TravelStream™ news feed for member couplakiwis on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/couplakiwis en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Sun, 25 Jan 2009 22:06:26 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1214389740/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1214389740/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1214389740/tpod.html Sun, 25 Jan 2009 22:06:26 -0500 Couplakiwis: South America and Europe '08

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Cheltenham, England, United Kingdom

We are now in Cheltenham, a nice smallish town on the Wolds, a range of hills dotted with several small towns and picturesque villages. We walked into town this morning with our host, Joe, but parted ways when he showed us a family of squirrels in the park. We spent the next half hour stalking squirrels through and around the trees - oh they're so cute! There were some younger, smaller ones, whose tails hadn't developed properly and then mum and dad with the bushy, feathery tails. I think they were just as intrigued by as, since all the locals just ignore them. They would come really close to us and then dart up a tree - on the far side of the trunk - but peep out to look at us before scampering up/off. Gorgeous.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1219482600/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1219482600/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1219482600/tpod.html Sun, 25 Jan 2009 22:04:56 -0500 Couplakiwis: South America and Europe '08

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Florence, Tuscany, Italy

Next place.Ah, the wordsmith in me wearies! However, am determined to have a detailed memoir of our trip - our once in a lifetime trip as we call it. And then wryly add: because it'll take a lifetime to pay it off!Florence - the birthplace of the Renaissance. It seemed a typical Italian city on arrival, however its Duomo was anything but typical: white with dark green horizontal stripes and a huge, orange dome (terracotta tiles). Far more impressive from the outside than the inside. It's Baptistry has these large, heavy wooden doors with 10 panels of gold plate, carved in bas-relief with scenes from The Bible. It wasn't until we took ANOTHER hop-on/off tour and ended up at Piazza Michaelangelo, overlooking the city that we got a sense of how pretty it is. It has the River Arno running through the middle, with several stylish bridges crossing it. One, Ponte Vecchio is lined on both sides by shops that jut out over the river. Very quaint. Ofcourse the ever-present terracotta-tiled roves make for a lovely contrast against the lush green of the valley littered with cypress trees. The Tuscan countryside really is as lovely as the legend. I love that Diane Lane movie, Under the Tuscan Sun, and I think Liv Tyler goes to Tuscany in Stealing Beauty. Anyway, like I said, I wasn't disappointed.  From the Piazza, the features of the cityscape are the massive orange dome of the Duomo, but, complementing it is the smaller and more graceful turquoise cupola of the city mosque.After a day of sightseeing, we decided to do a day trip to the little medieval town of Siena the next morning. It's a very sweet little place, with narrow streets and tall, old stone buildings. To get into the huge main piazza, you have to walk through little tunnels that are lined with tiny shops. The piazza itself is massive and on a slope, surrounded on all sides by 500-year-old buildings. It's different from any of the others I've seen. Siena's Duomo is also very striking, in the same style as that of Florence, but with a far more ornate frontage. It was a different style of town to any we'd seen so far, so really nice to go there.Next on the list for day trips was the Wonky Pillar of Pisa. The town itself isn't anything special - ok, another nice little Tuscan town, but everyone goes there to see The Tower. So we went there and saw it. Heaps of people there of course. It was a good time to go as it is being cleaned and restored, but thankfully they didn't have much scaffolding up so the sunny side looked lovely and white. Apart from being 5m from vertical at the top, the architecture itself is actually really delicate and unusual, so it's aesthetically pleasing on top of the novelty factor. After having a good look I lay down in the sun and actually went to sleep for an hour or so! Ah, what a life. When  I woke up, all the people who had been sitting next to me but in the shade cast by the tower were way down at the other end of the lawn, moving with the shade. Last day in Florence involved a trip to the Uffizi Gallery, Italy's most important and famous art gallery. It's made up mostly of the private collection of the powerful Medici family who governed the city for about 300 years. When Napolean conquered the city in the 1800s he knicked off with a lot of great stuff, now seen in the Louvre. However, there are still a lot of famous and fantastic works in there. I had to queue for an hour and a half to get in, but once I did, the place was huge. To be really honest, I was a bit over all the medieval religious art, although all that gold is pretty sparkly. I enjoyed seeing some more of Michelangelo's works, as I could actually appreciate how his style and use of colour was quite different to a lot of the paintings from that period. There was a whole room or two devoted to Botticelli, including the lovely Birth of Venus. I liked Venus of Urbino, by can't-remember-who. A beautiful nude which Mark Twain unfortunately called "the vilest, crudest, most vulgar work of art ever created," or something to that effect. My favourite painting in the whole place was by someone I'd never heard of and can't remember - Herri someone I think. That's the way it goes sometimes isn't it?Well, 5 nights in "Firenze" was just enough to see what we needed to and get a feel for the city, surrounding towns and Tuscan countryside. Next comes Venice and I'm full of anticipation. 
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1214130300/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1214130300/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1214130300/tpod.html Sun, 25 Jan 2009 21:59:00 -0500 Couplakiwis: South America and Europe '08

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Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom

So from Bath onto Cardiff. A late town bus in Bath (by 20 mins) meant we missed our connection in Bristol, had to buy new tickets, and a trip which was supposed to take 2 hours ended up taking 7! Ah, travelling. After a lovely first night with Abby and Huw, which included fresh, yummy pies from the local takeaways, we headed in to Cardiff to make the most of our one day in Wales. First stop was Cardiff Castle - Wow!  The Romans (again) built the orginal walls, mounds and ditches and used the site as a fort. The Normans added to it around 1100AD and the Norman keep still stands in the middle of the grounds (with a real moat and everything! Cool! I climbed to the top of it and imagined the medieval knights and soldiers fighting their enemies with swords, bows and arrows after they had breached the outer castle walls - the keep is the last stand.  We took a walk around the battlements and a tour through the main castle - reconstructed in the 19th century by the third Marquis of Bute, at the time the richest man in the world. It's constructed in the Victorian idea of medieval gothic style (apparently the Victorians were fascinated by all things medieval) and is so incredibly ornate, intricate and opulent. For instance, many of therooms have ceilings which are covered in 22 carat gold leaf! Every room is custom-painted with thousands of individual images of kings, queens, knights, angels, saints, martyrs and fairytale characters. The man would have spent MILLIONS of pounds (yes, back then) - he owned half of Britain apparently, and had as much money as the reigning monarch, Queen Victoria - and it shows! Apparently he could speak, read or write, to varying degrees, in 21 languages. We weren't allowed to take photos of the interior unfortunately but I sneaked one of our last stop - the library - a series of sculptures showing the progression of language from Runes, to Egyptian hieroglyphics, to Aramaic, Syrian? and Greek.After several hours in the Castle, we dragged ourselves away and over to the next block where stands Cardiff Arms Park and the Millenium Stadium. The Stadium has replaced the famous Cardiff Arms Park, but there is a smaller ground beside it with the same name, (perhaps the original) which has been there for 132 years and is one of the oldest rugby grounds in Britain. Of course Ray had to get a photo and walk on the ground. He then took a tour of the Millenium Stadium. Being a multi-purpose stadium, they have to import the soil and grass and lay it each time there is a football or rugby game. It costs them 80 000 pounds and takes a whole week to put it down. They also have rock concerts there of course, and the tour guide said that they made more from the last Madonna concert than from the entire football season when Chelsea and Man U among others, came to play. Evidently, Madonna is coming back in the next few weeks, and has asked that the toilet in the changing/dressing room be changed because she doesn't want to use the same toilet as all those dirty rugby players!We spent the rest of the afternoon down in Cardiff Bay, a really pretty area with many cafes and restaurants along the port and home to the Millenium Centre, Roald Dahl Plaza (he was born in Cardiff to Norwegian parents, and we saw the lovely little Norwegian church at which they worshipped) and possibly the world's most beautiful merry-go-round. We wished we had had more time to see Cardiff and Wales.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1213870980/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1213870980/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1213870980/tpod.html Sun, 25 Jan 2009 21:55:05 -0500 Couplakiwis: South America and Europe '08

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Bath, England, United Kingdom

Yes, we're here in England - the Motherland, land of hope and glory, land of pies, fish and chips and warm beer! We've had a great time so far - it's really nice and less tiring to be in an English-speaking country after 5 months. It's also very picturesque most of the time and the people have been SO friendly and helpful.We flew into London and it took us 4 hours to find our hostel - a long tube and then rail trip and then bad directions from the website which had us walking around for 2 hours. That night we slept for over twelve hours and woke up the following afternoon, despite being in a dorm room! Didn't do anything but recover from the  previous day and plan our trip around the UK. We realised that Wimbledon started soon, so decided to head out of town for a week and then come back and try to get tickets.We headed east to our first stop, Bath. A very cool town. Most of it was built in the 18th century, and several famous people lived there for a time, including Beau Nash, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. On our first walk through town I kept exclaiming, "it's so ENGLISH!" - I know. It's just that I've read about little english towns and villages in story books and history books since I was a kid, and now to see it was kind of weird. Of course, the most famous site in Bath are the ancient Roman baths. In the late 19th century they excavated right down to theRoman level (the Normans and Victorians had also added their bits) and it was pretty amazing to be staring at a bathing pool and standing on steps that were built and used 2000 years ago! You know I love the history stuff. It  was especially interesting because we bought 2 seasons of the acclaimed TV series ROME, in South America and have been watching it for the past few weeks, so we were imagining the characters from there going about their conniving and intrigue (it seems there was a lot of that in ancient Rome) while bathing, sauna-ring and the rest. It has been turned into a really tasteful, first-class exhibition and education facility, with free audio guides, 3D models and computer graphics, and many artefacts from the Roman period in England. Our first trip into town took us along the canal, created during the canal-wave of the early 19th century which saught to link the east and west coasts of Britain by joining the rivers with man-made canals. These were created all around the country but were only used for about 40 years before the railway took over. It was so lovely and quaint - all the barges along the canal, many converted into homes, and heaps of people enjoying walking, running or biking along the pony track. We actually got to see two canals using the locks - one going up and one going down - really fascinating, and such and ingenious idea! It took quite a while though. Another day we got to see the ones near Stonehenge that go right up the side of a hill. There are 16 locks in total and it takes 6 hours to get your barge to the top. However, there is a pub once you get there, and I'm pretty sure a beer would be in order! That day we also went to the Circus - a ring of 2-storey townhouses built like an inward-facing Colosseum, and Royal Crescent, a famous curved street.Our second day in Bath we took a tour to Stonehenge. Yep, the famous stones themselves. How cool to finally see them for real! And on summer solstice too, one of the most important and sacred days of the year in ancient times. We couldn't go until later in the afternoon, because on summer solstice, more than  25 000 people camp there and go to worship or just gork at the stones and hope to see the sun rising through the eastern arches. But of course, being England, the sun wasn't shining that day. Those sarcen stones are enormous. It really is a remarkable work, and due to the fact that it is no longer fully intact, you can see aspects of the workmanship andengineering that was required to get them to stay in place. We learnt that the earliest stones, the bluestones of the inner circle, put down around 6000 years ago, were actually carted from Wales, 500 km away! They are believed to have been shipped round the southern cross and then up the River Avon. Big job. Even the huge sarcen stones were brought from 50 km away. Since London, we haven't actually been staying in hostels. We've taken up "couchsurfing" - it's a worldwide phenomenon that is coordinated by a website (couchsurfing.com) whereby people offer a bed or a couch for free and travellers search for free beds around the world. Not only does it save you a hell of a lot of money (especially here in the UK) but it is a great way to meet some fantastic people. So far we've couchsurfed in Bath, Cardiff, and Cheltenham, where we are now. In Bath, we stayed with a middle-aged man, Charles, who, having recently been through a divorce, lives in a flat and I think has couchsurfers for the company, as he has never couchsurfed himself yet. He made us a lovely pasta meal on the first night, and his spicy version of shepard's pie on our last night, as well as plying us with wine non-stop every night! In Cardiff, we stayed with a lovely Welsh couple, Abby and Huw, who plan to travel around Europe couchsurfing but thought they would make their contribution beforehand. Huw (Hugh) speaks Welsh fluently, as his father's first language is Welsh. He watches rugby on the Welsh channel, in the Welsh language, and speaks it with many of his friends. Here in Cheltenham we are staying with another lovely couple - Slovaks Josef and Zuzanna. They too, cooked us a meal (a potato, onion and bacon Slovak dish) and made us drink baravicka, a strong Slovak liquor 40% alcohol, made from juniper berries.  Everyone has been so friendly and so hospitable - we never expected to be provided with home-cooked meals, wine and beer, desserts (Charles whipped up some cream and served with fresh Somerset strawberries). We've been blown away really. We're looking forward to having people to stay with us when we get back.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1211311980/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1211311980/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1211311980/tpod.html Sun, 25 Jan 2009 21:47:45 -0500 Couplakiwis: South America and Europe '08

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Machu Picchu, Sacred Valley, Peru

Machu Picchu - or the day Ray got felt up in a Peruvian toilet. More about that later.  Ah, Machu Picchu, one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World (and our 3rd) - well deserving of that accolade. I am going to run out of superlatives I can tell. I know I have used the word breathtaking several times before, and that doesn´t leave much room for improvement, so how about sublime? In all seriousness though, I think it is something you have to see to understand its beauty, and if you think it looks fantastic in the photos.... it is one of the most stunning and beautiful places I have ever seen. I mean, out of context, it´s this stone urban complex, still in excellent condition (minus rooves) on the top of a steep mountain, with hundreds of crop terraces, many temples, lookouts, royal houses, sacrificial tables and perfect lawns on wide open plazas. It´s impressive to behold. But when you think that it was built over 500 years ago, without the use of the wheel - mountains too bloody steep anyway - that 1000 people once lived here, and that if you put one foot wrong while digging your spuds,  mindblowing. I like to imagine the places we go to as busy and alive, with the people who lived there going about their lives as kings, warriors, priests, farmers or slaves (poor slaves) - with rooves on the buildings and all. In that way I can kind of merge out all the tourists crawling like ants all over the city and it´s like I´m back there. That´s when I got the scary image of the potato farmer: when I stood on the bottom terrace of one of the agricultural complexes and looked down - whoa, giddiness. To backtrack: we had gone up the day before to Aguas Calientes/Machu Picchu town by way of collective taxi, collectivo (jam-packed minivan) and train. We had read that that way you can get the 5:30am bus up to the ruins and beat the rush that comes on the train straight from Cuzco. The problem with all these "beat the tourist rush/through the back door" tricks, especially when published in enormously popular guides like the Lonely Planet,  is that it just creates a new tourist trail. Eg: at 5:30 that morning, in the pitch dark, we joined a queue at the bus terminal already 50m long. Within 10 mins, we were in the middle of a now 100m long queue. Nevertheless, we got on the sixth bus to leave (so 300 people already on the mountain, not counting those idiots who walk up) and rode the 20 min trip up a very wIndy (not windy) road asthe world slowly woke up. It was  light by the time we reached the site, and we joined another queue for quarter of an hour to get through the gates.It was great to walk through the storage buildings on the edge of the city and out into the open to be bombarded by walls and walls of stone - and llamas. Yes, there are probably over a dozen llama who live there permanently, nibbling or falling asleep on the grass that the tourist police don´t let you walk or sit on, and wandering in and out of the buildings. Very cute - sorry I know I´ve said that before. Especially the baby ones ....... OK! The part you  walk into is quite low in the complex, hence the feeling of being surrounded and overwhelmed by stone, and so you feel like you´re seeing something new, not: oh yeah, I´ve seen that picture a thousand times. It also gives you an appreciation of the size of the city, because views from above always diminish/compress that. Ray and I wandered around for an hour or so - he went to the Temple of the Sun and I went to the highest point of the city - the guardhouse - to watch the sun break over the mountains. Wow. As Ray said later, you can certainly see why so many cultures and civilisations throughout history have worshipped the sun - it brings warmth and light within seconds to a cold and grey world. It was an almost spiritual moment: the sun and all its power - heat, light, brilliance - slowly breaching the enormous mountain ranges surrounding Machu Picchu, and bestowing  its glory on this once forgotten city of stone. At that point it wouldn´t have mattered if there were 5000 tourists there with me, I felt like I was the only person on Earth. I took a picture of Ray experiencing the same moment in the Temple of the Sun far below me - no really, that IS him, THERE!Having been there for the coming of the sun, I thought I better face The Mountain (you know that one behind the city, in all the photos? Yeah, the really BIG, really STEEP mountain?) because I´d read that they only permit 400 people per day to climb it, and the view from the top is meant to be fantastic. It was 8:40 in the morning, and I was person number 180 -  heaps of time. By the way it´s called Wayna Picchu, one means Big Mountain, one  means Small Mountain. Well, you start by going down, not a good thing I always think, because it means at the END of the trip, you have to go UP again.Well, I should have just appreciated it because after 10 mins of going down, I then had to go very very UP. Like, huge stone steps straight up the side of the mountain. It is supposed to take and hour, and I wasjust saying to  myself, after 15 minutes of said stone steps, "just gotta put one foot in front of the other for another 45 mins Sarah." It was a very tough climb, probably the toughest I´ve ever done, but I´m no tramper. At points it was so steep you had to use the steel barrier-rope to haul yourself up. You know it´s bad when the people coming back down are looking at you like, you poor prick, and giving you words of encouragement or the number of minutes of hell you have left. (Oh come on, I´m a drama teacher!) Well, when I got to the top I was in for a surprise: from the city below, you can see several terraces on the front of the mountain, but in fact, there´s a whole town up there. There is an enclosed building, a temple, several guardposts, and dozens of crop terraces. When I looked down on Machu Picchu it felt like I was viewing it from a helicopter - it was so small! Man, I felt like I was on top of the world. And if I´d thought the potato farm was beside a sheer drop, wow. How on EARTH did they build a town up here on this precipice??! I nearly killed myself just walking up, without carrying a 10 tonne boulder with me (NOT an exaggeration. The boulder that is). Actually, as an aside, the Incas did use enormous stones - at Sacsaywaman (yes I had my photo taken with the sign), the main fort in Cuzco, one of the boulders weighs over 300 tonnes. (I think it´s tonnes not tons Dad). I spent an hour just looking around the top of the mountain - it´s not easy to get around you know, plus I was putting off going back down - took some amazing photos, and just savoured my time there, because I don´t think I´ll be back. I´ll think I´ll leave it at that. It´s an incredible place, and we can thank Hiram Bingham, that famous anthropologist, for REdiscovering it for us in 1911. He named it "The Lost City of the Incas" because it had remained hidden in the mountains for 500 years. People speculate there could be other lost cities out there, somewhere in the mountains, but only the sun knows where.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1218791580/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1218791580/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1218791580/tpod.html Sun, 25 Jan 2009 21:43:06 -0500 Couplakiwis: South America and Europe '08

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Naples, Campania, Italy

From Corfu we took another 7 hour ferry to the Italian port town of Brindisi, where we stayed for 3 nights, just recharging our batteries after the heat and mozzie-fighting of Corfu. Next stop was Naples. I knew it was famous, but apart from being near Pompei, I didn't know what it was supposed to have going for it. I HAD noticed in the news a few months earlier that PM  Berlusconi (sp?) had sent in the army to solve the city's rubbish problem! Not good publicity! On the way to our hostel we did get the feeling that it was a bit grubby: there was still quite a lot of rubbish around (jeez, where were the army, off fighting a war or something?!) and also a lot of graffiti on the blackened buildings. We got the feeling that our neighbourhood wasn't somewhere you would want to hang out after dark. Our hostel, although in a typical dirty, crumbly building, was brand new (only open 3 weeks), clean as a whistle with lovely bright colouring. Our first night there the hosts treated everyone to pizza. Now that's what I'm talkin' 'bout!!Our first day we tried to take a bus down to the harbour but Ray (yes, the MAN) read the map wrong and we ended up in Piazza Garibaldi, the main "square." It wasn't really a pretty area, but there was a huge market selling rip-off "you-couldn't-tell-the-difference" bags, shoes, and belts by famous Italian brands like Dolce and Gabbana, Armani, Gucci etc. Unfortunately I couldn't buy anything because I don't got no room to carry it.The following day we headed out to the place that was our real reason for coming to Naples: the ancient city of Pompei, buried in 2 and a half meters of ash and stone when Mt Vesuvius erupted in 72 AD. The volcanic layers preserved the city so well until excavations began in the late 18th century that you really feel like you're walking among the Romans. I don't know what the area is, but 10,000 people lived there, and I think most of the town remains (minus the rooves). We stood in the forum, looking at the Temple of Apollo with the striking form of thedangerous Mt Vesuvius in the background. Even though it hasn't erupted since 1944, you can imagine it must be quite daunting living in its shadow.For me, the most amazing thing was walking through some of the grander houses and seeing all the painted rooms still with their bright reds, golds, greens and blues. Some of the murals/frescoes in the gardens are fully intact, and the rooms aren't just painted in a single colour, but with images, patterns and designs in bright, bold colours. You can still see 2000-year-old graffiti on street walls, one political slogan said something like - vote for Mr X, he's the man!We walked right down to the far end of the city, where the amphitheatre is situated. It's the largest amphitheatre of its time remaining in the Roman world. Unlike the Colosseum, it is fully intact, and apart from some dirt and grass covering a portion of the stands, it's exactly as it would have been all those years ago.By far the most impressive residential building was the House of Mysteries, a long walk from the centre but well worth it. It is a grand villa that shows very few signs of disrepair, and the rooms are basically as they would havebeen at the time of the eruption. It's open-plan living, Roman-style. Large rooms with high ceilings, all beautifully painted, a courtyard with a tunnel down to a ?wine cellar and its own wine-press. It is called the House  of Mysteries because of a perfectly-preserved room with three walls depicting, with bold style and vivid colour, a scene from the festival of Bacchus (ok, so can't quite remember the Mystery part, but it's something to do with an initiate to the cult of Bacchus and the procession).A really poignant moment is looking at the casts made of people and animals that show how they were at the moment of their death. The archaeologists poured plaster into the cavities left by the victims as they were consumed by the volcanic debris, so you see them sprawled out on the ground, or huddled, clutching knees tochest in terror. It was a fantastic experience to walk through an ancient town and get a sense of history that you can't get fromseeing objects in a museum. To paraphrase one of the early archaeologists on the site - that ancient tragedy created one of modernities luckiest finds.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1220472180/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1220472180/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1220472180/tpod.html Sun, 25 Jan 2009 21:25:38 -0500 Couplakiwis: South America and Europe '08

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Lucerne, Lucerne, Switzerland

We got on the train in Venice and headed across the border into Switzerland. Not long after crossing over, immigration officers came through to check passports - that was a new experience: of course Switzerland is not in the EU so they don't have open borders. It was interesting that most of the signage in southern Switzerland was still in Italian. The train wound its way through incredibly narrow valleys, the one side of which could have been straight out of Heidi: little alpine cottages/houses, with small windows and brown sloping rooves, made from logs and other natural materials, or constructed so that they definitely blended into the surrounding environment and didn't stand out from it. Opposing these traditional Swiss hamlets, on the other side of the tracks (so to speak!) would be factories, processing plants, and other industrial sites, testament to the fact that Switzerland remains known for its beautiful scenery as well as its high quality manufacturing  (and chocolate!). The non-industrial side of the valley was just as I had always imagined: tiny villages or clusters of houses, separated by immaculately maintained greens and then the forest rising up the steep mountain slopes behind until it peters out and the rocky mountainside is exposed, barring a few patches of snow right a the very top.We arrived in Lucerne, which was to be the first of only two stops in Switzerland.  All I knew about it was that it was famous and that it is what we called the special hay we fed to the horses when I was a kid. Ray had been there before and said it was beautiful  - he was right. The town is situated at one end of a large lake, from which steep, heavily forested mountains rise straight up. Of course, the classic Swiss architecture is abundant - the town looks like the heavens have sprinkled giant cuckoo clocks all over it. It's certainly a style and a scene I hadn't seen before and I was enchanted: every significant building, street, bridge and public space screamed class, quality, design and heritage. Quaint and pretty would be two words that spring to mind, although neither of them carry enough weight with their respective meanings to do justice to Lucerne.We were only staying three nights in Lucerne, so that gave us two days to have a look around. That first night we met an interesting and hard-case young Aussie guy called Ben, who destroyed our hopes of having the dorm to ourselves for the night. I thought him a bit odd at first but he turned out to be a great guy. He was a travelling circus performer (well I guess you'd have to be a wee bit odd to do that for a living) and was working his way around Europe performing at various festivals. He had come off the Edinburgh festival a couple of months ago and was looking forward to his first appearance at the Melbourne festival early next year. So he must be pretty good. He studied at circus school in Christchurch. He was a real crack-up and we all had such a laugh. He did a performance for us where he stuck a rubber cooking spatula in his mouth, balanced a glass bottle on the wooden end that was sticking out of his mouth and then proceeded to throw the bottle around and flip it up and down, always catching it on the wooden bit. Yep, was a fun night! When I mentioned that I was a drama teacher and actually did clowning as a genre study he gave me a DVD of his act.Ben recommended that we do the very expensive but apparently worth it day trip along the lake and up the biggest mountain in the area. I can't remember how much it cost and quite frankly, I don't really want to because everything in Switzerland was so friggin expensive! It was a stunning day, and we started the trip with a 40 minute boat ride along the lake. The lakefront  was quite jagged, and behind each little peninsula would be another gorgeous little hamlet, once again in the quaint, traditional alpine style. So green and so beautiful. Looking out from the boat, you looked across the perfect, glistening lake,  then your eyes were drawn up through the time-capsule hamlets to the brilliant green of the village common and the deep, dark green of the rising forest then back into the misty, indigo  jagged outlines of the Swiss Alps.We arrived at the base of Mt Pilatus, up which travels the world's steepest clog railway. We piled into the bright red carriages of the little train and began the slow climb up. I think someone mentioned that the incline was about 70 degrees. You really would have struggled to walk up some of the sections we rode up. We went through narrow little tunnels and around hair-pin bends with vertical drops off the side, and all the while the view kept getting more and more spectacular: more lake, more mountains, fewer trees, colder air! We passed a few hardy cows on the way, (yes, with bells round their necks) and I kept expecting Heidi and Peter to come running down the hill - it was straight out of a storybook.We reached the end of the line and the summit of Pilatus at 2100m, well above the tree line and from there we could see every branch of the lake and right out across the Alps in all directions. An absolutely stunning view. The harsh, rugged beauty of the mountains fades into the blue misty distance and your eyes strain to make out form, so that you can't tell where the earth ends and the clouds begin.  This vague, ethereal alpine scenery contrasts with the lushness and precision of the fertile valleys and clearly defined villages below.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1219050720/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1219050720/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1219050720/tpod.html Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:52:12 -0400 Couplakiwis: South America and Europe '08

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Rome, Lazio, Italy

Rome. Magnificient, majestic Rome. All roads lead do Rome. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Rome wasn't built in a day. Vini vidi vici. Yes, it has a unique place in our history.&nbsp; Even the name conjures ideas of grandeur, greatness and power.We stayed in a camping ground at Prima Porta, a 30 min train ride from Rome's centre, &nbsp;at Tiber Camping, a nice green, spacious area with a restaurant-bar, mini-mart and swimming pool. We had our own room, which was half of a caravan, shared with nice guy Paul from Austin, Texas. When I say shared, there was a paper-thin wall between us, so we could hear anything the other half was doing, and the whole place shooked when any of us walked around!Our first excursion was to the grand Colosseum. You come out of the subway station, and there it is, right in front of you. You look up at three stories of ancient stone in awe. You queue for 45 minutes in the intense, blazing Mediterranean sun, and finally you're there, walking out as the gladiators, slaves, criminals and wild animals would have, to an enormous amphitheatre for 55 000 people. People all around you, a screaming sea of faces, eager for blood to be spilled in this most famous of arenas, most brutal of spectacles. &nbsp;It is quite damaged/decayed when compared to the brilliantly-preserved amphitheater at Pompei, but it is amazing that in the open air, subject to storms, sun, earthquakes and pillaging (apparently a lot of its stone was used to build St Peter's), so much of it still remains. The floor of the arena is no longer there, so you can see the labrynthine network of passages and spaces for trapdoors and contraptions and scary animals that lay underneath. A very impressive feat of architecture and construction.I hated to think of the brutality of what went on here, for both the humans and the animals. At the opening of the Colosseum, Nero slaughtered 9000 wild animals, but the record for a single event is 11 000 animals and 10 000 humans.&nbsp; How especially terrifying it must have been for those thrown into this arena against their will. What a horrible way to die. It was interesting learning more about the voluntary gladiators:&nbsp; those who chose to do this as a path to fame and glory, or as a means to break out of slavery. They only fought, on average, 2 fights a year, so their life expectancy of 34 is higher than you might have thought (and not much lower than average life expectancy at the time).From the Colosseum, we passed through the impressive Constantine Arch and walked down to the Roman Forum, the heart of Ancient Rome. It was really neat to stand there and look around, seeing remnants of the Senate, the temples, and other buildings that comprised the social, political and economic centre of the city/state/empire. It was great timing too, because over the past few months we've been watching the acclaimed series, Rome, on DVD (first season is great, deteriotes over second season).&nbsp; We could imagine the characters going about their wheeling and dealing and backstabbing, and see the buildings as they would have been in their prime.We left the Forum to walk back past the Colosseum and around the bottom of the Palatine, where the aristocrats, politicians and emperors lived, and down to the Circus Maximus. From the circus we the residence of the Emperor for many generations. The circus is now just a straight strip of land with a large bank on one side, opposite the Palatine hill, with a kind of guard tower or some building of significance fenced off at the end. This was where the parades and triumphs of the emperors would be held.Just down from the Circus Maximus, on the banks of the River Tevere, was the Aventine, a thriving suburb of markets and plebs, and where two of our favourite characters from <i>Rome lived. Well, there's not much remaining but it was cool to go there, and the river looks lovely winding its way through the city, with high stone walls rising from its banks and leafy, green trees hanging down over them.Day two was the Vatican City. We thought we'd better do that before we ran out of energy.We started off with St Peter's Square and Basilica. The Square was very impressive - a huge concrete area with a big obelisk in the middle and ringed by rows of Corinthian columns. The queue to get into the Basilica went more than half way round the square. You can just imagine what the atmosphere must be like when it is full of a hundred thousand faithful come to see His Holiness.Was getting a bit worried that I wouldn't be allowed inside, due to all the signs telling you - no singlets, no shorts! I was wearing both and didn't bring any extra clothing. Stressing out more and more as the line progressed around the square,&nbsp; just a few meters from the door I remembered that I was carrying the two little summer dresses I'd just bought at a street stall. So I pulled one up over my shorts and wrapped the other one around my shoulders. Not very coordinated or comfortable, but modest and certainly colourful!Inside, St Peter's was stunning. When you have some of the best minds and hands of the Renaissance working on your church, it blimmin well should turn out something special - and it has.&nbsp; The marble columns, flooring and sculptures give a sense of grandiosity, although Michelangelo's first well-known work, <i>La Pieta, of Christ on the Magdalene's lap, (the only one he ever signed) is very soft and poignant.The ceilings, if not decorated by some famous artist's fresco, are a maze of gold detailing - so much gold, so much work! I am still, despite my education and travels, gob-smacked by the wealth of the Catholic Church. Have rather ambivalent feelings about it too, but that's another essay. Every cupola/dome is painted in some colourful scene, with saints, clouds and angels. Bernini's centrepiece above St Peter's tomb stands majestically in the centre of the building: four twisted pillars climbed by a golden vine, reaching up to a richly detailed and beautifully sculptured pagoda-style top - gosh, I really don't have the vocabulary for this! It's certainly the most amazing church I've ever seen - the Iguazu Falls of churches: once you've seen it, there's little point in seeing any others.&nbsp; A short walk around the corner, we arrived at the Vatican Museums.&nbsp; Apparently there are 6 kms of gallery space, and you could spend days there doing it justice, but we didn't have days, just half a one, so we headed straight for the Renaissance wing, and the Sistine Chapel via the Gallery of Maps. Well, I just continued to be blown away by the beauty, the intricacy, the colour, the lavishness, the creativity and the craftmanship of the artwork, and, particularly, the ceilings. The Gallery of Maps must be over 100m long and all the way, the arched ceiling is decorated with gold filigree and scenes out of history or The Bible. The whole way! Man they put a lot of effort into their ceilings.With a sore neck from constantly looking up, we arrived at the fabled Sistine Chapel.&nbsp; It really is a work of art. Michelangelo's fresco the length of the ceiling, depicting the creation myth,&nbsp; is so bright and clear and vivid, and I felt really privileged to be able to see such a beautiful piece of art. Almost as impressive, and longer in the making at seven years, is his enormous fresco above the altar, <i>The Last Judgement. It is massive, and detailed, and busy, and blue, (predominantly, with the sky) but it didn't make the impact on me that the ceiling did. &nbsp;All the walls are also brightly frescoed by many other famous artists of the Renaissance with scenes, once again from history or The Bible. The Chapel was full of course, and security guards were constantly barking at us not to take photos and not to talk, but they were basically ignored, poor things. After splitting up from Ray and getting a little lost - another trip down the long Gallery of Maps - I finally found the Raphael Rooms, three rooms housing wall-size frescoes by the famous Renaissance artist. My favourite piece was <i>The School of Athens, a homage to the great authors, philosophers, scientists and mathematicians of ancient Greece.&nbsp; Plato and Aristotle walk side by side&nbsp; discussing their theories, while Pythagoras, Ptolemy and Zoroaster explain their theses to interested admirers. I think Homer is in there as well, and the cheeky Raphael has even painted himself into the bottom left corner, amongst these great men.As I said, there is so much to see in these museums, and we didn't see it all, but I think you can only appreciate so much art in one day and I didn't want to undermine my memories of the beautiful things I had seen with a huge quantity of other surely worthy stuff. Needless to say, at the end of the day we were beat, and that strawberry gelato went down a treat. I cooled off back at the campground with a dip in the pool, until it was invaded by twenty French teenagers.Being knackered from two full-on days of touristing, we decided to have a quieter day on the third day, so Ray just mucked around the lovely campground, but I went into Rome to get a look at Bernini's <i>Fountain of Four Rivers. It is supposed to be his best fountain, depicting allegories of the four great rivers of the known world at the time - the Ganges, Danube, Nile and Plate - around a huge obelisk. Yes, really looking forward to this although it was another stinkin hot day and I was really tired. Well. I take the long, hot, stuff train ride in, then get the Metro for a short ride, then walk 10 or so blocks down to Piazza Navona, and what do I find? Oh they've decided to cover the wee thing up while they do restoration work on it! I mean, it was like the Acropolis - I understand that they have to work on these old things from time to time to keep them in good nick, but I just wish they wouldn't do it when I want to look at them! I mean, I've come half way round the world for Christ's sake! &nbsp;Day three, disappointment. Hit the pool again.Last day: Trevi Fountain - big is better!&nbsp; Pantheon - is this thing really 2000 years old? Let's start with the Pantheon, built 1st C AD on the site believed to be where the spirit of Romulus, founder of Rome, ascended to the heavens, and built in honour of all the Roman gods. It has a classical portico out the front, but the building itself is circular, with a huge semi-spherical dome ceiling. The engineering required at the time to build such a structure was quite advanced. It has a large, circular hole at the top through which the sun shines and spirits can pass into the afterlife (well, you'd hope you'd be going up!) In the many altars around the walls were once placed statues to the Roman gods, but when the building was Christianised, these were replaced by statues of Christian saints.&nbsp; It certainly makes you aware of the parallels between Roman/Greek polytheism and Christianity (well, Catholicism anyway) and makes you wonder, as Leon Uris suggested in <i>Trinity, is Catholicism really still a monotheistic religion? The building is in incredible condition for its age. We kept thinking, this surely can't be the original stonework? The exterior looks appropriately weathered and slighly crumbly, but the interior is immaculate - the smooth marble shines, there's not a crack in the complex concrete ceiling, and all-in-all, it could have been built last year. &nbsp;Another unique and very impressive Roman building. The Trevi Fountain was another wonder of Rome. Certainly the grandest fountain my eyes have ever laid eyes on.&nbsp; It was built in 1762, but is still big and white and beautiful. As a backdrop Nicola Salvi designed a huge wall, with a classical triumphal arch standing out, bedecked with statues. In the water in front stands Neptune, proud and strong, flanked by two Tritons, wrestling with beasts of the sea. The water flows off these impressive stone figures and into a pool at the bottom, where it settles, crystal-clear. The monument is at once powerful and sturdy, eternal and yet fluid, as if it could change shape or direction at any time. There were hundreds of people there of course (including a procession of white-habitted nuns) but the fountain created an oasis of serenity where you felt that your experience wasn't lessened by having to share it with them.&nbsp;So that was Rome. MMM....One M for each milleniumMagnificentMajesticMagical.I am so glad I have been and I have seen. Vini, vidi.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1217648520/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1217648520/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1217648520/tpod.html Fri, 08 Aug 2008 10:43:47 -0400 Couplakiwis: South America and Europe '08

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Athens, Attica, Greece

Hellas is Greek for Greece. Not short for Hello fellas!&nbsp;Hi ya'll. How y'all doin? (sorry been watching The Closer on cable) &nbsp;Well, Athens for four days. Didn't get off to an auspicious start. Taxi driver, when told of our hotel said, "Oh no, very bad hotel, not nice. I have better hotel, very bad place. Lots of ladies working..." yeah yeah, we've heard this before. We've paid a deposit thanks, we'll stick to it. Well. There were lots of ladies and it did feel like a bad place. And he charged us double what he should have for the privilege of taking us through the BACK street where all the "ladies" were working, instead of the main street. The prostitutes - all African, so beautiful, so little clothing - were literally lining the street that he took us down. Very sad. He made ray stay at the car while he escorted me up the alley to our hotel (what a guy!), supposedly to watch the car but really to mess with our heads and make us feel even more uncomfortable so that we wouldn't balk when he demanded 20 Euros for the experience. Tosser. Ray of course got swamped with requests and smothered in breasts. He politely declined (you know Ray, polite to a tee.) When we mentioned this to our hotelier, he said, oh yes, we've complained about them but the hotel on that street owns them so we can't do anything about it.&nbsp;The following morning we took the Happy Train through the ancient Greek and Roman agoras (marketplaces) and the ancient Plaka district up to the Acropolis and walked around amidst the gale force winds. The Parthenon is undergoing maintenance so was covered in scaffolding, much to my disappointment. Still, you can get a sense of the grandeur of the place, especially when imagining yourself as an ancient pleb standing in front of those impressive pillars of power. The Temple of Athena Nike was unscaffolded, so that was nice. I learnt that Nike is Victory. Always wondered where that came from. As you can tell I didn't do Classics at school. Know my Greek myths though. The view from the Acropolis across all of Athens and out to the Aegean Sea is stunning. &nbsp;Day two we went back into Plaka to Hadrian's Arch and the Temple of Olympian Zeus. There are sixteen pillars still standing out of more than a hundred. The remains are set in a bare patch of land so that you can appreciate the size of the thing, and you look directly up to the Acropolis in the background, high up on its walled mountain bearing down on the city. Seeing the still-impressive remains of these ancient buildings, you can see why the fledgling United States chose Classical architecture for their significant buildings to represent strength, order and democracy.&nbsp;We stayed two nights at the dodgy hotel and then went couchsurfing with Dimitris. He was&nbsp;a dude. He's about 5 feet tall - standing beside Ray they look like Arnie and Danny DeVito in Twins. He took us out for a traditional Greek meal at the restaurant where he works when he's not doing his internship at the Ministry of Finance. We had plates and plates of all different stuff, the Greek equivalent of tapas, but i can't remember the word&nbsp;- sardines, octopus, anchovies, fried feta, fried cucumber balls and of course Greek salad. He also plied us with lots of raki (ouzo without the aniseed). Bloody strong stuff. Ouzo is like the Greek national drink, or so Dimitri told us. I ordered a wine after my first dreadful glass of raki, and it came out in a carafe! After dinner we went into town to the hip area for more drinks and to meet the two teenage american girls that would also be staying with Dimitri. Man, Greek women are hot! Ray says they rival the Cuban girls. So glamourous - well dressed, well made, gorgeous hair, gorgeous skin, gorgeous bodies ... the men aren't too bad either of course, although ray thought many of them were dressed like pansies! Standing outside the club was like watching a fashion parade. Dress gladiator sandals are all the rage this summer it seems. Pity i can't fit even another postcard into my suitcase!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1217964720/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1217964720/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/couplakiwis/1/1217964720/tpod.html Fri, 08 Aug 2008 10:41:18 -0400 Couplakiwis: South America and Europe '08

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Olympia, Peloponnese, Greece

From Athens we took a bus for 6 hours to Olympia. Thought it would be pretty cool to be in Olympia when the Olympics were on, but alas we were a bit early and had to leave on the 6th. Yes, it is the birthplace of the ancient Olympic games. We went to the site and the museum. They have recovered and restored many of the statues and friezes that adorned the buildings and grounds during the 1169-year history of the games (700Bc-400AD approx). Pretty cool to see 2500-year-old statues of Zeus, Appollo, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius (he doesn't look much like Richard Harris). There were also ancient bronze helmets that looked like they'd come straight out of <i>Gladiator or <i>300. We learnt that boxing and wrestling were among the first sports at the Olympics. That gymnastics/gymnasium come from the Greek word<i> gymnos which means "naked," so yes, ladies, all the men (no chicks allowed) competed in the nick. Maybe that's why everyone, even slaves were allowed into the games... but not women. We might get all hot and sweaty under the chiton! Ray decided he wouldn't want to be an ancient Olympic wrestler. Think <i>Borat. &nbsp;We saw a lot of the equipment they used to use (eg. hand weights to help in the long jump), including a rather decayed chariot wheel, cool. They also had 6000 year-old pots (it's always pots) that they had excavated on the site. Wow. Still in pretty good condition once they had been jigsawed back together. The Sanctuary of Olympia once held the famous Statue of Zeus, 12m/30ft high and one of the seven wonders of the ancient world (only the Great Pyramids survive today). When some Roman Emperor ordered the Olympics finished, it was moved to Constantinople (Istanbul) where it was destroyed in an earthquake/fire/something.&nbsp;Other than that, we just wandered around the town, pop 1200, eating nothing but kebabs noon and night (we sleep so late that we only have 2 meals a day), as everything else is expensive. They put fried chips in your kebabs in greece. Not that cool.
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