Marseille & Lyon

We spent most of a day in Marseilles, which spell check informs me has an "s" at the end if you write it in English.

Also, did you also know that "accordance" is not generally used in everyday speech? Yep. We go back to the States in less than two weeks. Culture shock here we come.

In any case, Marseilles is charming. I think I read somewhere that it has like 1/4 the population of Paris which seems about right; not too crowded but not depressively empty either. Oh good. "Depressively" seems to be another of my own inventions, thank you spell check.

On a side note: you know, it is probably so much the better that we're coming home in 11 days because instead of achieving my desired levels of fluency in a foreign language, we now have a cockeyed situation in which I start speaking the wrong language at the wrong time. At the bank the other day I ended up blurting sentences like this: "Yes actually, nous sommes ici depuis Septembre. So that means that nous avons ete ici pendant presque nine, I mean neuf, mois. Months."

DERANGED.

I'm glad the bank guy thought it was hilarious. Laugh it up, fuzzball.

Spell check is telling me to change "depuis" into "deputize." Thank you again for your diligence, dear spell check. In any case, getting back to Marseille, okay, essentially it's a nice town and you could probably go there when it's sunny and that might be really great too, but if not, be aware that in February it is cold although not unbearable. And the off-season is probably less crowded/expensive so choose your poison.

We start this evening with one of my favorite photos: MIL being slinky. Anchors aweigh, mee-ow!

A trireme (HA! take THAT spell check!) carved on a wall, overlooking the harbor OOOHHH see what I did there...? (Gotta get my kicks from somewhere.)Harbor. Said obvious narrator. User of fragments. Destroyer of spell check.A little baby boat for Henry.

Yeah that's a cool church on the hill isn't it, good thing I'm not too lazy to find out what it is. Ahem.Or this one. An encyclopedia I am not. But in other news, it's like thisclose to the sea.Front door. (Of the church...not of a house...but you knew that.)Window overlooking the sea. (Again, it's the outside window of the...oh never mind.)Mosaic time. Now this one is actually of somebody's house, APPROVAL.After wandering around for a bit and dealing with highly inconvenient restaurant hours we found a Moroccan restaurant willing to open up (Marseille has a high concentration of immigrants) and the food was pretty good. Mostly I just have to say that all Arabic music rocks. Bring on that desert yodel.

By the end of the day, Henry loved this town:Henry also loved the restaurant in Lyon where we stopped for lunch the next day on our way back up to Bar-le-Duc:He's wearing sunglasses to shield himself from the glare of his own coolness. And here's a neat castle up on the hill in Lyon.

You know, (or possibly you don't) I think by the end of Megatrip 2010 my batteries were lower than my camera's for probably the first time ever, meaning I have about six photos of Lyon. Total.

But basically we did what you should always do if you only have a couple hours to spare in a French city: pop into an authentic-looking restaurant and eat your brains out. It's the best and most French experience you could possibly have, certainly better than wandering around the sidewalks looking at stuff.

Also, the looks you get from French people when you waltz into a restaurant with a noisy toddler are pretty epic. We like to amuse ourselves by counting down the seconds until they've gulped their last Perrier and escaped.

Speaking of escape, my goodness--that's the END of Megatrip 2010!!!

Which now frees up more blog page space for the original, Blog-given right of every blogger: to pass countless hours examining my own bellybutton and the fancies that flit around my head as opposed to an endless recitation of what I did for the last two weeks of February.

I'm just saying, you'll probably end up wishing Megatrip had been longer.

Pisa & Aix-en-Provence

Is he pushing it over or holding it up? Only YOU can decide.

So, to continue with the Neverending Story...on our way back up through Italy we made a pit stop at Pisa. It's kind of touristy but still cool.

Know what else is cool? Running into Friendly Bird Lady outside the Leaning Tower. This modern-day Mary Poppins hails from China which meant that Don was able to bust out his Chinese, as was also the case in Rome and a couple other places.

Bird Lady seems like a very cheerful person and had lots of bread. Those pigeons loved her. Henry maybe not so much, what with his extreme stranger-danger phase he's going through right now...but at least he didn't burst into tears. And really, that's all I can ask for.

Luckily, Bird Lady thought Henry was cute despite his unrelenting scowl--which I'm beginning to realize is how he copes with new experiences. (It's also how he copes with old experiences, as well as everything in between.) Bird Lady: "Want a pigeon?"

Henry: "............."

That's my boy. Shyer than a wild animal. In any case we wandered in and out of the cathedral buildings at Pisa and holy cow get a load of this ceiling:If I were Catholic I would probably never pay attention to the church service, I'd be looking at their ceilings the whole time. Actually, Mormon chapels are not exactly known for their exciting decor (Protestant iconoclasm and all that jazz) and yet I still find myself gaping at the ceiling for minutes on end.

After Pisa we drove for hours up the Mediterranean coast into Southern France. Although we went right alongside and sometimes through cool towns like Monaco and Nice,unfortunately we weren't quite close enough to get any good pictures of the coastal area. But we could see that the next lane over probably did have spectacular views, if that helps at all. Ahem.

Spent the night in our hotel in Aix-en-Provence and woke up next morning to go to the local market. Aix's downtown is smaller than I had imagined it but very characteristic. It would probably look a lot more charming bathed in sunshine, but, you know...this fluorescent overhead light look you get in February is borderline acceptable.

So here are some shots of the farmer's market. They have a lot of local products made with honey and of course almost every stall sells Herbes de Provence--and who doesn't like eating lavender?! I tell you what, using flowers to spice your food is GENIUS. They do it all the time here.

We only caught the tail end of the market. I imagine it's probably in full swing by now; two months ago it was still respectable:

Somebody parked their bike next to the lettuce stall:Debbie and the ocean of flowers:We stopped by a local candy shop to try the famous Aix-en-Provence regional dessert: CALISSONS. They are small oval-shaped candies about the size of your thumb consisting of a soft, chewy fruit underside and a flavored candy shell on top.

Apparently calissons are a big freaking deal. They must be, considering they cost like 14 euros for a pack of six.

Umm, calissons are good, don't get me wrong--but they're not 14-euros-for-a-pack-of-six good. Seriously, are these things made of crushed diamonds? I would rather learn to make my own, thanks (not that I ever will.)

So like the total hobos we are, we ate their free samples and ran off.

Hee hee.

And um, what else was cool...oh yeah. Radioactively blue roses:Insert clever Smurf comment here.

Grandpa and Henry having lunch at an outdoor cafe. Yep that's a giant Gothic church just behind them; after a while you see so many that they just sort of blend into the landscape:

I have no idea what Henry's showing me here, but it better not be something he just pulled out of his mouth. Yum.

We took a post-lunch stroll through some cute picturesque streets and as I was coming in for a picture of this ginormous lion-head door knocker, an extremely friendly security guard who works at this building jumped into my shot. French people are so fun:

Also strolled past this scooter and could not resist:Handprints! Haha. And last but not least, Dustin's ever-deepening relationship with fountains. They bring out the, uh, "best" in him(?) Yep. Definitely liking this side of Dustin right here.

SlurpWell I think it's safe to say that at one point or another we all enjoyed Aix, especially Dustin, who would like to come back and go fountain-licking there again someday.

I really have no problem with that idea.

The Motherland

Another long evening of insane Italian driving.

These Italians, I tell you. Mario Kart of Death.

Also, our hotel was once again playing coy. We stopped at a late-night bar to ask directions and ended up garbling/speaking with hand signs to a group of rough-looking men and their long-haired bartender.

Side note: I will never understand why some of the scariest-looking people in the world also happen to be the nicest.

Using their all-but-nonexistent English and my throat-sounds-that-pose-as-Italian, they cheerfully told us that our hotel was really easy to get to and that we just had to make a couple turns and "go straight." Easy, so easy, so completely impossible to screw up.

Hahahahaha.

So, a couple hours and several helpful yet oh-so-unhelpful Italians later, we find the hotel.

How, you may ask? Well it was a lot farther off than we expected, and not exactly straight ahead by even the most fluid definition. We ended up following a policeman through a stadium parking lot and up a little side street to find it.

Yes, once again, it takes a policeman to get us where we're going. I hope this doesn't become a habit...

The next morning we woke up at a non-early hour, got into a slight scrabble over Vesuvius vs. Family Heritage Extravaganza, and somehow ended up at the dock buying ridiculously overpriced ferry tickets to Ischia. Or in other words, the island where Great-Grandpa Cenatiempo grew up.

Naples seems third-world picturesque, and really crowded. I especially dig their castlery (a term you may have not heard before because it did not exist until just now.) This is some kind of crazy castle right across from the ferry dock. And this, as you may have already concluded, is a picture of Don and Henry. By this point Henry is obviously okay with grandpa. And perhaps grandpa is noticing that Henry's cheeks are dangerously on the verge of a fat explosion.

And this is proof that your posterity may even go off and have its own posterity someday:The Mediterranean was blue, blue, blue. Even in February.Here we have Dustin's head and Debbie's left elbow discovering LANDAnd this is one of Debbie's shots, pulling into the harbor at Ischia.We took a regional bus to get to the town of Barano. It's a fairly small island but there are five little villages on it, and TONS of lemons. Seriously, gobs. Pics:


These are not exactly in order but I've never been known for my patience in uploading and arranging photos.

In any case, we wandered around for quite a bit. I trailed annoyingly behind and took pictures of lots of inanimate objects.

Towards the end of our visit we even found a little park where Henry and Dustin had a good time together while the rest of us sat on the bench wondering where they get their energy from.

It was dark by the time we took the ferry back to Naples and what I'll go ahead and call the Thoroughly Hidden Hotel. Next morning it was off to the French Riviera!

So, stay tuned for that and see you in Marseille.

ROME #2

I believe last time we left off at Trevi Fountain.

Not sure if I ever mentioned the Castel Sant'Angelo. Which of course would be a crime. So here's me not committing a crime: it was originally Emperor Hadrian's tomb, later became a papal fortress and prison blah blah blah and here's a picture:
While we're at it I guess now is as good a time as any to throw in some ruins, since we wandered past them at several points and it's all one big brain soup up there, so enjoy:
Sometime shortly before or after that (I have trouble remembering what I did two minutes ago let alone two months ago) we headed over to the Pantheon.

On the way, we saw Bernini's cute chubbly elephant.

Compared with our puny French town that only dates back to the Renaissance, stuff like the Pantheon is just unbelievable. Caesar walked here! The street level has risen around this building throughout the centuries! And I don't know if you caught the fact that OMG Caesar walked here! It's......really OLD!!!Stunning. Anyways, now because the Pantheon is...what was my technical term for it again...oh yes, really OLD, it was under restoration when we visited. 2000 years of crud getting scraped off the side or getting re-attached to the side or some such enterprise.

Why they couldn't have done it a week earlier or later, I'll never know--all I know is that we're fated to run into scaffolding wherever we go. And it's an-noy-ing.

No segue from that comes to mind, but here's me gaping at the Oculus:
The Pantheon was neat. I liked how there are benches inside so you can sit down. That always improves my opinion of any historical monument. Never underestimate the laziness factor.

But if I have to get up and walk around, the Vatican Museums are a pretty good place to do it in. Here's the entrance:No way can one blog page, let alone my brain, handle all the stuff inside the Vatican Museum. But here's the Apollo Bellevedere being a generally gorgeous man-statue:And here's Laocoon having a not-so-good time:And because pictures are prohibited in the Sistine Chapel (along with breathing too loudly and making eye contact) enjoy the School of Athens instead:And I just found this fun picture of Nero's giant purple marble bath tub...more like an oversized bird bath really, but just try picturing crazy Emperor Nero in there. I guess you'll have to do so in your head.

When you picture it in your head you could maybe put Nero in a swimsuit if you wanted to, I know I would--but it's your head, so ultimately it's your party.

After the Sistine we reeled out of the Vatican Museums in a fuzz of joy (well I did) and headed over to St. Peter's.
Many thanks to Debbie for the excellent and in-focus picture of Michelangelo's Pieta, since my photo of it was...well...none of those things. Dustin and I remember very little of St. Peter's apart from the floor, since that's what we looked at while scampering after Henry for a good hour while he roamed around eating crackers, grinning ear to ear, and getting personal with some nuns.

Oh and then, lest I forget, some guy in a red sweeping robe pops out of a small door in the wall and just about knocks Henry over. How many cardinals does the Catholic church have? Cause one of 'em has gone wild in St. Peter's and he enjoys toddler-bowling.

Whew! There it is, that's the end of Rome. Wow. I was wondering if I could get all that into two blog posts. To be fair, I probably skimmed over/forgot a lot of details. But it still took almost more time to write about all those things than it took to actually visit them.

Rome was fantastic and I'm glad we got the chance to go. We crammed a lot of stuff into less than two days of sightseeing but ultimately got around to everything we wanted to see, so pat on the back for us. We left St. Peter's in the late afternoon, walked back to the car and headed off to Naples.

I bet you can't guess what the next post will be about. Possibly the Cenatiempos' Italian heritage and how they visited the island where it all began?

Like I'd ever drop such an obvious hint.