The Roman Holiday

I can't even begin to explain how great it is to be able to decide you want to go to Rome the following weekend. And then just go. Ahh, the advantages of living in Europe.

So we began talking sometime in January about what we would do for Jason’s upcoming birthday (Feb 12). We came up with a few ideas and were leaning towards a giant, indoor water park/spa/beach called “Tropical Paradise” in Germany, thanks to a recommendation by one of my students. Going to a place where we could literally camp on the beach in the middle of a snowstorm did sound pretty appealing, but then we remembered that we’re in Europe and there are a lot of amazing destinations only an hour away. So we looked into flights and settled on Rome. I had been there about 10 years ago and Jason 9 years ago, so we were both excited to go back and see it again after so long.

We left Friday morning and arrived at our little B&B next to the Vatican by about 3:00 pm. When the owner of the B&B saw in Jason’s passport that it was his birthday, he gifted us a bottle of champagne. Nice! We couldn’t think of a better way to start our sight seeing around Rome. We poured ourselves (and the owner) a couple glasses plus one for the road and headed out on the town.

First stop was the Spanish Steps, which looked beautiful in the late afternoon sun. I tried to recreate a picture of me from 10 years ago on the Spanish Steps (in which I was trying to recreate the famous scene of Audrey Hepburn in the same spot). We headed on to the Pantheon and were amazed by the perfect semi-circle ceiling.

After some wandering around and looking for some recommended restaurants and gelato places from friends, we visited the Trevi Fountain, along with every other visitor in Rome, to throw a coin over our shoulder and take a cute couple pic. By that point it was getting late and we were starting to get cold in the night air, so we made our way to a little tratoria that looked appealing and ordered some wine and pasta. Great food, great wine, and great atmosphere. Perfect for a birthday dinner. Later, we wandered back to our neighborhood and found a (disappointing) gelato place for dessert.

Saturday morning we woke up early and headed over to the Vatican, where we spent most of the day. We heard horror stories about the 2+ hour wait to get into the Vatican Museums, so we were pleasantly surprised when we only had to wait about 5 minutes. We meandered through all of the museums and sat in awe gazing at the Sistine Chapel. It’s just as beautiful as I remember it! We walked around St. Peter’s Cathedral and visited in the catacombs, including the tomb of the late Pope John Paul.

That evening was Jason’s special birthday present. Being the big soccer fan that he is, he of course decided to check the schedule for AS Roma as soon as we started to plan our trip. He was very pleased to find that they had a game scheduled for Saturday evening against Palermo, a team from Sicily. We headed to the old Olympic Stadium and sat with the fans and cheered on Roma to their 4-1 win over Palermo. It was a great game, but I was absolutely frozen by the end. Our goal (haha.) for that night was to find a very local restaurant for dinner, where we would hopefully be the only tourists around and have a chance to eat the ‘real’ Italian food. We decided that the area around the stadium was sufficiently un-touristy, and found a really great little restaurant where we were indeed, the only foreigners. More great food, great wine, great atmosphere.

We spent Sunday (Valentine’s Day) walking all around the entire city and saw an incredible amount of famous sites: from the St. Angelo Castle, Vittorio Emanuelle Monument, Colusseum, Roman Forum, famous piazzas, etc. Jason gave me a beautiful rose on the Spanish Steps for Valentine’s Day, which I carried around all day long. We ate a tasty lunch, wine included, sitting outside in the beautiful weather of the Piazza Navona. For dinner we found an even less touristy, more delicious restaurant, just around the corner from our hotel. I got exactly what I had been craving our whole time in Italy: frutti del mar pasta and an artichoke (in CZ, artichokes only exist on pizzas). Bellisimo!

Monday, our final morning in Rome, before heading right back to Prague and back to work, we returned to the Vatican one last time. Before this trip, we didn’t even know that it was possible to go up on the roof on St. Peter’s and all the way up to the top of the Cupola. We went up at about 8:30 AM and were fortunate to be virtually alone atop the giant cathedral. The views were incredible, although a little smoggy, and looking out across the city from on high was the perfect way to end the beautiful mini vacation. I can think of nothing better…

Rome pictures posted here.

The Vienna Weekend

Me at the Schonbrunn Palace

So a couple weeks ago now, we had a nice 4 day weekend which we decided to spend in the beautiful city of Vienna. Here's the great thing about living in Europe: access to many amazing cities just a short bus/train/plane ride away. We took an overnight bus to Vienna on Thursday night and arrived bright and early at 5:00 AM. Well, it was early but I don't think we were feeling so bright at that time of day after little sleep on the bus...

So after checking into our hotel at 5am and taking a 2 hour nap on the couch in the lobby, it was time to set out to see the city at 7am on a Friday. During our 3 days in the city, we saw some beautiful and amazing sites. I have to admit that I didn't actually know that much about Vienna before visiting. I really didn't know what to expect from the city. But I was certainly impressed. The best word I can think of to describe the city is: grandiose. There are amazing palaces, beautiful government buildings and ancient cathedrals galore and everything is big and impressive. And it’s a city of music! Obviously so many great composers have come out of Austria (Beethoven, Straus and Hayden to name a few….) and that history is still very present in the city today.

We spent our time in Vienna walking around taking in as much of the city as we could. We were on the go basically non-stop from morning till night during our full 3 days there. We saw too much for me to remember or even tell you about. But some of the highlights include:

St. Peter’s Church

Taking in a classical concert with an orchestra, opera singers and ballet dancers

The amazing gardens of the Schonbrunn Palace

The Great Hall of the National Library

The copula in the State Hall

And to me, the very best was our first night spent wandering around the city. Outside of a beautiful government building we found a great circus that had set up some semi-permanent attractions. I really wanted to see the circus (it looked so inviting!) but we decided against it… maybe if they would have had elephants it would have been a different story. :)

But anyway, the circus had a great tent with lively music set up right outside a beautiful white building with a great clock tower. And outside of the tent there were stalls set up selling ethnic food from all different regions of the world (although they had hamburgers as the food from Mexico. Hmmm, not really what I would call Mexican food). We dined on some great Indian food and got to do some good people watching.

After dinner we wandered on to see some more of the city at night. We stopped into a church in the center of town, which was hauntingly still and silent. There were just a few other people sitting in the pews in the dark candlelit room, listening to the recorded chats playing from the alter. If you know me you know that I am not a very religious person, but this experience was moving even for me. It was so peaceful and seemed like such a wonderful refuge, it had a perfect atmosphere and I could feel the spirituality in the room.

Leaving the church, we wandered through the streets and happened upon a lone violin player, filling the quiet streets with his music. We stopped and listened to him play a few songs. I couldn’t imagine anything better. After that, a nice glass of wine sitting outside a café was the perfect way to end a perfect day.

Karls Church

Shanghai Day 2

Our first night in Shanghai we were SO exhausted... or at least I was. By the time I woke up the next morning my throat was starting to hurt a little bit. I was hoping it was just from the cold and would go away over the course of the day, but it didn't.

Anyway, we started off the day by visiting a temple right by our hostel called the Jing-an Temple. It's a very ancient temple (from around 600 AD or something), but has been moved, burned down and restored many times. So by now, it doesn't look quite so old. It actually seems really pretty new. It was under construction while we were there. There were people working everywhere and the pleasant Buddhist sound of buzz saws filling the air. Despite all of that, it actually was a pretty little temple. It had these ornate staircases and wood carved windows and things. But once we went inside a couple of the buildings that tourists could go in, they were just big cement rooms with a couple Buddha statues thrown in. Very odd. There were, however, practicing monks there. And we saw them come out from their chanting to light some incense.

After the temple, we wandered through some parks for a bit before making our way over to the Shanghai museum, which is supposed to be one of the best museums in China.

At this point I was really starting to not feel well, so we didn't explore the museum very in depth and enjoy it as much as we would have if I was well. But, we did see some really great Buddhist statues, beautiful Chinese ceramics and great ancient scrolls. It was really nice and everything was impressively old. And there were many statues that I've seen copies of through out my lifetime, always cool to see the real thing. (Like this horse... beautiful).

We had planned to go have a drink in the bottle opener building that evening. Apparently, there is a bar on like the 87th floor. Oh and did I mention that this is the tallest building in China? I was really excited for it, to feel fancy, have a nice drink and admire the beautiful city lights from way up high. But, unfortunately, I just wasn't feeling well enough. So instead, we spent the rest of the evening hulled up in our hostel watching movies.