Hallo from München! Ken and I are on our way to Rome for a few days, then a cruise around the northern Mediterranean, then to Madrid. I'll be posting photos and postcard thoughts to this thread.
Successful first day. Flight issues thanks to snow in Munich but we got to Rome in plenty of time to enjoy a lovely dinner at Babette. Highlight was the ravioli with mozzarella and a little anchovy inside in a yummy butter sauce.
Today's outing to the Vatican Museums was too much. It's a very demanding place and surprisingly uninteresting! Maybe that was just us being cranky from the crowds. But there are some lovely things there, some snaps.
Our hotel is near the Piazza del Popolo. It's a lively space for people, I particularly enjoyed this busker blowing giant soap bubbles to entertain the crowds.
Yet more Piazza del Popolo. It's quite a scene on a warm Sunday afternoon.
The Basilica Santa Maria del Popolo randomly has a couple of Caravaggios, a Raphael sculpture, plus a bunch of remarkable decoration.
We did a tuk-tuk tour of Rome today, mostly ancient Rome sites. It was a lot of fun and we got to see a lot easily but I didn't get great photos. But here's a few!
I've been making a point of wearing LGBT flare in the US this last year, but no one seems to notice or care. Fine! But on this trip in Rome I'm pretty sure several folks have been friendlier to me on seeing my rainbow watchband. Lots of flirty waiters.
Good morning Napoli!
Visited Herculaneum today, it was astonishing. It took me 30 minutes to understand all the beautiful masonry was original, not restoration. First set of photos, some shots of spaces
And some details of art. The decorative mosaïcs are absolutely gorgeous in person. Such tiny stones! And they are right there, sometimes for you to walk on.
Proper Neapolitan pizza at 50 Kalo. It was very good. But this is sacrilege: I've now had enough good examples of this style of pizza to say the soft crust is really not my favorite. It gets limp very very fast, ends up being more like lasagna on the bottom. Lovely cornice though.
Good morning Menton!
Dolceacqua, a preserved medieval hill town with tunnel-like streets.
Musée Cocteau
Office de Tourisme
Halles Municipales
McDonald's
Audi Service
Lamborghini Service
Good night Menton!
Good morning Genoa!
I really like Genoa! A big city, industrial and with an enormous port. But also a lovely city center very dense with tiny pedestrian streets. And of course lots of monumental Italian architecture.
Genoa also has terrific food. We toured the Mercato Orientale Genova, a very impressive food market that puts anything in the US to shame. I also found some street food snacks on my walk back to the ship. The focaccia was particularly good, stuffed with some creamy salty cheese. Probably prescinsêua or maybe stracchino.
Good morning Villefranche-sur-Mer!
Pleasant morning wandering around Villefranche-sur-Mer, a small and charming town. Not depicted: the Chapelle Saint Pierre which is fully decorated in paintings by Jean Cocteau. It is marvelous.
Our bouillibaise at La Mere Germaine. It was good but there was an awful lot of it.
Today we are in Valencia. They have this amazing park, the Jardí del Túria, built on the old riverbed of a diverted river. A 200m wide park running right through the town some 10km, a green lifeline defining the city. Also some amazing contemporary architecture.
We did a paella cooking class today that was a lot of fun. It's a simple dish but there's a lot of important customary technique to get it right.
Good morning Palma de Mallorca!
Palma de Mallorca is a lovely town, at least during low season. Tidy narrow streets, a place for vacation pleasure.
But the real jewel of Palma is La Seu, a 13th c. Gothic cathedral. Impossibly huge interior vault, light and open. And beautifully restored in the early 20th century, a fantastic building.
Palamós, our last port of call. A pleasant enough fishing town on the Costa Brava but nothing special. We didn't feel like taking the long drive to see the Dali Museum so I just walked around a bit.
Our cruise ship was Silverseas' Silver Muse, an ocean-going ship on the smaller side at 600ish guests. Excellent high end service, the staff has dialed in the trick of being very professional but also genuinely personal and friendly. The ship is quite nice too with a lot of smaller spaces and restaurants to break up the crowd. We are going to miss this generous hospitality.
Joey Yates has been a highlight of this cruise. He is a performer playing evening piano. He's very talented, holding a room several times a night with sets varying from quiet instrumental, sweet vocals, and fun piano bar tunes. He writes his own material and does great patter with the crowd. He's also genuinely friendly with the guests, we enjoyed getting to know him. We ended up planning our evenings around his schedule.
Went to the Prado today. Overwhelming and magnificent, particularly in scale. This time I finally understood Goya. His transition from elegiac paintings like the Old Masters to these very modern and unsettling images.
Excellent dinner of Fabada Asturiana, Spain's answer to cassoulet. Bean stew with cuts of delicious fatty pork sausage and something like bacon. This one was served with beans and meats cooked separately which was a really nice touch, kept the flavors distinct. Very satisfying with good pork.
Been enjoying a lot of Iberian ham but have never seen a rose sculpted from pork fat before.
Last tourist day in Madrid, a fun Tuk tuk tour of monuments and then some tapas. The bars and restaurants here are all packed, even early March.
