Italy und Innsbruck.

WiFi has been spotty at the hotels and pricey elsewhere, so I have a bit to catch up on.  The Cinque Terre were beautiful and mostly restful.  As it turns that chapel at the top of the hill is always MUCH further away than it appears.  We were hoping to snorkel but woke each day to the waves crashing spectacularly on the rocks in precisely the way we do not want to dash. Our ample free time also allowed us to perfect our Wine Pong. The rules are the same as ping pong and wine drinking, only observed simultaneously.  Also, whoever is ahead when you begin forgetting to keep score wins.
We were sad to leave, even sadder when we got to Florence and discovered that our 'guesthouse' was very much a random apartment building with no one to let us in and a conveniently disconnected phone number.  Equally worrying was the fact that every room in the city was booked for the night.  This was probably due to the presence of Paulie D and the Situation of Jersey Shore fame, whom we saw huffing it down a narrow cobbled street with their camera crew apparently in search of a laundromat.
We had to stay in Pisa instead, which we found much more pleasant on account of it not being an oven full of grumpy tourists.  No one spends longer in Pisa than is needed to photograph the leaning tower, so we had it ourselves by late afternoon.
Venice was nice, but the climate is a bit sticky this time of year and we choose mostly to walk after seeing the official $140/hr rate for Gondola rides.  We did take a lovely moonlight cruise but that didn't leave much in budget other than several lemon slushes a day to keep cool.
We were very relieved to reach the more rarefied atmosphere of Innsbruck, Austrian which advertises itself as 'The Capitol of the Alps'. Not that I've ever visited the Alps before, but so far it has my vote.  Our first day we took the tram from town up to just above tree-line and hiked down.  The mountain ie dotted with little cottages which spend the summer serving beer and delicious homemade traditional Tyrolean dishes to hikers. How civilized. Time to catch up, Sandias.
Today we went Canyoning, which is basically hiking down a narrow mountain stream.  Of course the water is glacially cold so you've got to wear a wetsuit. And its a bit steep so you have to rappel and/or slide down waterfalls.  Oh, and you start by being lowered by rope from a bridge into a raging ice-cold stream.  Scary, but very, very fun. And beautiful, this is the Alps after all.

Santorini, Rome, and the Cinque Terrestrial

The pictures took so long to upload last time that I didn't manage to write anything.  Our stay in Santorini was lovely, the islands were beautiful and the food was delicious.  We took the place on headlong.  Our first full day involved several stomach twisting rides across the island's sinuous roads, snorkelling, high-speed water tubing, and parasailing. We were well exhausted by the time that we had returned to the hotel. The snorkelling was surprisingly good given the rather chilly water in the caldera. I'm not sure if tubing really describes our second activity, but it's my best guess.  Essentially we held onto a giant inflatable sofa while it was dragged across the ocean behind a motorboat, thus being made to do its best Brahma bull impression. Despite the deathly grip I felt I was maintaining, at one point I noticed that I was up in the air, sofa nowhere to be seen. Shortly thereafter I landed in the ocean. A good time was had by all.  Undeterred by our epic day we undertook even more the second day, climbing a volcano, a harrowing donkey ride, swimming to a hot spring, and probably most difficult of all, the sunset viewing.  The tourist life of Santorini centers around sunset. Every restaurant, gyros stand and souvenir shop advertises the magnificence of its sunset view. A dozen different sunset cruises and tours cqn be booked on any given day.  So we were determined to experience the ultimate Santorini sunset, and the town of Oia, we were told, is the place to do it. Unfortunately, our boat dropped us off, already hot and tired, about 3 hours early at which time the sun is still very much the enemy. We were also a bit over budget and couldn't afford to stake out in one of the many sunset themed cafes of Oia, known for their 9€ Orange juices and we had to scurry from one patch of shade to another for what seemed like days.  The sunset ultimately was beautiful but we were mostly just glad to be rid of the sun. We also learned a valuable lesson, that this is a honeymoon, not The Amazing Race, and we get to keep going even if we do not complete every possible activity before returning to the hotel.
Our Santorini-Rome flight gave us one last taste of the chaos that is modern day Greece. At the airport we were dismayed to see a fairly long line spilling out onto the curb. Naturally, I went in and established that yes, this the line for our flight.  The line showed very little sign of moving and our neighbors all seemed think it was a different flight, so I went to check again, only to discover that, while the tail had stayed in place, the head had moved and we were now in line for a completely different flight that none of us wanted. Luckily we managed to catch the flight. I have been in many lines in many places on earth and so far I have been able to count on the principle that however slowly and erratically it may move, once get into the right line, you will continue to move towards your goal, but Greece has proved me wrong.
Rome. Our time in Rome was probably about equally divided between eating Italian food, waiting for public transit and viewing old buildings.  Of course there is a lot of variation within each category. Some sights are fantastic, some meals make us wonder whether the Boyardee family is Roman, some trains are air conditioned, etc.  The colliseum for instance, is a bit run down given that for 85% of its life its major purpose was as a combination stone quarry/stocky. The pantheon has, rather ironically, been kept in good repair by the Church. Our favorite was probably St. Peter's.  It simply is amazing what you can do with all the money and power in the world. But that's a bit trite.  The harmony that the half-dozen lead architects were somehow able to maintain is dare-I-say miraculous?  The food was good, but frankly not quite our style. Romans seem to enjoy sweet tomato sauces and thin pizzas that neither Kathy nor I prefer.
Onward to the Cinque Terre.  These five ultra-quaint, once-rustic villages hang off precipitous slopes running into the gulf of Liguria, also called Golfo de las Poetas, for the leaders of its first wave of tourists, Keats and Byron.  The whole area is a national park now, but not a barren wilderness park, a suntanning and souvenirs and charming little restaurants park. We've opted to stay 4 days to really get to know it. Sadly, the most picturesque of the picturesque, the foot path from Vernazza to Manerola, which is generally listed in the top 10 walks in the world is closed due to a landslide.  We've had to console ourselves with too much foccacia and gelato.

Adio Greece, Ciao Roma

First kathy pose


















church at mt. lycabetta


















view from the hotel in Santorini

Santorini Sunset

The town of Fira.












In the volcano.













In Europe, even the lizards smoke.













I'm ready for my donkey ride!

Obligatory colloseum photo.

Kathy bursting with divine glory, or perhaps flames.

Greece

It's been a while, went to Turkey, but skipped the blog, went on some other little trips too. Oh, and I got MARRIED.  The honeymoon is a simple 5-week tour of Europe.  We're starting off in Greece.
Athens is an interesting city, but I would say we missed the best time to go by about 2 months, give or take 2000 years.  The humidity and the long flight force me to coin a new term to describe our stay there: sweat-lag.  That's when you're not sure if you're exhausted because of the nine timezones you just crossed or because all of the water is leaving your body.
Greece has had some hard times and the amount of unemployment, graffiti and general unrest give Athens a pre-riot Los Angeles vibe. When things turn around someone is going to be spending years erasing political slogans from marble. The upside is that its cheaper than expected.
The acropolis and the Parthenon are nice, or will be in about 20 years when the reconstruction is completed, as it stands you can't find an angle without a crane in your view.  Our favorite part was actually climbing a hill up to a little church above the town.  Great views and great relief to be above the chaotic snarl of traffic that is day-to-day Athens.
An even greater relief to reach idyllic Santorini.  Originally Santorini was a mid-sized island in the south Aegean but around 600 BC it blew up Mt. St. Helens style and became 5 smallish islands.  The main island, where we're staying is composed mostly of the rim of the crater left by the eruption and is shaped more or less like a crescent.  This means that about half of the real-estate is cliff-front, or just the side of a cliff.  A forbidding place to live, but the perfect spot for a sunset-view cafe.  This being the Greek Islands the architecture is very blue and white.  From the air I imagine the island looks like a giant basalt croissant frosted with bright white hotels and gelato stands.  From the ground it looks like someone made it up for a spectacular movie. Pictures later.

Vietnam + Laos

Just a quick update. The fact that this post covers two countries and only six days will tell you something about the trip so far. We've been moving around quite a bit, which is okay, because I can't really get around the countryside on my own so seeing it from the window of a bus is the closest I'm likely to get right now. As you may know I injured my ankle in New Orleans during a night of carousing as exciting as it was enigmatic. The details are hazy, but probably awesome. Anyway, this limits my mobility just enough to be annoying.
We got into Saigon Saturday night after what seemed like a week in the air but still managed to drag ourselves out just long enough for one beer and to notice that certain Vietnamese women can be very forward. Very. We managed to both get back to bed alone and spent most of the next day wandering around the city sweating. We also visited the old presidential palace, which was very sixties-spy chic and the war remnants museum, which despite it's name portrays the war as a serious of brutal massacres of innocent civilians by America soldiers who somehow died in vast numbers(did you know 1 million Americans died in the war?). The food everywhere was plentiful and fantastic, but we decided to make the most of our time and move on to Laos.
Vientiane was fairly nice, as fair we could tell, but we were bound for Luang Prabang, which is one of those rare cities that just feels nice, like someone had layed it out for you. We saw a lovely cave and some waterfalls, and met what was probably the drunkest American in southeast asia(but friendly) and now we are on to Vang Vien for some tubing and a Beerlao or two.

NZ Pictures

Beach fire.












Franz Josef Glacier. Will look more intrepid when I photoshop out the other tourists.











View At Murchison Lake.



















Milford sound. Small cruise ship included for scale.




















Sheep stares at penguin.



















Sunset on the Otago Peninsula.















Above Lake Tekapo.




















Ukelele lessons, with my backup dancer, Randall.

Lately

Been a while since I posted. Made it to Nelson, where I stayed with family friends Randall and Lisa. It was nice to take it easy for a few days. The area they live in is extremely lovely. I'm sure it has it's problems, but they are hard to imagine. They were charming hosts and stuffed me with sausages and wine, and feijoa cider whatever that may be. We drove up along the coast of Tasman Bay and Golden Bay(tragically renamed from Murderer's Bay, but better for real estate prices no doubt) to Wharariki Beach which has some pretty good dunes and crazy sea caves. The tide was low enough that we got into one about an arms breadth wide and 25 feet high that twisted down to the ocean. For one second in the middle there was no light, just ankle deep water running down . . . somewhere. Exciting.
We were going to go boating on the Abel Tasman the next day but we decided to stay off the open ocean due to the Tsunami, which failed to materialize. Still, it was fun to get out on Nelson harbor in Randall's jetboat.
Lisa advised me to head down to Milford Sound as quickly as possible in order to try and catch a patch of sunlight predicted at the end of the week, so I raced down the coast. Stopping only to visit a brewery and a glacier. The brewery was a bit lame, but the glacier was amazing. The Franz Josef glacier receives 20-80 meters of snow at its head every year and so plunges down towards the ocean at speeds that can scarcely be called glacial, managing to dip into the temperate rainforest before it can melt. I only had an afternoon to hike up on to it, but it was definitely impressive. I'll have to rely on pictures to tell the rest of that story.
Got into Queenstown fairly late but still managed to hit the club before my 7:50 am departure to Milford Sound. Despite the weathermen's assurances, it was a grey, dismal morning, spitting rain all the way. Lots of low clouds as we pulled into Fjordland National park. We saw the mountain range cast as the Misty Mountains for the upcoming Hobbit films, but it was more mist than mountains. Just as people started grumbling about wasting their time and money the mists slowly began to part like a cotton ball be teased apart, lingering in shreds here and there throughtout the rest of the day, but letting plenty of sunshine through. The rain meant that some of the small waterfalls along the steep glacial valleys were running at full force. The scenery was literally mind-blowing. I had seen pictures, but I guess I've never really believed that any place like this existed, but it does. Somehow, the guy behind me managed to snore loudly through the whole ride. The sound(actually a fjord) is equally impressive. Ringed by snowcapped peaks, its steep sides are covered with a rainforest that just barely clings to the rocks in a mat of intertwined roots. Strong rainstorms occasionally cause whole sections of it to slip loose and plunge into the sea. A number of water falls plunge what seems like hundreds of meters directly into the ocean. To top it all of, our boat was greeted by a pod of bottlenose dolphins. Even the bus driver was impressed by our luck.