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Showing posts from September, 2014

Ten Days of Travel: Florence

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On a 'fine' Wednesday morning K and I took a fast train from Rome to Florence. It rained a lot during the journey and on our way to find our little airbnb-booked guest house. Cute it was. And raining the morning was. And sleepy we were. And nothing to do till 11am to go for the renaissance tour by the Florence Free tours. (So you can imagine how early we woke up). The renaissance tour introduced us to some of the beauty of Florence with the sculptures and paintings of the great renaissance artists including of course, our favourite Michaelangelo. The tour started at Piazza San Marta Novella and walked through to the Florence cathedral, and the church of Santa Croce. The Florence cathedral is a different kind of beauty, a renaissance church in all its glory. It had a dome that is at odds with the rest of the structure because the calculations were slightly off and the dome had to be constructed differently with an octagonal base. The guide also pointed out Flor

Ten Days of Travel: Vatican

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On Wednesday, we spent most of the day at the Vatican. Not really. You can go to the Vatican museum (including the Sistine Chapel) and Saint Peter's Basilica without issue even though they are within the Vatican border. But we can't go beyond that without permission. The museum is really vast and it's recommended to take a guided tour. The only one that was available was at 8.30 in the morning. We took it anyway, assuming we can also do the basilica before lunch. As it turns out, the basilica is closed on Wednesday mornings. The Pope gives audience and gives sermon at 11 am and it doesn't have a scheduled end time. So we ended up spending a good 4.5 hours in the museum. The guide said Wednesday mornings were the best time to visit the museum because of less crowds with the basilica closed, but we didn't understand that until after an hour after the tour ended. The guided tour lasted for about two hours. The guide showed us some amazing sculptures of people a

Ten days of Travel: Rome

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If I were to describe in one word the city of Rome, magnificent would be it. To mean large massive structures that can't possibly be human at all. And that is what Rome was, magnificent. On Monday we only had half a day to us. We went on a walking tour by the new tours. The guide was funny and knowledgeable. And it was good intro. The famous Colosseum aside, the shear size and span of not only the Roman structures like Piazza Venezia, but even the pagan temples like the Pantheon tells you the amount of glorification that Rome needed (and got). Pantheon also has Raphael's tomb. The guide took us to see an optican illusion to explain to us the evolution of art. Saint Ignazio has one of the best optical illusions I think, This ceiling looks much higher than the actual flat ceiling on which the painting was painted on. And the pic below,well, it's not a dome:    Trevi fountain was unfortunately under renovation (when open apparently it collects 3000 E

Ten Days of Travel: the weekend

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Edinburgh I've been to three times before and here's to the fourth. The first time I went as a student and to see it for myself for I didn't know if I would come back to London. I did. So the second time, after 2 years, I took my parents there to show it to them. The third time after 1.5 years, I took my sister and brother in law there. And now 9 months later, I took Ivo there. By the count of the reducing gaps between by trips, I think I'll be going again within 6 months! After our beautiful train journey on Friday morning along the eastcoast we say down for a coffee and walked around for a bit and sat down for again some lunch before we joined the Sandeman free tour. We had an incredibly funny American guide. She knew her stuff and did it well. Loved her little anecdotes. The tour which I had done before was more of the some. A bit about the history of Edinburgh the geographic formation, the people and garde loo, the interesting architecture of the castle and

Ten Days of Travel: Intro

My dear Nicaraguan friend came to visit me on a crazy Thursday. K was already in Edinburgh on work and Ivo had already visited London so we went to Edinburgh on Friday morning. We returned to London along with K on Saturday night. On Sunday, we decided to take a day trip to Oxford. On Monday morning, Ivo flew back to Nicaragua and K and I flew to Italy. An enormous country I'm sure, and only a little of it I've seen. K had been there briefly. But we wanted to go anyway. We flew into Rome on a Monday and spent three days there. On Thursday morning we took a fast train to Florence, barely 1.5 hours. We were supposed to take half a day to go to Pisa but we skipped it because we loved Florence. And we had little time in Florence as it is. We took a late train out of Florence on Friday to Venice, again a fast train for 2 hours. What we didn't realise before planning was that we ended up in Venice on a weekend! We reached Friday night and flew out on Sunday afternoon back ho

A Book List Tag

A friend of mine tagged on facebook with one of those list of books tags. I really loved it and I want to remember my list and jot it down. Where better but on my blog, with links to my book reviews though only the second half.  The list of books or series that changed/impacted me (chronological order) . 1. Claudine at St Clare's . The first novel I ever read, at the age of nine. I received this as a prize for coming second in class. I only read it because I was curious why people would read so much. And God knows I never stopped. 2. Famous Five, The Three Investigators, and the evergreen 18, Nancy Drew. My wanna-be detective phase. My friend and I would pretend we were the two investigators. We created mysteries in our imagination and solved them. 3. Brain by Robin Cook.It was a fascinating idea. Sphere beats it, but Brain was first. 4. If Tomorrow Comes by Sydney Sheldon. And I still love Tracy Whitney. And it was the first time I read a book with a feisty female lead. 5. A

Berlin

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Is filled with history, overflowing in every step and yet very modern, for all the older architecture was destroyed in the two wars. K had been to Berlin many a times and it is one of his favourite cities so he insisted we visit it soon. And soon we did. I'm struggling to write this post not knowing how to word it. I'm overwhelmed by the history and the struggle that the city went through time and again, and yet how it never portrays itself as victim but takes responsibility for the atrocities during WWII. Berlin is the embodiment of the consequences of war. It remembers everything. It even remembers Warsaw, the city that was completely destroyed by war. Cold War The first thing we did when we landed in Berlin was to head to the East Side Gallery . The Berlin Wall, my readers would recollect from history, was put up in 1961 to keep East Germans from escaping out of the communist reign into the little part of West Germany that was under the collaborated reign of the