Monday, September 28, 2009
I hate Mondays
After all the exciting Friday evening, still relaxed Saturday, then comes the Sunday. I spend all of sunday dreading Monday. The most I hate about monday is the routine.Get up at 6:30; get the lunch ready ;pack and leave by 7:45; reach office at 8:00; so on and so on. It never changes. It is such a contrast to Saturday when there is no single waking time; wake up whenever, eat whatever; do nothing on the weekly chores "To do" list and do everything else. How comfortable. Extra cheese if someone invites for lunch/dinner. All the gossip, fun and shopping. And the movies into the night, until the next days ticks. On a more serious thought, I probably wouldn't appreciate weekends if it wasn't for the Monday. Five more days until the next one :).
Monday, September 14, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
Day 7 Paris - Louvre Museum, Cathédrale Notre Dame
Yet another day. Regardless of how tired we were, how bad our feet hurt, how badly sleep deprived we felt, every day holds a promise of something new, something worthwhile to explore and something to marvel at. I love vacations. Bonjour Paris!!
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Day 6 Venice
St.Mark's Basilica
St.Marks Square
Gondolas
As we cruise in our end seats of the vaporetto, we get an awesome view of this water city., where every building touches the water, giving us the impression that they merely float on it.Imagine your door-steps directly dropping down to a canal. After crossing about 16 stops, each of which had at least one historical building on site, we disembark on the stop to St.Mark's Square. By this time, the Grand canal has opened up into a beautiful lagoon. The landscape here is beautiful, with blue waters in the background, marginally decorated by colorful buildings and numerous gondolas, water taxis and water buses studded on it like stars. Anyone with a little artistic mind, will just want to sit down and paint it.
St Marks Square - St Mark's square hosts the St.Marks cathedral, Dodge's palace and the clock tower. Oops I forgot to mention the pigeons, thousands of them. There is a gelato shop here again and since my craving for gelatos has not yet ended, we stop by one and get 2 new flavors. Devouring it all the way, we then play with the pigeons for at least half an hour. Jeevan gets all excited in feeding the pigeons. The pigeons find their loyal home and never leave his shoulder. When we didn't have any more biscuits to feed, we leave the pigeons alone and get a short trip of the St.Mark's Basilica. This is another impressive monument with all its gold marbled ceilings. It has hundreds of thousands of marbles(of the size of a contact lens) paved on a roof top about the size of 2 football fields(courtesy Rick Steves). It was an amazing piece of architecture. With no energy left to climb another monument,we skip the Dodge's palace and the Clock tower. Heard that the clock tower holds the world's first digital clock. It is refreshed every 5 minutes. We then opt to walk all the way back to the train station. This 2.5 hour walk takes through narrow streets of Venice. The streets are lined with all kinds of shops ranging from souvenirs to sweets. I especially liked all the masks from Milan. They come in a wide range of colors and designs.
After reaching the Rialto bridge, we stop at a small open restaurant there and order a pizza and cappuccino. The pizza turned out to be not so good. Rome had the best pizzas.
Today is our third anniversary and what more special than to celebrate it in Venice.Our day started with a 4.5 hour train journey from Rome to Venice. We arrived at the Santa Lucia station and got in a long queue to check-in our suitcases. Sure cannot drag these along on the narrow streets and bridges of Venice. Then we get into another queue to get tickets to a vaporetto(water-bus). We take line1 which does a 45 min trip down the Grand canal (the main canal of Venice). Venice, once the most wealthiest city of Europe is completely built on water.It was built on the riches of the expanding Roman empire.
Gondolas
As we cruise in our end seats of the vaporetto, we get an awesome view of this water city., where every building touches the water, giving us the impression that they merely float on it.Imagine your door-steps directly dropping down to a canal. After crossing about 16 stops, each of which had at least one historical building on site, we disembark on the stop to St.Mark's Square. By this time, the Grand canal has opened up into a beautiful lagoon. The landscape here is beautiful, with blue waters in the background, marginally decorated by colorful buildings and numerous gondolas, water taxis and water buses studded on it like stars. Anyone with a little artistic mind, will just want to sit down and paint it.
St Marks Square - St Mark's square hosts the St.Marks cathedral, Dodge's palace and the clock tower. Oops I forgot to mention the pigeons, thousands of them. There is a gelato shop here again and since my craving for gelatos has not yet ended, we stop by one and get 2 new flavors. Devouring it all the way, we then play with the pigeons for at least half an hour. Jeevan gets all excited in feeding the pigeons. The pigeons find their loyal home and never leave his shoulder. When we didn't have any more biscuits to feed, we leave the pigeons alone and get a short trip of the St.Mark's Basilica. This is another impressive monument with all its gold marbled ceilings. It has hundreds of thousands of marbles(of the size of a contact lens) paved on a roof top about the size of 2 football fields(courtesy Rick Steves). It was an amazing piece of architecture. With no energy left to climb another monument,we skip the Dodge's palace and the Clock tower. Heard that the clock tower holds the world's first digital clock. It is refreshed every 5 minutes. We then opt to walk all the way back to the train station. This 2.5 hour walk takes through narrow streets of Venice. The streets are lined with all kinds of shops ranging from souvenirs to sweets. I especially liked all the masks from Milan. They come in a wide range of colors and designs.
After reaching the Rialto bridge, we stop at a small open restaurant there and order a pizza and cappuccino. The pizza turned out to be not so good. Rome had the best pizzas.
After loosing our way more than a couple of times, we zip away through the streets and back to the train station. There our overnight train to Paris awaits us. Jeevan makes a final stunt, by disappearing at the last minute to get another gelato. hmm. What is with Italy and gelatos. We ate atleast a dozen in just 2 days. Off the whistle goes, and with that we bid bye to Italy.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
Day 4 - Entering Italy - Pisa
Leaving Swiss from Spiez, we take the overnight train to Florence, Italy. Pisa is just a 1 hour ride from this Florence(Firenze).
We made it a point to include Italy in our itenary. Having come this far, we had to see the pages of history coming to life. We trimmed the list only to include the most famous of all, and the "The Leaning Tower" as we know it, is definetly on the list. '
We then take the local bus to the Cathedral Square in Pisa(Piazza dei Miracoli ). As we walk inside the square, the collection of monuments start to show up one by one. There is the tower, beautifully inclined, just like we have seen in it in numerous of photographs. It was smaller than I had expected, but more beautiful and dimensional than in pictures. The gap between the pillars of the tower are so perfectly proportioned and the pillars just pop right-out.
We then took our customary photos, faking to hold the tower straight. It was so funny, when 1000's of others nearby were trying to do exactly the same :) . After taking a dozen shots, we sat on the cold marble slabs nearby. admiring the pure whiteness of the monuments rising over the lush green lawns.
There is a cathedral, baptistery and a museum included in the square. The visit wouldn't have been complete if we didn’t climb it. So climb did we, all of the 8 stories,300 steep steps until the top. The marble steps inside are so slippery and stamped with ages of time, people climbing up and down.
With the climb down, we bid bye to the "The leaning tower" . For more on why the tower leaned, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaning_Tower_of_Pisa
We made it a point to include Italy in our itenary. Having come this far, we had to see the pages of history coming to life. We trimmed the list only to include the most famous of all, and the "The Leaning Tower" as we know it, is definetly on the list. '
We then take the local bus to the Cathedral Square in Pisa(Piazza dei Miracoli ). As we walk inside the square, the collection of monuments start to show up one by one. There is the tower, beautifully inclined, just like we have seen in it in numerous of photographs. It was smaller than I had expected, but more beautiful and dimensional than in pictures. The gap between the pillars of the tower are so perfectly proportioned and the pillars just pop right-out.
We then took our customary photos, faking to hold the tower straight. It was so funny, when 1000's of others nearby were trying to do exactly the same :) . After taking a dozen shots, we sat on the cold marble slabs nearby. admiring the pure whiteness of the monuments rising over the lush green lawns.
There is a cathedral, baptistery and a museum included in the square. The visit wouldn't have been complete if we didn’t climb it. So climb did we, all of the 8 stories,300 steep steps until the top. The marble steps inside are so slippery and stamped with ages of time, people climbing up and down.
With the climb down, we bid bye to the "The leaning tower" . For more on why the tower leaned, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaning_Tower_of_Pisa
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