A Blog About Things We Do – Page 5

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.

Uncategorized

Stuttgart, Castles and Spas!

Post author By kevin
Post date February 2, 2015
No Comments on 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!

Germany Travel

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

Post author By kevin
Post date February 2, 2015
No Comments on 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!

Budapest Hungary Travel

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

Post author By kevin
Post date January 23, 2015
No Comments on 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!

Greece Travel

Aegina Island and Nafplio (bonus: Lake Vouliagmeni)

Post author By kevin
Post date January 9, 2015
1 Comment on 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!

Greece Travel

Athens, a Graffiti wonderland.

Post author By lindsay
Post date January 3, 2015
No Comments on 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.

Travel Turkey

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!

After 3 connections, and a delayed flight – Nick shows us his “I’M READY FOR A NIGHT BUS” equipment.

We arrived at 7am and headed to “Azure Cave Suites” which happened to be the most incredible “hotel” ever. Our rooms were literally caves – and they were GORGEOUS. We had the most amazing breakfast (provided for free!) every morning, and homemade puddings, breads and sweet treats every night. The family running the place and their German Shepard puppy, Zeus, were absolutely the best ever. They literally roasted us chestnuts (over an open fire!) on Christmas eve, made us gingerbread men cookies and did everything they could to make us feel like family. On our last morning, they drove us back to the main section of town where we could catch our bus, and the woman explained her “business” this way: “every guest is a family member from all over the world that I am just having the opportunity to meet for the first time. It’s a celebration every day.” And, it truly felt like that every. day.

oh! Our place also served, LINDEN TEA, which just so happens to be my namesake tea!

View from our roof top.Morning one, we rented four wheelers (thanks to Anthea and Brittany!). The company we rented through encouraged us to wear hair nets under our helmets…which Kev did proudly.

And this was what we saw:

Cappadocia is especially known for two things…1) exceptional natural wonders, in particular fairy chimneys (pictured below) and 2) hot air balloons (which are a bit further down this post).

The rock formations have eroded into hundreds of spectacular pillars which people of the villages at the heart of the Cappadocia carved into houses, churches and monasteries from the soft rocks of volcanic deposits. Obviously now all are completely abandoned, but climbing through the tiny caves and crevices, higher and higher up these formations made for an awesome day of exploring.

After, not surprisingly, we stopped for tea:

The next day we woke up early and went on a killer tour which included an underground city, a gorgeous hike in the basin of the “Grand Canyon” of Turkey, drank (more!) tea, river-side, explored more caves, fairy chimneys and monasteries and truly, just took in the beauty.Once we got up there, Kev was pretty scared of how high we were 🙂Which was kind of understandable 🙂Christmas morning, we woke up at 5:30 am to (FREEZE OUR BUTTS OFF) watch the sunrise and watch the famed hot air balloons take off. Sorry for the 6,000 balloon pictures, but it was honestly magic.morning eyes, cold noses.Another day, we rented mountain bikes. The guys looked like this: magazine-worthy.Conferrng with phones as to geo-cache location.This is how I felt about it. (That picture does not do my grumpiness justice.) We were minutes from dropping the bikes back off for the day, so my spirits were higher than on other times 🙂 Drew, if you’re seeing this, I would NOT have made you proud!BUT, after biking up the insane hills, we had an opportunity to do some pretty killer geo-caching, explore MORE old cave-things and see some pretty spectacular sights, so in retrospect, I shouldn’t have complained quite as much as I did 🙂For instance, on our biking adventure, we happened across a sunset balloon take off! The boys with a close-up view.A few hours later: bike view to Mount Erciyes.All in all, Cappadocia was amazing. We were all so thankful we had a chance to visit! Thanks Mar and Kevin and Mom and Dad and Brittany and Anthea and Ezgi and Mike! It was a Christmas to remember! <3

Travel Turkey

ISTANBUL.

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

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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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The first day in Istanbul, we checked out the Basilica Cistern, which was this cavernous, beautifully illuminated, cavernous cistern that was built in 532. Apparently, there are hundreds of cisterns hidden under the streets of Istanbul, but only 2 are open to the public. The Basilica Cistern is the largest cistern in Istanbul and was constructed using 336 columns, and stored up to 100,000 tons of water which was delivered to the Byzantine emperors in the Great Palace. Up to 7,000 slaves were rumored to have built it.

We had to pay a “decent” amount (I think $10 each?!) to get in (the most of any attraction after the Taj Mahal (which of course we got in for free), but it was honestly pretty crazy. At the back, there were carved Medusa heads which no one knows for certain why they landed here, which was quite interesting in and of itself. Worth the money? We’re not 100% sure, but it was beyond beautiful, without question.

Right across from the B.C. were a couple more famous attractions…the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofya.

The craziest thing about Istanbul for us was the fact that mosques seemed to just pop out of NO WHERE. BEAUTIFUL, HUGE, ornate vessels of grandeur – just BOOM. There they are. The pictures below are of Aya Sofya….

And even craizer, JUST across the street from THAT was the Blue Mosque (aka: Sultan Ahmed Mosque). Although I wish I could say otherwise, I did not get a great photo of the Blue Mosque (at least from the outside) – even though, in my opinion, it was MUCH cooler than Aya Sofya. But there were fountains, and people selling tea and loads of Muslims coming to pray (and tourists coming to gawk). It had quite the atmosphere.

Not surprisingly, they were very strict about the dress code, and offered free garments to ensure those entering the mosque were adequately covered. After removing our shoes, I was given a lovely light blue head scarf (giant piece of cotton cloth) which you can see in the goofy picture below.That said, it was honestly magnificent.No pictures can do it justice – it was just SO, so big. There were 20,000+ handmade iznik tiles covering the walls (appropriately giving the name “Blue Mosque”), over 200 stained glass windows…and yeah. The level of detail was just astounding.

And, as I said, right across the street from Aya Sofya. Pretty crazy, right?(In other news :)) Not surprising, we were pretty excited about the food. Kevin was stoked to try some baklava, but we both found it (surprisingly) tasted like a barn…which doesn’t sound like a great description – it was still quite delicious, but had a very distinct and pungent flavor that neither of us were used to.One night, we cruised around Taxism, which is known as the “Times Square of Turkey”. That description was pretty funny to both of us, although it did have a great energy and a LOT of people shopping and enjoying winter festivities…Down a little alley though, we came across a church that was totally decked out of the holidays. It was my first European church! and I was pretty happy with it 🙂(In other news (again)) The Turks loved their tea (cay). I don’t think I could even come close to counting how many glasses we drank while there…I loved that they came in cute, tiny little glass cups (perfect for hand warming) with miniature spoons and a single sugar cube. Even though I refuse to put sugar in my tea (thanks Mom!), it still added a perfect tone to the tea drinking 🙂One night we met up with Elif, Ezgi’s sister, and her friends in Beyoğlu and had an awesome night.Thankfully, we had a few perfectly spring-like days before the weather turned, and one day we headed to Ortakoy, which was this beautiful sea-side haven. We spent a decent amount of time just enjoying the water and watching endless jellyfish float by. Kevin also got pooped on seconds after this shot.

Turns out, the skyline at sunset was pretty insane.

The other amazing thing about Istanbul was the “Call to Prayer”. Five times a day (based on the position of the sun, etc) all mosques would “call”/sing to the people of Istanbul from loud speakers, welcoming them to their mosque to pray. Given the sheer number of mosques (3,113!!!!) and the fact that Istanbul is conveniently situated on so many waterways, during these times of day – magic happened. These eerie echos would literally masque whatever noise the hustle and bustle of the city might present and your ears would be filled with the rumble of the endless trilling cacophony of the Call to Prayer.

More food:

Turkish coffee (while literally as thick as mud), always came with a tiny glass of water and Turkish Delight. It really made me want to read The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe again…Breakfast of kut borek. Mike gave us a recommendation to go check out this little place near their flat which was owned by the sweetest old man, his wife and son. Even though they spoke no English whatsoever, we had the most wonderful time “talking” with them on a few mornings. One of the highlights of our time in Turkey, for sure.And, just a few days into Istanbul, it was time to get Nick from the Airport!

Turkey, part 2: Cappadocia coming soon.

Uncategorized

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.

Japan Travel Uncategorized

Kyoto (last day) + Etajima + Hiroshima

Post author By lindsay
Post date December 15, 2014
No Comments on 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.