Don't make us go back!

For the last four days of our epic journey I booked us a fantastic AirBnB room in Holland Park (Notting Hill neighborhood). Our host was the fascinating Jaana and her home was pristine in a gorgeous wedding cake of a townhome. While we had an open invitation to stay with Lizzie and family again, we knew we were much less fresh-faced than when we'd first been there. Basically we were animals, used to eating torn scraps of baguette and somewhat warm beers, speaking almost exclusively to one another in grunts and gestures, bathing infrequently, and hanging our underpants just everywhere to dry after an old fashioned sink wash. (Future employers: We are totally responsible adults in real life, we swear)

Four days sounded like so much time, and we tentatively planned a day trip to Brighton for Victorian beach amusement, and birthday celebrations that would empty the UK of its alcohol inventory. As you can imagine, we woke up on July 8, our first morning back in London and realized there was so much to do we could only cling to this time with our filthy fingernails. We walked through Kensington park to the Victoria and Albert Museum where we focused on the truly important exhibits: Fashion and Jewelry. We probably could have accomplished much more that day if I hadn't known about the Jewelry exhibit. The gallery didn't allow photos, but that didn't stop me from spending a full two hours there, much to Sally's horror, taking notes on jewelry styles and designers of different eras. I'm not even exaggerating (I kind of wish I were). We also visited the Wallace Collection, a townhome/cubic-city-block-mansion of art collected by five generations of Wallace men. I was inexplicably enchanted by the home's varied marble fireplace mantles, again, I am not kidding here when I tell you that I walked through this house taking photographs of the fireplaces and loudly praising them as Sally sat with head in hands waiting for the sweet release of death. Here's the proof:

 

I should also mention at this point we were at about 463 miles walked according to my absolutely imperfect pedometer. So now we were on a mission to reach 500 miles, we just had to. So we walked. One morning we got up and walked from our AirBnB to Camden Market, a six-and-a-half mile walk that we were about halfway into when the strap on one of Sally's hearty travel sandals tore free. She valiantly trudged on, not only to Camden but back into the center of London.

 

 

Another good reason for all the walking was that London's underground staff had decided to strike on July 9. After visiting Camden we had planned to make our way to the East End for a Sandeman tour, but could only get as far Euston Station, where we encounter a queue for the bus that was approximately 200 people deep at 2pm. Not good prospect for getting to Liverpool Station by 2:30pm. Sally wisely pointed out that it was not worth trying to run there, so could we just stop walking for a minute? That's how we ended up at the British Museum, ostensibly to use the toilets but since we were there, we took a gander at the Rosetta Stone.

The good thing about London is that where there's a will, there's a pub. So that's how we killed time before meeting Lizzie for drinks and Indian food. And after a perfect summer evening telling Lizzie about Francis and other adventures, Sally and I spent three hours trying to get home. It was a damn nightmare. 

Our last day in London was also my birthday. We ate breakfast with Jaana on her rooftop patio, walked to Westminster Pier where we caught the Thames River Service boat to Greenwich. The day was beautiful, the town was really cute in a touristy way, and it was an adventure of train rides back to London.

 

We finally made it to the East End for the Sandeman Real East End Tour. The itinerary looked so fun, a great afternoon adventure, but what the website didn't say at the time was that the tour started on July 31. So we trekked over to Liverpool Street Station, walked from clock tower to clock tower looking for a red umbrella, but 2pm came and went and we were just standing there, totally disappointed. It turned out okay though! We walked through the East End on our own and I pointed out to Sally streets that looked familiar from Call the Midwife. Thank goodness I watch so much British TV. 




We went back to the AirBnB for a bit before heading over to Lizzie's, so I took the opportunity to walk down Portobello Road, admiring the colorful homes and varied market stalls. 

 

 

The rest of the night wasn't captured in photographs, so I'll romanticize it a fair bit. Lizzie & Co had prepared for the big night by setting up a saber-ing station of 20oz beers. Three and a half years ago  when we traveled through India, I taught the Brits how to quickly and effectively remove the cap and lip of a beer using only a dinner knife. Sure it's sexier when a sommelier pops the top off a champagne bottle, but let's be serious: when you have to get to the alcohol, you have to get to the alcohol. This is the endgame of my wine career. Get the good stuff into your mouth. 

I lied, here is the sole photo from the night. Credit: Elizabeth W.

I don't know if British butter knives are weaker than Indian cutlery, or British bottles are thicker than their Indian counterparts, but we had a fairly difficult go of it. I think the men were finally successful, but I was woefully unable to make myself an amber glass ring. The good news was that we did have a bottle opener, so we were able to enjoy a few drinks before heading out to a wonderful South Chinese restaurant specializing in roasted meats and hand-pulled noodles. The entire experience was unique (a delightful departure from Americanized Chinese take-out) and provided deeply entertaining conversation. I am so lucky to have such accomplished and witty friends! On our way back to Southwark we stopped in for more drinks and a pile of chips/crisps to enjoy into the wee hours of the morning. We did precisely that, and on July 11 Sally made our way home. 

A few hours later we were up and out, wishing Jaana well, and met Lizzie again for brunch at Kensington Square Kitchen. It was as hard to believe that we were leaving as it was to anticipate actually taking the trip seven weeks ago. Sally and I didn't have much to say on the tube ride to the airport, or making our way through security. When we got into the terminal, I saw a sign and joked to Sally that it read "Breakfast Pizza" to which she responded, "I could eat." 

And so, the perfect end to our trip together was this: Sally eating a plain cheese pizza while I ate a plate of fish and chips with mushy peas. I couldn't have asked for a more amiable travel partner, nor a better counterpoint to my rather heavily sarcastic outlook.  As Sally finished her last European pizza, I turned to her and said, "Our plane is boarding in ten minutes. Now we have to run."

The French celebrate US Independence Day, right?

Arriving in Paris was the only time this trip that felt absolutely monumental. Paris is a big deal. I'd never been to Paris before. People were going to be rude to us. There was cheese. And wine. And the Eiffel Tower.  This probably sounds bizarre considering we'd just spent six weeks traveling to places we'd never been before, but Paris felt like significant. It was also our last new city/country, as we would return to London (we're practically natives there after the first go round).  Between these last few cities I had booked us flights on Vueling: oh the luxury! No more German train a-holes, no more confused bus drivers, just clear and concise plane rides.
 
We flew in to Charles De Gaulle, which was supposedly better than Ryan Air's flight arriving in Tille, France, a city nearly two hours away from Paris itself. CDG didn't feel so much closer, because we had to walk nearly three miles between terminals just to find the train to get to the terminal which could connect us to the train which took us into the city where we could take the metro to our Le Marais neighborhood and from there walk to our second AirBnB apartment. I go through that whole description to really convey to you how charming I looked, dripping with sweat (temps in Paris at 9:30PM were still above 88F), and dry heaving from running the last few blocks, when we arrived at the apartment to meet our host, and found the door code he'd given us wasn't working. We stood there at these 15 foot tall doors, probably carved and hung in the 18th century, staring at one another as twilight darkened into a deeper night, and I thought to myself, 'well, I have absolutely no idea what to do now,' while I'm sure Sally looked at me thinking, 'ten more minutes in that Scottish mobile phone store and this wouldn't be a problem you impatient idiot!' As we had no cell phone to call our host, we rather sheepishly hovered around the doors until a very kind French woman entered the building and we scampered in after her.

Up in the apartment, David was very genial and we chatted a bit, as tears of sweat course visibly down my visage, all of us pretending I was not the most unappealing character on the face of the earth. It was all I could do not to shout "Get out of here David! You have only one fan and I'm taking off my pants immediately!" Eventually he left and after a quick dinner around the corner, I was pants-less and contemplating why on earth there would be a down comforter on the bed. Sally was there too, much less sweaty and much more concerned about my immodesty.

Our apartment was très française and by française I mean tiny, but adorable. Unfortunately we did not have a map of Paris, so even though we woke up early and I had written down instructions for getting to the Paris Sandeman city tour, we ended up in deep in the 5th arrondissement before I bumbled us back to Place St. Michel, an hour late for the first tour, but right on time for the 11am! The tour was lovely as always. Our first stop was Notre Dame, of course, where we learned that during the French Revolution the citoyen were quick to tear down the stone figures carved above the entrance to the cathedral, which they assumed were statues of kings, so they beheaded them, piled them up in front of the church doors, and used them as a toilet. Vive la resistance! Errr, or maybe not. Because actually they were statues of saints, and even the most fervent citoyen knew that was probably a revolutionary misstep. Who doesn't love a good urinating-on-saint-statues story? How absolutely French!

 

We walked through the city seeing a small portion city's major hot spots: the Palais de Justice, Pont Neuf, Musee du Louvre, Jardin des Tuileries, and the Place de la Concorde. The heat of the day was unrelenting, and after three hours strolling around, I found myself drifting to sleep in a garden chair while the guide talked about the historical significance of the Place de la Concorde. So I can tell you nothing about that. After the tour, Sally wanted to see the "circle thing, with all the traffic" which most people refer to as Arc de Triomphe. From there we walked back to the Seine, and across to the Eiffel Tower, which was just spectacular to see, I mean you can't really anticipate how cool it is to see it in person. The tower was built for the 1889 World's Fair, and Eiffel himself had secured a permit to keep it standing for 20 years, so he actually lived in it. To make sure it wasn't torn down (which the city planned to do), Eiffel attached a powerful radio antenna to the top, which made the tower a utilitarian necessity in the era of telegraphy. I must have learned that whilst napping.

 

 

That evening we made our way to Montmarte for another walking tour. The hill used to be well outside the city of Paris, and is the infamous location of the decapitation of Saint Denis in the early 200s. It's infamous because after being decapitated, Saint Denis picked up his head and walked six miles before finally dying on a spot that would become a church in his honor. Can you imagine what a horror show it was to live in that time period? Not only do you have to eke out a terrible existence of despairing poverty under the iron fist of a vicious ruler, subjugated to his every whim, you're watching bloody zombies march through the countryside, head in hand. Don't even get me started on Jesus.  The more contemporary inhabitants of Montmarte were much less religious zealots and much more bon vivants of the Belle Epoque. We saw the apartment owned by Theo Van Gogh, who lived in Montmarte with his brother Vinnie for a number of the artist's prodigious years. We saw the cabaret where a young penniless charmer ate countless dinners and paid for them by offering the waitress a sketch drawn on his napkin. That is, until the owner served him, refused his napkin, and produced the previous napkin drawings and demanded payment in full. It was at that point that Pablo Picasso offered to give the owner an oil painting to cover all the bills, which worked! The cabaret itself is across the street from Montmarte's last vineyard, which makes atrocious wine. The tour finished at Sacre Coeur, which was gorgeous and glowing inside, and still very much a functioning parish. Sally and I wandered home after the tour, stopping along the way for multiple bottles of wine and a baguette. We sat on the couch in our oven of a flat that evening, buttering bread, pouring glasses of cold white wine, and listening to music on the iPad. Ideal.

 

The next morning we dawdled around the apartment, doing a good amount of tourist research due to my wine-addled brain having spurted out the fact that Jim Morrison lived in and was buried in Paris, much to the delight of Doors-loving 22 year old Sally Grace. I'd also found a highly rated hipster coffee shop that had bagels, so Sally prioritized our day accordingly: bagels, coffee, Jim's home. Boot Café was the five-seat coffee shop where we breakfast-ed/broke fast. While sipping our coffee, which was excellent, we read quietly and watched an American college student walk in with her mother and speak French to the presumably French barista who responded with, "I have no idea what you're saying, can you speak English?" They guffawed and tried again in French, and received a wide-eyed blank stare. Finally he was able to guess what they wanted (Cafe au Lait, I'm sure) and allowed them to pay. We spent the rest of the day walking excessively, past Jim's house and down to the Seine where we stumbled on an orchestra rehearsing al fresco, buying tins of loose tea at Mariage Fréres and Malongo, and watching a bagpiper lead dancing teenagers around Luxembourg Gardens. A musical day to say the least. Just before sunset Sally and I made our way to the Bateaux Parisiens dock for an hour-long river cruise. Rays of bright bronze sliced across Haussman's stately grey buildings along the river and Parisians enjoyed the quickly cooling evening by sitting on the river's edge with friends and picnics. We passed under 26 bridges of Paris and listened to the boat's guide tell us that Paris was the most romantic city in the world, which is lost entirely on Sally and I on this trip. Paris is a mega metropolis with museums and political buildings, a lot of bridges, and plenty of churches. But why is it romantic? Is it the huge iron phallus of a tower? Maybe I'm just not romantic enough to be sufficiently impressed.

 

 

 

On our last night in Paris we joined the masses sipping wine on the Seine, and on our last morning, I went to the Musee d'Orsay which absolutely impressed me. My god, I literally cannot imagine what people are paying €15 to see in the Louvre when the most incredible masterpieces in the world are collected in this museum. Truly, I wandered from room to room slack-jawed at the Maurin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Bernard, Signac, Seurat, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Renoir, Monet, Degas, Bouguereau, Cassatt, Manet, Pissarro, Tissot and so many others! I took so many photos of paintings my camera shut down out of nerd shame. But here are some of them!

 

 

I made it back to the apartment by 1pm, Sally and I said adieu to France and boarded a Eurostar back to St. Pancras International, London.

No sleep till Venice

Now on to Budapest! Which is beautiful, and a bargain, and a great place to enjoy summer solstice. As always, our first stop was a city tour....well really it was lunch at 2 Spaghi for handmade pasta, but then on to the culture! We took a history of communism tour which actually covered the majority of Hungarian history pre-communism too. Sally and I both noticed that this guide repeatedly talked about all the instances Hungarians tried to fight oppressive regimes and lost. You just don't hear that often, the constant refrain of, "we fought this war and lost. We started this revolution but it was quashed. We tried to free ourselves from communism but couldn't accomplish it." A very unique perspective. 

Also a delight to hear that Budapest has always been flush with excesses of money and invested way too much in building projects, such as their parliament. In 1873 the city held a competition for architects to propose the design of the new parliamentary building and received so many good options they couldn't just pick one. So they picked three. The first place winner built a bigger version of London's Westminster parliament building, which is positioned on an enormous square right in the river, and opposite to the second and third place designs, which are perhaps half as large as the winner, in different architectural styles, and currently home to other governmental ministries and a museum. A marvel to see, but one also wonders if this economic surplus could have been better spent on social programs. Ah, another highlight of the tour was seeing the larger than life Ronald Reagan statue that our guide, a native Budapest-an, had no explanation for. He'd not ever been to that spot, nor had he particularly focused on Hungarian liberation from the communist regimes. The statues reception has been thus: if you like him, you can shake his bronze hand, but if you don't you can step on his toes. 

 

Budapest has a surfeit of wine bars, and plenty of Hungarian wine to enjoy, so we sat for after dinner drinks in Doblo wine bar, then made our way for a late night beer to Szimpla Kert, where two American soldiers chatted with us about traveling, but couldn't confirm or deny where they may have been stationed. Perhaps that is something women are dying to pry out of them, but we were pretty unconcerned. In fact, it was way more interesting to take in the atmosphere of our first "ruin bar," which is I guess a bombed out building that was never rebuilt, allowing plant life to grow in through the cracks and then taken back by the community as an open air bar. Even more appealing, the next morning the same venue houses a farmer's market full of juicy cherries and plums, hefty wheels of cheese, a ten-person deep queue for flax covered loaves of bread, long paprika-infused links of sausages and dry rubbed cuts of ham, fresh yogurts, juices, and the odd handmade bath products. 

   

Aside from our walking tour, we loved Budapest for the truly casual tourism it cultivated. There weren't endless lists of the best 2,481 museums you just have to visit or an obligation to dine at a Michelin rated restaurant. Budapest's loveliness isn't in its exclusivity but its delight of simply being. We booked sensational massages, floated about in the Veli Bej baths, enjoyed free concerts in the park on Margrit Island, let the breeze ruffle our hair on a river cruise, and of course, walked and walked and walked. The weather was ideal, the city is pretty and expansive for a smaller capital, and the wine and food were a delight. Add to that the hour or so we spent in Budapest's cat cafe, and I think I can safely say that Budapest was a budget friendly favorite for both Sally and me.

   

  

 

Ahh, what a crest of perfect days in Budapest. I pitched a fit about leaving and was summarily underwhelmed (and foggy with a raging head cold) by the time we reached Vienna. Vienna was cold and anonymous and generally unwelcoming to budget travelers. Had I endless wealth and a burning passion for opera and symphonic orchestras, I probably would have enjoyed it.

This is how Vienna feels

It was with great joy that our ten hour layover in Vienna ended and we boarded an overnight train to Venice. That is, until I realized I'd only bought seats in a cabin...not beds. Once five people are crammed into a train cabin with all their luggage, you realize you aren't going to have the most restful of nights. And then when the Spanish couple next to you starts their roaring snores, and Sally starts weeping from exhaustion somewhere in western Austria, you realize you've made a huge mistake. (The upside is I started smacking the Spaniard guy every time he launched into an aggressive snorting, thus ruining his night as well.)

This was how we arrived to Venice; Sally on the edge of mutiny, bags under my eyes large enough to require luggage tags. Then we walked out of the Santa Lucia train station. "Wow," said Sally, "that is Venice." It sure was. The sun was high in the sky already, street vendors  scuttling energetically around prospective buyers, and the grand canal sloshing wildly against the water ferries, gondolas, and private boats that heave past fairly sinking under the sheer volume of tourists crowding for a ride. So we stepped out into the city, wide eyed.

It was like living in Disneyland

Our stay in Venice heralded our very first AirBnB stay, sharing a bedroom in a Florentine woman's home steps away from the Rialto bridge. Francesca is an Etruscan pottery archaeologist turned private tour guide, competitive international folk dancer and a consummate host. She met us in an easy-to-locate piazza, then wound us through the narrow stone streets to her flat, and was always available to offer up sights and experiences off the beaten path. (If you are planning your trip to Venice you must email me for her listing information. Truly!) We had heard a fair bit of negative press about the smelly, cliched tourist-traps that made up Venice, but we experienced a very different Venice. On the morning we arrived, we set off on a standard walkabout, getting thoroughly lost in very peaceful and empty alleys. We were happy, but exhausted, so when Sally asked if we could go home for a mid-afternoon rest, I had to sadly point out it was only noon. We did keep moving the whole day, bumbling our way back to the Piazza San Marco, squeezing through tourists packed eight deep to look at a wall or a bridge or a seagull, and rationalizing that with 13 miles already logged by 5pm, we could absolutely crash early.

 

One evening Francesca offered to take us out to a local gathering spot with some friends of hers, and at sunset we found ourselves sitting on the edge of the canal listening to a rockabilly cover band, drinking aperol spritzes and recounting tales of traveling with friendly Italians. After dark we made our way to a series of cicchetti hot spots. Cicchetti are the Italian equivalent of tapas, and in Venice are very seafood driven. We enjoyed a deep fried hard boiled egg with anchovy, salt cod pate on toast, calamari, meatballs, tuna carpaccio, and a few glasses of white wine to wash it all down.  We finished off the night sprawled on the deck of a boat bobbing outside a bar as extra seating talking about wine and our unknown futures; it was wonderful!

While in Venice we took a day trip to Padua, my paternal grandfather's birthplace, and enjoyed a sunny day of street markets, parks, and cobblestone streets. That side of the family was historically very musically inclined, a branch of ancestors full of symphonic composers, cellists and the like. It is very sad indeed how that fell to the wayside in my generation, as my musical ability reaches its zenith in humming. Nevermind. We also rode the water ferry out to a few island towns, the famous glass blowing community of Murano, the colorful photographer's haven Burano, and a very un-Venetian-like beach town called Lido, and spent a few hours soaking up the sun and luxuriating in the Adriatic ocean.

 

 

For a trip segment packed with travel annoyances and frustrations, Venice had a tall order in improving our moods. We left Francesca and her city nearly floating with contentment and looking forward to what is truly the end of our journey. 

Living the dream in Lido