Same Story, Different Versions (and all are true)

Originally posted at LiveJournal on Jul 14, 2009 Back in Geneva after a long weekend in Rome, and I am afraid to step on a scale.  Italian ice cream is soooo good!  We had it at least once a day, and also tried some Tiramisu.  Our favorite place to buy both was called the House of Tiramisu, and it was only about a ten minute walk from the place we were staying.  You could tell it was a really good place because lots of locals went there, so it wasn`t just some touristy spot. Around this time of year, Rome is packed--especially, of course, places like the Vatican and the Colosseum.  We got pretty lucky when we visited the Vatican; we were there around 9 in the morning, when the line of people waiting to get into St. Peter`s Basilica was just starting to look a tiny bit intimidating.  An hour later it would have been awful.  We could see the line circling halfway around St. Peter`s Square when we left the Basilica. Which, by the way, was ...

Originally posted at LiveJournal on Jul 9, 2009 After two days in Warsaw, we are now at our cousin`s apartment in Geneva.  Tomorrow afternoon we fly to Rome, and then we`ll come back here for five days.  The flight from Warsaw was interesting--a direct trip to Geneva would have cost something like $1500, so instead we changed planes in London.  We were worried at first about finding our connection in Heathrow, because people kept telling us how huge the airport is, and we only had an hour to catch our next flight, and our luggage might not arrive in Geneva on time so we should pack our carry-ons as if we would never see our luggage again...  in the end, everything went really smoothly.  Warsaw was cool--we saw the World War II Uprising Museum, and my brother and I checked out the Adam Mikiewicz Museum of Literature, which had two exhibits.  One was on the response of Polish artists and writers to the economic hardships caused by Communist policies dur...

Originally posted at LiveJournal on Jun 29, 2009 Bonjour!  It's Day 3 in Paris; and it is hot; hot; hot!  And humid.  One thing I've learned while traveling is to always have a super-size water bottle with me while sightseeing.  And the computer keyboards are arranged differently in each country, to account for different letters and symbols, so it takes me a bit longer to write anything.  Just a random little tidbit. So far, we've seen all the major sights---the Eiffel Tower (the view from the top is incredible!!  All the buildings look like clusters of Legos and dollhouses), the Louvre museum, the Arc de Triomphe... There were a number of informal concerts going on under and around the Eiffel Tower yesterday, to honor Michael Jackson.  There was also a demonstration to protest the Chinese government's persecution and torture of Falun Gong practitioners. In the evening, we took the metro to Montmartre and climbed up to Sacre Coeur church, behin...

Originally posted at LiveJournal on Feb. 23, 2012 I was recently invited by two of my cousins to join a 10-day trip to Scotland and England, along with two of their book club members and twelve others.  Here are some highlights: Rosslyn Chapel .  I have yet to read  The DaVinci Code , but that didn't make Rosslyn feel any less amazing or mystical.  Some call it the "woods bursting into song" because it's so full of nature imagery.  According to one of the guides, there are over 100 Green Man carvings throughout the chapel.  The ceiling is carved with lilies, roses and forget-me-nots, as well as stars and moons.  There's the vine-entwined Apprentice Pillar and the window carvings that look like maize and aloe (which some take as evidence that at least one 15th-century Scottish explorer had traveled to North America before Columbus.  Others say the carvings were probably stylized depictions of local plants or general patterns, and their resemblanc...