Yooroppa
This is not actually a proper write-up of my trip to Europe in April/May, it's actually just a cut-and-paste from an email to a friend, but eh, better than nothing, ja?
The trip, as a whole, was good but there were definitely some bumpy parts. This was my first cruise, and I realized that I don't really like cruises. -_- It was kind of boring on the boat after the novelty wore off, and all the activities were oriented toward older people. Also, we had a couple of incidents with the staff that resulted in my mom in tears once (on mother's day) and a slight feeling of racism here and there. Also, Princess Cruises is a lot less organized than you'd expect after all these years of doing cruises. But the main problem was that there just wasn't enough time to spend onshore. And since we had so little time, my mom organized land tours for most of our day trips, but I kind of hate tours too. I have to admit, though, it's nice to have a bus pick you up so you don't have to walk everywhere.
Anyway, my favourite place on the trip was probably Istanbul! We were only there for a day, but it was just so interesting and the people were so friendly! Did you know half the city is considered to be in Europe, and half is in Asia? And their history is likewise full of influences from various places. Istanbul = ancient Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine empire, so it was the seat of eastern Christianity for a long time, and then it was conquered by Muslims, and became the capital of the Ottoman empire. So there are things that look kind of Christian-influenced, and things that look Islam-influenced. Crazy! Nowadays, the population is mostly Muslim but they seem to LOVE westerners. Or maybe they like Asians, since my family is both. They kept wanting to take pictures with us, and kids would yell out "hello!" Also, Turkish delight is SUPER delicious! Completely different from the stuff they sell around here. We bought a whole bunch made with honey and pecans and no sugar--yum!
Barcelona was also fantastic, but we got to stay there for four days before the cruise began so I'm biased toward it. But still, really really cool place! We were staying in a rented apartment near Las Ramblas, which is kind of like a main drag, mainly for pedestrians. Every day there would be people dressed up as dragons or clowns or toilets or funny boxes or whatever, trying to make a few euro off of all the tourists. There are also apparently tons of pickpockets in the city and especially on Las Ramblas, although no one I knew was pickpocketed. One of my uncles saw a tourist getting pickpocketed though. I think the best thing about Barcelona is the architecture, which reminded me of some of the more Spanish-looking houses in the Philippines but times ten. The works of Antoni Gaudí are super interesting, but really, there were just so many amazingly beautiful, ornately decorated buildings everywhere. And the buildings and streets were laid out in a much more interesting way than they are here. At interesections, buildings would often have the corners cut off, so they wouldn't just be boring squares, and the intersection could be opened up more. What a good idea! And the city as a whole seemed very friendly to pedestrians and to public gatherings in general. Barcelonians eat out a lot, and they eat really late (because of their siesta), so it seemed like people in general were very socially inclined. Also, they had delicious food! We had paella almost every day!
Those were definitely my two favourite places. Athens had interesting ruins, of course, but the city itself didn't look as distinctive as I'd hoped. Mykonos (a Greek island) was very touristy but also very pleasant. All the buildings were white with blue trimming and there were lots of pretty things to buy. In Ephesus (Turkey) we visited the house that Mary (Jesus' mother) lived in at the end of her life. It had a lot of incense so I sneezed the whole time.
We spent a lot of time in Italy, but I'd spent a couple weeks in Italy on our last trip to Europe, and on our last trip we weren't bogged down by thirty relatives and the cruise schedule, so this time wasn't quite as nice. We visited Florence, Pisa, Venice, Rome, and the Amalfi Coast, which was ridiculously beautiful as always.
We also went to Nice and Monaco (both not really to my taste) in one day, which was very rushed. I wish we could have gone to Paris this time--I love rich, unheatlhy French food.
At the end of the trip we flew to London, and had a lovely time there! The last time we went it was super hot and we were kind of miserable, but this time was nice and cool so we had a much better time. I think I liked the zoo the best-- it was definitely the best zoo I've ever been to. Even better than the San Diego Zoo! (I just went to San Diego in June) The animals seemed very active, they had tons and tons of room, including indoor and outdoor areas that they could move between freely, and the handlers put on some really good feeding/training demonstrations. The zoo was also laid out very nicely (unlike San Diego), and there was tons of local wildlife flying/walking around too. During the penguin-feeding, a heron and a seagull showed up right before the handlers started giving out fish--and apparently they show up at every single feeding for free meals! Pretty smart birds. The coolest thing at the zoo, among many cool things, was probably the butterfly hut, which looked kind of lame on the outside (like a big inflatable plastic kids playpen) but was absolutely amazing inside. There were just so many butterflies and you got to walk right through them. There were even transparent butterflies, like saran wrap stretched on a black insect frame. In general, the zoo had tons of species there that I'd never seen before. Oh yeah, and we got a video of a tiger peeing right in front of us for about 1 minute. We're juvenile that way.
We saw two shows in London: Oliver, with Rowan Atkinson as one of the main characters (Fagan, the king of thieves), which was a good fun show; and also a Michael Jackson tribute show, where a bunch of singers/dancers performed his best songs. Considering that MJ died recently, we were really good we saw the show before his death. Oh yeah, when we were trying to find the theatres for the shows, my older brother led us astray both times and we had to run. Bah! We could have gone to see Waiting for Godot with Sir Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart (!) instead of Oliver, but no one wanted to see Waiting for Godot. I fail as an English major!
Oh yeah, and the best thing about London? Free museums.
All in all, good trip, except for the boat.
The trip, as a whole, was good but there were definitely some bumpy parts. This was my first cruise, and I realized that I don't really like cruises. -_- It was kind of boring on the boat after the novelty wore off, and all the activities were oriented toward older people. Also, we had a couple of incidents with the staff that resulted in my mom in tears once (on mother's day) and a slight feeling of racism here and there. Also, Princess Cruises is a lot less organized than you'd expect after all these years of doing cruises. But the main problem was that there just wasn't enough time to spend onshore. And since we had so little time, my mom organized land tours for most of our day trips, but I kind of hate tours too. I have to admit, though, it's nice to have a bus pick you up so you don't have to walk everywhere.
Anyway, my favourite place on the trip was probably Istanbul! We were only there for a day, but it was just so interesting and the people were so friendly! Did you know half the city is considered to be in Europe, and half is in Asia? And their history is likewise full of influences from various places. Istanbul = ancient Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine empire, so it was the seat of eastern Christianity for a long time, and then it was conquered by Muslims, and became the capital of the Ottoman empire. So there are things that look kind of Christian-influenced, and things that look Islam-influenced. Crazy! Nowadays, the population is mostly Muslim but they seem to LOVE westerners. Or maybe they like Asians, since my family is both. They kept wanting to take pictures with us, and kids would yell out "hello!" Also, Turkish delight is SUPER delicious! Completely different from the stuff they sell around here. We bought a whole bunch made with honey and pecans and no sugar--yum!
Barcelona was also fantastic, but we got to stay there for four days before the cruise began so I'm biased toward it. But still, really really cool place! We were staying in a rented apartment near Las Ramblas, which is kind of like a main drag, mainly for pedestrians. Every day there would be people dressed up as dragons or clowns or toilets or funny boxes or whatever, trying to make a few euro off of all the tourists. There are also apparently tons of pickpockets in the city and especially on Las Ramblas, although no one I knew was pickpocketed. One of my uncles saw a tourist getting pickpocketed though. I think the best thing about Barcelona is the architecture, which reminded me of some of the more Spanish-looking houses in the Philippines but times ten. The works of Antoni Gaudí are super interesting, but really, there were just so many amazingly beautiful, ornately decorated buildings everywhere. And the buildings and streets were laid out in a much more interesting way than they are here. At interesections, buildings would often have the corners cut off, so they wouldn't just be boring squares, and the intersection could be opened up more. What a good idea! And the city as a whole seemed very friendly to pedestrians and to public gatherings in general. Barcelonians eat out a lot, and they eat really late (because of their siesta), so it seemed like people in general were very socially inclined. Also, they had delicious food! We had paella almost every day!
Those were definitely my two favourite places. Athens had interesting ruins, of course, but the city itself didn't look as distinctive as I'd hoped. Mykonos (a Greek island) was very touristy but also very pleasant. All the buildings were white with blue trimming and there were lots of pretty things to buy. In Ephesus (Turkey) we visited the house that Mary (Jesus' mother) lived in at the end of her life. It had a lot of incense so I sneezed the whole time.
We spent a lot of time in Italy, but I'd spent a couple weeks in Italy on our last trip to Europe, and on our last trip we weren't bogged down by thirty relatives and the cruise schedule, so this time wasn't quite as nice. We visited Florence, Pisa, Venice, Rome, and the Amalfi Coast, which was ridiculously beautiful as always.
We also went to Nice and Monaco (both not really to my taste) in one day, which was very rushed. I wish we could have gone to Paris this time--I love rich, unheatlhy French food.
At the end of the trip we flew to London, and had a lovely time there! The last time we went it was super hot and we were kind of miserable, but this time was nice and cool so we had a much better time. I think I liked the zoo the best-- it was definitely the best zoo I've ever been to. Even better than the San Diego Zoo! (I just went to San Diego in June) The animals seemed very active, they had tons and tons of room, including indoor and outdoor areas that they could move between freely, and the handlers put on some really good feeding/training demonstrations. The zoo was also laid out very nicely (unlike San Diego), and there was tons of local wildlife flying/walking around too. During the penguin-feeding, a heron and a seagull showed up right before the handlers started giving out fish--and apparently they show up at every single feeding for free meals! Pretty smart birds. The coolest thing at the zoo, among many cool things, was probably the butterfly hut, which looked kind of lame on the outside (like a big inflatable plastic kids playpen) but was absolutely amazing inside. There were just so many butterflies and you got to walk right through them. There were even transparent butterflies, like saran wrap stretched on a black insect frame. In general, the zoo had tons of species there that I'd never seen before. Oh yeah, and we got a video of a tiger peeing right in front of us for about 1 minute. We're juvenile that way.
We saw two shows in London: Oliver, with Rowan Atkinson as one of the main characters (Fagan, the king of thieves), which was a good fun show; and also a Michael Jackson tribute show, where a bunch of singers/dancers performed his best songs. Considering that MJ died recently, we were really good we saw the show before his death. Oh yeah, when we were trying to find the theatres for the shows, my older brother led us astray both times and we had to run. Bah! We could have gone to see Waiting for Godot with Sir Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart (!) instead of Oliver, but no one wanted to see Waiting for Godot. I fail as an English major!
Oh yeah, and the best thing about London? Free museums.
All in all, good trip, except for the boat.