Jay and Karen's Adventures!

Ken and April's Visit to Ireland

2008-04-05T07:19:00.005Z

Ken and April came to spend a week with us in Ireland. It's so awesome to show our friends this beautiful country.
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Here's a link to more Ken & April's pictures in Ireland posted on flickr. These are pictures from Jay's, Karen's and Ken's camera.
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The first weekend they were here we went down to Cork, Blarney and Kinsale. We went on a walking tour of Cork, Ken and Jay kissed the blarney stone and we had a great seafood meal in Kinsale.
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We went on to hike around Glendalough in some CRAZY weather and head up to tour the Newgrange Passage Tomb.
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Ken had been reading a book on the truth about Pigeons. Ironically we saw this truck and had to snap a few pics.
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As part of our walking tour of Cork City we went to view this really cool map of the area. Our walking tour was actually a private tour, it was just the 4 of us and John, an guy who sure knew Cork.

We had a little bit of a hard time understanding his Cork accent. I think we got between 70-80% of what he was saying. Real nice fellow.
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We took this one from on the bridge in Cork on the way to dinner. Beautiful sky that night.
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The next morning we drove up to Blarney to see the castle and kiss the stone. Here we are just inside the grounds. That's Blarney Castle in the back ground.

. Jay and Ken in action-photo mode!

This is Ken kissing the Blarney Stone. It was great to get this on video.

And here's Jay kissing the Blarney Stone. We both tried to get as little lip contact with the stone as possible.

.Here's Ken trying to clean up the area a little by removing debris from the grounds.
. After leaving Cork, Blarney and Kinsale we were headed back to Dublin and stopped in Limerick to see the Rock of Cashel. We met these two really nice kids up there, Doncha and I can't remember the little guy's name. Really nice kids.

We learned a little new lingo from them. If something was really awesome, it was known as something really class.
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Like usual, we took Ken & April to hike around Glendalough. This time we had the most volatile weather we've ever seen in Ireland.

We started the hike with nice sunny weather like above...

1. then it hailed 1/8 inch stones for 10 minutes... then sunny again

2. then hail again about 1/4 inch stones for about 10 minutes... then sunny

3. then while we were eating lunch it started to hail again 1/4 inch stones which turned into a snow for a few minutes... then sunny

4. then we saw the deer before it started hailing 1/2 inch stones coming down HARD

5. then we had 10 minutes of rain... then sunny when we got back to the car
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We've seen a few deer here before, but never a stag... and never this close. This guy was really majestic!
.This is a picture during the last of the hail storms of the day. If you click on the picture and open it up a little bigger, you can see some of the hail streaks coming down. It was the craziest weather we've ever seen in Ireland.
. Here's one of my favorite trees in the whole valley. It's not nearly as big as this picture makes it look. I wish I had a wide-angle lens to get it without having it overlay the hills in the background. Nice tree, huh?
. There's a cool tree that fell over and started showing it's grain. This is a close-up of some of the swirly grain.
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And this is how we ended the hike. Those yellow thorny plants have the most unusual cocoa-butter scent to 'em. That kind of scent belongs on a warm sunny beach with pretty girls... not a glacier valley in the mountains in Ireland. Still nice though!

The next day (with some slightly sore legs) we headed up to the Newgrange passage tombs. These things are dated back to 3200 B.C. That's right... older than the pyramids in Egypt!
..It's nice to be able to take people out of the city. This Irish countryside is really incredible.

Last thing we did before they had to head back to the states was a Dublin ghost tour. It's run by the Dublin Bus company.

Our tour guide took quite a liking to April. He was spooking her whenever he had the chance. Here, he's using her as a model to show how they use to grab bodies out of a coffin.
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Cool night time shot of Ken & April in one of the most haunted places in Dublin... this is the haunted 40 steps. I liked the blood red sky in this picture.

Anyway, thanks for coming guys. We hope you had a great time!

Visiting Christine in Paris for Easter

2008-03-23T11:26:00.000Z

Christine is living in Paris for the first three months of 2008, so we thought it would be the perfect excuse to visit the City of Light again. Having a second chance meant that we could see all the things we missed the first time around!
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This time, Jay had his new camera. His favorite place to play with his shutter speed was in the subways.
.Under threat of closure due to strikes, the first thing we did was to visit Versailles. Christine called ahead to make sure the museum was opened. They’re response was “Yes, but there is no guarantee about tomorrow.” We took that as a strong hint to take advantage of the day.
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We were glad the palace was so beautiful, because we had to queue for 2 hours to get in! Here are the storm clouds coming into our picture…a few minutes later, we had hail!
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Though crowded, we were able to appreciate the extravagance of the palace. This room is only one example of the opulence!

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That evening we rushed back into Paris to witness the World Pillow Fight Day. In cities all around the world, there was a synchronized pillow fight at 6pm. The one for Paris took place at the Louvre. Great fun!

The next day was Easter Sunday. We attended service at the American Church in Paris, as it was the only English speaking service around (that we were aware of, at least). The congregation was made up of people from around the world.

. Next up, we hit the weekend markets. Lots to see, but not much to buy, in our opinion. As a precaution against the ubiquitous pickpockets, Christine tucked in her bag underneath her coat and enhanced her caboose!

.Afterwards, we went to the Louvre. This was our second time here, but with all that there is to see, we could never see everything it has to offer no matter how often we visit! We found a self-guided tour on the Louvre’s website centered around the theme of love.

We learned a lot about the art they included in the tour, which included not only paintings but also sculptures and antiquities.

.On the way out of the Louvre, we spotted some policemen on roller blades. We thought it was amusing, but very functional!

Monday was our last full day, so we tried to fit in everything we could! We started by visiting the Conciergerie. It is part of the larger complex known as the Palais de Justice, which is still used for judicial purposes. It was interesting and had a rich history. Marie Antoinnette actually spent the last of her days here.

However, after a little while, we started to be affected by the depressing mood of the place. Bad karma there, perhaps? Anyway, we got ourselves out of there to visit the church next door. As we were able to buy a combined ticket for both the prison and the church (funny combo, isn’t it?), we skipped the queue (we liked that a lot!).

The church, as expected was beautiful, and it felt very different from the much larger Notre Dame. Though we have seen what seems like a million churches in our travels, this was still worth a visit for us. It didn’t take long either!

.With a few hours left in the day, Christine and Karen thought they would try some outlet shopping (unsuccessful) while Jay went around the city taking pictures (also unsuccessful because of the rain). All was not lost, as Jay was able to take advantage of the clearer skies that evening to create some really beautiful photos.

Who can resist the Eiffel Tower by night...?

This thing just photographs so well!

Visiting Jen & Ben in London

2008-03-08T09:17:00.000Z

We went to London to visit Jen and Ben. Since we have been to London before, we were keen to spend time just hanging out with them and seeing something outside of the city. We headed out to visit the city of Bath, home of Jane Austen and tour the Roman Baths.

Bath is only about an hour by train west of London. We loaded up on coffee, muffins, a deck of cards and hit the tracks!
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It’s amazing to think about the amount of history here! First, we took a Jane Austen-themed walking tour. That really inspired us to rent some more of the films and read her books.

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Then we checked out the Roman Baths. As if we didn’t pack in enough activities, we stopped off at a local sports shop to pick up some cheap swimwear and spend some time in the thermal spa. We soaked our selves in water about 10 different ways!
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Here is a SUPER cool 360 degree view of the River Weir in the center of Bath. Pretty neat, huh!
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Here's Jay in front of one of the old baths turned into a more modern spa. There were no appointments available so we checked elsewhere to see if we could get something in later in the day.
. Here is the Pulteney Bridge from the north. It's one of only four bridges in the world that has shops across both full sides.
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From this side it looks strikingly like the Ponte Vecchio in Florence.
.The weather was mostly agreeable for our weekend. Here is Karen on our Jane Austen Tour during one of the five minutes it was lightly raining. We got pretty lucky by UK weather standards!
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This was one of the icon symbols for the town of Bath. There are versions of this face with wings all over the city. This was inside the museum on Bath.
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This is part of the outer building on one of the baths. This symbol shows they had a concept early on that the earth was round. We thought this was pretty cool.
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This is an attempt at an artistic shot of the great bath. This one is one of my favorite pictures from Bath.

Here's another 360 view of the great bath. How cool is that!

.The next morning we had a leisurely blueberry and banana pancake breakfast before making our way to the flower market and some cool shopping areas. Here was a fantastic looking guy selling peacock feathers.

.We ad lunch at a cool Indian place. Ben's here suffering through what he thought were harmless peppers from Jen's plate. After we all tried some and we all suffering together!
. We got to the flower market a little late, but still did a little shopping.
. I had to add this shot outside an antique shop near the flower market. I thought it was pretty well composed for a wide aperture picture.
. On our way back to their place in Chelsea we went by this court area and watched some bicycle polo. They make it look so easy!

Leah's Visit to Ireland!

2008-03-01T10:09:00.000Z

We spent Friday in Glendalough while Karen was at work. There's Leah in the background snapping away. It was nice to walk around with someone who takes as many pictures as we do.
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There were some spots near the waterfall that were so incredibly green with moss, trees and grass. It was really beautiful.
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I've said it before... this place photographs so well!
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We found a new little spot in Glendalough that was nice to explore, St. Kevin's Cell. We hadn't been in that part before and it was pretty neat!
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We had a pretty early night Friday. Leah had a little jet lag and was probably running on adrenaline the last half of the day. Saturday we spent walking through and sightseeing Dublin city center. Here we are in St. Stephen's Green.
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We stopped into Temple Bar, but it was too crowded so we had a pint just down the street.
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Karen and Leah on the north side of the popular Ha'Penny Bridge. It was built as a pedestrian bridge over the River Liffey in 1816.
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Sunday morning we started out to the Newgrange passage tombs in Co. Meath. These burial tombs have been dated to about 5200 years ago - making them older than the pyramids in Egypt!
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Here is the entry way to the tomb. The large square opening on the top of the doorway is what would let in the sunlight on the shortest day of the year. There is a lot of conjecture about the purpose and meaning of these tombs. Because there is no written account of them (it's a pre-historic site) the guides suggest that each visitor develop their own meaning and purpose based on individual observation and interpretation.
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Leah doesn't often pose for pictures, so this was a rare one! The weather was pretty agreeable today. Bright sunny blue skies nearly all day!
.These are the more common pictures of Leah... she's photographically vulnerable when taking her own pictures ; )
. I can't remember who, but Leah said someone she knew would get a kick out of this sign... "CHOPPER PARKING 50m".
. After our Newgrange tour, we headed south a little to Malahide Castle. Malahide and Newgrange are both not too far north of Dublin. It made the two trips really manageable in the same day.

What's amazing is that the castle is still in full original condition (except for the recently installed glass windows and TV antennas, etc.

Here's a nice side view of the castle. Interestingly, with as many invading armies as came through Ireland, this castle remained in the control of the Talbot family for 791 years. There was only an 11 year period when Oliver Cromwell was in power that the Talbot's were dispossessed of the castle.

They took it back after Cromwell's demise.

Lovely Luzern!

2008-02-25T09:29:00.000Z

We went for a long weekend to Luzern Switzerland to visit Grainne, Paul and Mark. What a nice town!
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It was really hard not to come home with new Swiss watches though!
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Here we are in front of the Chapel Bridge (locally known as the Kapellbrücke). It was first built in the 14th century. It's the oldest wooden bridge in Europe in fact.

It was burned down in 1993, but then quickly re-built.

. We flew into Basel on a Saturday morning and got into Luzern about noon-time. Once we had dropped all our stuff off at their house we went for a really nice walk along the lake to the old part of town.

This is a view through the beautiful trees of Lake Luzern to the Swiss Alps.

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Here is Bertel Thorvaldsen's famous carving of a dying lion commemorating the hundreds of Swiss Guards who were massacred in 1792 during the French Revolution in Paris. Click here for the wiki-link with additional info.
.The tower on the bridge is 140' tall. It was used as a prison, torture chamber, watch tower and a treasury for the city. Today it's used as the guild hall of the artillery association.

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Here's an evening view from the other side. It's the most frequently photographed landmark in Luzern.
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Sunday morning we opted to head over to Mount Pilatus to take in some of the Swiss Alps. Grainne and Paul must take nearly all their visitors here.

Thanks for indulging yet another set of visitors!

This is the last of three cable car sections that brought us to the visitor center on the top. Pretty steep, huh!

.We got some really great views of the Alps from up here.
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Here's a guy hiking up with his two pups. We met the dogs up top and MAN they were some big dogs! Probably a good 120lbs a piece!
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We climbed the stairs to highest point open this time of year. Here are Grainne and Mark with a view to their house in the background. Their house is just about in the middle of the picture.
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We decided to hike down one of the 3 gondola sections. Once we started though, we found the trail a little icy and needed some high tech trekking poles for balance on the way down.
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We only got a little off track on our way back to the last gondola ride. We got down with just enough time to get back into town for our dinner plans.
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Monday we headed out on our own and decided to take a ferry ride on Lake Luzern to see a few other towns on the lake. We loved this picture of the huge Swiss flag with Mt. Pilatus in the background.

We spent most of our time in a town called Weggis. This is the crest of Weggis. It must have been a fishing town at some point, but it didn't say in wikipedia.
. Here's another beautiful pic of Pilatus from Weggis.

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Just a nice moss-covered fence post here in Weggis. We try for a few artsy pictures every now and then.
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We couldn't find the name of this statue in Weggis, but thought it was beautiful against the mountains in the background.

.Here's a neat set of sculptures. It looks like the metamorphosis of a cube into a sphere... or a sphere into a cube if you were on the other side. Pretty artsy little town here.
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After our boat tour of Lake Luzern, we went back into the old town for some food and a little shopping. Here we are enjoying a local favorite - cheese fondue.

.We visited Switzerland on the nicest weekend of the year so far. It was so nice, we put the top down in Grainne's car! In FEBRUARY!!!!!!!!!!

.This is the view from the deck in Grainne & Paul's place. Pretty stunning view.
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And finally one last view of Luzern by night.

Thank you Grainne and Paul for your hospitality.

Come Visit Ireland!

2008-01-26T15:45:00.003Z

What a weekend!
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Jen, Ben and Dan all came in on Friday night. Then the 5 of us went to the airport on Saturday morning to pick up Tina and kept heading north to Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland.
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The only rainy spot on the island was Northern Ireland this Saturday. The Causeway was still a sight to see though.
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Here are Tina and Dan trying to keep their camera gear dry!
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These hexagonal rock formations were apparently formed by rapid cooling of highly fluid molten basalt flowing through chalk beds. Click here for the wiki-link for more info.
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Karen and Tina standing on top of the hexagonal columns.
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This picture of a guy with an umbrella looked funny. Umbrella can only be so effective in this place. Nice try though!
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Jen and Ben post in the wind and rain!
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Here are the Bryn Mawr trio. So nice that a trip like this is possible. How lucky we all are!
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Here's Dan acting like one of the columns. ; )

. This was actually the only picture of the 6 of us. We offered to take a picture of a full family first, then they took this one of us.
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Little blurry, but that helps capture the weather of the day!

. On the way back from the Causeway, we stopped at the Bushmill's Distillery for a tour. It was pretty neat!
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At the end of the tour they gave us a sample of a few of the different whiskeys. We all tried sampling
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Here's an action shot Sunday morning on Grafton Street. Today we walked through and explored Dublin City Center.
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Jen and Tina stopped to do a little wedding flower research.
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Here we are outside Dublin Castle.
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Jen and Ben outside the Chester Beatty Library. We went in and saw some of the old religious documents, etc. They have some really old bible papyrus pages dated to 150 A.D. Really fantastic collection of religious artifacts from Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, etc.
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This is the famous Temple Bar. The name Temple Bar refers not only to the bar in the picture above, but the area just south of the river Liffey to Dame Street. The earliest historical reference to the name Temple Bar is on a 1673 map.
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Now there's a sight!
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Here we are donning our Guinness moustaches. We wear them with pride!
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Monday morning we headed down to Glendalough for some Irish country sightseeing and picture taking. It was hard to pick and choose which pictures to post... enjoy!
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The weather held out for us pretty well. There was only a little light rain for a few minutes.
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Dan took this picture. Great use of shallow depth of field.

Again the depth of field utilized for effect here. There are so many great trees to photograph in this place.
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Here's a great picture of us in front of the valley we just hiked.
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There's a great lookout point along the hike back. Not a bad view, huh!

I'm sure there are HUNDREDS of pictures like this one taken by visitors. This tree bough was pretty well worn on the seat section.
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Here we are in Toner's with a few pints. This is a great old Dublin pub. It's named after the owner who operated it.

Apparently it is the only pub WB Yeats ever visited. Having sipped on a sherry he was said to declare, 'Okay, I've seen a pub and never want to see another one' or something along those lines.

Fabulous Florence!

2008-01-16T19:42:00.000Z

This was our third trip to Italy. We flew into Pisa and spent the night there then made our way to Florence.

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Our hotel in Pisa was only 100m from the Piazza dei Miracoli (square of miracles) in Pisa. So we got up the next morning and walked to the tower.
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Some of the city coat of arms are interesting. Here is Pisa's coat of arms.

We had to go for a few classic poses. Everyone was taking these same pictures. The place was filled with silly tourists. I wanted to be pushing the tower over...

Karen wanted to be holding the tower up!
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You can see someone in the background holding the tower up for her friends too. It was neat to see one of the tourist icons of Italy.
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This is the River Arno that runs from the sea into Italy, through Pisa and in to Florence. We loved the reflection on the still water here.
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Florence has a pretty cool coat of arms too. It's a red lily on a silver/white shield.

In Florence, this is the Ponte Vecchio bridge. It's the only bridge across the Arno river that survived the retreating Germans in 1944. They blew up all the other bridges.

There was a Roman bridge here built initially of wood, before they kept history of it. It was later built of stone in 1345.
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People have been selling goods on the bridge for centuries to avoid local taxes. At first it was a butchers market, then the butchers were kicked out and replaced by gold merchants in 1593. Today the bridge is still filled with gold and jewelry merchants.
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This is the famous David by Michelangelo. He sculpted it between 1501 - 1504 from a single piece of marble that two other sculptors had rejected for its imperfections... worked out pretty well for Michelangelo!
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The proportion and perfection in this sculpture are incredible. Most impressive to us were the hands and veins in the forearm. This is a spectacular sculpture.
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Here is The Duomo of Florence. The first stone of this cathedral was laid in 1296 but the dome remained unfinished until the 15th century. We found a small section of the cathedral that hadn't recently been cleaned and it was FILTHY!

This marble can really get dirty over time.
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This is Giotto's bell tower right next to the Duomo. Giotti worked on this tower from 1334 to 1337 when he died. It wasn't finished until 1359.

All these buildings are made of beautiful white, green & pink marble.
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This is a copy of Michelangelo's David outside the Uffizi Gallery.
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We met a couple from Los Angeles while we were in Florence. They took this picture of us. We spent the afternoon together walking around sight seeing and window shopping.

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In the picture above we were standing amongst sculptures in an open air sculpture garden outside the Uffizi. They've got some nice stuff there but we didn't go in.
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As we were walking back from the south side of the river we got some really cool pics of the reflective River Arno. In these pictures there is one bridge between us and the Ponte Vecchio.

Here's a picture of the Basilica di San Lorenzo consecrated in 1393. What we really liked in this picture was the layered depth of each of the building corners.

There's a huge leather market surrounding this basilica. We read that we could/should haggle pretty hard to get a good deal here. We got a jacket initially offered at 190 euro for 105. We were pretty happy with that.
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We found that Americans got different prices than the Irish. When I finally bought my jacket, I told them I was from Ireland and did a little better with the haggling.

Here's a picture Karen took of a mirror inside an Irish bar we found pretty close to our hotel. You can see the couple we met Ronald & Cordelia in the reflection... nice people.
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We met them at a tripe stand that was in our tour book that Karen LOVED! They took us to their favorite gelato place for the best stuff I've ever tasted.

This is one of the actual codex thingies from the movie The Da Vinci Code. This was in the Da Vinci Mechanical Museum.

It was really raining outside so this museum made the perfect activity as the shower passed.

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FINALLY a picture with some blue sky! We had 3 days of rain but the last day we got a sunny break. This is the Duomo in the sun.

Seeing Florence in the sun was like seeing each building again for the first time. Everything was new again to us.

And Giotti's bell tower... also in the sun.
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In the day light the details of the facade are just inescapable.

We've been to so many medieval churches in Europe, but none that were designed with different colored materials. The white, pink and green marble really made this cathedral different.
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Here I am in front of the doors... the HUGE doors of the Duomo (in my new jacket too!).
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And here is Karen's head in front of the Duomo too!
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This we are in front of the Basilica of Santa Croce. It was finished in 1442 and is the burial place of some famous Italians like Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, Gentile and Rossini.
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Here we are saying goodbye to Florence by the Ponte Vecchio. There were painters all along this side of the river selling paintings of the bridge of these exact views.
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Here's a clean picture of the Ponte Vecchio (also in the sun!).
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After getting our last pictures in Florence we made our way back to the train station to head back to Pisa.

In Pisa we had a little time to kill so we walked along a street fair on the north side of the Arno. You can see the white trucks and vans of the merchants on the far side of the river.

Beautiful Vienna!

2007-11-10T14:18:00.000Z

Because of limited vacation time, this was going to be our last trip in Europe in 2007. We flew into Bratislava and took a 60 min bus from Slovakia to Vienna.
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Ryanair uses Bratislava as their Vienna airport. They use regional satellite airports to cut down costs and sells real cheap tickets. It was pretty easy to get the bus too.

Here is an old map of Vienna in 1858. Click on it to see it in full detail.

Here's what that blurry picture of a Slovakia / Austria border crossing looks like. This was all I could snap before being warned I could be arrested for photographing a border crossing point.
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It was so nice to start Sunday morning with a little snow! It doesn't snow in Ireland for longer than 10 minutes per year, so this was a real treat.
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The snow made it an oddly romantic start to the day for us.
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We went to the Vienna House of Music museum and saw the spectacles and some compositions of Franz Schubert (there's a large music selection of Schubert to hear in the media section of this wikipedia link)..
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Here is the sheet music compositions, handwritten by Schubert himself. It was fascinating to see this type of music handwritten on a page.

We went to the Beethoven Platz to see the Imperial orchestra/opera/ballet. It was a small performance of Viennese musicians. They were all either part of the Vienna Philharmonic, the national symphony or another widely renowned Viennese orchestra.

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The opera singers were really impressive. The voices were just astounding!
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Here is a picture from inside the Salm Brau restaurant/brewery. We ate here EVERY night in Vienna. Their specialty is salted crispy ham... and it sure was special. The last night there we both split a leg for two. The table next to us had the same thing... for FOUR!!!!

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It'll be a few weeks till we can eat ham again.
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Everywhere we went there were Christmas market stalls under construction. We were just a few weeks early for some of the best Christmas markets in Austria.
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This is the Kunsthistorisches Museum inside the newly constructed Museumsquartier (check out the link for interesting info on the controversy regarding it's recent construction). It's a collection of museums that really enrich the Vienna experience. Here's their official website.
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They were building Christmas Market stalls everywhere around the city. We read they are as much drinking markets as Christmas markets!

This is inside the Museumsquartier in Hero's Square.
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We took this picture of the town hall from a hop-on-hop-off city bus tour. These buildings are just gorgeous.

They sure are proud of Mozart here. Never knew he lived his life so broke! He borrowed TONS of money from seemingly every friend he could and lived a lavish life on their generosity.
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Once when he didn't have any disposable money, he saw gorgeous jacket in one of the fanciest shops in Vienna. He wanted it so badly that he wrote a letter to a friend and described how much he needed it to keep up with his creative productivity, etc... the jacket was his in a couple days.

I suppose he was a pretty talented guy.

Sunday night we went into the St. Stephen's Cathedral in the center of the old city. Above is a video taken during the Sunday evening service. We were careful to be quiet, not to use a flash and not disturb the service.

The place was beautiful!

We eventually made our way to the home and office of Sigmund Freud. We found in 1909 that he was invited to Clark University to receive an honorary Doctorate of Law degree.

In WORCESTER, MA of all places!!!!!!
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This is a picture inside Freud's office of the actual mirror he had hanging in this exact spot. We thought it made a great picture of us.

Nearly every part of the old town's center ring was decorated for Christmas. They decorate for the festivities more lavishly in Europe than in the states.

Set in the old 16th-17th century streets, these decorations really go a long way.

Vienna really is a wonderful city. It was a really enjoyable trip.

The Town of Bremen in NW Germany

2007-11-05T17:10:00.001Z

We went for a long weekend in north-western Germany to a town called Bremen.

They've been host to the longest funning festival, Freimarkt. It's actually been going on since 1035 A.D.!

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There were roller coaster rides and TONS of food and beer. One of our favorite foods was a plate of fresh potato pancakes with apple sauce.

They also serve hot mulled wine. It's the red wide in the large globe in the background of the above picture. I didn't really love it, but had to try it to see what it was like.
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The machismo in me made me think... "I can knock over those cans... how hard can it be!" It's harder than it looks, the balls don't weigh much at all.
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These are the Bremen Town Musicians (click to read the story summary) from the Brothers Grimm fairy tales.
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There are representations of the Bremen Town Musicians all over this city. The lamp fixture above shows the 4 animals.
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When we woke up and walked into the old town on Saturday morning, we saw a HUGE crowd of people lining up along that looked like a parade or race route.

Turns out there was a 150 float parade that morning. All the kids along the route had canvas bags they used to collect candy from the floats. We had fun collecting a handful of candy too.
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Here's a view of the town hall through the parade crowd. This building was so intricately ornate. Seemed to be right out of a fairy tale book.

Here is Karen down in the Schnoor section of the city. It's in the south eastern part of the old town. It's a small section of really well preserved fishing houses from the 15th - 16th centuries. Now it's mostly small shops and cafes.

Sunday morning we went for an inside tour of the city hall. It was gorgeous!

That was our guide in the front. He's telling us here about the stories carved into the wooden spiral staircase. It chronicles the temptations of life that face humans in our path through life, struggling to do what's right in life.
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Here's a doorway to the official greeting room for official guests coming to Bremen. It must have taken YEARS to carve all the stuff in this room.

Here are some wild wooden faces carved in to a row of benches along one end of this massive ball room. There were so many surfaces carved in this room, it was really astounding!

Wild, huh!

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This is one of the mirrors that allows you to see a portion of yourself at a time as you walk into the HUGE dining room... first you see your feet, then knees, and up from there. It was designed that way quite specifically.
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Here's Karen in front of a Steiff shop. The Madson's visited Germany a couple times almost 25 years ago, and the Steiff museum we went to back then was pretty impressive.
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There's a restaurant inside this windmill restaurant that sits on top of the old city wall.

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We usually have one really nice meal in each city we visit. We had that meal here in Bremen. We both had venison with shpatzel... it was a GREAT meal! .
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Here's a picture from the outside of St. Peter's Cathedral in Bremen. The initial walls of this place (still standing on the bottom level of the building) were built in the early 11th century.

We walked in during a choir rehearsal. It was really a treay to hear them practice for a while. The voices in that place just carried incredibly!

We climbed up one of the towers in the cathedral (267 steps) and got a cool view down on one of the bells.

One last goodbye picture from outside the beautiful city hall.

Hiking Brayhead, County Wicklow

2007-11-05T09:55:00.000Z

This is looking up at Brayhead in County Wicklow. We went up for a hike on a leisurely Saturday this past weekend.

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It's a good day if there is no rain, so we took advantage of the weather while we had it. This has been the driest October in 20 years, so we've been out as much as we can.

.We paused mid-way up for a drink and some pictures.

The hill side was covered with these yellow flower spiky thistle things. You can see the whole town of Bray in the background.

Here is a picture of some flowers looking up at Karen.

There was an odd, sort-of cocoa butter smell to these flowers. It was really an unexpected smell.

It was a little breezy up top and we had to time our pictures carefully to keep other hikers out of the frame. Because it wasn't raining, there were a good number of people out for a hike.

We're getting ready now for a cold and wet winter. These last few chances to get in good weather are valuable to us!

We stopped at the top for a nice snack and warm barley tea. It was such a nice day.

A couple last pictures from the top before heading down.

There are not many trees left in Ireland. Ones this big are a rarity.

This are the ruins of a house that was used to collect a tariff from travelers walking from Bray to Greystones.

There's a stairway from the house going up toward the path that must connect the cliff walk to the summit of Brayhead. We'll have to go back and hike that sometime soon.

A visit to Barcelona, Espana

2007-10-11T09:30:00.000Z

We went for a nice trip to Barcelona and Girona. I flew in Tuesday, Karen flew in on Friday, then we both flew back the following Monday. The food was fantastic, the architecture was crazy eye-candy and the pace of things in Spain was really comfortable.
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Being our second trip to the country (went to Sevilla in June... and actually to the Canary Islands in March!) means I get to duplicate the Spain patches on my backpack ; )
.One of my first days in Barcelona I took a train east to Figueres to see the Teatre-Museu Dalí before Karen arrived.
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Dali built this museum himself it in his home town of Figueres, Catalonia. He built it over the town theater that was bombed out and left demolished after the Spanish Civil War.
. This whole museum was set up in a very peculiar way. Walking through the different areas it was so hard to tell if I'd seen everything. Dali designed it this way intentionally.
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I use to reproduce these paintings on graph paper in college. Seeing the originals after having re-done them in college was really incredible. The detail in Dali's paintings is just mind blowing.
.This really isn't an optical illusion... but isn't what you'd expect either. Dali did a few different things using reflective cylinders. What a mind this guy had!
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Here's a picture of us through a mirror having lunch with Biz (one of her many great suggestions in Barcelona!). She brought us to some really amazing restaurants... thanks Biz!
.This picture was on the roof of la Pedrera. It's the Catalan name of a house designed by Antoni Gaudi and built between 1906 and 1912. I can't imagine how people felt about it that long ago. It's wildly futuristic even by today's standards!
. These are the most photographed chimney pots in the world. We saw so many postcards that look just like this picture.
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And how about that for a vibrant blue sky!!! Look at the shadows cast onto the "necks" of the chimneys... you think those profile face shadows were intentional?

We loved the idea of us waiving to our own shadows.

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The weather was gorgeous for our stay. It was 24 degrees C at 10pm. That's better than any single day we've had in Ireland in a year! This trip was about the only few days of summer we had this year. (can't really complain though!)
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The Palau de la Musica is a concert hall built in Barcelona between 1905 and 1908. The lonely planet guide said it was something not to miss. The book said, "...see a show, any show!" So we got tickets and saw a full orchestra playing Sinatra tunes.

Here's a pic from inside the Palau de la Musica. Karen loved the musician sculptures coming out of the walls behind the stage. The place was really something to experience.
.Here is Gaudi's Casa Batllo. He renovated it just prior to starting la Pedrera in 1906. Hard to photograph in full because of the trees out front, so here it is from the side.

In Barcelona they affectionately call this place the bone house... you can see why. Unreal to think Gaudi renovated this place between 1905-1907.
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Sunday we went to la Sagrada Familia, also designed by Antoni Gaudi. They are still working on it today. I had to photoshop out a ton of cranes and scaffolding (hope you can't tell too much).

This is a drawing of what it is intended to look like once finished. Gaudi knew it would not be finished in his lifetime, so he made a lot of models and drawings for his successors to use as guides.

Look at the big tall cross on the top of the drawing above. Then look at the above-above picture and try to imagine how tall this thing should be someday. MINDBLOWING!!!

This is inside the basement of la Sagrada Familia. It's the workshop where Gaudi and his designers built plaster models of the cathedral in different scales. Construction of this cathedral began in 1882.

Gaudi worked on this project for over 40 years, and exclusively for the last 15 years of his life.
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Gaudi was a very religious man. This is on the entry way of the cathedral. The numbers form 130 different combinations of the number 33... the age of Jesus at his death/ascension.

The over-the-top detail in this thing is just astounding. I can't believe they actually went ahead and decided to build build it! I'm so glad we made it here to see these works of art.
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Here we are in the Plaça del Rei in the old town. This is where Christopher Columbus greeted King Fernando upon his return from the new world.
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This is the Plaça de Sant Felip Neri housing a dark chapter of Spain's history. The pockmarked walls remain as a memorial to those executed by firing squad here during the civil war. Gave us the creeps a little.
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We flew out Monday night from Girona, so thought we'd spend the day there before leaving. Here is the cathedral built with different architectural styles between the 11th to 18th centuries. .

The oldest part of the town holds a maze of tiny medieval streets. We thought sepia tone was appropriate on a street like this.

Weekend in Amsterdam

2007-09-05T09:21:00.000Z

We spent another long weekend in what might just be our favorite city in Europe. Amsterdam is one incredible city.
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Ok, here's a video for the super-cheeseball in everyone out there. FREE HUGS from Amsterdam (just watch through the first 1:10 and it's so worth it!). Brings a tear to my eye to watch... no surprise there, huh!

The houses along the canals in the Jordaan are all in nearly original condition and are just gorgeous! A lot of the canals were lined with house boats. We looked into staying in one but they were a little expensive and pretty fully booked.

Here is Karen in front of one of the more high-end shopping malls. We were in and out of there pretty quickly.--- : )
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The canals at night were made to be photographed. We took a ton of nighttime pictures of the canals and churches. We need to see how to turn these pictures into postcards.
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Here's Karen as we're heading south toward the Leidseplein area. If we weren't on the blatantly tourist bikes, we'd blend right in. --- ; )
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There are actually more bikes than cars in Amsterdam. What a great stat!

Here's a statue of Rembrandt. We went and visited his house and saw some great artwork there.

We've been able to see a lot of famous artists home towns in Europe. It was pretty cool to be in his actual house!
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Here we are in front of a bridge in the Jordaan. This is the oldest and richest parts of town. Construction on this part of Amsterdam began back in 1612.

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While we were in the Jordaan, we visited the Anne Frank House. It was really striking to walk through the rooms of the house where the family hid during WWII.

Shocking to think about what that must have been like for a young girl like Anne Frank to live through that experience.
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There are videos in the museum of the people who helped hide the family. Amsterdam lost more Jews in WWII than any other city in the world. Absolutely horrific to think about what really happened.
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You can go back and watch the free hugs video if you need an emotional pick-me-up.

Here's another picture from the Jordaan just after sunset. As well as being our favorite city in Europe, it's probably the most beautiful we've seen so far.
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Here is a picture of the quintessential Amsterdam city bike. They don't seem to care at all about having the newest carbon fiber frame or aerodynamic geometry. They care more about the bike lock than the actual bike!

The way bicycles are incorporate into the city's transportation infrastructure is really impressive. We rented bikes for our entire stay and probably enjoyed riding the canals more than anything else.
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Ok, one last nighttime shot of the canals.

On our last day we took a train 20km NW of Cantraal Station to Zaanse Schans. It's a 17th century village of windmills in Holland. It's like Old Sturbridge Village in western MA for those familiar.

This is one of our favorite pictures from Holland.
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It was funny, there was a torturous smell of chocolate in the air. We were hunting for something chocolate as we walked through the village but couldn't find anything. Karen was ready to kill for something chocolate. As we walked back to the return train to Amsterdam we passed the ADM Cocoa factory and realised where the smell came from!
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When we got back in to Amsterdam, we rode our bikes down to the flower market to pick up some souvenirs for co-workers.

Good bye to my favorite city in Europe... until next time!

E-Dog's BP

2007-08-25T09:41:00.000Z

I know we're really setting the bar pretty high for bachelor parties.

We flew Ethan to Prague where he met friends John, Mike and Steve. They spent a night in Prague then drove for a couple days through Germany. They spent a night in Wurtsberg and a night in XXX. The final destination being Amsterdam for 6 days of fun.
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Here is Matt in Dam Square. We took a walk through the city before everyone else showed up. We were really going to be a great time with these guys.
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I met Matt in Schiphol airport and we made our way to Centraal Station in Amsterdam. We went and checked into our hotel, then took a stroll through the city, stopping for a couple beers in the Red Light District.

This is us out the first night. It was great to be hanging out in Europe with the fellas. Everyone was pumped for a good time. You couldn't beat the mood, we were all psyched!

Here is the bicycle parking lot outside Centraal Station. It has 2500 bike spots and it's still really tough to park a bike. There are more bikes in Amsterdam than cars.

We rode around everywhere. Here we are before hitting the Van Gogh museum.

.We loved this tree in Vondel Park on the SW side of Amsterdam. The tree apparently had fallen over, but continued to grow. The tree still looked pretty strong, so they let it keep growing.

It would have been chopped right down if that happened in the states, but in Amsterdam it's cool!

Here's place that was awesome for hanging out. We played a ton of pool, drank a bunch of beer and closed the place at 2 a.m. (it was an early bar).

Here's a picture of Matty at a sandwich shop right on the back side of the Nieuwe Kerk (new church - built in the 1420's after the Oude Kerk (old church - built in 1306) ran out of space). Great perspective in this picture.

I took this picture looking down on the guys on their bikes after climbing up a metal half pipe in a small skate park right outside the Van Gogh museum on the SW side of the city.

Here's a picture from a canal boat tour. The weather was gorgeous and the canal buildings even more so.

It was cool to be in the water and get some of these pictures.

Ethan and John were making a few friends as we tried to claim tables on the canal boat.

Ethan and I took a trip on Monday about 30km south of Amsterdam to a town called Nieuwegein. We went to watch a stage finish in the 2007 Tour du Benelux.

There was a massive jumbo-tron for the spectators to watch before they arrived at the finish.

It only took us about 25 minutes to get down there from Centraal Station and we found a great bar w/a huge TV screen playing the race 100m from the finish line. We had plenty of time to walk right out and watch the finish. Couldn't have been more perfect. We met a fry-cook there from Brooklyn too... go figure!

Here's Luciano Pagliarini of Saunier Duval who won this stage. It was pretty cool to see all the pro teams. There was so little security here. After the race, the cyclists all walked their bikes through the crowd to the team buses.

Ethan said it was VERY different than security at the TDF.

Here's a great nighttime pic of some canal houses. It really feels nice to be riding our bikes home through these canals. The age of the city is pretty amazing and it entered into the way I felt just riding around.

I could easily live in this city (if we only had EU passports!).

The last afternoon we had some time to kill, so we sat here in the lobby of our hotel and played cards for a while. We could order beers and play poker at the tables completely undisturbed.
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Ethan and Phil went out earlier int he week and bought mentos, black licorice and some other white candies that we used for chips. The only down side was the horrid smell of feet coming from the black licorice.
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Here are Ethan and I on the morning he and Matt left for the states. It was so nice that we could take this much time over here. We're so incredibly lucky to have these opportunities.
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This is it! Last picture before sending them off to the airport from Centraal Station.

It was such a great week!

I had a day on my own now before Karen arrived the following day. I proceeded to ride all the canals around the city and photograph as much as I could.

.I'll leave you with a couple nighttime pictures from the canals. It's a really beautiful city... my favorite in Europe so far.

. This one is for Phil.

This is his Amsterdam city cruiser. This is Phil's answer for transportation in the future.

Thanks guys!

Camping in the Wicklow Mountains

2007-08-19T19:50:00.001Z

............... Djouce Mountain, Co. WicklowPhil and I went south of Dublin about an hour into the Wicklow mountains. We went for a hike near the Sally Gap. The weather tried hard to ruin the overnight, but we made the best of it.
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We're about to set out. This is as dry and warm as we'd be until we went home. When we left the car, it was just spitting a little and a little breezy.

Here I am, all smiles, at the summit. It started to get a little windier up here and the rain kicked up as we left the trail for the summit. As soon as we broke off the trail for the summit (walking straight into the clouds) we started to suffer the wrath of the August Irish summer!
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Here's Phil looking for a spot to set up our tent (which he just got for 11 euro) which was really worth the money... ; )
And yes, we actually had to scare the sheep away to set up our tent.
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Once we set up the tent behind one of the summit rocks, we settled in for what we thought was going to be a cozy afternoon with some scotch and the inside of a warm tent... NOT!!!
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Here's a video from inside the test as the wind and rain started to pick up a good bit.
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This had never happened to me before. The tent began to buckle under the force of the wind. When we were trying to sleep in the tent, the corner tent poles began to bang into my head. The windward side of the tent was being collapsed in toward the middle.
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Time for "plan B"!
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We packed up and made our way back toward the woods. On our way in, we passed through some pretty dense forest before we got onto the trail. We thought we'd be able to find a better spot in the woods.
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Aaaahhhhhhh!!!! Home sweet home. We finally set up inside the woods. We were almost completely sheltered from the wind and the rain had slowed down a bit.
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That's dinner out on the stove there: Irish beef, and onion, beans, rice with Phil's special cumin based spice pack and cheese on whole grain wraps. Great for dinner and breakfast.
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Everything was covered in a real heavy layer of moss catapulted by the thick humidity. It was much nicer to be back in the woods rather than the bare mountain top.
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Here's Phil shaking out the 2 cups of water that soaked his hat yesterday. It was actually DAMN cold this morning too. Felt more like February than August!
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After we left the parking lot, we headed back the long way to take in the view as the weather improved. Phil's looking down here at the deer farm on the grounds of Lugalla.

Weekend on the Aran Islands, Inis Oirr

2007-08-11T09:00:00.000Z

There are three Aran Islands located on the western coast of Ireland just across from Galway and the Cliffs of Moher. Inis Mor is the biggest western most island, Inis Meain is the middle island and Inis Oirr is the smallest and eastern most island (the one we visited).
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We got a front row seat for the 6-minute flight there!
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We arrived on Inis Oirr Saturday morning about 9:30. We walked up to our B&B up and said hello to Brid (pronounced like breege) who runs the place.
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There was hot tea, fresh scones and warm bread waiting for us. After David and Ena had a chance to catch up with Brid, we set out on our hike around the island..
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The islands are incredibly rocky. We found the most interesting cracks in some of them.
.Here's David making friends with some of the locals. It was a little rainy, but never came down real hard. It was just intermittent light rain most of the day.
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I tried my best to photograph the fragile spider webs after the rain.
.How's this for a sunset picture? The sky was beautiful. We took a TON of pictures!
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With the sunset this nice, just imagine how many pictures we took!
. Sunday morning the sky was a lot more clear. We found an enthusiastic horse here thrilled with the flowers we were feeding him.
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Here's a video of the "Plassey" that ran aground in 1960. The islanders ran to the aid of the fishermen and nobody was lost.
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That was a good size ship! Story goes, they lost engine power one night between the Cliffs of Moher and Inis Oirr. The currents in that stretch are treacherous and quickly dragged the Plassey right into the rocks where she still sits today.
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Oddly more beautiful in this decrepit condition than she probably was when in use. I wonder how long something like this takes to become lore and legend rather than pollution...?
Suppose that's largely in the eye of the beholder.
Having been here for nearly 50 years, you can see straight through what's left of the vessel.

. Here's a nice rustic thatched roof stone house. Much of the island is a view into an older day of Irish history.
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There were a lot of nice wildflowers on the island... some of which are found only in the Aran Islands.

This is our flight back from the Island. The planes are pretty small.

People get a little nervous over the water. David was good to hold Ena's hand.

Everyone needed to be weighed before we got in and seated specifically to balance the weight in the cabin.

July in Italy

2007-07-04T20:27:00.000Z

We were able to spend time in southern-central Italy. We visited Sorrento, Amalfi, Capri, Pompeii, Rome and the Vatican City.

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Here we are below in Sorrento. We've got Mt. Vesuvius is behind us on the left and some of the Sorrento coast on the right.

This is Positano, it's got some of the most desired real estate in the area. It's just an incredible landscape with some amazing views.

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It used to be a prosperous part of the Amalfi Republic in the 16th & 17th century. Through the 18th & 19th centuries it hit some hard economic times and become a poor fishing town.

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The hard economic times lasted from the mid 1800's up until about 1953 when John Steinbeck wrote an essay about it and it became a tourist destination. Today the main industry is tourism.

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This is a picture perfect look east along the Amalfi Coast. Our tour guide told us that the Amalfi drive is ranked the most beautiful drive in the world. He just might be right!

The Island of Capri

We spent one day on the island of Capri. It's a 20 minute boat ride from Sorrento. Oddly, it's named from the Italian word for goat.

We rented a scooter in Capri so we could explore the whole island. We rode to Anacapri, Faro beach and the old city of Capri.

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Here's a picture of the mosaic floor in the Cathedral of San Michael in Anacapri. It depicts the garden of Eden so beautifully.

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The picture below was taken from the Villa San Michele. It was built by Axle Munthe on the site of the Roman Emperor, Tiberius's villa.
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Here we are turning in our scooter. WE SURVIVED UNSCATHED!!! This let us see the whole island in the short one-day we spent here. Well worth it!

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Pompeii and Mt. Vesuvius

Here we are in Pompeii in front of Mt. Vesuvius. The last eruption on 24 August 79 A.D. lasted for 2 days. It buried the city and all it's inhabitants in 30' of volcanic ash.

The whole city remained buried for 1700 years when it was discovered in 1748. Because it was covered for so long, what is visible today in incredibly well preserved.

Below the city that we visited there is evidence of earlier volcanic activity. Carbon dated evidence suggests that the 79 A.D. volcano was at least the second eruption. It looks like the first city of Pompeii was built in the 8th or 7th century B.C.

Here we are on the main street of Pompeii. We can see painted signs on businesses and perhaps names of politicians running for elections, etc. The preservation is incredible..
Seeing the trees, flowers and plants today, it looks like the people just moved out. Hard to imagine it either as an active live city or buried under 30' of ash.

Pompeii has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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Ancient Rome

Here we are in front of the most well known Roman Colosseum. This thing was completed near 80 A.D. and could hold 50,000 spectators in it's day!

It was used for nearly 500 years, well after the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 A.D.

Here we are in front of the Trevi Fountain in Rome. The fountain was initially designed for Pope Urban VII by Bernini in 1629, but abandon shortly after the Pope's death.

The fountain we see today was finished in 1762 and holds many of Bernini's touches. We were close to jumping in it was so warm!

Click here for our video of Trevi Fountain.

Inside Vatican City

The Vatican Museums have so many priceless pieces of art. Here are sculptures of the three muses.

This is one of Michelangelo's most famous sculptures, Pietà, finished in 1499. This marble sculpture is fascinating partly because of the youth of the Virgin. Michelangelo may have sculpted her that young to try and portray her incorruptibility.

Here is a picture looking down the 120m of the Gallery of Maps. The artwork on the ceiling is really incredible.

The ceiling is actually flat. All of the contoured texture on the ceiling is painted in with absolutely expert shading.

Here is a picture from inside St. Peter's basilica. The guide we had claimed it was the largest church in the world (but our Lonely Planet guide said the largest was the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro, in the Ivory Coast).

Initially, this approach to the basilica was a mix of winding narrow road that never offered a direct view to St Peter's Square. The square was a final reward to the people who navigated through the tiny roads.

Mussolini didn't like that method, so he bulldozed it all down and created this long bold approach road instead.

Click here to see our video inside St. Peter's Square.

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We stayed in a town called Fiuggi. Here's a picture inside a mineral spring in the town. It's called L'Acqua di Bonifacio VIII, for Pope Bonifacio the 8th. He claimed his kidney stones were cured by drinking the water back in the 14th century... hence the name.

Sevilla, Espana

2007-06-21T09:42:00.000Z

Karen and I went for a long weekend to Sevilla, Espana, when we found some cheap airfare. Gotta love the competition between Aerlingus and Ryanair!

We can't wait till Ryanair starts flying to the states! Then we'll start to get some good flights home.
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We stayed at the la Casa del Maestro. It was perfect. We stayed by ourselves on the top floor of the place (59 stairs w/o an elevator though).

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Here's a tiny 'hole-in-the-wall' tobaceria that wasn't too far from our hotel. Karen loved the guard puppy in the doorway.

Here we are in front of the beautiful Gothic Sevilla Cathedral. It was built between 1401 and 1519. The audio tour told us that it was designed so that people who saw it in the future would think the builders were mad to construct a cathedral so large.

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Here's a good picture of the Palacio Arzobispal (Palace of the Arch Bishop). Its palatial façade is the color of sand and bull’s blood. It's one of the best examples of Baroque styling in the city.
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Here we are inside the Alcázar of Seville. It was originally a Moorish fort that was first constructed in 1364. Those are not cell phones... we each had portable audio guides.

This palace is particularly interesting because of the combinations of the dominant Islamic style combine with elements of Christian and Gothic styles.

At the last minute we decided to try and see some flamenco dancing. We got tickets to a performance at Los Gallos. If you want to see video of the performances, click on that link and select videos on the top tool bar.

We're so glad we decided to go. It was really high energy and a lot of fun.
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After the Flamenco dancing, we went back out for some more tapas and we just had to take some pictures of the Giralda tower illuminated in the night sky.

You can barely see the sliver moon on the right side of the tower, half way up. It was really beautiful.
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We are so lucky to be able to do this much travel. This time in Europe is really the opportunity of a lifetime.
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Here's another picture of the Giralda tower flanked by orange trees. It was all we could do to put the camera away and go back to the hotel.

We could have taken pictures all night!
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The next day we decided we'd tour the inside of the cathedral.

The Gothic Style is something that we hadn't seen much of before coming to Europe. The intricate detail in the style is just incredible.
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There's a little controversy regarding the final resting place of the remains of Christopher Columbus. The folks here put into the audio guide that his remains were bought here in 1902.

There is some controversy regarding his true resting place. A lead box bearing an inscription identifying "Don Christopher Columbus" and containing fragments of bone and a bullet was discovered at Santo Domingo in 1877.

Apparently he rests in at least two places, Sevilla, Espana and Santa Domingo in the Caribbean. Here's a picture of the elaborate catafalque that holds part of the remains in the cathedral of Seville.

The decoration inside the cathedral is pretty ornate. Here's a picture of the main altar.
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It was designed by Pierre Dancart and thought to be one of the finest altarpieces in the world. Composed of 45 carved scenes from the life of Christ, it is carved in wood and covered with staggering amounts of gold.

As we climbed up the Tower of Giralda, we took a few pictures from the windows along the way. In this Gothic style, there is no edge that's missing intricate little decorations. It's just breath-taking!

Here's a view from the tower looking the other direction. This place is HUGE!!!

There's a courtyard in the cathedral grounds filled with orange trees. Here's a picture of the cathedral framed by these trees.

Later that afternoon we walked over to the Plaza de España. This is where they hosted the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929.
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We were both a little tired by this time in the afternoon. We decided to find a spot in the shade of the cool bricks and Karen took a short nap while I read a little more about the history of Sevilla.

Here's a nap-time movie.

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I held up my sunglasses (the ones Phil HATES!) to the camera lense. I love the view through these glasses.

Life looks pretty good through rose tinted glasses, huh?

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Bordering the interior of the plaza's crescent shape is a detailed tile section honoring the history of each region of Spain.

It was cool to see the sections of Spain we've visited (Canary Islands and Sevilla).

Here's a view of the main fountain that dominates the plaza. .

This is one of the main shopping streets in Sevilla, la calle Sierpes. They put up these screens above the street to block the beating sun rays of summer. It keeps the place a little cooler on hot days. .

Here's a picture of a carniceria (meat shop) on la calle Sierpa. We had a couple pork tenderloin sandwiches that had a slice of these cured legs. MAN did it make the sandwich!

A Visit in Ireland from Mum

2007-06-05T14:46:00.000Z

My mom came to visit Karen and me in Ireland for a week. We did a lot of driving and saw so much of the countryside.
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We dropped Karen off at work one day and drive down to Glendalough. It's the most popular outdoor destination in Ireland.
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There is a monastic village built in the 11th century and a large very old cemetery too. The weather was just perfect today!
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We saw these guys building a bridge over a stream after we'd seen the whole village. The tray with the delicate silver tea pot was really what made the picture hilarious.
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It was a really beautiful day for us to go for a walk. Glendalough is such a beautiful place!
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Karen took Friday off and we drove down to Kilkenny and stayed in this beautiful B&B.
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We went for dinner a little SE of Kilkenny in Inistioge. The town is only a few hundred people but really quaint.

My mum said this one little river running through Inistioge looked like something she and George had seen in the UK.

We took a little drive out of Inistioge and took a few random turns. We found a great restaurant up on a hill overlooking the Nore Valley.
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Here we are in front of a beautiful old bridge on the River Nore. It was so picturesque.
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This is in front of the Kilkenny Castle. We're in the rose garden here. This was initially built as a defensive castle, but was donated to the people of Kilkenny.
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This was a picture behind the Kilkenny Design Center. It was another beautiful day and the grounds were gorgeous!

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We were on a road back towards the Cliffs of Moher and came upon a nice little town with a bunch of really quaint pubs.

Finally we made it to the Cliffs! (I'm writing this a couple weeks later, and another tourist was just blown off last weekend). People are really not suppose to climb over the wall.

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They just finished re-vamping the observation center here. It's completely different then when Ethan & friends visited in college. It had even changed a ton since Phil and I visited in January.

Purdy cows!

We stopped at a real nice cliff on our way up to Galway. There were a lot of people stopping to snap a few pictures and check out the view here. That's the Burren in the backgound.

I found a good spot to set the camera down and get a picture of the 3 of us.

We stopped at a nice castle restaurant on the drive back from Galway to Dublin.

I had to take mum down to Temple Bar. We didn't go inside for a pint, but walked around and got a good feel for the place. It's real touristy but can't be missed!

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Here we are at one of the pubs I stop at for lunch once in a while. Mum didn't develop the taste for Guinness, but at least she gave it a try.

It was a really great trip. I'm so glad mum came. I only wish George could have come too.

We miss you both.

Lovely Lisbon, Portugal

2007-05-18T21:49:00.000Z

We took a long weekend in Lisbon, Portugal. What a nice city; we enjoyed it more than we'd hoped.
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Bit of trivia... Lisbon is one of the nine cities claiming to be built on seven hills (according to Wikipedia; and yes... Worcester, MA is on that list too!).
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Here is a pic I snapped of the Portuguese flag.
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Below is the National Theater which use to be entirely under the Tagus River. The Portuguese submerged bundles of pine boughs under the water (similar to the oak Venice is built upon) to create the dry ground seen today. The tiles in the center of the square represent the ripples of the Tagus that use to run right there. We went on a walking tour our first afternoon is Lisbon. One place we went was the Casa do Alentejo. It's an old cultural center that use to be a mens only gathering place. Now they play fado music regularly, have two dining rooms and is open to the public every day.

Our last night in Lisbon, Jay had the most succulent plate of wild boar here. The dining room didn't open up until 7:00 p.m. but there was live Fado being played and the room was full of people dancing. It was so nice to see elderly Portuguese couples out dancing. Gingas is a locally brewed liquor of the gingas fruit. It's like a bitter cherry. This drink was thought to have medicinal qualities. Even today, Portuguese people drink a small glass regularly to ward off illness. Little old ladies even have their weekly gingas after each Sunday mass.

The picture below shows nearly 100% of the shops real estate. It's been open in this location since the mid 1800's and run by the same family.

Here is the inside of an old church we stopped at on our walking tour. Much of it was destroyed in the 1775 earthquake which measured 8.0 on the Richter scale. They left the inside to show just how old this church is. Our tour took us up the Santa Justa Lift connecting the Baixa and Bairro Alto. It's an elevator built in the early 1900's to make it easier to ferry goods up to Bairro Alto. From up top, we got a great view of the Castle of São Jorge. The weather really was perfect.
Atop the Elevador de Santa Justa there is a small cafe where we heard our first local Fado music played. Here is a short video of what we heard.

Below is the most well known literary cafes in Lisbon. Poet Fernando Pessoa use to frequent this cafe. He has a bronze statue outside with an empty chair next to him. He was very introverted and did not allow company to join him while he sat and read or wrote.

Pessoa was kind of an odd duck. He had a number of different personalities from which he would write. Literature buffs have studied his work and found the distinct individual personalities to have very little overlapping. He just might have legitimately had multiple personalities!I sent someone a postcard of this tree below. This picture proves my claim in the card... we DID in fact get a drink right there!

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It was just beautiful. We took a short break here on our walking tour to use the restrooms and catch a drink. Jay had a Super Bock, which is the local Portuguese beer.
Here's a video of us in the number 28 Tram. This is the most famous tram in Lisbon. It runs through the Alfama and to many other beautiful spots in Lisbon.

This is the old Lisbon train station. It's got a very unique style. Everything else we've seen in Europe was built in either Gothic, Baroque, Roman or Renaissance style. This building is in the Manueline style which we hadn't seen before. It's greatly influenced by the elements of the sea and incorporates many naval symbols.

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Unfortunately, the picture doesn't do the building justice. It's really something unlike anything we'd seen before.
Here is the view down the rua Augusta in the Baixa to the Praça do Comércio. That square at the end of the street served as the "airport" of Lisbon when people use to arrive by boat.

Here we are having lunch just north of the Alfama. We had just come from the large Saturday market at the Feira da Ladra. We didn't see anything we really needed, but enjoyed walking around and doing a little window shopping. It was like a large flea market.

We had a traditional salted cod cake plate and a VERY under cooked hamburger. Jay finished off with a glass of red port.
We happen to catch the Lisboa Down Town 2007 (you can choose English on their website in fine print on the top left) on Saturday while we were walking around. We were on our way to do some shopping and ran into this day long, single rider, timed downhill mountain bike race!

They had sectioned off a narrow track that wound through the narrow streets and down long stairways. It was WILD!

Below is one of the riders jumping a sponsor car half way through the course.

Here's a video of one rider going right down the stairs. There were nearly equal numbers of men and women competing. These riders were fearless!

We took a day trip out to Sintra and Cascais. Below is a picture of the Pena National Palace. It was again, so different from anything we've seen in Europe so far.

Here is a window overlooking a gate into the palace. Our guide explained how there were symbols of earth, wind, water and fire in the images below.

Mid-way through our day trip, we went to the Cabo da Roca just outside Sintra. This is the absolute western most point in all of Europe. It was really windy here.

One of the last stops we visited on our day trip was the Boca do Inferno (Mouth of Hell). The water rushing in and out was cool. Give people a tiny view of just how powerful the ocean is.

We got some really great local pastries at a small shop here. We think the name of them was Queijadas Finas de Sintra.

So two resounding thumbs up on Lisbon. The people were really friendly, we highly recommend the walking tour with www.insidelisbon.com. Tonia was our guide and she was great. Very fun, accommodating and informative.

We usually take a walking or bus tour to start a visit to a city. We find it gives us the lay of the land and an idea of what we want to come back and visit.

Weekend in Waterford & Dungarvan

2007-05-09T19:28:00.000Z

Karen and I spent the long May bank holiday weekend down in Waterford and Dungarvin with David and Ena. Finally, it seems we're getting some real Irish weather. It wasn't cold, but there was a slight chill in the air and we had a little precipitation... not nearly enough to bother us though.
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Here we are on the beach in Clonea. We found a skeleton of what we thought was a sea horse and Jay collected a few rocks to add to the collection!
Here's the map of the Ardmore Cliff Walk we took. The 4 of us drove here Sunday after breakfast for a nice hike along some beautiful cliffs. I think the hike was a little less than 2 miles and offered us some really great views.
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Ardmore is recognized as the oldest Christian settlement in Ireland.
Below is David as we just started the hike. The path was worn well but not too wide. It was exactly what we'd hoped for.
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Saint Declan was the first person to bring Christianity to Ireland. He lived here sometime between 350 – 450 AD and introduced Christianity here before the coming of Saint Patrick.

Below is the actual Declan's Hermitage. This place photographs so well! It was really beautiful.

At one point, we found a castle ruin to explore, so David and Ena waited under a small hill that blocked the wind. When we came back from exploring, the picture below of them waiting for us just seemed quintessential. It's really nice to have found good friends here in Ireland.

Here we are sitting under the same small hill with the castle ruin behind us. It was unreal how cottony soft the grass was. It honestly felt like there were 12 inches of down feathers right under the grass.

Here are the round tower ruins of St. Declan's church. The monks designed these towers to use as an escape when warring people came through. They would climb up inside the well-stocked tower and bring in rope ladders behind them. They would simply wait out the invaders. Pretty smart, huh!

Here is a picture of some very old stone carvings on St. Declan's church. They depict various scenes from the bible.

One interesting and very realistic thing we got to see was a reenactment of some early battles during Ireland's civil war. Granted these guys were firing blanks, but the sound sure made us nervous!

Here's Jay with Melly. This is David and Ena's pup who's the sweetest thing, but getting on in years. She doesn't quite have the teeth left to keep her tongue in her mouth, but a sweety nonetheless.

Thank you David and Ena for having us again. We sincerely enjoy your company and hospitality.

Exploring the Adriatic Sea: Pula, Croatia.

2007-04-29T17:03:00.000Z

I met Phil in Pula, Croatia for a 4-night mid-week holiday. He'd been traveling through South East Asia and up through Asia Minor for the preceding 3 months.

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Below is the Pula Arena (coliseum). The Arena is the only remaining Roman amphitheater to have four side towers and with all three roman architectural orders entirely preserved. Karen and I will be going to Rome next month. We can't wait to see that coliseum!

Here's a movie I took from inside the arena. The ring is almost completely intact and in really good shape.

I was able to catch some pretty good sunset pictures. I forced the shutter closed quicker than normal to deepen the colors. Didn't turn out too bad!
Phil and I rented scooters the second day we were there. We got about 10km north of Pula and broke one 3km out of Fazana. Phil tried to push it alone for about 15 min, then I found a solid spot on the back of his scooter and tried pushing it from behind. We found we could go about 30km/h if I straightened my leg on the back of his scooter and hit the gas on mine.

We made it into Fazana, called the scooter people, had an espresso and waited for them to come. It took about 45 minutes before they brought us a new one, didn't even try to start the dead one, just gave us a new one and tool the old one away.
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We ended up continuing north to the town of Rovinj a total of 43km north of Pula. We read in our Lonely Planet guide where we might get some great seafood. Sure enough, I had about the best seafood sample plate I've ever ordered. It was the sample of the day's catch.

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Here is the view down one of the cobbled streets. That's Phil down the road a bit.

The next day, we spent some time touring the Pula Arena. Phil actually waited outside and I went in for the full look around.

This arena was built by the Roman Empire between 14A.D. and 41 B.C.
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Yeah, Floyd is in the HOUSE!!!

This is a view of Kamenjak Nature Park. It's at the southern tip of the Istrian peninsula. This view is looking north. Pula is NNW of Prementura at the north end of the park.

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Phil and I rented bikes on our third day and rode south to this nature park. Took us a while to get here... we took a few sight seeing detours and a few wrong turns.

Here I am in the Kamenjak Nature Park sitting on a ledge over looking a water cave that opened up 80 feet below me. We were going to try swimming into it, but the water was too cold. Here's one last picture the long way through the arena. This place is just killer!

Here's the last sunset picture with Phil. This was actually the last traveling sunset Phil spent outside of Ireland. The next morning, Phil and I left Pula got Dublin. Phil actually decided on the bus into town that he wasn't going to Eastern Europe, but back to Dublin instead.
And here is Pula on the way out. You can actually see the arena from the plane. This was a great trip. There are some socio-economic observations Phil and I made about Croatia. I hope the economy gets some good help and maybe future membership in the EU. A lot of the people hope EU membership will improve the economics.

Easter Weekend in London!

2007-04-08T14:40:00.000Z

We decided to take advantage of the long Easter weekend for a trip to London. We got some great airfare and used Karen's reward points for Marriott bucks.
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The first full morning we were there started off as a semi-bust. We went down to Buckingham Palace to try and see the changing of the guard at 11:30 a.m. Turns out a LOT of people had the same idea. Karen needed a boost by the elbows to see anything! We got a few good pictures though.
Here is a video of the Buckingham Palace Marching band. We thought Tim would really appreciate this...

After trying to see the changing of the guard, we tried to get tickets to a show at Shakespears Globe but they didn't have anything playing that night. On the way there we got a few good pics of Big Ben and Parliament.

Here is a video of most of the 11:00 a.m. chimes. We narrated the video with a little info on Big Ben.

We ended up getting pretty good seats to Wicked, playing at the Apollo Victoria Theatre in London's west end. It was far better than we'd expected. Christine and OB both loved it... now we know why!
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One of the real highlights of the trip was our visit to London Tower. We got there by a riverboat from Big Ben/Parliament on the River Thames.

Here's Jay inside a guard booth in the Tower of London... nice try big guy!
Here's a good view of the Tower Bridge from inside London Tower. The audio tour of this place was awesome!

The weather in London was great! We ended getting a little more sun than we'd hoped to. Here's an outside view of the London Tower.

We also got to see the Crown Jewels from a flat moving escalator that carried you past them. Our friend David (Karen's boss) said we really should check 'em out, so we stuck it out in the 20 minute line to get in. They don't allow photographs inside, so we can't post any pictures. They were cool though!

After touring most of the Tower of London we made our way to Trafalgar Square to catch a night-time walking ghost tour. Here's Karen playing in a phone booth while we were waiting to start our tour.

We passed a handful on inviting pubs. Because of the dollar to GBP exchange rate, Jay refrained from drinking on this trip. A pint would have cost at LEAST $10USD!

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The city of London must pay these guys to walk around all punk'd out. People were taking pictures of them everywhere. We had to photograph them from the back to be discrete.

On our Ghost Tour, we stopped below inside the courtyard of the Somerset House. There is a huge collection of impressionist masterpieces in here.

One of the last places we stopped on our ghost tour was the infamous Charles Dickens 'Ye Old Curiosity Shop'. There were a couple super spacey drunk people stumbling around while we were getting the stories of this place and its ghosts. It'll just color the memory for us...
We went to Easter Service at Westminster Abbey. They closed the abbey down to tourists and only allowed people in for worship. When we got there, we found standing room only!

After leaving Westminster Abbey, we walked down the street toward Trafalgar Square and went right by Big Ben and Parliament. It was a beautiful morning. The sun was warm and there were hundreds of tourists taking in the sights.

Here is Trafalgar Square. The tallest sculpture is Nelson's Column. It honors Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson, who won some incredible naval battles during the Napoleonic Wars. He's a real big national hero.

Here we are in Hyde Park. There were a lot of people out in the park this day. People were throwing frisbees, kicking soccer balls, having picnics, etc. The colors in the tulip gardens were really nice.Our last day in London we headed west to find a GREAT curry house. On our way back, we stopped in Kensington Gardens. Below, Karen is sitting on the wall outside the Kensington Palace garden.

Nice Long Weekend in Belgium

2007-03-25T17:30:00.000Z

Karen had a business trip planned in Brussels, so we decided to turn it into a long weekend and spend some time in Antwerp and Bruges. At the same time, Karen's sister, Christine was on Spring Break from her MBA at University of Chicago so she flew out to meet us.

There was a beautiful sky as we were getting on our plane (and Aerlingus is one of our favorite company to fly!). Foreshadowing of a great trip to come! We all arrived in Brussels on Wednesday and went into Brussels that afternoon.

Here is a picture we took in the Grand Place (pronounced grand platz).

We were all getting hungry and trying to find a place to eat when we spotted a warm fire in the center of a picturesque restaurant. The only prerequisite was that we could get our mussels in Brussels, and they had 'em in HUGE buckets!

Just as we were heading inside the restaurant, the sky opened up and started hailing down ice pellets nearly half an inch in diameter! We took it as a sign and scurried inside for a great warm meal.

After lunch, we wandered over to find the famous Manneken Pis. Funny how small it is compared to what you expect after seeing it on TV and in movies.

While Karen was at work, Jay and Christine spent the day in Antwerp. Here's a picture from the ornate Antwerp train station.

Here is a wiki-link to Antwerp. Scroll down a little way to read the "Origin of name" section. It tells of how the city got its name from a giant who stood on the river Scheldt and would cut your hand off and throw it in the river if you tried to cross without paying his toll. Antwerpen in Dutch (hand werpen) means hand-throwing.

Now that we've piqued your curiosity, you have to click the link and check it out!

Christine had to get a picture of this stocked up beer store for her boyfriend. They take their beer pretty seriously in Belgium. Jay couldn't say enough about it!

Here is the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal (Cathedral of our Lady) at the Handschoenmarkt, in the old quarter of Antwerp. It's the largest cathedral in the Low Countries and remains the tallest building in the city.

The next morning, the three of us made our way to Bruges... the Venice of the North!

Bruges is a valuable landmark as the city centre has hardly changed since the Middle Ages. Similar to Amsterdam, Bruges has taken extraordinary measures to keep up with the restoration of their architecture. Nearly all the buildings are in close to original condition.

One of the first things we did was take a short city bus tour of the historic areas of Bruges. We were all a little tired and might have closed our eyes for a minute or two of the tour ; )
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We had lunch at an Argentinean bbq place and did a little walking around before turning in early.

Jay went walking along the streets and canals getting some nice night-time shots. Here's a great one of the Belfry lit up against the night sky.

The next morning, we started by going to an outdoor market where they had carts of the BEST barbecue meats we'd seen in Europe so far! Karen and Christine gorged on tasty meat and Jay got some funky cheeses and bread.

We went to the Chocolate Musuem in Bruges that morning too. We learned that the degree to which they gring the cocoa powder and the quality of the cocoa butter really separates Belgian chocolate from anything else available. In the museum we watched them make some chocolates (got to sample a few too!).

That afternoon, Jay climbed the Belfry clock tower to get some great pictures of the city while Christine and Karen did a little shopping. Here is a video of the last two chimes at 4:00 p.m.

Here is a video of the clock works and the spools that run the 47 different bells in the Belfry tower.

The picture below is of the Markt Square from up in the Belfry.

After Jay climbed the tower, he killed a little time with a large Belgian beer. The picture below was taken outside at the cafe with the red awnings in about the middle of the picture above.

If it weren't for the motorcycles, the picture below could easily have been taken in the mid 1800's.

At the end of the day we stopped in a nice shop for some real Belgian hot cocoa. This how it's suppose to be done... Belgian chocolate melting in hot milk!

On our last day, we took a tour of the only active brewery left in Bruges and Christine and Jay sampled some of their beer. Hundreds of years ago, they didn't have access to much clean water, so most people drank a few liters of beer daily!

First stop today was the St. John's Hospital Museum. It is a museum that chronicles the early development of hospital treatment in the 17th and 18th centuries.

We also took a carriage ride through the city before we left. Here we are with our horse, Ginfis.

Here are Christine and Karen in the carriage. You can see another horse carriage right behind us too.

This really is a very beautiful city. We're so glad we were all able to visit together.

Here is Christine jumping in as we were taking a picture. This turned out to be one of our favorite pictures. We really had such a nice time together.

One last picture of the Belfry of Bruges. Jay was really excited to finally get a picture with the sun shining on the front of the tower.

Check back soon for our next adventure!

Fuerteventura, Canary Islands, Spain

2007-03-18T09:06:00.000Z

We decided we needed a break from the busy cultural trips we'd been taking, so booked a trip to Fuerteventura in the Spanish Canary Islands. The flights were cheap and we needed a break from the winter weather.

Fuerteventura met that need exactly. All our other trips were about running around to finish our sightseeing in no more than a few days over an extended weekend. This trip to Fuerteventura was to R-E-L-A-X. And that we did.

The Canary Islands are off the NW coast of Africa and are sort of like the Carribean Islands of Europe. Most of the tourists we saw there were British.

The island of Fuerteventura is naturally quite desert-like—of all the other islands that make up the Canary, this one rarely gets rain and is newer to the tourism industry compared to the others.

There was not much in between the land that was developed for resorts. No real vegetation, buildings, people, etc. When we arrived at the resort, however, the white buildings and the sunshine were so bright, I had to squint, and Jay (with his blue eyes) needed to buy sunglasses. The first few days we spent switching between lying around and walking around, really just appreciating the surroundings.

Here's Jay with his sporty shades on a day trip we took to Lanzarote.

Here are a couple more pics from the Lanzarote day-trip we took. Approaching the island from the water was cool. It looked like a chik collection of wealthy properties in the set of a James Bond movie.And here is one posted to appease Jay's vanity!
We saw some funny things too, like camels on the beach. Another pastime for us in the islands was eating. We had a buffet style meal twice a day. When you put together all-you-can-eat and the Jaw-Madsons, you’ve created a monster that can’t be stopped.
We had some fun taking night-time pictures leaving the shutter open for a couple seconds. It was so nice to out walking around in the warm night air. The tropical sunsets were pretty cool too. We tried to time it to take sunset pictures each day, but the sky just wasn't cooperating so we only have one set. I think we did ok with this one.
Here we are walking to dinner in our hotel complex. It was really nice to have all-you-can-eat twice a day!
With as little hair on my head as I have, I can't believe I forgot a hat! I had to buy this FUERTEVENTURA total tourist hat while we were there. This was on the Lanzarote day-trip.This was the perfect relaxing trip where we didn't have the need to run around and see everything before we left. There was no sense that if we didn't hurry we'd miss something important.

This trip was EXACTLY what we were looking for!

Olso, Norway

2007-03-10T22:12:00.000Z

Norway had some appeal because Jay’s actually Norwegian. Oslo also a “winter city” so a March visit seemed appropriate. Snow was still on the ground and temperatures hovered around and below freezing. We were warned about how expensive it might be. Norway's currency is the Norwegian Kroner and exchange rates with the US dollar were absurd! For example, a baked potato in a pub cost $16 USD!!

Despite the cost, we thoroughly enjoyed Oslo and its surroundings. They're big on nature there which suited us just fine! Oslo is itself situated right on the cost, and is made up of a number of fjords, peninsulas, and little islands. Unfortunately, our first day was taken up mostly by travel. We flew into Torp airport, 70 miles from the city. We did get a chance to look around the city before it got too dark. The next day was kind of a bust, since all we did was walk around, did some window shopping for stuff we couldn’t afford, and didn’t see too much.

Our second full day was way better! We decided to head up to Holmenkollen, site of the 1952 Olympic ski jump in the mountains a 20 min. train ride North of Olso. The thing is huge! It just so happened that we were in town for the 2007 World Cup Biathlon. I’ve never been much of a spectator sport person, but this was cool!! We found a place to stand next to some really tall Scandinavians.We got a great view of the start. The pregnant pause before the start was tension-filled! Click here for a link to the video of the womens start.The athletes were world-class alright—they made it seem so easy as they sped by. It was so cool when a Norwegian skiied by. The crowd erupted with support... check out the flags! After all that adrenaline, we headed back to the city for a $25 lunch at McDonald’s and Vigeland Sculpture Park, famous for its statues by Gustav Vigeland. There are many many statues here, all of modern, artistic, and unclothed nature, which we will admit we did not always “get”. The statues date between 1926 and 1942.

Here are some interesting shots—we appreciated that the overcast sky let up just a little bit to allow us some nice pictures. And here is the most famous sculpture in the park, The Monolith. It's over 14 meters tall and is made from one piece of rock. There are bodies all intertwined into and surrounded by shorter sculptures of groups of people engaged in various activities. After seeing so many statues, we started to see them in the trees around us! The next day we took a bus to the Norsk Folkemuseum, Oslo’s outdoor folk museum. It's like colonial Williamsburg, except that it represented many more centuries of life in Norway. During the summer there are actors who play townspeople dressed in traditional clothes—we unfortunately did not experience that, but we did have the park virtually to ourselves. Here is the Gol stave church dendrochronologically dated to 1212, a house, and a village:

After that, we headed to Akershus Fortress, a historical landmark in Oslo. It was built in the 1290s by King Håkon V, but played quite a role during WWII. There are a number of museums in the compound, but we visited the Resistence Museum built in 1966. Nothing in the history books compares to going through this place. They did a great job of depicting the experience of being invaded, occupied, and ultimately triumphing over oppression. All in all, a very educational trip.

We were told the economy is looking at a slow down and it might be a MUCH more affordable city this same time next year. Who knows!

The last thing I'd like to post is the Viking Code of Laws. Some of this seems to ring true with me.

A long weekend in Paris!

2007-02-25T17:30:00.000Z

I think in 4 days, Karen and I got nearly everything out of Paris we possibly could have . We took a nice long 4-day weekend in Paris. We both ended up loving Paris far more than we'd expected. We found the people really responded when we made a full faithed effort to speak in French. And it was fun!

Above, Karen and I went up to the top of the Arc de Triomphe. It was commissioned by Napoleon in the early 1800s, but didn't get finished for some time.

We went to the Père Lachaise cemetery to visit Jim Morrison's grave. There were a handful of people there. We had to wait to get a good picture.

It was smaller than we'd expected. I thought it would be bigger than life I guess. Wasn't there a bust of Jim at one point too...? Guess not.

Here we are outside the Musée du Louvre just north of the Seine. Last year 8.3 million people visited the collections here. They really have some amazing art here.

We got to see the infamous Venus de Milo sculpture, the Mona Lisa, countless Monet's and Van Gogh's, etc. It was pretty incredible to say the least. A person could spend a full week and maybe squeeze in just what's on display at the moment. They are only showing a fraction of their collection at any one time.

Here is a picture looking up and out from underneath the pyramid in the main courtyard. Some people don't like the design of the pyramid section because it's so strikingly different from the rest of the Renaissance architecture.

We thought it was great!

So to end our first full day in Paris, Karen and I went to visit the Eiffel Tower. It was really cool to see it at night all lit up. Above is a really quick video I took of the Eiffel Tower twinkling at night.

Here we are at the Basilica of the Sacré Cœur in Montmartre. This is the artist section of Paris. Dali, Monet, Picasso, etc. all once lived and worked here. There are still scores of artists in the area. There's a square behind the Basilicia where artists are selling paintings, soliciting portraits, etc. The place is still hopping with artsy stuff!
At the Musée d'Orsay we got to see one of the largest collections of impressionist art in the world. This is a picture looking out to the northern hill of Montmartre.
This is the official Opera house of Paris. We thought the lit-up facade was stunning against the night sky. There are so many really beautiful buildings in Paris. We literally took hundreds of pictures!

We stayed at the New Orient Hotel in the Right Bank West. Karen read up on the place ahead of time and asked for a top floor room with a balcony. We wouldn't have had this view if she didn't ask early on. Nice job Karen!

These Renaissance buildings are just so easy to photograph!

Notre Dame Cathedral is another must-see in Paris. The level of detail in this gothic church is really something to appreciate. Every single edge is covered in delicate detail. They even made more edges just to keep decorating!

We went into a huge 9-floor department store called Printemps to do a little shopping. They have a terrace cafe on top where I took a great picture of the Montmartre hill and the Basilica of the Sacré Cœur. I'm going to try and do some sketches of this hill soon.

Karen humored me at the end of a long day and we went back to the Arc de Triomphe. The sky was pretty cool looking and I wanted to take some time elapsed photos when it was all lit up. Some of them came out really well (don't need to post them all here though).

I was captivated by the clouds that night. When we got back to the hotel I kept taking pictures out the window. Again, some came out really well but I don't need to post too many.

Trip to Copenhagen

2007-01-19T15:01:00.000Z

Karen and I took a long weekend in Copenhagen, Denmark. It was a little chilly and rainy for part of the trip, but really nice all in all.

Here is Karen in front of the Central Station in Copenhagen. It was super convenient that the station was only 200m from our hotel.

First night there we went walking around and found this really large thermometer telling us EXACTLY how cold it was!

Here is Karen standing on Vindebrogage with Nybrogade on the other side of the canal. There weren't as many canals as in Venice or Amsterdam, but they were some really beautiful sections.

There is one section of Copenhagen called Freetown Christiania inhabited by 850 people, artist/hippies mostly. The area is a self governed 85 acre section of the city and according to Wikipedia has established a semi-legal independant status.

I had to take these pictures discretely. We read that the inhabitants don't like it when people come in a take pictures of their lives, etc. They illegidly start hollaring at photographers and chase them out.

We found coffee shops, bars, restaurants, home-made souvinere shops, etc. It seemed to be a fully functioning counter culture commune. Here is the very interesting wikipedia Freetown Christiania link.

Here's a look over the top of the area.

We took the Greater Copenhagen guided bus tour on Saturday afternoon and got to see a lot of the city. It was raining for the first half of the tour but cleared up towards the end.

Here’s a picture of some of the canal houses.
We set the tripod up for this one. This is the row of houses on 90% of Copenhagen post cards.
Some of the architecture around the main squares in Copenhagen have been restored to full original glory. Here is one that captures that old 16th century beauty. These buildings are just gorgeous!
Here we both are in the courtyard of the royal family palace. There was a flag flown on the main residence indicating the family was ‘home’. These places were HUGE! Each of the 4 main residence buildings were many times the size of the white house.
Here is a picture I took from the bus of the only historic old dutch windmill we actually in the city. We could have seen so many more if we had gone out of the city… maybe next time!
And here is the world famous statue of the little mermaid (the Disney film is the Dutch Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale). The movie made the story far more well known that it had previously been, but it’s only one of HCA’s many works.
Ans here is the statue of Hans Christian Anderson in the bronze in the corner of the the city’s central square right on Hans Christian Anderson Boulevard!

Phil and I Visit Amsterdam

2007-01-16T12:48:00.000Z

Phil was just starting his European holiday going to Madrid, Barcelona, maybe the UK, etc. so I suggested he and I meet up in Amsterdam for a couple days. I knew Amsterdam's reputation, but really hoped there was more to it.

I got out of the plane in Schipol airport (which is HUGE!) and made my way to the train for Amsterdam's Centraal Station. It was a short 15 minute ride.

When I met Phil outside the station and looked around, I couldn't believe the number of bicycles! There were thousands of bikes all neatly locked up around the train station. As we started to walk to find our hotel, I saw just how integrated bicycle travel is in this city.

There were 4 methods of travel fully integrated into the street surfaces:
1) there were sidewalks for pedestrians
2) there were fully separated bicycle lanes
3) automobile lanes
4) train tracks for surface trains
It was really interesting to see so many people commuting around on bike. We decided we'd have to rent a couple and ride around a bit.
Let me take a short minute to talk about the architecture here. These buildings were all built in the 1600's and 17oo's. That's a LONG TIME AGO!!!
Amsterdam has apparently spent a TON of money restoring the all the buildings to original condition. I couldn't see one brick that was decaying on a building anywhere. All the buildings were in what seemed to be original condition (except some were leaning into over the street a little).

This is one of, if not THE most beautiful city I have ever seen! I wonder if the government subsidises the restoration, or taxes for it, or just enforces it really efficiently. One way or the other the city is in amazing condition.

Anyway, our hotel was perfect; we stayed at the Hotel Sint Nicholas. It was cheap, clean and in a great location. We stayed right next to the red light district (150m to the SE of Centraal Station).

Soon as we dropped stuff off in the hotel we hit the street to grab a beer and get into the city. Because we were staying right next to the Red Light District (RLD), it made the perfect place to grab a bite, a beer and see what was going on.

The coffee shops sell marijuana in various types. Some were listed as strong, some weak, some were suppose to induce a happy buzz, some would excite you, and some were suppose to be more calm and tranquil. Funny that there were so many different types associated with moods like that.

We just walked around and just took it all in.

Once we got into the heart of the district, it was really weird to see prostitutes in the windows. It's just like we've all heard about... red lights and pretty girls in the windows. It was a little uncomfortable to think about these as business windows that just happen to have HUMANS for sale!!! We kept walking.

Next day we went to see the house where Anne Frank lived in hiding for 2 years under the Nazi regime. I read her diary when I was younger and it had an impact on me. I was about her age when I read it. It was moving to see the same walls she decorated with the sparse magazine clippings she could get. They were still up there! Visit the Anne Frank House if you're ever in Amsterdam. It's historic and something to remember.

We rented bikes a little later that day. What a GREAT IDEA!!! Bicycles are so well integrated into the city, it's the perfect way to get around. Phil thought we rented "the bike of the future!" I have to admit, they were very comfortable.We rode down to the Van Gogh museum and spent some time there. His work is really something. Either the work of a madman or a genius. Little of both I guess!

We also saw Natalie Portman there. She was walking around looking at the Van Gogh works too. She's a little shorter than I'd expected. Must be the way we glorify hollywood and expect everything to be bigger than life.
We walked by a place in the tulip market that would ship tulip bulbs anywhere in the world. I really should have stopped and had some sent to my mom. She would have loved that. Next time!

We gorged ourselves that night. Phil and I got a nice big Thai dinner then hit the streets for a few beers, etc. After we had loosened up a little, we passed by a pancake house and I couldn't resist. I ordered the largest pancake I have ever seen in my life. It had to be 18 inches in diameter! With 2 baked pears, halved with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream and drizzled with chocolate sauce. Now THAT was an experience!

Suffice to say Dutch pancakes are no joke! Get one if you're ever there.

We only spent a couple days there, so that about wraps it up. I should have spent another 2 days there. I want to try and take a little longer trips in the future if I can swing it.

Karen's Trip to Frankfurt

2006-12-15T22:01:00.000Z

Jay was home in the States for most of December working on The Classic Toy Shop, so I took the opportunity to book a weekend trip for myself to visit the Christmas Markets in Germany. Frankfurt won out based on the cost of the tickets. I figured that there could be no better time than now to experience Christmas in Europe. The market (located in the Römerberg area) was alive with activity—lots to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch! I spoiled myself by buying CDs from street musicians (latin harp + guitar combo) and picked up some nice trinkets for my friends and family (nutcrackers, beautiful glass Christmas ornaments, jewellery, and foodstuffs, etc.). I also ate myself silly with the sausages, potato pancakes, sauerkraut, marzipan, roasted nuts, and chocolate covered marshmallows… yummy! Here’s a picture of my lunch: Being a non-drinker, I could not avail myself of the mulled wine, which looked oh-so-cosy in the hands of my fellow shoppers in the cold weather. I amused myself instead with animated moose heads that sang Christmas Carols and the old-fashioned choo-choo train that pulled into the area and made the experience so quintessential.

I saw a few interesting things while meandering through the city. First of all, could you believe Woolworth’s still has stores?! Not far from Woolworths, I happened upon one of the nicer department stores in Frankfurt. Right in front was a man and his pony. For the price of spare change, you had your own petting zoo for a few moments. I thought it was a funny site—this thigh-high pony, and a department store. I also happened upon a poster advertising a local Western show entitled, “I Like America” And here is one of the more colourful buildings I strolled by—pretty flowers for a pretty pub! Frankfurt was also a beautiful city in its own way, with a mix of modern buildings, old-fashioned architecture, and a river lined with gnarly sycamore trees. One day of shopping was enough for me, so I crossed the Main River via the Eiserner Steg (iron footbridge) and spent my Sunday exploring the Frankfurt’s Museum Row (Museumsufer). I spent most of my time at the Städel Museum, where they had a special exhibit on gardens in art. I must say that Frankfurt was altogether a very pleasant trip, though I would have loved to share it with some company!

Our First Trip to Italy

2006-11-24T20:35:00.000Z

Here are some pictures from our first trip to Italy. I say, "our first trip," because we are certainly going back. Karen and I both want to see Rome and Florence, etc.

Karen and I took a week long trip to Northern Italy. We stayed in Riva, a costal town on the northern shore of Lake Garda. We went with an Irish tour group called The Travel Department.

We were the only Americans on our trip; the group was all Irish otherwise. What a wonderful people. It's hard to accurately describe what is so nice about them, they're just a genuine people.

Here's the view from our hotel room. It was so nice to wake up with these mountains all around us. The views were gorgeous!

You can click here for a movie we took of our room in Riva. We stayed in the Grand Liberty Hotel which had a spa, pool, sauna, steam room, etc. It had a real old world charm to it.

First day in Italy we hiked up to a Basilica of Santa Barbara. This is a view of Riva from the mountain. After we had some food at a regional alpine mountaineering club the clouds started to roll in. The views were really cool.

We went for a tour around the lake and stopped at a nice marina town for some espresso and fresh pastries. The mountains around the northern part of the lake are just so beautiful.

On the North East shore of the lake, the mountains come almost straight out of the water. In a lot of places they had to dig out tunnels through the rock because there was not enough land on which to build a road. They were really neat to drive through and beautiful to look back on.

We also took a day trip to Venice. It was really cool to see all the canals and architecture. Venice is a pretty expensive city though. Our tour guide arranged for a few discount things for us. It was great to have her looking out for us in financially like that.

I'm really glad to have seen Venice, but I don't know if I needed to spend a whole lot more than a day there. I can't imagine seeing it in the height of the summer. Probably better with a fraction of the tourists.

Check out the pigeons in the middle of St Marc's Square below. They sell bags of bird food you can feed the birds... actually you just let 'em see the food and they maul you. We watched it happen to a few people and vowed NEVER to feed the pigeons again.

Trim Castle in County Meath, Ireland

2006-11-11T22:07:00.000Z

This is the castle where Braveheart was filmed. The movie was set in Scotland, but the Trim Castle scenes were actually filmed in Trim, Ireland in County Meath. They must have done a lot of work to get everything together for the movie. There is a photo album there with a lot of pictures showing the behind the scenes production of it’s filming.

Here’s a picture of Trim in relation to Dublin. The drive is 39 miles and takes a little over an hour. There’s another castle or at least a few ruins visible from the N3 to the North of the road. It’s a really nice drive up into County Meath.

Trim Castle is a keep style castle that was designed to be easily defended by 7 or 8 well trained men if need be. Everything was constructed with incredible insight into highly efficient methods of defense. The stairways, gates, windows and all points of access were built giving amazing advantage to the defending knights.

Trim is the largest Norman castle in Ireland and was built by Hugh de Lacy and his son Walter beginning in the late 1100s. It was built by England serve as a visible sign that the English ruled Ireland.

Inside the curtain wall lived trades people who had to pay taxes to live inside that protected area. The taxes to live inside were high, but the protection was unquestionable. Lived outside you were subject to the whims of nearby tribes who would come through periodically and attack, taking whatever they could ravage from anyone outside the castle.

That didn’t breed much local patriotism for the English. When the castle was under attack, the folks living outside would cheer for damage the castle would sustain (no matter how little it actually sustained).

There was some pretty advanced engineering inside the castle. They vented a duct in the stone walls from the septic collection area up through where the clothes were hung using the ammonia to kill lice or fleas in the clothes. I don’t know how they dealt with the stench, but there were no bugs!

The person in charge of the septic area would regularly stir the excrement and even collect bowl to leave on the outside of the door for examination. In that day, they would be proud of darker excrement because it was evidence of a rich castle diet. They would use that to advertise the culinary luxury of the kitchen. Little different than today, huh; now we just have to look into Zagat’s!

We left Trim and headed back for Dinner at O’Shea’s and Guinness at The Brazen Head. Brazen Head is the oldest pub in Ireland. It was established in 1198 and still pours a great Guinness… they’ve been doing it long enough!!!

Al and Kathy Visit!

2006-11-09T19:45:00.000Z

This weekend we had two friends from NYC come and visit. Al and Kathy flew in on Thursday morning and stayed through the weekend. I think it was only 2 or 3 hours before we were sampling Ireland's infamous Guinness.

Getting off the plane after a red-eye flight to Ireland usually takes a shower and a cup of coffee to recover from. Al and Kathy were lucky to have slept well on the plane, so they just needed the shower each before hitting the pubs!

We walked through St. Stephens Green and fed the ducks on our way up to Grafton Street. It's fun to walk around through all the people and neat shops up there in spite of the heavy tourist feel. I'm glad we stopped to feed the ducks. It's something I really like.

We made our way up to Temple Bar area and stopped in for another couple pints in the famed Temple Bar itself. It’s one of the most well known pubs in Dublin… they even named an area of Dublin after it!

Pubs sure are friendly in Ireland. Neil, our bartender, taught us how to balance a pint on it's edge using a match stick. He even offered us some snuff we later found out he picked up from a couple other patrons 20 minutes earlier. Funny place I guess!

After Temple Bar, we walked up to the River Liffey and took some pictures before making our way home.

Karen met us after she got out of work and we headed down to the Canal for dinner. We had reservations on the only river boat restaurant in Dublin, La Peniche. Our house is right on the Grand Canal and the river boat docks about 150m east of our back gate.

They sail every Thursday night and try to go 2 locks east or west. The food was GREAT and it was really cool going through the locks. Not cheap, but worth the expense.

Our cruise was actually boarded at the Leeson Street lock by an inebriated local on his way to a party someplace further up in City West. He was walking with another buddy with a case of Portuguese beer (?) and jumped on board for a minute. They wouldn’t serve him a drink on board though, so he promptly jump off.

It’s so nice to show our new home and city to good friends!

Bike Ride to Deer Park Golf Course

2006-10-25T13:56:00.000Z

So I went for a ride last week up north of Dublin to a town called Howth and rode by a few golf courses on the way. Karen told me a friend at work had heard of the Deer Park Golf Course up there and that it was pretty affordable.

I looked on-line and found it was €1 per hole, had a great view of the Dublin Bay and rented clubs. They actually have about 36 holes on their grounds. There’s a pitch and put course and a full 18-hole course too. It’s only 11.5 miles from our place and when I woke up on Tuesday, the weather looked perfect! I was going to wait a little while before I took a day to ride up and play, but the weather forced me into it today.

It was a gorgeous day… it was sunny, about 50 degrees and only a little windy up on that part of Howth. It was perfect golf weather. I was really looking forward to getting out on the course!

The ride up was uneventful. I left the house about 11 a.m. and got there about an hour later. It was awesome; I rode by the old castle/church on the course grounds, locked up my bike, changed shoes, rented my clubs and headed off to the first hole.

I was nervous on the first tee that I’d duff the ball or lose it OB someplace with clubs I’d never used before, so I took a 5 iron out of the bag to be conservative. I didn’t hit it too far, but it was right down the middle of the fairway. I thought it’d be easy enough to find that one!

It was a great 9 holes. I wouldn’t have minded being paired up with a few other guys, but the course was pretty empty so I went out by myself. That actually let me strap my camera on the pull cart and snap a few pictures without feeling too self-conscious.

I would have played a full 18 holes but I didn’t get there early enough in the day. I was done by 3 p.m. and home safe a little after 4 p.m.

I look forward to the weekends the most, that’s when Karen and I get to jump in the car and go exploring around Ireland. On the days when she’s working, I usually spend some time working on the toy shop website, clean up the house, do some laundry, walk to the grocery, etc. But today was a day I spent out having fun in Ireland by myself… it was my perfect day!

Here's a google map of the ride up to the course.

Bike Ride North of Dublin

2006-10-20T20:26:00.000Z

So I finally got out for my second bike ride in Dublin today. I took one ride before this one, and had a pretty bad time! I was trying to find Phoenix Park just north of the Liffy to the West of City Center. The traffic patterns were awful, cars didn’t know there was a bike lane… it was a miserableride.

On today’s ride I tried to find the road on the north side of Dublin that ran along the water. One of our relocation people mentioned that it had a great bike path that was separated from the rest of the road. What a find! Look here how clear the separation is from the road. It’s not like this the whole way, but it’s far better than riding through the heart of Dublin.

I did have to ride carefully in some traffic to get north of the Liffy and out to the water. Once I got there the bike lanes were separated from traffic just as described and the ride was terrific. The weather was real cooperative too. The rain held off and it was only partly cloudy.

I found three golf courses on a small island that Karen mentioned one of was pretty affordable. I think the perfect day might start with a good breakfast, then a bike ride to the golf course, 18 holes of golf, then a ride home. I may try and make that happen sometime next week if the weather cooperates.

I got as far north as a town called Howth. I had lunch in a nice sandwich café right in front of a marina. Howth is really a quaint sea town with a quintessential marina sea-port feeling. The jetty that protects the marina was busy with tourists and offers great views of an island just off the coast. It was beautiful!

Here is a picture of my complete bike route today. I really got to see some great places north of Dublin.

I feel so amazingly lucky to be able to enjoy Ireland so much. This is such an incredible opportunity for us (especially incredible for me). Click here to see the full Ofoto album of today’s pictures (just click on view slideshow).

Malahide Castle

2006-10-14T16:33:00.000Z

We traveled North today about 45 minutes to see our first castle in Ireland. The Castle is located in the town of Malahide about 10 miles out of Dublin. This castle and the 250 acre grounds were owned and controlled by the Talbot family for 791 years, which is actually pretty amazing in spite of all the invaders that have come in and occupied Ireland. For one family to hold on to such a large property through all the occupying forces is really unusual.

They didn’t allow photography inside the castle, so my pictures are only of the outside. The interior pictures I gathered on the internet.

The oldest parts of Malahide castle were built in the 1100s and remain today in nearly the same condition as when they were built. This makes it quite unique in Ireland. Nearly all of the castles in Ireland today are in various states of disrepair. To see Malahide castle fully intact you can really see how the people lived when the castle was a working estate.

Some things are different today. For example, there were no glass windows initially. For defensive purposes, the windows were only narrow vertical openings from which arrows could be launched but would be hard to penetrate from the outside. They have been replaced with glass today for obvious functionality.

The Talbot family held the castle and its grounds from 1185 through 1976. There was only one break of Talbot control of the castle between 1649 and 1660. During this time Oliver Cromwell had a short conquest of Ireland. He gave control of the grounds to Miles Corbet following his short rule. In 1660 when the brief Cromwell rule ended the castle and grounds were restored to the Talbot family.

There is one beautiful completely oak paneled room, the Oak Room, with ornate biblical carvings along every wall. Above the fireplace in the Oak Room, there is a rare 16th century Flemish carving depicting the coronation of the Virgin. This carving was very important to the Talbot family. During the short years the castle was out of the Talbot control this carving disappeared. When the Talbots regained control of the castle, the carving miraculously reappeared.

There is a nice little tea room in the castle and a fancier restaurant just to the back of the castle. The tea room serves great sandwiches, soups, lasagna, coffees and pastry desserts. This was perfect for us.

We visited the castle on a Saturday morning and as we were driving in we saw teams of kids hurling. The grounds are used today for different hurling leagues and the sound of young kids running around was neat. It’s nice that the castle grounds have contemporary use.

The castle and grounds were sold to the Dublin City Council for preservation in 1976. Apparently the taxes became too much for the family to maintain so they sold it to be used to teach some of the history of Ireland.

Here is a link to the Malahide Castle website and here is a link to Malahide Castle on Wikipedia.

Knowth Passage Tombs

2006-10-08T17:36:00.000Z

We traveled about an hour north of Dublin after church today with Justin & Shawna into County Meath. We went to the Neolithic passage tombs in the valley of the River Boyne in Knowth. These are the oldest tombs in Western Europe dating back to about 3000 B.C. At the Knowth site there is one large super tomb mound measuring roughly 1 hectare (2.5 acres) in area surrounded by 17 smaller satellite tombs. The tomb perimeter is lined with 127 curbstones (very large carved megaliths). Of the original megaliths, 3 are missing and 4 are very badly damaged. A lot of artwork is actually carved on backs of the stones. This type of megalithic art is known as hidden art.

They don’t know the exact meaning of the two sided megalith art. It could be they simply wanted to recycle the large stones; others think there may have been some kind of spiritual significance to the people’s remains buried inside. Burial in the main center tomb was reserved for the highest social group… kings, rulers, high priests, etc. The decorative artifacts found in this tomb versus the 7 satellite tombs substantiate this theory.

The entrances on the East and West line up with the sun rise and set on the spring and summer equinoxes. This could show the worship of the sun or sun gods in some capacity. The entrances as they pertain to the uses of a tomb could represent the beginning of life with the rising sun and the ending of life with the setting sun. There were probably celebrations or ceremonies held here on the different equinoxes.

One of the megaliths probably represents the lunar calendar. I’ve tried to show the patterns carved into this stone, but I couldn’t reproduce everything that was on the stone. Our tour guide used this stone to show the potential lunar link. There are actually 29 circular objects carved in to the horizontal oval… could be the 29 days of the lunar calendar.

One of the really cool things our guide did was focus on just how much of what we know about this site is interpretive. There are no written records (aside from the megaliths) to tell us about the meaning and use of this place. At one rock we talked about how many seemingly accurate interpretations could be made on the same carvings.

The weather was a little rainy today. Justin & Shawna both brought rain jackets; Karen and I were under our umbrellas. The rest of the tour was semi-unprepared. It never really rained hard, just kept drizzling most of the day.

On the way home Justin saw this broken down stone structure on top of a hill just off the road. We drove up because it was close. This old structure was just across the street from a few houses and had these cows grazing out front. These old ruins are littered all over the place here. Gives the towns and countryside a sense of age and depth a little more profound than what we see back home in Jersey!

We do miss Hoboken, but we’re happy to be spending time in a place with a history MUCH older than ours!

Here is a link to Knowth on Wikipedia and here is a link to the official Knowth site.

Our First Hike in Ireland

2006-10-07T18:22:00.000Z

Our friends Justin and Shawna came to visit for a long weekend and wanted to see some of the Irish landscape. I was thrilled to have an excuse to go for a hike in Ireland! The drive took us on some pretty narrow roads. It seemed like there were close calls every time we passed an on coming car. Turns out that's just how close the road is!

We went to a place called Glendalough (translated from Irish it means valley of the two lakes). It's the largest glacier formed valley in Ireland. A few of our tour books said it was the most popular outdoors tourist attraction in the country.

The hike started at a monastic village with buildings from the 10th to the 13th centuries. It was also a cemetary with graves from the 1700s to 2004. We got some pictures of some really cool Celtic cross grave stones.

The oldest structure on the site is a small old cathedral built in the 10th century. Apparently there was a second addition built 200 years later in the 13th century. By the time the second addition was built, the Norms had invaded and brought a Roman architectural influence with them. You can tell by a Roman window in the later addition when there are hints of Roman architecture in the earlier structure.

The hike was probably 6 or 7 miles long. We walked along both lakes in the valley to an old quarry setting. I was expecting to see some wild life along the way. We had been walking a while then up on our right we say a dozen mountain goats. I knew we'd see something, I just didn't know what.

As we started to get out of the valley and began to reach the higher elevation of the valley the ground became more and more wet. Soon we found a set of what looked like railroad posts lashed together to serve as an elevated path. The posts were wrapped with chicken wire and held down with large nail/staples for added traction on the wood. They referred to this as the boardwalk. We were told it was an easy very safe hike if we stayed on this boardwark.

The views as we walked along the boardwalk became more and more incredible. As we were looking down on the two lakes we were looking at the views we saw on all the post cards from Glendalough. It was really a beautiful place.

Here is a link to the official Glendalough site and here is a link to Glendalough on Wikipedia.

Amsterdam Picture

2006-09-26T11:28:00.000Z

We're Finally in Ireland!!!

2006-09-24T20:18:00.000Z

After waiting for a long time to get over here, Karen and I have finally arrived in Dublin. We've got a terrific place to live and are looking forward to having friends and family visit, and maybe do some travel in Europe.

Click on the link way up on the right to see some highlight pictures of our first couple weeks in Dublin. Below is the block of houses where we live just south of Dublin City Center. The back gate of our courtyard/backyard opens up to the Grand Canal. There's also a picture of our place from the back. We got to see a dinner river boat go through the locks right at our back gate.

We expect we'll be here for at least 6 months. There is a chance our stay will last beyond March into April 2007. Click on any picture to see a larger view.

Our first weekend we just tried to get settled, put our clothes and things away and did some walking around Dublin City Center to see what was around. We're right to the south of St. Stephens Green and Grafton Street. This is a really nice part of Dublin, and we're thrilled to be here.