Second day in rome

*To catch up on all the past posts about Italy, or start from the beginning, here are links in order.  Tuscany: Arriving in Italy, Arriving in Tuscany, Day 1 – Cooking in Tuscany, Day 2 – Florence, Day 3 – Siena, Day 4 – San Gimignano, Day 5 – Spello and Assisi, Day 6 – Perugia, Day 7 – leaving Tuscany, Rome: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3.*

 

Back to blogging about italy, the second day in rome we took it a little easier.  the pace was more relaxed, and we mostly just walked around and looked around the city.

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ever present tea break

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and lunch

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needless to say, i haven’t gone hungry on this trip if you thought i was.

while i was trying to take a picture of a the entire row of smart cars, ANOTHER smart car drove into the picture.

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Ah HA!  the ruins from yesterday, here are the cats!

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EPIC

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more ruins

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this was very impressive.  it looks like the marble column had a failure, and they filled it in with bricks. i really like that.

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from the da-vinci museum.  i guess he invented the first band saw?

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some interesting self portraits.  i like them.

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and after the museum, the heavens opened up on us.  torrentially.

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that evening noa and i went out and ate at a pizza restaurant called dar poetra, i think.  probably the best pizza i had had up to date in italy.  but it was neapolitan style.  soooo good.  and the little restaurant was so quaint, and had good wine.  i think its my second favourite pizza place now in the world.

one more day in rome to go!

Calgary, Amber and Eric’s Wedding and Rainmageddon

Taking a little break from Italy pictures, noa and i arrived safely in calgary last thursday for Amber and Eric’s Wedding.

First off, congratulations to the newly wedded couple. it was a fantastic wedding, i thoroughly enjoyed myself, and it seemed like everyone around me did too. Amazing job Amber and Eric!

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So having said that, let me put some context to this weekend.

we landed in calgary at 1pm local time, and got to our very nice hotel downtown. Since we were hungry, we wandered to downtown calgary to find some food. Now, downtown calgary is an interesting place. i dont know if many people live there or not, but there were not a lot of people around. i guess everyones working, but still, downtown vancouver is always hustling and busting, and so is Tel Aviv, for that matter.

a very desolate downtown

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There are some nice things to see though.

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so we had lunch, then walked back to the hotel, and decided to go to the hot tub. at this point, we were both feeling RIDICULOUSLY jet lagged, and we thought this might wake us up. Well that plan backfired, being in really hot water just makes you more tired. also at this point i felt like the world was spinning around me while i walked. but we had to persavere, and make it to at least 10pm so we would not wake up in the middle of the night. So we then took a short hour nap, and forced ourselves back up and went for dinner. now at this point it had been raining off and on all day. we managed to not get really wet, but at dinner the heavens opened up on us and we did get a little drenched.

So apparently before we had arrived, there was some serious flooding going on in some area’s of alberta. everyone was talking about it, and it did seem like it was pretty rainy. before arriving, i assumed summer in calgary is nice and hot, and the same in BC. well, apparently we misjudged, because we see nothing but rain in the forecast, and i packed a lot of shorts. good work me. but anyways, so everyone was talking about the rain and flooding, but we didn’t think much of it. So we made it to 10pm finally, and passed the heck out. the next morning, we woke around 8am, and noa got her laptop and was like, this is weird, i guess the outlet broke, my laptop is only half charged. in our sleep daze, im like, weird. and i go over to the bathroom to turn on the light and low and behold, theres no power!

So we get dressed, and go downstairs to find out whats going on and to eat breakfast, and we enter pandemonium. No one knew whats going on, and theres hotel guests loitering around everywhere. The hotel staff tells us there is no breakfast in the hotel, and so we go and wander the streets again to try to find some food. as we are wandering, we notice there is no power in a 8 block radius from our hotel. and all the restaurants have signs that say due to the evacuation, we are closed today! what the heck! so we keep walking and walking, and finally the only food we find is a continental breakfast at another hotel that has power. so we eat there, and then return to our hotel.

At this point, they have a better idea of whats going on. they tell us power was shut off on them, due to the likelihood that the river will overflow and take out the substation. then we get an email from amber telling us she has rebooked everyone into another hotel thats higher up. We ask the hotel staff if we can cancel our reservations, and they inform me that if you have somewhere else to go, go. they did not think they would get power back that evening at all. Then we find out bill and ruth are in the hotel, we call them, and we all pack our bags and meet in the lobby. Bill drove, so we manage to cram all our stuff into the little civic, and he drives us to the alternate hotel. Amazingly amber managed to rebook all 40 guests from the one hotel to the other. not what you want to be doing the day before your wedding day!

While all this is going on, theres another panic on two fronts. One, noa and i were going to drive back from calgary to vancouver today, staying the night at Lake louise, then jasper, and driving home. Noa has never seen the rockies, and this was our big opportunity to do so! Well, eric’s brother, Dan, and the band, the moonshine express, were doing a BC to Alberta Tour, and had played in Banff on thursday night. the following morning, when they tried to leave, they found out that highway 1 had been washed out by the river, and to the north the road had a landslide or something and to the west there was flooding on the road! they were trapped on three sides, and could not get to calgary! banff is only 1.5 hours away, but there physically was no way to get out.

So when we found this out, we quickly cancelled our hotels and rental car, and rebooked ourselves on a flight to vancouver. so that disaster was averted, but now there was the added disaster that Dan, groomsman and brother, and the band were not going to make it to the wedding!

Then we decided to see what all the fuss was about, so bill decided to hold a disaster tour, and take some of us to the river to see what was going on. well, we were not alone in doing so. it seemed half of calgary was walking about, since no one downtown was working anyways. so we got to the river, and this is what we saw.

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Holy Moly, that was nuts. and the water was creeping up on all sides of the river banks, going in to downtown too. So having seen that, it put a little context to how bad this really was. That evening there was a little get together, and everyone was talking about how the guys in banff were going to get to the wedding. we all had high hopes for them, but it seemed super bleak, and were positive there was no way they could get out of banff.

The following morning, on the wedding day, we all took a school bus to the wedding venue, which took about an hour since so many roads were flooded and closed. when we got there, low and behold, there was the band! they made it! apparently they left at 2am that morning, and there was one road they were able to take out of town. they drove through wheel high water down one highway, and took a 11h detour to get to calgary! they had been driving all night and got to the venue at 2 and set up! so crazy. everyone was relieved that they made it safe and sound, and the wedding was off to a great start!

So today im posting these images, and writing this up, while we wait to check out of the hotel and take our flight to vancouver. we will be in a few days earlier than we had planned, but we will put that to good use and try to visit with people these next few days before we go to the island for a week.

 

Rome and the Vatican

We arrived in rome just fine from tuscany, and returned the rental car that day.  we were staying in trastevere, which is a very nice neighbourhood in rome.  i dont think i took any photos that evening, but the next morning, i was in full force.

a nice little square near us

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this guy wanted his picture taken.  i was taking a picture of the van, and he jumped in front and said with me!  cool dude

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the river.  noa and i ran along it one day.  really nice feature in such a big city.  down by the water you would never know your in rome.

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then we met up with a tour guide at a market for a small culinary guide through Rome.

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a tiny one room church

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so for the first time since arriving in israel, i found a real brew-pup.  i asked for the hoppiest beers.  they had some okay ones.  but still worlds behind the pacific northwest.

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but they did have amazing fries with parmesan

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yup.  tasty.  i agree.

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next we saw the jewish ghetto in rome

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a fountain

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some ruins with cats apparently

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poor elephant

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The Parthenon

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and then we ended the tour on two different types of ice cream shops.  this was the better one.

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what a morning.  from there we decided to go to the Vatican Museum, and have a look around.

The Vatican was a mobhouse, but i guess once you got in it was a little better.  still, i wasn’t super excited about all the people.

this was a cool display.  they had different boats from around the world for some reason

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if you want to mail mail stamped vatican, this is your guy!

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some epic stuff

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going inside, most of what you see is people

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then we happend on this quaint little pool.  it had water flowing down it, and it was this little pool of serenity in a very busy place.  i think this was my favourite thing in the entire vatican.

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and onwards with stuff….

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I saw so many people taking pictures with ipads.  its crazy to me that you want a 1.3MPx photo.  but i guess if it looks good on the ipad, thats where your looking at it?

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this was cool.  monitoring the cracks for movement.  just like mining.

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some roofs in a hallway

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okay, so my favorite non plant related feature was here.  they had paintings of every area of italy and this one was the whole area we had been touring around in tuscany.  you can see cortona quite predominantly

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and all of italy in one

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these were rooms where pope’s actually lived.  crazy crazy stuff

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and the woodworking on some of these cabinets was exquisite

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i think we were in there for many hours.  but the end, i was much like a zombie, shuffling along on sore feet and braindead.

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lastly we went to go see the front of the vatican

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after seeing there was another line to go there, we decided against it and headed back.  i think everyone was truly exhausted from this day!