Rovinj

The old coastal town of Rovinj is just across the bay from Venice, which you can tell from its architecture and stonework. Everywhere you turn is another picture-perfect moment--case in point: the photo of Tom and Sandra was taken from the parking lot!

Pula

The ancient town of Pula houses the best-preserved Roman coliseum. The one in Rome is bigger and more famous, but is in much worse shape. The Pula arena is almost intact, and one can also go underground to understand better the entry-and-egress system and a behind-the-scenes look at the world of the gladiator. Ken, as you might well imagine, was in hog heaven, since this is the kind of thing about which he teaches daily!

Plitvice

Plitvice is a unique place ecologically, because its calcium deposits form newer and better waterfalls at all times and because of the clear water its natural filters create. We walked around eight miles of the Plitvice waterfall area with Sandra and Tom Sibley on our weekend jaunt through three of Croatia's famous sites. It was breathtakingly beautiful.

Croatia is BEAUTIFUL!

I didn't know very much about Croatia before going there a week or so ago--OK, I didn't know pretty much anything about Croatia. But it's a wonderful country, young because it's only been a country for about a decade and old because it has a long, fascinating history, some of which I may get around to writing about in a future entry. But for now, I'm here to tell you that this country is flat-out gorgeous. It has an 800-mile coastline, beautiful vineyards and trees, and gorgeous architecture.

Take your pick--lamb or pork?

'Nuff said.

Where We're Staying in Croatia

Of course, you're aching to know where we're staying in Croatia, so I will leave you in suspense no longer! We're in a small, attic apartment above the Institute for Biblical Studies where Ken is teaching. The apartment has 3 bedrooms, a bathroom with non-working shower, a kitchenette, and low overhangs everywhere. It's absolutely perfect for us, because Ken simply walks downstairs to teach class. You're probably thinking the picture of the vertical windows in the roof is where we're staying. WRONG! We're one floor HIGHER than that; our windows are those skylights in the attic! The vertical ones are part of the Institute. The ground floor houses the Church of Christ, and it has a very cool baptistry copied from the one in around 800 A.D. I'll try to remember to take a picture of it later on today.

The Word of the Day: "Hotel"

1644, "public official residence," from Fr. hôtel, from O.Fr. hostel "a lodging," from M.L. hospitale "inn" (see hostel). Modern sense of "an inn of the better sort" is first recorded 1765. Hotelier is a 1905 borrowing of Fr. hôtelier "hotelkeeper."

One can see from the definition above that an hôtel originally meant a big house, often divided up into smaller units or apartments and was not what Hilton or Marriott have in mind. While apartment complexes have been around forever (ancient Rome had its insulae and other civilizations have had communal-yet-separate living quarters), the first official hotel is in Paris, and is pictured here at the Place des Vosges.

End of etymology lesson for the day. You're welcome.

A New Country on My Personal World Map

create your own visited country map
or check our Venice travel guide

I'm sure you're all just dying to see which countries I've visited in my life, so here's a map of them. I was able to add Croatia as of this week! This map tool I used enables me to cheat quite a bit, so it looks like I've visited, for example, everywhere in Russia, and I've only been to St. Petersburg (and environs) and Moscow. Also, it is quite an exaggeration to say I've visited Iceland, when in reality my cousin Lisa and I have only ever washed our hair in a sink in Reykjavik, and Iran, where we landed to refuel one time, and my brother David and I went to the stairs that descend from the plane, telling our mom that we wanted simply to set foot on Iran (at which point we looked down and saw machine guns pointed up at us) and then telling her that we had changed our minds!

Ken could add a number of places to his personal map, including lots of Caribbean islands, Egypt, Israel, and South Africa, but subtracting all of Asia.

We're both looking forward to adding South America to the girls' and our maps when we move to Uruguay for the Spring '08 semester with ACU's Study Abroad program!

It's all Napoleon's Fault

So many things that I thought were originally French weren't. One of these is the origins of the cravat, or the tie. Here's one version of the story: when Napoleon inspected his troops, he thought the smartest-looking ones were the ones from Croatia, the ones with the ties; in fact, the word "croata" can be found as the root in a number of languages for tie or cravat. Napoleon thus began to require cravats of all his men. [Pictured: the stained-glass dome is in a shopping area under which one can buy $500 silk ties; also pictured is a dude in traditional Croatian costume wearing the red cravat.] So you can blame Napoleon for those nooses you men like so much....

The Rodin Museum(s)

When you go to Paris or to Philadelphia, please, please, please go to the Rodin Museum(s). We have now been to both, and each was an extremely wonderful experience. When we went to the one in Philly, we were grouped with a tour of blind people who had special permission to touch all the pieces and whose tour guide emphasized the musculature of the statues, etc. As the only seeing people on the tour, the leader didn't want to leave us out, and we too were encouraged to rub our hands on the statues and to experience them that way. That may be my single favorite trip to any museum because of that tactile aspect.

But the Rodin Museum in Paris is fabulous as well, and of course it's housed in a gorgeous "hôtel" (more on that word another time, but you can see it in the picture below, next to the building with the gold dome--that's Napoleon's Invalides, where he's buried, by the way) that Rodin and many other artists actually inhabited. There are so many things to say, but I think I'll let a couple of pictures speak for me, though they fall FAR short of the experience of seeing these works in the round and in their "3-D-ness." (For the record, Ken had a headache, hence the matching pose.)

A Trifling Tale of Trouble Tasting Truffles

This trip, Ken and I were going to eat a fancy-pants meal on the Isle de St. Louis, and I really only had one goal: try my very first truffle, those hundreds-of-dollars-per-pound delicacies famed for growing under the certain trees and one that cannot be cultivated but rather must choose life like some little Republican embryonic 'shroom. But it was not to be; alas, on Friday night, we had snacked too late on all things delicious and French and knew we couldn’t eat a four-course meal; on Saturday night, we were too tired and I had the tummy waggles, only for a brief period of time that occurred during eating-a-fancypants-French-dinner time, meaning late. And on Sunday, by the time we got downtown it was too late for lunch and too early for dinner and we were flying out that night. Rats...

Ah, but all was not lost, because when we flew to Croatia, I learned some truffle facts that are very, very interesting--to me anyway. First, while the "black truffle" of France is supposed to be delicious and runs somewhere around $300/lb., the Croatian white truffle is even more of a delicacy and often runs more than $1000/lb. "But how can I ever afford to eat even one bite?" I whined to Sandra Sibley, the very nice woman who took me around Zagreb on our first full day. She knew a place...

And so we went to a fancy-pants restaurant in Zagreb, Croatia, where we sat out on a terrace on a beautiful day in a beautiful city in a beautiful country and ate a beautiful risotto with white truffles. Wow. My meal cost only 22 kunas, around five dollars. How did it taste? Great, for real, not like people saying they love caviar but they don't, because c'mon, it's fish eggs, and they look like Nemo's siblings. Risotto, the national dish of Croatia, is on many, many menus, and this truffle dish tasted quite a bit like a yummy stroganoff.

So here are some more truffle facts for you (you know you want them):

1. The greatest delicacy for a long period of time was a truffled turkey. "I have wept three times in my life," the composer Rossini admitted. "Once when my first opera failed. Once again, the first time I heard Paganini play the violin. And once when a truffled turkey fell overboard at a boating picnic."

2. A single (very large) truffle once sold for 160,000 dollars.

3. Karen has now eaten them, and she liked the dish she ate very much.

Foreign Signs

Shelly sent this list of foreign signs, and I thought you just might like to read a few. I have eliminated a few, as, after all, my mother reads this blog! :)

Cocktail lounge , Norway:
LADIES ARE REQUESTED NOT TO HAVE CHILDREN IN THE BAR.

At a Budapest zoo:
PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS. IF YOU HAVE ANY SUITABLE FOOD, GIVE
IT TO THE GUARD ON DUTY.

Doctor's office, Rome :
SPECIALIST IN WOMEN AND OTHER DISEASES.

Information booklet about using a hotel air conditioner, Japan :
COOLES AND HEATES: IF YOU WANT CONDITION OF WARM AIR IN YOUR ROOM,
PLEASE CONTROL YOURSELF.

In a Nairobi restaurant:
CUSTOMERS WHO FIND OUR WAITRESSES RUDE OUGHT TO SEE THE MANAGER.

On the grounds of a Nairobi private school:
NO TRESPASSING WITHOUT PERMISSION.

In Aamchi Mumbai restaurant:
OPEN SEVEN DAYS A WEEK, AND WEEKENDS TOO.

Hotel , Japan :
YOU ARE INVITED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE CHAMBERMAID.

In the lobby of a Moscow hotel across from a Russian Orthodox monastery:
YOU ARE WELCOME TO VISIT THE CEMETERY WHERE FAMOUS RUSSIAN AND SOVIET
COMPOSERS, ARTISTS, AND WRITERS ARE BURIED DAILY EXCEPT THURSDAY.

Hotel, Zurich :
BECAUSE OF THE IMPROPRIETY OF ENTERTAINING GUESTS OF THE OPPOSITE SEX
IN THE BEDROOM, IT IS SUGGESTED THAT THE LOBBY BE USED FOR THIS PURPOSE.

Advertisement by a Hong Kong dentist:
TEETH EXTRACTED BY THE LATEST METHODISTS.

A laundry in Rome :
LADIES, LEAVE YOUR CLOTHES HERE AND SPEND THE AFTERNOON HAVING A GOOD
TIME.

Tourist agency, Czechoslovakia :
TAKE ONE OF OUR HORSE-DRIVEN CITY TOURS - WE GUARANTEE NO MISCARRIAGES.

The box of a clockwork toy made in Hong Kong :
GUARANTEED TO WORK THROUGHOUT ITS USEFUL LIFE.

Airline ticket office, Copenhagen :
WE TAKE YOUR BAGS AND SEND THEM IN ALL DIRECTIONS.

The best!!!! In a Japanese cemetery:
PERSONS ARE PROHIBITED FROM PICKING FLOWERS FROM ANY BUT THEIR OWN
GRAVES

In case our blog looks weird...

In case our blog looks weird, let me explain that I'm posting on Blogger in Croatian, and I'm sure if I could read it, I could find some magic button that says "English" to select, but I can't find such a thing, so I'm winging it based on my fading memory of what the Blogger site looks like. Lest you think I'm exaggerating, here's what I'm looking at--see how you would do in Croatian!!!

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Paris, 14 septembre à 16 septembre 2007

Fermée ou ouverte? Paris is old, founded sometime around when cavemen discovered that bones look like baguettes, but that baguettes taste better. Thus, at any given moment, many buildings and areas are undergoing total renovations and are closed (fermée). For example, this is my 3rd trip to Paris, and I have yet to visit the allegedly-gorgeous Sainte Chapelle; it is closed for renovations, this time only for the three days we were in Paris (I’m not kidding!). Also, we went up to the Musée Picasso, and inexplicably it too was closed. But I’m not sad about these things: I’ll just have to go back to Paris every chance I get…

Additionally, at the risk of making the reader barf when I say the following--a closed door really does mean that sometimes there's an open window nearby. Because we went out of our way to go to the Picasso Museum and because it was closed, we wandered nearby and found the Musee Cognacq-Jay, which gets me to my next harangue, I mean topic.

How much things cost: In life, nothing costs exactly what it should/does in my head; everything costs either WAY too much or WAY too little. For example, the exchange rate in Europe at this time favors only around a dozen people in the world, all of whom have the last name Rowling, Gates, Hilton, or II. For the rest of us, here is some good advice: get out your ATM card when you arrive in Paris and keep it out until you leave. It costs 9 euros for a 1-hour boat ride on the Seine or 11 euros for all day; it costs a mere 6 euros to see the unbelievably great Rodin museum, but it costs 2-and-a-half euros for a teeny-tiny bottle of water there.

But there are things that cost shockingly little as well: we stumbled upon the aforementioned Musee Cognacq-Jay, a museum dedicated to the 18th century in Paris, and it was completely FREE! Ken and I would have loved it, even if it hadn’t had a single Fragonard or Renoir (which it did). The house itself was beautiful, with two courtyards and gardens, a study area, and the cleanest, nicest, free bathrooms in Paris. There are jillions more of these (often free) little, out-of-the-way museums in Paris--or sometimes, they're big, right-there places. The Petit Palais (which is very large, but dwarfed by the HUGE Grand Palais across the street and which is my favorite building in Paris) is COMPLETELY FREE and gorgeous and houses the Musée des Beaux-Arts, which has a fantastic collection of old beautiful glass objects (think Tiffany), among other art treasures.

More about prices: I’m shocked that I could get free internet most places on the Metro, but I would have had to pay around $20 every day for that privilege at my overpriced-to-begin-with hotel. My thought is that, not only am I cheap because I have to be because we don't make all that much money, but that it's responsible and even FUN to try to "do Paris" on the cheap: run into the Musee Cognacq-Jay and other places, take a bottle of water and refill it, take the Metro or even better, walk along the Seine. End of harangue...