London

We made it home and survived our first day back at work. For a moment, though, indulge me and allow me to take myself back to the final stop on our honeymoon journey - London.

We arrived Wednesday afternoon. Our England home base was a really nice apartment no more than a block away from the Notting Hill Gate tube. It was a very convenient and pleasant place to stay. After settling in, we got ourselves oriented in proper London fashion - hopping among pubs. But first, a side trip took us to the Tower of London, at which they were just beginning to deconstruct an amazing tribute to England's fallen soldiers in the First World War. The arranged thousands of red poppies, one for each English life lost during the war. It was a beautiful and poignant tribute. You can see pictures here. From there, it was on to the pubs. Our neighborhoods of choice that evening were the South Bank of the Thames and the City of London. The Old Thameside, The Founders Arms, and Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese were our stops. The first two offer good mingling and reliable cask ales, the crown jewel (...) of the group is clearly the Cheshire Cheese. It's a pub with more nooks, crannies, corners and caverns than are easy to count. It is also full of history. Truly one of our favorite places to try a cask ale.

The next day began with me sleeping off the ales I just mentioned. Once we took care of that, we headed east. We started with a tour of the Tower of London, led by one of the famous Beefeaters. After watching him and listening to his stories and very dry seanse of humor, I more fully understood the English blood that I have always been told runs in my dad's family.

From there, we went farther east to Greenwich, which is famous for arbitrarily haven been chosen as zero degrees longitude. Greenwich offers the feel of a small English town and the convenience of a 20 minute train ride from central London. When we arrived in Greenwhich, it was a bit cold, windy, and rainy. While not ideal, such weather is part of what you sign up for when visiting London. How did we cope with the dreary weather? You guessed it - Pub time. We waited out the worst of the rain at the Meantime brewery, where they make their own trendy microbrews in the shadow of the very old Royal observatory, through which the prime meridian runs. After that it was still raining a bit, so we sufferred through another stop at a local pub, this time the Greenwich Union, which offered the feel of a local college bar, including a very welcome bartender full of good suggestions and generous samples. By the time finished at the Union, either the rain had almost completely subsided, or the beer made us not care as much. We took the long stroll up the hill to the old observatory, which now hosts a nice little museum with telescopes and watches and all sorts of great geeky gadgets.

Sam in the Western Hemisphere and Stephanie in the East

On the way home, we stopped to walk around the docklands. The docklands are the relatively new and shiny answer to the City of London's tradition and elegance. Skyscrapers seem to be shooting up everywhere you look in the docklands, a relatively recent development for an area that had been previously neglected and run down, and before that had been the heart of the world's busiest port, welcoming ships bearing all sorts of goods to London via the Thames. We found a Spanish Tapas restaurant and enjoyed some wine and Spanish cured meats and cheese. It was a nice little snack. The combination of lots of beer and greasy pub food didn't sit well with Stephanie, so we laid low that night, including an interesting outing for Sam in search of the UK equivalent of Pepto-Bismol (Tums was the best I could find, and I also bought some cookies which were labeled as digestives, which makes them totally healthy).

Friday we slept in again. A honeymoon full of tours, hikes, and walks adds up, and we were more than willing to trade in some sight-seeing time for rest and relaxation by that point. Once we did get moving, we visited the London Transport museum near Covent Garden. Fun fact: because they don't celebrate American Thanksgiving in England, they have no barrier to starting the Christmas shopping season at the beginning of November! The high shopping streets and several markets were well on their way to fully-decked (double-decked?) status.

Along with several elementary school classes of children, we walked our way through the history of public transit in London, which may sound dull, but London does a really really really nice job with public transit, including the world-famous underground. It tuns out that 2014 is the "year of the bus" and there was an interesting exhibit about London buses that were used to support English troops on the front lines of battle in World War One.

Hey Dad (Joe), check out the pigeons!

 In addition to the museum and exhibits, the transport museum is home to what I think is the greatest museum gift shop in the world. The place is full of endless books, posters, mugs, magnets, models, fine china, home decor and basically anything else you can print a tube map on. And it's all fantastic. It was perhaps my greatest display of discipline our entire time in Europe to refrain from buying anything.

And that's where me not buying anything came to an end. Those of you who have followed S&SGTE since the first trip will know about my longing to find a coat like the Euros wear. In Paris and London, everywhere you look, you see a stylish man wearing a really sharp looking overcoat. They are the envy of all the Euroladies' eyes. But I have never had any luck finding one. Until now. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you: Sam in a (moderately) fancy London coat:

This is navy, but Sam actually bought the black one

Seen here

Next up was an evening London Walk - this time we chose the Knightsbridge pub walk, which took us through some of the most expensive neighborhoods in the world, and ended up by the famous and quite fancy Harrods's department store. Once again, our diet of pub food and pub ale was not sitting the best with Stephanie, but she trooped on through. Our guide was familiar to us, the same one we had on our SoHo tour last year named Richard III (London walks employs 6 Richards). Among the extremely expensive and fancy looking row-manors, we saw an impressive array of very very expensive cars, all parked out on the street. The one that reigned supreme (...) was a McLaren, which left a couple of the men in our tour group a few blocks behind while they salivated over the car. Candidly, this was my least favorite London walk of the three I have done. Richard III takes some time in warming up, so for the first while he seems as though is slightly annoyed to be leading the tour. In addition, there weren't many sights of note along the way. The tour was notable mostly for the overpricedness of everything we walked past. The icing on the cake was that we only stopped at two pubs! Despite the walk not living up to those past, it was still a worthwhile activity for a couple hours. We ended the night with a late meal at the Kensington Nando's, the tasty Portuguese chicken chain.

Saturday brought the bittersweet finale to what we both agree was a fantastic vacation. This time we woke up relatively on time. Our first stop was the Portobello Road market. We indulged in crepes, doughnuts, coffee, a german sausage, and a potato that was spiral-cut and served on a stick.

We also bought cheese, meat, and bread for a meal later that day. After the market, our day was spent rather aimlessly. A stroll through Hyde Park, a stroll along the South Bank of the River Thames, and  a night time stroll through Kensington. We took a boat ride along the river, which was a relaxing way to take in the sights. We also enjoyed the meal from the market on the terrace of our apartment.

Random Notes From Europe

It has been a week since Stephanie and I have returned to Des Moines from our honeymoon in Europe. Here are a few random thoughts and observations from our trip.

• There are a lot of mosquitoes in Italy, even in November. I have a nice collection of annoying souvenirs in the form of itchy bites to remind me of our trip.
• Europeans are thinner and better-dressed than Des Moines residents. This is not universal, but closer than you might think. One exception is the silly puffy-ribbed coats that Italians seem to love.
• The bread in Florence is not made with salt. As a result, it doesn't taste like much. All of the other food in Florence is the best food.
• Stephanie commented a couple times on how beautiful Paris is. I agree. Unlike any other city I have seen, Paris shares a common aesthetic, and it truly beautiful.
• High-speed train travel > plane travel. Traveling by train is really enjoyable. You can see the countryside, they have a bar on board, and the check-in and security process is painless. In contrast, the worst part of our entire trip was the 4 hours we spent once we landed at Chicago O'Hare airport. What a completely miserable experience. Ugh.
• I love the public transit in Europe. London is famous for it's tube and double-decker busses, and for good reason. It is so easy to get where you want without a car. Even in the relatively remote Cinque Terre in Italy, regularly scheduled trains make it easy to move from one city to the next.
• I have no patience for Americans who say Parisians are rude. I have what I refer to as traveller French. That is, I can exchange pleasantries and ask for directions. I always try to start a conversation in French, but that's almost always as far as it goes, then we switch to English and we're on our way. The people we have interacted with have been almost without exception pleasant, polite, and helpful. I laugh when I think about how "Iowa nice" people would react to visitors who can't speak English.
• We downloaded a few offline map applications, and we got a ton of value out of them. Ulmon makes offline guides for most big tourist destinations, and we recommend them. We also replaced paper books with a Kindle paper-white for this trip, with fantastic results.
• AirBnB is the way to go in big cities with expensive hotels. It does require a little research, and the search and filter features are far from perfect, but have really enjoyed feeling more like a resident, and having the amenities offered from a real home, vs. just a place to stay.
• London is a fantastic mix of stodgy English tradition, international flavor, and modern progress. While American English seemed like the common language in Italy, we were never sure what accent or language we were hearing in London. A shiny new building that looks like a giant tooth sits blocks away from centuries-old institutions in the city of London. It's an interesting dynamic, and one that I find very appealing.

Guest Blog/Photo Essay of Paris

Hi all,

Stephanie here again.  I was put in charge of uploading some Paris pictures.  So here they are:

To start, here is a view from our apartment window in Paris.  

But we actually arrived in the evening, so let's start there.  As soon as we arrived in Paris, we had our AirBnb host Kevin show us where the laverie (laundromat) was.  We were successfully able to wash our clothes without incident.  The dryers were HUGE and dried everything in around 15 minutes.  I want one.

The next day we walked around a lot.  (According to my fitbit we walked 28,947 steps which is approximately 12.6 miles).    

We found a nice wine shop for some meat and cheese.  We almost didn't eat here because it smelled like garbage when we walked in.  Turns out it was the cheese at someone else's table.  I'm glad we stuck it out.  The food and wine were great!

Luxembourg Gardens

Notre Dame at night

The even more beautiful building across from Notre Dame (the Préfecture de Police)
 

The following day consisted of museums including the Musée d'Orsay which is in a beautifully repurposed train station.  Most of the museums don't allow many if any pictures so this was a light day from iPhoto's standpoint.

I've discovered that I love train stations.

That evening's meal was at Pain, Vin, Fromage.  

Yum

The next day was more museums and ended with some Eiffel Tower viewing. 

ALMOST AT THE FRONT OF THE PICASSO MUSEUM LINE!

But how do you really feel, Sam?

On the morning of our last day in Paris we had to check out of our apartment around 8:00 and our train didn't leave until close to 13:00.  So, we figured out how to check our bags at the train station and decided to climb up to the top of Montmarte to visit Sacre Coeur cathedral.  

There are a lot of steps

There was a very nice view from the top.  

The view from Montmarte

After that we went back to the train station.  While we were waiting for our train we were given complimentary candies because Eurostar (our train operator) was celebrating their 20th anniversary.  

The UFO disks were particularly tasty

That's a bit of our time in Paris.  I have to go enjoy our last day in London now.  Arrivederci, ciao, au revoir, and cheers!

Paris

Greetings from London on Thursday night. Stephanie is currently not feeling the best, so I thought I'd write an update on our days in Paris. We will go in reverse order on this one, so that I can have time to remember what we did.

Our train on Wednesday left Paris at a little after noon. That gave us a few hours in the morning to hang out and fit in a little last-minute sight seeing. We decided to visit Montmarte and the Sacre Coeur basilica in northern Paris. Montmarte sits on a very large hill, so it offers really great views of the city. It was also in the seediest area of the city that we visited, including very unpleasant and aggressive men trying to sell junk or more likely pick pockets. Even so, the view was great, and the cathedral was quite impressive.

On Tuesday, we made our worst tourist mistake of the trip so far by not reading carefully enough about the Picasso museum. Long story short, we waited in line for over an hour and had to buy tickets when we thought it was covered by our Paris museum pass and we would be able to skip the line. Oh well. The museum was really nice. It is a massive collection of Picasso's work, and it fills a beautiful building.

The French were enjoying Armistice Day, which likely contributed to the line at the museum, as well as heavy crowds in several of Paris's parks. We enjoyed the parks with them, as the weather was pretty great for mid-November.

We concluded our Paris museum tour with a visit to the Musée D'Orsay, which holds an impressive collection of impressionist paintings (along with a lot of other stuff) in a re-purposed old train station. As the sun fell (which is happening at a dreadfully early hour), I decided to overcome my bad memories from last trip and head over to the Eiffel Tower for a romantic and picturesque sunset and night view. By way of clarification, I got nowhere near the steps or elevators that actually take you up the thing, only ground-level views this time. And those views were lovely, of course.

We dined at Chez Georges, a little restaurant just a couple doors down from our Paris home. The food was good, but the company was better. Our waiter tolerated and encouraged my poor French, and the couple next to us got a few good laughs out of my bungled sentences and the waiter's creative responses and attempts to help me out. At one point, in English, he commended my efforts saying "But at least you try. That's … Tres Bon."

Monday, we pounded the pavement to several museums (The Musée de l'Orangerie with Monet's water lilies, the Louvre with AllOfTheArt, and the Pompidou with lovely modern and contemporary art in a distinctly non-Parisian building). In between we found time for a little shopping and plenty of wine and coffee. It was a good day.

That night we enjoyed a standout meal at a fondue restaurant called Pain, Vin, Fromage (bread, wine, cheese). The food was really great, and the atmosphere was lively. The main floor of the restaurant doesn't hold more than 18 people, and it seems to be a popular place. We witnessed at least 5 interactions in person where people came in the door, asked to be seated and dejectedly headed back out after 1. smelling the awesome smells and 2. finding out that there was no availability until 11:00 pm. We heard at least twice this many phone calls covering the same conversation. "Vignt-trois heures" means 23:00 o'clock means 11:00 pm, for those who are wondering. Even after truly stuffing ourselves on fondue, we decided we could fit in one piece of cheesecake between the two of us. That ended up being a good decision, as the cheesecake was delightful. For anyone who ever dined a the Trattoria in Des Moines, it was about like that cheesecake.

Sunday we spent most of the day orienting ourselves to our neighborhood in Paris with one of Rick Steves's self-guided walking tours and a stroll throughout the Luxembourg Gardens, which like the Bobili Gardens in Florence, were designed as something of a back yard for a Royal Palace once upon a time. Like the Bobili gardens, the Luxembourg gardens get my approval as a very nice lawn.

Back to the present - I think I will skip pictures on this one for now, but we will get several of those up soon too. I'm not sure when we will check in again, perhaps in airports on the way home in a few days.

 A quick preview of London:
-Sam's family will remember our trip here several years ago. We're staying maybe a block away from there this time. Right next door to the Sicilian Pizza/espresso place Arancina. I remember making fun of it on that trip, but it's actually really good.
-We got ourselves re-oriented to London in proper fashion yesterday evening, visiting several of our favorite pubs and replacing the wine of continental Europe with London's finest (maybe?) cask ales.

See you soon,

Sam

A Very Brief Guest Blog

Stephanie here.  We have to leave for the train station in just a few minutes but I want to write a quick update first.  We are leaving the gorgeous Cinque Terre to travel for most of the day to Paris.  We have been here for just under two days.  Last night we ate at Trattoria dal Billy because our apartment owner said "it is the best."  The main point of this update is to tell you I ate mussels.  And I didn't hate them!

Notice the size of Sam's pile compared to mine.  But also notice that there is more than 1 on my plate!!

That's all.  See you in Paris!

Florence

Good evening from Florence. Tonight is our last night here, and we hope to continue what has been an excellent few days of eating very well at dinner tonight. Much like Venice, Florence is teeming with tourists. We heard as much French as anything while we were in Venice, and here, we hear more English than Italian. It makes it easy on us as Americans, but I worry that we should have been working harder on our Italian in preparation for our day and a half in Manarola in the Cinque Terre.

Quick summary of our time here:

We arrived on Monday, around noon. We were greeted with busy crowded alleys similar to those in Venice, with the added bonus of cars and motor bikes zooming past. Not ideal when wheeling my carry-on in tow. Score one for Stephanie and her brand new backpack. When we arrived at our hotel, a friendly lady at the desk directed us to the Mercato Centrale for lunch. The market is really cool and is what you would expect form a market - butchers, fruit, cheese etc. On the second level (what you Americans call the second floor, but us Euros refer to as the first floor), there is basically the best food court ever. Little restaurants offer meals made from fresh ingredients like those in the market below.

We enjoyed it so much that we went back today.

Stephanie's Notes: The tagliatelli was AMAZING

After lunch we visited the Galileo Science museum, which wasn't that much about Galileo, but had some really cool old globes, telescopes, and machines.

Tuesday we went on a walking tour of the historical center city of Florence. Historical indeed. Too much history to remember, but we enjoyed it and got a much better feel for the history and the current layout of the city. After that, we found the best restaurant ever. Not really a restaurant, to be accurate, but more of a dingy little bar in a very old building on the south bank of the Arno river that felt more like a little cave than a dining room.  We sat at the bar, conversed in our broken Italian and the lone server's broken English about the food, then watched the show as he gave us delicious sausages, cheeses, tomato bread soup and more meat and cheeses. It was fantastic. I don't know what it was called, everyone should go there.

Sam approves

After that, we spent the afternoon basking in the sun in the Bobili Gardens, which served as the backyard of the Pitti Palace. If Stephanie thought Peggy Guggenheim's palace in Venice was a nice house, I think the Bobili gardens are a good lawn.

We saw a gatto!!

It was a beautiful setting and a beautiful fall afternoon. The capstone of a wonderful day was an evening spent learning to cook Pizza & Gelato. We started with a pile of flour, and in three hours, we had made and devoured a delicious Tuscan Pizza. Mine was better than Stephanie's, but we both earned our diplomas. Come over to the condo some time and we will try to recreate it.

Today, our last day in Florence, has been rainy. We beat the rain mainly by hanging out inside at Museums. Luckily Florence has some decent art. You may have heard of Michalangelo's David(?) We saw him this morning. He is doing well. Then we went to the Uffizi Gallery, which has some of the most famous renaissance art in the world. Even though we are both more modern in our art preferences, we enjoyed seeing so many masterpieces. After our second lunch at the awesome market food court, we indulged in some local shopping, with Stephanie finding a nice pair of leather boots, and me adding to my RickSteves-Euro-Layer-Chic travel wardrobe with a nice wool sweater. Tomorrow we're off to the Cinque Terre, then on to Paris. For now, off to hunt another great Florentine meal.

Arrivederci,

Sam

Honeymoon - Buongiorno de Venezia

Hello from Venice. We are about to head our for dinner on our last night in our first city in Italy.

It has been a good start to our trip. Venice is one of a kind, in good ways and bad. It is a very strange city. There are no cars. At all. Everywhere we go, we go on foot. There are also several versions of boats and ferries, but we have managed without them. The street is laid out on a series of canals and walking streets, with essentially no rhyme or reason. As such, we have gotten lost several times, but it's ok, since the whole city is a relatively small island. It is also a strange city because it is dying. The city is essentially an homage to what it used to be. Residents have been moving away for decades now, and there are almost as many tourists as Venetians in the city on any given day. Other than tourism, very little happens in Venice. Even so, it is a really neat experience to walk around the city. There are lots of pretty old buildings, several beautiful and impressive bridges, and lots of people. We have enjoyed walking around to nowhere in particular and taking in the shops and restaurants along the way.

Here is some of what we have spent our time doing, in pictures:

This is our hotel room at Ca' Zose. It has been a very nice home base for us in Venice.

We have spent a lot of time meandering through "streets" like these.

We do enjoy our cafes when on vacation in Europe. Plenty of stops for espresso, water, and (not pictured) lots of wine and good food.

I mentioned that the city is confusing. We have been frequently checking our maps, and consulting with our Rick Steves guide to Venice (the kindle has proven to be much easier to tote than 7 different books).

Speaking of Rick Steves, last night we went on a tour with Rick Steves approved guide Alessandro, which included a few stops for wine and food. We met a nice almost-vegetarian couple from Atlanta.

Earlier today, we stopped in at the Peggy Guggenheim collection of modern art. This museum is situated inside of Ms. Guggenheim's former residence on the Grand Canal in Venice, which is a partially-unfinished palace. Stephanie says it looks like a nice place to live.

Addendum: Sam & Stephanie go to Chile

Hello again and happy holidays.

I want to check back and in and write about our Thanksgiving trip to Santiago, Chile. Our friend and colleague Natasha spent 3 months on assignment in Santiago, and Stephanie and I went down over Thanksgiving to pay a visit.

Our trip was relatively brief. We spent most of 4 whole days in Santiago, and most of 2 whole days getting there and back. The flights were long and uncomfortable as usual, but there was an unusual perk too. One of our layovers happened to be in Panama City, Panama. Normally, seeing things out the window of a plane isn't noteworthy, or even blogworthy. The Panama canal is without question an exception. There are dozens of giant ships queued up on either side of the canal, and it's a pretty impressive accomplishment of engineering.

But enough about the flights. We arrived very late Wednesday night or maybe very early Thursday evening. After trudging through customs, we got a cab and headed for our apartment in the Providencia neighborhood of Santiago. Along the way, and especially when we arrived, Stephanie's spanish was immediately put to the test. The night doorman at our apartment didn't seem to have one word of English, and apparently Stephanie didn't remember the lesson on key phrases in conversing about online apartment sharing services from her high school spanish classes 10 years ago. But she worked through it, and eventually we found our keys and entered our temporary home.

One of the highlights of our time in Santiago was the consistently excellent weather. 85 and sunny every day. Compared to the teens, twenties, and snow we were coming from in Des Moines, it was more than welcome.

While in Santiago, we did a lot of roaming the city and enjoying restaurants and cafes. A few of the specific highlights of our brief stay were:

• The museum of memory and human rights. This isn't the place to go for a roaring good time, but it is well done and powerful. The museum tells the stories of the years of dictatorship in Chile in the 1970s and '80s. I admit that I was largely ignorant of this dark piece of history before going to the museum, and I'm glad I went and got a feel for a big part of what has shaped the Chile of today.
• Vino Cousino Macul is a vineyard & winery within the Santiago city limits. The people from the winery who were there the day we went for a tour were about as friendly and welcoming as you could ask. We had a little mishap with trying to schedule a tour online and showing up after the final tour had started for the day, but they went out of their way to make our experience memorable and positive. The tour guide spoke English, and for the half of the tour that we caught up for, he said everything twice. Not only did he speak flawless English, but his Spanish was so crystal clear that even I had a chance of understanding a few phrases.
• The three of us also climbed to top of the San Cristobal hill on Sunday. Again, the weather during this time of year is apparently always perfect, so this was a great way to spend part of a day. Santiago's largest public city park is situated on a giant hill (Stephanie insists it's more of a small mountain). When we visited on the weekend, the park was packed with people biking and walking, as well as lots of programming put on by what I assume is the city's parks department. After maybe an hour of steady hiking, we made it to the summit and saw the entire of the valley in which Santiago sits. 
• On Saturday night, Stephanie and I were both craving a late night snack, so we ventured out in search of a late-night cafe or convenience store. What we found was a lively night time street festival called the Noche de Colores (Night of colors). There were lots of little shops open, along with temporary craft stands and food and drink. There were also musicians and lots of colorful lights illuminating a few blocks of Providencia. 
• We enjoyed our fair share of nice restaurants. Even though Stephanie isn't much of a seafood fan, she found plenty to eat. I enjoyed more fish and other fruits de mer than I usually do, including some delicious parmesan cheese oysters at the bustling Mercado Central sea food market. We also indulged in a few Pisco Sours while we were there. Pisco is the official unofficial liqueur of Chile. I understand that if you ask someone from Peru, they will tell you that it's theirs, but we went to Chile, so we side with them.

Our time was brief, but I think we both enjoyed going. It was good to get away, especially to somewhere warm with long days full of sunshine. It was also good to see our friend Natasha and hear about her time in a new place. One thing I noticed was that the Santiago locals didn't necessarily welcome us with open arms. They weren't mean or rude, but they seemed largely indifferent to our presence. It was interesting that the notable exception to this was any international residents of Santiago, who generally were much more outgoing and quick to advise us on good things to check out. I think if we had planned more time, or put more effort into planning the time we did spend there, we probably would have ventured outside of Santiago. Chile has all sorts of natural treasures that we didn't really take advantage of. If we ever make it back, we will definitely make it a point to check out the real mountains and the ocean. As it was, it was a nice trip together, and it is nice to be familiar with a new place.

Note from the author: We might add pictures later and this might have lots of errors. It's also 2 months late.