Fred in Dallas...San Gimignano

   After our return from Paris I spent the next week in florence with Renee and the kids.  I went to some of Renee's activities, such as a cooking class she was taking.  I think she already showed a picture of us but it was myself and nine women...very nice!:

  Renee and the boys have been to several Tuscan towns and she has blogged about some of these: Siena, Voltera, Pisa.  We took out a bus out to San Gimignano, the epitome of a Tuscan hill town.  Pretty touristy but it has 14 of the original 72 midieval towers still standing and very scenic.  We had a nice lunch and I had a Tuscan delicacy for the first time: boar stew...not bad.  Wild boar, or cinghiale, is served in many different ways.  Some photos of the town and views around it:

A wall surrounds the town and this is the village below:

 

    I had a great week in florence and could choose form hundreds of pictures...the Duomo, the Bargello (incredbile, worth a separate entry), Santa Croce, Oltrano...the list goes on.  My last day there we went up to Fiesole, a small hilltop town overlooking florence founded by the Etruscans about 400 years before the Romans founded Florence.  Great Etruscan and Roman ruins and a neat little museum.  We had lunch in a favorite local spot, Ristorante Perseus where I had ribollita, a Tuscan favorite...a traditional peasant dish with vegetables, bread, and spices.  Mine was incredible.  Ahh the best part of travel.  We met an old gentleman at the table behind us, a shoemaker who had taken up painting in the past 10 years.  He has only been out of Florence three times in his life...in his early 70s.  As sweet as they come!:

                            

  I head back to Italy this Saturday...first stop, Prague!



Fred in Dallas...more about Paris

   We were only in Paris three days but boy did we pack a lot in.  As I metioned in my last post about Paris, we walked everywhere, same as Rome.  I love walking around a city...you learn so much more about its people and its secrets.  I do the same when I travel in the States.  I rarely take taxis...much prefer just hoofing it.  And the surprises and great finds you stumble upon..always the best part!
   I am not a student of architecture but how can you not be fascinated with it when traveling through these ancient cities of Europe.  Below are the flying buttresses of the exterior of the Notre Dame Cathedral:

   Beauty and strength, just like the human body.  I remember learning when I first visited Paris that the cathedral took 190 years to build!  Multiple generations worked on the building, just like the Duomo in Florence.  Here is a picture of Evan outside the Sorbonne...that great Parisian institute of higher education.  We are trying to play with the image a bit to make it look like he is lifting that steel container...his composition!:

  And oh the flower shops...and bakeries...and wine stores!:

  We dined at a restaurant called Nicolas Flamel, named after the 15th century alchemist who supposedly discovered the philosophers stone.  Reportedly he was JK
Rowlings inspiration for some of her wizards in the Harry Potter series.  He founded a home for orphans and the restaurant is housed in this ancient building:

Great fun and a great meal.  Incidentally, this is our second time staying in a reasonably priced little hotel 5 mintues from the Louvre, Hotel Therese...neat little place and reasonably priced for Paris. (http://www.hoteltherese.com/)
    We spent time in the Louvre which is so massive it can intimidate the average tourist...there is so much to see.  So the key is to go in and spend an hour or two and then come back if you want to see more.  We did run by and see the Mona Lisa...have never really understood what the big deal is with that painting.  The boys chilling in one of the galleries:

Great tip, don't wait in line at the main glass entrance by IM Pei, get your tickets on line or go in one of the side entrances and walk right in.  I loved looking in this one room where they were unpacking new or stored antiquities... the place is busting with masterpieces!:

   We walked up the Champs-Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe, which was commissioned by Napolean to celebrate his victories.  By the time they finished it he has lost more than he had won and had long ago been banished to Elba.  The four of us on top:

That gal on the left really wanted to be part of our family but we eventaully ditched her.  And a shot of the city with the Eiffel Tower:

  Paris was fantastic...great art, great food.  It just has a very unique feel.  The statue below is in the Jardin des Tuileries, between the Louvre and the Arc.  The poor guy is very sad...there are constant birds on his head crapping on him...or maybe he's sad because of his small penis?  I guess we'll never know.

  So after Paris we went back to Florence, the boys went back to school, and Renee and I had the chance to explore a little each day.  Though she has posted on some of the things we saw and did, I will add a few more pics and thoughts next time...

An Argument for Travel During Turbulent Times - NYTimes.com

Fred posting from Dallas.  I have always enjoyed the writings of Paul Theroux...a wonderful travel writer that has been writing about travel for decades.  Attaching an article from the Times he published yesterday.  Are there dangers when traveling, particularly in hotspots or troubled countries?  Absolutely, but most of those dangers can be avoided with common sense.  I believe there are also dangers in not traveling: complacency, missing out on so many wonderful experiences and cultures, not realizing that people everywhere are by and large decent and peace-loving.  Most dangerous of all, however, is my belief that when we don't travel we believe our country and our society has all the answers, does everything the best, and everywhere else may be nice but is a distant second to our utopia at home.  We are trying to teach our children that there is a whole world out there...full of adventure...waiting for them.  My commentary for today!  fjd


An Argument for Travel During Turbulent Times - NYTimes.com

Rduff in Russia

 Rduff and frinz on a huge pile of snow. There was about two feet of snow in Novingrod, so that was fun..even if I was not very prepared with my clothes.

The queen of Russia's summer house...nice

Berestra Palace

Questo è Ryan. I just returned from Russia. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life. For the first 4 days, we went to St. Petersburg, and the last 3 we went to Novingrod. The trip was a MUN conference. MUN is Model United Nations. So, I was pretending to be a delegate from South Korea. Preparing for the conference was difficult, but actually lobbying and debating was fun and enjoyable. A few times I did drift off into sleep though because of the lack of sleep from the previous night. Aside from the conference, meeting new people was very fun too. I made friends with many people from Egypt, Panama, and other countries. At night we would stay up and hang out in other people's room and the hallways. I'm going to miss doing that. We also toured quite a few museums including the Hermitage, which was nice....I guess?  They were interesting at first, but at the end I had had basta ("enough" in Italian). We also saw some ballet and traditional Russian dancing. This was a very unique time for me, because I have never gone on any trips like this with people my age. It was fun pretending to be in the UN. It was also a great bonding experience- I made friends with a lot of people at the school that I never would have expected being friends with. NOICE RDUFF NOICE

Primavera and more on Venice

C’è primavera!  So I will have to post a few pics of the very beginning of spring here. Sometimes on the weekends, I take long walks east along the Arno River past the end of the paths.  The snow melt from the Apennines is occurring and the river is swollen and muddy now.  The weekend before last, I noticed a number of fishermen wearing red shirts and spaced evenly apart fishing along the river.  I should have gone down and asked if they were a club. There were several people out sculling. At least once every century, there is a massive flood…the last being in 1966 where the water level rose 16 feet over the banks of the Arno and really wiped the city out.  It’s very interesting that the two most prominent floods both occurred on Nov. 4^th in the double digit years 1333 and 1966.  I finally found the plaque on the corner of via San Remigio and Via de’ Neri that commemorates both floods…it was too high above my head to take a picture.
There’s also a lot more activity on Piazza Santa Croce with marionette shows, fiddlers and drummers on the weekends.  Also, posting some more pics from the trip to Venice this past weekend!

Italian flags and laundry!

Band on Piazza Santa Croce

Love this door, even has the lily symbol of Florence

Arno River

Fishermen club on the Arno!

Pazzaglia Sculpture Garden with Italian cypresses

    

Florence is full of towers but most of them have been
incorporated into buildings.  This one is part of a hotel in Oltrarno
(which means "other side of the Arno").  Tower houses "grew up" in Florence
in 1200s and served the dual purpose of home and fortification as there were
frequent rivalries between families ...when necessary the families would close themselves
inside their tower houses which had very tiny entrance doors up high accessible
by ladders they would pull up.  Later in the 1400s the towers signified "prestige" so
wealthy families would just build them on alongside their palazzos.  When a family fell into
disgrace, the top of the tower would be "lopped off," a sort-of tower castration!
By decree, they could not be higher than the Bargello (current day national sculpture museum
that used to be the police headquarters and prison)


Evan and I underneath Palazzo Ducale





Murano glass


 

Top of San Marco Church from the side


 

Mars in the courtyard of Palazzo Ducale



The Virgin Mary with a rifle and votives! (inside San Marco)..ok, I don't
have an explanation for this one yet but I like the sentiment



View of  side of San Marco Cathedral



Roma outside San Marco



canal with leaning tower

View of San Marco area from back of Palazzo Ducale

 

Grand Canal in the morning by San Marco

Jackie, Dad and Evan having gelato in Venice.  

Venice (Venezia)

Ciao ragazzi! We decided to take a little weekend trip to Venice, "the city where taxis are boats called vaporettos." It was exactly like what it looked like in movies (particuarly the Italian Job). It was so weird to me how much water there was, even though I knew that was what it was going to be. There are bridges between every block. They are full of street vendors selling things from plastic balls that you throw on the ground to Venice sweatshirts to keychains. One of the sweatshirts they have is a copy of the white and black striped sweatshirts that all the captains wore. I took a picture with the gondola captains, and it turned out like this: 

My gondola buddies and I



bell tower from terrace view at our hotel.

My carnival friends

The Adriatic Sea behind me

Pops and I at the Ducale Museum

A gondola with a church in the background on the Grand Canal



Venice has much to see like Florence and Rome, but its main feature (the fact that it's built on water) is out of this world. I highly recommend seeing it and seeing it soon, because the water might rise due to global warming.
Evan

Fred in Dallas...ahhh Paris!

   As I write this the family is asleep in Italy, pooped out from their recent travels.  Renee and Evan just returned from an overnight in Venice with her Dad and his wife...Bob and Jackie head back to the states Tuesday having spent nearly three weeks with Renee and the boys.  Sounds like Venice was a blast...Renee will elaborate on a future post.  And all you Evan fans look for a great picture of Evan in Venice coming your way...extremely entertaining is all I will say!

  Ryan returned several hours ago from St. Petersburg...yes that St. Petersburg, the one in Russia!  My sixteen year old has just spent a week of his life in Russia...I'm not too jealous.  He attended a mock UN meeting with some classmates and then did some sightseeing.  So follow along with me: my American son going to school in Italy was in Russia at a mock UN meeting representing South Korea!!!  Unbelievable.  Can't remember where St. Petersburg Russia is?  Check it out:

  A little fuzzy but it is that orange arrow in the west, just south of Finland.  He came back exhausted but had a great time, especially interacting with the other kids...lots of late nights.  He apparently met some great kids from Panama and Egypt...yeah that Egypt, not Egypt Texas (is there an egypt texas?).  Great stuff.

  So back to my trip a couple weeks ago: after a couple of spectacular days in Rome we flew to Paris.  I have been there several times before.  I know a great little hotel five minutes from the Louvre if anyone is going (Hotel Therese).  As in Rome, we stayed in a great location and walked everywhere, though we did end up on the subway one night. 

   We spent some time in the Louvre and the Musee d'Orsay, quite possibly my favorite museum in the world...housed in a renovated and spectacular old building that used to be a train station.   The Louvre is also spectacular, though can be overwhelming there is so much to see.  Ironically, they have a great section on ancient Etruscan art, likely found close to Florence.  The boys with a Roman dude:

  These Romans all had significant bootys...or junk in their trunk!

  We hit Notre Dame and the Arc de Triomphe.  I love this picture of Evan near the front of Notre Dame...completely staged...he was more interested in getting a picture of the soldiers with the machine guns!

  More to come on Paris in my next post....a magical city!