Posted by barb on Jun 30, 2006 in
Travels We actually made it to Chicago and the Field Museum just in time for our 10-10:30AM entry tickets to the King Tut exhibition. We drove to Madison last night, and then left this morning around 6:30 AM to get to Chicago in time. In fact, we should have had plenty of time, but breakfast took almost an hour. At a truck stop. Normally breakfast is very fast at truck stops, so we weren’t sure what was going on there. We didn’t get to check in at our hotel before hitting the museum as a result, but at least we made it.
The exhibit was wonderful! Way too crowded, but great to see none-the-less. We weren’t allowed to take pictures in the exhibit (not surprising), so all I have are a book of postcards. My favorite thing in the exhibit was a cartouche-shaped box with Tutankhamun’s name in it and an elaborate necklace/pectoral.
After the King Tut exhibit and lunch, we poked around the rest of the museum, though we only took in a few of the exhibits. We were still rather tired from our drive and early start this morning. Of course, we had plenty of time to spend money in the gift shops. After dropping a few bucks, we went to check into our hotel and take a bit of a rest.
After resting, we ventured out of our hotel to find dinner. Just a couple blocks down Michigan Ave. was the Hilton and Kitty O’Shea’s – an Irish pub which had great veggie burgers.
The Taste of Chicago is also this weekend, just across from our hotel. So, we decided to check it out. Of course, as soon as we got very close, we started to get overwhelmed by the crowds. We didn’t actually taste Chicago, but I did get to snap a few pictures of the cheesy midway carousel.
Finally we went back to the hotel and crashed. Lots packed into one very tiring day!
Tags: trip report
Posted by barb on Jun 28, 2006 in
Travels I flew to Minnesota this morning. Mom was supposed to be home alone next week on vacation – the original plan was for her to go visit Dad in Colorado over the 4th, then Dad’s job got put off until he wouldn’t be able to take that week off, so Mom was going to be alone at home with a week’s vacation. Finally, the job’s been postponed again, so Dad will be in , but Dad’s job in Colorado has gotten postponed so that he won’t be there next week. Anyway, when we thought Mom was going to be alone for that week, I decided to come out and visit. Mom made a plan for us to drive to Chicago to see the King Tut exhibit at the Field Museum. Even though Dad was still home, we decided to go forward with our girls’ weekend.
So, here I am in Minnesota for a couple days before Mom, Gram and I drive off to Chicago. I’ve spent most of the day going through Dad’s pictures from the last twelve years. Dad has this bad habit of taking pictures, developing them, and then…well…nothing. They sit. For a long time, they sat in paper bags, completely unsorted. Dad organized them a bit when I told him I wanted to go through the pictures of the time we went to that Canadian fishing lodge. My real goal is to grab pictures of Allie and Sammy – our cats who recently died. Allie died earlier this year; she was 18 years old. Sammy died last year, and she was 16 years old. They were our first cats. And I want to put together a little scrapbook for Mom (in fact, I’m using the mini-book I made at the scrapbook convention last week).
This evening, Dave and Jen came over with Kira and Sofia. Since Sofia’s birthday is next month, I brought my presents for her so i could watch her open them. What fun! She’s so cute with her presents. She even loved the outfit I gave her, hugging it to herself right after opening it. Kira helped her little sister with her presents, and showed her how to make the little cat stuffed toy “meow”.
Then we all went out to dinner at Macaroni Grill, meeting Kevin and Brock and Amy, Halley, and Eric there. We had a great time, and Kevin even brought me one of the button candy strips from the 40th Birthday Retro Candy Box I sent out for his birthday earlier this month.
Tags: trip report
Posted by barb on Mar 28, 2006 in
Pictures,
Travels I’ll be honest, I was a little nervous about going to Turkey, almost more nervous than going to Egypt. Why? Because Turkey is a strongly Muslim nation, and I’m a US citizen. Sure, Turkey is the most secularized of the Muslim nations, but that wasn’t much comfort. I’ve said before, I’ve lead a bit of a sheltered life.
Our port, Antalya, seemed a bit like the Myrtle Beach of the States – a sea-side town built up with lots and lots of hotels and resorts. My fears of Turkey were quickly forgotten as I saw women dressed much as they would have been in the States: skirts of all lengths, jeans and slacks.
Our first stop was the Antalya Museum. We had hesitated about signing up for an excursion that would put us in a museum, since, presumably, we could see similar things at a museum near us. However, the other stop on the excursion, Perge, sounded interesting, so it wasn’t like our entire time in Turkey would be stuck in a museum. Once again, our apprehensions were silly. Despite its small size, the Antalya Museum is now on our list of favorite museums, and I think we’d be happy if we could go back sometime and spend much, much more time there.
There were about three rooms filled with Roman statues, the remains of which were found in Perge (our second excursion stop). One thing we really liked about the museum was that they displayed even half-complete statues. They didn’t fill in the missing parts. Instead, they mounted the pieces that they had allowing spaces where the missing pieces would go to allow the imagination to fill in the full statue.
Another unique thing at the Antalya Museum was its displays of finds by different researchers. There were several cases showing pictures of archeologists with a brief background on the researcher and the site where they were digging. The cases held random-looking items, all of which found during a dig with the showcased researcher.
We didn’t have enough time to explore the other rooms at the museum, but would love to return sometime to see all of the treasures in the Antalya Museum.
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Tags: trip report
Posted by barb on Mar 27, 2006 in
Pictures,
Travels Today was our most enjoyable shore excursion yet! The ship arrived in Rhodes around noon, so we had a leisurely morning lounging, reading, and journaling. Our shore excursion left around 1PM, and we rode in the bus for about an hour. Rhodes is beautiful with mountains and seashore vistas throughout our ride.
Our destination was Lindos, a village of a few hundred people, built in a traditional Greek style – boxy houses painted white and washed with lye soap twice a year at Christmas and Easter. The roads of town were twisty and narrow (and confusing!)
We walked with our tour guide, Anastasia, through the village and then up, up, up, up to the Lindos Acropolis (acropolis: acro meaning height and polis meaning city, so high point of the city). The acropolis was surrounded by a medieval fortress built by the Knights of Sir John. Inside the fortress is a temple to Athena, the goddess of Rhodes. Somehow, I was still able to climb all of those stairs, despite my back troubles from the camel ride.
The trip up was well worth the work! It afforded us a spectacular view of the ocean and of Lindos:
We had two hours to explore the acropolis and the village – a wealth of time compared to our other stops. Andrew and I explored the ruins of the temple and the fortress. Then we took our time descending back to the village, snapping pictures along the way. We explored the village a bit; its a charming place with winding streets and lots of shops (yay!).
We had to walk up a bit of a hill to get back to the bus, but took our time, finding a small cemetery and then grabbing a Diet Coke at a small convenience store (next to the cemetery, oddly enough).
On our way back to the ship, we stopped at a local ceramics workshop, where we saw a demonstration and had the opportunity to buy some souvenirs (which, of course, we did). Then it was back to the ship.
A few notes I want to remember:
- There were goats all over the island
- we could have hired donkeys to get us back down to Lindos from the acropolis, but it seemed a bad idea after all the trouble I’ve been having since the camel ride
- the guide told us that the deer is a symbol of Rhodes because deer were brought to the island to help with the snake problem – the idea is that deer will stomp on snakes and kill them
Check out all of my pictures from the day at my Rhodes/Lindos Excursion Flickr photoset.
Tags: trip report
Posted by barb on Mar 26, 2006 in
Pictures,
Travels We pulled into port at Limossol, Cyprus around 1PM. After a short bus ride (anything seems short compared to yesterday’s 3-hour ride!), we arrived at our first stop: Kourion. There was a hillside with several different archeological sites. Sadly, we only had time to make one stop: a Roman private residence with a public bath and a nearby amphitheater.
The house had amazing mosaic floors that were fairly well preserved.
There was also an incredible view of the ocean:
When our group moved to the amphitheater, Andrew and I skipped off to explore the theater on our own. We weren’t ready for another history lesson, but wanted instead to experience the theater without the background drone of a tour guide. We snapped a few pictures, and checked out the beautiful sea-vista from the theater.
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Tags: trip report
Posted by barb on Mar 25, 2006 in
Travels Who knew a day could be so filled with contrasts. Today was a very good day – exciting, thrilling, magical – but it was also a depressing, guilt-inducing, and hard-to-take.
I think many of us have romantic visions of Egypt. Pyramids in the desert constructed in an ancient world before cranes and forklifts. The land of Cleopatra, Ramesses, King Tut, and the Nile. The imagination runs away with images of hieroglyphs, mummies, and cat worship. The truth of Egypt is that it is a third-world country today, not matter what it was in the ancient world. That single modern truth takes most, if not all, of the romance out of modern-day Egypt.
Our day started when the ship docked in Alexandria. We went above-deck to look at the harbor, and the first thing that struck me was the number of police patroling the harbor area. Several of these police had rifles slung over their shoulders. These were hardly the last police we saw today – they were everywhere.
We gathered for our shore excursion, and the second we disembarked, we were assaulted by vendors trying to sell us postcards, hats, and bags. This mini-assault was just the beginning, and mild compared to what was to come.
Once all of the buses were loaded, we took off in a caravan, complete with a police escort. We drove for about 20 mintues through Alexandria to get out of the city. Many of the buildings we passed had large portions of bricks missing from the foundations and first floor walls, yet most of them had laundry hanging from the balconies. These certainly would have been condemned in the States, but here they were important housing for the people of Alexandria. Many street corners boasted more police, most of them with rifles.
There was a check-point (or gate?) at the edge of town – it was very cool, with “Alexandria” spelled out in both English and Greek alphabets. Yet, the approach lanes were all lined with ads for Pepsi and vondaphone. I couldn’t help but think, “This checkpoint brought to you by Pepsi”. That’s not exactly the image I think Pepsi would want to be associated with, but who am I to judge.
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Tags: trip report
Posted by barb on Mar 22, 2006 in
Travels 
I didn’t sleep well for the first half of the night — I woke up every half-hour or so. There were weird noises, the bed was rocking, the light from the porthole, all contributed to my odd sleep. Around midnight, I got up to look out the porthole and saw some specks of light moving quickly through the air – birds of some sort. for a few moments I thought I saw the lights of a city off in the distance, perhaps an island or the coast. Then those “lights” broke up and flew off. I crawled back into bed and slept until 6AM after that.
We docked in Civitavecchia, Italy, shortly after 6AM – perhaps the manuevers into port woke me…or the rising sun. After a quick breakfast in our room, we were off to our first shore excursion: classical Rome. Rome was an hour and a half bus trip from Civitavecchia. Our first adventure came with our “pee-pee” stop at a gas station on the way – toilets with no seats. Fun, fun.
The reputation of Rome traffic (or “circulation”, as our tour guide would say) is well deserved! I sat by the window, so I got to see every close encounter and crazy move of cars on the bus’ left side. Yikes! Our driver must have nerves of steal to navigate that city, in a bus, not less. Parking was a premium, too, so many people had small cars, like the SmartCar in the picture.
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Tags: trip report
Posted by barb on Mar 21, 2006 in
Travels Whoever said “Getting there is half the fun” was an idiot.
Andrew and I left the house at 1:30 PM yesterday for our 5PM flight to Paris. Why so early? We first had to hop on the Metro to get to a shuttle to Dulles — there’s no good way to get directly to Dulles (usually I drive, and park there, but since our stay is going to be nearly 2 weeks, I didn’t want to pay for the parking, even in the economy lot).
Mental Note: if the airline you’re taking only has two flights per day, be prepared for a bit of a wait at the check-in counter. Fortunately, we still had enough time after checking-in and going through security to grab a bite to eat before boarding. There were lots of annoying children in the gate-area, so we worried that the flight might suck. However, the plane was large enough, or the children quiet enough (yeah, right), that we don’t remember hearing them at all.
Our flight left DC at about 5PM and arrived in Paris at about 7AM, so we knew that we’d need some sleep on the way. But AirFrance actually served dinner (!) — I didn’t know that any airline still did that — so, I had to wait until after the meal service to try and sleep. I tried watching The Constant Gardener on the in-chair screen in front of me, but had to give up when the woman in front of me leaned her seat back so far that I couldn’t make out the picture anymore.
The airline had given us sleep masks, so I popped mine on and slept on-and-off for about 4 hours. Of course, this was airline sleep, so it was not exactly refreshing. Still, I think it helped me stave off some of the jet-lag.
The Paris airport was…um…fun to navigate. Even though Andrew knows French, and I remember enough French from high school that I could read most of the signs, it wasn’t enough to help. We blindly followed the crowd, but couldn’t tell from the signage if we were really in the right place. Eventually we made it through customs and into the rest of the airport, but that was only part of the fun. From there we stumbled around, trying to find the signs for our gate, but never quite sure if we’d made the correct turn (one problem I remember is that the airport used the down arrow to indicate both “straight ahead” and “go downstairs”, which ends up being confusing).
Before we passed back through security, we stopped at a cafe for a bit of breakfast. Can anyone tell me why the tea and coffee were so expensive in Europe? It was €4 for a cup of tea. €1.50 for a pastry. Diet coke? €4.50!! Yikes!
It’s a good thing we grabbed something before going through security – after security there was only a single vending machine, no restaurants, and there were no refreshments on the plane due to a strike. I slept much of the flight from Paris to Genoa. Poor Andrew didn’t; nor had he slept on the flight to Paris.
Next we hopped a bus to the cruise ship. The ride to the port was only about 40 minutes, but there was such a line of buses loading people onto the ship that we ended up waiting another 40 minutes or so. We saw our first Eurpoean kitty while waiting, but I was unable to get a picture.
Once we got off the bus, we….waited and waited and waited and waited in the Costa building for our boarding number. Sigh. Andrew had not slept, and we hadn’t eaten anything since our morning croissants. We were both getting a bit cranky, and just wanted to get to our rooms.
Finally, our number was called, we boarded the ship, surrendered our passports, and were shown to our room. Surprisingly, the luggage was already there, so we unpacked, read through the materials in the room, and freshened up. I wanted to go upstairs for our departure from the port, so we popped above-deck before dinner.
Not many people were above-deck, but I thought it was fun. My first cruise. My first time out of North America. The beginning of a grand adventure, and we were finally off!
Tags: trip report
Posted by barb on Feb 8, 2006 in
Pictures,
Random Thoughts I took a quick trip to Minnesota last weekend, where my Dad gave me a cold, so I’ve been in my jammies for the last two days. The room has finally stopped spinning enough for me to write up a quick post.
I flew out on Thursday, and got to have dinner with Sweetie and her sweetie, Jeff (too many Jeffs!). Poor Jeff was in for a grilling, but he came through with flying colors. (My first question was what makes him good enough for my best friend, and his response was that he probably isn’t good enough – good answer! Not that he’s a not a good man, but no one is good enough for my Sweetie.) After dinner, Sweetie and I had some “girl time”, but I’m not at liberty to divulge anything that we talked about (like Las Vegas, what happens during girl time stays in girl time!).
The above pictures are my mom’s cats. Alexis (on the left) was actually originally my cat, but Mom got attached, and wouldn’t let me take her with me (actually, I couldn’t take her with me when I first moved out, but later, when I could, Mom wouldn’t let me). Allie has been a part of my life for 17 years, and I probably won’t see her again. But it was really good to see her on this trip – she’s gotten really thin, and has kidney disease, but perked up while I was there. I’m not sure if that’s because I was there, or because of the fluid treatments that my Mom has been giving her (probably the latter), but I’m glad I got to say good bye.
Callie, on the other hand, is a bit of a terror. Mom and Dad have a lot of antiques and collectables at their house, and many of them have had to be put away, because Callie likes to knock things off places she wants to sleep. She’s also a clutz. But she’s cute and fuzzy, so she does her job.
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Tags: trip report
Posted by barb on Jan 2, 2006 in
Pictures,
Random Thoughts Happy New Year everyone!
Andrew and I returned from our trip on Saturday, and I’ve been lazing around the house ever since. I put a few pictures up in a Flickr set, and put all of them up on Flickr: Christmas in Montreal.
I’ll hopefully add a few pre-dated posts in the next couple days, but I make no promises (I’m still feeling lazy, plus I have the AAS meeting next week to get ready for…at least I don’t have to travel for that one this time).
Tags: trip report