My Only Souvenir

I realize that I did forget something in the post about spendings. During the entire trip, I bought one souvenir for myself, excluding magnets (I get a magnet from each city or country).

I’m not one for fancy clothes or elaborate jewelry (ok, I lied, I did buy a silver chain in Poland also), or useless trinkets. In fact, I actually hate nick knacks. If you haven’t noticed, I like getting rid of things and, on the flip side, I hate clutter. As cute as they may be, I don’t want random chotchkies filling every counter top and shelf in my house. I want everything bare and clean. Nothing useless, nothing just for show, no clutter.

In practice this isn’t as easy to abide as it sounds, I end up with little things that were gifts or things that I made or something from when I was a kid. But I try to avoid the clutter like they’re harboring buboes*. This trip around Europe was no exception to the rule, I did not purchase figurines, coin trays, scarves, photo frames, or anything that would end up sitting around my house unwanted but unable to be let go because it was Purchased In Europe. I followed this rule religiously, and, really, without effort…until I saw Sebastian.

He was at a tacky souvenir store in Dublin, Ireland. I was mostly just walking around and scoffing at the ridiculous-ness of the items for sale there – a whole store with Irish souvenirs of all types! Pencils, mugs, shirts, bookmarks, wallets, hats, towels, cheap jewelry, magnets, thimbles, photo frames, embroidered sweaters, flashlights, doormats, chocolates, and on and on and on. In the mess, on the bottom of a shelf in this hugely tacky store, I fell for Sebastian. He looked up at me with his googly little eyes and I held his tiny, green, spherical body in my hand, and I knew I could not put him down.

Sebastian is a green, rubber piggy bank shaped like a little portly pig. He has a removable snout so you can get all your money out**, and he’s got three little green clovers on each side of his bum. He’s the cutest thing ever and I took him home to my country to have a long and fruitful life with me. Now he holds my change in his belly and I see his cute face every day on my counter. I love him dearly and I’m happy that he’s the only souvenir that I have from our trip to Europe. See? How could I resist:


*Yeah, I made a bubonic plague joke, go 1300’s!
**This is beginning to sound like a nursery rhyme…and I like it.

Prediction

Today I found my estimate for our Europe budget. Before we left Australia, we were trying to get an idea of how much $$ we would need for 3 months of travel in Europe. In Australian dollars, we had estimated this:

• $5000 for flights
• $4000 for car rental
• $1500 for diesel
• $9000 for accommodation ($100/night * 90 nights)
• $4500 for food ($50/day * 90 days)
• $1000 for rail passes
• $1500 for ferries and misc. transport
• $5000 miscellaneous
• =AUD$32,500 total (for both of us)
  

Using the exchange rate that we got when we bought our Travel Credit Card from Australia (AUD$1 = €0.55), we budgeted €17,875 for 90 days of travel. In reality (refer previous post), we spent €16,362 for 106 days of travel. Granted, we were trying to be conservative in our estimates, but kudos to us for actually being conservative and not spending more that we thought we would. And yes, my arm is hurting from patting myself on the back so hard.

Additionally, I'd like to point out how close we came on some of those figures. Here's a list of how much we budgeted (first in AUD, then in Euros), and how much we spent.

• Flights: Guessed $5000 = €2750, Spent €1880
• Transportation: Guessed $6500 = €3575, Spent €3560 (!) (including car rental, parking, EU rail passes, ferries, all subways/trams/etc)
  
• Diesel: Guessed $1500 = €825, Spent €600
• Accommodation: Guessed $9000 = €4950, Spent €4965 (!)
• Food: Guessed $4500 = €2475, Spent €3070 (oops)
• Misc: Guessed $5000 = €2750, Spent €2285 (including activities, other, and stuff)

And, mind you, we were estimating for 90 days and we actually traveled for 106 days. Booya. We win!

Europe: The Low Down

Clearly the last month of complete bloggular silence has been for a good reason. Obviously I've been doing research, manipulating numbers, and deriving complex equations, in order to provide you with the data analysis promised so many months ago regarding our three and a half month trip around Europe. Remember that? When we were in Europe? I do. We worked for a full year to save for it. And now it's all gone.

From the data analyzed, I conclude that traveling is not cheap. It is, in fact, heinously expensive, even on the tightest of budgets. Not that we didn't already know this, as we do have some experience in previous budget analyses from our Great Australian Road Trip. So, I ask you, are you ready for the information, the results of the complex analysis, the low down?? Of course you are.

And this time, I'm in 3-D - booya. Beginning on July 9, 2009 and ending on October 24, we had 106 days during which we spent €16,361. Using an approximate conversion rate, that's just over US$24,000. That's US$226 per day of travel (for both of us). And since that's approximately how much I make in a day of work, travel appears to be the opposite of working in more ways than one.

But really, how much money is this above and beyond the spendings of normal life at home? For example, we spent almost €5,000 (US$7300) on accommodation over 106 days of travel. That's an average of €46 (US$68) per night (counting all 18 nights of free accommodation at Jon's house toward that average). When we lived in SLO, our monthly rent was US$1650, which comes to about $55 per night to live there. So, in all our traveling, we were still only paying an equivalent of about US$2000/month rent - not unlike a decent apartment in any big city. Granted I wouldn't say that the places we were staying could all be considered "decent", but the fact remains that we weren't spending so much more than we would have on rent living anywhere else.

Unless you count living at my mom's house, in which case we were clearly wasting our money like fools. FOOLS!

As for food, the other major expense of (and best part of) living anywhere, we did end up spending a bit more than normal while we were on the go, as opposed to stationary living. Which makes sense; there are no trips to the grocery store to save money when you're in a hotel every night. You'll be happy to know that my meticulous record keeping for the past two years has given me a good idea of how much we do spend in our daily existence. From that data, I can tell you that we spent an average of AUD$30/day on food while living in Australia, just about half of which was spent on groceries, the other half on "out" food.

Now, because the exchange rate for Australian dollars to US dollars has been on the fritz for the last two years, this converts to a very subjective amount of US dollars per day spent on food. Since the conversion is about AUD$0.92 to every American dollar at the moment, let's say that AUD$30/day is about USD$28/day.

On our trip, however, we were racking up the receipts and spent a whopping €3,067 (USD$4,500) on food in 106 days. This averages to USD$42 spent per day of travel on food items, which is almost exactly 1.5 times the documented amount of money we spend on food living our "normal" lives. And I actually don't think that's doing too badly - see how good we were? I would have thought that eating out for every single meal of the day would jack up the food bill at least two or three times normal, but apparently we are that good.

It's worth mentioning also that we made an effort to stay at places that included breakfast in their accommodation deal. This saved us time in the morning since we didn't have to forage around the city to find an acceptable morning snack, and it saved money (in my opinion) because it didn't allow for us (me) to spend some exorbitant amount of money every morning on whatever I wanted just because it was the closest place or I got too hungry or I was just being a brat.

For the 106 nights we spent in Europe, 18 of these nights were spent at Jon's house (breakfast included, yeay!) and 42 nights were stayed at hotels with breakfast included. This meant that for only 46 nights, less than half of the mornings, were we required to start the day by looking for a restaurant or cafe. So, technically, our "food" budget owes our "accommodation" budget a few bucks for the savings provided by the beauty of the bed 'n breakfast.

Side note: this was the very best included breakfast on the whole trip, three cheers for the Full English Breakfast:


Food and accommodation accounted for about half of our total spendings, and both of those can actually be reasonably justified against normal living patterns. The real killer was the transportation. It's something that we spent a whole heck of a lot of time pouring over before the trip. Train Versus Car: The Ultimate Battle. I could post a blog entry on just that, I swear. And maybe I will, since I have a lot of info on that matter, but suffice it to say for now that our rental car, parking fees, road tolls, ferry rides, tram tickets, train, metro, and subway rides accounted for a total of €3,560, or USD$5,233, worth of costs (note that this does not include flights). That accounts for 22% of our total spendings, and made it possible for the rest of the money to be spent, yeay!

Let's see about real life. In Melbourne, we spent approximately (very approximate) AUD$6 per day on transportation. We took the tram to and from work every week day, and then again sometimes on the weekend. We rented cars a few times, and we paid for some of our friends' gas and parking fees when they took us out. I'm not including vacations in this tally; this is just regular day to day working life (without owning a car). Now, owning a car in the US, I have no idea what the daily average for transportation costs would be - including the cost of the car, maintenance, gas, registration, and insurance. I'm sure it's more than $6 a day to live with a car, but I'm pretty sure it's not $50 a day like it was for us to travel.

That's right, we spent an average of USD$50 (€34) per day on transportation for 106 days of travel around Europe. Would the train have been cheaper than a rental car? Maybe. But then we wouldn't have had the flexibility of travel, and in my opinion, would have had a lot more stress (I don't mind driving, but communicating at a train station can get sticky - not everyone agrees with me). So, transportation certainly turned out to be a formidable foe.

As for the remaining 30% or so of our spendings, a third was spent on flights (€1880 / US$2760), another third on activities (€1690 / US$2480) and the remaining third split between diesel (€600 / US$890), "stuff" (€480 / US$700), and "other" (€115 / US$170).

There were actually only 4 flights total: Melbourne to Munich, Munich to Rome, Munich to New York, and New York to California, and I think they were relatively reasonably priced (and way better than a round-the-world ticket). Activities were all the touristy things we saw/did on the road. While we were always trying to be frugal, these were some of the most fun and interesting things we did on the trip. "Stuff" was used to denote anything we bought for ourselves or as a gift along the way, and mostly consisted of magnets, pharmacy items, clothes and accessories (undies, hats, sunglasses), books, and gifts for our families. "Other" was used to mostly as a catch-all for things that didn't fit into any other category - prepaid cell phone, Skype charges, pay toilets, laundry, and mostly ATM fees.

You may notice that we only spent €600 on diesel on our trip. That's US$890 for 10,700 kilometers (6,650 miles) of driving. It cost us under $900 to drive the equivalent distance of across the United States and back - you can see that our car wasn't a Ford Explorer. In my Explorer, I pay about $0.18 or so per mile driven and a 6,000 mile trip would cost about $1,100. In our little Renault Clio III, we paid approximately $0.13 per mile, and that's considering that the price of a gallon of diesel would cost about two or three times more than a gallon of gas costs here. Diesel is more efficient, and we got a good number of miles to the gallon - yeay for fuel efficient cars.


And that's it. Now you know all about how much money we don't have anymore. And the bad news is that we haven't even been replenishing the supply so far. But that's a far less exciting story for a far less enthusiastic audience. Thanks for reading all about the financial side of our trip, this entry has been really fun for me at least. Now that you're at the end, can you think of anything I missed?

Favorites

So, now that we’re safely home and into super-extra-boring, money-saving-lifestyle mode, it’s time to reflect and discuss The Trip which we’ve just disengaged from and get down to the nitty gritty. We were traveling Europe for four months; what were the highlights?

It’s true that I took over 5,000 pictures, a couple dozen horribly choreographed videos, and spent an inordinate amount of time scouring the internet for the best deals on a hostel in our next location. But amongst all the grimy hotel rooms and mediocre restaurants, there were some serious bright spots. Not to make our trip sound terrible or anything, I just like to be sarcastic. You should know this by now. Anyhow, I’ve thought long and hard about what I found to be the very best experiences from our extensive trip (that is to say I’m trying to remember what the heck happened) and I thought I’d tell you a bit about it.

Let’s start with the obvious: best locations. We traveled to over 27 cities in 15 countries in the span of 3 ½ months and I would say that my very favorite cities were (in no particular order):

1)Hallstadt, Austria: Gorgeous, tiny lakeside village tucked into the Austrian mountainside. Peaceful, old-fashioned, and seemingly straight out of a fairy tale.
2) Prague, Czech Republic: Urban yet clean, tourist-oriented yet charming, beautiful and fun, Prague is an unexpected treasure in the ex-communist territory of eastern Europe.
3) London, England: Classic, metropolitan, chock full of history, monuments, and other silly English things. The “on the beaten track” part of Europe that will still never be boring to me.
4) Edinburgh, Scotland: Extremely simple city with all the necessities of the big boys but with less fuss and bustle. If the weather were better I may have never left.
5) Paris, France: Just a fine city over all, Paris didn’t hold true to any of the stupid clichés that I had expected. Impressive with its hard-hitting sights but still quaint and unique on a micro scale as well.
6) Cinque Terre, Italy: The amazingly old-fashioned Disneyland-style villages that you might see in an Olive Garden commercial even though Olive Garden certainly has no roots here. Painfully rustic but immensely beautiful and relaxing.

Other favorites include Salzburg (Austria), Dublin, Rome, and Florence. It really is hard to choose, there were just so many places with plenty to appreciate, each with a pointed uniqueness that makes them hard to compare to each other. Plus, it's a really subjective thing to say "I liked this city" or the opposite since each person's experiences are different and we were only in each of these places for a few days, you know?

Do you really want to know something though? Do you want to know which places we went that I liked the least? Of course you do, here you go:

1)Vienna, Austria: Way too much glamor for not much actual substance. If I want to shop I’ll go to Paris, people, you gotta have something cool to show me.
2) Berlin, Germany: I think it’s actually a really cool city but we were a bit overwhelmed by the confusion and underwhelmed by the explanation of the sights. I would certainly try again though.
3) Amsterdam, Netherlands: Dirty, low-life, deep fried. That’s how we saw Amsterdam. Not Holland’s best side I don’t think. Next destination please.
4) Belfast, Northern Ireland: Not really a bad city but just a bit dreary and not a whole lot to do. Pretty dang cold and rainy too, at least when we were there. They’re up and coming though, watch them for the future.

What else? South-west Germany was the prettiest landscapes, Budapest's baths were the most uniquely fun activity, London felt most like home*, Paris had the best pastries, Italians were the nicest people. Although, interestingly, New Yorkers are pretty nice too. But I might be cutting them extra slack since I was so happy to finally be in my own country again.

Universal truths in the First World: Starbucks and McDonald's. Additionally: Asian people own gift shops and Middle Eastern people sell things on the sidewalks. I'm not stereotyping them, they do it to themselves, I swear. Also, Che Guevara paraphernalia is the most ubiquitous souvenir item in all of Europe. You can get a Che Guevara magnet in any major city in Europe, that is what I have learned. There are also Che playing cards, pens, t-shirts, post cards, or thimbles** which you can also buy just about anywhere. Thank goodness for capitalism and thank you Che for somehow managing to be the latest poster boy for it, even though I'm pretty sure you spent your entire life fighting against exactly that.

Since we've gotten back we keep being asked, "So what was your favorite part of your travels?". This questions is too broad - can you please specify slightly so that I don't go on and on with a response? Even "What was your favorite city in Europe" or "What did you most like about Australia" or "Are French people actually stinky" would be easier for me. Either way, if you're reading this, you've already had some of these questions answered so the point is a bit moot.

Eat, sleep, walk, carry, think, dodge, and of course spend. That was the name of the game for the past 4-5 months and, though it was great, I'm glad it's over. It is rather exhausting living out of a suitcase, always having to plan the next few days of your life, and never staying in one place long enough to make good friends, develop a favorite hang out spot, or eat home-cooked food. Not that it wasn't worth it - it totally was - but these are the things that you don't really consider when you dreamily envision traveling the globe. But they do compound quickly when you're away from home for more than a week or so.

Anyway, I'm apparently rambling, so, I'll stop here. If you have any questions (if anyone still reads this) I'd be happy to post a response in the comments. Or, god forbid, you could speak to me in real life about it. But no pressure there, I know it's a lot of commitment to make a phone call, that's why I don't just do it. =)

*It was pretty much no contest - they speak English and they have black people, so that's as close to CA as you're gonna get in Europe and that's all there is to it.
**Ok, I may be making up the whole Che thimbles thing, that probably doesn't exist. Che baby spoons though, for sure.

Che photo courtesy of the internet. Thank you internet.

Sky Mall

I kid you not when I tell you that the Sky Mall catalog was my in flight entertainment all the way back from New York to California. Kane and I had separate flights (he flew to Seattle) and there were no personal TVs on Delta's finest (surprise). Fortunately, we customers are granted something far more exciting than a choice between Two and a Half Men and Journey to the Center of the Earth; the Sky Mall catalog provides more than just useless crap to the people who have everything.

I honestly spent hours just flipping the pages of this magazine, happily skipping over the opportunity to review the emergency procedures for a Boeing 747. If we're going down, I don't think my knowledge of the proper crash sitting position will help much; I'm sure kicking and screaming will suffice, no further research is required. But Sky Mall, however, did deserve my attention. I read description after colorful description for completely ridiculous and utterly useless goods (and services!). My Stephanie Meyer book would have wait; the literature in the Sky Mall catalog could not be ignored.

I think the best way to convey to you my feelings on the many items offered in the Sky Mall catalog is just to pick a select few and review them with you. Like any retailer of fine goods, Sky Mall is also fully available online, god bless them. Let's get started.

Do you love the crust of a home-baked cake? Are you tired of putting up with slices of a homemade chocolate brownie that don't have the delicious crunchy edges? Well, you need suffer no longer, Sky Mall offers the Edge Baking Pan: a pan with a snake shaped void so that every piece of your baked goods has at least two yummy crispy sides*!
Next up is another kitchen-oriented item that can save you time and paper! Oh, well maybe not paper since it can also print - this is a Voice Recognition Grocery List Maker. I don't know about you, but I am sick and tired of the simplicity and ease of writing my grocery list on any scrap of paper laying around. I have been waiting for a device to wrestle with such that this inane task can be turned into something adequately high-tech and complicated. I mean, you can even manage two separate lists simultaneously on this device! I wonder if they provide technical support when you go insane from using it?
Still in the kitchen but moving to the pantry, I pose this quandary to you: Are you overweight but you freaking love cookies? Well, have I got the diet for you! This is the Hollywood Cookie Diet that lets you eat as many cookies as you want and still lose weight! Nevermind that you need to eat a cookie instead of a meal and that these aren't just any cookies, they are "packed with fiber, protein and 13 essential vitamins and minerals" so I bet they're only slightly less delicious than mom's. But, it says that Debbie lost 5 pounds in 3 days, so it must work, right?
Let's move now to your watch management strategy. What, you don't have any form of watch management currently operating in your life? Shame on you. Fortunately, Sky Mall is here to help. To prevent you from drowning in the sea of watches you no doubt own and have flung carelessly all over your home and office, SM offers the very civilized and sleek Watch Storage Case. Stop losing watch after watch every day and instead catalog them by color and date purchased in your new extremely unnecessary organizer! Anal retentiveness not included.
Into the bedroom - oh la la: do you lay on your bed at night, trying to read a book or do your taxes and you are just profoundly uncomfortable? And yet you don't want to acquire any more pillows or simply move to into a nearby chair? Well, SM offers an item for you - an extremely bulky yet only marginally more comfortable Superior Comfort Bed Lounger. You know it's good when they had to put the words "superior comfort" in the title. After that, the thing just sells itself!
Are you cheesy? Do you think really ridiculous and childish things are neat? Are you a redneck? If you answer yes to any of these questions, you may be interested in these new Superman Returns Cufflinks. Because even though SM is fairly certain that anyone with the desire (read: nerve) to wear these most certainly would never be wearing a suit, they sell them with a bold face anyway! Clever, Sky Mall, very clever.
Now, do you like the president? Maybe you voted for him and the day he won was the best day of your life. Maybe you cut out every article in every magazine and newspaper pertaining to Mr. Obama and his family and you keep a scrapbook as if he were your own dear son. If President-stalking is your style, you may be interested in this framed artist's sketch of The First Couple. Sky Mall understands that sometimes you just need to be closer to someone famous, even when the police just don't get it. Now the Obamas can grace your mantle or bedroom wall, replacing many of your actual relatives who just aren't as pretty or interesting.
As a refreshing interlude, let's explore some of the "health and wellness" items on offer at SM. These are some of the most entertaining products, I have to say. The massage section alone provides nearly endless comedic fodder. For example, the Head Spa Massager looks like an item direct out of the movie Tron. "For all your futuristic head-gear needs. Borg laser eye-sight sold separately."

Then there's the Vibrating Head Massager, which, except for the picture of the woman ecstatically demonstrating the item, one would have no idea what to do with this thing. Looks a bit like something out of War of the Worlds or the little gadgets that chase people in Fahrenheit 451. I'm gonna not put that near my head, thank you very much.

Another massage must-have on SM is the Mobile Massage System which not only looks like an attacking amoeba-like space alien, but the product description appears to be for another item altogether. Not really selling it here, guys. Though I'm sure, gauging from all the other spectacular items for sale, it's top notch.
One more self-improvement item is the Endless Pool Swimming Machine. We've all seen these advertised on infomercials and I don't even think they're too terrible of an idea, but I just cannot imagine making a $21,000 purchase from the Sky Mall catalog. Seriously, not my first choice of places to buy my high-end never-to-be-used exercise equipment. But maybe that's just me.

And now for my favorite health and wellness item and perhaps my overall favorite SM catalog item: The Personal Infrared Sauna! This gem of an invention uses "in-floor radiant heat to help improve the immune system by increasing the blood flow, starting at the feet". It improves your immune system to sit in a particleboard box in your living room - who would have guessed! And as an added bonus, you do not look at all ridiculous assembling or using this miracle in modern technology! I do hope they include instructions to help you get in and out of the thing; it doesn't exactly look user friendly. It does look a little like something the Nazis may have used, but maybe I'm just being outrageous.
Ok, so you weren't sold by the massage amoeba or the sauna box, but have a look at this item. What do you get for the person who has everything - it's an age old question, right? Well, how about an Executive Health Evaluation?! From what I can tell, this is a $3,500 doctor's visit. Granted, it's a "5-star treatment" at one of their "beautiful, contemporary centers", but I'm really not seeing how this can cost so much. Oh, I see, maybe because "benefits may include: decreased risk of age-related disease, improved muscle tone, and sharper thinking"? I'm pretty sure eating an apple may include these benefits also, but I'm no doctor. Start forking out the cash, friend.

So what if this "person who has everything" is smart, maybe a bit geeky? You're pretty sure they won't use the exercise equipment and they won't appreciate the Superman cufflinks (what a shame!). Maybe they have an entire wall of their house just empty and waiting for something heinously huge and non-artistic to fill the void? In that case, the Largest Crossword Puzzle in the world might do the trick. I've just gotten really bored of crossword puzzles that were on normal sized paper that can be completed in manageable setting. I'm pretty sure I want to adorn my home or office with an oversized tribute to my intellectual superiority and to stand in front of this shrine day after day to complete a puzzle which no mere mortal could finish. I am great and I would like all the friends I don't have to make note of this when I don't invite them over to my house. Nice khaki pants, crossword puzzle model man, and good choice at turning your face away from the camera.
Ok, you could see how I could go on and on here. This catalog just provides so much amusement that I just could not contain myself. I was going to continue with discussions of the Skyrest Travel Pillow, which, though it is actually quite a practical solution, would be hilarious to see on an airplane (see the picture on the link). Or the A Christmas Story Leg Lamp, for the dude who's way too obsessed with that movie to the point of being creepy about it. Or the baffling 6 Piece Puzzle Mat, because a regular roll-up mat is just too uncool. This catalog is just chock full of ridiculousness and it's freaking great.

Side note - if you happen to own any of the items that I have mocked, please do not take offense. I actually thought twice about buying the Marshmallow Shooter because I firmly believe that marshmallows should have the capacity to be projected across any given space at any given moment. We all have and love ridiculous things, it's ok to laugh about it. I mean, someone's gotta buy this stuff right?

*Kane actually wants one of these, he hates the undercooked center of a brownie.
Note: All photos courtesy of the Sky Mall website: www.skymall.com

These Vagabond Shoes

I finally did it: I bought new shoes. I got them at a DSW in New York and I threw away my old Nikes that I’ve had for about 5 years. You may recall me complaining about the old shoes once or twice (or, if you’re Kane, 1000 times); they were so worn out that they were becoming quite useless. They still had the parts that allowed the shoe to physically hold onto my foot and I think that’s the only reason why I still wore them. The underside was so worn down that little flaps had formed that scraped when I walked. Water could get in from the bottom and holes near the toes on top. The inside heel was worn completely away and a piece of whatever’s-inside-a-shoe would flip over and stab my heel every time I put my feet in. It was getting to be ridiculous.

I had refused to buy new shoes in Australia because they are heinously expensive as compared to the States. I tried to buy shoes before we left for Australia, 2 years ago, but ended up running out of time before I found any I liked. I also tried to purchase some on our visit to California last year, but again could not find any I liked. I was being too picky, I will admit. And I paid for it with increasingly decrepit shoes. But alas, DSW provides.

I didn’t want to buy anything in NY because it would just mean I’d have to carry it back to CA, which I thought was sort of silly since there’s pretty much all the same stuff for purchase here. So I restrained myself in the block-long Macy’s. But if I replaced my old shoes I wouldn’t have anything additional since I would just chuck them on the spot. Flawless logic - let’s buy things.

After searching through the mile-long row of women’s athletic shoes at DSW, I became painfully aware that my feet do not fit into “normal-sized” women’s shoes anymore. At least not athletic shoes. I used to wear a size 10, but apparently not anymore. Either the shoes are smaller or my feet or bigger but either way, it’s not working. Apparently it’s inconceivable to the DSW at Union Square that a full grown woman would have feet this large. My feet are so ridiculously oversized that I must be some sort of rare phenomenon - like big foot (ha) or a yeti, minus all the hair on the feet.

Kane finally suggested that I just skip over one aisle and try on some men's shoes. He pointed out that there really isn't much difference between men's and women's athletic shoes except that the women's ones are smaller (detrimentally so, apparently) and sometimes have pink on them. The men's shoes weren't so bad, really, except that I ended up having to buy a size that really did look like it should only fit on a man. My shoes are shown to the left.

I wear a men's size 9.5 in Asics shoes. A European size 43.5. Seriously, ogre in the house.

I decided to get Asics because they make gel shoes. It's new (ish), it's high tech, it's super comfy. I tried on some Adidas and they felt nice. So did the New Balances. But the Asics gel shoes were a step above (pun certainly intended). They made the others feel like a slab of cardboard under my tender feet; the gel felt like walking on a fluffy feather bed. Plus, Kane mentioned that his dad swears by them. Not that his dad "likes" Asics gel shoes, but that he indeed places his right hand onto the shoes and swears. Maybe that would be "swears on them", but whatever. The man is serious about his gel. And I don't argue with an ex-All American Wrestler when it comes to athletic shoes - I just hand over my credit card.

My Little Town Blues Are Melting Away

I would like to start by saying that hanging around this city for three full days had the Frank Sinatra song stuck in my head indefinitely. I felt like such a goober walking around singing that. Here, you can have a listen to the inside of my head for the last few days:



But on to more interesting fare: Our Three Days In New York City. We arrived in NY on Oct 20 after an eight hour flight from Dusseldorf (following 2 hr layover and flight from Munich) without personal televisions. If making someone sit in a ridiculously small chair for eight hours with no entertainment available isn’t a crime, it should be. But instead of pressing charges, we paid good money for those seats.

Fortunately, the plane arrived at JFK at the agreed time and our luggage came through, which I suppose were the main parts of the agreement. The flight landed at around 5pm, we had our luggage an hour later, and two or so hours after that we were finally in Manhattan approaching our sad excuse for a hostel. It was a long day.

But we were jazzed; we were back in our home country and only a few days away from being really home on the West Coast. I’ll talk about home later, now it’s time to discuss New York. I’ve technically been to NY when I was about 12, but I think that hardly counts since I don’t remember much, wasn’t in charge of anything we did, and had no concept of the layout of the city. Plus, I don’t think I had quite the introspective capabilities to analyze foreign lands (yes, I’m considering the east coast foreign – it is!) based on their customs and social practices when I was a pre-teen. I did know how to identify a crazy person though, and it’s true that they are still here.

New York City is a truly interesting place. It seems that when you smoosh a million or so people onto a tiny island things just go a bit nuts. Population density is proportional to insanity, I have found (I can make a chart if that would help). And NY is no different; it may, in fact, be the leader of the pack. More crazies per capita than anywhere I’ve ever been, that’s for sure. And I don’t just mean homeless people in your face or drunk teen-agers shouting on the streets (though I’m sure these can be found aplenty), I mean normal people like you and me that waltz around the city with a crazed glint in their eye.

They look normal, they’re dressed pretty standard, but they’re shouting obscenities into a cell phone in the middle of a Starbucks. Or, they look like they’re on their way to a business meeting, but instead of toting a briefcase, they are carrying an axe. Ok, I made that last one up, but you get the idea; these people are just a little off. Which does not mean they’re not friendly. Indeed, no, most of the people we encountered were extremely nice and helpful, offering subway advice and directions like we were old friends. Of course, some people are just surly jerks, but, welcome to the world, right?

My favorite normal-slash-crazy person we saw was a woman standing on a street corner. She was dressed in business attire with a long beige overcoat on. She had well-kept light brown hair, left down and reaching slightly below her shoulders. She wore makeup and carried a leather briefcase. She looked completely normal except that she was standing at a street corner waiting for the light to turn with her mouth completely open and a ridiculous, over-the-top surprised/shocked look on her face. It looked as though someone had just been murdered across the intersection in front of her white-collared eyes.

Turning to look where she was focused, there was nothing to be seen. Kane and I looked at each other. Maybe she just remembered something; she left the iron on at home or whatever. Glancing back after we passed her, she remained in the same position. It was as though she was catatonic. It was ridiculous and beyond speculation of an explanation. Which seems to be what a lot of New Yorkers are going for: you really need to be a freak to stand out amongst these folks.

Aside from the droves of people in New York, which can be a site unto themselves, there are also a billion noteworthy landmarks and attractions to see. Good ones too. We really didn’t even scratch the surface in only three days, but we did the NBC studios tour, went to the top of the Empire State Building, strolled through Central Park, were visually overwhelmed by Times Square, viewed the Statue of Liberty from the Staten Island Ferry, wandered down Wall Street, stopped by the big empty space that is Ground Zero, and had lots of classic New York and American foodstuffs in between.


The first two days we were there the weather was gorgeous: sunny, warm, t-shirt time. The day before we left, Friday, the weather turned and we were caught out in the freezing windyness all day, much to my dismay. Overall, however, it was an excellent visit and I was glad to be re-acquainted with a city I visited so long ago. I would happily visit again, preferably in the early fall or late spring when the weather is likely to hold.

See the rest of our pictures of NYC here.

On Saturday, Kane and I boarded our respective flights to the West Coast, finally! I arrived back in Hayward at 4:45 with Dad waiting at the airport to pick me up, and Kane landed in Seattle at just about the same time, spending one last week visiting a couple friends and his momma in Washington and Oregon.

So, that was it, that was the trip. I will be further blogging regarding the aftermath of this whole extravaganza; spending totals (with charts included – you can’t wait!), summarizing musings, reflections, and our new life on the rebound. So, stay tuned for the epilogue, even though the pictures probably won’t be as exciting.

Pizza-athon

As we headed to Italy in late September, Kane made a pact with himself. He vowed to eat as many pizzas in our three week trip as he possibly could.

Let me back up and tell you that Kane loves pizza. He loves all pizza, be it American, Australian, Italian, or frozen. Bread, tomato sauce, cheese. His very favorite is Margherita pizza, but I think he'll eat just about any kind happily. We had “pizza Fridays” in Melbourne where we would patronize his very favorite pizza place ever, Medici, on the ground floor of our building. I would wager that he could eat pizza every day for eternity and still have a huge smile on his face on the millionth bite.

So, in the land where pizza was invented (if not perfected), Kane vowed to gorge himself.

We were in Italy for 20 days, but the first and last were the travel days in and out, so we're only really counting 18 full days of Italian tourism. And therefore, 18 days were available for pizzas to be consumed by Kane. His initial goal was to have a 3:2 ratio of pizzas to days, meaning 3 pizzas every 2 days, or 1.5 pizzas a day average. It was plain pretty soon that this would be very difficult. I will take the blame and say that if I weren't there to fuss over food and insist on not constantly eating pizza, he probably could have done it. My digestive system, however, is not as resilient as his; I need other kinds of food too.


And so, over the 18 days we were walking, talking, and eating Italian, Kane consumed a whopping... 25 pizzas. Yes I photographed every single pizza he ate just so that this collage could be made. Isn't it impressive? Isn't it gorgeous?? I think so. Kane drools at the sight. You may notice that only 24 pizzas are shown in the picture, which is because one night he ate two identical pizzas from the same take away place (he was hungry), and I only took a picture of one of them since they were the same. It makes the collage neater, so it worked out.

And, he actually came quite close to his 3:2 goal; only 2 more pizzas and he would have been on target. I'm proud of him anyway. As for Kane's single favorite pizza? The winner, the champion, the best pizza in the world?? Margherita pizza, Medici's Restaurant, Melbourne, Australia. Go. Freaking. Figure.

Venice, and That's a Wrap

On the 14^th we took an arduous train journey from Cinque Terre back through Florence and over to Venice. We only spent one full day in Venice, but it was a nice end to our tour through Italy. The only unfortunate part of the deal was that central Europe has been hit by an episode of “early winter” with which follow symptoms including record low temperatures, unexpected snow fall, and incessant complaining.

Since Venice is in the northeast corner of Italy, bordering Switzerland and Austria, it was definitely affected by this unhappy bout of cold. No more capri pants and t-shirts for me; I had to whip out all the defenses I had with me, which weren't plentiful. It did not deter us (much) though, we still took our day and walked all around Venice. Over bridges, through alleys, into pizzerias.

See Venice pics here.

Venice is a nice town. I think its entire purpose at this point in its long history is to exist completely for the amusement of tourists. I'm pretty sure any semblance of the original culture is gone, replaced by a hundred thousand souvenir shops and exorbitant prices. That said, the place still retains its uniqueness. Obviously it's a city built on water; it's ancient, it's got a maze of canals, it's littered by bridges. Besides it being seemingly entirely occupied by tourists, it's still a comfortable place. It's clean, vibrant, and has an air of richness about it that I think even the most travel-weary can enjoy. I think it would actually be one of the easiest places to visit if you were making a trip across the pond; it's like Europe 101.

One thing I found endearing (that could also possibly be interpreted as infuriating) is that it is simultaneously extremely simple and completely impossible to get around this island. What I mean by that is that the whole place is a tightly woven web of very old alleyways and canals. There are no cars. No streets are at ninety degrees from each other. There is no grid, no order, no rhyme, no reason. If you want to walk around, you just start walking and pretty soon you'll have gotten around – easy as that. If you want to visit somewhere in particular, however, good luck.

Kane and I have excellent senses of direction and we had maps and there was no way to get anywhere (except the train station, thank goodness, that's a straight shot) in a timely or direct fashion. The streets are at all kinds of angles so even the keenest sense of direction is easily thrown. You constantly find yourself in dead ends, either facing a building or a canal. The street signs are perhaps even more minimal than in the rest of Italy because they apparently don't think it's worth the bother to label tiny alleys, even though that's the only kind of roads there are.

I found that if you're willing to just go with the flow, it's totally fun and extremely entertaining to just meander around for hours at a time. If you're trying to get somewhere on a schedule, you might be better off jumping in a big canal and swimming there because at least the waterways are marked on the maps.

Another interesting thing about Venice are the exports. I don't mean sugar cane and coffee beans or whatever, I mean all the junk at the souvenir/nick knack shops. We've been all around this continent and you typically see the same old crap wherever you go: post cards, magnets, scarfs, t-shirts, candy, etc. Some places will have a particular type of local craft (read: junk) that's on offer, very rarely is it impressive or tempting for me to buy.

But Venice has approximately a billion shops selling almost exclusively masks or glass goods. Apparently it is a local tradition to make glass (I guess it's called Murano glass) and they have really gone wild with the concept. Entire stores are filled with colorful glass figurines, ash trays (or change trays, as I like to use them), beads, necklaces, clocks, vases, and on and on. And then another ton of stores are devoted entirely to theatrical-looking masks. Glittery masks, porcelain masks, masks with hats, masks with huge noses. I'm not sure why this is the case, nor am I sure what one does with one of these masks (I did see one Asian woman trying them on over her face, which I found funny). They were pretty though. I think some of them had a mounting such that it can hang as a wall decoration, but most of them looked life-sized, like a person could wear them. Where? For Halloween or something? I may never know. But it's ok, they were pretty to look at.


So, we had fun for our short stint in Venice, and then we boarded our longest train ride of the trip (7 hrs total) from Venice to Munich. It was better than flying though, I can say that. We spent three days sitting around in Jon's apartment, vegging out appropriately, and then spent our final day in Munich hanging out with two of our friends from Australia, Damien and Grace, who are now picking up where we're leaving off and traveling all around Europe. It was so awesome to see them and we hope they can come visit California next year! Now we're off to NY to three final days before returning to the West Coast!!

A Little Slice of Heaven

No, I'm actually not talking about food this time. Not a cake nor a tart nor a pie of any sort. You don't believe that I would call something "a slice of heaven" if it weren't covered in chocolate ganache, do you? I don't blame you; you know me well.

But alas, it is actually a national park I speak of. And it's different than any national park you might know in America or Australia. We're not talking rivers and grassland, camping and bird watching. We're talking about five tiny, centuries-old villages perched along a mountainous stretch of the Mediterranean coast in northwestern Italy. We are talking about Cinque Terre.

Cinque Terre (pronounced cheen-kway terr-ay) means Five Lands and refers to the five villages that were built by hand into the hillsides over the centuries, documented back to approximately 500 AD. More amazing than just the villages themselves are the crops that have been painstakingly terraced into the hillsides; their main yield being mostly grapes for wine, as far as I can tell. These hills aren't exactly of "rolling" caliber, however, they are steep, forbidding cliffs that are literally being held together by the crops growing on them. It would have been quite a feat to build.

Which always makes me wonder - why did these people plant crops and build villages here? You see this time and again in human history: groups of people overcoming massive obstacles in their locale of choice for what seems like no real reason. Couldn't these people suck it up and move their stuff down the coast a few miles where the mountains aren't so heinous? I suppose in a lot of cases it's literally impossible to understand all the reasons that went into these types of decisions. Makes the world a more interesting place, doesn't it?

Ok, I digress. Back to it. The villages themselves are a bit like Disneyland. The pastel painted, boxy little structures all crammed together with laundry lines dangling from the windows are totally out of travel magazines and story books. Even walking through the towns I was amazed that it was real.

I think if you look up "quaint" in the dictionary, you may find a picture of one of these adorably run-down, ticky-tacky buildings with a cuddly, squishy, shawl-clad Italian woman out front selling fruit to passersby. I bought a pear. I restrained the urge to hug this woman and her half-toothed grin. I can now see how fairy tales were created.

On a related note, these people actually use the phrase "Mamma mia!". I giggle with delight each time.

There are hiking trails that lead between the five towns and all up in the hills (mountains, really) behind, and the whole area is a national park and, more recently, a UNESCO World Heritage site. All this helps preserve the area just the way it is - no roads for cars, no new buildings, limited tourist traffic (though there are plenty of tourists, I assure you), etc.

Let's start with the furthest town southeast, Riomaggiore. We stayed in this town in a tiny apartment up a ridiculously steep staircase (no elevator) down a teeny little alley. Picture this with all the cuteness possible and no worries of thieves or even beggars. It's all the old-world charm without the burden of social degradation attached. See why I say heaven? Here's Riomaggiore as seen from the peninsula outcropping near the marina:


As for the rest of the towns, they're all pretty similar until you get to the northwest most city, Monterossa, which is more beach-y and modern. It's also less awesome, in my opinion, but we weren't there for too long, so, hard to say. Anyway, here's a one-pic summary of each of the towns:

Manarola:
Corniglia:


Vernazza:

and Monterosso:

As for a favorite village, I would have to say that they seem to all have their charms: Riomaggiore was the perhaps the most photogenic while Manarola appeared to have the most bustling main street. Corniglia seemed to be the quietest and Vernazza had the best piazza on the marina with umbrella-covered restaurants a-plenty. Monterosso was the best if you like beach bummin', but we don't so there wasn't much for us there. I would probably say that Vernazza would be my fav, but they really were all so, so cool.

For the full gamut of pictures, including a couple from our quick stopover in Pisa*, please see the Cinque Terre Picture Album. Next (and last) stop: Venice!

*I would like to note that the faulty foundations under that stupid tower was the best thing that ever happened to Pisa. If that tower were straight and plumb, no one would have ever heard of Pisa, much less bought any overpriced sandwiches from the millions of surly vendors on the main drag. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

Smells Like Florentine Spirit*

Florence is the Yin to Rome's Yang. It's Italy's San Luis Obispo where Rome is its Los Angeles. It's civil and clean and upscale. It's small and homey and easy to navigate. We spent four relaxing nights in an adorable B&B on the first floor (Americans call it the 2^nd floor) of an old stone building by the river. We did not wake up to cars honking and people yelling. We instead awoke to the smell of cappuccino and the murmur of our fellow guests having their breakfast down the hall.

We walked around the town each day and it was pleasant and comfortable. The weather was beautiful most of the time and the city is extremely inviting. The city itself has less than half a million people which tones down the pace of life already, as compared to the metropolises we've already encountered (Rome, Naples). I'm not sure exactly why Florence is so much more calm and clean than cities in the south, but it seems to be just the way it is. Our friend from the language class described the different regions of Italy as all being extremely different; it's quite a phenomenon.

Before we go any further, may I direct you to my Florence Photo Album to go along with this entry.

The main site in Florence is the Duomo (Dome) of the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, a huge cathedral with a gigantic brick (yes, brick!) dome completed in 1436 and engineered by Brunelleschi which was the largest of its kind at the time, and still the largest masonry dome in the world. Huge engineering feat and all that. And it's still standing there, the tallest structure in the city, its enormous unreinforced brick dome held together by ancient timber tension rings. Yep, the thrust (pardon the engineer speak – thrust just means outward force) of the dome is taken out by concentric wood beams tied sloppily together with iron fittings. I have no idea how that's possible, but apparently they were a lot more efficient at engineering back in the day**.

We trudged up the mildly terrifying 483 steps to the top of the Duomo and had a grand old time elbowing other tourists (I aim for the German ones) for some spectacular views of the city below. Fun! And, our hotel was so close to town (about 15 minute walk down the scenic riverside) that we were able to head to the room for a mid-day rest whenever we wanted. Quite a change from our endurance-challenge in Rome.

We spent the rest of our time wandering around the streets (safe, clean, pretty), looking in shop fronts (expensive), eating (pizza, gelato, no change here), and seeing the few sights. There actually are quite a few things to see in the city, but they're not exactly Rome caliber. Aside from the Duomo, we walked across the famous old bridge, Ponte Vecchio, lined in jewelry shops; we strolled the piazza adjacent the Uffizi Gallery and photographed the replica David statue standing in the original's spot; we hiked up the hill to the southeast of the city to view the city from above at Piazzale Michelangelo (the Wiki entry has a rad panoramic - my pic below is just ok).


We even paid outrageous admission to see the real statue of David in the Archeological Museum in the north of the town. It really is an incredible statue; we were adequately impressed. Other than that, we really didn't do a whole lot and that was fine for us. Our trip is winding down and so are we. It's time to be done with these shenanigans. But not before just a few more stops...Cinque Terre on the northwest coast, Venice in the northeast, Munich one last time, and then a brief stop in New York City before we are reacquainted again with the smiling faces of our California (and Oregon, for Kane) friends and family.

*It's a play on words of the Nirvana song Smells Like Teen Spirit. It was hard to come up with a pun for the title since "Florence" and "Florentine" don't rhyme with much anything. Other candidates were: A Florence by Any Other Name, and Eggs Florentine. If you can think of a good one, I'd be curious to see; please leave a comment.

**Now we would use steel for such things; it is far better in tension than wood, as you might imagine. And it degrades far less easily.

Picture Ketchup

Not ketchup, silly, catch-up! I run out of titles for these posts, you know? Gotta change it up a bit, keep you on your toes.

The point is that I've been blathering on about all these wonderful things for the past couple weeks but have been hoarding the visuals all to myself. They're all mine! You can't see!! Ok, yes you can. And here you shall.

Let's get caught up. Way back when, we were in Switzerland and then stopped through Munich to catch a glimpse of Oktoberfest. Remember these things? Well, here are some pictures so you can see.

Switzerland and Oktoberfest Pictures

Where after that...oh yes, we flew over to Roma. And took a respectable amount of pictures there, as deserved. She's such a pretty city, if you look over the beggars and around the dog doo. Pictures, coming up!

Rome Pictures

Next stop was a little detour down south to Naples where we dodged some serious garbage-ridden streets and made it over to the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Feast your eyes on these pics!

Pompeii and Herculaneum Pictures

Ah, there. Now we're just about caught up. At this very moment we've just arrived in Venice after spending four days in Cinque Terre and four days before that in Florence. So, we're not exactly caught up, are we? No, but we're getting there. Shortly I will tell you tales of Florence with visual aides ready and waiting, and then I will describe the wonders of beautiful Cinque Terre before, finally, revealing all there is to know about Venice*! The blog finale awaits!

*By "all there is to know", I mean all that I know. There is a significant gap between the two that I thought would be prudent to tell you about. We do live in a very litigious society, you know.

Let's Talk Pompeii

Do you like really old stuff? How about volcanoes? How about time travel?? Well, if you like the first two, have I got a couple places for you to see! If you like the third then read a damn book or go watch Star Trek or something. We're talking old ruined towns here, not Picard's journey back to the 19th century*, and Pompeii and Herculaneum are certainly world-class.

So, brief, relatively accurate historical summary: in the early centuries B.C. there were people around Mount Vesuvius and they were living the life. They built their little stone cities, they partied on the beach, they oppressed the women and slaves, or whatever they did for fun back then. Then, in 62 A.D. there was a gnarly earthquake that knocked a lot of their neat little un-engineered buildings down. They started to put them back up, but just 17 years later in 79, Mount Vesuvius threw a huge hissy fit and rained ash and pumice down on all the surrounding little towns killing everyone around and burying everything under tons and tons of volcano goo.

Fast forward to 1700 years later when someone accidentally finds these buried towns and begins unofficial excavations. A bunch of cool stuff was pillaged from the sites for the next many years and then real excavations started in the mid-1800's. Even today both sites are still being excavated, and a good chunk of Herculaneum is trapped under the modern day city with no apparent plans to unearth it.

Whew! Ok, so there you go. Obviously, the cool thing about these places is the way that the volcano's ashes covered the cities, preserving them almost perfectly for so long. Pompeii was buried below 12-60 feet of ash and mud and Herculaneum below around 60 feet (though there appears to be some discrepancy - get it together Wikipedia editors!) and besides the burnt remains of any organics (wood, people, food, clothes) and the structural collapses from the weight of the debris, most everything else in the city remained intact underground for 1700 years.

During the extensive excavations, they have found all sorts of pottery, tools, statues, frescoes on the walls, and mosaic tiled floors, in addition, of course, to half of all the buildings (the bottom half, typically) revealing the exact layout of the towns' streets and structures. The archaeologists seem to know the purpose of each of the buildings (houses, stores, brothels, etc) and, often, who the owners of the residences were. It's pretty amazing.

If you've never heard of Herculaneum, it's basically just another town about 10 miles away from Pompeii that suffered a similar fate. The place is far smaller but even better preserved. The cool thing about Herculaneum is that it wasn't initially in the path of the volcano's main pyroclastic flows so many of the houses filled up with ash and debris before the wind shifted and the real poo hit the fan. Therefore, many of the structures were all nicely supported by this debris and many of the roofs didn't collapse. So there's a bunch of buildings almost entirely in-tact, roof and all. It's so cool!


Also, since the initial stuff that rained down on Herculaneum wasn't a bagillion-gillion degrees, it didn't entirely destroy every piece of wood in the place. It singed most of it to hell and certainly killed all the people no problem, but there are still some of the wood beams in place that were there 2000 years ago. Now that is rad.

On Sunday, after taking longer to figure out the stupid train system than we actually spent at the site, we finally made it to Herculaneum for a mid-afternoon visit. It was a beautiful day, as seems to be standard in southern Italy in October, and the place was stunning. This site is far smaller than Pompeii and is therefore a bit more manageable. Though I think I still could go back ten more times and find something new each time. It's a maze of cobbled streets with a grid of ruins all around it. But, as I mentioned, some of the structures are almost completely in-tact. Click the collage to see it larger:


Plus, since it's totally a tourist thing, it's cleaner and quieter than any place around**, which was a nice change from hanging out in Naples. Loved it, would highly recommend.

Monday we took the same train (less difficulty this time - we're pros now) further down and walked around the sprawling ruins of Pompeii. The place is 164 acres, 2/3 of which is excavated (or so they tell me). It's massive. You might imagine, knowing our patience levels, that we did not see every building . And, to be honest, by the end they sort of all look the same. But still, super awesome ruins, beautiful surrounding area, and most excellent prehistoric brothel ever (complete with stone beds - ouch!).


I'm really glad we decided to do one site each day instead of cram them both together one after another. They really are both worth a good look. Apparently there are three smaller sites around there too which we did not have time for. I certainly would not mind returning someday to do it all again and stop by the smaller ones as well.

So, until next time Pompeii, I hope you can stick around for another few years so that we may meet again.

*As seen in the last episode of Season 5: Time's Arrow. I wasn't hating on Star Trek nerds, I was just pointing out that this is not today's topic.

**There was definitely a barrier of garbage bags that built up on a street between the ruins and the train station such that we were able to skirt the garbage on the way down but had to find an alternate route on the way back up. These people have a serious garbage problem.