We were done with Trichy and were on our way to Tanjore via Kallanai.. Hindsight being 20/20 we could have skipped that as it was a detour. Still we went on the bridge across the empty Cauvery river and back and kept going.
We reached Tanjore and the Big temple was going to open at 4PM. Our train from Tanjore to Guruvayoor was at 6:30 or so.
We spent a good hour in the Tanjore museum. The ladies were taking a nap in the car while I did the rounds with FIL. There were five sections to this complex. We spent most of the time in the museum with the bronze and stone statues.
there were some interesting things about the Tamil letters and their evolution.
Then my trusted Bata chappal just ripped in two. Walked the last 20 minutes with that. Then we made it to the Big temple 15 minutes before it opened and were walking around and taking pictures.
The amazing giant Nandi (bull) at the big temple!
stray dogs asking for belly rubs (and they do get rubs from visitors!)
a slideshow of some of the temple pics..
As soon as we got to see Brigadeeswarar, we made it back to the car. There was a flying stop at a local Bata store to get a replica of the exact chappal and we still had 30 minutes. Had the yummiest Rava dosa in a restaurant just across the station area and we spent the last 1/2 hour at the train station, drinking tea, enjoying the sunset.
This temple complex is mind boggling.
Built using elephants for labor and has stood a 1000 years. Now elephants are hardly there!
Day 2 morning was spent on a city bus tour (which ended up being a repeat for San and me of what we saw on the hop on hop off bus tour the previous day). We have learned to love these Viator tours of cities. The guides are decent, we can leave stuff in the bus as it is safe, we get to meet other folks for the day and have them take your pictures as you take theirs..and also learn about their experiences in the same city if they had reached a day or two earlier. A lot less stress for me as I don't have to drive!
The exception compared to previous day, was we got down to take pictures at a few spots like the stadium where they had the Olympics.
Then we spent the rest of the morning at the Acropolis museum followed by a walk to the top of the Acropolis itself from the museum.
You end up walking on thick glass floors where you can see two or three layers of excavated sites below. In Athens, anywhere you dig, you will find history! This is one amazing place if you love history!
There is a fantastic view of the theater as we walk up. As a FOB grad student, got introduced to Yanni.. folks used to tell me I look like him when there was the long hair phase. Had all his records and had watched him perform live at the Acropolis! walking past this brought back memories of listening to Yanni in Philadelphia!
Here is a tip if you are visiting Athens even in September. Take an umbrella. There is not much vegetation in this place. Only Olive trees grow here and while they may be few hundred years old, they are 8 feet tall, tops, for the most part! Not much in terms of shade, unless you hide behind the statues and pillars here and there!
It is still pretty hot in Athens in September. Take your water bottles with you!
The walk up to the acropolis was crazy. We estimated at least 5000+ people on the steps and another 5000 at the top! Apparently we went off season and usually the wait to go up is 2 hours! We made it in 35 minutes.
Walking under the majestic gate of the Acropolis was an experience in itself. All those traders that had docked below would have had to walk up the same steps. They must have just been floored by that entrance gate! You have to see it to believe it!
The Acropolis is just magnificent. The scale of it on top of that hill is just amazing. Couldn't help but feel a similarity between the Greeks and Indians when it came to their pride of history, their array of damaged and vandalized monuments by invaders or war, their best stuff all in the British museum!
Given the crowd, taking photos was challenging! We did get a great view of the entire city from the vista point.
Here is photo vs reality.
Greek tour guides take their jobs very seriously. Maybe they are all teachers doing a part time gig was the joke as we walked around. They have pages of notes, then they quiz you after explaining things, and even ask some folks in the group "Now, did you understand that?". Some of the kids in the group were like "if we wanted to be in school, we wouldn't have come on this vacation now, would we?". Enjoyed the history lesson as an adult.
On the way down we stopped at a park looking place with a statue of a famous greek singer. That place was nice and cool and it was a welcome break before our bus ride back to Syntagma square.
A video highlights reel..
Then we had to find lunch. Every place was booked solid with a waiting line to be seated. Stomach acid does not bode well for 50% of the family, so we all scattered and finally found a place to eat! The dry heat had gotten to us all. So after that lunch we decided to take a nap back in the rooom and venture out late evening!
If there was one place that came to the top of the list on the Europe tour, it was Paris. The kids have been wanting to go see the Eiffel Tower and see Paris with dreamy eyes for at least a few years now. Many of their classmates have visited Paris over the years and they were itching to go..
It was surprising that they allowed us to start the Europe tour in a place other than Paris and waited till day 9 of the trip to go see the sights there.
Day 9 came and we were on an all day tour of Paris which started with two hours at the Louvre. The tour covered three famous ladies including the Mona Lisa and three hallways and galleries. The Louvre being huge, this was like a trailer for a movie.. a two hour trailer!
The Louvre was amazing. The entryways, the grand staircase below the glass pyramid, the hallways, the water fountains! (yes, they were a contrast to the Palace of Versailles where one could easily faint of dehydration), and the amazing art work were a treat.
We also were fortunate to have a great tour guide for the day. This lady knew what she was talking about and paced things resaonably well.
We saw the Mona Lisa and took a selfie. There was a huge crowd just to get to take a selfie.. We did the "engaththu kaararum kutcherikku ponar" shot with the Mona Lisa.. I never realized the actual painting size was so small!! Once the guide told me that this was different from previous portrait styles in the day, I humbly bowed and moved on..
I was amazed by some of the art that I did not know about before.. the paintings were amazing as were the sculptures..
This one piece with the sunlight on the marble made the whole thing surreal.. how a person could sculpt something with marble like this is beyond me.. truly amazing.
The rest of the art looked vaguely repetitive because we had seen them at the Vatican or Uffizi or Vechchio museums or we had just seen the same stuff at the Versailles palace the previous day.
Here are slide shows from the Louvre Visit..
We were rushed to see as much as possible in two hours and were happy to be rushed. We absorbed what we could, told ourselves that someday we should just do a one week tour of the Louvre and walked out with the rest of the group.
It was time to go on a boat trip on the Sienne to see the Eiffel tower!
The video that captured the entire days trip!
The video has the entire day 9.. will be breaking the other places we visited as separate posts..
Within Rome, all roads also lead to a central point.. in spite of this, it is possible to get lost in Rome today. Google Maps comes in very handy!
The previous post on this Europe trip (day1) is here..
On day 2 we got up, had breakfast at Hotel Canada (they have a very good breakfast for 10$/person) and walked to the train station. We were taking a local metro to the Vatican. The local metros in Rome are really good. On time, every efficient and people on the trains are friendly. The ticket buying system is also very easy to use.
We were to meet our tour guide at the bottom of the steps directly opposite the Vatican entrance per instructions. This is like telling a Penguin, you walk up that island of ice and your partner will meet you there.. It looks like all of Rome is at those steps, trying to find their tour guide. There are a zillion tour guides holding flags with the tour company names and some other little beanie baby or toy tied to their little flags. The trick is to go early so you can be united with your guide. Then it is easy.. or not.. depending on, if you belong to our family.
The tour guide looked at San and the girls and shook her head. My guess was she was thinking "if you girls dress like this to Vatican, what do you wear at home? do you wear anything at all?" and my answer would have been "I have been married to this woman for 19 years and I have seen her ankles only three times in public and her knees once when she came to our Christian friends wedding in Napa. she is usually covered head to toe and gives middle eastern burka wearing woman feeling under clothed!"..
Anyways, I don't know what got into San and the kids. They decided that given Europe was going to be hot and all we had was one carry on and a backpack each for this trip (to save time at airports), they packed and dressed "light". Short skirts and shorts everywhere for the most part. Out of all of those, they decided to pick the shortest for Vatican day. Turns out the Vatican has a dress code. No exposing shoulders or knees when going into the place.
This was interesting because most of the tourists were stuck. This problem was solved by a bunch of African and Middle eastern immigrants who were selling scarves with pictures of vatican for anywhere from 10 to 3 Euros.. "knee cover. shoulder cover".. they kept shouting and were walking among the penguins trying to find their guides doing brisk business. We bargained with two or three of these fellows, found the LCM on the price (kids, note how math comes in handy) and got three of these. The boys just pulled down their shorts to cover the knees and started walking funny with a rap star gait! I now know why these rap star folks walk funny.. when you are constantly trying to avoid your shorts from falling off your hip, you walk like that!
Where were we? yes, Vatican..
We had booked trips on Viator. The tour guides were good. They had all the tickets pre booked and it was all "jump the line". Also they made sure most of our group was from USA/Canada and they grouped families with kids together. We had a 14 people group and the walking started.
The Vatican museum is amazing. The Christian leadership went out of their way to create this place and they made sure it will be preserved well.
We had seen a lot of stuff in Uffizi that was repeated here, which was good. We had already been conditioned on what to expect. There is a lot of history in this place... and also some statues that put the previous one in Uffizi to shame.. like this one..Take that Uffizi!
The photographs in Portrait format in slide show..
another slide show..
We went to the Sistine Chapel. Unfortunately there were no Photographs allowed. Some of the folks in our group were taking pictures by holding their iPhones at waist level. I thought that was not right. If me being a non Christian could accept the rules there and put my camera inside, these folks with their Crosses on their neck chains could have done better.. San told me to mind my business and we kept walking out. We also found that there were lot of folks who did expose their knees and shoulders and no one said anything. But the scarves were not exactly returnable.. I liked the ceiling but thought it was too depressing. Loved the ceiling in the Palace de Vecchio better.
I did find a new favorite painter after this trip. Raphael! The one painting on a wall above a window where he painted a prison room with amazing shadows stayed with me for a long time. Pity this guy died young. His work was the best in that place..
The basilica is a completely different story. The place is well lit compared to most of the other churches we visited and I loved it. I like places of worship that are not dark and dinghy.. a place that can lift up your spirit. Saint Peters Basilica is amazing. I could kneel down there and say a prayer and feel a sense of calm that you get in some of the grand temples in India. Totally awe inspiring place.
Once we were done with the Museum tour, the Sistine Chapel and Basilica, the morning part of the tour ended with us in the open courtyard. That in itself is grand. (see the Pano pics below). The Pano feature on iPhone was best to capture these places..
this is a Vertical Pano shot by doing backbends..
We had a tricky situation. it was already 12:30. We were supposed to be at the Coliseum to find our guide there at 1:45 for a 2PM tour. Now that we knew that finding your tour guide takes time, we rushed out to the metro. It was a 20 minute walk. We took the train, changed trains, then went to the stop for the Coliseum. Our first thought was let's get there, check in with guide and hope to find something to eat. The kids were starting to strike saying "lets eat here and then go there".
Eventually we ended up right in front of the Coliseum and there was a restaurant where we found food. They had sandwiches, fries, juice, etc.. so it worked out. The outside temperatures were close to 100F. There were no trees in the area. Mostly ruins for touring around. It is a good idea to have a hat or an umbrella if you are doing these tours in summer. We walked through multiple levels of the Coliseum with our tourguide Ursus. He was a family man with three kids of his own and given our group was just the 8 of us and a Canadian family with two kids and a grandma, he made sure the kids were the focus of the tour. They were all attentive and he was giving them a history lesson. The adults mostly trudged along taking pictures.
The Coliesum in an interesting place. Human depravity knows no bounds. At least that was my one line takeaway after walking around this place and the surrounding ruins for almost 4 hours. Good news here? Free water fountains everywhere in Rome with great cool drinking water!
After the tour, he gave us an option to continue on the other side. We said "we are all extremely tired. We will pass". Handed him the head phones and went back to take the metro to the hotel.
A video to cover our Day 2 of the Europe trip..
We did laundry at a Laundromat near the hotel, the ladies decided their hubbies should get something for being nice the whole day and sponsored a Thai massage at a place one block from the hotel. I promptly got an allergic reaction from the oil the lady used for the massage. We ate a nice dinner again within a block from the hotel at a restaurant that played world cup games on the big screen. Think it was the Belgium Japan match where Belgium came from behind and won. It was a Monday evening. After the dinner we called it a night.
We were going to go our different routes on the trip. We said our byes and it was time to pack up everything. The hotel part of the trip was over.
This weekend, we got to visit the Oakland Museum of California. We had no idea a place like this existed and were glad it did!
This was a chance to be part of a group tour (lunch included) to be introduced to the museum with the museum docents. It was like a "behind the scenes" tour with some very knowledgeable people. Given Jr. and the Little One's recent rant on "why do we even need to study history", thought it would be a good idea to do this.
This place really surprised us. Maybe because of the amount of information that we got from the docents.. maybe because we under estimated the amount of "action" that had happened in California over the last 500 years.. we still cannot put our finger on it.
All we did was explore one eighth of one floor and even less than that of another floor over two hours. It was time for lunch and our drive back. In that two hours we learned a lot.
Here are some pictures of the exhibits.
There were lots of interactive displays and the kids loved it.
This is the first time we have seen this gas dispenser among so many other firsts..
Jr. seems to have this as her signature pose these days, be it posing for Holi colors or Hollywoodland!
I was joking with the docent "we must have done something terrible to the grizzlies to have them on our flag" and she laughed. I told her "we cut down every oak tree in the area and call it Oak tree road. Kill every deer and shut off the creek and call it Deer Creek Road, decimate an entire tribe and name the local park after that tribe.." she nodded in approval!
The second "science" floor had a lot of cool exhibits. But we spent 15 minutes there in the "bee" area. We had a busy weekend with lots of other things going on.. so we had to drive back (Okay, I had to do yoga for the day.. but we did have a lot of other stuff going on with the kids having class etc.)
We are definitely going back to this place to give it the time and attention it deserves. Apparently the third floor is a photo gallery! It was a bummer that I missed it.
There are a few things learned :
1. The Indian tribes were amazing craftsmen when it came to making things with reeds. They could weave it so tight that they had water bottles made of reed!
2. San Francisco was really built up with money from the Comstock Silver mining.. not the gold rush as I had thought.
3. The peace sign actually came from the British and has to do with nuclear disarmament.. for a guy who is big on trivia, had got this one wrong!
4. California was actually named after a black queen Califa who appears in a book written in 1510 in Spain. (see one of the pictures above)!
5. Paper sons! That should be a post in itself..
Strongly recommend the Oakland museum of California. Amazing displays. Great architecture. Well laid out. Especially with the docents telling us the details, it was wonderful!
Sunday, October 13, 2024 at 10:42PM ;)
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