Rome? But when were you in Rome?

My flight back home to Israel had a layover in Rome. A long layover....long enough that I had time to go into the city, for at least a couple hours. So, I did a (ridiculously) fast tour of Rome.

I was lucky that I'd looked at the forecast for Rome before I left Barcelona. Otherwise I would have spent today lugging around my warm sweaters, not knowing that it was going to be warm and sunny.....



I got wet enough in my first few minutes outside that I could turn down all the people on the streets trying to sell me an umbrella for 20 Euros, because I don't think I could have gotten any colder or wetter anyways.

But, despite being wet and cold, I made it to the Vatican. I stood in line (trying to avoid having my eyes poked out by umbrellas--luckily the year I lived in Vancouver taught me how to win at the umbrella war) for quite a while, thinking I was in line to go inside St. Peter's Basilica. But, once I finally got inside and started passing these...


I realized that, no, I was actually in line to go and see the Pope's tomb. Whoops. So, after following the line for a long time, and eventually passing by the tomb and, um....paying my respects?....I followed an even longer line back outside. To the same spot where I begun.

I eventually did make it inside the Basillica.


And, of course, what trip to Rome is complete without seeing the coliseum? Of course, seeing as how my few hours in Rome didn't overlap with the opening hours of many places, I had to be satisfied with seeing it from the outside (just like Christmas, all over again....except for without the scary masks).



I wandered past the forum too....


And ended up here. . .


Sadly, I have no idea where "here" is. I felt like a fraud, although I'm not really sure why...could be that I was touring a famous city, trying to do it in about 4 hours, and currently standing in front of what appeared to be a famous landmark (I was guessing this based on the 'majestic' appearance of the building, and the large groups of tourists taking photos) but had no idea where I was, or what I was looking at. I could have asked one of the tourists what it was, but decided instead to ask you....

Anyone know where this is a picture of?

More Gaudi in Barcelona

I started out my last day in Spain, and my day on my own in Barcelona, at the Parc Gruell, another one of Gaudi's creations. It seems as though everyone else in Spain had the same idea....there were lots and lots of people in the park. If you wandered away from the main attractions though, it was possible to find a little solitude.



This lizard is probably one of the most famous images from the park, and judging by the t-shirts at the numerous tourist shops, one of Gaudi's most famous images as well.


Probably the second most famous thing about the park is the long mosaic-covered bench. You can see it in the foreground of this picture...



It was a gorgeous day, and the bench was full of people enjoying the break from the cold.



A closer view of the mosaic....



My next stop was the Sacre Famille--a Gaudi designed cathedral that is still under construction, and is expected to be under construction for at least another decade.

I was confused, because in every postcard picture I had seen of the cathedral facade it looked as though the church was melting--at least that's how I would describe it. But, the cathedral looked nothing like those images...


I spent a long time outside the church looking at the sculptures all over the facade. And I could have spent a lot longer too--I really like the strong lines in all the figures.




It was probably a good thing that I spent so long looking at the outside, because when I went inside I realized it was even more unfinished than I expected. A few parts of it did look like a cathedral....



But most of it just looked like a big construction site...


After wandering through the inside, I went out the other door of the church, and realized my mistake. I was wondering why the cathedral looked so different from all the postcards without thinking "hmmm....I wonder if there's more than one face to the building". Well, there is. And this one does look like it's melting.

Zaragoza

Sara and I spent the last day of our trip together in Zaragoza. When we arrived on the bus the first place we went was the tourist information centre.

Best tourist information centre ever. Each city we go in to, we've stopped at the tourist desk and asked our standard question "If we only had x number of days in the city, what would be the top places you would reccomend seeing?" Most often the response is simply to hand us a map (which helpfully often pointed out all the McDonalds in the tourist areas) and a attractions book and send us on our way to read on our own. Somewhat unhelpful as we've generally already done this on our own, and just want to know what their top picks are.

The woman at this centre though--fantastic. Took out a map, circled the 3 "must-sees" and then gave us a couple others that were interesting "if we had time". And then, gave us directions to our hotel....all in under 5 minutes.

The first place went to see was Aljarferia, after her "of course you will go to Aljaferia" comment, to which we responded "of course!" even though neither of us had ever heard of it.



AlJaferia is described as a 'muslim palace'. It's interesting for it's architecture and numerous arches with really detailed carving.....at least that's what I found it interesting for.



What I will probably remember even better than the arches though, would be our ultimately unsuccessful attempts to get ourselves some oranges off these trees. Yum.....royal oranges.

The plan, admittedly, was fairly elaborate. It involved a slip-and-fall on the very slippery cement (as demonstrated by Sara here)...

after which my screams for help would distract the orange guard (we assume this was his job--I mean, what else could he be guarding?) and when he came over to help, thus averting a lawsuit, it gave me the opportunity to hop the fence and grab the oranges.

Sadly, though, as we were working out the final details of our plan, another employee came to start cleaning up the oranges off the ground near the trees, and put another element into the mix that we just couldn't figure out a way around. So....no oranges for us. Luckily, I had a clementine in my bag that we could console ourselves with, as we imagined how the royal oranges would have tasted...

Then we also consoled ourselves with a little game of "Where's Waldo", or in this case "Where's Jennie?"


We spent the rest of the day exploring Zeragoza. The cathedral had some great colourful tiles on the roof.


And climbed the tower at another, not-as-helpful (although we didn't give them much of a chance), tourist centre for a night-time view of the city.



Sara and I both left early the next morning to take the train back--Sara to France and me back to Barcelona where I had one more day before my flight left. The train station was new, very massive and impressive, and also very very cold (much like many of the cathedrals we had seen on this trip). They'd even gone so far as to put propane heat lamps throughout it, which each had a circle of travellers huddled around it.

Palais Royale

We went back to the Palais Royal today, so that we could actually go inside.

You know it's a real palace because the thrones are guarded by lions...



The Royal dining hall. You can tell which ones are the seats for the queen and king, because they are a little bit higher than the others (although barely even noticeably so).



I love how the man on this clock looks bored....


There are lots of clocks in the palace: King Ferdinand VII and Charles V collected clocks. There are supposed to be over 150 working clocks here, but we only counted 14....

The pharmacy was pretty cool. The drawers all had latin names of plants on them, with the lower drawers even having drawings of the plants as well.



They also have a room where they showed all the armour from different times in history. They had armour for knights, horses, and even children


.

Tourists on Christmas

What being a tourist on Christmas is like......


You get to visit the outside of a lot of places, but not the inside. I imagine the Prado is much more impressive from inside....

But, With it being Christmas day and all, we had assumed that most things in Madrid would be closed, so saved one of the walking tours in our tour book for today. It started off at the centre of Spain....seriously.

This is a plaque on the sidewalk that marks the exact centre of Spain. I've decided that that's a great way to stop wars--once it's in place, it's really a waste to go and move the country's borders.



Visiting a creche (nativity scene) is a big Spanish tradition at Christmas time. This is one of the bigger ones in Madrid, and the lines were often quite long to walk through--so we just snuck a look from the outside.



More places we visited the outside of....
The Palais Royale (royal palace for those of you wanting translations).


And this church...

I don't know the name of the church, but it is right beside the palace, so we visited the outside of it as well (we actually got to visit the inside too, but just for a few minutes. We thought that we were inside the visiting hours, but the guards, apparently, thought otherwise).

I discovered that there are people just out on the street dancing flamenco. Just as I always dreamed Spain would be.



Another of the living statues.....



I love the name of this restaurant--"the museum of ham". It would do well in Israel, no?

Incidentally, the guy in the picture is about to give me the finger. He thinks that I am taking a picture of him. You've got to expect with a great name like the "museum of ham" that there will be people taking pictures, so it's not one of the best places to run away from the cops with your sheet full of counterfit perfume.....maybe he didn't think of that though. Being busy running away from the cops and all....

Christmas Eve in Madrid

We arrived in Madrid today and went straight to the tourist office, as it would likely be closed tomorrow, and we wanted to ask what options there were for Christmas day in Madrid. Luckily the tourist office was in the same square as the most famous Christmas market in Madrid.




Most of the Christmas market seemed to be devoted to selling.....halloween costumes. Complete with skull masks. I don't really understand it, but many of the people on the street were wearing colourful wigs and masks "for Christmas".



Christmas is usually celebrated on the 24th (well, actually I think many people celebrate the Orthodox Christmas in January, but those that celebrate a December Christmas often do it on Christmas eve) so Sara and I decided to do the same. We made ourselves Christmas dinner in our hotel room--we had roast chicken, salad and the traditional cold canned baked beans. Much different than our other Christmas dinnners, but I think we were both happy with it. It was Christmas with family after all.



We went to a midnight mass at one of the cathedrals close by. I've been two 2 Catholoic masses now, but I don't know how typical either of them were, or how well I would be able to describe them, seeing as how both were in lanuguages I don't speak. Perhaps now I have at least a little more realistic opinion of them, as before now based on my experience attending mass in Be'er Sheva last Eater, Catholic mass is conducted in Hebrew.

Toledo

Leaving Barcelona we took an overnight bus to Toledo. We were planning on doing an overnight train (which sounded like a good idea) but apparently the rest of spain had the same idea, so everything was fully booked for days. We ended up taking the overnight bus instead--we really had no other option, but I don't think either of us were too happy that morning when we arrived in Toledo.

The old city in Toledo is quite a bit higher than the bus station, so you can either hike up the hill, or ......

take the escalotor. Yup, they have an outdoor escalator (the staircase type looking thing on the side of the hill).

Our first stop (after lugging our bags (and ourselves) up more and more hills to get to the hotel) was the cathedral. Massive, beautiful, full of amazing things....but so cold! There were a few rooms that had paintings, and robes of the bishops in them, that we spent a lot of time in, partially because they were interesting....but mainly because those were the only rooms that were heated.



There were no pictures allowed inside, but we snuck this one from the courtyard.



We took a tour around Toledo on their tourist train. Our Rick Steve's book had said that it was a good way to see Toledo from the other side of the river, and it was. We got some great views.





But it also meant riding around the city on this train.



It was pretty funny. It drives on the roads with all the other traffic, only much much slower. There were times that there were huge lines of cars behind us waiting for any opportunity to pass!

We also went to the Jewish quarter. We had stopped at the Jewish community centre to ask what to see, and had asked about a particular church: the Sinagoga santa maria la blanca. It has at one point in history been a synagogue, a catholic (?) church, and a moorish temple, and retains characteristics of all of them. The guide at the centre said he didn't really recommend it, as it was really just a big empty room....


We went anyways. It really is just a big empty room. But a big empty room with Jewish, Christian and Moorish influences.....

At night the city was lit up with Christmas lights. I remember how last year in France the Christmas lights were so much more special because I hadn't seen any yet until I arrived, and it really did make it feel like Christmas. Same thing here--I loved just walking the streets at night and looking at the lights.




On our way out the next morning to catch the bus to Madrid, I saw this mailbox....kind of like the lion is eating your mail?