Eurotrip 2011: Caio Messina

We woke up on this day to one of the most beautiful views of the entire trip. We were in the port of Messina, the weather was absolutely spectacular and the boat was in the process of circling around so that our direction for departing was from the way we came. The port was busy with activity as work on the water gets started well before sunrise. We got our things together and headed downstairs.

I didn't get into this last time around, but we had asked around about where to go in Messina the night before. Beth had heard of some medieval clock that's in Messina, and the biggest question was how close was it to the boat. Taking a taxi had been expensive so far, and we were looking to break out of that cycle if possible. We heard a few rumors, but were instructed to talk to the excursion pro that will be in the theater area on the boat, where all the excursions gather before leaving in the morning. We got down there a little before 10am and asked her what the deal was. She let us know everything was within very short walking distance and that there was a shopping district that would should make sure to check out, as there was a gelataria there with the best canolis in town. Even though it seems (from an American perspective) that canolis are an Italian dessert, it's really a uniquely Sicilian dessert which explained that we never saw one canoli in any of the thousand gelaterias we saw in Rome. In addition to this widely known dessert shop there was a place called Coin to get some ladies clothing and accessories. She graciously drew her instructions on a 'map' of Messina, that the ships excursion crew had provided one of the tours earlier, and we were off.

We get off the ship and there's a small sidewalk that lets us cross the major road (Via Vittorio Emanuele II) parallel to the peer. It was lined with locals selling their wares and I began to understand the business of cruises and destination countries a bit better. We found our way across the street and worked our way through the city on the way to Piazza del Duomo and the timepiece that Beth had heard so much about; the Orologio Astronomico or Astrological Clock. This clock/bell tower and adjacent church make up one of the biggest attractions in Messina for many reasons, but the main one is that the clock is a mechanical marvel that produces quite the show at mid-day. When this clock strikes twelve noon, everyday rain or shine, the medieval built machine sets off a series of events much like dominoes falling; a rooster crows, a lion roars and waves a flag, Jesus and his disciples are orbited by birds and for the grand finale a group of statues rotate to an instrumental playing of 'Ave Maria', projected through what seemed like a WWII era intercom/broadcast system (modern update I assume). The whole event is about 15 minutes long and if you're in town it's a must see.

While in Piazza del Duomo (center of map) there are sweeping flocks of locals trying to sell hats. Once you get in the habit of saying 'no thank you' and/or ignoring street peddlers it can make it hard to get valuable information from locals actually trying to share tradition and information with you. There are some interesting historical items here, including this fountain. What you see here is called the Fountain of Orion, and it was built by one of Michelangelo's subordinates (Giovanni Angelo) around 1550AD. This water feature celebrated the first aqueduct in Messina, in the 16th century. While we were Rome Beth and I drank some water from the a fountain across from the Pantheon, and I wasn't inclined to take a sip from this one.

Piazza del Duomo and the tourist buses arriving for the astrological clock show.

To be honest, I didn't know what I was shooting while I was there, we were wandering around hungry in the late morning ha. That brings us to the most important thing, the lunch we had before noon. As they say in the real estate biz, location location location, and the sole restaurant in Piazza del Duomo was Dolce Vita (which doesn't show up on google maps accurately). Dolce Vita was a complete restaurant with a great shaded seating outside and a tasty menu. We found ourselves eating a ton of traditional antipasti throughout our travels in Italy; this day would be no different. We also got ourselves a local pizza variety that escapes my mind currently; it had bacon, ham, potato, mozzarella and red sauce. Another lovely touch was the olive oil and balsamic vinegar condiment packets. A little olive oil, pepper and salt with the fresh baked rolls was a good way to get the party started. Calling the meal delicious would've been an understatement and it was a reminder why authentic is always better than imitation, no matter how flattering it may be. We paid our bill then joined the major crowd that had formed for the show.

Monochrome. #13

Vagfair 2011 album coming soon.

Green Thumb Season 2 - Ep. 4

If you remember the plan from last time, while we were away from the Country we had my brother-in-law Chris come by the house to water our plants. After getting back from Europe into Philadelphia Int'l Airport, on Thursday, Chris picked us up. I asked him how long it had been since he'd been there to water the plants and he said Tuesday. I was worried. I asked how often he'd been going over and he said every couple of days. I was even more worried. We got home and I made a b-line for the deck with water in hand. Yeap, I had reason to be worried.



irregular growth

The cucumber plants were just about depleted. They require a bit of water due to the size of the fruit and since this had been a particularly hot and dry week, some of the major veins had dried up. There were a couple cucumbers that hadn't been picked yet, so we took those off and tended to the cucumber plants to see if they could make a recovery. Now this wasn't as bad as it seems, as the cucumbers didn't have much more fruit in the tank for the season. The pepper plants on the other hand had thrived; they didn't need as much watering attention, obviously, and all the plants had produced more peppers while we were gone.


Italian Sweet pepper.



Yummy pepper.



Post-trip bounty.


After a week or so passed I decided to ask Beth, who was off for the summer, to make her way to the local nursery's to see if should could find some other herbs or something that we could replace the cucumber plants with. No one in a radius of 10miles had anything; it's odd too because there's at least two months left of warmth with the way the seasons go these days. Anyways, the focus was now on the evolution of the peppers. We took a few jalapeños off and used them in different food dishes and we were pleased to find they had good kick. The Thai peppers weren't quite as strong. Their seeds packed a decent punch, but they were no where close to as hot as I hoped...and I like hot peppers.


Last weeks' chicken fajitas.

Not too much later the Thai and Yummy peppers began to mature. The Thai Hot peppers can be picked while green, but red is preferred. I'm not sure if red necessarily means the flavor and spice has matured, but why not. The Yummy peppers have a similar picking option, green or orange-yellow. We've been having the Yummy peppers in salads and the Italian sweets and jalepeño's have been included in peppers and onions sauteed up for dinner with chicken sausages, beef and chicken fajitas. Unfortunately I don't have many pics of the dishes due to how busy I've been lately, but here are some shots of the last few weeks of growth.

Week 15:



New Yummy's on the way.



Week 16:


Yummy's starting to turn.

The jalepeños have been the best performer this year.

This may be the end of this series as there's a ton of effort going into recapping Eurotrip 2011 through the Fall and editing about 10k images taken over the past month (and more coming up). Never fear, Season 3 will start when the next crop is planted!

Eurotrip 2011: I'm on a boat!

We packed the night before and went to the lobby of our hotel to await contact by our shuttle to the port of Civitavecchia, Italy. Fortunately we had covered the confirmation with the shuttle company prior to the phone failing, so everything went smoothly. We lugged our stuff outside after receiving the call and made our way to port with two other couples on the way to a different cruise than ours. To recap, our cruise had four stops scheduled: Messina (Sicily), Athens (Greece), Kusadasi (Turkey) and finally Crete (Greece). We arrived at port, and were dropped off at the Royal Caribbean check in center for our boat, The Navigator of the Seas.

I was physically burnt. Sleep had been terrible, getting up early to walk over 5 miles each of the past two days didn't help, and I just needed a nice soft place to lay down. In the meantime, we stood in a snake-line with about a thousand people in order to check-in and turn over our passports...which was weird, but worked out fine. We made some preparations before going on the boat to ensure it was as good an experience as possible. I've been on plenty of small boats in my time, for as long as 3 days straight, but since this would be 8 days we made sure to pick up both Bonine and ginger root extract pills. The Bonine is for nausea due to the constant motion in the ocean, and the ginger root helps settle the stomach if the nausea does arrive. Throughout the trip I took half a days serving of Bonine (one tablet) and a ginger pill with lunch and had no problems outside of the unavoidable 'rocks'. Even the rocking isn't that bad when it doesn't lead to hugging a trashcan. We also stashed Bacardi that we bought in Rome, in our luggage within some portable pouches, to ensure we could keep costs down if we really needed to avoid expensive drinks.

We boarded the boat prior to our rooms being ready, so we were instructed to stay on the lounge levels of the boat until 3pm. We checked our luggage but I held onto my camera bag. We walked up 10 flights of stairs to arrive on the pool deck and found a pair of recliners to crash on. We went to the bar, ordered a beer and a water, then retreated to the covered area near some retractable windows. The view outside was pretty impressive. The water in the Mediterranean was amazingly blue and I did my best to try to capture it as days passed. Also, The Navigator of the Seas ship and it's crew were quite impressive. Bigger than the Titanic, with maps of the boat and all it's facilities in about 10 places on every floor, and loaded with just about everything imaginable to make you think you weren't on a ship. They had an all in one ID card/credit card/passport that you had to keep with you at all times and logged all the charges that would eventually be presented to you in a nice white envelope on the second to last day. And due to issues with people walking away from paying in different parts of the boat, they didn't let you start tabs in the local bars. This got pretty annoying by day three, but was a necessary evil.


US outlets were my life preserver


After getting an hour of sleep, the central broadcasting system sounded an alert announcing everyone could check into their rooms, as it was 3pm. We worked our way down to our our floor, towards the front of the ship on the 7th floor, and opened the door. Arguably the biggest room of the vacation and a balcony with a view of the ocean. I'm glad I didn't cheap out on the room. The bed was a queen, but was shaped in such a way that made my heels hang off (I'm 6'1"). I wasn't too concerned with that, I was just happy that we had more than 10 channels on the TV, we had US-spec plug outlets so I could charge my computer and camera batteries, and most importantly the bed was soft. I jumped into the soft sheets with a big smile on my face and heard something awful. I heard the public announcement system, which I thought I escaped already, and it was on in the room informing us of a mandatory life preserver/life boat briefing in 30 minutes. A minute later the announcement started again, but this time in Italian. Then in German. Then in French. Then someone was knocking on the door to remind us to go. Then I was outside with one eye half open being told how to put a life preserver on.

On our way.

This ain't the Atlantic Ocean.

I hobbled back upstairs and decided to take a couple pics. Beth went through the interactive program on the TV to figure out our excursion for Sicily and I then started backing up pictures off my memory cards, because I hadn't had the ability to do so previously. I got back into bed, turned on the TV and found myself one of the two German TV channels which was broadcasting the F1 Grand Prix race at Silverstone. I was happy. I nodded off. I woke up to our luggage being delivered, and our Bacardi made it. I was happy. I nodded off. I woke up a couple hours later to Beth doing her hair at the vanity, post-shower, imploring me to wake up because our scheduled dinner time was coming up fast. Ugh. Despite my ambivalence on attending the organized dinner (there was a buffet option as well which I was betting on), I got in the shower and threw on some clothes. We walked down to our assigned dining table, me with red eyes and on auto-pilot, then proceeded to sleepwalk through conversations with five nice couples from the (4) US and (1) Romania. I did more head nodding and smiling than talking and afterwards we made our way back to the room. After a drink or two I caught my second wind. I've been working evenings and going to bed around 4am for the past 3 years; like magic, regardless of my energy level, once midnight comes around I can always stay up til about 4am without fail. I didn't stay up that late on this night, but 1:30am was close enough. I closed my eyes and tried to catch up on sleep.

Monochrome. #12

Eurotrip 2011: Vatican Museum for two Pt.2

Sign after sign for the Sistine Chapel came and went and it was no where to be seen. Then, like magic, the stairwells got tighter and more rustic. We were almost there. A bathroom line appeared, followed by a small cafeteria and stairs to a smoking area. Last rest stop before going into the world famous meeting ground for Roman Catholic elite as well as arguably the most famous ceiling of artwork ever produced...but for now I was thirsty. We go into a bad excuse for a line and got some drinks. I chugged a bottle of water, strategized with Beth on next steps (it was already ~3pm) then made our way to the main event.

Unfortunately there are no images of this part of the journey; while plenty of people were going against the Vatican security presence, taking pictures and video of the ceiling, I respected the rules and took some time to listen to my digital tour guide. The audio player described the artists who provided material as well as the material and what it referenced. Raphael's ceiling piece and the process behind it was examined, as well as the large-scale refresh of the Sistine Chapel's artwork, which took place a decade or so ago. The atmosphere was cool and there was a constant low murmur of conversations about everything to be seen, broken up by security's firm requests for silence and "move along" to the endless waves of tourists entering the Chapel. The first thing I did on my way in was locate 'The Creation of Adam'. My eyes then wandered over all the other pieces I've only seen in textbooks. There were several hundred people present at the time and no real place to sit. It was an awesome experience. On our way out we saw that some people were walking through a shortcut door for tour groups only. We took a mental note and went through the regular exit. We ended up into a modern art exhibit pathway, then got to another hallway with books and other Vatican related items to buy. With no real exit revealing itself, Beth asked a cashier how to get out. The gentlemen chuckled and pointed us towards to exit.


Exit ahead...or so we thought.



We ended up in a large bookstore type area where the Vatican Post Office was housed. Beth and I bought postcards and shipped them home. She sent one to her very Catholic Grandma Joan and good friend Liz and I sent one to my parents. On the same floor there was a wooden scale model of Vatican City which was quite impressive. Somewhere around shooting that pic I lost my lens cap. We made it all the way down the steps of the Vatican Museum exit (see above) and I ran back up and looked everywhere. Resigned to it's loss I got my camera bag back and we made our way down the Vatican City wall to St. Peters Square. My take away from the Vatican Museum was that, regardless of arguments of how all the works were collected, there was more art there than anywhere else on earth. In a way this fact was both good and bad for the time we had to spend there. Of course it's great to be able to see so much of mans creations from the long history of humanity, but there was really too much to see for anyone even in a day's time. We were later told that if you spent one minute at every exhibit in the Vatican Museum it would take you 13 days to see it all.

After a short stroll we entered the place of legend. St. Peter's square was bigger than I expected. Looking around you could immediately tell that the previous Pope was quite the hard act to follow. The next thing we noticed was the line to get into St. Peter's Basilica. Earlier that morning we asked our substitute tour guide if we could use the tickets we received to get into the Basilica per our initial tour arrangement and she told us yes. However, we didn't know how the tour guides waved their magic wands for this one. Rather than getting in line, since it was already 5pm and our energy was low as ever, we walked to catch a cab back to the hotel. While looking for cabs we stumbled onto a rally for the Rome chapter of Harley Davidson enthusiasts. It was quite the spectacle.

Next time, St. Peter's Basilica. Next time.

We returned home to pop into one of the other cafes we hadn't frequented yet. They had liquor, which was the biggest draw, as we wanted some for the cruise. Bacardi and panini's in hand, we got to our room and had lunch. Later that evening, we ended up back at Il Capitello for our last meal in Rome. We dined and sipped vino outside while observing locals and visitors from multiple countries work their way around town, along with homeless sleeping on the street within a stones throw. The shop keepers made sure to keep randomly approaching vagrants from interrupting their customers experience (much appreciated), but it didn't happen to often that night. It was a reminder of the current economic state of the world, Italy specifically, but in my mind was oddly normal. Another great meal enjoyed, we headed back for a short night of springy sleep. In the morning, we'd be getting a shuttle to the Civitavecchia Port to start our Mediterranean Sea cruise.

Eurotrip 2011: Vatican Museum for two Pt.1

The non-tour line to get into the museum can be seen on the left. It wrapped around a kept going for another 70 yards.

After another crap night of sleep on the springboard mattresses at Hotel Planet Rome, we had to get up early and make it to the Spanish Steps across the street from the entrance to the Vatican Museum by 9:30am. We had a few things working against us that I didn't get into during the last post. To make a long story short, I bought an international use SIM card for the trip and borrowed a smart phone from my friend Paul. We used the phone successfully after arriving in Italy, but the data features were all useless, including google maps which is the main reason I got a SIM card and filled it with minutes. I also bought a outlet converter for me to charge my laptop, phones and camera accessories. Due to a 'mix-up' shall we say, both of these items were taken out of commission. This lead to some problems; neither of us wear watches and we had no ability to charge any electronics until we got onto the cruise ship that Sunday and today was Saturday. So to save batteries, I left my US cell phone (HTC Evo) turned off, only turning it on as needed, due to its notoriously short battery life. I programmed my US phone so that it had the local time displayed, which was GMT+2 during this time of year. We woke up to the alarm on Beth's US phone that I hadn't programmed yet. Doing the math from EST, we thought it was 8am when it was really 9am. After our cab dropped us off at the Vatican wall, the time info on the first couple shots I took left me confused. I figured it was just a mistake and stopped for breakfast since it'd be a long day of walking once again.

Even though our rush clouded the experience, we stopped in a nice restaurant a block away from the Vatican Museum entrance. We ordered food, then I took the pic above. The time stamp on that image was really bothering me so we asked the waiter for confirmation. Yep, we were off an hour, it was 10am and we had missed our 3hr tour which had cost a few hundred to book. I scarfed down my eggs paid the bill and we quickly made our way to the next Dark Rome tour that was were our meeting spot was. The rep let me know our tour had gone already, but she could take our voucher and bring us in on her tour which wasn't really a tour, but rather a free for all that let you skip the line. This was the start of the longest day of my life. Ha just kidding, but not really.

At 10:30am this new tour made it's way to the entrance line work-around (the main line was entering from the left of the pic above). This is a seemingly generic process where the tour guide holds a piece of paper with identification on it, in the air, and a bunch of people follow them inside. The line for those who hadn't booked in advance was long and hadn't wavered since we had eaten. We got inside to relive our airplane boarding experience once again; a row of about eight security stations with scanners awaited. Little did we know at the time that this would be a running joke all cruise week. I got through metal detector check to have a security officer randomly tell me I had to check my camera bag, which was the only thing I brought with me. It was packed with spare memory, batteries and other accessories, but in the disorienting nature of the process, and lack of English used, I didn't take anything out of the bag as my camera was already around my neck. Yep.

Once my bag was checked and I received a ticket for retrieval, the tour group scattered and we made our way upstairs to the main ticketing desk. There were plenty of options for those who didn't have a tour guide, including a headset and digital player that you could use to get information on anything you were looking at, using a numbering system. We got our equipment, map of the Vatican Museum and started making out way towards the start of the exhibits. There were signs everywhere giving you a general idea of where places in the museum were, but no real specifics; I found this to be synonymous with most direction receiving experiences during our time in Rome. The beginning of the museum started off with ancient artifacts collected around the world. Starting with figurines from the ancient Mayan civilization it them moved to Egyptian ruins and early African carvings.

As we proceeded the artifacts decreased with age and before we knew it an hour and changed had gone by. The tour we missed was 3 hours long and supposedly visited the Vatican Museum, the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica. The thought of this Gilligan's Island reenactment became unfathomable (or should I say realized) as hours passed in the Museum with no real idea of where the exit was. To be honest, there were multiple reasons why the trip through the museum was taking so long. The main reason was that I was taking pictures as we went and the lighting conditions were such that I had to take relatively long exposures in most situations. I had no tripod, just ISO/aperture adjustments and my hands. I found myself leaning against anything I could to take keepers and by the end of this day I was a better photographer. The second contributor to problem was tourists like ourselves. In order to capture anything decent I'd have to contend with the thousands of people all sharing the same space. As time passed the 'waves' of people became predictable and work got smoother.


A break in this wave was a minute or so away



On our way between exhibits there were large windows that gave a hint of this museum buildings' design. There was a huge courtyard inside of the four wings of the Vatican Museum, whose centerpiece was a large bronze globe that was actively in motion on it's many layers. We kept walking in the direction all the signs said the Sistine Chapel was, but all we found were literally thousands of more rooms with exhibits. As we walked the hallway ceiling artwork started off being works of pretty accomplished artists; Raphael, Michelangelo, etc. Lesser known artists filled the void elsewhere.

I shot like a madman and my camera started to get warm. Next thing you know the new 16GB card I bought specifically for this trip started giving me CF Error messages. My heart sunk. I had shot about 700 images so far and to think they were all gone was a little frustrating. I also had no other cards with me because they were in my bag. It was great to see plenty of other people with large bags about this time; and don't think I felt singled out, Vatican Security randomly selected a wide range of people to check bags; women, children, old men. I really didn't know what the overall security plan was, they were half paying attention all the while...but I digress. We got a little closer to the Sistine Chapel, going through random room after room. About 15minutes later I tried to turn on my camera again and my memory cards image count returned! I was back in business. Hopefully I could make it back to my bag without any other issues.


One of the rest areas on the way to the Sistine Chapel. My camera works again!