Paris

As if Shannon and I require an excuse to travel, for our 2nd anniversary we decided to go to Paris. We had each been there before on separate trips so we repeated some experiences and tried to mix in some new ones. If you can believe it when Shannon was in Paris before the Louvre was closed so we made a visit to that museum a priority. Obviously it is one of the greatest museums in the world and I like it because it has awesome art and history collections from around the world. We also made a point to make it to Versailles where we toured the palace and enjoyed the temporary Japanese exhibit and the gardens outside. We visited many museums in Paris and saw the many famous sites. We also found time to make it to a couple shows including the famous Moulin Rouge. Not surprisingly we had a nice eating experience in Paris as we explored the different areas of the city.

Florence 2010

Shannon wanted to go to Florence for her birthday this year for some good food and shopping. We visited the famous Uffizi museum and saw one of the most famous art collections in the world. We had both seen the David on previous trips so we decided to skip the line this time and just see the replica at the Piazza della Signoria. However Art museums were high on Shannon’s list of things to do so we also visited the Palatine Gallery and the Modern Art gallery. We also got some of Florentine history in with our tours of the Famous Duomo and the Medici Royal Apartments. Shopping was one of the priorities for this trip so we visited the leather market a couple times. We both brought back some nice souvenirs from our trip.

Oktoberfest II

I had a great time at Oktoberfest last year so this year Shannon wanted to see what the fun was all about. This year we made it in for the opening ceremony which features a parade that brings the kegs in on horse drawn carts. The climax of the ceremony is when the mayor of Munich cracks open the first keg of the festival and the fun can begin. Our first day we toured a couple of tents and ended up meeting some Swedish revelers who we hung out with the rest of the night. Our second day we took a tour of the Dachau concentration camp which is just 10 miles outside of Munich. Dachau was the first concentration camp and served as the model for future Nazi concentration camps. We ended the day by visiting the famous Hofbrauhaus and later to the Augustiner Haus for dinner. Our third day we took a guided walking tour of Munich and then headed back to the tents in our recently purchased traditional Bavarian Dress. We were very popular the entire evening and made lots of friends.

Belgium and The Netherlands

For our first international trip of the summer we joined up with our friends Dan and Jess in Belgium. We lost a couple hours the first day before we figured out that we each had arrived at different airports but everything else went smoothly after Shannon and I picked them up in our rental car. Our first stop was at the famous Westvleteren brewery in Belgium. Westvleteren is a Trappist monastery that brews beers consistently ranked among the world’s best. The beers are only available for purchase at the site itself. From there we headed to the city of Bruges where we took in the city’s midieval architecture while on a boat tour on the canals. We also visited churches, museums and a brewery within the city limits. We ate the traditional Belgian fare such as mussels, cheese and chocolate. I ate many waffles which are apparently appropriate for any meal, or between meals. From Bruges we headed north into the Netherlands and to Amsterdam. In Amsterdam we visited the famous art museums, the Anne Frank house and explored the squares and parks that make Amsterdam such a nice city.

Our final stop was in the Belgian capital of Brussels. In Brussels we saw the famous architecture and statues and did some more beer tourism. Our trip to Belgium and the Netherlands was great, it was an escape from the intense August heat of Sicily and an opportunity to spend some time with friends we hadn’t seen in too long.

The Summer

Last summer Shannon and I were lucky to have lots of visitors to share Sicily with. In this entry each picture is a link to a different album. Mike and Emily came to visit us from Indiana in May and we took them around to see Sicily visiting sites such as Agrigento and the Vineyards of Mt. Etna. Their trip was capped off by a stay at the COS Agritourismo along with many of our friends from the Base. Shannon had organized the trip to be a murder mystery party so many of our guests dressed up and brought props to play their parts. In June my parents came to visit from Detroit. We showed them parts of Sicily and we tried lots of the local dishes. During their trip Mom and Jim invited us to go on a cruise with them around the Western Mediterranean. On the cruise we visited Carthage, Tunisia; Majorca, Spain; Barcelona, Spain; Provence, France; Genoa, Italy; and Pompeii, Italy. We saw a lot on a one week cruise and had a great time.

Next Jeremy and Lisa came to visit us from Chicago. We showed our visitors some Sicilian sites and booked a visit to an Agritourismo in the Vittoria province of Sicily. Vittoria is a wine growing area and during the trip we spent time visiting Ragusa, the wineries and chilling out by the pool.

In July my sisters came to visit- Carrie is entering her senior year of high school and Teresa is in college back in Michigan. They had never been to Europe before so it was fun to show them around Sicily and explain how old everything is here on the island. After visiting Palermo, Syracuse and the Aolian Islands the girls and I took a 10 day road trip through Italy. We crossed the Straits of Messina to the mainland and stopped in cities all throughout the peninsula. Along the way we visited Pompeii, Florence, Milan, Lake Como, Verona, Venice and Rome. It was epic.

Ireland

When a volcano in Iceland erupted this spring many flights in Europe were cancelled. The ash cloud never reached Sicily, but Irish air space was closed in the days leading up to our planned trip to Ireland. This time luck was on our side and we were able to make our trip a little more than 24 hours after the flight ban was lifted.
We arrived in Dublin on a foggy and rainy day. We checked into our hotel in the city near Stephens Green and headed over to the St. James’s Gate Brewery. Arthur Guinness acquired 64 acres in Dublin city in a lease that lasts 9000 years at £45 per year. On his land he built a brewery and St. James’s Gate has been the world headquarters of Guinness beer since 1759. Today you can tour the old brewery and enjoy the exhibits that tell the history of Guinness and explain some of the brewing processes used over the years. At the end of the tour there is a roof top bar where you are given a complimentary glass of Guinness.

Next we toured St. Patrick’s Cathedral which is the National Cathedral for the Ireland and also the largest church on the island. The church was built in 1192 and placed on the spot where Saint Patrick baptized converts from paganism to Christianity.
From there we headed over to Dublin castle and took a tour. The castle was built by the English for defense of the city and to protect the King’s treasury. The castle was completed in 1230 and remained the seat of British rule in Ireland until 1922 when Ireland became a Free State. Today the castle is used for government offices and ceremonies. Like many castles, our tour took us to royal apartments, ball rooms, banquet halls and a throne room.
After dinner Shannon and I took a guided tour of Dublin that focused on the rich literary history of the city. It was also a pub crawl. The tour was lead by professional actors who take visitors to pubs of literary significance, perhaps a frequent stop for a poet, or the setting for a scene in a novel. At each stop the guides perform a scene or song from the work of a Dublin artist. It was less lame than it sounds.
Itching to see some of the Irish countryside, the next day we ventured out to the Wicklow Mountains. We were able to do a little bit of a hike along a river that leads to Glendalough, a medieval monastic settlement founded in the 6th century. At Glendalough there are churches and ruins of churches along with a Celtic graveyard.

From Glendalough we headed to Brownshill Dolmen. Brownshill Dolmen is a bit of a mystery, it is a tomb built of large granite rocks in the middle of a farmer’s field. The tomb was built between 4000 and 3000 BC and the roof of the tomb is a slab that weighs 110 tons. Shannon claims to have solved the mystery of how they built it.
For lunch we headed to the city of Kilkenny. Kilkenny was built in the middle ages and today is a very enjoyable town to spend an afternoon in. We did visit the major sites of Kilkenny Castle and St. Canice’s Cathedral but mostly we just enjoyed walking through its streets and taking in the city’s charms.
The next day we toured Trinity College which, founded in 1592, is the oldest college in Ireland. The campus itself was nice and was a point of interest along our literary pub crawl a couple of nights earlier. Today our aim was to visit the famous Trinity College Library. The Library is the largest in Ireland with around 5 million volumes and is also entitled to receive a copy of all works published in the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. However the coolest part of the library is Long Room and the Book of Kells. The Long Room is lined with shelves containing 200,000 of the library's oldest books and manuscripts, along with busts of scholars, a 14th-century harp and an original copy of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic.
The book of Kells is the prize possession of the library. The Book was made by Celtic monks around 800 AD and is an illuminated manuscript in Latin, containing the four Gospels of the New Testament. The exhibition for the book is great. Because the book is illuminated each page is a piece of art and they have individual pages framed on the walls like an art museum would hang canvases. Along with opportunities to view the pages there are exhibitions about the making of the book and its history. The library at Trinity College was a highlight of the trip.
From Trinity College we headed to the less high-minded museum at the Jameson whiskey distillery. Still one of the most recognizable whiskies, at one point Jameson was the largest distillery in the world. We took a museum tour that walked us through the history of Jameson and the distillery process.
So our tour of Ireland began at a brewery and ended at a distillery. But in between we saw castles, libraries, churches and sheep. We had a great time enjoying the many sides of Ireland.

Istanbul

Istanbul is a very cool town. Shannon and I did not know when we left that it would be such a great place to visit. There are excellent ancient sites to visit, great museums, along with tasty food and drink. The city itself is really nice too, existing on both sides of the Bosporus River it sits in both Europe and Asia. The city is clean, organized and easy to navigate on foot. The primary difference between Istanbul and any other European city is that instead of Churches, the city is spotted with Mosques. The only other predominately Muslim city Shannon and I have visited is Cairo and they seems worlds apart as far as culture, wealth and progressiveness. Istanbul has the Muslim call to prayer 5 times a day but few women cover their heads on the street and alcohol is available in almost every restaurant. In fact starting in the 4th century AD, the city was the Christian capital of the Roman Empire and it remained Christian until 1453 when Sultan Mehmet II conquered the city.
Shannon and I had a rocky start to our Turkish adventure because flight delays all of our bags did not make it with us to Istanbul and we arrived very late. We did not arrive at the hotel until after 1am and we were informed that the only room left was the penthouse suite so they gave it to us at no extra charge. So our room had wrap around windows along its own Jacuzzi and sauna. However the coolest part was the view. From our balcony we had an unimpeded view of the Hagia Sophia, the Golden Horn Waterway, Topkapı Palace, and the Blue Mosque. I don’t know if another hotel could have had a better view. The Hagia Sophia is a huge building and took up almost our entire window to the South.
On our first day in Istanbul we headed over to the Topkapı Palace which was the residence in the city of the Ottoman Sultans for 400 years. Today much of the Palace has been turned into museums holding art collections, artifacts and treasure. The Palace is a huge, walled complex that contains many courtyards and mosques. First we toured the Harem, which is a section of the palace with over 400 rooms and served as the home of the Sultan with his wives, family and concubines. We viewed ceramic collections, the imperial library, the armory, and portrait gallery.

The highlight of the artifacts was the Chamber of Sacred Relics which houses what are considered to be "the most sacred relics of the Muslim world." Some of the artifacts on display include the swords of the first four Caliphs the turban of Joseph, the forearm and the hand of St. John the Baptist, a piece of the Kaaba (the most sacred site in Islam), and a carpet of the daughter of Mohammad. They also have a casting of Muhammad’s footprint, along with his cloak and sword. However the relic Shannon and I were most intrigued by was the “Staff of Moses”. Let me just say it looks nothing like what Charlton Heston wielded in The Ten Commandments and looks more like a stick. The plaque next to the “Staff” has a description suggesting that it may not be the actual staff. I guess we’ll never know. However these artifacts are considered one of the greatest collections in the world. In fact they are considered so sacred that at one point even the Sultan and his family were permitted entrance to the chamber only once a year. Today the site is open to the public every day and is a pilgrimage destination for Muslims around the world.
Another surprise was that 2009 was the “Turkey-Iran Culture Year.” In the spirit of the theme, Topkapi Palace hosted a special exhibit called "Ten Thousand Years of Iran's Civilization, Two Thousand Years of Common Heritage” which featured Persian art and artifacts on loan from the Islamic Republic of Iran. It was a great collection and one that we may not have the opportunity to see again for a while.
We could have spent days at the Topkapi Palace but there were more sites to see. Next we headed over to the Hagia Sophia and where we hired a guide to show us around and give us the inside scoop. The Hagia Sophia is very cool. Emperor Justinian had it built with the aim of creating the largest and most majestic structure in the world. The Basilica was completed in 537 and in fact remained largest cathedral in the world for nearly a thousand years. In 1453, Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Turks and Sultan Meshed II ordered the building to be converted into a mosque. They removed the Christian symbols and plastered over the murals while adding Islamic features such as the four minarets outside. Today the building is a secular museum, in 1935 the first Turkish President, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk believed that the building should belong to the world and ordered the carpets removed to expose the marble floor and other decorations appeared for the first time in centuries, also the plaster covering many of the mosaics was removed. What remains today is an interesting mix of Islamic and Christian art and symbols. All interior surfaces are covered in marbles, green, white and purple, along with gold mosaics. It is one of the coolest buildings I have ever seen.
From there we headed to the Basilica Cistern. The Cistern was originally built by Emperor Constantine and then later enlarged by the Emperor Justinian and was used to provide water to the city. The cistern is underneath modern Istanbul and the ceiling is supported by 336 marble columns. The cistern is 105,000 sq feet in area and capable of holding 2,800,000 cubic feet of water. Interestingly, despite is immense size the Cistern was “forgotten about” for hundreds of years. Petrus Gyllius, a Dutch scholar, while doing some architecture research in Istanbul noticed that some residents were fishing through holes in their basement floors and went in search of a stream or natural spring under the city. What he found was a surprise even to Istanbul city officials. The cistern is fed by aqueducts which bring water in from 12 miles north of the city. It used to be full to the top, but today they keep the level low so people can walk around on raised platforms.
The next day Shannon and I visited the Blue Mosque. The Mosque was built in the 17th century and intended to “rival and even surpass the nearby Hagia Sophia in grandeur and beauty.” Although the Mosque is decidedly (not just by me) not as impressive as the Hagia Sophia, it and interesting combination of themes from the nearby Hagia Sophia and traditional Islamic architecture. It is considered the last great mosque of the classical period and one of the great mosques of the world. The interior of the mosque is covered with more than 20,000 handmade ceramic tiles and has 200 stained glass windows.
After the Blue Mosque, Shannon and I took a boat ride across the Bosporus to the Asian side of the city. There is not much to report from the Asian side, it mostly served to give us some different views of the city and allow us to get some lunch.
After our Asian adventure we headed over to the Istanbul Archeology Museum. The museum was established in 1891 and houses over one million objects that represent almost all of the eras and civilizations in world history. One of the most famous artifacts is the Alexander Sarcophagus, believed to be prepared for Alexander the Great, but he is in fact in Alexandria, Egypt. The museum contains many other Sarcophagi, Greek and Roman statues, Glazed tile images removed from the Ishtar Gate of Babylon, and an exhibit dedicated to Trojan artifacts.
My favorite part of the museum was the Tablet archive which contains 75,000 documents. They had everything from political treaties to marriage and divorce contracts. Among the collection included the oldest surviving political treaty- the Kadesh Treaty drawn up in the 13th century BC ending a war between the Egyptians and Hittites. (quick fact: An enlarged replica of the Kadesh agreement hangs on a wall at the headquarters of the United Nations because it is earliest international peace treaty known to historians.) There are also clay tablets bearing Hammurabi's famous law code written in cuneiform (earliest known writing system in the world).
The next day was our last day and we only had the morning to do more exploring. We went first to the Spice Bazaar. The spice bazaar is the second largest bazaar in Istanbul and was constructed in 1660. Shannon bought assorted spices, herbs and tea to take back with us.
Next we went to the Grand Bazaar. The Grand Bazaar can be a little overwhelming for many reasons. To begin with it’s huge with 4000 shops and miles of streets it is one of the largest covered markets in the world. It is also crowded with between 250,000 and 400,000 people visiting every day. Also I think you can buy anything there- seriously probably anything. In addition to all the shops, the market has mosques, banks, police stations, restaurants and workshops. It was crowded, loud, colorful and very interesting.
We ate well in Istanbul, the exchange rate between the Dollar and the Turkish Lira favours us so we could eat at nice restaurants each night. Turkey doesn't seem to care for vegetables much so we ended up eating a lot of beef and goat. For lunch we would find kebab places all of which served excellent kebabs or wraps for very cheap. We also drank a lot of tea, the Turkish tea is black tea from the black sea coast and is by putting loose tea leaves in boiling water. The tea is therefore very strong and served in small glasses. We also tried the hookah one night with some flavoured tobacco, it was fun although we both agree that Egyptians do a much better hookah.