Author: Linda

Today we walked past the market outside our hostel where Andy stopped to buy a peach. We then walked over to the square with the astronomical clock and bought another Kurtosh cake. It was different than the one in Budapest, but still good. We watched the wooden saints appear in the trap doors. Then we headed over to the Old Jewish Cemetery which we didn’t end up going in. It housed bodies from the ghetto until the late 1700s. We then walked across the river for lunch at Baracnicka Rychta which served authentic Czech food. Andy and I split the beef goulash and pork tenderloin. Before that, Andy also stopped at Cafe Ebel to buy coffee and it was really good. Andy thought it may have been better than the Italian coffee. After lunch, we made our way up to the Prague Castle and saw St. Vitus’ Cathedral, which had interesting gothic architecture. We also saw the Old Royal Palace, Basillica of St George, and the Golden Lane. We also walked through the gardens. On our way back across the river, we stopped at a church with the Infant of Prague where people pray to baby Jesus. We stopped at the tourist booth by the bridge to find out more information about the puppet shows. We wanted to catch the slapstick opera from the Forman’s Mystery Boat Theater, but we couldn’t find it. So we stopped to look at the Dancing House and then the Beer Museum. I thought Andy was thoroughly enjoying learning about the history of beer. By the time we finished up at the Beer Museum, it was time for dinner. We ate at Pivnice in Pivrnce, for some pub grub. We had sirloin with Bohemian dumplings and roasted duck with Bohemian and potato dumplings.

No breakfast today. Our host of B&B Chain Gallienus never got back to us about breakfast. We got up late and rushed to get ready so that we could still make it to the Pantheon before it closed. We tested the guide’s facts about the room being perfectly sized to view the entire room with one’s peripheral vision. We also looked at the oculus, which was also sized perfectly to support the dome structure. It has no steel supports, like they would have if they built it today. We also saw the tombs of the first two kings of Italy as well as the original burial place of the artist Rafael. After the Pantheon, we stopped at the pizza place our tour guide recommended called Montecarlo. Linda had the Montecarlo pizza (okay) and Andy had the anchovies pizza (good). We had to return to our hostel to switch rooms, which we still didn’t understand why. The accommodation is nicer, a private apartment. But it smells because it’s below surface level. We took the metro to the Spanish Steps. We both saw a guy on the metro get pick pocketed. We were torn as to what we should do, but the pickpockets were right next to us and we didn’t want to have a confrontation since we could’ve ended up as a target ourselves. When we got to the steps, we found out that the fountain there also was in the process of being restored. We sat there for an hour or so and bought semi-cold beers from the illegal street vendors. We ended up going back to the ice cream place to order/try more flavors. On our way back, Linda saw another guy get pick-pocketed. In fact, one of the pock-pockets may have been sizing her up since a local asked her for change when he obviously knew how the system worked. We tried to eat at the place our hostel recommended, Trattoria Vecchia Roma, but it was closed so we tried the Trattoria at the corner near our hostel. They overcharged us one euro and charged us two euro for table service. We wanted to eat at the pasta place David recommended but we didn’t want to travel far. It was called La Taverna dei Fori Imperiali. We also bought a couple bottles of wine and a corkscrew to enjoy at night in our hostel. We also stopped at Basilica Papale di Santa Maria Maggiore. It was probably one of the nicer churches we’ve seen so far.

We got up at 3:50 am this morning to catch our flight from Budapest to Rome. Didn’t have any problems this time at the airport. However, when we arrived, we decided to take the bus which confused us a bit. The bus was full when we left the airport, but somehow we managed to keep picking up more passengers along the way. We also missed our stop. We planned to get off at the train station in Ciampino, but we missed the stop. We noticed it as we drove away from it so we ended up getting off at the subsequent stop. The bus driver told us we could just catch the metro to Rome. But we didn’t really understand what he meant at the time. We probably spent about a half hour there trying to figure it out, with little help from the train people since they didn’t speak much English. Andy actually figured it out. When we got off at Termini, we walked to the hostel but no one was there. We ended up asking the neighboring hostel (Savannah House) and they actually helped us out by calling the hostel. It’s actually just a group of independently owned guest houses. It’s decent, though we should expect some amount of independence since our host doesn’t speak a lot of English either. The first thing we ended up doing was walking down tot he Coliseum. After talking to a tour guide, we took their restaurant recommendation and decided to go back later for a tour. We had fried vegetable pizza and lasagna with meat at Pizzeria Lizzi. It was quite entertaining. The waitstaff accidentally sat two couples at a table awkwardly and spent the entire time confused and talking about it. Andy’s pizza came out first and it looked like vegetables just meant watercress. Then they brought out a pizza and lasagna to the table next to us even though we were seated and ordered before them. We eventually got my lasagna though. They also brought food to the wrong table and I ended up switching their food. Anyways, we went on a tour of the Coliseum afterwards. The tour guide could have been better. He kept talking about the same things repeatedly and was not very energetic. The next guide for the Roman Forum was David Battaglino. +39 345 3370484, email david-tours@live.com. He was great. He gave us some interesting history and tips. He talked about how it functions as their marketplace. Some of the tips he gave us included how water was free and safe from the fountains, bathrooms must be made available to public by law, where to go to eat, ect. He mentioned another tour he was giving later in the evening and we decided to do that as well. We grabbed a beer from the store and walked around drinking it in public. That’s allowed anywhere until 10 pm apparently. He took us to Colonna Traiana, past Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele 11, past Ara Coeli and Campidoglio, past the Teatro Marcello (looks like the miniature version of the Coliseum, to a church with a walk through the underground, past the Synagogue, by the elephant obelisk (with the trunk giving the middle finger and the trunk moving as to motion he would be pooping), by the Pantheon, and ending at the Piazza di Navona (one side curved because it was built on ruins and supporting the hill while one side was flat). We then walked over to Ciambella for pasta. We had a lamb with potatoes and risotto with buffalo milk (first course meal). It was small portions but it seemed okay. The food itself was good. We headed home after that. Oh, we also stopped at the cat sanctuary. That was fun.

We started our day by visiting the same square we were at the night before to take photos of Buda Castle and Fisherman’s Bastion. We took the metro there and of course, the stop we spent probably an hour looking for was right on the square as we had suspected. We took the bus over and across the Chain Bridge and got off at the first stop since we weren’t sure which stop we needed. We walked up a ton of stairs to get to Buda Castle. When we finally got to the top, we realized that the Budapest Wine Festival was starting today and throughout the week (5 days total). We had originally planned to visit the bath houses but decided it would be worth it to come back later for the festival instead. We grabbed lunch at a restaurant next to Buda Castle and split a prosciutto sandwich and a greek salad. I’m not sure why we ordered a greek salad. Neither of us are big fans of black olives. The food was decent nonetheless. We walked over to Fisherman’s Bastion and Matthias Church to look around. The architecture and views of the city are amazing here. We decided to go in to Matthias Church, which I happened to like the best so far from the churches we have visited. Afterwards, we walked over to the Labyrinth to check it out, but we were both exhausted from walking so we opted not to walk through it, though at least we had a chance to see a little bit of it at the entrance. We then walked back towards Fisherman’s Bastion to see the view from the bottom (even better of course). By the way, we realized the bus would have taken us all the way to the top of the hill so we never really needed to climb those stairs. We found the Metro to take us to the other side of the river (underground beneath the river) to go see the Parliament Building. It was impressive. We also saw the guards performing some ritual (a similar ritual also happened near Buda Castle). We then walked over to see the bronze shoes on the Danube River, which is really sad for what it represents. We took the tram back to the square to catch the metro back to our hostel. Andy wanted to ride all forms of public transit. We stopped at our hostel to reload. Eventually, we found ourselves back where we started our day, at Buda Castle for the wine tasting. The cost was a flat admission rate, and then you pay each vendor money for a taste. I think there were over 200 Hungarian wines there. We were overwhelmed, so we decided to try the award-winning wines listed in the information booklet. We even had a vendor toast us (or so I think) when we tried the wine known as the Taste of Hungary. Since we were already there, we decided to have dinner as well. There were food vendors everywhere but we found a food court similar to the setup as the food vendors at the square the night before. It must be a thing. Again, delicious food. We had goose leg with vegetables, and potatoes with a funny side of meat. I wonder if we should start eating goose back home. We sure have enough of them. The Wine Festival was a wonderful find we happened to stumble upon. I forget to mention, after trying one bad bottle of still water and one carbonated water, we finally found the right brand (NaturAgua with pink cap). Andy’s reaction to the best tasting water ever (in Hungary) was funny. We had also stopped at a food stand right outside our hostel for a cinnamon pastry type cake. Smelled and tasted great!

Andy told me I should mention that on our countryside tour yesterday, the bus tour guide told us that the house next to the Cliffs of Moher cost 200,000 euro, and that’s just for a shell, half covered. Today, we started out our day by visiting the Shandon Church to ring the bells. Apparently that’s what visitors do to announce their arrival. They don’t want people to ring nonsensical melodies in excess, so they provide sheet music. The first song we played was Amazing Grace. It sounded really cool. We then toured the rest of the tower, seeing the mechanics behind the four faced liar (supposedly all four sides of the tower have a clock which is slightly different from one another) and behind the bells. When we got to the top, we had a fabulous view of the city of Cork. Andy was a bit scared, but he still seemed to enjoy the view too. On our way back down, we rang the bells again, this time we played Kumbaya. He wanted to play another song after that, The Wedding March, and record a video of us doing it. But we didn’t. We peeked inside the actual service area and it was quaint. Small but nice. We then walked to the other side of the city to see the cathedral called Saint Fin Barre’s. It looks like it is the largest one in Cork. It had amazing stained glass windows and mosaic flooring. Andy kept telling me there’s a church in Milwaukee that looks just as good as this. Afterwards, we stopped for a cup of coffee next to the River Lee. Andy was sad that they didn’t have regular coffee, but I enjoyed the double espresso shots. We walked over tot he English Market to see what the buzz was about. It reminded me of Seattle’s market. We decided to buy some smoked salmon from one of the merchants (cooked, not uncooked). It was delicious. We tried to stop over at a pipe store but unforunately it was closed on Mondays. So we headed over tot he Franciscan Well Brewery to try a couple of beers. Andy had their IPA and I tried the Porterhouse Stout. One of the last things we did in Ireland was to stop and get some doner kebab at Crazy Kebab. I miss doner kebab! Andy loved his first eve doner kebab. We grabbed our packs from the hostel and waited at a bar, The Poor Relation, near the bus station to catch our plane to London.