Note that this is not “edited”, it’s just a video the camera automatically puts together from photos you take by recording a few seconds of video before you take a picture. So, not that exciting.

December 9, 2014
Life couldn’t get much better, I don’t think

Pictures will come, but I just wanted to quickly post this while the spirit moved me as pictures likely won’t do justice anyway.

Lindsay and I took a night bus from Kyoto South/West to Hiroshima, arriving this morning around 6:30am. From there we took a road trolley to the port of Hiroshima, where we waited an hour or so for a ferry to take us to the Koyou port on the Island of Etajima. Each step of this trip brought us further from the city, further and further into smaller and smaller towns. People are more likely to stare and wonder what a few gaijins are doing walking down the street with giant packs.

Anyway, after arriving on the Island we took a bus (the bus we suspected took us where we wanted, though we weren’t sure) 3 or so kilometers and then hiked up the side of a hill through the backyards of some UP looking houses (except Japanese). Then bam! We arrived at our current living accommodations, a small, 100ish year old traditional Japanese house. It’s not fancy. At all. It’s got a bunch of random stereo equipment laying around. The couches are warn and mismatched.

It’s currently 38 degrees, and there is no central heat. The doors are all rice paper, which is to say, incredibly thin with very little isolation. The only heat comes from propane fans (I’m hoping we don’t die in a tragic fire), which I have pointed directly at my person. I’m also wearing socks for the first time in 4+ months and one of those expose-to-air-and-shake-to-activate heating pads taped to my chest. I’m still cold, but incredibly happy and content.

Outside the house is a garden with mandarin oranges, a bonfire area (complete with a bench that says “I’ve got 99 problems but a bench ain’t one”), and more importantly a direct view of the ocean. We’re up on a hill, so the view is great. It’s not a “top of the empire state building” view but it is a “top of a hill in a very small rural village in Japan overlooking an oyster farm” view.

Lirdy is currently taking a cat nap. Sadly for her, the heater in the room didn’t seem to turn on, so it’s very cold in there. But she’s under blankets, so hopefully she’s doing OK. We’ll see when she wakes up. Speaking of cats there are two here, but they are actually really great cats. You see, I generally don’t like cats, but at least one of the cats is quite dog like. Actually seems to enjoy petting in a dog-like fashion, and the cat is bigger then many cats I’ve seen so it’s got some substance to it when you pet it.

Having just arrived we don’t have many plans, but our host, Tohei has told us there is the oyster farm/factory 2km away that we can walk to and buy cheap oysters at, so we might do that tomorrow. I also plan on looking for a local bar. And, 6km is an onsen (hot spring/public bath) that apparently looks over the ocean, so that’s on the to-do list for sure.

We’ve got 4 days here, and no plans. Maybe do some reading, and definitely do some programming. And walking.

December 6, 2014
Kyoto + Arashiyama + Nara + Kinkaku-ji + Philosopher’s Path

Kyoto. Although still relatively large and modern, it’s OLD WORLD Japan – meaning the buildings, the customs, the food – everything is reminiscent of the past. it’s easy to imagine that you’ve been transported back in time, and frankly, fun to do so! From the BEAUTIFUL temples, cobblestone paths, out-of-this-world bamboo forests, wildlife (deer!) hanging out in shrines, geisha cruising the streets, beautiful waterways, short doorways and unbelievably friendly people…it’s a gem, there’s no question about that.

PROOF: (Kevin is stuck on short door way)Geisha out and about…We showed up to Kyoto without a place to stay for the night when we first arrived because (while we didn’t know when we decided to travel here) November/December are considered the busy season in Japan due to the fall colors, and everything we could find online was booked. While we managed to book the rest of the week, we decided to test our luck and just show up and hope for the best – fully expecting the sleep on a park bench or in a karaoke cafe for the night. As luck would have it, we met this awesome dude Yu, who just minutes after meeting him, invited us to his apartment for the night to spend the night, free of charge. It’s worth noting that the day before, we had been exploring a new area and stopped to take a breather and minutes after sitting down, a group of 4 women picnicking nearby brought us tea and sweets…the day before THAT, on a rainy day, our coffee was bought for us by a couple of wonderful Japanese women nearby. Needless to say, it’s been this kind of generosity and overall kindness that has really made Japan a special place for us to visit. The more places we visit, the more amazing sights we see, it’s never been more clear that it is the PEOPLE and the connections that we make that really make a place memorable or a place special. That could not be more true of Japan.

Today we walked the “Philosopher’s Path” which is named after the 20th century philosopher, Nishida Kitaro, who used this walkway as a meditative practice. The walk itself can be completed in about 30 minutes (although it took us hours) as there are multiple temples, etc along the way that are worth seeing…

Just to start this blog out right, I have to say – what a hunk, am I right!?

Posing on the Philosopher’s Trail

Not a shrine, but a pretty worthwhile stop for cute points- cats nestled up together in a cart trail-side to avoid the wind (of which there was ample today!)

We also encountered many artists painting and sketching along the way. Given the picturesque nature of the walk, it’s not overly surprising they chose such a beautiful spot. Apparently in the spring, cherry blossoms adorn the pathway – and while the fall colors have been nothing short of amazing, I bet that it would give our walk today a run for its money.

Kami stones along the wayAfter walking for not much time at all, we hit Ginkakukji temple.

To be honest, I was hesitant to go check out this “zen garden” and temple, because truly, 1.5 months in Japan, we have seen our fair share of temples/shrines/gardens and I wasn’t feeling the need to pay for another…BUT (thankfully!) Kevin insisted (which I never will live down), and it was TOTALLY WORTH IT. The temple grounds were actually constructed in 1460 (SO CRAZY!) by a man facing his retirement – and the sheer amount of planning and thoughtful design that went into constructing this (now) temple was truly amazing. The pictures don’t do it justice (but, do they ever really?!)

My favorite pic of the day 🙂 We call this the “booty toosh” Tyra (Banks) would be proud.

Yesterday we checked out the “Golden Temple” aka Kinkaku-ji. We walked for about 2 hours (literally) to get there, but dammit if it wasn’t worth it too! The fall colors were out of this world, and it was yet another instance of “man, I’m happy we saw that.” I’ll tell you this, the Japanese have a way with integrating the landscape into their artistic design and have a serious knack for maximising tranquility among the magnificent. Nature perfectly placed, golden water reflections…Kinkaku-ji is a perfect example of this.

Told you.

TWO days ago, we took a train to meet up with a friend we met in Tokyo to visit a city called Nara. We originally heard about Nara from Anthea, who visited Japan a few years back. After informing us of a ridiculous deer infestation of the city, and hearing her stories, we decided to check it out. IT WAS CRAZY! Aggressive, and Pavlov-ed responsive to deer cookies, these little buggers were NUTS! (Full disclosure: While I like to think of myself as fairly tough, I was actually pretty freaked out with their aggressiveness….and while I DID feed them towards the end, I would not say I came ANYWHERE close to feeling comfortable – DEFINITELY not enough to feed them from my mouth like Kevin did :)) Given the fact that it’s hunting season back home, I couldn’t help but laugh knowing we were literally surrounded by HUNDREDS of deer eating OUT OF OUR HANDS when the rest of our families were freezing their butts off for hours waiting for just ONE to approach. Come to Japan guys! Just sayin’!

Seconds after walking to the “Can I purchase deer cookies?” counter, Kev was greeted by a new, hungry friend.He took to his new job right away.

Kevin the Deer Whisperer.Deer selfie!

Kev and our friend Ira without enough hands for crackers.

Not surprisingly, there was ANOTHER! temple that we checked out, so we walked to Tōdai-ji (see those ominous clouds?!)….It was raining pretty hard on and off, so Kevin dressed for the occasion.

We weren’t the only ones interested in it though…

And the day BEFORE THAT we checked out the BAMBOO FOREST aka Arashiyama. If you’ve ever seen Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, you have an idea of this place – only with one difference. Loads of tourists. Even still, it was INCREDIBLE. BREATHTAKING. OTHER-WORLDLY. Bamboo for DAYZ.

GEISHA/MAIKO SPOTTING! Apparently bamboo forests aren’t only for tourists!All the beauty worked up Kev’s appetite for something sweet (which happens by the minute, I’ll tell you), and we happened across a super cute little homemade custard stand. Good luck? Yes. Happy camper? YES.

And again, our walk there was pretty ugly….

Sick of gorgeous fall colors yet?

We’re not.

And the day ended, just as most seem to…with RAMEN + beer.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it 1,000 times – Life is pretty darn good, and we are feeling pretty damn lucky.

December 3, 2014