Italy and Croatia

After leaving South America, we flew to Milan, Italy, and met up with Karen's brother, Seth, and his girlfriend Haley. From there the whirlwind travel commenced - seven days to see as much of Italy and Switzerland as possible (two countries in a week? No problem...).

Day 1 - Milan and Lake Como
As we flew into Milan, we figured we should at least give it a look, so we wandered around the city center for a couple of hours, did some window shopping, and satisfied our intial gelato craving. Unfortunately, the beautiful cathedral there was covered in scaffolding (which seems to be rather common in Europe) so we couldn't fully appreciate it. We did have fun wandering around Castello Sforzesco - can you spot the tiny Seth at the bottom of the turret?.



After our three hour "comprehensive" tour of Milan, we hopped on a train north to Varenna on beautiful Lake Como. The best part about our visit (other than the super hotel that we stayed in - Hotel Du Lac really is a perfect place) was that Seth and Haley got engaged! Yay!



Day 2 and 3 - Switzerland and the Golden Pass
We headed back to Milan to take a train up in to Switzerland where we were met and graciously hosted by Ben's frend, Valmai (who makes an excellent cheese fondue). We got on the road again early the next morning, stopping at Lucerne to walk around this lovely town. We particularly enjoyed the ornate Jesuit church (it doesn't look like much from the outside, but it is definitely worth a look inside). The rest of the day was filled with the Golden Pass - a famous, panoramic scenic train ride from Lucerne to Montreaux that passes through the Alps. We lucked out with the weather, as we had mainly beautiful blue skies which lit up the snow-covered mountains and cute villages that we passed along the way.



Day 4 - Florence
Fresh from our overnight train ride (lesson learned - you can not pick up pre-ordered tickets for an Italian train ride in Switzerland...even if it starts there), we spent the day wandering through Florence. You can't miss the enormous Duomo with its multi-colored marble facade and the massive painting of the Last Judgement on the dome interior. We also took in the huge art collection at the Uffizi, and watched the sun set over the river (and yes, we had more gelato). Check out Ben's arty-farty shot of the Ponte Vecchio in Karen's super-fashionable Italian sunnies.



Day 5 -Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast
Completely refreshed after our second overnight train ride (in a row), we staggered into our lovely hotel in Sorrento and were eternally grateful for early check-in. A few hours later we emerged and took the scenic bus ride along the precipitous cliffs of the Amalfi Coast. In Amalfi, we replaced our gelato addiction with a love of limoncello, searching for as many free samples as we could before finally selecting the perfect bottle. This region is famous for its citrus fruits - we were amazed by the football-sized lemons.



Day 6 - Pompeii
We visited the famous city of Pompeii, a Roman settlement that was destroyed by an eruption of nearby Vesuvius in A.D. 79. Excavations into the ash that covered this city reveal a well-preserved picture of Roman life at that time: well laid out and paved streets (with the chariout ruts still showing), pottery, paintings, beautiful mosaics, lead piping for water, bathhouses, whorehouses, and many, many other buildings and structures (lesson learned - give yourself more than two hours to explore this place). Sobering reminders of the fate of these people are the plaster molds made of the cavities left in the ash from the victims' bodies.



Day 7 - Cinque Terra
Our final stop was the lovely Cinque Terra (further north on Italy's west coast). We stayed with Karen and Seth’s aunt and uncle – they have the most amazing view of Poet’s Bay and the 6th century castle that looms above it. This is a lovely area to explore with five small towns perched among the cliffs. We hiked between Monterosso and Vernazza, a beautiful (if somewhat tiring) hike, which rewarded us with many wildflowers and stunning views of the sea and Vernazza. Here we said goodbye to everyone as Seth and Haley headed back to the States and we made our way to Croatia by ferry.



Croatia
After arriving in Zadar, we were picked up by our good friend Masa (an ex-Merck colleague) and enjoyed our first of many café breaks (relaxing with friends over a cappuccino for as much of the day as possible seems to be a Dalmatian custom). She took us to her family home in Split, where we were treated like royalty (including first-class dining courtesy of her husband, Jura), and spent a lovely couple of days recuperating from our Italy trip. We then joined Masa on a three-day trip to northern Croatia and Istria to check out the countryside and perhaps pick up a few hundred sage clippings on the way (Masa’s PhD studies are focused on Croatian sage).



One of the nicest parts of the trip was staying at the Pensione Tramontana, complete with a lovely view over the town of Beli, and exploring the sheep and sage-covered island of Cres.



Taking a ferry to the island of Krk, we enjoyed views of the AMAZINGLY crystal-clear water of Croatia. The scenery here was vastly different, dominated by scarred white rock, which we saw all along the Croatian coastline.



Our last few days in Croatia were spent back in Split, mainly hanging out with Masa’s son, Marko (who has a passion for climbing :). He was our expert guide for the historic center of Split, sections of which date back to Roman times.



One of Marko’s other passions is caving, and we joined him on an expedition to a local cave. The entrance drop was around 20 vertical meters, and we were greeted by a few of the local inhabitants. We had a really nice time exploring the beautiful features of the cave (thanks again, Marko!).



Since Croatia, we have been having a wonderful time visiting friends in Germany and Denmark. From this point, we only have another couple of weeks in Europe (Ireland and London) before we head to South Africa! We’ll update you on the rest of our European travels when we have the chance! Happy Easter!

Brasil - Our last days in South America

Apologies for the long delay in posting. We left South America for Europe and have spent the majority of time with friends and family, so updating the blog has not been our top priority. However, we have a bit of time here in Copenhagen, so we are attempting to catch up.

We left off having finished volunteering in Bolivia and on our way to Brasil for Carnaval....

Goias
From one line in our guidebook about a "joyous Carnaval celebration little known to outsiders", we headed for the small town of Goias Velho. Our guidebook proved correct as we really enjoyed the 5-day celebration in this beautiful town, and we were probably the only foreigners there. The people were super-friendly and tried very hard to communicate with us, even though we quickly learned that our basic Spanish knowledge was of no help in understanding Brasilian Portuguese. We did manage to communicate that Ben was from Australia, which provoked questions such as "Is it cold there?" and "What language do they speak there?". However little else they knew about Australia, they did know that they made it to the World Cup this year. As long as we could somehow relate all of our conversation to the World Cup, we got along just fine. We didn't bring the camera out much as we were too busy having a good time (and didn't want to stand out more than we already did), but we managed to snap some shots of the brightly painted buildings lining the cobbled streets, as well as one night of the celebration. Samba dancing and drum squads everywhere!




Brasilia
After Carnaval, we headed east to Brasilia. Much like Australia's capital, Canberra, Brasilia was constructed roughly 50 years ago in the middle of nowhere, Brasil, for the sole purpose of being the capital. The city contains some really beautiful buildings, most designed by the architect, Oscar Niemeyer. We climbed the radio tower for a good view of the city center with the congress building (shaped like a giant H for "humanity") at the end. We only went in a few of the buildings. One, the Itamarati palace (for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) is surrounded by a water garden and is very beautiful inside, containing gardens, cocktail rooms, dining rooms, and many sculptures. We also went in the Cathedral Metropolitana, shaped like a giant crown of thorns with a ceiling made of stained glass.


We were also impressed with some structures not constructed by Niemeyer. The Dom Bosco Santuary was really beautiful with all four walls filled with stained glass of varying shades of blue and a massive chandelier made of Murano glass. After sitting inside for a while enjoying the play of light through the windows, we exited and were greeted with a world made all of yellow, as our eyes attempted to readjust to unfiltered sunlight. At the end of the day, we made it out to the JK Bridge. The design was inspired by the flight of a skipping stone, and it was named the most beautiful bridge in the world in 2003 by the Engineer's Society of Western Pennsylvania (yay, Pennsylvania!).



Ouro Preto
As Brasil continued to get more and more expensive the further east that we went (hostel accomodations were roughly 5 times more expensive than Bolivia....ouch), we decided to delay going to Rio by heading to another beautiful small town, Ouro Preto. A colonial gold mining town, the city has beautiful buildings lining steep (!) cobbled streets and each hill is crowned with a church (13 in all). The hostal we stayed at was really lovely, with a great view of the city from their bird and flower filled gardens.



Rio de Janeiro
We finally made it to Rio with only two days left in Brasil. We made the most of it by heading to the top of Pao de Acucar (translated as Sugar Loaf) mountain for some views of the city. We were almost thwarted by thick fog that decided to gather only at the top of the mountain, but we were lucky and it blew off long enough for us to take some photos (the buildings lining the beautful white beach behind Ben is the famed Copacabana section of Rio). If you look closely at the last skyline photo, you can just spot the statue of Christ the Redeemer crowning the peak of Corcovado. We also took in a football game at Maracana Stadium (which has held over 200,000 screaming Brazilian fans at one time). We sat in the fan section for one of the teams, so we were surrounded by dancing, clapping, and singing fans jumping up and down and waving massive flags the entire game, which definitely added to the atmosphere.




We flew out of Rio on March 10th, and have traveled through parts of Italy, Croatia, Germany, and now Denmark. We have been staying with the most wonderful people (thanks to all of our excellent hosts!). We hope to update the blog soon with some European pictures.