April in Paris

We saw, we ate, we drank....we enjoyed every second.

Pinch Me

You think that if you've seen one, you've seen them all.  Well, that doesn't 't really hold true for some things.

There are very few places left that I really want to go and very few things that I really want to see before I leave Europe this summer and return to the place I really want to be.  So on Christmas Day, I was looking for places to go over the long weekend in January when I realized that I had yet to see David's butt.

That's right, the main reason I went to Florence was to see David's butt.  And there's no hiding the fact (mainly because he's naked) that it is in fact a nice butt. 

This is a replica on top of a hill at Piazza Michelangelo.

And the one below is outside the Uffzi Museum.

You're not allowed to take pictures inside the Accademia, where he lives.

 So I took my time and admired Michelanelo's work.

I'm not a museum person, but I am an architecture and beautiful scenery person.  Florence has all three.  Florence also has some wonderful food and also happens to in the Chianti region....what a coincidence!  So, I took in the scenery, the wonderful vitamin D that I've needed so desperately, and the fruits of the region, all topped off with some great naps.

Ain't No Particular Way

My friend Kim wanted to go to Prague. And she wanted to do so without having to bore a 5 year old and a husband with architecture and no plans. That's where I came in. Neither of us had been to Prague in about 10 or so years and neither of us really remembered much about it. Our plan was to relax, see some beautiful architecture, eat good food, and drink some good beer.

We stayed in a brewery hotel--the smallest brewery in Prague. We ate in the hotel's adjoining brewery restaurant when we arrived and were surprised when we ordered a dark beer that we were served a dark Budvar (the original Budweiser brand). The other surprise is that Prague still doesn't have the ban on smoking in restaurants.

On Saturday we had decided to do a walking tour of the city, but it didn't begin until 2, so we meandered to the Charles Bridge and took in the views. We strolled through the city, not looking for anything in particular and when we wanted to stop to see something or drop into a shop, we did.
One of our goals was to avoid the tourist restaurants and we did a fine job. For lunch on Saturday, we stopped into a restaurant for a long, leisurely lunch that had some wonderful food. I had a sausage and cabbage soup and a mushroom risotto.
The tour we took was by New Europe and their idea is that you pay for what you can afford and do so by tipping your guide at the end. I took one in Paris and think they're pretty good. You learn about the city, but also quirky stories that you don't read about in guidebooks.

An architectural example of cubism.

We ate at another great restaurant on Saturday night that was out of the tourist area, but quite close to our hotel. The prices in Prague have risen--it's not as cheap as it used to be--but we still were able to have a great meal at a much more reasonable price than in Germany or at home. After dinner we headed to the river so we could get some night shots of the castle. I had some turn out quite well, but my favorite is of the street car.

Just before we got our ride to the airport, we used the coupon from the hotel for a free beer from the brewery.  It was delicious.

My Old Kentucky Home

I had a wild hair. Which is funny, because it's usually a stiff chin hair, not a wild hair, but whatever kind of hair it was, I went home over the 4th of July for a wedding reception. I had already declined my invitation many weeks before, but bored one Saturday, I discovered "cheap" tickets, so I plucked the hair or smoothed the hair or...I bought the ticket, okay.

It was a quick trip home, I'll admit that, but well worth it. I flew into Washington and out of Louisville, where the reception was held. I spent 1.5 days in Baltimore, if you can count the rush hour traffic from Dulles Airport, which we avoided by stopping in Washington D.C. for Angus burgers and beer. On Friday Chris and I set out early on a road trip to Louisville, Kentucky.


Instead of the typical mindset of having to get there as quickly as possible, we drove and when we wanted to stop, we did. Our first fun stop, was at a casino somewhere near Charleston, West Virginia (but not Charlestown races and slots like you hear on the commercials in Ohio). In 30 minutes, we lost $33 in a few slots, but mostly my fault at the craps table. I was able to annoy a bunch of old men when I showed up to the table and everyone passed the dice until they got to me, when I happily threw them for craps. Everyone loses! Woohoo!!

Back in the car and on the road a while longer, I saw a sign for Louisa (Kentucky), when I exclaimed, "that's where my great-grandparents were from! I was there once to see G.G.'s (great-grandmother) grave!" The genealogist in Chris couldn't resist, so we turned the car around and headed back for the exit and found our way to Louisa.
Once there, we trolled through town searching for a cemetery and finally stopped to ask someone. He gave me directions and we headed up a hill to find it. I had been to Louisa once before when I was probably around 10 years old. The area where my great-grandparents had their house was going to be flooded to turn into a park and we went down so we could see it one time, and for Grandpa and my Dad to see it one last time. We saw where the house used to stand and some bricks that once made up the one-room school house where my grandpa attended. On that trip we also visited G.G.'s grave and all that I could remember was that the grave was on a hill.


So Chris and I searched this small cemetery, looking at every headstone and plate in the grass, but found nothing. Back into town we stopped at a gas station for water, where Chris asked a customer about another cemetery. He gave us the locations of two others, which were more out of the way than the first. The largest of the three we visited, I was certain felt right, but after searching, we found nothing. Although we didn't find the graves, we did learn that one of our federal government officials came from Louisa. Pretty exciting.


On Saturday morning, for breakfast we met Chris' family, who had driven up from Tennessee, along with his daughter and son-in-law, the bride and groom. I just loved listening to them talk, because I love their accents. However, after not understanding something Chris said (his accent gets thicker the more he's around his family), I was corrected by his Mama that he didn't have an accent. Yes Ma'am!

The reception was Saturday. It was a burger bar and a local Louisville brew, with instructions to "wear whatever you're comfortable in." Perfect. I think weddings are overrated. The beer was wonderful and the burgers were delicious! Low key and no chicken dances. Nice job, Jen and Scott! Congratulations!

We visited the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory and that was awesome. They had an exihibt where you could choose from 4 game-used bats to stand at a plate to swing or have your picture taken. Every kid was opting for Lou Gehrig's bat (or was it Mickey Mantle's?), but being the oddball Reds fan, I chose Johnny Bench's bat.


On Sunday, we went to Churchill Downs. Because of the holiday, it was free to get in. Completely confused on where we could sit to see the track out of the sun and how to bet on the races, we sought help. A lovely usher gave us seats for a very small tip, a card on how to bet, and the program for race day. We sat in "box" seats, which had a tv with the race and were directly in front of the room where the rich people stayed, with air conditioning, servers, tables, food, and drinks. They only came out to watch the races.


We bet on every race we saw. We knew nothing about the horses, but chose based on their names and sometimes their odds. Our math wasn't that great, but I think we came out almost even.

Here's to America's birthday and to chin hairs!

On an Evening in Roma

Over Memorial Day weekend I went to Rome with my good friends Kim, Brian, and their 4-year old son Jack. Rome was another place on my list that I have always wanted to see, so in April when Lufthansa was having a sale on flights within Europe, we combined that with a holiday weekend and booked it. We stayed at a place we booked through Vacation Rentals by Owner, which is a site that regular people use to put their house/apartment/whatever up for vacationers in cities all over the world. Our place was great. It was just down the street from the Colosseum, away from the noise of the main street, and included a private patio.

The Italian gentleman, Andreas, we rented the apartment from recommended restaurants, certain self-paced tours of sites, and also where the grocery store and other necessities were. Since we were starving, we went to the closest recommended restaurant to our hotel and it was awesome. It was a small place with seats outside and it was packed with Italians and tourists alike. The place across the street was empty. The prices were super cheap and the house wine was amazing. We liked this place so much that we went back for our last night. The best part was that the local Italians seemed to love it as much and they were regulars, judging by their interaction with the staff and owner.

On Saturday, we headed for the Spanish Steps. We hadn't had coffee or anything to eat yet, so in tremendous faux pas, we found a McDonald's and got coffee and croissants. We wandered over to a piazza that Andreas recommended, where you could climb to a high point and get a view of the city. After that, we had lunch and then walked to the Vatican, for which we had reserved tickets online.

Spanish Steps

View of Rome

First of all, the Vatican is huge. You walk in and you see signs pointing toward the Sistine Chapel, which is all I wanted to see, you walk down some halls, past beautiful artwork, and some awesome ceiling art, but you still aren't there. So you follow more signs and you think that it's got to be close. But it's not. More hallways, more art, more signs. Finally, you arrive to a huge, dim room full of tourists who wanted to see the same thing. And you look up.

Not the Sistine Chapel, but very beautiful.

Even though there are signs saying no photography and guards, too few for the large crowd, shouting 'no photographs', there are still people taking pictures. So, I turned off my flash, held the camera at my chest and pointed up for a few shots. It's hard to see (especially since I didn't bring my glasses) with the dim light, but it was absolutely amazing and beautiful. The crowds got to me, though, so I didn't stay long.

The Sistine Chapel

Me, in from the Vatican and not on fire!

Since we had been walking all day, literally from the Vatican to our apartment near the Colosseum, Brian and I went to the grocery store to get stuff for dinner. We bought super cheap wine, which turned out to be really good, and had pasta with sausage and zucchini on the patio that evening. It was wonderful.

The walk to Piazza Navona

Rome is filled with lots of statues with butts and phallic symbols. Funny.

On Sunday our only goal was to see the Colosseum and we figured 10 was pretty early, but were surprised to find the line already with a wait of 45 minutes. So instead of waiting, we joined one of the English tours they were trying to get people to join outside and I'm glad we did. Had we just paid for entry, we wouldn't have heard any of the stories of the entertainment that the Colosseum intended. Around 700,000 people died in matches and thousands of different kinds of animals from all over the world that the Romans could reach. The guide said that they had "comedy" shows in between the battles. The comedies were things like a dog versus a porcupine or a woman versus a midget.

Inside the Colosseum, this was the arena floor, which you can see they've reconstructed there on the right. The gladiators entered from beneath and the floor had trap doors to remove the dead animals or the gladiators. The gladiators were mostly criminals who were serving a sentence and they lived across the street, where they learned to fight. Being a gladiator, if you survived, was sort of like being a Hollywood star in today's world.

Since Jack wasn't having a lot of fun and Brian was bored too, they left Kim and I to walk around on our own after lunch. We strolled the city, saw Trevi fountain, and got a gelatto and coffee. That evening we went back to the same restaurant we tried the first night. Kim and I got an awesome spicy pasta and mussels dish and some delicious red house wine.

Trevi Fountain

It was a great trip, with great weather, and some great friends. I'm happy to have been able to see Rome with them.