Adventures in Rome and Florence!

Hi everybody,

In a couple of hours I’ll be flying back to Sydney, so I thought I’d put in another blog update about my adventures in Italy.  The first few nights I was in Rome, I stayed in the lovely Trastavere neighborhood, which has the oldest church in the world dedicated to Mary.

Here is a picture of my first meal in Italy, which was at a nice little restaurant nearby:

My first day in Italy I didn’t have much energy to do more than explore Trastavere a bit and then go to sleep.  But the next day early in the morning I went on an epic trip to the Vatican City.  On my way, I was delighted to see a store selling the latest in ecclesiastical fashions:

Here's St. Peter's Square:

The first thing I checked out in the Vatican was St. Peter’s Basilica.  It is very difficult for a photograph to convey how amazing and beautiful it is.  I tried, but all the photos I took with that intention came out looking lame.  So instead, here is a picture of me with some of the Basilica in the background.  (Note the halo.)

The next thing on the itinerary was the Vatican Museum, which is HUGE, and has the Sistine Chapel inside it.  But we weren’t allowed to take pictures there.  Nevertheless, I did get a few pictures of some lesser but still amazing masterpieces.  I took the liberty, for example, of inserting myself into the School of Athens:

and posing in front of the Laocoön:

At one point I glanced out a window from the Vatican Museum and was charmed to see a tennis court and a little playground for children in the Vatican’s grounds.  I didn’t know the Pope went in for tennis:

And speaking of the Pope, attached to the Vatican Museum there was a little-known exhibit of Popemobiles through the ages.  I took a picture of one of the swankier old Popemobiles:

A few more things I saw in the Vatican before I left were this charming picture of the previous Pope holding a Koala, and a painting of the Magi coming to visit Jesus, which I photographed because Jasper’s name derives from Gaspar, the name (according to tradition) of the Magus who brought Jesus frankincense.

I did a bit more walking around Rome that day, including a visit to the ancient temple of Ariadne, which I expected to have that library-esque vibe that more or less like every other Very Old Thing has, but which instead seemed to have a panel discussion going on inside, with lots of Italian politicians and the media and enthusiastically clapping constituents.

Before I left Rome I also checked out the Colosseum, which was astounding, and the Palatine, which is the (now uninhabited) neighborhood nearby where all the old Roman aristocrats used to live:

Then a few days of philosophical conferring, and on to Florence!  Which I have to say I liked much better than Rome.  My first meal in Florence was a German sausage and some German beer, which was being served out in front of the Cathedral of Santa Croce because of some German market/street fair.

Florence is a very beautiful city.  The skyline is dominated by the Duomo, the central cathedral, which is humungous. 

Florence also boasts the Ponte Vecchio, which is a famous bridge that connects the two parts of the city.  Mostly it has lots of jewelry shops on it.  You can see it in the distance here.

And that’s about all, folks!  I saw a lot more in Florence (e.g. Michelangelo’s David, Boticelli’s Birth of Venus, etc.) but photos were forbidden, so I don’t have as much from Florence to post.

So that’s the report on my trip to Italy.  I’ll be getting home late Thursday night, and am soooooo much looking forward to being with Rachael and Jasper again.

Lots of love from the Eternal City,

Throckmorton.

Dubai

Hi everybody,

Well, I'm in Rome now, but first I had a 19 hour layover in Dubai, where I stayed at the amazingly opulent and beautiful Arabian Courtyard Hotel & Spa.  Here is a picture of my room and the view from the window of the Dubai Museum and one of the Grand Mosques of the city:

I also had a walk around the old part of the city (Bastarakiah), where I had lunch:

And then a walk around the textile market (called a "souk"), which was a bit intimidating, somewhat like the tourist retail area in the Turkish city Rachael and I went to once, only this time all the pushy salesmen were trying to sell textiles.

The textile souk was close to the little creek that the city of Dubai is built up around, so I took a picture of that too.

On the way back to the airport I caught a glimpse of the world's tallest building (the one that looks like a needle, second from the left), but it was too far away to look very impressive in a photograph.

That's all for now.  I'll have a post about Rome in a day or two.  All the best from the Eternal City,

Throckmorton.

Hi everyone!  It's been a while since Throckmorton, boy reporter, last brought you up to date on his adventures, and there have been several.  Firstly, a few weeks back, I went out to the Art Gallery of New South Wales to take in an exhibition of works by Picasso that were visiting Australia for a Limited Time Only!

I didn't actually photograph any of the Picasso pieces because I wasn't sure that I was allowed, but on the way to and from the Art Gallery I took a few pictures of points of interest in the city of Sydney.  Here is a view from Hyde Park of the grand Catholic cathedral in downtown Sydney:

To get to the Art Gallery I walked along Art Gallery Road, which was quite beautiful:

And then on the way home I crossed the bridge over Darling Harbour and took a few pictures of the boats:

But wait, there's more!  My old friend Ben is visiting Australia for a few weeks, and last weekend he and I went on a road trip from Sydney to Melbourne.  Here he is enjoying an Australian coffee, which is the best in the world:

Before we went to Melbourne, we took a trip out to a local zoo and hung out with some Ozzie wildlife:

The drive from Sydney to Melbourne is very very long, so to break it up a bit we stopped from time to time in little towns in the middle of nowhere, including Holbrook, a town hundreds of kilometers from the coast that randomly acquired a submarine decades ago to attract tourists.  Ben took my picture on it.

And finally to Melbourne, where I had some terrific Eggs Benedict on DeGraves Street:

Melbourne has a lot of inviting little alleys with shops and cafes:

Because Ben has developed a severe allergy to gluten, we hopped on a tram to a place that serves gluten-free fish and chips:

At dusk we drove out to the Phillip Island nature park where every night at dusk the local penguin population can be seen parading home from the ocean to their burrows.  They were very very cute, but it was kind of hard to see them properly because the nature park was so crowded with people staring at the penguins.  Also, we weren't allowed to take pictures of the penguins because it can blind them if you use a flash, so instead of the penguin parade I took a few pictures of the people parade from the parking lot to the penguin habitat:

Ben flew from Melbourne to Cairns and will come back to Sydney in a little while after exploring there and in Brisbane.

But that didn't keep old Throckmorton and Rachael from having yet another adventure this weekend!  Variety's 1955 prediction that rock and roll would be gone by June is still false, thanks in part to Rachael's rock star brother Jonathon, who had a gig in the town of Katoomba up in the Blue Mountains on Friday that Rachael and I drove out to see.  Here's the website of Jon's band, which you can check out at your leisure:

http://thisismusic.com.au/about.php

I also took a video of their performance that should give you an idea of how great they are:

Jon is the one singing on the left, Kis (pronounced "Keesh") is the guitarist on the right, and behind them both is Pete on the drums (he's a bit harder to see).

Last but certainly not least, the next day on our way home from the mountains, Rachael and I stopped at a stunningly beautiful botanic gardens for tea and botany:

All the best,
Throckmorton.

more Paris, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and home!!!

In our last few days in Paris, Rachael and I visited the Cathedral of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, which was extremely lovely, and I took a lot of pictures.

The Cathedral is especially noteworthy, from my point of view, because it is where Blaise Pascal is buried, and, from Mom's point of view, because it had a little box where offerings could be made under the patronage of St. Therese.

From Paris we flew to Singapore for three days.  On our first real expedition in Singapore, we got on the top of a double-decker bus in order to get to the Little India neighborhood, but my navigating efforts failed, and we ended up in Chinatown instead.  A very friendly Chinese-Singaporean woman helped us find it.  The Chinese community in Singapore is gearing up for the Chinese New Year, and there were decorations for that all over.

Slightly to our surprise, McDonald's is trying to cash in on the Chinese New Year fever by pushing a seasonal "Prosperity Burger," which I did not try.

Rachael and I visited the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple in Chinatown and, frankly, found it quite off-putting.  The temple was full of shiny Buddhist bling in a way that seemed irreverent, perhaps partly because it is only a few years old, so all the gold shiny things haven't had a chance to become charmingly worn.  Anyway, it seemed painfully materialistic to me, and deepened my resolve never to become a Buddhist.  I didn't take any pictures.  However, before we left, I took a picture of a Buddha statue on sale in a store with a swastika on its chest.  It was nice to see a swastika functioning as a symbol of something good instead of evil.

Later that day Rachael and I took a walk by the Singapore River.

This building is commonly referred to as the "Durian building."

And, speaking of durian fruit, we saw lots of them all over Singapore, although I didn't try it.  Our hotel even had a durian policy:

The most exciting thing about Singapore, we decided, was the culinary aspect.  We eventually did make it to Little India and had a lot of delicious pratas (more commonly spelled "parathas", which are discs of fried dough, sort of like pancakes); to the glitzy shopping district and had some delicious dumplings; and to the Middle Eastern neighborhood for some delicious "Murtabaks", which are kind of like pratas stuffed with meat.  Also, we went to a fancy tea house for delicious tea and scones.

 Last but not least, on our way from Sinapore to Sydney, we had a layover in Kuala Lumpur (in Malaysia).  I wasn't expecting to encounter anything bloggable there, but lo and behold, in the middle of the airport there was a Jungle Walk, where you can leave the indoor area and walk around inside some real jungle with plants and tropical birds and a waterfall. It was hard to take a picture that really conveyed the jungleness properly, but I did my best.  (Rachael says I look crazed in this photo; I think she looks beautiful.)