From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Wed, 03 Jun 1998 14:59:05 -0400
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: We made it! v2

Hello, everyone!

We are composing this email from our hotel room in Barcelona.  Here's what
happened so far:

We flew from Newark to Copenhagen in "EuroClass" on SAS - this was a
pleasant surprise. Apparently, getting to the airport early paid off,
because we got that upgrade from "tourist class" which allowed us to have
huge seats with tons of legroom. SAS serves good food and wine as well, so
it was a nice trip.

We got to Copenhagen during a light drizzle, but didn't care because we
weren't leaving the airport. The airport there is beautiful but sadly
lacking in any kind of anti-sneezing medication which, by the time we
arrrived there, Hillary desperately needed. Although she'd taken her usual
antihistamine AND some comtrex pre-departure, she was apparently VERY
allergic to something on the plane (or is coming down with a cold). She has
gone through 6 or so of those little travel sized kleenex packs and is kind
of bummed about that. One cool thing about the Copenhagen airport is the
existence of a "Quiet Area" for you to hang out in. Also, there were
numerous nifty and amusing Sun Microsystems advertisements lining the
walkways.

Anyway, we got on our connecting flight ok and the flight attendants gave
Hillary some medicine which helped a bit. We got to Barcelona on time and
due to Michael's outstanding grasp of the native tongue, we were able to
find our way to the Hotel Cadovanga via train and taxicab. Kudos to Michael
also for explaining to the saleswomnan at La Farmacia that Hillary needed
"mas kleenex" :)

We walked around briefly in downtown Barcelona, stopped at a cafe for dos
coca colas, and tried to do some planning using a map that was 4 times the
size of our table. We believe that we managed to tip the waiter (and cab
driver, for that matter) correctly; however we have concluded it not going
to kill us if we leave a tiny bit too much instead of not enough.

Refreshed from our cokes, we returned to our hotel room for una siesta
grande. We just recently awoke, and we plan to try to find somewhere to eat
some dinner and perhaps we will also look for the cybercafe listed in our
guidebook.

The weather is pretty nice - there was a quick thunderstorm while we were
on the train, but we somehow managed to avoid being rained on pretty much
entirely, and it was clearing up and then sunny by the time we finished our
walk.

We just heard over the AP feed to our cellphone that the FDA has approved a
large scale trial of an AIDS vaccine. This is pleasing to us, as we were
distressed by the news of the large German train crash earlier today.

So far everyone here has been very friendly and Michael has been truly
amazing with regard to speaking Spanish to them.  Hillary has piped in with
the occasional "gracias" but really isn't very much help in that regard.

One thing about our hotel: we realized that it is very good that Avi did
not come with us, as he would likely not fit into the elevator. Avi, if you
come to spain, check out the elevators in advance! This one is pea sized.

Well, since all we've really done so far is travel, buy some kleenex and
cokes, and take a nap, this is likely an extremely boring email for you to
read. Therefore, we regretfully say goodbye at this time, and we'll send
another email after we have done something interesting to tell you about.

ta ta for now,

Hillary and Michael

PS: late breaking news!  We just downloaded our mail and got Hillary's grades:

2001-Pharm-B
7002-IMD-A
7023-Pub.Health-A
8011-Anesthesia-A!
9001-Med/Surg-B

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Thu, 04 Jun 1998 15:06:14 -0400
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 4: en el Eixample

Hola!

Well, after we sent that email yesterday, we went out for dinner. We walked
down La Avinguda Diagonal, which is the big street our hotel is on, and we
went to a place called Quasi Queviures, but which goes by the nickname "Qu
Qu." It was a lovely post-thunderstorm evening; clear and mild, not too hot
or too cold. So, we sat outside in the large sidewalk seating area, and we
ordered an assortment of tapas, the little appetizer dishes everyone always
talks about when they talk about spanish food. We also ordered a bottle of
rose wine, and we sat and enjoyed ourselves for a while until we just
couldn't stay awake any longer. Then we headed back to the hotel and
crashed at about 1 am.

So, today we got up at about 9:30 am and prepared for a day of walking
around the city. We had breakfast in the hotel, and met a nice couple from
Phoenix, AZ, who were winding up their month in Europe, but were cutting
their trip short because they had to rush back to the states to sell their
house or something. They helped us out with learning how to make train
reservations and they are also giving us their "leftover" French francs :)

At about 10:30 am we headed out, guidebook in hand. We took the "Barcelona
modernisme" walking tour outlined in our Frommer's guidebook, but since it
started somewhere kind of far from our hotel, we figured we would take a
bus to get there....that didn't work out. we could not, and still have not,
figured out the bus system here. It looks great on the surface, but for
some reason the buses we want do not seem to stop at the stops marked with
that number. Oh well... cabs are cheap in Barcelona, the cab drivers thus
far have seemed honest or if not, at least they are very very good liars.
(that's a joke). The cabs are nice clean little yellow and black Fords with
blue upholstery.

So, we took a cab to the Placa Catalunya (the c in placa should have a
cedille under it but I do not know how to type that...) and started our
tour. The placa is a sort of a park, or town square. There was a large
slate or similar material surface surrounded by a number of benches, and
some grassy area with trees, and several statues and fountains. We took
some pictures there and we hope they come out ok.  

We walked from there along the Rambla de Catalunya, which is a tree lined
street with very broad sidewalks - typical of the
shopping/business/restaurant districts here, because the cafes and
restaurants all put out large groups of chairs and tables, and they charge
more for eating inside (or is it outside? we can't quite figure it out :))
We looked at a lot of buildings in the "modernisme" style of architechture
- many of the buildings in this district (the Eixample) were designed by
young spanish architects in the late 19th century, and they are very
intricate and colorful and beautiful.

We took some pictures of some of these buildings and then we took a break
(as directed by our book!) in a small cafe type place called "Cerveceria
d'Or". Here we again ordered dos coca colas. Hillary says she is going to
try to remember to order hers "sin lemon" next time, because for some
reason they always put a lemon slice in the bottom of the glass here.

>From there we walked some more - we have a map on which we have marked our
route, we can show you when we come home if you are interested - but we saw
some cool buildings, with griffons and eagles and flowers and maidens
clutching lightbulbs (really!) carved into them. Oh, also of note - the
weather today was beautiful. It was probably about 85 degrees F and very
sunny! Oh, and hey - Michael just turned on the TV and the Simpsons is on,
in Spanish of course. Lisa's voice sounds really weird and so does Bart's.
Anyway, in the area not too far from the restaurant we stopped at was
something called "the Block of Discord" although we know of no reason why
they call it that. One of the buildings here was very cool - we took
pictures but they will not do it justice because there were some trees in
the way. This was the "Casa Batllo," an 1877 building overhauled by one of
these modernisme guys named Gaudi,in 1906. 

The Casa Batllo is supposed to look like a dragon. Basically, there were
tiles - fragmented tiles - embedded into the front of it, and the effect is
that it looks like the building has scales. Also, the decorations around
the windows and terraces look like teeth, and bones and stuff. There is a
tower on the top that is believed to represent St. George, the patron saint
of Barcelona. We hope the photos show this building well.

We walked on, tirelessly :) to the Quadrat d'Or, which Hillary says is
misnamed, because it didn't look very gold to us, but whatever. We saw more
modernisme buildings with intricate ironwork on the terraces and lots of
flowers growing on the balconies. Then, starting to fade from the heat, we
sought a cool respite in a little underground place called "La Bodegueta"
on Rambla de Catalunya. This funky little place had a bar behind which were
many dusty wine casks. There was a sizable modern refrigerated wine cellar
system there near the bar. We sat at one of several small tables near the
bar and ordered dos copas de Cava, Cava being the popular sparkling wine of
Catalunya which we read about in our guidebook and just had to have.
Michael did an excellent job of explaining to the proprietor that no, we
did not want una botella de Cava, we wanted dos copas! I think if it had
been Hillary talking to the guy we might have gone home with a case of the
stuff. Anyway, it was a nice place and the Cava hit the spot. 
We took a quick photo from the door of the place but again, who knows if
this will do it justice...

Further along in our walking tour we passed a really trendy and expensive
restaurant called "El Tragaluz" which claimed to have Japanese appetizers
and therefore got our hopes up with regard to finding some sushi...but no,
no sushi there, sad to say. It looked like  a nice place but we didn't
really stop there. We continued onward until we reached Carrer Provenca
(that's a street) where there is a building our guidebook calls the most
striking of the modernista buildings - a very beautiful and unique building
called, believe it or not, "Casa Mila"!!! (note to the confused: Hillary's
mother's name is Mila. The building name has an accent over the A, but it's
close) This building is hard to describe. The limestone facade kind of
undulates - it's all cut limestone and it is made to look kind of like
waves in the ocean or something. We really can't describe it very well.
You'll have to check out our pictures.

We walked some more, checked out a department store called Vincon which
seems to be Spain's answer to Ikea, but on a smaller and more sophisticated
scale. We then deviated from our tour a bit, after checking out still more
of these really interesting buildings, and we stopped at a place called
"Fantapas" where we had some sheep milk cheese and some potatoes with spicy
pink sauce. Why did we have a plate of sheep milk cheese? well, because we
accidentally ordered it and didn't want to admit it, that's why :) - Hey,
Michael is good, but he isn't perfect. It was very good cheese, anyway.
Hillary figured out how to ask for hiela for her agua, too. She's picking
up some spanish pretty quickly but she is afraid to use it in public.

We walked to a small mercado - kind of like the Reading Terminal market -
and we bought some fruit there - peaches, tiny peaches which they call by
another name here, and one orange colored fruit called a nerido or nerida
or something, which had a good, sweet taste to it. Then we walked a long
way to the Sagrada Familia, where there is a huge and beautiful church
called the Templo Expiatori. This church was first started in 1925 but was
not finished. It got interrupted by the civil war and some other stuff.
They are working on finishing it up now, using Gaudi's drawings and plans,
and they hope to have it finished within the next *50* years. I guess they
have union workers on the site, or something... (seriously, the detail on
this building is amazing. We are sure it must be very difficult to do this
well.)

We decided to risk another attempt at public transportation but, still
fearful of the buses, went with the Metro instead. This worked well despite
some initial confusion due to the million or so escalators you are required
to go up and down before you get to where you are going. We took the metro
to the "Barcelona Sants" station (estancio) which is not only a metro
station but also the main transportation hub of  Barcelona, a la 30th St
Station in Philadelphia. While there we got a schedule of trains leaving
Barcelona for Madrid on Sunday the 7th. We did not make a reservation
because we didn't have all our stuff with us and didn't want to make any
mistakes. We will probably stop there again tomorrow. Hillary made sure to
pick up a few local timetables for Uncle Jeff, though. 

Hillary thought we should try to take the #27 bus back to our hotel from
Estacio Sants. This was the initial recommendation made by the Hotel
concierge when we called for directions from the airport - but yesterday we
were too tired to deal with it and took a cab. So, Michael said she would
have to ask where the bus stop was, since she was the one who wanted to try
the bus today. Hillary went up to the tourist office at the train station
and tried to say "Donde esta el autobus veinte y siete por favor" and she
made herself understood although perhaps less than eloquently. The woman
answered her really quickly and of course Hillary couldn't understand a
word of it, but Michael did, so we went out where she said the stop
was...and it wasn't there. So, Hillary fearlessly approached a Barcelonian
woman and tried again with "pardon, donde esta el autobus veinte y siete,
por favor?" This woman looked puzzled and said in spanish that the 27
wasn't aqui, and asked us where we wanted to go. We showed her on the map
and she helpfully showed us where the bus actually did stop. Hillary was
pretty excited about actually communicating with someone in Spanish :) but
in any case, we decided after walking to where the bus would stop that
really, we weren't so far from the hotel, and so we walked back to the
hotel by way of La Placa de Francisc Macia. 

This may not seem like much, but we had a really good time. We left our
hotel at about 10:30 am and did not get back til about 6:30 pm. So we did a
lot of walking and we are tired. We will rest for a bit before going out to
dinner. We get CNN and a European NBC channel on the TV here, so we are
trying to keep up with what's going on in the world also. Hillary doesn't
like it when she goes on vacation and loses touch completely with what's
happening globally. 

Other notes: Barcelona seems to be a city that is reasonably tolerant of
dogs. We saw muchos perros y perritos while walking around and we heard
some barking in the metro station. We saw one gato negro as well, but it
seemed to be a stray - although, it was plump, not skinny, so someone was
feeding it. People seem friendly and tolerant of Hillary's kindergarten
level spanish and Michael's mexican accented third grade spanish. Also, the
ambulances here have a different kind of siren, and we were playing a game
of judging the location of the ambulancia by the way the doppler effect was
changing the sound. Wherever we go, we are geeks. :)
We also noticed a place on the way back to the hotel which had a sign
advertising la videoconferencia and los telecomunicados, and a bigger sign
upon which it proclaimed itself to be "Supermercado Informatico," - the
Information Supermarket? Sounds about right for Barcelona :) No
superhighways here. We weren't sure what that was all about but we were
amused and so we took a picture of it.
That's about all we can think of right now. 

Love,
Hillary and Michael


From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Fri, 05 Jun 1998 13:10:32 -0400
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 5:  off the beaten path

Hola again!

Last night after we wrote to you we took a brief siesta and then headed out
to dinner at about 10 PM, as per local custom.  We went to a place on el
Passeig de Gracia called "Tapa Tapa," and (in a surprise move) we ate some
tapas and had a pitcher of sangria, which was very good. We ordered an
assortment of tapas and all of them were to our liking. So far, we haven't
had anything not to our liking. We found out why we had a plate full of
cheese the other day, though. Despite the fact that our berlitz menu guide
agrees with us that "taco" means "tortilla full of stuff," it seems that in
Catalan, the local pseudo-spanish dialect/language, "taco" means "chunks"!
so that explains that. Anyway, we ate and then we had dos cafes - which
really turned out to be dos espressos, but that was cool with us. We also
had un helado chocolate which was refreshing and really rich and creamy. We
entered into a conversation with the couple at the neighboring table when
it became apparent that not only were they americans, but they had the same
guidebooks that we had and were even ordering the same food! Every place we
go, we meet americans...

After dinner we headed back to the hotel and went to bed.  That's where we
stayed until about half past noon today!! I guess yesterday took a lot out
of us. When we got up today we decided we'd make our train reservations for
Sunday, so as to get that out of the way. We walked from the hotel out to a
little place on the corner called the Central Cafe. It was set up with a
long bar inside, and the whole front of the place was open, so that sitting
at the bar is almost like sitting outside.  We ordered dos capuccinos
freddos (a specialty of this establishment and very good!) and un xurro,
which was actually a whole plate of what they call "Churros" in the states
- cylindrical sweet breadlike things. After breakfast, we walked back out
to the Placa de Francesc Macio again - noticing that the nearby Rodier
store sells the same stuff as the Rodier boutique on Walnut St. We walked
back down the Carrer de Josep Tarradella that we walked up yesterday. We
stopped at a small shop where there is a soda machine with the cheapest
cokes in Barcelona - only 125 pesetas - and Michael got a coke. We also
stopped in that Information Supermarket place and asked them to show us on
our map where exactly the Cafe de Internet was located - they were friendly
and they seemed amused by our desire to schlep all the way across town to
get to the Internet place. 

Eventually we got to the Estancio Sants, and we took a number to be helped
at the ticket window. There was about a half an hour wait, during which
time we chatted with some girls who are travelling around Europe as well,
from Minnesota, Maine, and Calgary.  They had been travelling for many
weeks and seemed to know what they were doing, so we asked them about
navigating the European train system and they were pretty helpful - they
pulled out a timetable book they had and looked stuff up for us.

When we got to the window, we were helped by a friendly guy who spoke
little if any English. He and Michael discussed what we wanted and got
everything set up correctly without using any English at all except for the
word "smoking" accompanied by a vigorous shaking of the head to say "no!"
:) We paid our mil pesetos for the reservation (they require a nominal fee
for reservations apparently to avoid the problem of people making many
different reservations but only using one of them) and we were on our way. 

We walked out of the station and went down Carrer Sant Antoni through the
Sants district - this is more of a working class type district, from what
we could tell. We turned to walk down the Carrer de Sants and we passed
lots of small businesses, local type places...shoe stores, bakeries, etc.
Then, when we got to El Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, it became more
upscale. 

Before turning onto the Gran Via, we stopped to check out La Placa
d'Espanya. This is at the intersection of El Gran Via y Avinguda del
Parallel. There is a sort of a monument, with an eternal flame type of
thing at the top, in the middle of a traffic circle here. Also nearby was
the "Anello Olimpica," from when Barcelona hosted the Olympics. We wandered
into the Olympic area to check that out - we took some pictures of a
beautiful art museum in there and we also took some pictures of the Placa.
On the other side of the Placa is the Barcelona Arena - their version of
the Spectrum? It was a pretty brick building and we took a photo of that as
well. Then we moved on out onto the Gran Via.

We were walking through the area between the Sant Antoni district and the
De Eixample and we walked a long way down Gran Via - 2.5 kilometers (that
may not seem that much, but realize we had already walked 3 kilometers
before that!). While walking down Gran Via we passed some interesting
places. We stopped and took a photo at a "Sex Shop" which claimed to be a
"general store of sex" - we couldn't go in and check it out because they
were on siesta at the time. We saw a "perruqueria de caninos" which we
think was a grooming salon for dogs. They sold Iams food there :).  We
walked past a University (conveniently located across the street from Placa
Universitat, where there is a metro stop and a nice park area) - it was
another stunning example of old architecture. This was simply a few blocks
away from the Placa de Catalunya, where we began our walk yesterday, by the
way. Anyway, also near the University was El Bar Estudiantes, which seemed
to be full of students relaxing and enjoying themselves. We noticed that
there really are not many homeless people here in Barcelona. We have seen
one or two people who looked as if they were down and out, but nothing like
we see in Philadelphia, that's for sure. 

Finally we got to the Internet Cafe. We stopped in and had dos bocadillos -
un bocadillo de tortilla espanol (tortilla espanol is sort of like a potato
quiche, presented here as a few slices of the stuff on some bread), y un
bocadillo de salchichon (salami). Of note is the local custom of doing
something people always laugh at Hillary for doing in the states....they
seem to rub the bread with the cut surface of a ripe tomato, just enough to
turn the bread sort of pink, and leave behind the tiniest bit of pulp and
the occasional seed. This is done in place of any kind of mayonnaise or
mustard and it tastes very good! After we ate we moved upstairs to the
Internet area of the cafe and spent half an hour checking email - hillary
had to erase a bunch of spam, as well as a bunch of error messages, and it
was really annoying. Oh well. 

After leaving the Internet Cafe we toyed briefly with the idea of riding
the metro back to the hotel, but the weather was so nice that we decided to
walk as far as we could. So, we walked up Carrer Roger de Lluria towards
the Avinguda Diagonal. This was about another kilometer or so. We passed
the cafe "Fantapas" where we ate lunch yesterday, and Michael took a
picture of hillary standing outside of it.  We also noticed the law school
across the street from that cafe, which we hadn't really noticed the other
day. 

When we got to Avinguda Diagonal, we observed and went into a small
courtyard full of pretty flowers and trees - Hillary is pretty sure that
one of the plants was on her poisonous plant test, but she can't remember
the name of it.  She did take a picture of Michael standing near some of
the flowers, though. Oh, btw, we also noticed a few orange trees with
actual oranges on them! 

When we walked out the gate on the other side of this little park, we found
ourselves in a little pedestrian mall area - maybe about 50 yards long? -
kind of like what Chestnut Street wants to be. We sat on a bench there and
watched some local skateboarders making idiots of themselves. Then we
continued on our way toward the hotel.  We accidentally walked too far,
though, and found ourselves back yet again at La Placa de Francesc Macio!
So, we went around the block and stopped at a small store to purchase a
large bottle of water - boy, were we thirsty! :)

Other things - we forget where exactly, but somewhere on our walk we
stopped at a small grocery store and took a picture inside. Very
picturesque place...
We saw a lot more dogs today, too - but we haven't seen any veterinary
hospitals! We noticed that all the male dogs were un-neutered - but they do
not seem to have a problem with stray dogs, so it isn't that bad of a
situation.

Mila, Dan, Jason, Jeff, Joan, and Avi: Hillary would like to mention to you
that she got an email from Kristen Morris, nee Cooper, today - and Kristen
remarked that it has been too long since we last spoke, and she sends her
love to the family and says hi to everyone and wants to get together when
we get back, as she has recently moved to Wilmington from Virginia.

Everyone - we hear on CNN that as of today the trains and taxis as well as
the Air France pilots are on strike in France. We fervently hope that this
is resolved before we reach Paris!! We assume it will be as we have 3 weeks
 before we go there. Still, we'd be mas contento if they were not on
strike, as it would be one less thing to worry about. 

Hillary managed to order a coca cola and pay for it and everything and do
the whole thing without Michael's help at all. A landmark occasion!

We are not sure what we will do tomorrow. Perhaps we will walk around the
"Cuitat Vella" area and then go to the Zoo...perhaps we'll do something
else. Barcelona is a very very large city and there is simply no way we
will cover all of it. We'd be exhausted if we tried.  We are also
considering taking a ride on the tourist bus, which stops at 17 places
along a loop - kind of like the Phlash.

Well, that's about it for now. We'll write more when we have more to say!

-Hillary and Michael

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Sat, 06 Jun 1998 17:22:32 -0400
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: review: Citrus Restaurantus / June 6 / review: La Botiga

Hey y'all. We have just returned to our hotel at 1 am on Saturday the 6th
(that is, it is very early on the morning of the 6th, not late at night on
the 6th). We ate dinner this evening at a restaurant on Passeig de Gracia
near the tapas bars we patronized earlier this week - Citrus Restaurantus.
This was a very nice, very trendy kind of place. It reminded us a bit of
Pollo Rosso as far as decor and atmosphere, but different in that there
were tablecloths and of course the style was not Italian, but rather more
Barcelonian :). 

We arrived at Citrus Restaurantus (CR) at about 9:40 PM and were informed
that there would be a wait until about 10:15 PM. So, we put our name on the
list and went back out to a small cafe called Cafe di Roma, where we
ordered dos cervezas y una focaccia primavera to tide us over, as Hillary
was feeling a little peckish :)
At about 10:10 we went back to CR which was now very crowded in the foyer
area - after a short while we were seated at a very nice table. 

We were given menus which contained loose translations of the *real* and
much more formal looking menus given to the locals. These were large
notebook like menus containing detailed information in english, italian,
french, and german. Using these menus, we decided on a bottle of Cava,
which you may recall is the local sparkling wine which we enjoyed the other
day at the underground botega. We ordered zucchini with goat cheese and
parmesan as an appetizer, along with "Citrus Moussaka," their version of
the greek dish moussaka. For entrees we ordered chicken tourenados with
mushrooms and lamb stew with baby vegetables. We also had una botella aqua
con gas :)

The food was all very delicious. The moussaka was exquisitely prepared,
very unlike your standard greek restaurant fare but still representative of
the actual classic dish. The eggplant was layered with slices of tomato as
an upper layer, underneath which there was the usual potato and lamb
mixture. The zucchini appetizer was also good. 

The lamb stew was very rich and flavorful and contained large chunks of
tender lamb as well as tiny baby carrots and mushrooms and onions. The
chicken was beautifully presented as two rolled up pieces wrapped in some
kind of bacon type meat, served aside a mound of minced wild mushrooms with
peppers and onions. All of it was delicious and there was more food than we
had expected. Plus, the very very solicitous waiter kept bringing us more
bread, and the bread was especially tasty. 

BTW, the Cava we ordered was very good and we've decided we are going to
harass the state store people in PA and force them to stock this stuff if
they do not already carry it. You might look into this if you are interested.

Hillary wanted to find the bathroom at this point and Michael refused to
ask the waiter where it was for her so she went up to some random
restaurant guy and asked him "habla ingles?" to which he replied "un
poquito." She asked him in English where it was and he showed her. Michael
thinks this was cheating. She doesn't. 

Anyway, when she got back to the table Michael had ordered some dessert -
Citrus Sherbets - lemon, lime, and "sour pink citrus" which turned out to
be a yummy and low pH grapefruit flavor. After all of this, we sat back and
mentally figured about how much this would cost us in Philadelphia. We
figured for all of that it would be about $120 or so, considering the
champagne type wine and all. However, it came to a mere 6000 pesetas, which
depending on the exchange rate and stuff should be about $40. What a
bargain!!!! If you think about it, we're actually *saving* money...well,
not really, but it is amazing how cheap the food is here. Plus, you are
only supposed to tip about 10% in restaurants, although we do tend toward
the side of too much rather than too little.

During our walk this evening we noticed again the Casa Botllo (sp?) - the
building we remarked on before which resembles a dragon - in the dark, with
the lights shining on it, it is even more beautiful and striking.
Unfortunately, we were not able to get a picture of it tonight. We did get
the waiter to take a picture of us in CR, but we're not sure if it will
come out because he fumbled with the camera a bit.

FYI for Mila and Dan - prior to our departure Hillary posted a note to the
phl.food newsgroup about the updated menu at Pollo Rosso, and advising
readers to check it out, and also mentioning the review in the Philadelphia
Weekly. Well, today, she got email from some people who read the review and
are going to check out Pollo Rosso. You might mention this to Jon if you
feel like it.

Question for Joy: Michael and I are arguing about which modern languages
are considered "romance languages." Could you please settle this for us by
sending us a list? 

Of general interest - we noticed that Basset Hounds, small terriers, and
large mutts seem to be the most popular dogs around here. We have seen many
dogs of these types. We have also seen one dalmation, one golden retriever,
and one Italian greyhound. Still no veterinarians, though. Oh well.

Tomorrow (later today) we plan to ride the tourist bus - only 1700 pesetas
for unlimited rides on the bus, which stops at 24 interesting places. You
can get off and back on as much as you like. We will probably ride it to
the area near the Parca Cuitadella/Parca Zoologica, and get off, walk
around, check out the zoo, the park, and the nearby Olympic village, then
get back on the bus and check out the north part of Barcelona, which we
really haven't seen at all. Then we'll come back to the hotel and pack and
prepare for our train ride to Madrid on Sunday.

that's all for now. we hope that you are enjoying our travelogues at least
one half as much as we are enjoying experiencing the contents of them!!

------------------------------------------------------------

It is now 7pm here on June 6th in Barcelona.  We just got back from a very
long day of touring many parts of the city of Barcelona that we had not
seen yet.  Here's the story of our day:

We woke up late in the morning and headed over to the cafe which we ate at
yesterday.  We had dos cafes con leche which turned out to be similar to a
latte back in the states.  You can't really get a cup of coffee around
here.  If you order un cafe, you get a shot of espresso.  We also had some
type of pastry, but I forget the name of it.  We sat at the bar, drinking
our coffees, and we had some serious doubts about the weather.  It was
overcast and kind of cool out.  Michael even brought an umbrella just in case.

By the time we were done at the cafe, however, the sky had cleared up and
the sun came out.  It was actually kind of cooler today, and it turned out
to be a beautiful day, weather wise.  We decided that it would be a shame
not to see the far north and south parts of the city while we're here, so
we hopped on the tourist bus at the Placa de Francisc Macia stop. The first
part of the bus tour took us along the route we described earlier, past the
information supermarket down to the Barcelona Sants train station. We then
drove around it, and got a good view of the Parc Espanya Industrial, which
is kind of a plaza with a lot of water and trees and large metal sculptures.

We didn't stop there, though. We continued on past the Parc Joan Miro,
where Michael and Hillary attempted to take a photo of a very beautiful
sculpture, only to be told to sit down by the evil tour guide who seemed to
think we were going to fall off the top of the bus if we lifted our butts
off the seat by an inch. So maybe that photo won't come out. We continued
across the Placa d'Espanya, which we described to you in a previous email,
and then drove farther than we'd walked before, into the Anelia Olimpica
and up the mountain called "Montjuic," or "Mountain of the Jews." We went
past many interesting places here - stadiums, parks, museums, etc...of
particular note was the Montjuic fortress, beneath which there is a buried
Jewish cemetery, which of course we could not see as it was buried.  On the
way down the mountain we drove through some striking scenery - many
interesting and very tall flowering cactuses, trees, and succulent plants.
Hillary noticed many flowering oleander shrubs, and is pleased that her
poisonous plant class is coming in so handily. She made sure Michael didn't
eat any of the oleander :)

After we got down from the mountain we were in the harbor area, where there
was a cruise ship docked. Two apparently very travel-weary american women
sitting behind us remarked that they were really glad to be off the cruise
ship they had been on for the past couple of weeks because they had gotten
very fat on the boat! We drove past this harbor area and past a
resort/beach area where people were frolicing and enjoying the balmy
weather - note that we were enjoying it too, from the open-air upper deck
of the tour bus! We drove through the coastal area of the "Ciutat Vella"
part of Barcelona, and went through a trendy shopping area where there was
an Imax theater. Oh, also - these tour buses are apparently heavily
subsidized by KFC and Pizza Hut, because every time they announced a stop,
they also remarked on where the nearest one of those places was - often
right near the stop! And our bus tickets came with coupons for discount
meals at those places (we passed on that...) Also in this area we stopped
to see the "Mirador de Colon" - a monument to a general, we think, at the
base of the people-watching boulevard, La Rambla. Then we went through Port
Vell, which seems to be where the cargo ships come in.

We drove past the district they call "La Barceloneta," where there is more
trendy shopping, tourist stuff, and coastline, and we went through the Vila
Olimpica, which is just behind the two tallest buildings in Spain - they
call them the "twin towers" and they are a whole whopping 42 stories tall!!
woo. 

Then the bus made kind of a U turn and went inland a bit, taking us into
the Parc de la Ciutadella. This is a very large - about 3/4 kilometer by
1/2 kilometer - park, with beautiful trees, shrubs, and grassy areas,
fountains and sculptures, etc. It occupies the former site of an 18th
century citadel and houses several museums and the regional parliament
building. Also in this park is the Zoo. We got off at this bus stop and
walked around a bit. The park was full of picnicking locals and tourists.
We went to the zoo (our bus tickets gave us a discount) of course :). The
big thing about the Barcelona zoo is they have the *only* albino gorilla
ever seen - the only one anyone knows about, anyway. His name is Snowflake,
and he has five or six living offspring but they are all the usual black
color. The zoo had many other interesting exhibits as well. It was very
heavy on the birds - we saw a lot of parrots and many tropical birds like
toucans and others that we can't recall the names of but Hillary thinks
that some of them were related to the toucan. Hillary thinks Dr. Moffatt
would have enjoyed checking out the large aviary. We also went into an
exhibit of the rainforest of Madagascar, where there were interesting
lizards. Michael enjoyed seeing the marmosets and tamarins with their
infants clinging to their backs in the small primate area. So, anyway, we
had some sandwiches in the zoo, and took a photo of the statue of a stray
dog put up by the Barcelona society for the preservation of plants and
animals. there was a poem under the statue, written in Catalan, that we
couldn't fully translate but it seemed to say that people should be kind to
animals and that if you weren't, you were a big fat loser.

When we were done exploring this area we got back on the tour bus. It took
us past the Estancio Franca, another huge train station, which was built
originally for some world expo or something but is now just another train
station. We continued into the Gothic quarter, which had some interesting
architecture, a music museum, but wasn't as interesting to us as some of
the other stuff we had seen. We did notice a french poodle strolling about
one of the parks, though.

The next stop was Placa Catalunya of which we wrote before. Today the
fountains weren't on. We changed buses here, to get onto the one which goes
to the west of the city. The second bus first took us through the
moderniste area which we already described in detail, so we won't discuss
it again - although we did get another good look at the Casas Botlle and
Mila :). We drove on past the Sagrada Familia, getting a better look at
some of the detailed carvings, and then drove up the Passeig Sant Joan
until we were near the Parc Guell. We disembarked at that stop and after
Hillary recovered from practically impaling herself on a waist high pole
that was located exactly in the wrong place, requiring Michael to purchase
an ice-cream bar with which to distract her from the pain, we walked
through the Gracia neighborhood into the park. This was originally supposed
to be a chi-chi housing development with homes, markets and schools, but it
turned into something very different. Only two houses were ever built here
and one is now a museum. The place is designed by Gaudi, the same guy who
did many of the other things we've seen, and who also designed the
sidewalks Hillary so admires on the Passeig de Gracia. There is in the park
a big ceramic lizard, which Michael posed next to for a photo. Also there
are many benches inlaid with broken tile in mosaic fashion, and some
interesting walkways lined by unique stone carvings of which we took a
couple of pictures. We also went through the Hall of a Hundred Columns, but
couldn't get a good picture of the beautiful mosaic ceiling because it was
kind of dim in there.

After we finished walking around this park, we walked back down to the bus
stop.
We got on the next bus and drove through the La Sarria neighborhood, which
our guide told us is the most exclusive quarter, but which Hillary thought
was not as impressive as the Eixample, by any stretch. There were many
beautiful gardens, however, with lots of bright purple and red flowers we
didn't recognize as well as the omnipresent oleander in pink and white, and
some orange trees lining the streets. 

We drove along a main road all the way until we got to the Monestir de
Pedralbes-Thyssen, an ancient monastery which is now a museum. It is "the
best example of the Catalan Gothic style of architecture," which leads us
to believe that the Catalan gothic style of architecture is nothing to
write home about. Ooops. I guess we just did. Well, anyway, this very old
building houses art and other items collected by a Catalan Queen, by the
name of Elizabetta or something like that, many years ago.

>From there we drove down to the Futbol Club of Barcelona, where some guys
in rugby shirts got off to go look around. They have a big museum of Futbol
here, and the largest sports arena in Europe with 150,000 spectator seats.
Nearby was a school of Pharmacy and a maternity hospital. Also in the
surrounding area was a sculpture garden. 

After leaving the futbol club we drove along the section of Avinguda
Diagonal which is opposite the Placa Francesc Macia from our hotel (that
is, it is beyond the Placa, in the part of the city we had not previously
visited) and we drove down this section toward the Placa. This is supposed
to be the most exclusive business area of Barcelona. We drove past the
Hilton, which was a nice black shiny glass building, and we drove past
several fancy restaurants, and a mexican place :)

Finally we got to the Placa de F.M. and got off the bus, and returned to
our hotel. Here we are, relaxing and recovering from our busy day. We will
pack our stuff up and prepare for our travel day tomorrow to Madrid. No
sleeping in for us tomorrow!!!

We got a lot of sun - Hillary has a criss-cross pattern on her feet from
wearing her sandals. Michael's freckles are coming out. No sunburn, though. 

That's about it for now. We hope things are going well for everyone!

-----------------------------------------------

It is now 11:10 PM on the 6th, and we have just returned from dinner at La
Botiga. This was a charming and very good restaurant located off La Placa
Francesc Macio. We were given the *real* menus this time, and had to ask
for English translations. I guess Michael is finally getting the local
accent down pat!  We had fried scallions and seafood stuffed eggplant to
start -both were very good, the scallions surprisingly so, served with a
Romesco sauce, and the eggplant indescribable really. Then we had
tourenados of beef with three different cheeses, and in a surprise move
hillary ordered the lamb chops :). Both entrees were served with a very
good side dish of potatoes with zucchini. We also had an excellent Rioja
(red wine from the region of spain near the French border) and a bottle of
mineral water, sin gas (we ordered it con gas, but that's not what we got.)

For dessert we had profiteroles with chocolate sauce, and green apple
sorbet with calvados. Both were excellent.

When we got the check, Hillary noticed that in addition to the items noted
above, there were listed on the bill un pastis y un yogurt. She asked the
waitress "que es el pastis y yogurt?" and the waitress took the bill away
and then came back with it corrected - we're not entirely sure what was up
with that - were they trying to rip us off because we told them we did not
speak very much spanish? we hope not and think probably not - it seemed
that they were having a problem with their computer, but we don't know for
sure. Anyway, it worked out and it was only about 6000 pesetas for the
whole shebang (that's about $37 or so). We wanted to leave a tip, but we
didn't have any change, so Michael sent Hillary to the bar to ask the
bartender "puede combiarme esto" (can I change this?) por favor. The
bartender said "si, no problema," and made change for her, and we left a
tip, and left.

Now we are back in the hotel. We are almost all packed up for Madrid -
except we have to pack up the computer! Anyway, we're pretty wiped out and
we have a busy travel day tomorrow so that's all for now.


Love,
hillary and michael

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Sun, 07 Jun 1998 14:40:14 -0400
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: up the down staircase, June 7th

The subject is a reference to the Madrid metro....but more on that later. 

A couple of general things we've not mentioned yet: 

- when we got to spain from copenhagen, we were waved directly on through -
no customs hassle of any kind.
- Michael is always correct with respect to which direction we ought to go
in order to find a hotel, a transportation site, or a point of interest.
- Hillary is almost always incorrect with respect to above.
- Sadly, we rediscover these tendencies vis a vis sense of direction daily.

We left off, we believe, with a tale of our final dinner in Barcelona. We
got up early today and had breakfast in the hotel, then took a cab to
Estacio Sants to catch the 10:30 Intercity train to Madrid. We had some
time to kill in the train station, so we took a picture for Uncle Jeff, and
then looked around a bit....Michael sent Hillary on an errand to purchase
some postage stamps. She managed to ask the information people where to buy
stamps (in Spanish), and then to actually find them, and to ask the woman
at the counter for them, and to pay for them and get change and everything
all by herself. This was a huge deal, you have to realize. Hillary also
went and bought some water and some melocotonitos (tiny peaches), using her
amazing linguistic skills to find out how much these items cost before
committing to the purchase. Michael, on the other hand, found a mailbox and
sent some postcards. 

So, we hopped on the train, which was very nice...lots of legroom!! and
good climate control, too.  The trip from Barcelona to Madrid started out
going kind of southwest along the Mediterranean coast. During the first
part of the trip we hugged the coastline, which reminded Hillary of the
northern California coast, especially certain parts of the coast we passed
by that greatly resembled Red Rock Beach in Marin County, CA - even down to
the nude sunbathers, who were completely visible from the train, by the way :)

We passed through some very upscale looking resort areas and these were
surrounded by cheaper looking apartment/motel type buildings. Maybe some
summer homes, too? we're not sure. There were many golf courses, tennis
courses, soccer fields (we saw some games going on). Many of the cheaper
looking buildings were orange, blue, yellow, or pink! There was a lot of
new construction going on as well. In between these resort areas were some
agricultural areas - some olive farms, some other kinds of farms, and there
were these very poor looking villages right up near the resorts. The trees
in the region were palm, fir, and maple. The wildflowers were mainly yellow
and white.
After a while we also passed some public campgrounds, which looked very
nice - subdivided by twine tied to stakes, large areas whithin which people
pitched tents or set up an RV or trailer or something. These had easy beach
access as well, and public playgrounds for the kids.

The next big stop was Tarragona, and that's where the train turned to start
going inland, more directly west. We passed through some large industrial
areas with tanks, and warehouses, and shipping areas. These were
interspersed with some beautiful countryside - trees, farms, hills, those
nice white and yellow wildflowers, and big open country areas....and some
mountainous areas. We can't really describe it that well. Imagine a cross
between the Irish countryside and the California countryside near
Yellowstone, with some mountains thrown in!

Michael slept for a while and Hillary read a book (surprise) during the
next hour or so, until the conductor came to check our tickets, which was
sort of anticlimactic after all the warnings we'd recieved about ensuring
that everything was perfect with respect to filling out our railpass
correctly. The next big stop was Zaragoza, which was a big station with a
lot of colorful graffiti on it. The city of Zaragoza was visible from the
train, and it looked really big. There was a large rail yard and we saw
some freight trains loaded up with shiny new automobiles. As we passed west
of the city, we observed some feedlot cattle (a feedlot is kind of a large,
dirt-floored, fenced in area, surrounded by feed troughs, where they fatten
up the cattle before shipping them to market) - several of which were
*ahem* having their way with each other.

After Zaragoza, but before we reached Calatayud, we saw a large herd of
white goats being sheperded along (goatherded?) by some guy with a stick.
It was comical because the goats extended to cover an area perhaps the size
of a football field, and there was this one man trying to herd them. We
passed through a very large farming region, with tons of olive trees
ranging from new saplings to ancient trees. Eventually we came to a
picturesque stop called Mora La Nueva, where the station was a yellow brick
building with white trim, somewhat reminiscent of Independence Hall in
Philadelphia. This station, unlike most of the others, was nicely tended,
with fir trees and oleander shrubs nearby.

Moving westward, we passed through another largely mountainous region,
where Hillary observed what she thinks was a plant called astralagus
growing on the hillside. This is another one of those poisonous plants :)
Michael noticed what he thinks was the cooling tower of a nuclear reactor,
and a nearby very large electrical plant of some kind.

Also of note on our journey - about an hour outside of Madrid we passed a
large group of cows grazing freely on the hillside, below a fortress of
some kind which looked like a castle out of Monty Python and the Holy
Grail. In this region the wildflowers were mostly red and purple, not
yellow and white.

The last big stop before Madrid was Guadalajara, a very large and modern
city with tall, square, buildings mostly of red brick. There were also some
older style buildings, including a church we had a good view of from the
train. On the way out of Guadalajara we saw a huge black cardboard cut out
of a cow in the middle of a field :)

About 1/2 hr outside of Madrid we passed a large hill or small mountain
above which there appeared to be about 8 or 10 hangliders. Then there was
just some open country and then finally.....Estancia Madrid-Chamartin!!!

Chamartin is the station we came into, it is in the north part of Madrid
and is not the station closest to our hotel, but all trains from Barcelona
go here. Upon arrival, we schlepped our stuff up a few flights of stairs
and then set about searching for the Eurorail Aid office which our pamphlet
clearly stated was in this station - because we wanted to get the updated
timetable we were told to get. After schlepping back and forth across the
station a few times and attempting to talk to three different officials, it
became clear that pamphlet or no pamphlet, the office was a figment of
someone's imagination. So we moved on to item 2 on our list of things to do
in Madrid - buy a map! that was a lot easier and quickly gotten out of the
way.

Feeling a bit more worldly after navigating thus far, we decided to take
the Metro to our hotel, instead of what would have been an expensive cab
ride. So, we schlepped our stuff down the stairs, across the platform, down
some more stairs, across another thing, and bought tickets and figured out
where we had to switch trains. Then, to enter the actual metro system....

*sigh*
You know those automatic turnstile things, you put your ticket in and it
sucks it through and spits it back out and lets you go through - like the
Septa subway? Well, Hillary had some trouble going through there....the
turnstile wouldn't let the suitcase through so she tried to lift it and
ended up doing a major pratfall, landing on her back with the suitcase on
top of her, feeling incredibly stupid and grouchy about the whole thing.
But, we survived. We schlepped down some stairs, across some platform, up
some stairs, and down some other stairs, or so it seemed, and eventually
got onto the train - which we rode to the next stop, then switched to
another line, which took us the rest of the way to Puerto del Sol, which is
right near our hotel. To get out of the metro, it was more of the same. Up,
down, over, yada yada. Finally, out into the sun!!

The metro ride was pretty unremarkable save for a tall, skinny, dour faced
man all dressed in brown who quite obvious about "adjusting himself."
Madrid seems much more frenetic, if you will, than Barcelona. While
Barcelona is a relaxed city full of American and European tourists and
light skinned locals, Madrid seems to be much more multicultural - we saw
people of many colors during our brief (3 minute?) walk from the metro to
the hotel, not to mention the ride on the metro itself. The streets are
much more crowded. Hillary notices that it is much more difficult for her
to read the signs and stuff in "regular" spanish (that is what Michael
calls Castillian :)) than it was for her to read the Catalan - which seemed
to have a lot of French mixed into it.

In any case, we arrived at the Hotel Madrid. Michael asked for and obtained
a change from a room with twin beds to a room with one larger bed. Yay! :)
The concierge was friendly and gave us some pamphlets with touring
information.
This is really about it. We checked out the shower, which is better than
the one in Barcelona as far as consistency of water temperature goes, and
we will probably go get some food sometime soon.

We hope that you all are doing well and that no one is too inconvenienced
by the Septa strike. Lisa, sorry to hear it's been such a problem for you.
Let us know when that resolves.

love,
hillary and michael

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Mon, 08 Jun 1998 13:47:56 -0400
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 8: siesta to fiesta?

Greetings from tropical Madrid!

It is warm and sunny here in central Spain - seems to us this is typical
spanish weather.  Today we got out a bit and we again noticed some definite
differences between Barcelona and Madrid - for one thing, Madrid is MUCH
more "big city"ish - lots more hustle, way more bustle. There are many many
shops and cafes and little stores and businesses and stuff all crammed
together here, the sidewalks for the most part are smaller, and people in
general seem to be busier.  There are also some similarities between Madrid
and Barcelona - most people still seem friendly, the automobile drivers are
pretty aggressive in both places, and the street signage is unbelievably
poor!! The names of the streets are (occasionally) posted on square plaques
on the corners of certain large buildings at intersections, but are often
either absent or covered up by the nearly ubiquitous green screens that are
used by the construction workers to cover their work area - it seems that
much of Spain is under continuous renovation.

Anyway. Last night, after we sent the email detailing our journey by train,
we went out to briefly explore the area near our hotel, which is called
Puerto del Sol - gate of the sun. This is the very center of Spain both
physically (there is a marker for "Kilometer 0" embedded into the sidewalk;
this is the point from which all distances are officially measured) and
politically - there was a big uprising in 1808, against the French troops,
during which many Madridilenos were executed - a memorial plaque and wreath
are present on the Communidad de Madrid building, which we took a photo of
today. This building is also of note because it was used during the reign
of Franco as the central police headquarters, and the key scene of Franco's
"interrogations." Apparently the deaths of the prisoners here were
regularly recorded as suicides. 

Anyway, last night we didn't really look around this area that much, but we
crossed over the plaza to an interesting looking area of two pedestrian
walkways which had been draped with festive looking streamers - sort of a
roof of streamers had been created, multicolored streamers strung between
the buildings on either side - and we wandered through that area looking at
the many cafes and restaurants and such. We walked through this area until
we reached the road called Gran Via, and then we doubled back on a tiny
street called Tres Cruces and went into a restaurant recommended by one of
our guidebooks, called Costa del Sol. This place was pretty interesting -
it was staffed by a bunch of old fat guys, one of whom greeted us and
directed us peremptorily into our seats at a paper covered table. He
brought us bread without butter or bread plates, which seems to be
customary here in Madrid. Note this is unlike the Catalan custom in
Barcelona of giving you the bread with the tomato rubbed onto it - that was
served on a large central plate. Anyway, this restaurant we went to last
night is known for serving "meat, and a lot of it, at reasonable prices."
So, we ordered some sangria (which was heavy on the brandy, very strong,
and  very sweet), a salad, a mushroom omelette, and a grilled veal dish.
(Yes, Mila and Dan, Hillary ate veal. Calm down.)  The salad was nothing
special but everything else was very good. 

We left this place and retraced our steps back to the hotel, stopping first
at a small restaurant to have dessert (a banana split and a flan). 

Today, we woke up just in time to miss breakfast in the hotel, so we went
to the Jamaica Coffee Bar on Calle Mayor in the del Sol area. We got some
espresso and a cappucino (they seemed to think we had "cafe italiano" and
"cafe con leche" but really, it was an espresso and a cappucino) and a
croissant. The coffee bar was a nice place, similar to the Cafe Central in
Barcelona but more indoors.

Then we began a walking tour. First we doubled back to get a good look (and
a photo op) at the Communidad de Madrid building, which we have already
described. Then we walked along the Carrera de San Jeronimo, which is one
of 10 streets that meets in the center of the Puerto del Sol. At the corner
of San Jeronimo and Calle Victoria we came to a funny restaurant called the
Museo del Jamon - the museum of ham! This place is to ham what Sonoma
restaurant in Manayunk is to vodka, or what Baskin Robbins is to ice cream.
They have "varietal" hams, they have parts of pigs hanging up all over the
place, they are really the place to check out of you are a ham fan, we're
told. Michael is not a ham fan by any stretch of the imagination, so after
a quick look around, we continued on. 

We walked up the Calle Victoria, which was lined with small restaurants and
taverns, many of which had interesting window displays consisting of
shellfish, octopus, and cuts of meat, sitting there in the window case. We
also noticed several windows where there were people selling bullfighting
tickets, and posters advertising bullfights. 

Then we walked down another small street called Nunes de Arce. This area
has many taverns and cervecerias. We walked along until we got to the Plaza
Santa Ana, a small but very nicely laid out park. We walked through and
around the park, checking out the statues and refreshment stands on the
way. The north and south sides of the park are lined by bars/restaurants,
including Cerveceria Alemana, which was apparently one of Hemingway's
favorites. The east side of the park is bordered by el Teatro Espanol, a
large building with columns which since the 16th century has been the site
of the center of Madrid's theatrical scene - although the building wasn't
put up until about 1869. 

The west side of the park is bordered by the Gran Hotel Reina Victoria,
which is a beautiful, elegant structure that was recently renovated (in the
80s) and which is apparently a kind of hangout for people who are into
bullfighting.  On the other side of this building is the Plaza del Angel,
which isn't really a plaza so much as it is an area where the narrow
sidewalk gets a bit wider. This area is of note because one of Madrid's
"top music emporiums" is here - Cafe Central (not the coffee bar in
Barcelona of the same name!), known for jazz and blues.

Then we turned down onto a larger street called Calle de las Huertas, which
really didn't look like very much because nearly everything was shuttered
and closed. This street houses many bars, which make it a real party scene
at night, we're told. 

We continued until we got the the Calle Lope de Vega, on which there is a
big brick building containing a plaque marking the burial site of Miguel de
Cervantes Saavedra, who died in a house around the corner shortly after
completing his great work, Don Quijote. The building housing the burial
site is called Convento de Trinitares Descalzas, and it is in fact a
convent, housing a group of nuns who shun contact with the outside world.
It looks like nothing so much as a prison complete with iron bars on the
windows. 

Nearby, around the corner on the Calle de Cervantes, we checked out Casa de
Lope de Vega, home of the playwright Lope de Vega - who was a rival and a
contemporary of Cervantes - note that Cervantes is buried on Calle Lope de
Vega, while Lope de Vega died on a street named Cervantes. Kind of ironic.
The Casa de Lope de Vega was recently renovated and restored to its
original appearance c. 1610.

We walked on, stopping to check out the Cortes, the national parliamentary
building, in which Colonel Tejera, leader of the right wing Guarda Civil,
attempted a coup by charging the building with a machine gun and holding
the officials hostage. Juan Carlos managed to squelch the coup, as must be
obvious, since he still rules.

We crossed Plaza de las Cortes and went onto Carrera de San Jeronimo,
walking along until we reached the Plaza Canovas del Castillo, which is a
traffic circle that has a fountain with a statue of Neptune in it, and some
lovely flowering shrubs around it. We tried to take a good photo of it, it
was a bit difficult since there were many cars and people around. While
standing looking at the fountain, we could see in the background off to our
right the Museo del Prado, perhaps Spain's most famous museum.

We zig zagged our way into the tree lined pedestrian median strip of El
Paseo del Prado, which they generally just call El Paseo because it changes
names as it passes other important sites (another reason not to drive
around in Spain - even if you figure out what street you are supposed to be
on, it will change names and confuse you!) The Prado is closed on Mondays
and we didn't want to go in there today anyway. We walked toward the end of
the building and reached the Jardin Botanico - a very large and old
botanical garden. We paid 200 pesetas each to get in - this was a real
bargain because the gardens were quite relaxing and beautiful. We wandered
through the medicinal plant section, back through the roses and other
ornamental plants, up around through the interesting tree section, and back
toward the front of the garden. We stopped frequently to rest in the shade.
We took a picture of one particular sign we found there, marking a tree
with pretty white flowers. The name of the tree was something like
"philadelphius pubescens," and we liked it :). Michael was very lucky that
he had Hillary with him today to point out the many, many, many poisonous
plants we passed by. :) :) :) :)

After we left the gardens, we decided we'd try a restaurant "recommended"
to us by a nice blond girl who was handing out flyers. She said it was her
family's place. We figured what the heck. Michael was starving. We went in
and ordered the menu del dia - bread, beverage, appetizer, main course, and
dessert for 1000 pesetas each. The food was in fact plentiful and good.
During the meal, Hillary realized she was simply too tired to continue on
the walking tour, which had easily another two hours to go. She has a cold
or something, and her Comtrex was kicking in. Michael was not averse to the
idea of our following local custom today, so we returned to our hotel for
una siesta. We took a nice long nap and are now preparing to go out and
check out the nightlife, baby. :)

By the way, Hillary is anxious for news from home, so please do not be shy
to send her some brief updates (to izzy@izzy.com, but don't quote this
entire message!).


love,
Michael and Hillary

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Tue, 09 Jun 1998 14:02:24 -0400
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 9: Las mujeres de la noche!!

Now, we left off, we believe, prior to our going out last night. We ended
up going to an  Italian place for pizza, believe it or not, because we just
couldn't face more spanish food :). It was a pretty good place. The pizza
was very thin and crunchy and we had a nice bottle of Rioja with it (which
cost oh, 6 bucks...)
The restaurant we went to last night was on Calle de Horteleza, a street we
walked up and down on - we first walked all the way to Plaza Santa Barbara,
where we saw some men on horseback leading two other horses each, and then
back down the street to the restaurant. After dinner we ended up just going
to bed, because we were very tired.

This morning we got up bright and early at about 7 am, had breakfast here
at the hotel, and went to get on a tour bus at 9:30 at the bus terminal in
front of the Royal Palace. The Royal Palace is an imposing structure with a
formal garden in front which contains many statues. We took a picture of
Michael with some of the statues. 

The tour we took took us around Madrid. We saw a LOT of stuff, but we're
not going to write it all down here because it would just take forever. The
most interesting parts of the city that we saw today were:

1. The university - it has about 95 buildings on campus and over 150,000
students!! We saw schools of engineering, medicine, dentistry, law, and
energy; plus many others we didn't catch the names of. In university city
we saw a wall with graffiti on it that says "Nazis No!" - which reminds us,
in Barcelona we saw a lot of anti-bilingual and pro-revolutionary graffiti;
here in Madrid we see mainly the same BS graffiti we see at home, plus some
anti-fascist graffiti. On our way out of university city we passed the
National School of Physical Education - of note here were the aluminum
people out on the lawn, which reminded us of the large sculpture of people
walking on the South St. Bridge over I-95, but on a much smaller scale.

2. Some famous chapels - two identical chapels, one of which was painted by
Goya in some famous painting, and one which has been dedicated to St.
Antony and is open to the public. As we drove by here, we saw a nice statue
of Goya, and some mounted policemen patrolling the area, which was being
prepared for a festival to celebrate St. Antony, on June 14.

3. This is for Jeff - Estancio del Norte - a big-ass train station from
which trains heading to the north of Spain depart. This station also houses
the Principio Pio metro station, which we observed from within a metro-car
while we were on the metro (later today).

4. Casa de Campo - this used to be the royal estate, prior to April 14,
1932 (when the king stepped down or something). This is a huge park which
contains a zoo, an aquarium, an amusement park, and lots of camping and
hiking areas, and also a lot of HOOKERS!! You wouldn't believe it if you
saw it. After our bus tour dropped us off at the zoo (where we spent some
time looking around and Michael made friends with a gosling) we eventually
walked about a kilometer to the metro station. On the way to the metro as
we walked through the park we kept seeing condoms on the side of the road.
Then, we noticed some women standing at the intersection of two remote
roads both lined by open park/wooded areas. Hillary pointed out that one of
the women appeared to be naked under her black lace see through body suit.
As it turned out, she wasn't entirely naked - she was wearing a skimpy
g-string and a push up bra that had no covering over her breasts (it was
more of a shelf for her breasts to sit on). She was accompanied by two
other women in lingerie and high heeled knee high boots. We walked past
them and noticed an increased number of condoms by the side of the road.
Further along were more of these women. As we neared the metro station, an
older man with no shirt on was heading down the road toward these
women...we beat it out of there and hopped on the next metro train. 

5. Old Madrid - at one point, our bus took us under a very old aqueduct,
and past the only remaining 14th century building in Madrid. The whole area
of what they call "old Madrid" was laid out in a very confusing way, and it
kind of reminded Hillary of the way Italy tends to be depicted in the
movies - narrow streets, etc. 

6. Numerous churches were pointed out to us, the one at Plaza de San
Francisco was designed by an Italian architect and currently houses many
paintings by Goya. 

7. The dolphin fountain in Plaza Republica Argentina is one of the most
beautiful fountains in Madrid. We tried to take a picture of it from the bus.

8. Alcala Gate - a very large stone gate made of several arches, in the
middle of Calle Alcala. We have no idea what it was for or what it
signifies but it sure is cool looking.

9. Near the zoo, we finally saw a veterinary hospital! Yay! Also,
yesterday, we forgot to tell you but we saw 4 or 5 very very large dogs in
the park across from Hemingway's favorite cafe. A Great Dane, a St.
Bernard, an Afghan, and some big mutts. It seems that Barcelona is a city
that prefers perritos, whereas in Madrid, they go for los perros grandes. :)

10. Plaza de Toros de las Ventas - or something like that - the
bullfighting arena where they still have bullfights. This used to be
located outside of the city limits, because bullfights within the city were
illegal - but now, the city has expanded and it is in the city - but it
hasn't moved or anything. From the outside this is a beautiful arena - we
hope our photo of it is ok - brick and ceramic tile, sort of similar to the
arena near the Olympic area in Barcelona.

Anyway, we have lots more written down (believe it or not, we took notes
while we were on the tour. Our biggest fear is getting home and realizing
we don't remember a thing...) but it would be tiresome to go through it
all. We hope that you can kind of get the flavor of our day from this email.

We were on the tour, by the way, with a family from Texas - at first we
thought they were the Hank Hill family (Fox TV reference) but no, alas,
that was not the case. The woman insisted that we must go to the Museo del
Jamon - the museum of ham - in fact, she says that the whole reason they
came to Madrid was because that is her favorite restaurant in the world.
They were really only coming to Spain to go to a wedding in Seville, but
she insisted on coming to Madrid for this restaurant. We had a chat with
them about the new subway system in Dallas - apparently it sucks and got
all messed up by the politicians and it is losing money.  Also, the woman
from Texas mentioned that we were lucky today was "cool" in Madrid,
because, she said, if it were hot, we'd have really been uncomfortable. We
aren't sure what the normal weather is like in Dallas, but it must be
really really hot there as a matter of course because it was NOT cool today
in Madrid! Now, our tour guide did mention that there are 320 sunny days
per year in Madrid, which means we were right about it being sunny most of
the time (and which is why they have a research center dedicated to solar
energy); but it must also be very hot here much of the time, because we've
been told that "when it gets hot" in August, everyone who can afford to
leaves the city. It is plenty hot enough for us as it is; Hillary says if
it were any hotter she wouldn't be able to walk around, Michael says
Hillary is a wimp. In any case, it was about 85 by our estimate - Hillary
was kind of melting during that 1 km walk to the metro station.

One other thing we noticed in downtown Madrid is that there are a number of
signs regarding PP O7 which is apparently a piece of proposed legislation
that has something to do with poor people. Some of the signs say that it is
for poor people, and some of the signs say it will hurt poor people. We
can't figure out what exactly it is, perhaps they are voting on some kind
of welfare reform or something.


Love,

Michael and Hillary
Anyway, that's all to report for now. It is now time for una siesta grande. 

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1998 19:50:49 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 10: the last day in Spain

Hi again, everyone.

Last night we went for a walk in the area north of Puerto del Sol, and we
ended up having dinner at a Tony Roma's, of all places - at least they have
a no smoking section!! We sat and ate and listened to the american country
music; the only thing of note really was that the food cost about half as
much as it would have at home.
While we were out walking we saw a store selling exotic reptiles, and we
checked it out - they had a variety of terrariums in there housing a
variety of unusual lizards, spiders, and snakes. We got a good look at
several fountains and ornate buildings lit up especially so they looked
really beautiful in the dark - but we hadn't taken our camera with us on
our walk, so we will have to remember that in our minds.

Some general comments about Madrid, for the record:

1. If you travel to Madrid and accidentally forget to bring any shoes, no
problema!! There are zapaterias (shoe stores) all over the place. On the
street with our hotel, there are at least four in this block!

2. Not only do Madrilenos seem to have some kind of shoe fetish, but also
there seems to be an inordinate number of places to eat and drink. We think
perhaps purchasing shoes makes you really hungry and thirsty.

3. Underwear is not popular among the Madrilenas. G-strings are plainly
seen through flimsy pants and skirts *if* they are worn; bras are seen on
the tourists only. Not that we're going around and checking this out
closely, but it is pretty obvious.

4. Our hotel seems to be a magnet for travelling Americans, in particular
Americans who were poorly brought up, and who do not realize that the
hallway of a hotel is not the place to run around screaming "woo hoo!
european vacation!!" and things like that. The people in Barcelona, even
the tourists, were much more civilized.

Today, we woke up kind of early for us and headed directly to the Prado -
the most famous art museum here. The building which contains this museum is
not exciting, although we did take a photo of it. It was supposed to be a
science museum but that never panned out, and after it was used by the
french troops as military headquarters during the french occupation of
Madrid, it became in 1819 an art museum. We spent a couple of hours in
there, checking out the works of Velazquez, Murillo, Goya, Titian, Rubens,
Rembrandt, and El Greco (et al.)  A highlight of the visit was the newly
reconditioned/cleaned/restored painting, Las Tres Gracias (the three
graces) by Peter Paul Rubens (aka Pedro Pablo Rubens :)) - a very very
large painting of three Rubenesque nude women. Hillary is a big fan of
Rubens. We also saw a lot of really wonderful marble, bronze, and alabaster
statues. Some of the marble work was amazing - women wearing robes that
looked so real, you couldn't believe it wasn't really cloth draping over
them.  Also in the museum we noticed some groups of cute spanish schoolkids
wearing uniforms and holding hands :) 

After we finished up in the Prado we walked down to El Parque del Retiro, a
huge 300+ acre park with lakes, exhibit halls, and all kinds of stuff. On
our way there, we walked up a street called Calle Claudio Moyano, which is
lined with booksellers. Hillary found a set of veterinary anatomy books,
and bought them, for 900 pesetas. (These are old books, written in spanish,
and really are just for Hillary's amusement, although the diagrams with
latin labels are actually useful.) 
We also stopped briefly at the Glorieta del Emperador Carlos V, a sort of a
traffic circle with a fountain in it, which is directly in front of the
Estacion de Atocha, yet another big train station - this one is where the
new high speed AVE trains to Seville originate. 

Anyway, in the park, they were having some kind of book festival. The
walkways were lined with booths selling various books on various topics and
there were big tents set up where corporate sponsors had exhibits. We saw a
little "history of Apple" museum set up by Apple corporation, and we
stumbled upon a tent set up by the local phone company which contained
Internet-connected computers. We sat down to check our email, and found
that our friend Patri was logged into izzy's server - so we were able to
talk to him, real-time. He was logged in from an Internet cafe in
Amsterdam! So that was interesting. We also browsed the cnn.com site and
are pleased to see that the French pilots and other transportation workers
have stopped striking. We checked the cnn.com weather pages and it seems
that Copenhagen and all of Norway are in for at least a few days of rain
coming up, so that's kind of a bummer, but at least we will be prepared and
can make sure we wear the appropriate clothing for our journey through
Denmark and Norway tomorrow.

We wended our way through the park and spent quite a bit of time there. We
found a really beautiful rose garden there and took several pictures of it
- it's been there for over two hundred years *point of contention here.
Hillary thinks the sign said 1820 or something like that and Michael thinks
it said 1920. Guess we'll never know. Anyway, we walked through there,
stopping to sit on a bench and relax for a while...then we walked out of
the park and wandered around until we found ourselves at...El Museo del
Jamon (jamon, jamon, jamon whole wheat....all right!)

We figured we had to give in, and we sat down and ordered two platos
combinados - a numero dos y un numero siete. The food was good, but, as
we'd been warned, the soup was god-awful. It was kind of weird eating while
surrounded by cured pig legs hanging from all the walls. We managed. While
in this restaurant, Hillary was shoved around quite a bit, by two different
old spanish women. We're not sure if this is normal behavior among old
spanish women, or if Hillary just seemed push-able today, or what...
During our meal, we observed un perro grande y negro, sitting in front of
the glass doors, looking in at us. We thought maybe he was hungry but it
turned out he was just being a good dog and waiting for his owner to finish
up inside.

We left the Museo del Jamon with full bellies and walked around the block
(because Hillary said we should go the wrong way again...) and finally
found our way back to the Paseo del Prado, and we basically retraced our
steps again until we were almost back to the hotel. We stopped off at a
parfumeria (this is kind of a small store that sells perfume, makeup,
soaps, and other bathroom products) because we needed to get Hillary some
conditioner for her hair. Then we headed back to the hotel for yet another
well earned siesta.

love,
Michael and Hillary 


From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 20:55:29 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 11: day of travel

Last night was our final one in Madrid (and for that matter Spain).  We
went out to an Italian restaurant on Calle Prim.  The pasta there was
excellent, and both also had Veal Scallopine prepared in a marsala sauce.
The cool thing about this restaurant was that they gave us a complementary
glass of Cava (champagne) upon seating us.  We also had a very nice
secluded, dark, candle lit table in a window nook.  We enjoyed it very much.

We got back to the hotel and packed up in preparation for leaving.

Today we woke up at 7am in order to have time to check out, have breakfast,
and head to the Madrid airport.  We had no trouble finding our way to the
gate and getting through customs.  The Spanish customs officials don't even
ask you any questions.  They look at your US passport, stamp it, and you
are on your way.

When our flight was ready to board, they loaded us onto a bus which drove
us out to some kind of airplane parking lot.  Our plane was actually a
SpanAir one - this flight was a cooperative one between SpanAir and SAS.

--Note: the above was written on the plane from Spain to Copenhagen. Now,
we are sitting in the airport in Copenhagen, having just returned from a
busy day of sightseeing! We have about an hour or so to kill, so we thought
we'd write some more.

We landed at about 2:30 and since we'd checked our bags through to Norway,
we deplaned and proceeded directly to customs, where we were waved through
the security area (although a little old lady near us got her bag
searched). The customs official who stamped our passports asked Michael how
long he'd be staying in Denmark, and when Michael told him just for the
day, the man said "that's too bad, but you are welcome to come here
anyway!" Then, when he looked at Hillary's passport, he asked, "Hillary? Is
that like..." and Hillary cut him off with a "yes," before he could make
the obligate Clinton joke. He said "oh, I guess you hear that all the time,
well, you are most welcome to come here anyway!" and waved her through. He
reminded Hillary of her neurosci professor in that both men have red skin
and pale white/blond hair - but the neurosci professor is the incarnation
of evil, and this customs guy was pretty nice.

We had read in our guidebook about the SAS express bus from the airport to
the city's Central Train station, so we took that - a great bargain, at a
mere 35 DKK (about $4.50) because a cab would have been much more. It runs
every 15 minutes and is pretty nice. It dropped us off about 25 minutes
later at the train station (yes, Jeff, we got a photo. It's a nice brick
building.) We headed across the street into the Tivoli gardens, which is a
combination amusement park/botanical garden/bunch of restaurants and fine
dining.  At first, we were kind of disappointed in it, but as we wandered
through we found some very cute ducks, which Michael befriended, feeding
them 2 DKK worth of duck food; and then we found some really beautiful
gardens and fountains and things, which we took photos of. We deliberately
passed straight by the Hard Rock Cafe located near the exit of the gardens.

After we finished in there, we walked down the "Stroget" (the o should have
a diagonal line through it; this is pronounced "STRO-yet." This is a mile
long pedestrian thoroughfare that runs through the heart of Copenhagen. It
is lined by designer shops, regular shops, and a plethora of shawarma
restaurants which also sell waffles and soft serve ice cream. As shoes are
to Madrid, so shawarma is to Copenhagen!! Who would have guessed? Why this
isn't mentioned in the guidebooks we have is a complete mystery. 

We walked all the way to the end of the Stroget, passing through the
Kongens Nytorv (King's Square) which is a plaza containing a statue of some
important guy on a horse, surrounded by some fancy hotels and the biggest
department store in Scandinavia, Magasin du Nord. Finally we came to an
area called Nyhavyn.

Nyhavyn used to be a wild area populated by sailors - it is a canal-front
part of town and there are still boats lining the sidewalk (boats in the
water, not on the land), and there are some tour boats which leave from
here. On either side of the canal there are buildings, and on one side of
the canal there is a large pedestrian walkway with many sidewalk cafes on
it. We stopped at a Mexican place and had beers and fajitas :). They were
good!

We hung out there for a while enjoying the amazing weather - while rain and
15 C had been forecast, it turned out to be sunny and warm at about 21 C or
so. However, it started cooling off so we decided to mosey. We walked back
along the pedestrian walkway, taking a turn we had not taken before, and
encountering the Museum of Erotica. This we couldn't miss! So, we went in.
The first thing we saw was a giant golden penis with the words "museum of
erotica" underneath it. This was a photo op we couldn't pass up :)

Things progressed....there were paintings, photographs, carvings, dioramas,
paraphernalia, videos, movies, magazines, you name it, they had it, and it
was in color too! A very strange place. Not only were there pictures and
things, but there were photos of famous people with dissertations on their
sex lives printed up next to them (in Danish and English). There were hard
core movies, soft core movies, sex aids, sex toys, sex drugs. There was a
lot of stuff in there. It took about an hour or so to see it all. Finally
we got out of there. On our way out we passed a group of four middle aged
Danish women heading in. :)

After that, we walked back to catch the SAS bus back to the airport. We
just missed one (remember, they come every 15 min) so we walked into the
train station to check it out. There was a gang of Danish soccer fans in
line to catch a train to France. They were wearing Danish "football"
jerseys and hats and stuff, all red and white like the flag - and one guy
had a buzz cut and had his white/blond hair dyed scarlet red - except for
leaving a white cross still white, so his hair was a flag!

Hillary had occasion to check out the rest room in the train station - it
was weird. You could get a shower there for 15 DKK. There was a sign next
to the sink that said "washing hands is free, washing for 'other purposes'
is 5 DKK." We're not sure what those "other purposes" are. Also, there was
a room in there where an attendent was selling a variety of panties (yes,
underwear) for 25 DKK a pair. Why you need to buy new underwear in the
restroom of the train station is beyond us. Maybe they are often crowded
and people find themselves unable to wait, and end up needing new undies?
Who knows.

Anyway, we caught the SAS bus and got back to the airport and here we are,
waiting for our plane to Bergen. We are excited about being reunited with
our luggage. Tomorrow, we will explore Bergen, and then hop on the Richard
With (that's a boat) to begin our 6 day cruise of the Fjords. Woo!

love,
Michael and Hillary


From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 21:57:15 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 12: Norwegian Wood

Ok, we made it to Norway!! Our plane from Copenhagen was a bit late, and
very crowded, and when the pilot made some announcements in Norwegian and
Danish as to the status of the flight (he said in English at one point that
there were some problems loading it), some good-natured passengers started
making jokes among each other in either Norwegian or Danish or possibly
Swedish, we really can't tell any of these languages apart. It was a
convivial crowd, though.

The flight was short, only an hour, and the remarkable thing was that as we
flew from Copenhagen (where it had been just starting to get dark at about
11 PM when we left) to Bergen, the sky got lighter and lighter! As we began
our descent over Norway, we were above a very dense cloud cover - above it,
it was quite light even though it was near midnight. As we dropped through
the cloud cover, it became darker because it was so very overcast, and when
we got beneath it, it was about what you would call twilight, or late
twilight. There was still at midnight plenty of light for us to see the
beautiful Norwegian coastline and the trees and homes we flew over. It's
not a sight we are likely to forget anytime soon. 

We landed and our bags were three of the first 7 bags off the conveyor, so
that was cool. We hopped on another of those nifty SAS airbuses which took
us to the center of town, about 40 minutes away, for about $5 bucks - our
guidebook informs us this would have been a $50  cab ride, so this was a
great deal.

We got off the bus about 3 blocks from our Guesteheusen. To get to the
Guesteheusen we had to go up a hill which was sad for Michael who was
schlepping a larger bag than I was. We finally got here at about 1 am - it
was pretty dark by now although still not DARK dark. We checked into our
room - although the propietors had lost the key, and had to get us in by
using the master key, we figured who cares, we're just sleeping over here
anyway. 

The place is nice, clean, and has everything we need - although, not only
were there twin beds, but the beds fold longitudinally - so we were on a
twin bed with a crack down the middle. We ameliorated this a bit by using
one of the nice soft down comforters as a bottom sheet. 

The weather here was a slight bit drizzly on our way into town last night
but again, we completely avoided being rained on, as by the time we got off
the bus it wasn't raining, and it was warm enough for us to be wearing T
shirts, windbreakers, and pants without freezing our butts off. It's
looking kind of mostly cloudy with some blue sky present as of today.

This message is being composed at about 9:45 am - we were awakened this
morning at about 9 am by the Norwegian sanitation engineers who seem to go
down the street very slowly in a big truck, doing something that makes a
lot of noise. Oh, btw - in Copenhagen they had automatic trash cans on the
street that kind of ate up your trash and compacted it on the spot!!
Anyway, we're packing stuff up and getting ready to go for a day of
sightseeing in Bergen.

Cellphone afficionados among you - though Omnipoint claimed to have no
roaming agreements in Denmark, they obviously did - we sent you email via
cellular from the airport there. Here in Norway, they claim to have one
roaming agreement only, but we are able to use either of two networks. Go
figure.

More later!!

------

Well, it's later :)
We're sitting in Cafe Latino on the waterfront here in tropical Bergen,
Norway. That's a joke because it isn't very tropical here today. Earlier we
had a waffle at a stand run by a nice girl who told us that last week, it
was so warm she was sunbathing in a bikini, but today it is "unseasonably"
cold. Yeah, sure, whatever. It's cold here. We went and bought ourselves
each a nice hand knitted wool Norwegian sweater, hat, and gloves - Hillary
immediately put on the gloves and would have put on the rest of the stuff
too but Michael would have laughed at her too much. We got a bargain on the
woolens - the woman selling them gave us a bulk rate discount and remarked
that she was very lucky we came by today because we bought so much! Michael
even talked her down further from NOK 1056 to NOK 1000, because that was
what we felt like spending, and that comes to about $130 or so - not bad
for two really nice sweaters plus hats and gloves!

We got email from Hillary's dad yesterday about a tram ride in Bergen that
we should take. He will be pleased to hear that we rode the "Floibanen"
from the city center near the fishmarket up to the top of Mount Floyen -
1050 feet up. This is an 8 minute ride that takes you to a nice plateau
where you can look down on the city and take photos and stuff. Then we
walked back down the mountain, through the Norwegian Forest - but we didn't
see any cats in there. We did meet a nice older couple who offered to take
a photo of the two of us together, though.

The views from up there and on the way down were lovely. The bottom part of
the mile long walk down the mountain (after we exited the forest) went
through a quaint residential area where there were homes with yards and
lovely gardens - lots of rhododendrons, huge lilac bushes/trees like in
Maine, bleeding hearts (yet another poisonous plant...), and some
unrecognizable yellow flowering trees/shrubs. We did see one cat wandering
through this area but it wasn't a Fuzzy - it was short haired. We took a
picture of it anyway.

After that we went back to the Fish Market we'd been to already - Hillary's
Uncle Sidney would probably love this place. Tons of fresh salmon, crab,
shrimp, other things, and even fresh WHALE! We ate some smoked salmon and
some gravlax. The coolest thing is you can go around and ask to try things
and the people will let you taste anything you want. Everything was
delicious :)

Then, a real stroke of luck. We were walking past a pet store and they had
a photo in the window of some Fuzzies (norwegian forest fuzzies!). We asked
the store manager about them and she took us next door into the flower
store and spoke in Norwegian to the guy there, who then took out a phone
book and called up a friend of his who turned out to be a breeder of NFCs,
and told him he had two americans here who had some Skaukatts (that's what
they call the NFC here) and put Michael on the phone with him. We are going
to visit the cattery in about half an hour or so - that's why we are
sitting down here at this cafe now - it's too cold to sit outside, we don't
want to walk too far from this place and get lost, and there isn't really
much else to do while we wait for the guy to get home from work.

--

Ok. Now we're on the boat!! Er, ship. Anyway, we did meet up with the
Norwegian Forest Cat (hereinafter: "Fuzzy") breeder, a very nice German guy
named Frank. He took us into his home (a third story walk up apartment that
was quite nice) to meet his six fuzzies. They were sooooo cuuuuuute!!!! We
played with some of them - one in particular was very friendly and reminded
us a bit of Rufus because he rubbed up to us with his head. Also, there was
a grey and white one who looked a little like Kanga. There was one great
big red one but he was very shy and ended up jumping onto the top of the
refrigerator. Frank talked with us a bit about Fuzzies in general and
breeding them and showing them and he told us a bit about the breeder where
he obtained his starter cats, and the stuff going on at that bigger
cattery. He gave us a couple of photos of his kittens, and we took some of
our own as well. He gave us his address so we can send him photos of our
Fuzzies after we get back home. He invited us to come back for a visit
anytime; we told him if he gets to Philadelphia he should come by and say hi.

After that nice visit we returned to the Rosenberg Gjestehus, picked up our
luggage which we'd stowed rather insecurely in a closet next to the coke
machine, and schlepped it over a hill and along a bunch of cobblestoned
streets to get to the dock. Several times along the way, passersby asked us
in Norwegian-accented english if we were headed to the north-bound ship,
and when we said yes, tried to give us directions. That was very helpful!
When we were almost there one guy actually pointed out the boat to us, in
the harbor, so then we were all set. We must have been a sight with our
bags and everything. :)

We got on the ship, checked in, had a nice dinner, and attended an
informational meeting, where we overheard the middle-aged folks at the next
table telling the other older people at the table after that that they were
from South Jersey (the other people being from Rochester, NY). We didn't
tell them we were almost neighbors.  We also overheard some poor people
trying to be polite in their dealings with the staff - apparently, they are
on their honeymoon and have been booked into the same type of room that we
have - two extremely narrow twin beds. These people are extremely upset and
since the ship sails in about 10 minutes, we hope they get it dealt with
soon. 

The ship, by the way, isn't a cruise ship per se. It is a working cargo
ship, a ferry that takes residents between cities, and takes cars and
stuff, as well as being a tourist/cruise type ship. So there is a lot going
on here.

So, we're all settled into our room, and we're looking forward to seeing
some beautiful scenery, and going on an excursion either tomorrow or the
next day (we have to check at the desk; we forget).

Love,
Hillary and Michael


From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 22:33:51 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 13: Climb every mountain; fjord every stream (ha ha)

Hi again!!

Last night we took the bottle of wine that our travel agent, Adele,
arranged to have waiting in our cabin, and sat on the observation deck
drinking it, until about 2 am. While we were sitting there we struck up
some conversation with an older couple - they are Australian by origin but
have been living in New Zealand for a number of years, and they take 3
months off to travel every year - must be nice. They are on this cruise
because the man, Steve, is a skipper on a smaller boat in New Zealand,
where they also have fjords, and he wanted to check out these fjords and
compare them.

We saw some very beautiful countryside while travelling north last night.
We went up the coast past the Oygardan chain of islands to the west and a
bunch of small villages on the coast to our right. Everything was beautiful
but the views today were better so I won't go into detail just yet. I'll
just mention this - as we sat on the deck in the rear of the boat and
watched the sun moving closer to the horizon, it went behind some clouds
and created a sort of a false sunset, it was still pretty light out but the
sun was behind a bank of clouds, making the clouds appear to be on fire,
with rays of sunlight coming out the top and making the other clouds to the
side look pink in the blue sky. It was really lovely.

Today we were awakened at about 7:30 am by a maid who entered our cabin
without knocking. She scurried away when she heard Michael's cry of
surprise. About half an hour later she came in *again*, this time to find
Michael standing in his underwear in the middle of the room. She went away
again and didn't come back til we left the cabin, at about 9:30. We sat on
the deck again and watched some very very beautiful scenery go by.  Today
the ship went up around the West Cape, past the Hornelen mountain where a
viking is said to have climbed to the peak. Then we passed Maloy, a big
fishing community; we also stopped briefly at Alesund - a charming
community nestled into the base of a huge mountain - this town burnt down
in 1904 and was rebuilt in an Art Nouveau style. We saw an old fashioned
wooden fishing boat here and took a photo of it.

It's pointless to list all of the places we went passed as the names mean
nothing to us. Suffice it to say that we traveled north on the ship to
Garaingefjord. During the journey to this fjord we passed much amazing
coastline. In some areas, there were vertically rising moutains, coming
directly out of the water - much of it covered with many many trees, with
some higher snow covered peaks producing snow-melt waterfalls - also in
many places the fjords are so steep, that no trees can grow; in these areas
the rock is sometimes dark brown, sometimes black from the water constantly
dripping down. Michael says that much of the coast here reminded him of the
fjords of Alaska. Of particular interest was the "Seven Sisters" waterfall
at Garaingefjord. We wish we could think of a really good way to describe
the scenery - it was really breathtaking - but it's pretty indescribable.
The weather during this part of the trip was mostly overcast with some
periods of sun - the low lying clouds covering parts of the steep mountains
were part of the charm. It only adds to the beauty, so you can't really
complain about rain here.

Today did turn out to be the day of our excursion. We disembarked from the
Richard With at Geirangerfjord, onto a smaller ferry which took us to the
shore of Gerainger where we boarded a very nice tour bus. The bus took us
along the "Eagle's Road," the only road out of Geiranger during the winter
because all the other roads go up too high and become too dangerous during
times of heavy snow. This road sort of wended its way up the mountain and
gave an excellent view of the fjord, the waterfalls and mountains - we saw
some truly amazing stuff. We saw some goats climbing up the mountain, some
farms and stuff - the oldest farm houses are 350 yrs old, but the farms
themselves are over 1000 yrs old. We noticed that some of the buildings
have sod roofs, such as Hillary recalls reading about in the Little House
on the Prairie books :) - apparently that is an old Scandinavian technique
and the roofs can last for over 80 years if made well. We also drove along
a lake to a town called Eidsal, and then the bus went on a ferryboat to a
place called Linge. We drove through what they call "strawberry valley"
because they grow a lot of strawberries there - which are not expected to
ripen until next month, by the way - and Hillary remembers eating some
strawberries out of her mom's garden shortly before we left Philly, so the
growing season here is obviously behind what it is at home. This was also
evidenced by the fact that the horse chestnut and locust trees we saw are
in full bloom - the ones in Rittenhouse Square were done blooming in May.
In this area we saw more beautiful countryside in the valley areas, and
more moutain stuff too. Everything was very verdant and fertile looking,
except for the frozen parts at the top. We saw many areas of sheep and
goats in the mountains, and in the valley we saw some cows. Then we drove
over what they call the Troll road, because it is very high up in a frozen
rocky area (we were able to get out and be in the snow; we took a picture
of Michael with a troll too!) - Mila would hate this road because it is
very very narrow and has a series of 11 hairpin turns as it descends this
very tall mountain, and it also goes over 2 seemingly sketchy bridges
because of the huge, beautiful waterfalls in the way. When we got down from
here we were again in a valley with cows and sheep and goats, the tour
guide mentioned there is a dairy back in Alesund to which they ship the
milk. We saw the cows actually coming home at one point - everyone always
talks about that, but you never see it. These cows were obviously due to be
milked and in a big hurry to get to the milking house.

It was really spectacular, as we went up and down the mountains, the
vegetation and the rock formations changed drastically. Up high there were
areas of boulders and rocks which formed when the mountains froze during an
ice age and shattered as the frozen water expanded. At the higher
elevations also the trees were very small and in many areas they were
growing horizontally as a result of being repeatedly covered with snow
during avalanches. Also in some areas there are avalanches every year and
the trees have given up entirely, so nothing grows there. As you get lower,
the trees (which are mostly birch trees) get bigger and lusher. Ferns and
mayapples begin to grow as groundcover, and along the side of the road in
many many areas there was lupine growing - those are those tall spiky cones
of flowers, with pretty lacy leaves - these were planted originally by
Norway's version of Johnny Appleseed, an older man who didn't like the
roadside after the road was built, so he planted some seeds along it, and
they spread all over the place. The flowers are pink, purple, and white.
Also when you get into the valleys where the farms are, there are lilac
trees and shrubs, with regular lilac colored flowers as well as purple,
indigo, and white. We saw some goats at one of these farms which were
standing on the roof of their barn :)

We drove past a big river which is the best salmon fishing river in Norway
and which is also quite beautiful. We followed it along for quite some
time. The water is clear and aquamarine colored and in some areas it has
impressive rapids and waterfalls - the energy of this river is harnessed in
a couple of areas and they are able to make enough electricity to power not
only the entire region but some neighboring areas as well (they sell power). 

We saw a monument to King Olav, and we saw some towns where British
soldiers landed in WWII - this resulted in the city being heavily bombed,
of course. Another city was heavily bombed in WWII because the king and his
son had fled to the region. 

We stopped at a train station, Jeff, because there was a girl who wanted to
take a train to Oslo. We learned that this region is served by one railway
line - they have both day and night trains to Oslo, that run on the
original track laid in about 1925.  Then we went through the Hannefjord
tunnel - this is a big tunnel that goes 100 meters under the sea and is
about 2800 meters long and has solid rock walls 30 meters thick. On the
other side was Molde! This is the "city of roses" but sadly we arrived too
early for the blooming season. There were plenty of other things blooming
though, like tulips and the ubiquitous rhododendron. We saw the Molde
cathedral which has a really interesting bell tower, and we were told about
the world renowned view of 222 mountain peaks from here - but as we said,
it was overcast, so we couldn't see all 222 peaks. We saw a few. We stopped
and had dinner here and it rained while we were in the restaurant - when we
went out, there was a rainbow at the harbor where we awaited our boat! We
tried to take a photo of it but who knows if that will come out.

We're back on the boat now, relaxing from our long day. It was good that we
had a day of sitting around today because our legs are sore from climbing
down the mountain in Bergen yesterday! We are sailing north of Molde now on
the way to Kristiansund. Tomorrow we will be in Trondheim, where Hillary
thinks is where Dr. Sorenmo (one of Wally's doctors) said she went to high
school. We will be probably getting off the boat early tomorrow morning and
walking around there a bit. We are also deciding if we want to do another
excursion the day after tomorrow - they take you out onto a glacier, it's
supposed to be pretty cool. We aren't sure yet, though.

It's currently about 10:30pm and mostly sunny, so we have a beautiful view
as our boat travels further up the coast.  We see green mountains against a
clear blue sky, and the sun is shining brightly in the west.  The sun still
is not very close to the horizon.  Yesterday, the sun set after midnight,
and now since we are further north, it probably won't set until closer to 1am.

We were very impressed by the cellular phone coverage here in Norway.  Even
in the middle of nowhere, there is excellent signal.  Even in that tunnel
under the sea.

Love,
Michael and Hillary

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 12:26:06 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 14: Trekking through Trondheim

Here's a tidbit of news we forgot to mention in our last mail, but were
reminded of when we got email from Hillary's Uncle Jeff describing his
traffic nightmare of being trapped at O'Hare airport - right now the air
traffic controllers in Norway are striking and as far as we can tell no
planes are landing in Norway at all. Some people have missed this boat
because of it, in fact - which allowed that honeymooning couple to end up
getting a better cabin, by the way. Good for them, but bad for the
travellers, and possibly bad for us. We will arrive in Kirkenes on the 18th
and are supposed to travel from there by plane to Oslo. If the planes are
not flying, we aren't sure what we will do. We may be able to get a train
but then again, we may not. There is a boat related Kirkenes excursion
which takes you to the Russian border and even in the river which IS the
border, and to the other side of it. If we get stuck in Kirkenes perhaps we
can do that - heck, that would kill two hours. If we end up REALLY stuck in
Kirkenes we aren't sure what we'll do but we are sure it will be
interesting in any case! If you hear any news about this, please let us
know. Today we asked a newsstand manager about it and she said that she
hadn't gotten any new newspapers for two days because of the pilot strike -
nothing is being flown in! She said she hoped to have news of the strike by
Monday.

Some other stuff we forgot to mention is that when we were on that bus tour
from Garaingefjord to Molde, while driving in the area approaching Molde
but before the big undersea tunnel, we passed by some people walking along
the road with one of those multiple leashes and it had about 10 to 15 dogs
at the end of it!! They were long haired dachshunds and they were very very
cute. Also on our drive we kept passing these vintage (1920s and up) Rolls
Royces which are here in Norway for some kind of special gathering/race. We
thought this road was not the best place for these cars. In addition to
this gathering there was a sign for a gathering of motorcycle riders, and
we saw some bikers heading toward that. Our tour guide also described for
us two other races that occur in the area - one was a marathon up the Eagle
whatever road that gave us the great view of the fjord, the other was a
bicycle race up that Troll road we described before, which occurs during
August in the warm weather. Both sounded extremely harrowing and unpleasant.

--

Today, June 14/Sunday we woke up early for us at about 9 am, when the boat
staff made some announcement about a bus that would be leaving at 9:15.
Shortly after this our alarm clock went off so we really had to get up
then. We prepared to spend a few hours wandering around today's first port
of call, Trondheim, where Dr. Sorenmo went to high school. This is Norway's
third largest city so we figured we should go check it out. First we had
breakfast on the boat, then we set out with map in hand to look around this
city. 

First we took the obligatory photo of a statue of Leiv Eriksson, and then
we walked past the harbor area and some shipping areas until we got to one
of the actual streets of Trondheim - this required going over a bridge and
past a cute little marina. We walked toward the city center - past the
Central train station and down a main road all the way through the heart of
the city. We stopped to take a photo of the Trondheim Cathedral, built
originally by King Olav Kyrre sometime between 1066 and 1093, and then
later enlarged in 1151 when they established this city as a religious
center for all of Norway. This church is supposed to be the most
magnificent one in Scandinavia, and for the moment we're willing to go
along with that although we did greatly appreciate the modern bell tower at
the church in Molde the other day. Anyway, this cathedral is built in what
the guidebook calls a "Late Romanesque transitional style, influenced by
Norman architecture and Gothic style". The church is built of "klebersten,"
a blue-grey colored soapstone which they quarry here to the south and east
of Trondheim.

After checking out this area, we crossed the Elgesester bru (that's a
bridge over the Nidelva river/canal that runs through Trondheim). From the
bridge we had a great view of the Kristiansten fort, on a low hill to the
east of the town, which is a 17th century fortress. Looking the other way
(west? it's hard to tell around here since there is water everywhere) we
saw some pretty green hills with some houses on them, which reminded
Hillary of the Berkeley Hills area of Berkeley, CA.

We headed for and found the student center, a big red round building which
houses a guesthouse, a couple of restaurants, and some other stuff - but
it, like everything else in Trondheim, was closed on Sunday morning.

That was a bit of a disappointment but not too much, since the walk over
was very pretty and the weather is sunny and about 55 degrees F. We decided
to walk back along the river at first, through the Erkebispegarden park
where there were many very pretty flowering horse chestnut trees, lilac
trees, rhododendrons and tulips. We saw some people walking their dogs. Oh,
they do not crop ears or dock tails here in Norway - it is against the law
- so we've seen some very cute dobermans and spaniels with long ears and
tails :). 

We then walked through the city up along Munkegata, the main road, all the
way up to the Kanalhavn which separates Trondheim proper from the finger of
land which houses the train station, the shipyards, and the railroad
tracks. We stopped for a photo op in front of the Stiftsgarden, the royal
residence, which is Scandinavia's second largest wooden building.
Apparently Trondheim is known for being a town of wooden buildings.
Trondheim also is the home of the largest research institute in Norway
(SINTEF) and the University of Trondheim, which we passed as we walked back
toward the boat. It says in our book that the University is known for
educating civil engineers who then seduce the female population of the
town.... hmmm. Sounds like someone we know!

Trondheim was very pretty with very wide sidewalks and lots of trees, and
on every other block it seemed there was a park with an open green space
and a garden and some benches. It's too bad that everything was closed and
everyone was either asleep or in church or something because we didn't
really get a feel for what it was actually like when the people were
around. We do think that David would like it here because the few people we
did see walking around or biking around looked like Lori. We noticed there
was a sushi bar here and we took a photo of it :) - it was across the
street from a fishmarket, so we suspect the sushi would be pretty good, but
we wouldn't know since it was closed.

We've picked up some Norwegian while we've been here. "Til" means "to,"
"laks" means "salmon," and "smor" means "butter." We're way to mature to
find any amusement in this but in case some of you less mature people find
it humorous, we also learned that the Norwegian word for "speed" is "fart."
Also, we keep hearing people who speak Norwegian using a word that sounds
like "fuktis" pronounced "fuck dis"; we're not sure what it means but
perhaps Hillary's mom wants to ask Dr. Sorenmo??

David, you will be happy to know that the lock on our cabin door uses a
Ving card!

Hillary would like to mention that they make the announcements over the PA
here in Norwegian, English, and German, in no particular order. The other
day she was listening and she heard the German announcment before the
English one, and understood it!

Regarding Norwegian food - it sure is odd and unusual seeming! At
breakfast, they serve these little toothpaste tubes of kaviar. At lunch,
they serve *seagull eggs* ! The seagulls here, by the way, are similar
looking to our seagulls but they squawk with Norwegian accents. We were
given a book about the coast when we got on the boat and it contains
information about the various birds we may see on our trip. We are hoping
to get a look at the puffins although they are greatly reduced in number
lately. Also about the food - pancakes and waffles are popular snacks,
served with coffee or tea, not as breakfast foods. Jams are served with
nearly everything. Potatoes are popular, and cream sauces are nearly
ubiquitious, on everything from beef to herring. We've been told that dill
is used a lot, but actually we haven't really encountered much dill which
is good because Michael dislikes it. On the boat, each meal includes an
offering of assorted cheeses. There is a sweetish, very creamy blue cheese
we've been greatly enjoying. Today at breakfast there were two sharper blue
cheeses (one may have been a roquefort) and a really bizarre cheese that
looked a bit like and tasted quite a bit like peanut butter!

Nonetheless, we are looking forward to some home cooking upon our return to
the states in July! 

Love,
Hillary and Michael



From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1998 19:17:57 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 15: to the glacier

Hey!

Yesterday we finally met our dining partners - we've been assigned to sit
for dinner on the ship with a couple from central NJ - two older folks who
are vacationing on this cruise. They were pretty amusing. The man is a
cross between Archie Bunker and Hillary's Uncle Helmut. He kept griping
about the fact that "they spell things funny here" - he complained that
"ol" is how they spell "beer" here, but that sometimes they also spell it
"pils." We tried to tell him that "ol" was "ale" and "pils" was "pilsner"
but he insisted that "ol" was no way for anyone to spell "beer," and that's
what the bartender had told him it meant. But then again, he told us that
whenever he travels, he always tries to find a beer that resembles his all
time favorite beer, Bud Light....He also complained that they let the
waffles and pancakes get cold (it is customary to serve cold waffles or
pancakes with jam or sugared butter as a snack with coffee here). The woman
was not so much of a complainer.

Today we got up really really early so that we could get ready and have
breakfast and leave the boat when we got into port at Gronoy at 8:20 AM. We
disembarked onto a smaller ferryboat and were taken by ferry into
Holandsfjord, where there are many islands and skerries, all the way inland
to Svartisen National Park, where we got off the ferry.

During the ferry-trip from Gronoy to Svartisen via Holandsfjord, we saw a
lot of beautiful coast moderately similar to the coast we've already
described, except that now that we are further north, not all of the leaves
and stuff are out - the growing season is a bit behind - and also, during
this small stretch, the land did not rise as steeply, but was more hilly
than mountainous. We saw a sea eagle fly near to the boat, but we were
unable to photograph him because he moved too quickly.

When we got to Svartisen National Park, we walked up a trail through an
area of birch woodland and some marshy area. About 1/3 of the way to the
end of the trail we entered an area where there were some cows and sheep
hanging around. We looked up to the side of the nearby mountain and saw
that there were also some cows up there. As we walked up this trail, ahead
of us we could see a piece of the Svartisen Glacier, which is what we were
walking toward. On either side of that were very large snowcovered
mountains. To our right was the tail end of Holandsfjord, in which the
water is colored an unusual green color due to glacial silt that the water
picks up as it flows out from beneath the glacier. We continued up the
trail until we got to the little tourist area across the water from the
glacier, were we had a snack and took some pictures of the beautiful
scenery (and got someone to take a photo of the two of us in front of the
Glacier). By the way, the weather today was again beautiful and very sunny
and clear!

Eventually we had to head out of the area. On the way back to the ferry we
stopped on the trail at a pen someone had set up for their pet rabbits.
This was a large penned in area with two little A frame houses in it and 5
or 6 rabbits hanging around in there. We took pictures of them too 'cause
they were cute - mini-lops and angoras, we think. Also, on the way back,
there were more cows and sheep. We got a picture of two sheep resting in
the woods and a picture of Hillary standing a couple of feet in front of a
large group of white and also some white and brown cows. The really cool
thing here was that the animals all had big cow bells on them, and as they
walked around they would ring, and also they were mooing and baaaing as we
went by, so it sounded sort of like music :)

The ferry then took us across Holandsfjord to the shore on the other side
where we boarded a tour bus. Of note at this point was the fact that the
tour people had prepared one tour guide to speak English and German, and
another guide to speak Norwegian and French - but the German speaking
people filled an entire bus, so the English, Norwegian, and French speaking
people ended up on the other bus. Therefore, our guide had not prepped
himself to give the tour in English and as a result, had some problems. He
obviously could speak the language, but when giving a tour you probably use
a lot of unusual words and this poor man kept having to stop and look
things up - and also for the first half of the tour he spoke a LOT more in
Norwegian and French than in English, until a kind Norwegian fellow behind
us went up to him and told him that all the Americans kept asking "what is
he saying?" and from that point on, the English portion of the tour improved. 

So, we drove on Norway's version of California's coastal highway 1 - Norway
Coastal Road 17. We were driving through the borough of Moloy, along this
road which they call the most picturesque of all roads in Norway. The first
town we passed through was Glomfjord - an "industrial" city, according to
the guide - and they do have a big power plant and chemical fertilizer
plant there - but really a very small town, more rural/suburban than city
like. The power plant here was built in 1920 and that is when the town
really "took off." The harbour became one of Norway's busiest ports and in
WWII, the Germans raided the harbor and bombed the plants and so forth.
During the wintertime, people take ski lifts located here up to the top of
the surrounding mountains, and go skiing. On our way through Glomfjord we
were driving past some homes located on the edge of the woods, and we saw
someone looking at us from the very edge of the woods - a black norwegian
forest cat!!

We drove through a tunnel out of Glomfjord (Rte 17 has many tunnels; these
are required because many areas suffer repeated avalanches which would wipe
out regular roads) and then we passed through Neverdal, at the base of the
Spilderhesten mountain which rises 851 meters above sea level.

We continued on through a very beautiful region of snow capped mountains
and white sandy seashore (where swimming is of course out of the question
due to the frigidity of the water, but fishing and boating remain popular)
until we reached Ornes, the administrative center (county seat, we think)
of Meloy. This is a beautiful city with a charming harbor, and it is very
popular with Swedish tourists who come to go fishing for weeks at a time in
the summer, so we are told. Again, many of the homes and other buildings
are wooden, although not all are. Some are built log cabin style, even
though they are obviously new. All throughout Norway, yellow and red are
traditional and popular colors of houses and barns.

We continued our drive through a lot of country which we really didn't
catch much information about, but at one point a very exciting thing
happened - we saw a small herd of reindeer! Yes, big brown animals with
huge antlers - the guide claimed he saw 5 but Hillary thinks she saw at
least 10 or more. These reindeer are not native to Norway. They are owned
by a Swedish family and apparently in the summer these reindeer come into
this area where there is better grazing for them, and they hang out here.
They were down in a valley, some were lying down and some were standing and
grazing.

Our next point of interest was "Saltstraumen," which is the strongest
"maelstrom," whatever that is, in the world. We believe from context that
"maelstrom" means "current," for what is going on in this area is that two
fjords are coming together and the water must pass at high speed through a
very narrow area. This creates a very very strong current and a lot of
whirlpools and stuff. We drove over a bridge to get a top view and then we
pulled over to a fishing area where there were some fishermen catching lots
of fish - apparently this place always has lots of fish in it, and we could
tell that because there were many sea birds here, fishing themselves! We
observed many Grey Gulls, with red spots under their beaks; we also saw and
got a photo of some Eider ducks. Other birds we have seen along the way
include Gannets and Guillemots, what looks like some kind of a tern (but
not the one in our book), and some kind of grey crane or egret that isn't
in our book. No puffins yet though. 

>From Saltstraumen we drove to Bodo, the administrative center of Nordland
county. There are many universities here, an airport that handles over 1/2
million passengers yearly, and an engine factory in addition to a big
fishing industry. Jeff will be interested to know that this city, Bodo, is
the end of the line for the Norwegian rail system. Here, they make
connections between the Coastal Express (which is the boat we're on) and
the railroads, buses, ferries, and airplanes (which still aren't landing in
Norway, by the way. We are awaiting word of the results of the meeting
between the Air Traffic Controllers and the Norwegian Government, which was
to happen some time today.) Of note regarding Bodo - prior to 1940 this was
already a large city (which got its start as a big herring processing
area). However, in 1940 sometime in May, the Germans bombed the hell out of
the city, destroying over 400 out of 700 buildings in the center of town.
They did this, we're told, because the Germans believed that the British
soldiers who had come here were in the harbor at the time - but in fact,
the soldiers had left to return to London two days before, or something, so
the bombing did not accomplish whatever it was the Germans wanted to do,
but it did result in the loss of the homes of 3,700 people - but as the
Norwegians were able to implement an excellent evacuation plan, only 15
people were killed. The airport and north Norway rail line, by the way,
were also built during the rebuilding of Bodo during WWII after the 1940
bombing. By 1956, the town was completely rebuilt into the huge modern
communications/transportation hub it is today.  In Bodo we got back on our
ship and we are now continuing northwest across the wide Vestfjord - right
now we are kind of in open water with distant land on either side, which is
why we are able to spend so much time writing this up. Later today we will
stop off at Stamsund and then still later in Svolvar. Our book says we will
be able to see a lot of very nice fishing villages and fisherman's cabins
lining the coast as we approach it later. After we stop at those two ports,
we'll be continuing in a more north/northeasterly course.

This was a great excursion today and we look forward to more wonderful
scenery later today. You should realize that we crossed over into the
Arctic circle at about 7:30 AM today, and we are now in the land of the
midnight sun, so we can expect to be able to see everything out there for
as long as we manage to stay awake! It is very strange how darkness never
really comes. Last night the sun did set for a short time (again very
beautifully through a cloud cover, giving the appearance of a bright orange
fire burning through the clouds, which had holes between them) which
resulted in a twilight/dusky period that lasted for about 2 1/2 hours
according to a woman from California named Annette, with whom we spoke
today, who told us that at 3 am she'd been awakened by bright sunlight
streaming into her cabin. We'd gone to bed shortly past midnight and we
suppose that one advantage of having one of the cabins in the middle of the
boat with no window (which the travel agent told us was all that was
available - she sounded apologetic about it) is that the sun being up at
odd hours can't possibly bother you! We like this feature.

Love,
Michael and Hillary

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 01:05:11 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 15/16: the sun also rises

Hey there. We're still up at about 1 am on June 16th, preparing to go to
bed but we wanted to write this down first! After Michael finished his nap,
we had some dinner with Mr and Mrs Einstein from central NJ. Boy are they
odd. The guy is just a couple slices short of a loaf or something. He
thought the bowl of potatoes was a bowl of olives, he thought that the
string beans were salad, and he thought that the windows, which were dirty,
had some kind of special flocking on them. What a maroon.

Good news! The norwegian air traffic controllers' strike is over! Woo hoo!
They made an announcement about it as we were heading to dinner this evening.

As we ate, the ship docked at Svolvaer, one of those fishing villages we
had been told about. We were there for about an hour, so we got off the
boat and walked around a bit. Not a lot to see there - we took a photo of
some teepee like structures down by the dock  - we have no idea what they
were; we saw a nesting pair of Grey Gulls with two down-covered fledgelings
up on a roof but we couldn't get a photo of them because our camera doesn't
zoom in far enough. 

When we got back on the ship we sat out on the observation deck for a while
- the ship took a short diversionary turn at about 11:30 PM into the Troll
Fjord (we don't recall the Norwegian name for it) and while there the crew
served everyone "Troll soup" which was a kind of a chicken based soup with
veggies and stuff in it. This fjord was really awesome. We were in a very
narrow channel with huge rock faces coming out of the water vertically on
either side. There was a nice waterfall we tried to photograph; there were
some trees but very few due to the angle. The U-turn maneuvering the ship
did to get out of there was kinda scary.

While we were sitting there we were chatting with some Norwegian 9th
graders - one of whom aspires to be a veterinarian, another wants to be a
Hollywood actress :) - and also with a 70 yr old couple from New Hampshire.
The man of that couple has been teaching himself norwegian for the past
three weeks and was practicing it on these 9th graders, who were very
impressed (as were we.) It was fun chatting with them all.  We also got
visited by our New Zealand friends Jan and Steve who said they'd thought
maybe we'd left the ship and they were glad to see us again. They got to go
up into the area where they steer the ship and stuff, and show the captain
pictures of the New Zealand fjord and the boat that Steve captains there.
But they didn't get to see the glacier or the reindeer, so that kind of
makes us even, right?

As we were sitting there getting kind of tired, we realized that we were
finally moving out of the area of very tall mountains and that we'd get a
glimpse of the sun soon. We went out onto the outer deck and braved the
chilling wind as the boat moved forward, under a bridge, to reveal the
brightly shining one o'clock in the morning sun, about 20 degrees above the
horizon. Overall, the impression is that it is early morning at about 7 am
or perhaps late evening at about 8 pm, with plenty of light. It's really
eerie. The thought of what it's like in winter when the sun doesn't rise is
even worse, though.

Tonight as we sleep we will pass Sortland and Harstad; tomorrow during the
day we will get to see Finnsnes and we'll probably get off the ship and
walk around for a few hours in Tromso. We'll let you know how it goes :)

TTFN,
Michael and Hillary

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 19:52:00 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 16: Traipsing through Tromso

This morning Hillary was awakened by an announcement over the boat PA
system, so she got up while Michael was still sleeping and took a shower in
the tiny little boat shower, which is really a whole experience in itself,
but probably not something that translates well into words, sorry. When she
emerged from the shower, the maid waltzed right into the room, again
without knocking, this time completely ignoring the "do not disturb sign"
which we *had* placed on the door. Hillary said "hello?" and the maid said
"hello" and just stood there for a minute until Hillary said "please
leave," and the maid left. 
This was rather annoying so we later asked the boat staff to please make
sure not to ever enter our cabin before noon, no matter what. That should
hopefully resolve the problem.

After Michael got up we went into the "library," which is a quiet room with
windows and games and books. We played scrabble with some people from
California for a while as we watched the scenery go by. We'd slept through
the stop in Harstad at 7 am, but we did get a good look at Finnsnes,
another fishing village. As the ship pulled out of Finnsnes, we went
through some narrow straits and passed Senja on our port side. Senja is the
second largest island in Norway, but otherwise isn't really that much
different from the rest of the coastal territory.

We did delay our departure from Finnsnes because the ship had called a
doctor for some woman who had been having chest pains, and they had to wait
for him or her to show up and look at the woman. So we were in the harbor
there all during lunch. We ate lunch again with Joe and Jane Genius from
central NJ. We didn't make much conversation and when we were finished
Michael went and asked the head waiter to please change us from the second
seating to the first seating so we wouldn't have to be with them anymore.
Therefore, we shouldn't be bothered again by the sheer idiocy of these
people. (And in case anyone is getting any ideas to the contrary, Michael
was bothered as much as Hillary was!)

After lunch we went back to finish up our scrabble game. During the journey
to Tromso we passed another island with a Musk Ox farm on it - but we
didn't see the Musk Oxen. Oh well. When we got to Tromso, we disembarked
for a look at the town.

The harbor was nice; of note were two Russian ships, one cruise ship and
one working ship of some kind, which were also in the harbor just behind
our ship. There was a great view of some snow covered and non snow covered
mountains, and a nice bridge. We took some photos of the harbor, and of a
unique triangular church. 

We walked into town and found a memorial to people from Tromso who had been
taken to concentration camps during WWII - at least, that was our best shot
at the translation. It was a headstone type piece of granite with a metal
plaque on it, and it contained a lot of Jewish names, and it had the word
Konsentrasionkamp or something like that, and the word Tromso, and anyway,
whatever it was, we photographed it. This was located across the street
from a pretty yellow church built in the typical Norwegian style - wooden
with a metal steeple directly over the entry. We photographed that as well.
Also in Tromso we came across yet another church which had the word
"Filadelfia" on it - that seemed to be the name of the church.

We stopped in a small shopping mall area and bought Hillary some half price
wool tights to wear under her pants on tomorrow's excursion to the North
Cape Plateau. This promises to be a pretty exciting trip; we'll tell you
about it after we do it. 

Tromso was very nice with wide sidewalks and lots of shops and parks, not
quite as large or relaxing as Trondheim though. Tromso is on an island -
Tromsoya, and is the capital of "North Norway," although we aren't sure
what that means really.  They call it "Arctic Ocean City" and it is well
known for fishing, polar expeditions which began here, and the University
of Tromso. We saw a memorial to one of the famous polar explorers, Roald
Amundsen - but you know, after a while, bronze statues of strange men with
funny names all start to look alike, and we didn't photograph that
particular monument. :)

While walking around Tromso we saw a guy riding a bike and holding a leash,
attached to which was a dog who looked like Wally Gorman - which reminds
us! The other day as we were riding the bus along the Troll Road and into
Strawberry Valley, the tour guide kept referring to the many valleys we
were passing through, and the pronunciation of the word "valley" with a
Norwegian accent is very much like the Amercian pronunciation of the name
"Wally," so we were very amused by this.

While in Tromso today we also stopped and checked out one of the many
electronics stores we have seen here in Norway. Michael of course wanted to
check out the cellphone display - they did have some very cool stuff, but
nothing cooler than that which we'd already seen. They were also selling
satellite dishes there - we've noticed a lot of them on the buildings
around here, and it is kind of funny to see them pointing down - because
the elevation they get the signal from is just above the horizon, so it
needs to point down to receive the signal. At home our dish points up a
little bit, not down.

Soon (after the ship gets it together and leaves the Tromso harbor, which
it hasn't yet done) we'll be moving along further northward, and will get
to the Lyngsalpene mountain range in about one and half hours. This is
apparently a very well known mountain range, although we haven't heard of
it before. We'll definitely attempt to get a good look at it though.

BTW, today's weather was very overcast, but still bright and not raining at
all. It was about 50 degrees or so, a bit cooler than yesterday. Tomorrow
we have been told to bring warm clothes with us for our excursion to the
North Cape, which is more arctic in character. Hence the wool stockings!

After we pass the mountain range mentioned above, we'll start to cross a
stretch of open sea called "Loppa." We're not sure if that's part of the
Norwegian Sea or what.

Anyway, as far as the ship goes after tomorrow we sail one more night and
then we will arrive at Kirkenes, which is where we catch our plane to Oslo.
We asked the ship people about transport to the airport and they told us
about a bus to the city center and another bus to the airport...we're not
sure how we're going to work it out exactly, as we arrive in Kirkenes at
about 11:15 am, and our flight out isn't til 7:30 pm, but probably there
will be a luggage locker area at the Kirkenes bus terminal or something, so
we should be able to spend some time sightseeing there and perhaps even
check out the Russian border. We'll let you know :)

--
FYI, here it is about 8 pm, well after dinner now that we've switched to
the first seating :) and we are STILL in port at Tromso. Apparently someone
has been taken to the hospital and they are waiting to see if he/she comes
back onto the ship or not before they go ahead and leave. That's good, we
suppose - if one of us were sick, we would want the ship to
wait...although, it means we'll travel faster to make up the time to the
next port.

Dinner was good tonight - salmon! Yum. 

We would like to thank Michael's Grandma Suzie for explaining that the word
we kept hearing as "fuktis" in spoken Norwegian actually means something
along the lines of "as a matter of fact." At least, that's what a similar
word means in Swedish, so we believe it's probably the same thing in
Norwegian.

Hillary would like it if someone could please explain what on earth is
going on in Kosovo with the NATO military exercises and all. The news clips
we saw about it were in Russian with Norwegian subtitles and we're very
unclear on what exactly the problem is.

Love,

Hillary and Michael

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 17:32:22 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 17th: Floundering through Finnmark County

Howdy, friends and neighbors!

Last night as we cruised still further north, we noticed a couple of
things. First of all, the landscape changed drastically during the journey
on day 5 of this cruise as we went north from
Stokmarknes-->Sortland-->Harstad-->Finnsnes-->Tromso-->Skjervoy and out
into the part of the sea they call "Loppa." By the time we'd passed
Skjervoy pretty much all there was to see was a bunch of humongous snow and
ice covered mountains - very spiky, jagged peaks on these mountains! The
other thing is that after leaving Tromso we moved into an area of kind of
blechy weather - which we've been in ever since. It's as if we're inside a
cloud - if you go out on deck, it is very wet and chilling, and from the
observation rooms it looks very foggy outside. Also, the ocean is choppy,
though the boat is large enough that it isn't making too much of a
difference in the feel of the ride. Anyway, it is still beautiful, but last
night we couldn't see the sun, per se - rather, it was very grey but bright
outside, as on a winter day in Philadelphia, when it is very overcast, but
the sun is still high in the sky behind the clouds. This was at 11 pm :)

At 9 PM last night there was a special event for us - in the observation
deck area where we were hanging around with our friends from New Zealand
and their friends from California - King Neptune came out to "baptize" us
and induct us into his Arctic Kingdom! This entailed getting handfuls of
ice shoved down your shirt, and in some cases into your pants as well
although we escaped that brutal fate :). Then we were given glasses of wine
and lovely certificates which certify us as members of the elite few who
have crossed into the Arctic Circle. It was quite amusing. You kind of had
to be there, but we did take a photo of King Neptune to try to capture the
moment - he was actually a nice Norwegian girl named Lina, who is kind of
this ship's equivalent of Julie from The Love Boat, if any of you remember
that TV show....

Today Hillary woke up early again and went out to sit on the observation
deck, where she read up in the travel books about what to do and see in
Oslo. She also checked with the ship people about whether or not we would
be able to join the Kirkenes/Russian border excursion when the ship gets to
Kirkenes, and still have time to come back to the ship, pick up our
luggage, settle the bill, and check out before the ship departs the harbor.
They said yes, so we got signed up for that, and if the ship stays on
schedule we'll be able to do it. 

This morning the ship stopped in Hammerfest while we were asleep, and then
in Havoysund for about half an hour. Havoysund appeared to be a very very
small village, in a very desolate area - mostly a main road, a harbor with
shipping activity, perhaps some fishing activity, and a few homes and maybe
a hotel, all clustered down by the coast, and surrounded by huge empty
stretches of snow covered mountain. In this weather today, it looked even
more grim. The houses and other buildings are painted in bright red,
yellow, and green colors, perhaps because the landscape is so bare. We took
a photo of a few of the better looking buildings down on the coast.
Other than that, all we've seen today is more of the same imposing
mountains - we think that living in this area might make one feel very
small in comparison!

---

Brrrr! It sure is cold outside around here!
We've just returned to the ship after today's excursion. Here's what went on:

We got off the boat in the fishing village of Honningsvag, on the island of
Mogeroya, in Finnmark County (which is larger than all of Denmark!) and
stood around in a light drizzle for ten minutes until the tour buses
arrived. We then boarded a tour bus with an English speaking guide (yay!)
and began our 40 minute drive up to the North Cape (Nordkapp).  Honningsvag
is so small, with only 3000 inhabitants, that as the guide put it, "as we
drive into the center of town, we're already driving out of it!" Once we
left the town we were on a narrow road travelling through a very bleak
area. Mogeroya is basically a really big rock with some limited amount of
ground cover. Really, in many areas all you see when you look around is
piles of rocks or exposed rock faces. There are also a lot of lakes in the
inland areas, and much of the area even down at sea level still had snow on
the ground - although the depth did increase as we increased our elevation. 

We were driving up to the peak of Nordkapp which is 307 meters above sea
level. You must realize that it was VERY VERY overcast and grey outside and
as we increased our elevation we became surrounded by a heavy cloudlike fog
and had very limited ability to see anything at all. We did see a few
things, though, and we'll tell you about them.

We caught a glimpse of the fishing village Kamoyvaer. This we nicknamed
"the invisible village" because we'd thought Honningsvag was small...this
was just ridiculously small. Village? Hah! Well, maybe it was hidden by
fog, or maybe it really was just a couple of buildings and a fishing boat.

We then drove inland a bit and eventually stopped off at a Sami camp. The
Sami are the people who used to be called Lapp or Lappish people (think of
Lappland in Sweden...) - they are sort of the Eskimos of Scandinavia, if
you will. The name "Lapp" has taken on sort of a negative connotation so
now they are called Sami. In any case, most of these people have
assimilated to Norwegian (or Russian for those on the other side of the
border) culture, but the mountain Sami have not (Hillary kept thinking of
those "mountain people" that Latka would talk about on the TV show Taxi,
but these people are not like those people). The camp at which we stopped
had a couple of teepees and a small herd of reindeer, and some structures
used to cure hides and things, and a sled, and some other stuff.  A nice
Sami guy had one of his reindeer out to learn how to deal with tourists :).
The reindeer, whose name was incomprehensible but sounded sort of like
Harrykelekeskyoen, was happily munching away on a bucket of moss. Who knew
reindeer like to eat moss? Well, it's a good thing they do because
otherwise let us tell you these would be hungry reindeer! Their "pasture"
was mostly bare rock, some moss covered rock, and very very rare patches of
grassy stuff.

We continued on and up, through some very bleak landscape - think grey,
think wet, think rocks - there were occasionally small waterfalls present
in areas where the snow was melting, which added a bit of excitement to the
otherwise grim surroundings.

We passed a couple of other herds of reindeer out there - many of the
females had young calves with them, which were very cute :). We also saw a
lot of birds - definitely at least one Cormorant, a number of Fulmars, at
least one Gannet - beyond that it was very hard to make them out so we
can't really say. We don't believe any of them were Puffins, though,
unfortunately. Also in this region there are nesting colonies of Sea
Eagles, Kittywakes, and Guillemots.

As we got further up above sea level, our guide was telling us about the
region - she mentioned that the Nordkapp is at an equal latitude with
Siberia (71 degrees) but that due to the presence of the Gulf Stream
bringing warm water from Mexico, it is about 20 degrees C warmer here.
Thank goodness! The coastal water is about a constant 4 C and their harbors
do not freeze over in the winter which is good news for the local
inhabitants who really must be able to fish or they will be in big trouble.

In this area they have some fish farms as well, which look like round wire
pens out in the water - they grow salmon here. We saw one of these down by
Svartisen as well, although we're told that the ones around here are better
since the cold water reduces the need to medicate the fish in any way -
pathogens don't like the cold, we suppose. 

When we finally got to the North Cape it was somewhat anticlimactic. We
couldn't see a thing. We were completely enveloped in a white mist. Getting
off the bus was sort of like stepping into a wind tunnel, too.  The wind
whipped around - it was shockingly strong - and we ran directly into the
pavillion.

There is a very nice tourist pavillion here. Obviously we couldn't take
advantage of the panoramic viewing areas but we could and did see the
panoramic video showing the island in different seasons. Apparently in the
very short warm season it does get a little greener :) - although, our
guide mentioned to us that the plant growing season here is so short that
if you pick a flower, it will take 3 years for that flower to be replaced!
The video was beautiful though.

Also in the pavillion we checked out a champagne bar, which was built with
rock walls to make you feel like you are in a cave in the side of the
cliff, where you can buy really expensive beverages. There was also a
number of displays where we could read about the history of the area and
learn about some of the birds. 

Interestingly they have a Thai museum here as well, where they display
gifts received by the Nordkapp government officials from the Thai/Siam
government. In 1907, the King of (then) Siam came to the North Cape and
carved his initials into a rock (of which we took a photo, of course), thus
beginning a long tradition of friendship between the peoples of Finnmark
and Thailand. In addition, there is a honeymoon suite somewhere in the
building but we didn't get a look at it. Oh well.

On our way back town to the harbor to meet the boat, the guide spoke of
some of the history of Finnmark. About 3850 people live in Finnmark - and
remember, about 3000 of them live in Honningsvag, so the rest of the
population must be spread very thinly over this region, which covers 924
square kilometers! The most important occupations here are fishing,
tourism, and public service (like medicine and such). When the undersea
tunnels started construction in the past 20 or so years, they found proof
that this area has been inhabited for at least 10,300 years. That is not a
typo! They had thought previously that this would be impossible due to the
snow and ice and stuff, but apparently the Gulf Stream warmth was even
present during the ice age, creating a valley of green where people could
hunt and fish even then.

Unfortunately, this area was completely devastated by WWII. Realize that we
are right near the Russian border. The Germans were using this area as work
camps for Russian POWs. They needed to clear out the norwegians so they
rounded up everyone and sent them to the south of Norway, and then they
burned down every single building in Finnmark. The only thing left standing
was a church in Honningsvag, and that was only because the German officer
refused direct orders to burn it! It was good that it still stood, because
it was shelter for the people when they returned from Oslo to rebuild their
towns. 

Our guide told us a personal story about her family - apparently her
grandparents would (prior to the evacuation of Finnmark described above)
hide escaped Russian POWs in their home. One day a German soldier knocked
on the door at night - apparently having seen light peeking through the
blackout curtains. The quick-thinking lady of the house picked up her baby,
pinched it to make it cry, and exposed her breast as if she were breast
feeding, before going to answer the door. When the soldier saw her half
naked with a crying baby, he was very embarrassed. He blushed and said
"please ma'am, draw your curtains tighter," and fled from the porch. Our
guide explained that years later, that baby grew to be her mother, and the
3 russian boys who had been hiding in the living room did come to visit her
grandparents when she was a child.

That's all for now. We're back on the boat, resting up, preparing to pack
things up for our journey tomorrow from Kirkenes to Oslo by plane. We
probably will not do the Kirkenes excursion to the border - unfortunately
the weather will likely be similar to today's weather and we wouldn't be
able to see anything across the water, so there is no point. But we'll be
able to explore Kirkenes for a number of hours and we very much look
forward to that.

Love,
Michael and Hillary

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Fri, 19 Jun 1998 00:14:30 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 18: Oslo or bust!!

Hey there, ho there, friends and neighbors!

Last night after we re-boarded the ship following our North Cape excursion,
things were still ok. But when we pulled out of the harbor it became
rapidly obvious that we'd moved into an area of very very choppy water, and
Hillary was feeling pretty sick. Michael got her some seasickness tablet
from the front desk and that made her feel a bit better, and then we pulled
into another port and so she was feeling well enough to have dinner - but
after dinner, things went rapidly downhill. We tried to sit in the
observation deck and relax, but Hillary decided she'd better get to the
cabin so she could throw up in private - but unfortunately, didn't make it,
and instead gave some poor German guy in the 6th floor hallway quite a
surprise. Oh well. It wasn't her fault. We found out today from our
Californian friends that not only had their mom been sick too, but many
other passengers had become ill, and in fact the ship's staff had brought
buckets out to the public areas for passengers to throw up into.  However,
Michael obtained more anti-seasickness medicine for Hillary and it pretty
much zonked her out, and she slept uneventfully through the VERY tumultuous
night. Our friend Jan from New Zealand told us that she took two sleeping
pills and laid there rocking back and forth thinking that she'd returned to
the womb - and that otherwise it would have been a real white-knuckler of
an evening!

So, today, we pretty much stayed in our cabin as long as possible (and yes,
the maid DID barge in again, at about 10:30 am, despite assurances that
they wouldn't come in before noon...) When we docked at Kirkenes we were
among the first folks off the ship! We boarded a bus to the city center and
breathed a sigh of relief to be out of the choppy sea.

Kirkenes seems to be a village playing dress up - it wants to be a city,
but it really isn't. It's a village in despair, too - it reminded us of the
song "Allentown" by Billy Joel - it has that air of decay. Apparently
Kirkenes is another one of those towns that was devastated, demolished,
destroyed, etc by the Germans in WWII. It shows. Today, Kirkenes industry
centers around shipping, a giant mine of some sort, and tourism - they
organize day trips into nearby Russia.

The bus ride from the harbor to the bus terminal at the center of town was
depressing. It was another overcast day plus it was very cold outside.
Hillary is sure her parents remember the song about the houses that are
"all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same." We went
through an area like that...then we drove past Kirkenes' equivalent of the
"HOLLYWOOD" sign (which we took a photo of) and then blammo, we were in the
city center.

The city consists of a couple of blocks lined by shops. We did check out
the Monument to Mothers of the War, which was a nice statue, but the museum
was closed and there really wasn't anything else to do. We did find the use
of Russian along with Norwegian on the signs around town to be sort of
jarring. We took a photo of a Russian ship docked in the harbor, too. We
ate a meal in the nicest looking restaurant and hung out in the cafe of the
hotel in town for a while, then we took a cab to the airport.

The cab ride to the airport was slightly less depressing than the bus ride
into town. Heading out of town we moved rapidly into an area of desolate
landscape again. Pretty lakes full of fish set within areas of scrub brush,
struggling birch trees, and such. There is some grass in this area, but
it's straggly and browning. Soon we started to pass signs which warned in
four languages (Norwegian, English, German, and Russian) that the area is
under military restrictions, and no camping or photography is allowed. This
was most likely the area closest to the border, as there was a nearby river
and it is our understanding that the river is the border between Norway and
Russia. There was one intersection too where there was a sign pointing in
one direction some number of kilometers to Kirkenes, in another direction
some number of kilometers to another Norwegian town, and then in another
direction some number of kilometers to something we couldn't understand
because it was written in Cyrillic, so we couldn't write it here anyway. 

The airport was small - 3 whole gates! We napped and sat quietly from about
4:30 PM til our plane came in at about 7. The plane had open seating and we
managed to snag three seats for the two of us. Woo.

The plane stopped twice on the way to Oslo - first at Alta, which was
rather nondescript, and then at Tromso, which you may recall we described
in an earlier email. We really lucked out with this landing - the weather
in Tromso was sunny and beautiful, so the pilot decided to give us a scenic
landing. We had a great view of the jewel-like city nestled into a green
valley amidst majestic snow covered peaks. It was really great. 

The final approach to Oslo was less spectacular but nonetheless memorable.
Oslo lies within an area of rolling green hills, and from above it appears
that someone has broken a mirror over them, because there are many many
large and small lakes in the area. We were flying in at about 11 pm, and
above the cloud cover it was bright and sunny, though once we broke through
the cloud cover it was more like twilight. It is now midnight here in Oslo
and it's about as dark as it gets - still plenty of light to see by, the
sky is a kind of cornflower blue and everything looks very pretty with the
lights on. 

We took a cab to our hotel - the bus doesn't seem to stop anywhere near it.
The hotel is wonderful, with a suit-press, a heated bathroom floor, an
umbrella in case of rain, a TV that gets CNN, a *balcony* with a door that
opens out onto it - we took a photo of Oslo by night from our balcony, btw.
Oh, and in the shower, there is a note that says Norwegians sing in the
shower and we should too, and it has some helpful Norwegian song lyrics to
get us started!!

Now we sleep after our busy travel day. We'll let you know what happens
tomorrow!

Love, 

Hillary (who is totally recovered) and Michael (an excellent healer)

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Fri, 19 Jun 1998 18:29:05 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 19th: overcome by Oslo

Hello!

We woke up early today to a beautiful sunny Norwegian sky! Even at about
7:30 when we got up, it was reasonably warm on our balcony, so we dressed
appropriately, had breakfast in the hotel, and headed to the train station
to make our reservations on tomorrow's train to Stockholm.

We took the #19 trolley (they call it a tram) which was twice as expensive
as a SEPTA trolley but was also much nicer, so there you go. This trolley
went directly from half a block outside our hotel to the train station in
16 minutes, following a pretty scenic route, too. 

When we got to the station we were overwhelmed. Oslo's Sentralstasjon is a
combination upscale mall/lowbrow food court/train station. It's bigger than
the one in Copenhagen. We entered on the ground floor and took an inclined
people-mover up to the second floor (not an escalator, not a flat conveyor
belt, but a hybrid of the two - convenient way to get your luggage
upstairs). We stopped at the information center there and were informed
about where to go to make our reservations and when the trains were. So we
headed over to the reservation area and took a number.

It seems that all the European stations have a similar method of handling
ticketing - you take a number for either international or domestic travel,
and then a screen shows when it is your turn, and which window will take
you. It is much better than being in a crowd of rude surly people at 30th
St. You don't have to stand in line, you can walk around while you wait
your turn. However, at 9 am it was uncrowded and it was our turn very
quickly. We told the guy at the window we wanted a reservation on the first
train to Stockholm tomorrow and he told us "yes, but Sweden is down right
now. We called them, they are working on it." It turned out that the whole
ticketing system for the trains destined to Sweden had been down for three
hours. He said we should come back later. Hillary asked him, "at any
particular time? Do you know when it might be working again?" and he said
"who knows? it has already been 3 hours." So, we asked "Will there be any
problem getting on the train?" and he said "oh, no, don't worry about it,
we're open til 11 pm." So, we left to get over to the tourist information
office where we hoped to purchase a sightseeing tour ticket.

We left the train station and walked up one of the main streets, Karl
Johans gate. This is part big street, part pedestrian walkway, and it sort
of reminded us of Copenhagen (without the Shawarma). We took this road all
the way to Munkedamsveien, on which we turned left. The walk up KJgate took
us past a lot of interesting sights, including a beautiful park with
flowers and fountains (Spikersuppa Park), the ornate Parliament building,
of which we took a photo before we even knew what it was; the "Old
University" which is now purely a law school, the beautiful neoclassical
National Theater, and right up to the edge of the Royal Palace grounds. The
walkway through the palace lawn is lined with Norwegian flags and today,
also with German flags and special baskets of beautiful red and yellow
roses and lilies and things, because a German VIP is visiting the Norwegian
royal family.

We walked down the Munkedamsveien past the Oslo Concert Hall, where the
Oslo Philharmonic plays, and then we turned left on a small side street to
get where we were going. The tourist information office here is wonderful,
as it was in Bergen, with big helpful and interesting displays, and
multilingual staff. We looked around a bit and Hillary picked up some
articles about Women in Norway and the Sami People in Norway. Lisa might be
interested in the article about women. Then we booked ourselves on a
sightseeing tour bus which left at 11 AM, which gave us about 20 minutes to
walk around the area we found ourselves in -
Vestbaneplassen/Radhusplassen/Aker Brygge. 

First we walked over to the Radhusplassen - this is the little plaza in
front of the City Hall (Radhus). The interior of the Radhus is painted with
numerous frescoes, so we're told, though we didn't get a look inside - and
the artists who painted them were rewarded for what was termed their
defiance of the Nazi occupiers at the time the painting took place, and
they ended up being deported to concentration camps. It really seems that
Norway took a beating during WWII! Anyway, the Radhus is the building in
which the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded every December 10.

Then we walked over to the waterfront, from where we could get a very good
view of the Akershus Castle and Fortress - built in 1299! - to the left as
we faced out of the harbor. We walked along and looked at the boats and
birds - there was one large grey gull totally dominating the area and
kicking out the brown and white gulls which were trying to also get some of
the shrimp tails some people were throwing down, and then crossed over to
the right side of the harbor, Aker Brygge - this used to be a center for
shipbuilding until 1980, but now it has all been converted into offices and
shops and restaurants. When you walk down there, there are floating
restaurants and cafes in the water, and nice shops and restaurants on the
land. We passed a couple of friendly mounted policemen and petted their
pretty chestnut horses.

Finally it was time to go on our tour! The bus drove us to the fortress
close up so we could get a good look at it, and then it drove us around the
city center a bit - sort of where we had already walked - and then we went
west to the Vigeland sculpture park in the larger Frognerparken. This is a
very very big park in which the principal attraction is the amazing work
done by Gustav Vigeland, who lived 1869-1943 and who gave all of his work
to the city of Oslo in return for being given a studio and this park in
which to do his work. There are about 650 sculptures here. They are bronze
and granite sculptures of human beings - in particular we saw a bridge
which had bronze people on both sides - men, women, children, young/old,
etc - all together. Vigeland's work was imbued with the life cycle - he
always sculpted people with other people, never alone, and his groups of
statues always include infants, kids, adults, and old people, and sometimes
even dead people or skeletons. We also saw the imposing 17 meter tall
monolith, with 121 intertwined human bodies - dead/old on the bottom,
infants on the top - except for Vigeland himself, who is up near the top
with the children. Some say that this is how he represented his belief in
the afterlife. Who knows. It is a very impressive piece of work. A nice guy
took a photo of us standing next to a granite man and woman we particularly
liked.

When we left the sculpture park, we travelled by bus to the Holmenkollen
ski jump. The thing about Oslo is - where Kirkenes was a village playing
dressup, Oslo is a big city playing chameleon - or something. There's your
big city part of Oslo, and there's your harbor, and then there are huge
parks and stuff - but then, there are also big hills, where it gets quite
suburban looking, and mountain lakes and so forth. You wouldn't think you
were in a city if you didn't know it. As we drove up this hill we passed
many very expensive homes in this exclusive hillside neighborhood. We also
stopped at a turn-off so we could get off the bus and look down from the
hilltop over the city. It gave a very good view of the Oslofjord, the city,
the airport, and the wooded areas.

Then we continued to the peninsula Bygdoy, where we visited the Viking Ship
museum and the Kon-Tiki museum. The viking museum was of interest because
it contains actual preserved ships and artifacts from the ships which were
very well preserved because they had been buried in some special blue clay.
It was amazing to realize how very far people were able to travel on these
ships!

The Kon-Tiki museum was also interesting for similar reasons. For those of
you not familiar with the project, a Norwegian fellow Thor Somebody or
other (couldn't spell it anyway, really...) back in 1947 set out to prove
that it was possible for people to have drifted on a raft from Peru to the
Polynesian islands (he believed that this is what had happened, due to
similarities b/w the Incan and Polynesian cultures; prevailing thought at
the time had been that Asians populated those islands). So, he built the
Kon-Tiki raft, with a number of other Scandinavians, and they took the
journey, and it worked! They then undertook a project in which they would
drift from Africa to South America in a boat built of papyrus - anyway, we
saw a bunch of exhibits about these excursions, and gained a lot of respect
for ancient people who traveled in these ways (as well as the modern
scientists/sociologists who replicated the journeys!)

That was the end of the tour (of course, we gave it to you in highly
condensed version :)). Then we were returned to the spot where we'd
started. After we got off the bus we stopped for Whoppers at the local
Burger King (we really needed that after all this Scandinavian food...and
boy did they hit the spot!) and then we went back to the train station,
where we ran into a bit of a snag.

We took our number and then asked to ensure that the Swedish system was up
again, and then wandered around a bit while waiting our turn. During this
time we saw a very very cute Rottweiler puppy with a long tail. Hillary
picked up some train related stuff for Jeff. Finally it was our turn and we
went to window 15, noticing on the way that the same guy we'd spoken with
this morning was still at window 16. We told the woman at the window that
we wanted two reservations on the morning train to Stockholm, and she said
"sorry, it's all booked." There was a moment of silence...

Then, Hillary said, really quite calmly, "are you sure? We were here at 10
this morning and the system was down, but the gentleman we spoke with said
there would be no problem getting a spot if we came back later." The woman
did some clickety-clicking and said "I'm sorry, it's full, but I can put
you on the 16:40 train."

Now, the 16:40 train does not get into Stockholm until about 11:30 pm, and
we are supposed to be meeting some ISP friends in Stockholm for an evening
barbecue, so this was pretty upsetting. Hillary's eyes quietly started to
overflow with tears and she sniffled as she said "well, it's really too bad
we came all the way from the states and our friends are throwing a party
for us and we won't even be there. I suppose you should book us on the
16:40 train. Someone should reprimand the gentleman at window 15, though."

We believe that then the woman took pity on us, for she did some further
clickety-clicking on her keyboard, and finally we were confirmed on the
train to Stockholm! For one half of the ride we have to go 2nd class
instead of first (although there is a chance of being able to switch on the
train if there ends up being an empty first class spot) but at least we are
on the train!! Thank goodness everyone here speaks English. We might not
have managed so well if we had been trying to communicate in Norwegian.

We thanked the ticketing agent most profusely (and she said she would in
fact speak to the other guy for us and tell him to be more careful in the
future). Then we decided to walk back to our hotel instead of taking yet
more public transportation. We followed at first closely along the route
used by the #19 trolley - as we walked up the Tollebugata, we passed the
main Oslo post office which is situated right near a Postal Service museum.
We looked in the window there and saw some old fashioned mail delivery
trucks and stuff. Then we walked along the Stortingsgata, which parallels
Karl Johans Gate and gives a nice view of the scenic park and the National
Theater from the other side. Then we walked up the Drammensveien, passing
along the edges of the Royal Gardens. 

Unfortunately, the growing season in Oslo is not on the greatest schedule
for us. The spring flowers are just about done and the summer ones aren't
quite out yet. Still, there are some parts of the gardens where there are
nice flowers. We saw one large rock in the Royal gardens covered with some
green leafy vines and big giant white flowers - very very similar to the
vines on the Gormans' mailbox, what is it, clematis? But the flowers are
bigger and white instead of purple. Anyway, we liked them. We passed the
Henrik Ibsen museum and the Oslo Energy building (which has a nice garden
planted with yellow and red flowers in the shape of their logo). We also
snapped a photo of the unpretentious Nobel Institute, which is where the
people who decide who is going to get the Nobel Peace prize do the actual
deciding. The American Embassy was not far from here - Hillary stopped in
there to see if she could use the rest room, and they apparently have some
kind of arrangement with a nearby cafe for that purpose, so that worked out
just fine. We also stopped in this general area at a bookstore that
advertised "English books!" and got Hillary some reading material for
tomorrow's six hour train ride. Books are expensive in Norway! We found one
book on Norwegian Forest Cats, but it was very small, it was in Norwegian,
and it cost a whopping 40 bucks!! (a regular novel costs about $12!! Must
be the value added tax - they add 25% to everything to support their
socialist stuff. Tourists get refunds IF they buy 300 NOK of stuff all at
once, but we haven't been spending that much in one place.) We stopped and
looked at the photos, though :)

We then walked up "Inkognitogata," which is a small side road lined by
residential buildings, almost all of which are the residences of
Ambassadors from other countries - Italy, Korea, Indonesia, etc. Finally we
got out onto Hedgehaugsveien (Hedge Hog way?) which is really an extension
of the street our hotel is on (Bogstadveien). This street contains a number
of trendy shops and restaurants. 

While we were walking today we noticed a shop advertising "we sell REAL
Cuban cigars!" We briefly considered picking some up, but decided it wasn't
worth potentially getting in big trouble on the way back into the country.
Jason, is it really really worth it? 

Joan: Hillary wants to be reminded of the meaning of a kcal in relation to
the use of the term "calorie" on american labels. We have in hand a
beverage which says it contains 30 kcals. What does that mean?

--

Love,

Hillary and Michael

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Sat, 20 Jun 1998 23:03:17 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 20: slipping into Sweden

Hi!

Last night in Oslo we decided we'd had it with cream sauce and dill and
weird pickled things and we headed out to the "Gate to India" restaurant a
few blocks up the street from our hotel. This turned out to be a very cozy
and beautifully decorated Indian place on the second floor of #66
Bogstadveien. We had a very good meal of chicken and lamb and bread and we
even indulged in a couple of those notoriously expensive scandinavian
beers. Then we headed back to the hotel, packed up, and slept.

We got up outrageously early again today so that we could have breakfast,
check out, and catch our train to Sweden. We chatted briefly with this
woman we met yesterday, who is an Afghan Hound breeder from Columbus, Ohio.
She was in need of a plastic surgeon so we referred her to Bob Ruberg -
Mila, you might mention that to Cindy and Bob :). The woman, btw,
videotaped us yesterday - it was kind of weird but she pulled out her
camera and started asking us questions. Strange.

We got to the train station in time and we hopped on the 9:30 train. It
proceeded to go east, as we'd hoped that it would. The first leg of our
trip, we travelled first class. The ride was smooth and quiet, and the
scenery was really very beautiful. We went through kilometers and
kilometers of scenic green countryside - farmlands with cows and sheep and
quaint Norwegian barns and homes, all painted red and yellow and made of
wood. We also of course passed through a few towns and a couple of cities,
and sometimes instead of farmland we went through wooded areas that were
also very beautiful. There were lakes and things sometimes, too. It is at
this point very difficult to describe the natural beauty of this place - we
feel that we have already used up all the good descriptions. 

At one point, we saw another Norwegian Forest Cat on someone's property :)
As we travelled into Sweden, it was really just more of the same. No one
checked our passports or anything so we got no stamp. We transferred to a
new train at one point and continued on through more beautiful country. The
buildings in Sweden did seem a bit more modern, and less likely to be
wooden, and less likely to be painted yellow or red, but otherwise things
were very similar to Norway.

The weather was bright and sunny until we neared Stockholm - we headed into
an overcast area and as we arrived at station it looked like it would rain
soon.
The Central Station in Stockholm was very very large and we were tired from
our trip and in a hurry to get to our hotel so we didn't really take much
of a look around. We did make our reservation for our train to Vaxjo on the
23rd before we left - we figured at this point, as much advance planning as
possible would be a good idea.

During the cab ride to our hotel we saw some of beautiful Stockholm.
Stockholm has some buildings that remind us of the ones in Madrid, and some
similar to those in Norway, and some that are completely different. The
really interesting thing about Stockholm is that it is really a bunch of
islands hooked up by bridges - but we haven't really looked around much
yet, so more on that later.

We got to our hotel and checked in and headed up to our room - but when we
went into it we saw that there were two twin beds pushed together instead
of the queen sized bed we had reserved. This was troubling as the two
nights in Oslo had been spent trying to sleep in beds like that and we kept
falling through the crack between the beds :). So Hillary went and asked
about it and the concierge said "oh, no problem" and moved us into a room
with one big bed instead of two smaller beds shoved together. It is a
smaller room but we don't care about that.

We put our stuff away and then we called our friends Ingvar and Jenny, the
Swedish BOFHs (Bastard Operators from Hell, it's an Internet/computer
thing, don't ask if you don't know) we met on the Internet. We arranged to
meet them on one of the smaller islands of Stockholm - Langholmen. We took
the T (the tube, the underground, that's what they call it) and then had a
bit of a walk onto this island and up a large hill, where we found them
looking up to see if it was going to rain or not. Finally we decided the
weather was too sketchy and so we headed off to a pub instead of having a
barbecue.

There were five or six of us all told, and everyone was very friendly. We
talked about various things, traded stupid customer stories and so forth,
while we ate some good food (various preparations of steak and potatoes)
and had some beer and cider. After a while we broke up the party because
Hillary was very very tired and most people had things to do. But it was
fun while it lasted, we got to geek around about internet things and
cellphones and stuff :)

We made plans for tomorrow, too - we're going to take a commuter train to
Jenny's house about an hour away to meet up with the crowd for lunch. She
works for an ISP here of course, so we will have internet access from
there, so Michael can do some work he needs to do without paying outrageous
rates for it :) After we're done there, who knows. Maybe some sightseeing,
maybe another party. We know we can always save the big sightseeing tour
for Monday, though. Really, we just need to catch up on our sleep. This
travelling is tiring stuff sometimes!

To sum it up - the little bit we've seen of Stockholm is very pretty and
very inviting. The public transportation system is pretty easy to use and
oh! Almost forgot - the tube stations are decorated with artwork - they
call it an underground art gallery or something like that - and so far what
we've seen is pretty unique and interesting stuff. It's nice. 

That's it for today; our bed built for two is calling us!

Love,
Hillary and Michael

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1998 21:41:09 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 21: R&R :)

Hi everyone,

We got a very good night's sleep last night, it was wonderful :)
Today when we got up we'd missed the hotel breakfast but we weren't worried
about that. The hotel leaves little coffeepot things in the rooms, with
teabags and coffee and milk and sugar, so we had some coffee in our room
while we prepared for the day's adventures.

Michael thought we should call the Citroms (his relatives in Vaxjo) to let
them know when we would be arriving. So, he tried to call them - this
didn't meet with immediate success and resulted in one wrong number (they
hung up on him), but eventually he figured out that you have to add a zero
before the city code when calling from within Sweden (you don't do that
when calling from outside the country), and so he completed the call. It's
all arranged - they will pick us up at the station when we arrive in Vaxjo
on Tuesday.

We gathered our things and set out for a nice walk through damp, chilly,
overcast Stockholm to the Central Station, where we caught the "Pendeltag,"
(commuter train) to Nymashamn at 12:39. When we bought tickets, we
purchased a "Rabatt-Kuponger" (rebate coupon) instead of paying for the
fares separately for the two of us. This saved us a bit of money and worked
just as well. We took this train to Nynas Harsbad, where Jenny lives, to
meet our friends for lunch. The train ride took us through more very
beautiful countryside - wooded areas, farm areas, lakes, and everything. We
were headed south of Stockholm on this trip which took about one hour. "Not
Calle," one of our friends (they call him "not Calle" because he is always
hanging around with a guy named Calle, it's kind of an in joke, but he
didn't offer us his real name so that's what we call him too) was on the
train with us and we chatted a bit about various geek stuff. 

Jenny and Ingvar met us at the station and we had a nice walk to her
apartment. In her apartment we made the acquaintance of her cats, Pixel, a
domestic shorthair, and Tusse, a Birman, who were very cute and friendly.
We sat and chatted about all kinds of geeky stuff, internet stuff, stupid
luser tricks, cell phones, and various things. We got to use the internet
from her house (she works for a large Stockholm ISP) so Michael got to fix
the problem on his server for his customer with the mailing list. Ingvar
cooked us an amazing lunch of curried fish over rice with salad with garlic
dressing and also stir fried vegetables. Then he prepared a dessert of
poached pears with After Eight dinner mints melted onto them, and made a
sauce of melted chocolate and liqueur and stuff to pour over vanilla ice
cream. Yumm.

Over lunch, all of us discussed politics and the global economy, the
introduction of the Euro, etc. Since we were three Swedes, a Dutchman, and
two Americans, it was an interesting discussion :) It was ironic that Brom,
the Dutchman, and a very friendly chap (he gave us a ride to our hotel from
the pub the other day), who also lives in the Netherlands like Lisa's
friend Josh, is *also* going to be out of town and therefore unavailable to
show us around when we get to Amsterdam. But he did say that we're welcome
any other time :)

After a relaxing afternoon hanging around and talking and stuff (and making
plans to see Jenny's office tomorrow evening) we caught the train back to
Stockholm, with not Calle and Ingvar. We had some extra time so we took
"the scenic route" back to the train station. We walked through a very nice
area of exclusive, expensive homes on the waterfront of the Baltic Sea. We
saw a lot of beautiful lilac shrubs and many other flowering plants in nice
large, well-maintained gardens. Hillary had hopes of being able to
photograph some of the lovely homes, but unfortunately Michael had the
camera stowed in his backpack for the train ride, and we didn't really have
time to stop and unpack it if we were going to catch our train, since we'd
taken the longer walk. But we will have our memories... :)

On the train ride back, we passed all the same stuff - Hillary noticed some
ponies she hadn't seen before - they looked like the Icelandic ponies she
has pictures of in her horse book. We talked with Ingvar and Not Calle
about crime in the USA and Sweden and stuff - the topic had come up because
of something that happened at one of the first stops the train made. The
train stopped and a woman walked onto the train, looked around, got off,
got back on, then got off and started yelling in Swedish and waving her
arms around....then another woman got on, and grabbed yet another woman out
of her seat. She was yelling in Swedish and the other woman was yelling
back, while the first woman was on the platform getting the conductor, who
came over and watched this all take place. Eventually the woman who came on
and grabbed the seated woman managed to drag her off the train, and the
train left. Ingvar translated for us - the woman who did the dragging was a
shopkeeper, and the woman who got dragged had shoplifted some tobacco from
her shop - so the shopkeeper was making a citizen's arrest and holding her
in the shop til the police came! Very exciting :) And it led to an
interesting discussion of gun control and crime...Ingvar told us that in
Sweden there has been a resurgence of neo-Nazis who have been committing
hate crimes :(, and Hillary noticed some anti-semitic graffiti under a
bridge at one point - but someone had painted big black Xes over the
swastikas and nasty slogans, so at least not everyone agrees with it, even
among the graffiti artists.

When we got back to Central Station, we picked up some info about a bus
tour we plan to take tomorrow at one of the very convenient and useful
Tourist Information Offices they have here. We then used our railroad
ticket to transfer onto the tube, to get back to the hotel - and here we
are, pondering the day's activity and figuring out where to get our next
meal :)

One funny thing we saw today was in the tube station close to our hotel,
when we took the escalators up from the platform, there was a series of sex
education posters advocating condom use. There were stylized penises,
vaginas, butts, and mouths in various combinations, with 0 symbols over the
penises to symbolize condoms. There was also a poster which explained (in
Swedish) that condoms are good against sexually transmitted disease, and
they referred the reader to www.kondoms.nu for more information - perhaps
some of you will check that out :). We snapped a photo of them because they
amused us.

It's a bit chilly here today, and it has been drizzling off and on, so it
was really wonderful that we had a nice warm apartment to hang out in and
friends to talk to. It wouldn't have been a wonderful day for sightseeing.
We're hopeful that tomorrow will be a bit nicer and we can go out and do
all the tourist stuff then. Also, all this travelling does take a bit of
energy out of you, and it was very nice to relax in a homey environment for
a few hours.

Love,

Michael and Hillary

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 18:37:33 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 22: Stockholm in a Nutshell

Last night we went out to dinner at a little Italian place near our hotel,
called Capri.  This restaurant was listed in one of the guidebooks we
brought from home, and also in the Stockholm Restaurant Guide provided by
the hotel. Also, the concierge recommended it to us when we asked for a
good Italian place, so we figured it would be good - and it was :)

The place was narrow and set up as sort of a stylized cave. They played
Italian music during most of our meal (near the end, they started playing
the theme song from the movie: Lambada - the Forbidden Dance). It was one
of those dark, romantic places. We had a good bottle of Orvieto and some
very good Italian food. The waiter was very attentive and nice. There was
another waiter who kept coming out to reset the other tables as people left
(we were pretty much closing the place, they closed after we left) and when
the Lambada music came on he was dancing around. It was funny. Also the
people in the kitchen started chatting in Italian to each other. Before we
left, our waiter took a photo of us together in front of a nice window.

Today, we got up early to go on our tour of Stockholm. First we had a nice
breakfast at the hotel, then we walked down to the Royal Opera House to get
our tour bus. 
The tour we booked, Stockholm in a Nutshell, was a 1.5 hr bus tour and a 1
hr boat tour. We really liked it!

One thing that was different about today is, it was a real business day for
the city, and there were many people around. You see, when we arrived, it
was Midsommer's Day, a national holiday here, and the evening before had
been Midsommer's Eve, also a National Holiday, so most people had left town
for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to go celebrate at the beach or whatever.
Today was the first time we saw all the shops open and all the people
around, and it really made a difference - it cast things in a whole new
light. Stockholm has a lot of old world charm, if you will, but it's really
a hustle-bustle place like Madrid, too.

Stockholm is made up of a number of islands and part of the mainland. Our
hotel is on 
the mainland in the Ostermalm area, which also includes the Royal Library,
some exclusive shopping areas, the Opera House, some theaters, and such. On
our way down to the Opera House we passed a building called the Sula Hall -
it's a nice building which we'd photographed before. Today it was open so
we went in - it turned out to be Stockholm's version of the Reading
Terminal Market. It was very nice. We didn't have time to linger too long,
though.

We continued along and made our way to the Opera House, passing the quay
where the sightseeing boats hang out, which is the Baltic Sea waterfront.
At 10 am, we got on the bus. The tour started with a discussion of the area
around the Opera House. Apparently the building across the plaza, a lovely
yellow building with a woman's name on it, was originally built by a king
as a home for his sister, and a twin building which was identical was built
where the opera house now stands, and it was the opera house, at the time.
It turned out that the second building was too small for modern operagoers,
so the new Opera House was built in the 19th century. 

It may be worth noting that early on in the tour, the Italian folks in
front of us were talking back and forth to each other (there were 6 or 8 of
them) very very loudly. This was annoying many people and finally Hillary
couldn't take it and she leaned forward and said, "excuse me - I'm sorry,
but we're trying to listen to the guide." That shut them up and things went
well from that point.

Of course, they were probably chatting with each other because they
couldn't follow the guide that well (not that this is an excuse for talking
over the guide!) When the tour started, as the bus was pulling away, the
guide announced that the headset system (which was supposed to provide a
guided tour in seven languages) was broken, and that therefore this tour
would be given only in English and Swedish. The Germans on the bus didn't
seem thrilled by that either, but we didn't mind it at all. ;)

In any case, we then drove across to Gamla Stan, an island that is rich
with history. This is the island that used to be the whole of Stockholm.
Here we saw the Royal Palace, which is currently the building in which the
King and Queen conduct their official business (but is not their
residence). Also here we saw what they call the "old town" like
Philadelphia's Old City - the buildings here are narrower than the newer
ones, and many of them are painted pastel colors.  There are a lot of
cobblestoned streets here. Also on this island are the Royal Treasury, the
winter residence of the royal family, and a 700 year old cathedral.

Then we crossed over onto Sodermalm, the southern island. This island was
not originally part of the city - rather, it was where people who weren't
allowed to (for criminal reasons) or couldn't afford to live in Stockholm
would live.  It was finally incorporated into the city in 1570. To reach
this island from Gamla Stan as we did, you cross over a sluice or lock,
called the Slussen, which separates the brackish water of the Baltic Sea
from the fresh water of Lake Malar which is about 1/2 to 1 meter above sea
level. This is a rocky island and the street layout is specially adapted
for that. The main things to see on this island are the many cafes and
artist hangouts (a former queen got "nice people" to move here by lowering
taxes for artisans) and the gay nightlife scene (which we didn't check out
from our tour bus, sorry.) By the way, although the Lake is obviously
smaller than the Sea, from looking at it you wouldn't really know. This is
a very large lake, and there are swans and geese and ducks in it, and there
are other cities besides Stockholm which make up the shore of it.

Other things we saw include:

back in the Ostermalm area - the Nobel Foundation, established in 1900 by
Alfred Nobel, the chemist. We also saw a park of his which contains
representative specimens of all the plants and trees that grow in Sweden
(except the mountain birch which won't grow here in Stockholm). 

On the island Djurgarden, the former Royal Hunting Ground, there is an
amusement park called Gronelund, which has a sign over it that says Tivoli
which amused us :)
This was a very beautiful island which also contains the Skanset open air
museum which contains many many examples of buildings from all over the
country from many years ago; also here is the biology museum, the Nordic
museum, a whole lot of museums :). This island is owned by the royal family
so if one wants to buy/sell or build a home here, one must get the
permission of the king. We saw some lovely homes here. The Vasa Museum is
also here - this museum contains the Vasa war ship which sank on its maiden
voyage in the 1600s. 

Not sure which part of the city we were in, but at one point we saw a bunch
of embassies - we think this was near Nobel Park. We also saw the
residences of the ambassadors - these were very large, very beautiful homes
with big gardens, on the waterfront. They were built as private residences
for "regular" people, but they were so expensive no one could buy them, so
they are now rented out as ambassadors' residences.

The Stockholm City Hall is a beautiful building, dark brick with gold trim,
built in the National Romantic Style. Sadly, we probably didn't get a good
photo of it. This is the building where the Nobel Prizes are presented
(except the Peace prize which is presented in Oslo.) The Stadion, a large
sports/concert arena built for the 1912 Olympics, is also built in this
same style - kind of fortress like and archaic looking.

Stockholm is 1/3 water, and 1/3 green open spaces. One of the green open
spaces we saw was a huge park which used to be a hops garden in the 17th
century, when they apparently drank a lot of beer. In today's times, lots
of beer is also consumed in the Stureplan - a large, exclusive shopping
area where there are pubs that stay open until 5 am. In this area we saw a
building that looks like a ship - we took a photo of it - there were
mermaids on the front and a clock with astrological signs on it. Very
pretty building, seemed to house just shops and stuff. 

While on our boating tour (the "Royal Canal Tour" because it took us
through the canal separating the Royal Hunting Ground island from the other
island) we saw a lot of the same stuff from different angles. We saw
(again) some geese with their babies - these were similar in shape to
Canada Geese, but prettier with a different coloring - they were Siberian
Geese which have escaped from the Skansen Zoo :) and our guide said that
they were sort of becoming pests, as they are non-native and have no
predators around here. From the boat we were able to get a photo of Gamla
Stan, and a photo of a nursing home that looks like a palace - once, a
Russian War ship came to Stockholm and fired a canon in honor of the King
and Queen in front of the "palace," and really scared the old people in the
nursing home!

It was mostly drizzly and a bit rainy today, so it is just as well we were
in a bus and in a boat, it wouldn't have been too much fun walking around
in the drizzle. After the tour we did walk around, the drizzle stopped, and
we did some shopping in a couple of stores, bought a gift for Michael's
relatives in Vaxjo so we don't show up there empty handed, and eventually
wound up back here at our hotel, where we stopped in the bar for a couple
of hard ciders. When we tried to get back in our room, we hit a small snag.

The rooms in this hotel use Ving cards, those magnetic cards, you know...
Well, ours wouldn't work in our room door, but they did work in the hall
door. No lights on the room door came on so we knew the door batteries had
died. We went and told reception - they said ok and reprogrammed our cards.
We said that wouldn't work and they said it would so we tried it but it
didn't work...and we came back and told them. The very surprised woman at
the desk then called a colleague over to help us. We told him the story so
he came up with us to "let us in." But, he'd only brought the master key
card, not the actual key. So he couldn't get in either. He said he'd get
maintenance to let us in. We waited...in 10 minutes the guy shows up and
tries HIS key card...10 or 15 times. Then he tells us it isn't working (duh.)

Finally, they got the batteries changed and reprogrammed the door and it
was all fine. Hillary was really happy because she'd been anxious to write
this email :)

That's all for now!
----

At about 4:30 PM we left to go meet Jenny at her office near the Hotorget
plaza. This plaza is a large open air flower market and fruit and vegetable
market - really nice, and fragrant! Nearby was a very large blue concert
hall with greek style columns. We went in to Jenny's office building and
got a quick look at the inside of algonet.se where there were many boxes
from Sun microsystems. Hillary and Michael were both offered jobs by
Algonet, but we declined. Jenny took us out to her favorite coffee place,
Robert's Coffee, which was in a nearby food court type of thing. We had
really good mochas. Then we walked out onto the Drottningatan, another one
of those pedestrian walkway things, where we bought a couple of trinkets. 

After we said goodbye to Jenny and thanked her profusely for everything
(she had also printed out some stuff for us at her office, that'd we had
forgotten to print out, that we need for the Paris leg of our trip) and
invited her and Ingvar to visit us in Philadelphia, we turned around to
head back to the hotel. On the way, we passed a really weird place - there
is this hotel on the corner of Sturegatan and Humlegardsgaten that has a
restaurant downstairs called the Lydman Restaurant - on the sign it says
"restaurant - jazz - soul - art." From the sidewalk where we stood we could
see poetry written on the large windows in very large letters. Of course,
from the outside, it was backwards, but we could figure it out. Here is a
sample verse: 

	Boring Virgins
	Men impotent and seduced
	Lustful foxes
	Foul acts performed for delectation

There were other, equally bizarre verses, all involving sex in some way,
but you get the point. The other interesting thing we saw on our way back
to the hotel was what appeared to be a dry cleaning shop. The name of the
place was "Tvatt Master." Finding the humor in this is left as an exercise
for the (immature) reader, who understands how the Swedes pronounce the
letter V.

We also passed a clothing store that looked like something Emily Israeli
would have enjoyed shopping in...but of course, we weren't able to do any
shopping for her. Oh well.

Tonight we're going to turn in early, because tomorrow is another travel
day. We'll be in touch again from Vaxjo!

Love, 
Michael and Hillary

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1998 18:36:21 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 23: the best laid plans...

Hoo boy. Where should we begin? Um. How about last night? 

Ok. Last night, Hillary had some kind of misunderstanding with her brother
and she got very very upset. This is a good opportunity for us to say that
we both apologize profusely if we have offended any fathers out there (and
you know who you are) by failing to send timely Fathers' Day greetings. We
hope you realize that the lack of crass commercialism here in Sweden caused
us to get confused about the timing of the Hallmark Holiday. Thank you for
your understanding! Anyway, it took a while to calm her down but finally we
got it together and we went out for Chinese food across the street from the
hotel. The food was kind of mediocre, but not terrible or anything. We've
since been told that Sweden is not the place to get a good Chinese meal.
But, this reminds us - while in Stockholm, we saw a really unique Chinese
restaurant - it was on a viking type ship all made up to look like a dragon
but also with all the typical Chinese lanterns and other Chinese restaurant
stuff on it - painted red and gold, just floating there in the harbor. It
was pretty funny :)

We then returned to the hotel and thought we'd get a head start on the rest
of our travel plans. We pulled out our European railway timetables and
started figuring out how we would get from Vaxjo to Amsterdam. We'd been
told it was a 13 hour train ride from Copenhagen to Amsterdam, so we knew
we were in for a long haul, but we hadn't fully realized the extent of the
problem....

After an hour or two poring over all of the information, we realized this
would be trouble. There are about 4 or 5 different ways to do the trip, but
all of them are at least 19 1/2 hours (some of them are more) and involve
at least 3 different trains (some of them more) and 2 or more border
crossings. This was bad. We were scheduled by our travel agent to leave
Vaxjo on the 25th and arrive at our hotel in Amsterdam on the 25th. The
only way we'd do that is if we left Michael's relatives' home at 3 am on
the 25th - and then we'd have one of those long-ass, convoluted train
rides. PLUS - one of the connections had only 7 minutes between arrival and
departure, and no one would guarantee that the connecting train would wait
if they didn't end up being on nearby platforms. And if we did miss the
connection, we would have to wait 8 hours for the next train! You see the
problem, we're sure.

We started to get moderately upset about this but then we hit on the idea
of checking with SAS for flight information from Vaxjo to Amsterdam. This
was at about 10:15 PM. Hillary called SAS and found out that we could do
the trip for about $300 each if we split it 50-50. This involved some
creative ticketing - Michael gets a "youth" fare because he's under 26, and
Hillary had to get a round trip "weekend excursion" ticket to bring the
cost of her "adult" fare to a reasonable amount. But, we did it. They told
us we'd have to pick up the tickets on the 23rd, so we figured we'd stop at
the Airport in Vaxjo, since the SAS office in Stockholm wouldn't reopen
before our 9:30 AM train out of Center Station.

Feeling more relaxed, we finished up our packing and went to bed.
In the morning we got up, had breakfast, and were about to head to the
checkout counter, when we hit another snag. Michael pulled out the train
tickets to double check them, and noticed that the departure time was 8:12
am, not 9:30! This wouldn't have been so bad if not for the one little
detail that it was already 8:30. With heavy hearts, we checked out, and
caught a cab  to the train station to see what we could do about this
developement. (BTW: why did we miss the train? because we got confused! it
was the train from Oslo to Stockholm that had been at 9:30. Oops.)

We got to Central Station, took a number, and were quickly helped. We told
the guy we'd missed our train and that we wanted to book the next one.
Sure, no problem - uh, um, except - the computer was down again. Now it was
about 9 am. Michael decided he would head to the Stockholm SAS office,
about 10 minutes away, to pick up our plane tickets so we wouldn't have to
get them at the Vaxjo airport, which would have been a pain in the butt.
Meanwhile, Hillary waited at the window for the computer system to come up.

Hillary had a nice long chat with the guy about crime in the US and Sweden.
He was shocked by our story of the shoplifter on the train the other day -
he called it unheard of! 

About 5 minutes before Michael came back from the SAS office (at about
9:45), the system came back and we got tickets for the 10:12 train out of
Stockholm, which in fact we are now actually ON.

We are in first class, of course, due to our first class Eurorail things.
Shortly after the conductor checked our tickets, Michael took some fruit
out of the basket of fruit made available to first class passengers, which
was sitting on the table in front of some french dude. The french dude said
"I'm sorry, those are only for this table." Hillary said, "oh? the
conductor said they are for all first class passengers!" The man said "oh.
YOU are in first class??" and Hillary said "well, why would we be sitting
here if we weren't??" He said "the train is overbooked." Michael said
"well, we have first class tickets," and he took the fruit and sat back
down. Hillary wanted to bust the guy for using his cellphone in a
"cellphone forbidden" car, but Michael told her not to :)

That's all for now.

----

We're back! Hillary couldn't deal with using the computer on the train
anymore before. You see, the train we were on was an X-2000, one of
Sweden's high speed trains (similar to the kind that crashed in Germany not
long ago.) These trains give a very smooth ride, but they bank the turns in
a way that feels similar to a ship rolling side to side in the waves...and
you all know what that means. Georg (Michael's uncle here in Vaxjo)
confirmed for us later that Hillary is not alone in feeling uncomfortable
on these trains - he too feels kind of "seasick" on them. 

In any case, the ride to Vaxjo (including the transfer at Alvesta, 10
minutes outside of Vaxjo) was uneventful. We arrived and were immediately
picked up and taken home to the lovely home of the Citrom family (for those
who do not know - Georg Citrom is Suzie Ressler's [Michael's grandmother's]
brother). We got a quick tour of the home, which is full of artwork and
flowers, and the garden, which is also full of flowers and herbs and some
wild strawberries. Then we sat down for some fresh swedish strawberries and
home made sugar cookies.

After we'd fully recovered from the train ride, we were given a sightseeing
tour of Vaxjo. Vaxjo was originally a series of little villages, and now
they are all incorporated together into the city of Vaxjo, but Vaxjo
remains very "small town"ish.
BTW, Vaxjo isn't pronounced the way it is spelled. Think Vex + chutzpah,
without the tzpah part. :)

We saw that there are "suburban" parts of the town, as well as an
industrial area, a shopping area with one of those pedestrian walkways we
love (where we were taken into a gift shop and given a gift!) and lots of
park area and many lakes - huge lakes - with forests around them. There is
also a university with a castle on the campus, where we took some photos.

We have learned from Elizabeth that crime is not necessarily as rare here
in Sweden as some of the other people we've spoken to say it is. She says
that crime has been increasing lately, and in fact her car is missing the
radio to prove it :(. She also mentioned a problem with neo-Nazis - the
second time someone here has told us about this problem.

Still, Vaxjo appears on the surface to be a beautiful peaceful town. We saw
a really lovely very very old church - it looked very similar to the old
Norwegian churches we have seen - but we were taken inside this time, where
we saw an amazing old pipe organ, and some unique sculpture, and a macabre
stained glass window of a prince and a skeleton dining together at a table.
This church is situated at the edge of Linne park - which we also took a
quick look at.

Linne park is a memorial to the great swedish scientist Karl Linne, who
created the Linnean system of classifying biological organisms. In this
park is a special area which is planted yearly with special plants to
create a picture and a caption - this year it was made of various types of
different colored cactuses - really, we can't describe this for you - we
just have to hope that the photos come out very well. It was as if the
scene of a man and a woman and the caption and everything had been painted
on the ground, but intsead of paint they used these tiny cactuses!

We're now back at the Citrom home, putting in a load of laundry. As you can
imagine, it is about time for us to run our underwear through a real wash
cycle. :)
Tomorrow we plan to check out the local crystal industry. More on that later.

Love,
Michael and Hillary

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Thu, 25 Jun 1998 00:09:28 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 24: Valking in a Vaxjo Vonderland

Ok, so we didn't do so much walking. It's a joke! :)

Last night after we sent our email to you, we had dinner here at the
Citrom's. This was no ordinary dinner - Elisabeth is a gourmet cook! She
prepared us some wonderful meat and tiny new potatoes, with wild mushrooms
(porcinis) that she picked herself here in the Swedish countryside, and a
great green salad with homemade dressing to die for. She also served her
version of sushi - fresh raw salmon with lemon squeezed over it, served
with a special kind of pesto type sauce she makes - and also another kind
of fresh salmon, a sort of marinated/lightly pickled type, that was also
delicious. As if this all were not enough, she also served us some home
made vanilla ice cream! They also served us a wonderful Brunello di
Montalcino and some after-dinner Limoncello, so after that, we were ready
for bed :)

Today after a wonderful breakfast featuring Elisabeth's home-made bread,
home-made cheese, and fresh berries, we were taken by car to the nearby
glass factory area. To get there, we had to drive through some very
beautiful, heavily forested area. It was overcast again today, but we had
ample opportunity to see the forests and also some farming and lake areas.
In the countryside here, the barns and homes are generally wooden buildings
painted red, or occasionally yellow, with tiled roofs.

We got to the glass factory area and while we were there, we purchased a
small glass factory. OK, OK, we didn't buy the whole thing, but you know
how it is when you go shopping in a place where everything is
incredible...plus, Elisabeth had a friend working there who helped us to
find the best pieces and also to get good prices!

After our buying spree, we went into the Kosta Boda glass museum where
there were many many pieces from the early years of this company, which you
needed to see to believe. We also were able to go into the actual work
area, where they were making the glasses and vases and candlesticks and so
forth - and we saw them making some pieces similar to the ones we had
purchased. We took a couple of photos in the factory so we can show you how
incredible it was. One particular thing that struck Hillary as amusing was
a young man, perhaps about 25 yrs old, wearing a tie-dyed Smashing Pumpkins
(that's a band) T-shirt, working intently to make very special martini
glasses :). Another really cool thing is that one of the famous artists who
designs for this company was present in the factory, directing some young
glassblowers who were working on implementing one of her designs.

Following this educational experience, we went out to lunch with
Elisabeth's friend from Kosta Boda (her name was Marny). We went to a
small, very charming place, housed within an old farmhouse of the style
typical for the area (red and white, you'll see it in a photo we took :)).
Here we saw (but didn't eat) the infamous swedish smorgasbord in action -
too much pickled herring involved in that for the likes of us! We stuck
with the "normal food" again :)

Then we went on (after a quick stop to see the *real live moose* behind a
nearby gift shop, as well as a bunch of bunny rabbits, baby bunny rabbits,
guinea hens, potbellied pigs, and goats) to another glass place - the Kosta
Boda glass exhibit hall where they have some new work by an artist named
Kjell something. This stuff was amazing. Michael's grandmother has one (or
more?) of his pieces. We looked around in there for a long time - these
were fantastic pieces involving faces, birds, other animals...according to
the book about the exhibit, the artist had a vision of a mystical forest
and this work came out of that. The glass was multicolored and really
didn't look like glass at all in some of the pieces!

After we were all done with the glass stuff, we headed east to an island
called Oland. During the ride, we napped, because we were very sleepy! When
we got to where we were going, we sat up, looked around, and were amazed!
It had been overcast and drizzly before, now it was almost sunny! Plus, we
were at the site of a huge castle on a very scenic island. Borgholm Castle
is at the top of the Landborg cliffs, and is one of Sweden's most important
pieces of history. It was built during the 12th century and was in
continuous use as the Royal Palace (of various kings) until 1772. Now, it
is pretty much a ruin because of a fire that occurred at the site in 1806. 

The castle is built of the local rock - the island, you see, is made of
limestone. Red and blue limestone, which makes up most of the land mass and
in many areas isn't covered by any soil, in others only by very little.
This makes for a very unique landscape. There are plants unique to this
island - we saw a wonderful plant with tiny purple flowers, called Blue
Flame, that only grows here. We also saw some really pretty pink rock roses
and red poppies, that are not unique but are still nice!

>From the castle area we drove to Borgholm and parked near the marina after
a quick drive through the center of town, where there are yet more
pedestrian walkways! This is the main town on the island. We took a short
walk around past a number of tourist shops and a miniature golf course, and
then we got to the Hotell Borgholm, where Marny had told Elisabeth there is
a good restaurant.

Boy was she right!! The restaurant is apparently run by a Swedish chef (no
jokes, please) who has a weekly radio show, and is famous for her
imaginative use of herbs and spices and for growing all of her own
vegetables and herbs. The food was AMAZING! It sure didn't seem like your
standard Swedish food to us. 

After dinner we walked back to the car, which we'd left near the marina -
where we saw the sun starting to set over the water (at about 10 PM). The
sky was orange and pink and red - we hope that the photos do it justice!
The reflection of the different colors from the water onto the nearby white
buildings was really something. Georg was kind enough to take a photo of us
standing in front of the marina.

Then we had a beautiful drive home - we got to see the whole length of the
island (Oland is very long and narrow) which we'd slept through before. We
passed some really pretty cows that were close to the road, and also some
horses and foals and riding stables. Hillary noticed a 4H club and got all
excited about that because she used to belong to 4H :)

When we crossed the bridge to the mainland we were reminded of the bridge
to the Outer Banks of North Carolina - same kind of bridge. There were a
number of very small islands in the water nearby, and as we passed near one
of them we could see that it was covered with many birds. Earlier in the
day we had seen a grey crane standing in a field - these weren't cranes, we
don't know what they were, but it was nice to see them anyway.

The rest of the ride was mostly forested area as before. We kept seeing
those "moose crossing" signs, but thank god we didn't see any actual moose
because apparently they cause bad traffic accidents.  We talked with the
Citroms about this and that - they told us interesting stories about some
of their previous house guests, in particular some people from East Germany
before the wall came down. Apparently they had some "guards" with them,
Communist Party officials, and it wasn't until after the wine with dinner
and the after dinner drinks that the guards started to act like real people.

We finally got back to Vaxjo at about 11:30 PM, to a more overcast sky and
a very dusky light (there are still white patches of sky in areas where the
clouds separate, though). Our laundry is almost dry! Tomorrow, we leave for
Amsterdam, where we hope to enjoy some sunny weather.

That's all for now,
Love,

Michael and Hillary

 

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 00:22:56 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 25th: Arriving in Amsterdam!

We woke up this morning to a cloudless blue Swedish sky over Vaxjo. What a
stroke of luck! Our final day in Scandinavia will be sunny.

We had breakfast and moved our still-damp laundry outdoors into the sun. We
sat around outside on the patio, watching the 76 year old millionaire
working on the Citrom's lawn (he doesn't like sitting around being
retired...). It was really nice and relaxing.  We took advantage of the
weather to snap some photos of the Citrom house from the outside, and also
got a  couple of interior shots.

When it came time to leave, the Citroms INSISTED we take a bottle of wine
with us "for the road," we really couldn't refuse. We're saving it for the
train from Amsterdam to Paris, though. 

On our way to the airport in Vaxjo we stopped off at the factory started
and built by Georg Citrom. We didn't have time to go in and look around,
but Michael did get a picture of the building, anyway.

Finally we were at the airport. The Vaxjo airport was a bit bigger than the
Kirkenes airport, but not that much bigger. We flew out of there on a prop
jet, as Hillary's Uncle Jeff had predicted. It was a Fokker 50, originally
introduced in 1955. The flight was pretty smooth, although a patch of
turbulence made Hillary leave some dents in Michael's arm.

We arrived in Copenhagen (AGAIN) after a routine half hour flight. Today it
was a lot nicer weather-wise, and we were able to get some really nice
views on the way down. Thiws time, though, we didn't leave the airport. We
just did some more shopping :)

Our connecting flight to Amsterdam came in on time, left on time, (with us
on it), and landed a little bit early in sunny, pleasant Amsterdam! We
headed out to find our baggage. Dutch customs, btw, didn't stamp our
passports (as Sweden hadn't) but they DID check them (unlike Sweden) - they
seemed to be able to scan them or something. We got our stuff, changed our
leftover Swedish money to Dutch Guilders (fl), and looked for the train
information center. You see, there are trains connecting the airport to
Amsterdam's Central Station (the big train station in town). We wanted to
take one but we weren't sure how it worked with reference to our Eurail
passes and stuff.

We found the information center and figured everything out. We waited on
platform 2 for our train. It was kind of interesting - they use the
international trains as commuter trains b/w the airport and the train
station - so the train we took to Central Station was really a train to
Hanover. The train ride took about 15-20 minutes. We thought we should make
our Amsterdam --> Paris reservations before leaving the station, so we did
the whole "take a number" thing and after a number of false starts (because
the Dutch railway ticket workers seem to have a "the customer is a captive
audience, they need us, we can be as lame and slow as we want, they will
still buy their train tickets" attitude), we confirmed two spots on the
train for Sunday.  After that, we hopped into a taxi for a ride to our hotel.

The hotel Galaxy, where we are staying, isn't really in the center of town.
What you have to do is either: take a taxi (this was about $13), take a
bus, or take a ferry and walk.  The walk from the ferry dock is about 15
minutes, and the ferry itself comes about every 5 to 10 minutes and only
lasts 5 minutes long, so that's not so bad. When we got to our hotel, we
had the kind of check-in you'd expect from one of those Chevy Chase
Vacation movies. We've learned that most hotels in Europe, when you reserve
a "double," have the option of giving you "the big room with two twin beds
smooshed together" or "the small room with a big double bed." The thing is,
they always do the first option by default - so then we have to switch
rooms and stuff. Grrr. But we end up ok in the end, so that's ok. We
finally got everything organized here and we went out to see the city.

We took the walking plus ferry option to get back into the main part of
town, and then we walked from Central Station south into a touristy area
where there were a lot of restaurants and stuff. We were charmed by the
canals here in Amsterdam, and by some of the very old "canal house" type
buildings which line some of them. These are very tall, pointy-roofed,
narrow, row houses of brick. The bridges that go over some of the canals
are also very picturesque. 

We got ourselves all the way south to the Woodersvein (or something like
that) and then we found a place to sit and have a coffee (well, Hillary had
coffee; Michael had an Oranjeboom). The place (called the Green House) was
really cool. It had a very funky front room, and the outer wall had all
kinds of tiles on it, and inside near the back they had a little garden
area set up, with a fake waterfall, and benches with pillows on them - and
their bathroom, of all things, had a mosaic of broken mirror and colored
tiles, with lots of flowers and things. We took a photo of the bathroom but
it will probably be much less spectacular than the actual bathroom. (anyone
think there is a market for a travel guide of "Interesting Bathrooms of
Europe" ??)

Having worked up an appetite doing all this bathroom photography, we
thought we'd walk back the way we came and go to this particular restaurant
that we'd passed on our way south. But, that didn't work. We thought we
were retracing our steps, but then we didn't ever see that restaurant. But,
we found a different restaurant, and it turned out to be great. We'd been
hoping to try some of the acclaimed Indonesian food here, but ended up in a
Thai place where we had a really good meal.

After dinner we had more coffee, and then decided to turn in. It was still
pretty light out and we wanted to get back to the hotel before it turned
much colder, as the afternoon had been quite warm but now it was cooling
down.  We walked back to Central Station, went behind it to the ferry
docks, waited for the ferry, took the ferry, etc etc. We finally got back
to the hotel, and we figured we'd better start writing some of this down or
we'd forget it all!

Today seemed like a very long day, because we had so much time doing stuff
in Vaxjo before we left, and we also spent a lot of time here doing stuff.
We're thinking probably tomorrow we'll do a quick bus tour or something and
then check out the Jewish Museum, Anne Frank's house, that kind of thing.
It depends on the weather though - we hope it stays nice!

that's all for now,

Hillary and Michael

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1998 11:14:00 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 26: Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!

Before we get started on today's adventures, there's something we forgot to
mention before. The people in Amsterdam are *obsessed* with the World Cup,
to a degree thus far unmatched anywhere we have been. When we were entering
the airport from the airplane at Amsterdam's Schiupol Airport (where
smoking is allowed only in designated areas, unless you are Dutch, in which
case you smoke where you damn well want to smoke and anyone who doesn't
like it can piss off), we walked through the flight gate and into the
waiting area - in which there were about thirty people, who all suddenly
stood up and cheered really loudly, in unison. At first we thought they
were just some kind of bizarre dutch welcoming committee, but then we
realized they'd been watching a World Cup match, and something had happened
that they liked.

Boy, this place is strange! It's so jarring to see signs on the cafes
telling customers to: Please roll your joints inside! But, we've seen a lot
of that so far. This morning after breakfast we walked to the ferry
terminal, took a ferry into town, and started walking around to see what we
could see. We checked out part of the red light district, as we'd been told
to look at it during the day when it was safer. We saw many of the famous
Amsterdam "coffee shops" where coffee isn't the main attraction.

If some of you are unclear on what IS the main attraction at these shops,
let us clear that up for you. Pot. Weed. Marijuana. Oh, also, hashish.
These places have menus and everything - it's very surreal. We walked
around in an area where there were many of these shops, and we looked at
some of the promotional materials in some of the nearby stores where they
sell drug paraphernalia and so forth. It's hard to read Dutch when you
don't speak Dutch :) but we gathered that there is a faction here working
toward recognition of marijuana as a medicinal substance, and another
faction here working toward recognition of marijuana as something fun to
do. We think the second group is winning, based on the local activity we
saw when we stopped to have a coffee in one of these places (just to see
what was going on!).

Also worth noting were the sex shops. These were surreal as well. Videos,
magazines, comic books, regular books, posters, knick knacks, dildoes, fake
vaginas, fake boobs, fake women (various kinds of inflatables: nurse,
teacher, schoolgirl, etc), leather harnessess, even PLAYING cards, for
heavens' sake! It was interesting, anyway. 

We strolled along one of the canals for a bit and then returned to the
Damrak, the main street perpendicular to Central Station, where there are a
number of tourist shops, coffee shops, tour excursion centers, and also a
Museum of Torture (which we photographed, but didn't enter. Too scary for
us - although, we might have gotten some good ideas of things to do to
annoying Net Access customers. Hmmm. There's always tomorrow...)

Then we booked ourselves on an afternoon bus tour. We also got a short
canal tour with it, which we decided to do first. The canal tour was really
cool. We cruised through a number of canals and got great views of:

- the Merchant Canal: lined by mansions, formerly owned by rich people but
now generally office buildings and banks

- the Old Harbor, which was the original harbor here but which is no longer
big enough for the ships to unload from

- lots of 17th century canal houses, which remind us a lot of philly
rowhouses, except they are narrower and have gables with large windows at
the top, which is how they get the furniture in and out of the upper
stories (staircases are too narrow, you see.)

- some architecturally interesting 16th and 17th century warehouses, which
we sadly didn't photograph

- the Jewish Quarter, which isn't really original anymore due to lots of
new construction. The diamond polishing centers are still here - the Jews
who originally settled here were (many were) diamond merchants. South
Africa, back then, you recall, was a Dutch Territory, and when the big
diamond mines there were found, the diamond industry in Amsterdam really
took off. Also in the Jewish Quarter we saw some kind of black stone
monument with gold writing on it in hebrew - we have no idea what it was
for, though. Also in this area is the new Opera House, a really ugly round
building covered in what looks like white bathroom tile. Speaking of
bathrooms, we saw another interesting one today, with Heineken taps for
sink faucets - but we didn't get to photograph that one, sorry :)

- Rembrandtsplein - from the canal we could see the statue of Rembrandt,
which was built in 1876 in the middle of this park area. 

- a defense tower, with a 15th century base and a 17th century tower -
really interesting brick work on this tower!

- lots of other stuff! We learned on this tour that the Central Station was
built on a man-made island. The stuff across the canal from it used to be
oceanfront property! Now, the entire city is facing Central Station, and
kind of radiates out from it. The canals form semicircles around it. The
city is very disorganized - the streets are not laid out well, probably
because the city is so very old, and because they have 100 canals and about
1000 bridges - and because many of the streets are really, really, really,
really narrow!! In fact, in many areas, you might think you were on a
pedestrian walkway - because everyone is walking through it - until a car
comes inching down behind you. Also, the city is several meters below sea
level! There are a number of sluices which keep the water from overflowing
the dams and getting into the city.

The city is very beautiful and if you should come to Amsterdam, we can
wholly recommend the canal tours. Note also that we were very lucky with
the weather today. It has rained here for 2 months straight, and we've
gotten the first two partly cloudy/ partly sunny days in a long while. BTW
- if you're into this kind of thing you might be interested in knowing that
"Holland" isn't the name of this country - it's the name of a province
which contains Amsterdam. So you have Amsterdam, federal capital of the
Kingdom of the Netherlands, within the province of Holland, and you have
Der Hague, capital of Holland province. That's kind of weird. Our guide
mentioned that also the football fans at the world cup games shout out
"Hol-land, hol-land" even though there is no Holland team, there is only a
Netherlands team - that's like going and shouting "New York" or "Ohio" when
rooting for a US team! She said this just goes to show you how disorganized
these people really are.

After our canal tour we walked around some more - we found an interesting
shop that had an internet terminal, but someone else was using it. We
stopped for some french fries - you have to be careful getting those here,
the Dutch seem to like them with mayonnaise glopped all over them, and if
you don't say something, It Could Happen To You.

After that we had our bus tour. This was another example of Dutch Anarchy,
as we like to call it. No one is in charge, no one has any information
about anything, then all of a sudden everyone is running somewhere and you
are trying to figure out what's happening. Once the bus started moving, we
were fine. However, the tour guide was not. Perhaps she had been in one of
those coffeeshops? She couldn't remember her own name! She also seemed to
hear voices, because at one point she said "what? wait a second. someone is
talking, and it isn't working. but I will continue." It was strange.
However, she was an excellent tour guide, and gave a delightful commentary
regarding the sights we saw. She expounded on drugs and prostitution for
quite a while, bemoaning the fact that the Amsterdam government (which she
implied was rather "oppressive") had taken it upon itself to allow soft
drugs and prostitution, and that the "man in the street" such as herself
can't do anything to change it, so her fair city is getting a really bad
reputation.  She also remarked that the prostitutes used to be here for the
many sailors who came to port, but that now they are here for "you people"
meaning us, the tourists! Hmm.

Speaking of prostitutes, there are many of them, standing in their windows
with a little red light shining down on them. You can have your way with
one for fl 50 (about 25 bucks), so we're told. We saw many fat, ugly, bored
looking professional women standing in leopard print G strings and
fluorescent bikini tops during our meander through this area today.

Our tour guide pointed out to us a round, squat, tower, sitting on what
used to be oceanfront property. This was called "the Tower of Tears"
because this was the building in which women would say goodbye to their
sailor men, and the building in which women would wait for the men to
return, and perhaps be told by the crew of the ship that one particular man
didn't make it back (or, find out that the whole ship didn't make it back!)
So a lot of crying went on here.

Our tour also took us to see a water-pumping windmill (very picturesque,
with nearby ducks), and into a diamond factory! The diamond factory of
course was in the Jewish Quarter. We got some instruction about diamond
quality and worth, and how they cut and polish them, and stuff like that.
They also showed us a bunch of jewelry that was for sale, and Michael
nearly gave Hillary a heart attack by continuing to pick up different
diamond rings, and saying "I like this one, what do you think?" She finally
had to tell him to cut it out.

Following the diamond shop stop, there was another chaotic boarding of the
bus and then we wrapped up the tour with a look at Dam Square. Dam Square
kind of cordons off the area of the University from the Red Light district.
This square contains the WWII memorial, which interestingly was just
returned to Amsterdam 2 months ago from Germany, where it had needed to be
sent for cleaning! The memorial is built out of soapstone, and had suffered
staining and water damage, and the Germans apparently have the only
facility in the world that can clean and restore soapstone. So, the
Amsterdam folks debated it for a while and finally decided to send it. It
looked good to us! Do you believe, the Germans had the gall to charge for
the cleaning??

Also in this square is the Royal Palace (although it isn't really used as a
palace these days), the Coronation Church (which is currently in use as an
exhibition center to show stuff about Queen Victoria), and the Amsterdam
Post Office, a really striking building which is no longer a post office,
but which is in use as a shopping mall. We told you this place wasn't
organized!!!

Sort of near this area, but not quite, there is a Flower Market which we
got a glimpse of from both the canal boat and from the bus. If time permits
we'll check it out more closely tomorrow, but for all the hype and
everything, it didn't seem as impressive as the one in Stockholm, based on
today's taste of it.

After our tour, we hopped on a tram to head over to Leidseplein - the
theater district. What's this about a tram? Well, we bought these tickets
called "Circle Amsterdam" which allow us unlimited use of all available
public transportation in Amsterdam for two days. We figured we'd need it
what with needing to get through the tunnel and all at the end of the day,
anyway. So we hopped on a tram (trolley to you) and were swiftly carried to
our destination.

Of note regarding the trams is that a) they work on the honor system in
that no one actually checks your ticket routinely, b) if you are caught
without a ticket you must pay fl 60 (about 30 bucks) or c) show them photo
ID and fill out paperwork and pay more later, or even d) go to the police
station and get in trouble. Also, they run in two directions over the same
track in some areas, so it is difficult to try to cross the street and
stuff in an area where a tram runs.

The Leidseplein is a square at the end of Leidsestraat. It contains a
number of bars, theaters, and so forth. We noticed a football tree covered
in orange streamers with soccer balls "growing" in it. There were some
performers in the center of the square who seemed to be preparing to juggle
some chain saws (that were turned on!) But we had no time for such
frivolity - we headed into "Nonsense" to get our tickets for Boom Chicago!

What's Boom Chicago, we hear you cry. Well, Boom Chicago is a group of 9
Chicagoans and an Australian, who perform improvisational comedy shows here
- similar to the shows done by ComedySportz above Montserrat on South St in
Philadelphia, but of course not quite the same. They are widely acclaimed
(at least, we'd heard of them before) and we were in the mood for a laugh
or two. They turned out to be very funny. They really had the "american in
amsterdam" experience down pat. They did a great sketch about some college
kid coming here and at first being afraid of drugs and then getting really
stoned by smoking some hash and having a paranoid freak out. They also did
a really funny bit about some americans getting killed by trams, and having
to pretend to be Dutch to be able to cross the street - and then figuring
out that the ubiquitous bicycles (which really are VERY numerous here, as
Amsterdam is entirely flat so it's easier to bike than in other places) are
actually working in cahorts with the evil two-way trams in a conspiracy to
mow down wayward Americans who take up valuable space here in overcrowded
Amsterdam. They also did a really funny improv where they sang songs, in
the styles chosen by the audience, about something chosen by the audience.
They ended up having to sing about respectable sex in the style of "jungle
music, swing, and rap" and it was hilarious.

Amsterdam really is overcrowded, btw. It's so overcrowded that people have
taken to building houseboats and parking them in the canals. It's so
overcrowded that it is routine for people to sit down at the spare seats at
your table, wherever you are. Furthermore, although we haven't personally
seen the problem, the crowding allegedly contributes to a large
pickpocketing problem. 

After the comedy show, we went back to the Red Light district just to get a
look at it "by night," if you will. The canal bridges were outlined with
little red christmas lights (the ones outside the district get white
christmas lights). The prostitutes were more numerous, and some of them
were actually NOT fat and old. In fact, some were neither fat NOR old! They
still all looked bored, though, and only one or two percent of them were
actually "good looking". They just sit there in these chairs with their
legs spread or their boobs hanging out, waiting for work to wander in.

One thing they have here in Amsterdam is a plethora of Live Nude Girls and
Live Sex Shows. It is kind of like New Jersey, in that way. We debated
whether or not we should check out a Live Sex Show. It seems pretty silly
to pay for watching people do something like that...doesn't it? But then
again, we hear the girls do these things with bananas and cigars.... hmmmm.
Still, the US Navy seems to think it is ok for their sailors to watch these
shows - we saw plenty of these guys hanging around trying to see if they
had enough cash to get into one.

At about 11, it was getting darker and we figured we'd head back to the
hotel. It was a really long day and tomorrow will be longer! We have a list
of museums we want to see, surely there isn't time for them all but we'll
see what we can do. We need our rest, though!

TTFN,

Hillary and Michael


From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1998 17:44:17 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 27th: Amsterdam - ARGH!!!

Ok. First of all, we *are* having an excellent time! That said, it is worth
mentioning that not only is the city of Amsterdam very disorganized, but
also, everything runs late! Each bus or tram or train or boat ride we've
gone on has failed to begin on time - usually things run 5 to 15 minutes
late. We are not sure exactly why this is - it could be that everyone's
stoned all the time, or it could be that the people in charge know that all
of their customers are stoned all the time, so they delay so the teeming
masses do not miss their buses...or, it could just be a very laid back
attitude in general. Hard to say, really.

Amsterdam is perhaps the most immediately *livable* city we've been to so
far. Absolutely everyone in town speaks English. The natives are all at
least bilingual, and many of them speak many more than 2 languages. The
people who work for the public transportation division all speak at LEAST
Dutch and English - most also speak German and French, some speak Italian,
Spanish, Pakistani, etc. Even the losers who have jobs standing in front of
the places that have Live Sex Shows, the guys who stand on the sidewalk and
try to get tourists to go in and watch the shows, speak at least four
languages - one of these guys flabbergasted a group of Israeli tourists by
speaking to them in Hebrew, the other night.

Anyway, enough about that. Other cool things about Amsterdam include the
fact that despite the departure from the times printed in the timetable,
the public transit seems very reliable and there is very complete coverage
of the city. There are a lot of theaters - stage and cinema - and there are
a lot of ethnic restaurants, which we love, and there is good coffee here,
and there are some cool street performers - and there are ISPs, and plenty
of dogs, so we could find work! But don't worry, we're coming home soon :)
Oh, also - cats are very popular here. Our guide told us yesterday that 9
out of 10 homes in Amsterdam have cats! They even have a special cat museum
here.

Today we slept in and then headed out for a day of culture. We had high
hopes for being able to see a bunch of museums - but, our ambitious plans
fell victim to the two real problems with this city - one, complete lack of
organization, and two, crappy weather.

First we took a bus from a stop near our hotel over to Central Station
(this bus was late, of course, but that was ok, as it was nice out this
morning), and then we got on the Circle Tram 20 and took it over to
Westermarkt. This is the area near Anne Frank's house, Westerkerk (a 17th
century church), and the Homomonument - a monument to the Gay and Lesbian
people who were killed by the Nazis and also to those people in more recent
years who have succumbed to HIV related disease. We were dropped off by the
tram directly in front of the Homomonument - which is itself directly
behind Westerkerk - so we tried to check that out first - however, the
entire square housing the monument is heavily under construction, and so we
couldn't get a really good look at it. Mainly it was two separate pinkish
polished granite triangles in the square, proper, and one other triangle
with steps from the sidewalk down extending into the canal next to the
square. There was some writing in Dutch on one of the triangles but we
couldn't tell what it said. There was a lot of sand and dust flying around,
and construction barriers all over, so we really couldn't even photograph
it, unfortunately. 

We continued around the corner to get to Anne Frank's house at number 263
Prinsengracht. We were dismayed when we saw a line that wasn't really
moving at all, extending far from the door. It looked like it might take
well over an hour to get to the front. So we checked out the general area.
The construction zone between 263 and the corner had a plywood barrier
blocking it, next to which people were standing in the line waiting to get
into the house. The barrier had a number of pictures hanging on it -
paintings done by children, it looked like. Each had a caption in several
languages, something like "the right to play" or "the right to grow up" or
"the right to live." At the end of the line of pictures was a title "The
Rights of Children." It was very uplifting and somewhat depressing at the
same time, what with it being so close to the spot where one child didn't
have any of those rights (which we are sure was the point, but still.) In
front of the house was a small bronze statue of Anne, which we
photographed. We also took a picture of the house itself - a brown brick
building, nothing different about it from the many other houses lining this
canal. Hillary noticed a young (15 yr old?) girl standing in one of the
windows, smiling brightly down at the crowd on the sidewalk. That kind of
gave her the creeps - it didn't seem like a particularly happy place to
her. We decided not to go in - we've both read Anne's diary and she gave
very vivid descriptions, so we feel we know what it would be like in there
without spending two hours in line for a five minute chance to know for
sure exactly what it was like in there.

After that, we were hungry. We had some trouble trying to find a place to
eat. We couldn't decide what to eat, where to eat, how to get there - we
were confused by the trams running two ways on the same track, and the
situation was detiorating rapidly when suddenly a bus appeared that looked
like it would take us back to the Leidseplein (where we saw Boom Chicago),
so we hopped on that and it worked!

When we got to Leidseplein, those same street performers from before were
there and the guy was actually juggling the turned-on chain saw at this
time. We stayed and watched the whole very funny and impressive show - the
usual juggling of fire, 7 foot unicycle street performer kind of act - with
an amsterdam twist, because one guy stripped down to a leopard print bikini
- and since they were good, we gave them some money too. Then we were
REALLY hungry so we found what looked like an excellent Indian restaurant,
went in, and chowed down. We were correct - it was an excellent Indian
restaurant. We've been told that the Dutch do not really consider
themselves to have a national cuisine, per se - rather, they have
appropriated as their own the many ethnic cuisines available in their
cities. That works for us!

After lunch, we waited around again for a late tram, and then got on one
that was heading toward the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a monument to the
memory of Jews deported from this site during WWII. When we got there, it
was raining. We figured out where the monument was and jogged there to
avoid getting drenched. Unfortunately, the exhibit itself had closed for
the day by this time, but we checked out the building - a nondescript,
large white marble building - and read some of the information. Apparently
during the course of WWII, about 80,000 total Dutch Jews were forced to
meet at this building, where German Soldiers would round them up and march
them to the train, for deportation to concentration camps. Ugh.

After this, we'd wanted to go see the Joods historisch museum (the Jewish
Historical Museum) but it was really raining hard. So, we hopped back on
the tram to go back to Central Station, waited for the bus back over to
north Amsterdam, took the bus back to the stop near the hotel, and made a
mad dash through the rain into the Galaxy Hotel. It's too bad the bus stop
isn't a tiny bit closer, or cabs a bit cheaper (from Central Station to the
hotel the first day was about US $13.00) When we got here - we looked like
drowned rats by then and the girl in the elevator laughed because our hair
was all wet, but we didn't care. We're hoping it clears up, so we can go
out this evening. 

TTFN,

Michael and Hillary

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 23:23:11 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 27/28: nous allons a Paris!

Well...you remember, it was a rainy day in Amsterdam, and we'd returned to
the hotel. We hung out and watched old American movies on TV (well, Hillary
did, while Michael took one of his famous naps). By about 8:45 the rain had
stopped and it was actually kind of sunny out, so we decided we'd try to
find this Ethernopian restaurant we'd heard about. (South Park reference,
FYI - we DO know how to spell Ethernopian. We just choose not to.)

We walked out to the bus stop but since it's Saturday, the buses in this
area only run every half hour, and we weren't at the right time, so we
walked down to the ferry dock, and crossed to Central Station that way,
then took a #2 tram south of the Leidseplein a ways. We found the Addis
Ababa restaurant there, and the menu was unfortunately in Dutch. We were
able to figure out what things were based on the ethernopian part of the
text, though :) 

The food was very good and we enjoyed ourselves a lot, although we feared
for our lives every time the server came near us because she carried things
extremely precariously. We survived without incident, we're sure you're
happy to know.

After dinner, we took the tram back to the Leidseplein, thinking we'd walk
around the cinema district and check out the late night party action around
here. There were a million people out and that meant half a million bikes
piled up on the sidewalks. Dutch people are really into biking! Also,
starting at about 11 PM, there is a very large, very visible police
presence here in Amsterdam. They just stand there on the sidewalk, staring
ahead, occasionally chatting people up. Also, some of them sit in cars
parked strategically in front of large gathering places. 

We checked out some of the outdoor cafe type areas, and we wandered along a
canal front for a bit. We stopped to see what was playing at a few of the
movie theaters - but decided we weren't really into seeing a movie after
all - especially after we heard that Dutch theaters tend to insert 15
minute intermissions into the middle of feature films, and that they
usually come at a very annoying moment in the movie. Some of the buildings
were really cool, though.

We stopped and had Ben and Jerry's ice cream cones from the B & J store in
this neighborhood, too. It was really good :) and it was crowded too, even
late like it was. 

Finally we realized we were tired (well, Hillary was tired because she
didn't get a four hour nap this afternoon...) and headed back to the tram
stop. We took the tram back to Central Station, and then tried to find a
bus to our hotel - but, since it was about midnight on Saturday night,
there was only one bus line left that would go through the tunnel and into
the particular part of North Amsterdam that our hotel is in. Therefore,
Michael decided we should simply take a cab rather than sit and wait half
an hour for a bus. Since it's just a 10 minute drive, it is really annoying
to sit and wait for a bus for that long. So we cabbed it, and it turned out
to be a bit cheaper than the other cab ride due to decreased traffic.

Tomorrow we travel to France. Michael is quizzing Hillary right now on how
to say things in French like "we want to go to Hotel X, please" and "how
much does this cost" and "why do all you french people hate us americans?"
and "that's not real football, that's soccer." 

That's all for now.
----

So, this morning (the 28th) we got up a little later, had a relaxed morning
in which to finalize all the packing and stuff, try to get the shampoo
packaged so it wouldn't leak all over the place, that kind of thing. We got
it all together and were ready to go by about 11:30. We took a cab to the
ferry, with all our bags and stuff, and schlepped it all into Central
Station (have you noticed yet that nearly all european train stations are
called Central Station??). We tried to lock it up because we had a good 2
hrs to kill, but we couldn't find any open lockers, so we schlepped our
stuff up to the large seating area near the Burger King (at platform 2) and
hung out there for a while. We found another Ben and Jerry's shop - we
suppose either B & J like Amsterdam, or the people who work for B & J do.
Amsterdam has at least 2 B & J shops, Philadelphia has NONE. San Francisco
only has one. Hmmm.

We made our way to platform 14 to wait for our train - the high speed
Thalys to Paris! The Thalys is the French equivalent of the Swedish X2000
we'd ridden before. Hillary had a concern regarding the
seasickness-inducing capability of the Thalys, but it turned out not to be
a problem. While we were waiting for the train, a different train stopped
to pick up passengers bound for Bruxelles - this was a train that would get
there 10 minutes before our train would. After that train left, some guy
came running up to us and said, in English with a french or belgian accent,
"where is the train to Brussels, here?" and then "it left! Oh shit!" and
ran off. Ooops. :) We were all set though, because we had our reservations
in hand, and everything under control.

We got onto the train and managed to find the right seats in the right car
and even to stow our luggage conveniently. The train was great - Hillary
liked it better than the X2000 because it had red plush seats and blue
curtains, but Michael said the X2000 was nicer. It turned out that the
people sitting behind us had a little dog with them - about a 35 lb dog, or
so - they carried it in a canvas shopping bag with its head sticking out,
and then they put it under the seat! It was a very good dog the whole time,
not like the other dog in our car who kept barking now and then. We think
Septa should allow dogs!

The trip to Paris was relatively uneventful. As we left Amsterdam, we saw
some very picturesque Dutch country farmland, with many many cows and sheep
present. We also saw some other Dutch cities, which appeared
architecturally similar to what we'd seen in Amsterdam, for the most part.
The Rotterdam station was the last stop in the Netherlands, and it was a
really cool train station - it had multicolored walls and big cut outs like
tunnels or something in some of the walls - it looked like a childrens'
playground/ art gallery combination. 

Hillary slept for most of the ride through Belgium, but Michael remarks
that it was mostly farmland with cows and sheep. When we got to Bruxelles,
Hillary woke up (and also woke up Michael who had *just* fallen asleep -
oops) and was glad she did, because the city was worth a look even from the
train - large rowhouses somewhat reminiscent of Amsterdam but not made of
brick, and painted in pastel colors!

>From there, it was only about an hour and a half (at 300 Km/hr) to Paris.
When we got to Paris we gathered all our stuff up, got off the train, and
set out to fulfill our first mission - to obtain french francs from an ATM.
We walked up to the first available map of the station and found our way to
the cash machine. Yay! It worked fine, despite the pessimistic entries in
our guidebooks regarding North American ATM cards and Parisian ATMs. 

While we were walking through Paris Gare du Nord (the train station) we saw
TONS of world cup stuff - they had all these information booths set up and
so forth. People are REALLY out of their minds with this football stuff. We
were in a strange country where we couldn't understand much of the signage
or the people talking around us, we had no idea where to go, AND half the
world was on their way here to go to a football game. Great.

But never fear, we figured it out. We went down into the Metro, armed with
a plethora of maps and guidebooks, and stood in line to purchase tickets.
Hillary spoke in French to the sales clerk, "Quel est le tarif pour deaux
personnes aller a Madeleine?" and they told us it was 16 ff, so we paid,
got our tickets, and headed for the subway. We headed over to the subway,
we headed down to the subway, we headed across to the left, we headed back
up, and finally onto the actual car. It was similar to Madrid, with a few
less stairs. We had to change metro cars at the Republique stop, but we
managed, and finally got to our final stop. When we came out to the street,
we were somewhat overwhelmed by the fact that we were actually in France,
in Paris no less, and that there were all these giant French buildings
around us, and all these people speaking French and stuff, and we just kind
of stood there for a minute. We were also overwhelmed by the warmth, and
the sun, which hadn't been so evident up north...Then, we realized we still
had to get to the hotel and so we took action.

Hillary stepped over to a nearby street vendor and asked "Ou est Rue
Cambon, s'il vous plait?" and they told her it was "something something a
droit" so she astutely figured that we could walk down the street and it
would be on our right - and it was! woo hoo! Two down, one to go. We got to
our hotel - located in a WONDERFUL central location that really more than
makes up for the Amsterdam hotel being located off the beaten path as it
was - the walk there took us past a number of couture shops and crystal
showrooms and so forth. We stopped at the Reception desk of the hotel and
they greeted us by name "Michael Israeli and Hillary Gorman? Hello! You are
in Room 35." We talked to them a bit about the possibility of changing to a
room with one big bed instead of two beds pushed together - but, again, we
were faced with what we like to call the "European Paradox." This means
that the probability of a large bed being in a large room is inversely
proportional to the probability of two small beds being in a large room,
and that air conditioning is only available in large rooms which contain
small beds. In other words, we could have a nice big room with air
conditioning (and two small beds shoved together) or a small kind of crappy
room with no air conditioning and a really nice bed. Hmmm. We caved in and
took the big room with small beds. We were really HOT.

Once we settled into the room we were again amazed by the football fever
going on. There is a heavily trafficked area near here and there were cars
going by honking for the team, and there were people screaming and yelling,
it was insane. So we cleaned ourselves up and went out to walk around, and
find some dinner. 

We walked from our hotel the one block over to the Jardin des Tuileries,
where there is a huge amusement park. We then walked down the Rue de Rivoli
and over about a block and a half to the Place de la Concorde. This giant
traffic circle is where Dr. Guillotin's invention was housed during the
French Revolution. They say about 1500 or so people were executed in this
fashion at this site between 1793 and 1795. It was kind of creepy to
consider what it must have been like, with the crowds of people yelling and
shouting and clamoring for the deaths of King Louis and Marie Antoinette
and all those other people...There is no remaining sign of that, though.
Instead, there is a large 3300 year old monument, called the Obelisk of
Luxor, the oldest monument in Paris, standing where the guillotine used to
be. We took a photo of it. When standing in the Place looking north, you
can see the two hotels on Rue de Rivoli and Rue Royale (they are on the
corners, facing each other) - these are giant, matching colonadded
buildings left over from before the Revolution. We took a photo of them, as
well. The Hotel Crillon currently occupies the building which used to be a
nobleman's home in the 18th century; the Hotel de la Marine occupies the
other building which is a former royal warehouse, but is now the navy
headquarters. 

Also in the area of the Place de la Concorde are a couple of art museums
which we didn't check out (it was about 10 PM, realize), and the Palais
Bourbon, which houses the French Parliament, which we observed from afar
(and photographed). We did check out the Rue St-Honore, which was nearby,
and which houses a number of posh shops - which were closed...but it was nice.

We started getting HUNGRY so we walked up the Rue Royale (checking out
Maxims and some of the other posh establishments on our way) until we dead
ended at the Eglise de la Madeleine, a big white building with red
flowerbeds, which Michael photographed while Hillary looked it up in our
book, because it was so impressive. It was built in 1806 as a "Temple of
Glory" for Napoleon's army, and it has 52 Corinthian columns (we didn't
count, we're taking the book's word for it, but there were a lot of columns.)

Then we took a right on Rue Capucins, and headed over to Avenue de l'Opera.
We stopped to check out the opera house, as well as the Ministry of Justice
and Place Vendome, in the middle of which there is a giant monument to
Napoleon, which looks like a penis, because - well, we'll show you the
photo. The monument is covered in bronze taken from 1200 cannons at the
Battle of Austerlitz, FWIW.

Finally we settled down on a Moroccan restaurant, where we had an
excellent, if a tad bit expensive, Moroccan meal. Hillary communicated
reasonably well with the waiter -we got everything we wanted, and we didn't
get anything we didn't want, and the bill was correct, so we were happy :)

A short walk back to the hotel and here we are! We're gearing up for an
early start tomorrow, we want to pack in the sights of Paris while we're here!

Love,
Hillary and Michael

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:37:00 1998
Date: Mon, 29 Jun 1998 17:46:59 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 29th: promenading through paris

Bonjour! 

Today we got up early and headed out to see what the big deal about this
place is, anyway. We walked down to the Jardin des Tuilleries again to get
a look at it during the day...this is the most historic garden of Paris, so
we are told. It paves the way from the Louvre (which we plan to visit on
Wednesday) to the Place de la Concorde - which is where we were approaching
from. Catherine de Medici commissioned these gardens and the associated
palace in 1564, because she feared for her life and wanted a more secure
area. Unfortunately, her astrologer warned her that this would be a mistake
and the astrologer turned out to be correct - during the Revolution, Louis
XVI and Marie Antoinette were imprisoned here (before having their heads
cut off in the Place de la Concorde) and much later when the royal family
tried to escape in 1762, 600 of the King's guards were massacred here.
During the uprising in the 1870's the whole place was burned down, but the
garden remained intact, and lovely! There is a large fountain where kids
like to sail model boats. There are also a lot of marble statues and some
shrubs made into curlicues, and things like that. We snapped a couple of
photos here :)

Then we went into the Musee de l'Orangerie. This museum is within the
Jardin. From the outside, it is pretty unimpressive, but on the inside -
hoo doggies! 
The museum contains a collection of about 150 paintings - Renoirs,
Cezannes, Gaugins, Monets, Picassos, Modiglianis, and some other lesser
known (to us anyway) artists' works. While Hillary still thinks she likes
Renoir the best, even she admits that the most impressive thing in this
museum is the basement, which contains 40 foot long panels of Monet's Water
Lilies paintings - 8 enormous paintings in beautiful blue/green/purple.
These paintings were given to the French government following WW I - Monet
said "It isn't much, but it's the only way at my disposal to participate in
the Victory." The government built the exhibition hall at the Musee de
l'Orangerie to Monet's specifications, and agreed not to display the
paintings until he died. This was because Monet, who had had cataracts for
some time, wanted to be able to keep retouching the paintings until he
died, to make sure they were perfect.

Anyway, we really liked the Water Lilies, and wish we could have taken them
home with us! However, we couldn't carry them out without being caught, so
we just left and continued on the walk we had planned for the day. We
walked around the Place de la Concorde - stopping briefly at the Pont
(bridge) de la Concorde where we had an excellent view up and down the
river, and from which we took some photos of the city in general and of the
Pont Alexandre III, a stunning bridge nearby with many statues and lots of
gold trim. Then we continued around the Place to the Avenue des Champs
Elysees, planning to walk to the Arc de Triomphe. We were immediately
distracted from this by the presence of the Jardins des Champs Elysees,
where there were many really beautiful flowerbeds. It's obvious that people
spend a lot of time taking care of these gardens - we got one picture of a
stunning flower bed which had someone working on it at the time. 

We continued on up the Avenue, passing many fancy and some not so fancy
stores, banks, fast food and slow food restaurants, and movie theaters. We
took note of a couple of theaters showing British and American films in the
VO (version originale) with french subtitles :) and we stopped in at one
department store to pick up a small gift for Hillary's cousin Jessie.

We finally got to the Arc de Triomphe, and we walked up (and later, down,)
all 284 stairs in the tiny little spiral staircase to get to the top. The
views from up there were outstanding and we're glad we went up there. The
carving of the Arc, on the inside, is really something to see also. 

We came down and walked back the way we had come. We stopped at a bank to
change our remaining Dutch Guilders into French Francs, and managed to get
a pretty good exchange rate at the "CCF" bank (Commericiale Credite
Francaise, or something like that). Then we stopped in another store to
pick something up for Hillary's cousin Andrew, and then we stopped at Chez
Clement for lunch. This was a charming place - we sat in the sidewalk
section since it was such a sunny and warm day. We had roasted chicken and
an assortment of fresh summer cheeses with bread and salad and
strawberries. Yum :). Oh, we also had some regional rose wine (that e
should have an accent on it - we didn't have *rose* wine :)).  Before
leaving, Michael wanted to visit the bathroom, so Hillary taught him how to
ask "where is the bathroom" and also told him the words for "to the left"
and "to the right" so he could figure out where to go. However, she didn't
tell him the words for "straight back and up the stairs" so he had to
figure it out on his own. Ooops. But, at least they understood his
question, because they answered him!

>From there, we went south, down Avenue Marceau - past a really big, soot
covered church called St. Pierre de Chaillot - and then all the way down to
the River Seine via Avenue de President Wilson. At the water, we stopped
where a crowd of people was assembled around a small statue of some kind.
Upon inspection, we found that the statue was an exact replica of the flame
of the Statue of Liberty, put here as a monument to the ongoing friendship
between the French and the American people. However, it is currently
standing as an informal/unofficial monument to Princess Diana, as it is
directly above the tunnel (that is, it is on the "roof" of the entrance to
the tunnel) where the fatal crash occurred. There is a lot of graffiti on
the flame and the dais on which it stands: 

	we love you diana
	diana and dodie - you are together forever now
	the most beautiful princess, go in peace

etc, etc, etc. There are also a number of posters people have glued up, and
numerous bouquets of flowers people have left there. It was interesting,
and it came as a surprise to us because - well, because we'd had no idea it
was there, and then all of a sudden, there it was.

We hadn't come to see that, though. Onward we walked (or, some might say,
onward we schlepped), across the river (without stopping to take a look at
"Avenue de President Kennedy"), to the main attraction here - the Eiffel
Tower. This is really an amazing thing to see up close. We decided not to
deal with going up to the top because there are lines and so forth and we'd
already had one panoramic view of the city today. But looking up from
underneath gives an amazing view of this structurally magnificent tower.
While we were here we took the opportunity to photograph l'Ecole Militaire,
which is located at the other side of the Parc du Champ de Mars from the
tower. We also took a shot of the Musee du Cinema and the Musee de la
Marine which sit side by side across the river from the tower. These are
beautiful buildings with many columns; you'll need to see the photo for a
better idea of what they look like. 

Leaving the tower area, we walked through a small park where there was a
lake with a waterfall, and a few families of ducks hanging around. As
usual, Michael stopped to chat with the ducks (and also to tell Hillary to
"look at the quackers," except he didn't say quackers...). Here we were
again struck by the magnitude of the police presence here in Paris. We
assume this has to do with the World Cup. There are not just local police,
but many many FEDERAL police, who are walking around, patrolling, etc,
accompanied by men in army fatigues holding machine guns. We took a photo
of a few of them while they were not looking our way (the fed was helping a
tourist with a map, the gunmen were looking away or something). They don't
seem to be bothering anyone, but it is sort of creepy.

We walked along the riverside heading east, back toward the area of the
hotel. Our legs were starting to get kind of tired, so we basically took
the shortest route back here. We stopped in briefly at one of the crystal
shops on the Rue Royale, and also at a pharmacy off the Rue St. Honore to
buy Hillary some more tissues :)

We'd like to point out to those of you who expressed pessimism regarding
the attitude of French people that so far, we've had zero problems. Sure,
Hillary's French sucks, but it seems to be *making an effort* that counts.
Everyone has responded by smiling and trying to be helpful except one guy
who was grouchy to everyone including other French people. Most people do
speak some english, and those who don't are willing to try to deal with
first grade level french without being snobby. 

We're finding Paris to be a very beautiful place, with so much to see in
every block that we're wondering if we'll ever even see 1/4 of what we'd
thought we might! However, since this is the tail end of our vacation, the
plan is NOT to cram in every last possible museum and monument, but rather
to relax and enjoy ourselves. If we miss a couple of things, we'll have a
good excuse to come back, yes?

A final note - if anyone would like us to bring back any special french
perfume, cosmetic, lotion, scarf, hat, etc - please let us know NOW, and
tell us exactly what it is, so we can find it for you!

TTFN,

Michael and Hillary

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:37:00 1998
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 23:17:01 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 30: smelling up Paris

Allo!

Last night after our big nap, we went out to - do not laugh - the Chicago
Pizza Pie Factory, off the Avenue Champs Elysees. Why? Well, we'd had
advance word that it had *excellent* pizza and good atmosphere, and a
nonsmoking section, plus it was almost midnight and we knew it would be
open, so we figured what the heck. But, it was an excellent choice! 

We learned some things there. First of all, the security guards here in
Paris are big black guys just like at home, except they say "Bonsoir" and
"Au Revoir" when you go by, instead of just pretending they do not see you.
Second of all, dogs are allowed in restaurants, even REAL restaurants that
aren't cafes. We were seated in the non fumeur section next to a French
couple with a Yellow Labrador Retriever who was extremely cute (and of whom
we tried to take a picture, but we may have gotten a picture of her tongue
trying to lick the camera...)

Also we had an experience we're not sure would ever be duplicated in the
USA. Hillary spoke in French to the waitress, telling her we wanted a pizza
with mushrooms, a coke, and a carafe of red wine. The waitress looked
confused, so Hillary tried again, reading the name of the pizza off the
menu in English. The waitress said, sounding very relieved, "Oh, English,
Ok" with a British accent. Now, can you imagine going into a French
restaurant in the US and trying to speak English to the server, the server
not understanding, and you having to speak in French? Doubtful, right? And
later on, she couldn't understand the man with the dog at the next table
when he spoke very rapidly in his native French. She told him she was
English and asked him to speak more slowly. He said, good naturedly, "Oh,
ok, I weel use frawnglais - I weel speak in zee Englawsh weeth a heavee
frawnch axawnt!" Now, if your waiter didn't understand your English in a
restaurant in the US, how many of you would make a joke of it and reply in
your waiter's native tongue?? Not us, anyway. So again, we have to say that
in our experience, the whole "French people are language snobs" theorem has
not been borne out (yet).

Today, we got up early to start soaking up some culture. We started off
with a small problem. Yesterday when we got up, we were informed by the
concierge that they were working on the water heater (well, actually, the
guy said in French to Hillary that they were working on "la machine" but it
must have been the water heater) and there was no water at all, so we could
not shower. Today, when we got up, there was water, but only ICE COLD
water. We were told by the breakfast waitress (the only staff person
available at the time) that it most definitely would be fixed "aujourd'hui,
ce soir." So, no shower again today. Sigh. Hence the subject line. 

We headed out with the intention of taking the metro to the Varenne station
and going to the Rodin Museum, but there was an accident of some kind and
that train was stuck sitting there for some unknown amount of time (Hillary
couldn't understand the rapid french over the PA) so we took a different
train over to the St. Paul stop. The metro, by the way, is clean and fast,
and very crowded and stuffy, and lacking in air conditioning which it
sorely needs. Some of the stations are ugly and foul, and some of them are
lovely, with museum type exhibits. In some hallways there are musicians
playing for tips, some of them really lame accordion players and some of
them very accomplished string octets. It's interesting. Anyway, we got to
the stop and were in the neighborhood they call the Marais.

We were heading toward the Musee Carnavalet, a museum of the history of
Paris. On the way, we were surprised to pass by an old synagogue with some
orthodoxim standing in front. It was a very nice building, reminding us of
some of the modernisme buildings in Barcelona. We took a couple of photos
of it. 

We got to the museum and checked it out pretty thoroughly. Right in front
was a sign from a veterinarian's office, from a few hundred years ago.
Sadly, flash photography was prohibited and so we didn't get a picture of
it. Hillary is very upset about this, but she will eventually get over it.
The rest of the museum contained all kinds of objects and signs and things
from very old Parisian businesses - wineries, metalsmiths, and so forth.
There were several sculptures of cats, that were marked "unknown
significance." There were also a number of rooms made up as replicas of
certain salons from the old days. It was very impressive.

>From there, we again took the metro, this time to the Cite stop on Ile de
la Cite. This tiny island is jam packed with things to see and we saw them!
We went to the Palais de Justice, the Marche de Fleurs, the Ste Chapelle
Cathedral, the Conciergerie, and of course, the Notre Dame Cathedral. The
flower market was huge and we got a picture of part of it. The Palace of
Justice is the current city courthouse. It's an elegant building with
"Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" inscribed over the main doors, which is
interesting when one goes around the corner to the Conciergerie, which is
the "anteroom of death" in which the prisoners of the Revolution (like
Marie Antoinette, whose cell we saw) were housed prior to their beheading.
Hmmm. Not a whole lot of Liberte, Egalite, or Fraternite going on there!
Considering the Palais de Justice was in fact the place where the "trials"
were held during the Reign of Terror in 1793-95, we feel there is some
hypocrisy at the heart of the French justice system. BTW, did you know they
used the guillotine up until 1981??

Anyway. The Ste. Chapelle cathedral was beautiful - it has humongous
stained glass windows. The downstairs, where we entered, was stunning, and
then we went upstairs and Hillary almost passed out from shock because she
couldn't believe it but the upstairs was even better! King Louis IX
commissioned this place in 1245, and it has 6,456 feet of stained glass
windows. Louis got to pray upstairs, his henchmen had to content themselves
with the downstairs. 

While in the area we also checked out the Pont Neuf - the oldest bridge in
Paris, linking the Right Bank (which we also checked out, noticing the
famed booksellers with their old used books and amusing posters) with the
Ile de la Cite. This bridge was built in 1607 by Henri IV (well, by the
people he told to build it, we suppose...)

We looked at the Notre Dame cathedral, and actually saw the Hunchback! We
will show you a picture of him when we get back. Then, we wanted to find a
memorial that was mentioned in our book, so Hillary talked to a security
guard who took pity on us and gave the directions in very slow and
uncomplicated French. We thanked him and went on. On the way to the
memorial we passed through the lovely formal Jardins du St. Joan, from
which we photographed the Cathedral's back side. The gardens contained a
lot of wonderful red and pink flowers, shaped hedges, and a statue of St.
Joan. Behind this garden, and across the street, was the small park
containing the memorial we were looking for. That was the Deportation
Memorial. Right on a bridge over the Seine, there is this little green park
area, with benches and some flowers, and a plain granite wall, about waist
high, with red writing on it which says:

1940 - For the 200,000 Dead in the Camps - something we can't remember - 1945

It was in french of course, but it was easy for Hillary to translate. When
the photo comes out, perhaps we can read the rest of the inscription. In
any case, it is a memorial to the 200,000 French Jews who were deported
from this region during WWII to die in concentration camps. 

Before leaving Ile de la Cite, we walked over the river to check out the
Hotel de Ville. This is an architecturally amazing building, with over 150
statues of famous Frenchmen on it. The square in front of it was a site of
executions in the Middle Ages. Right now, it has some benches, some cool
triangular fountains, and a big weird thing made of flowers (which we
photographed) put there by the school for Florists of Ile de la Cite. The
hotel itself was once the seat of the revolutionary government of
Robespierre and Marat, and was also the site where the Resistance leaders
brought Charles de Gaulle for a welcome home party after the liberation of
Paris, in 1944. Right now, it's the office of the Mayor of Paris. 

After checking out the Hotel, we went to a nearby cafe for a quick lunch. A
funny thing happened there - we sat in the outdoor section, but then the
rain we'd been promised by the CNN weather guy started slowly to come down,
in a drizzle. The waitress came running out shouting "Pleut, pleut!" which
Hillary knew meant "rain! rain!" but which still sounded really funny, so
we moved into a table which was "inside" but only just, in an area where
there was no wall separating us from the outside. It was great. By the time
we were done, it wasn't really raining anymore! Phew!

We headed out via the metro to Varenne. Here we visited the Musee Rodin.
This museum is full of stunning sculptures in marble and bronze (the marble
ones are cooler - it looks as if the people or animals or hands are
reaching or climbing out of the marble from which they are carved), as well
as paintings from Rodin's personal collection, by Van Gogh (two really cool
ones by him!), Monet, Renoir, and other lesser known artists. The museum is
surrounded by formal french gardens. Tons of roses, flowering and green
hedges, fountains, and many of Rodin's best known sculptures within the
beautiful outdoor garden setting. It was really really something.

After that, we were tired, so we wanted to go back to the hotel, but first
we stopped back at the Champs Elysees to visit the Office de Tourisme,
where we booked a bus tour for Thursday (our last real day here) and picked
up some info about transportation to the airport. Then we came back to the
hotel.

Upon our arrival back here, we asked about the water, but unfortunately it
still isn't fixed. The very nice girl at the reception desk said we could
use her shower at home, but unfortunately she's still working and we're
going out later, so that wouldn't work too well. We're managing nicely by
sponging ourselves off in the sink :) but we will talk to the manager
tomorrow if it isn't taken care of by then. 

We obtained a list of restaurants that are supposed to be good before we
came to Paris, and we wanted to make a reservation at one. Hillary called
up (Michael dialed for her - the phone system here is beyond Hillary) and
asked them if they spoke English, but "seulement un petit peu, madame." So,
she communicated in French, that we wanted a table for two people this
evening at 8:30, and not only did the woman understand her, but she
congratulated her on her french! This may be the high point of Hillary's
trip :) - well, ok, maybe not, but still, it was a confidence booster.

That's all for now.
---

Hi again. When we got to the restaurant and Hillary told them we had a
reservation under the name Israeli, they found us on the list and seated us
immediately, so apparently they did understand the first grade french after
all! Woo!

We went to a restaurant called Phillippe Detourbe, on the recommendation of
some random Belgian guy named Jack, on the Internet. It was in fact quite
good, and we're really glad we went. They had a fixed menu degustation for
220 FF; after explaining it to us they asked if it sounded ok - Hillary
knew that Michael was too polite to say anything so she told them that he
didn't really like fish - so they replaced his fish courses with a green
salad and a squab dish (which he said he wasn't sure he would like but he
ended up liking it!)

All of the food was wonderful, especially (says Hillary) the dessert, which
was strawberries in a red wine sauce with vanilla-perfumed whipped cream
and coconut cake. Also of note: they had a wine guy who came to talk to us
about wine, and we asked him if France did or did not, in fact, produce any
sweet wines (because of that obnoxious waiter in Guadeloupe who said "all
French wines are dry!"). He told us that yes, France makes many sweet
wines, perhaps most notably the Sauternes, and that the waiter in
Guadeloupe didn't sound like a very good waiter at all. He said he would
pour us a glass of sweet wine with our dessert, which he did, and it was
very good! So, we should all go back to Guadeloupe, find that waiter, and
kick his ass.

Unfortunately, when we'd completed the repast, we found ourselves in a
quandary. We'd failed to arrange for a contingency plan in the case of more
rain. Yes, for the first time, we found ourselves caught in some really wet
rain, with no raincoats or umbrellas. So, we dashed between the awnings to
the metro, and made it back without getting *completely* soaked, but just
barely. 

When we got back, Hillary was feeling a bit grouchy due to the wetness and
chilliness and the fact that she had banged her knee on some pole on the
way back and had a bruise - bottom line, she *really* wanted a hot shower!
She asked the night guy (whose English is not that great) if the l'eau
chaude was fixed yet, and if not, when? He said that it would be fixed in
time for us to have a shower tomorrow morning - but he also said that no,
no one is working on it tonight, not til tomorrow - so we are not holding
out many hopes for a shower tomorrow AM. But, the guy was nice and all, so
we can't really be annoyed with him. 

Tomorrow is Louvre day! We also hope to have time to stop by the Pasteur
Institute - we were near there tonight when we went out to dinner, but due
to the rain, we were unable to stop by and check it out. Beyond that, maybe
we'll do some shopping or something - who knows. We'll let you know!

Love,

Michael & Hillary



From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:37:00 1998
Date: Wed, 01 Jul 1998 17:30:41 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: July 1: we're clean!!

You will be pleased to hear, we're sure, that we have FINALLY gotten to
take showers! But let's do this in order, shall we?

Today, Hillary got up early because the hotel staff had promised her a
meeting with the manager at 8 am. So, she waited from 8 til almost 9 am,
but he didn't show up - they said he was "stuck in traffic" even though
some other people who were coming to check in had just remarked on how
little traffic there was in Paris today! But please realize - on the whole,
the hotel staff were very kind, and very sympathetic, and very agreeable -
but they had no power to do anything, and kept referring us to the manager,
who was never around! Since it seemed like another managerial no-show,
Hillary woke Michael up, and we had breakfast, and just before 10 AM, as we
were preparing to leave, in walked Monsieur Le Manageur :)

This is actually a good story, because we'd been kind of worried about
having to leave Paris without meeting a stereotypical French Asshole, and
now we do not have to worry about that anymore!! The manager started to
tell Hillary that there was no way the water could be fixed today, that he
was sorry but this is the way things are, that surely she could understand
how it is when a water heater gets old, etc etc - and Hillary said (very
politely!!!) "Yes, of course I understand. But, this is my third day
without a shower, and regardless of the problem with the water here, I
think you need to arrange for us to have shower facilities." His response
to this was to take her over to the area where some dude was working on the
pipes and start in again about how this work takes time, and they cannot
turn off the water to fix it during certain hours, and blah blah blah in
incomprehensible franglais. Hillary again told him "yes, I understand, and
I'm sorry, but the thing is, we must have showers today, so please tell me
what you can do for us!" So the guy said, "ok, we can move you to another
of our hotels. It is very close. I will arrange it for you, and when you
come back from your sightseeing this afternoon, it will be all set. Ok?" 

Now, you may be thinking "that doesn't sound too much like an asshole to
me." But, there's more - to come later, in its place. After all that, we
set out for a journey via the Metro to Le Louvre. Now, it's simply not
possible to describe this place, so we will not try. It is of course a very
large, very beautiful building, with the oddly placed glass pyramids by
I.M. Pei smack dab in the middle of the courtyard. We entered with
absolutely no wait - in fact, no one even checked our tickets - and started
to explore. To make a very long story short, our favorite parts were some
of the really beautiful ancient Greek statues (but NOT the Aphrodite/Venus
de Milo, with which Michael was particularly unimpressed, saying "but these
others over here are prettier, AND they have arms!"), some of the "Large
format French Paintings" in the Denon gallery, the absolutely unbelievable
reproductions of Napoleon's apartments, the *really* exquisite Apollo
gallery (a richly decorated, extremely large hallway housing a number of
precious objets d'art including collections of crystal, jewelled jaspar
cups and so forth, and the crown jewels - and you can't forget to look up!
there are frescoes on the ceiling that are great!), and the Medici Gallery
(another very big room, this one filled with huge canvases done by our old
friend, Peter Paul Rubens). Hillary also liked the room just past the
Medici Gallery, which contained two large canvasses full of many different
animals :)

While in the Louvre we also stopped at the Cafe Richelieu, for un Coca Cola
et un Coca Cola Light. We sat out on the patio, with a wonderful view into
the pyramid-containing courtyard. Michael noticed that the pigeons of the
region have an unfair advantage over the erstwhile tourist - the pigeons
are allowed to fly right onto the many statues which adorn this huge
palace, whereas the tourists are always kept at arm's length! What's up
with that, anyway???

So we left the Louvre, refreshed by our sodas and with high hopes for the
rest of the day. We had had our eye on a particular item in a shop we'd
passed the other day, so we thought we would go look to see if it was still
there. Also, we wanted to buy a duffel bag because if we were going to
change hotels, we would need a spare bag - we've collected a lot of stuff!! 

We took the Metro to the Opera stop - this gave us a chance to get another
look at the beautiful National Academy of Music, which we'd only seen in
the dark before. It really is a great building, and it is really too bad
that the French do not have the Scandinavian tendency to keep their
beautiful old buildings CLEAN! The french buildings are all covered with
grime and soot (kind of like us, after three days with no shower, but we
digress...). In any case, it took us a minute to organize ourselves and
while we were figuring out where we were, we spotted a restaurant someone
had recommended to us - the Cafe de la Paix/La Brasserie. We went in there
and had an excellent lunch. Hillary had a heck of a time translating the
menu, because the words for various fancy french food items are not part of
high school french classes NOR for some reason were many of them in her
phrasebook - but, we figured it out, and we got some excellent food. We're
going to miss the French goat cheese, that's for sure. 

Since our waitress seemed to speak rudimentary English, we tried to ask her
if she knew where we could get a duffel bag - but it seems that there is no
translation for "duffel bag" - and when we tried to ask her in English if
she knew where we could get one, she said "je suis desolee, mais je ne
comprends pas!" So (and those of you who do speak french should get a kick
out of this!) Hillary said, "D'accord. J'ai un valise, mais nous voudrions
un autre valise, mais n'est pas cher." and the waitress immediately gave us
directions to a shop which sold cheap suitcases, down in the metro station
:). Unfortunately, we didn't want a cheap suitcase. We wanted a duffel bag!
So the search continued.

We wandered through the district somewhat aimlessly, noticing a lot of
charming hotels, residences, brasseries, and patisseries (but despite
Mila's recommendation, we're trying not to enter every patisserie in sight
- we don't want to go over the passenger weight allowance on our flight
home!). Finally we found the shop we'd seen before, and we went in to make
our purchase. The proprietress spoke English, and she confirmed for us that
no one in France would understand what a "duffel bag" was, and seemed very
pessimistic about our being able to find one. Nonetheless, we continued on.
We finally ended up in some cheesy tourist shop on Rue de Rivoli, where we
got a small square pseudo duffel bag, it's black canvas with the word
"PARIS" emblazoned in gold embroidery on the side :)

Then we went back to the Residence Concorde, packed up, said goodbye to the
very nice woman at the desk, and went where she'd told us to go - next
door, to the four star Hotel Cambon. BUT - when we told the concierge who
we were and why we were there, she had no idea what we were talking about!
She called the Residence Concorde, and the woman at the desk there told her
what the manager had said, which was that we were to move to the Hotel
Cambon. Obviously, someone screwed up. So, the Residence Concorde woman
called in to her manager - but got his answering machine again (this had
been the problem before, when we'd wanted to talk to him about the shower
problem on the second day). Then she tried calling her "reservation office"
whatever that is - and they told her we were booked into a different hotel
- the Hotel Daunou Opera, a few blocks away - normally a 10 minute walk. 

Well, this wouldn't be a huge tragedy or anything, but we had a lot of
luggage, it was hot, and we were tired and frustrated. So Hillary went back
over to the Residence Concorde (right next door) to see if they would pay
for a taxi for us. The woman there was so nice! She was cursing her
manager, calling him irresponsible, etc. She tried calling him again to no
avail, and eventually she gave us some money out of the drawer without
authorization because she figured we deserved it. So we got a cab (which
ended up costing more than she'd given us because he ripped us off, but
that's another story) and got to the other hotel. 

Here, we have a nice room very similar to the other room, but arranged a
bit differently and with no air conditioning. Hillary inquired about the
air conditioning, because we had had air conditioning at the other hotel -
and they put her on the phone with the manager (she didn't ask them to,
they just did it) who (now really showing his true colors) insisted that we
had not had air conditioning in the other hotel! Hillary said "Ok, fine,
nevermind, thanks for your time" because she figured there was no point
getting into a "yes we did, no you didn't" thing with him - but he kept
saying "there is no air conditioning there!" and finally she said "I am
hanging up now, thank you very much" and hung up. What a creepo he is! If
they had moved us the first day, it probably would have been better, but we
are happy now that it's all arranged and we are well-scrubbed and clean :)
(also we called the airport shuttle service to give them our new address!)
The very nice woman from the Residence Concorde even called us a few
minutes ago to make sure we were all settled in well, and that everything
was ok, which it is.

Not being the type of people to let a little setback like this get us down,
we're preparing for an evening out on the town. We're not sure what we'll
do, but hopefully it will be good and we'll let you know about it in our
next missive :). Also, tomorrow will be a bus tour of Paris, and a cruise
on the Seine. Woo Hoo!

Love,

Michael and Hillary

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:37:00 1998
Date: Thu, 02 Jul 1998 17:28:20 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: July 1 & 2nd: the end is near

Greetings, travel fans!

When we last met, our heroes had showered and scrubbed and were preparing
for a night on the town. We're sure you're all panting with desire to know
what happened, so here's the  lowdown:

First, we headed out via the metro to the Pasteur stop, so that Hillary
could see the acclaimed Pasteur institute. The Institute is made up of a
number of buildings, but two of them, which sit directly across the street
from each other, are the original buildings - brick with white columns, and
with inscriptions reading "Institut Pasteur" over the doorway. We
photographed them, so we could prove we were there :)
In case any of you are wondering, the Institut Pasteur is the research
institute where Team France, in a nose to nose photo finish with Team USA,
initially isolated the virus which causes AIDS, which they called HTLV at
the time. In front of the main building is a bust of Louis Pasteur himself,
who saved the world from TB by bringing us pasteurization for milk, and
more recently (although he probably doesn't know it) from salmonella with
the advent of pastuerized eggs.

As we were standing there, considering trying to sneak onto the campus of
the Institute past the sleepy looking security guard, it started drizzling,
so we hightailed it back to the metro for the next leg of our night out.

We went back to the area near our (new) hotel - the Madeleine station,
which happens to be the station we went to the first time we rode the
metro, but that was a mistake, b/c we should have gone to the Concorde
station that time. Anyway, we went there and walked up the Avenue until we
got to a small street called Rue Caumartin. Then, we took a left (jason -
we hope this is detailed enough for you! :)). When we got to #21 (which, by
the way, was difficult to discern at first - the numbering system here is
weird, not in order, and often even more hard to figure out due to the
omnipresent construction work/scaffolding) we went into Les Bacchantes, a
wine bar of which we'd heard good things. 

The friendly gentleman who seated us didn't speak english (except for the
phrase "excuse me") but nonetheless, we managed to order and have a
pleasant time. We had five different wines, all good, and all $5 or less.
First, Hillary had a glass of a muscadet, while Michael had a white
Bordeaux; then Michael had a different muscadet while Hillary had a rose';
then we shared a really good glass of pinot noir. Along with the wine, we
had a plate of assorted cheeses, which was served with a basket of this
really yummy, fresh, thinly sliced, brown bread, which is ubiquitous here.
All of this cost us about $25, by the way! We have decided that we like
muscadet, which is a white wine produced in the Loire valley. The muscadets
we have had have all been bursting with flavor. If only Michael would stop
calling them "Moose Cadets," everything would be fine.

While we were enjoying ourselves there, Michael found that he particularly
liked one of the cheeses on the plate, but we couldn't figure out what kind
it was, so Hillary asked the server what it was called. He told us what it
was (though we've now forgotten) and then the gentleman at the next table
leaned over excitedly to tell us (in French) that yes, this was in fact a
very good cheese, very famous, and very french, and that the name of it was
the name of the region from which it came, which was in the center of
France. We think it starts with a C. Anyone know?

Our original plan had called for going to the above wine bar, and figuring
out where to have dinner while enjoying our wine. However, the bread and
cheese was so filling and yummy that we didn't think dinner would be
possible! So, we figured "don't mess with a good thing" and we headed off
to another wine bar :)

This required walking a bit, which was good, because our stomachs were
heavy. We headed back in the direction of that shop we stopped at earlier
today, but further down that street, and eventually we got into a nifty
little area with many nice looking restaurants, a fruit/grocery shop, etc.
At one point, we passed one of those "On this site in year X" historical
signs that you see all over the place. It marked something called "Passage
de ---" (we forget what it was, exactly), that appeared to be some kind of
alleyway which had been covered over at some point, and which was lined
with various shops. Hillary wanted to stop and spend a couple of minutes
figuring out what the sign said, since it was obviously something
important, but Michael said "Oh, come on - it's just another old French
hallway" and Hillary was laughing so hard at that that she allowed herself
to be dragged on until we had gone so far past it, it wasn't worth it to go
back. In this area was located Willie's Wine Bar - a wine bar/bistro owned
by a British expat. After a quick consultation with our map and guidebook,
we found it.

We went in and sat at the bar and ordered dessert and a glass of sweet
muscat. While perusing the wine list we noticed that one of the top 10 most
expensive wines on there was a Beringer Chardonnay, from California! Go
figure. Anyway, we had quite possibly THE WORLD'S BEST creme brulee at this
place, along with a puff pastry shell covered with caramelized apricots in
vanilla sauce, which was also very good. One thing we've noticed - the
apricots around here are huge compared to the ones at home. The fruit
markets have apricots almost the size of avocados! Plus, the flavor of the
apricots (we bought a fresh one at a fruit market the other day) is MUCH
more intense than the flavor of the apricots at home. We never knew
apricots could be so 
apricot-y! 

This reminds us - we have walked through a few areas where there have been
markets with fruit for sale. The fragrance of the fresh berries, peaches,
apricots, melons, etc is overwhelming as you walk by. Either the fruit here
produces more odorant molecules, or american fruit is chemically treated to
prevent their release, or something. Hillary wanted to stand in one of the
fruit stores and just inhale the aroma for a while, but Michael thought we
should continue on because he was hungry :)

OH! That reminds us - don't ask us why - we forgot to tell you something
about Amsterdam (maybe we're reminded because both Amsterdam and apricot
start with an A?)

Amsterdam is *seriously* lacking in ATMs. There are very long lines at all
the available ATMs, and it is a very long walk between ATMs. It sucks.

Anyway, back to Paris. We ate our dessert, chatted up the guy next to us at
the bar who spoke to us in English after he heard us speaking English, and
chatted up the bartender, who was a British woman who was pissed off about
England's failure to advance in the World Cup. Then we took off.

On the way back to the hotel (which is where we headed next, because we
must get up very early for tomorrow's bus tour) Michael expounded on the
silliness of the French language. He finds it very upsetting that they do
not pronounce the last letter of each word. In his words, "if they aren't
going to pronounce it, why do they put it there?" Hillary has tried to
explain that they put the last letter there to ensure that the letter
before it is in fact pronounced; also that if they kept taking off letters
that aren't pronounced, while still following the rule about not
pronouncing the last letter, soon you would have no letters at all; but
Michael isn't buying it. He greatly prefers Spanish, where (almost)
everything is pronounced, and you can brush up on your vocab by watching
Sesame Street. :)

That's all for now, gotta sleep!
----

We woke up this morning, had breakfast at our new hotel (which has better
orange juice, but worse coffee), and headed over to Rue de Rivoli which is
where the tour buses leave from.  After waiting for a bit, we boarded the
tour bus and began the tour.

This was one of those tours where they give you a headset so you can hear
the information in your language of choice. Our first information area was
the Place de Concorde, which as you know we'd visited several times
already. However, we learned some new things here this time! The Egyptian
obelisk standing in the center is 3300 years old and is inscribed with
really interesting heiroglyphics. It is the oldest monument in Paris and
used to be part of some Temple we couldn't catch the name of because the
tape we were listening to had a lame-ass music soundtrack in the background
that suddenly got really loud :). Also in this place, there are statues
signifying various cities in France, surrounding the traffic circle. 

Then we drove down the Avenue Champs Elysees, which we prefer to call
Benjamin Franklin Parkway because of the flags with which it is lined.
Today some workers were setting up bleachers along the sidewalks, so from
the bus it wasn't really possible to see into the gardens we'd walked
through before. We did, however, get an excellent view from the center of
the Rond Point, which is the intersection with all the cool flowerbeds and
fountains we mentioned before, where the Avenue de Franklin Roosevelt
crosses the Ave Champs Elysees. 

While driving down the A.C.E, we heard some commentary regarding the
numerous shops and cafes and such lining the commercial part of it, west of
the Rond Point. The tape mentioned a cafe with red awnings called Fouquet's
- which is apparently a place where many movie stars and famous people tend
to hang out. When we looked out the window to see it, we realized that it
was the same place we'd stopped the other day to have a couple of $12.00
beers. No wonder! We also have been informed that Art Buchwald, writing for
the international Herald Tribune 20 years ago, wrote "so, shall we have the
asparagus, or shall we send Heimy to college?" about a meal at Fouquet's.

As we approached the Arc de Triomphe, we were informed that at one point,
city plans called for a gigantic elephant with water spouting from its
trunk instead of the more refined arch which currently stands there. The
model for the elephant was even built, and is housed in one of the many
museums around here. It kind of gave us pause, to imagine this giant
elephant standing there...

We continued onward, south, down Avenue Kleber. This is a very chichi,
exclusive area, where many countries have their embassies. We noticed a
pizza place called "Speed Rabbit" which guaranteed to deliver your Pizza
Americaine to your door in under treinte minutes. :) This avenue terminates
at the Place Trocadero, a green area with a statue in the middle of it
("some guy on a horse"), located behind the Palais de Chaillot - which is
the building we remarked upon the other day, which we saw across the river,
from the Eiffel tower. It contains the museum of cinema, and the naval
history museum. The Palais de Chaillot is really cool up close - it has a
lot of gold statues lining its courtyard.

We then went along Avenue de President Wilson, past the modern art museum,
through Place de l'Alma, to the Baton-Mouche at the base of the Pont de
l'Alma. This is where we got of the bus and boarded the boat for the cruise
on the Seine.

The boat ride was fun, although it was very overcast and a bit chilly, we
still sat on the upper deck to get the best view of everything. We cruised
all the way down past St. Louis en l'Ile, the smaller island just past the
Ile de la Cite. From our boat-top vantage point, we were able to get some
good photos of Notre Dame, the Musee D'Orsay (which used to be a train
station), and some of the 17th century buildings which are now exclusive
homes on St. Louis en l'Ile. 

After the boat thing, we got back on the bus and drove over to the Eiffel
tower, where we were given passes to cut in line and head immediately up to
the first platform. The views from up there were really awesome, so we took
some more photos from up there. Also, while up there, Hillary convinced
Michael that crepes are not crap, and got him to try one. He reluctantly
admitted he liked it :)

We went back down after we finished checking everything out, and we crossed
the river on the Pont d'Iena, which was teeming with junk vendors trying to
sell us useless pieces of junk for 5 FF each. Just across the bridge was
the Palais de Chaillot - but set up in front of it was a HUGE "parc du
Football" sponsored by Adidas and France Telecom. There were a number of
information booths and boutiques set up in tents along either side of the
grand fountain there. We didn't go in there, but walked around the side,
where there was a pretty green area with some nice flower beds, where
Hillary stopped to sit down for a minute because we were going up a very
steep hill :)

When we got to Trocadero Place on the other side, we hopped into the metro
and headed to station Richelieu - Druout. This station was mere seconds
from the Hard Rock Cafe, where we stopped for a couple of juicy american
style cheeseburgers, and Michael made a cameo appearance on the closed
circuit TV (they showed him heading into a room under a sign reading
"TOILETTES")

>From there, we walked hither and yon, looking at buildings and shops and
chatting about nothing in particular. Michael remarked that it would be
really bad if he were to get lost on his own in France, because the only
French phrases he knows are "s'il vous plait," "ou sont les toilettes," and
"voulez-vous couchez avec moi ce soir?" We went on past the Bourse, which
was covered with pigeons, and to the Place du Victoires. From there, we
took the wrong road entirely, and at just about the time we realized our
mistake, it slowly began to drizzle. We figured out where we were going and
got there, and when we came out of the shop it really began to steadily,
but lightly, rain. So we headed quickly back to the hotel, for a nap, and
to download today's information out of our brains and into the computer
before it is lost forever.

Other confusing things about France: if you aren't allowed to stop using
"vous" and start using "tu" until the other person tutoies you, how does
anyone ever get to use the tu form? And, why do people think that it is ok
to park their cars on the sidewalk? Also, how come people allow their dogs
to leave little piles of stuff everywhere in sight??? We're told that the
dogs in Paris produce *11 tons* of excrement daily - and we are not
surprised to hear it. But we think someone should have the job of cleaning
it up!!!

Since we leave tomorrow from the hotel at 5 am (bleah), we will require an
early night tonight. This will probably (but not definitely) be our final
email - we'll be home tomorrow!

love,

h. & m.

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:37:00 1998
Date: Thu, 02 Jul 1998 22:20:52 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: July 2, 10 PM: Thanks for the mammaries

As we were hanging out in our hotel room this afternoon after we last wrote
to you, and doing some pre-packing packing, the weather here in Gay Paree
changed from overcast and somewhat chilly to sunny and warm. The streets
beckoned. We resisted. They beckoned some more. We turned our backs to
them. Then it started getting warm in here so we gave in and headed out for
one last roam around the city.

It's a good thing, too, because we hit on some great things! We started out
for our final stroll carrying only one small map and a phrasebook for
emergencies. This alone was something new for us - usually, we carry around
all relevant travel materials such as guidebook pages, menu translators,
big maps, little maps, etc, in what we like to call "the Bag of Knowledge,"
also known as Hillary's black pocketbook that her mom gave her last month.
This time, we were "on our own" as it were. It gave things a whole new
feeling.

We chose a random direction and started walking. We passed some
architecturally interesting buildings, some cute little shops, and some
stuffy little poodles - hey, by the way, for some reason the French are
really into SMALL dogs. Mini poodles, lhasa apsos, you name it, if it is a
small dog, they have it. Anyway, eventually we found ourselves in a square
(actually, a circle) with two pretty fountains and La Comedie Francaise
building. We took a photo of one of the fountains because it looked nice,
and of La Comedie Francaise because Hillary had to read so much Moliere and
French theatrical history in college that she felt it was only fair. 

Then as we walked past this area, we found ourselves at the northeast side
of the Louvre. We stopped here for a minute to take in the nice view from
across the street, then we crossed over to the Louvre side of the street to
photograph the cool art deco sign marking the Louvre metro stop there. We
also turned back to get a good look at the building across the street from
the Louvre - obviously some kind of government building, with army type
guards and a big French flag, and lots of columns and stuff.

We headed into the courtyard of the Louvre, and walked around the pyramid
fountain, checking it out from various angles. The fountains were lit up
and it looked very beautiful. We also got to appreciate more of the
architectural detail of the building from this perspective. The columns
have all these intricate carvings on them, it's really amazing. 

We then headed out of the courtyard to the east, toward the Jardins
Tulieres. Marking the boundary of the Jardin is a large arch, sort of a
mini Arc de Triomphe, although still very large, with statues of horsemen
on the top, and pink columns on either side. It's very pretty and we
photographed it, and then we got up close to read the inscription, which
Hillary thinks said something like "the army went on a campaign on the
continent, and kicked ass in some city called [we forget the name] in a
remarkably short time, and we built this to commemorate the victory."

Then we walked down to the waterfront, via the Jardins Tuileres - we got to
see the whole west section of the Jardin which we had skipped earlier -
this was a very nice area, with sculpted hedges and marble statues of women
and animals; plus another section planted with rows of wildflowers and more
statues and stuff.

After checking out the view of the river and noticing the sun starting to
set, we walked back toward Rue de Rivoli, also stopping to take a final
look at the Place de Concorde, which looked great in the setting sunlight.
We walked out to Rue de Rivoli via the amusement park section of the
Jardin, where we were in fact amused by a giant inflatable chicken and a
huge gorilla. This amusement area, when viewed from back by the bank of the
Seine, actually looked really cool, since all the rides had colored lights
on them and stuff. Up close, it was just another tacky little amusement
park, with kids running around screaming (including one American 12 year
old who turned to his group of American 12 year old friends and grabbed his
pelvic area and shouted "suck this!" Yes, we are proud of our American
heritage...)

Feeling kind of tired, but suspecting it would be wise to eat something
since we get up at 4, leave here at 5, and who knows what will happen once
we get on the plane, we decided to look for somewhere to eat. We headed in
the general direction of the hotel and what do you know - there is a really
nifty looking Vietnamese place right across the street from here! We went
in there and ordered some chicken soup and Vietnamese spring rolls, Coca
Cola, and Vittel. It was excellent. While we were there, there was another
couple sitting and having dinner in the corner of the room. At one point,
the girl leaned over and the guy first stuck his hand down her shirt, then
practically stuck his whole face in there. They left shortly after that.
(Hence our subject line :)) We left shortly after they did, and now, we're
back in the room, surveying the damage, and planning the packing.

So, thanks for listening to our travel tales. We hope you have enjoyed
them. This is definitely the final installment, so for those of you who
have been simply deleting these unread, STOP DOING THAT, any further mail
from izzy@izzy.com is REAL mail, not travel BS. 

Oh. Hey. Wait. If you were deleting them unread, then you are not reading
this, are you? Oh well. We know where to find you, ALL of you, and if we
want to talk to you, dammit, we will.

See you on the flip side,

Hillary and Michael