There are probably several posts in here about London, since we come here often. Like this one:

A few things about London

But I love this city and am happy to ramble away once again about why I personally like visiting here.

There was nothing at the site of London before the Romans came.  They chose the site because it was far enough up the river to be warned about any raid from Germanic pirates, but navigable to the sea.  And here they could bridge the river. Two hills to the north gave some protection and the Fleet River which ran perpendicular into the Thames to the west provided additional protection.

The Romans began to export the rough commodities available like timber, hides, etc. And wool. Eventually British wool garments came to be considered the finest available in the Empire.

But the real prize they came after was Tin.  There was a fair amount of Iron around Europe by then, but the economy of the Roman empire stood on Bronze. And to make Bronze you add Tin to Copper.  But there is/was surprisingly little Tin around the Mediterranean.  The Etruscans had depleted their mines even before the Roman era.

The British island has a wealth of metals, including lots of Tin, which became a major export.  

In London today, history from the Roman times exists here side by side with the modern.

Downtown, in more or less the area of the original Roman square mile around 400,000 people work in the leading financial center of the world. 

There are more American banks than in New York and more Japanese banks than in Tokyo.  Don’t try the underground when they all evacuate at 6PM.

London has endless attractions for visitors.   Royalty and historical places, theater, great museums of every kind plus ever new special exhibitions,.

and all the shopping and restaurants possible.

We like to stay between Grosvenor square and Hyde Park. 

It is an easy walk through the park down to the Science Museum .. see the only existing unmodified Newcomen engine, a Babbage difference machine, and on and on.

And to the Natural History Museum..

and the incomparable Victoria and Albert Museum. 

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We like to walk along Oxford street and over to the British Museum.  There is only one word for this museum: unbelievable.  Certainly the best museum in the world.  Here are some notes I took a few years ago.

The British Museum

This time I only took one picture.  News articles.  One tells about the death of Alexander the great in 323BC.  Another the passage of Hailey’s comet in 164BC.

And I have not mentioned the art museums.

We like the London theater and always see a few plays when we visit. 

And when it rains there are plenty of historic buildings to pop into .. such as visiting St. Paul’s Cathedral.

This is an easy city for a visitor to get around. Walking, underground, taxis.

It is almost 50 years since I lived here and I still love it.  If you are thinking of visiting and want to talk about plans, give me a note here or email.

Starting the winter travel season in Northern Europe ..

in the company of CAMarchand.

First stop: Amsterdam.

Probably the most wealthy city in the world during the Golden age of the Dutch, in the 1600’s.  Capitalism was rooted here with the invention of joint shares and the world’s first stock exchange.

Today the old city center with its canals is a World Heritage site, more or less still as the city was in the mid 1800’s.  And it is visited by millions of tourists each year. 

Mainly the canals are lined with thousands of old trading houses since the Amsterdam Dutch traded in almost any commodity saleable, from the new world to Japan.

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Tulips, forever popular and once a mania are still for sale.

There are still some older buildings but mainly churches and the remnants of fortifications. There are no palaces or royal buildings since the Netherlands has been a republic since the end of the Orange wars.

Today commerce in the city seems to be dominated by steak houses, cheese shops, and pastry shops.

And Cannabis. The coffee shops and head shops cater to the users who puff away everywhere.

In the morning the city smells like sugar and cannabis. In the afternoon like grilling hamburgers and cannabis.

The museums are not up to London standards, but excellent.  The renovation of the old Rijks Museum is complete and it has reopened and is gorgeous.  We were lucky to be here for a special exhibition contrasting Spanish and Dutch artists of the Rembrandt era.

We are off to London next week and will keep in touch. Thanks for coming along.

Mystras is virtually a “modern” site by Greek standards.  Established by the Franks around 1250 and later the Byzantine (Constantinople) capital of the Peloponnese.

Some photos:

Messsene. The city state of Thebes founded around 400BC. These are the ruins of a very large city. 

The Theater.

The city council chambers.

The gymnasium.

Olympia.  A major world heritage site.  Inhabited for ~6000 years with a city here for at least 4000 years.  The ruins cover a large area.

This is, of course the site of the ancient Olympic games. The stadium is still here, set up for 45,000 spectators.

Olympia was also the site of the Temple of Zeus.  The 40+ foot statue of Zeus in the temple was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.  The statue stood in the temple for over 800 years. It was removed to Constantinople and lost in the great fire around 500AD. 

There is an excellent museum at the site.

For centuries offerings great and small were brought here to Zeus.  One special custom was that after a successful military campaign the generals brought artifacts from both the victors and the vanquished.  Here both from roughly 500BC, helmets from the destruction of the Etruscans. 

And the defeat of the Persians at Marathon.

Delphi

This was believed to be the geographic center of the world in ancient times.  For maybe 2000 years the oracle spoke to men as the voice of Apollo answering questions and delivering prophecies.  Emperors and kings, governors and princes and common persons travelled here to deliver offerings and receive the advice of the oracle.

Both the current town and the ancient town site are very compact and very vertical.

Once one of the richest sites in the ancient world with majestic statues, buildings holding the valuable offerings of city states and nations ..

… today a ruin. 

The riches have been plundered by many groups and even the little museum sadly holds mainly fragments.

A few photos from a little road trip down the coast from Kalamata.

And of course some food photos.  The little braised leg of lamb in one of these photos was about 9 inches long and could be cut with a fork.

And so, that’s it for Greece this year. 

Thanks for coming along. 

We are heading back to Bemidji by way of a few days in London.

The Peloponnesian peninsula contains some of the most important historical sites from Greek history and therefore the history of the cradle of western civilization. These are a few simple notes and pictures just to give you an idea of the incredible richness of the history of this area.

Corinth.
Once a very large Greek city state. But today not a lot of Greek construction left. A few standing columns from the old Greek Temple.

The fountains and water system.

But most of what remains are the ruins of what the Romans rebuilt after they sacked the city in about 150BC.

There is an ancient fortress on the high hill overlooking the site that is said to be very interesting.  I did not make it up there.

Epidauros
The most famous healing center in the ancient world. Mostly ruins today, the site mined for the cut stones.

But there is a 14,000 seat theater in its original form dating from around 450BC. As a fellow scrivener: Pausanias of Lydia said in about 150AD, “particularly worth a visit”.

Special theatrical events are still held in the theater and it is said that the acoustics are such that you can hear the actors from any seat in the theater.

I liked the little Gymnasium area.

 

Mycenea
The ruling palace of the Myceneans.

It is hard to believe that from this remote inland location they ruled the north eastern Mediterranean between 1500BC and 1100BC.

There is a nice museum at this site.

The Myceneans had great bronze technology, and were notable for having more gold than anyone else in the western world.

Many of their remaining artifacts are in the National Archeological Museum in Athens.

Nafplion
This is a very nice small (tourist) town and a good place to stay and day trip to the many nearby historic sites.

The site was occupied from antiquity. And it is possible that a group from Egypt settled here. It was occupied by various pre-greek tribes. But the wonderful fortifications come from almost modern times in comparison as the Byzantines, Ottomans and Venetians held and lost and held the strategic town over centuries.

There is a great walking trail around the old town and for a few miles out along the coast.

And, a Nafplion treat:

This is the third winter I have visited Athens and have two earlier posts about the city on this site.

This year I convinced CAMarchand to come over to Greece and join me for a short time. We have been staying in Athens, and will start a little road trip around the Peloponnese peninsula tomorrow.

The Acropolis
The number one Athens must see site.
We have been living in the old town and from almost anyplace you can look up at the Acropolis.

The Acropolis is the site, the high jutting rock.

One of the buildings on the Acropolis is the Parthenon, the large Doric temple built around 500BC as a celebration of their victory over an invasion by the Persians.

The Ottomans occupied Athens from the mid 1400’s. During an attack by the Venetians in 1687 the Ottomans fortified the Acropolis and stored their ammunition in the Parthenon. A direct artillery hit exploded the ammunitions and severely damaged the Parthenon.
There is a smaller Doric temple standing complete in the “Agora”, the ruins of the ancient Greek/Roman city below the Acropolis.  Here you can learn some things about the inner workings of these temples.

Around 1800 a British “Lord” (bribed the guards per the Greeks), removed the surviving sculptures and sold them to the British Museum. The Greeks have built a museum to house them upon their return, which they have been trying to accomplish since the mid 1980’s.
A few more pictures.

There are also plenty of ruins of mainly Greek, Roman, and Ottoman history just lying all around all over the old town.

For more history I would direct you to the fantastic National Archeological Museum here in Athens. Great permanent displays. Great temporary displays. Covering all of the northern Mediterranean civilizations from Neolithic until Roman times. Completely described in English.

I could have taken a million pictures in the museum, but like these two.

A good place to learn some history.

Some 3500 year old data storage devices.

Here are some tourist pictures of Athens “just walking around”.

One comment: Downtown Athens has the most shocking graffiti problem I have ever seen. Even worse than Prague. Areas NOT covered with grafitti are notable. This takes some getting used to.

And, of course, a few food pictures.

Corfu is on the west coast of the Ionian sea (the sea between Italy and Greece), about as far North and West as one can get and still be in Greece.

This is a very historic place and the largest of a number of islands in the area. I have spent the week in Corfu Town, a small historic town, now tourist destination.

This island was settled from the stone age. Corfu was a Greek city over 3300 years ago but of course almost everyone in the region and beyond has occupied the island from time to time, even the British. This was a Venetian city for centuries. Austrian and German royalty built palatial homes here. Prince Phillip was born here.

But Corfu was never occupied by the Ottomans. This was one of the most heavily fortified cities in Europe during the middle ages and these old Venetian fortresses successfully resisted four separate sieges by the Ottomans. The defense of Corfu is credited with halting the Ottoman advance into Europe.

This is tourist ground zero. 33 million tourists visited Greece last year. The old town of Corfu, a UNESCO world heritage site is one of the top destinations. Even now in late November the old town is full of them.
And why not, it is gorgeous. The city has a distinctive architecture of multistoried buildings with arched walkways. Narrow medieval streets with basalt and marble paving.

Some of the notable aspects of Corfu town being thoroughly geared up for tourists: The taxis are all immaculately clean Mercedes Benzes. The old town shops offer designer goods, jewelry and watches. 25 dollar cigars. And on the side streets there are endless little souvenir and trinket and handicraft shops.

The prices of everything in the old town are roughly twice those in Thessaloniki. There are rows of restaurants with handsome menus. In the old town and across from the cruise ship and ferry port. Many many upscale bars. The bars have American prices and are thick with cigarette smoke.

There is a very small but very nice archeological museum, especially interesting illuminating the important 600 to 300BC Greek period. Otherwise history seems to have taken the back seat to tourism. Following a map in the museum I track down a few notable ancient sites. Sadly, they are ruined, padlocked and neglected.

But they do bring me to this silly little picture, my favorite of the week.

Outside of the old town are the areas where real people live. Nice shopping streets selling the goods people need to live. Locals interested in talking with you beyond a potential commercial transaction. This is where your correspondent spends his time. The coffee is just as good and in real, lively cafes.

Simply asking in a nice butcher shop who grills lamb chops leads me to a delightful friendly little restaurant. The fellow selling fish in the market is happy to explain the types of fish he has displayed. He can easily send me to a nearby restaurant that grills his fish.

If I were out for a special evening or say for an evening off a cruise-ship I might want linen table cloths and sparkling glassware, but the food in the places I mentioned are literally half price from the old town restaurants a quarter mile away. And the portions are huge. I often request the doggie takeaway box.   A glass of wine in an old town bar is from 5.50 euros to 9 euros.  A half-liter jug of wine (hey, I read this on the menu) in my fish grill restaurant is 3.50 euros.

My apartment is very nice, but I spend too much time looking out at this little square in the rain.

There was a cold snap in the north of Europe this week, which played out here as wind and intermittent hard rain showers. My plans for renting a car for a day and exploring the island are washed out. Too bad because I read that there are a number of delightful villages on the island. And over 200 miles of marked hiking trails.

The showers are not continuous and so I make it out most days for walks with only a few soakings. And can scoot out between showers for a look around or umbrella out for some recreational eating.

Walking around Corfu city is difficult. The town is very small. There is a nice green 45 minute out and back south of town with views of the city.

The only long walks are to the northwest, following the highway out of the city. This takes you through some interesting suburbs, but the walking is tedious, directly beside traffic.

And so, that is my damp report on visiting Corfu. Thanks for coming along.

Tomorrow I shoot down to Athens.

I have been enjoying visits to Greece these past few winters and so came back this year to spend more time and look around a few cities. For the past week I have been living in Thessaloniki, on the northwest coast of the Aegean Sea.

There is an older post about visiting Thessaloniki here on this site and I invite you to visit it if you are interested.

The white tower. Symbol of the city.

This is Greece’s second largest city with around a million people, but the downtown is quite manageable. It is a pleasant downtown because of the proximity to the sea and I especially like the city having many open spaces, giving it a nice comfortable feel as you walk around.

My apartment was directly north from the white tower.

And it turned out to be very nice, in a real neighborhood near the university and so in a lively area with lots of young people enjoying the small cafes and bars in the area throughout the evening.

This coast was settled in far antiquity and this was a notable bronze age settlement from around 3000 BC. “Modern” Thessaloniki was founded by conquest by the Macedonians in 315BC and named after a half sister of Alexander the great. The Macedonian royal family tombs are in a nearby village.

Later this was a very important Roman town. And after that everyone around the Mediterranean and from the Balkans held it for a while. It is only around a hundred years since the Ottomans lost the city and so it still has a bit of an eastern flavor. Literally in some of the little dishes where the spices can surprise you.

Even after centuries of war, sackings, fires, etc. there are ruins from the ancient times all around the city.

The Archaeological  Museum here has an outstanding exhibit on the Macedonians from their earliest times through their peak from say 700BC until they were conquered by the Romans.  Two surprising things:  how advanced they were for their times and how much the Romans seemed to have adopted from them.

Another thing I really like about Thessaloniki is that you can walk directly out of the city center and out along the harbor  .. for as long as you want.

I found mid-November to be a little late for visiting here. All of the seaside resorts up the coast have closed for the season and I have not encountered many tourists in the city, which is good. But the weather is changing rapidly. It creeps up into the low 60’s during the day but it is “jacket required” chilly in the mornings and evening.
You can still eat outside because the restaurants put out those propane heaters under umbrellas.

You want to be outside because everyone smokes here, everywhere, and so the atmosphere inside those cozy restaurants and cafes can be unpleasant.

There are restaurants everywhere. Food is inexpensive. A great meal with wine for less than 25 dollars. If you can eat sandwiches and pizza and the like, you can eat for practically nothing.  But be warned, here are some photos of restaurants at 7PM. They will not be filling up before 9PM and will be open until after midnight. They eat so late here that I have started to have my one big meal of the day mid-afternoon.

If you get tired of walking along the sea you can climb up hill over the city. Some of the old city walls still stand.

But more interesting to me is the ruins of an old fortress. The stones tell of Greek, Roman, and Medieval construction.

Of course I cannot end this post without talking about food.

The food here is similar to Italian.  The coffee is the same.  Less pasta and pizza. More Giros and pita wraps.  More fried food. More salads.  Hardly any mozzarella but heaps of feta. Street food is everywhere and many many people buy and eat food directly on the street.

Even little markets downtown are beautifully stocked.

There are more than one central city open air markets. Always fascinating to me.

 

The Seafood is great.

 

And there are tempting baked goods everywhere, both savory and sweet.

And that is it for Thessaloniki this year. Thanks for coming along.

Tomorrow I go over to the west coast of Greece on the Ionian Sea to visit the island of Corfu.

Last year when I was in Sicily I rented a car and drove around to towns and some of the historic sites, and posted a number of blogs here.       I invite you to go back to them if you are interested.

This year I elected to just stay a week in Catania and experience life in the city under the gigantic volcano Mount Etna.

Except for a day and a half of rain the weather has been perfect, around 70 degrees every day with loads of sun. The little elephant, the symbol of the city.

And my apartment turned out to be OK and in a good location, right on the main pedestrian street in the town center.

As you recall the town had to be rebuilt after the great Sicilian volcano eruption and earthquake around 1700, and has miles of these Mediterranean Baroque buildings. The entire downtown is a world heritage site.

This is a big city of a million people spreading between the sea and the volcano. But the compact city center makes it feel small. This was a Greek town, then Roman. And then various others held it. Even the Normans (like in 1066) for a hundred years or so. There are a few significant ruins available for the interested to visit.

It has been a good week. This is Italy. The food and wine are great. The coffee fantastic. The tomatoes will make you cry for all that America has lost.

Italy has an attitude.  A joy of life.  A rollicking vitality that always makes it fun to visit. When asked about travelling in Europe I often say: “It is hard not to just keep going back to Italy”.

The markets are well stocked with wonderful things.

Restaurants are everywhere and eating out even in the tourist areas is not too expensive.  But much more costly than how one can eat well out of the shops and markets.

Tip1:  Stay away from the fish restaurants right in and around the historic fish market.  They have morphed into high priced experiences for bus  groups and excursion groups off of the cruise ships.

Tip2: Do all that you can to avoid getting a pool of rotisserie chicken juice in the bottom of your back pack.  They are very hard to clean out.

Catania still has a very large daily open air market.

And there are still many small shops that sell just one thing: produce, fish, meat, bread, hardware, plumbing, tailoring, cosmetics, etc.

If you have a sweet tooth, or two, this is the place for you. Sicily is famous for their sweets. Sweet pastries, cookies, cakes, sweets I cannot name, and of course Gelato.

But Catania would not be the destination I would recommend for the first time visitor to Italy. I would send them to the North which is more prosperous, fashionably old and chic. Catania in comparison is unfortunately dirty and run down.  But for myself, I give them extra credit for being real.

During the hours before dinner it seems that the entire population, of every age, come out to walk the streets in the soft evening air.

The Bellini Park in the city center is good for a quiet walk. But if you are a serious walker you will have to walk the streets, preferably early in the morning when they are still quiet.

Outside of the city center walking is into increasingly ugly and pedestrian unfriendly areas.

So that’s it for Catania.   Thanks for coming along.

Tomorrow I move on to Greece to visit a few cities.

 

I have just spent a quiet week in Split, mainly enjoying the nice weather and getting outdoors.
As you know, Split is in Croatia, east across the Adriatic sea from Italy. They call this the Dalmatian coast and Split is the defacto capital of the area.

I visited here two years ago and posted pictures and comments on this blog site. You may recall that the most significant thing about Split is that the old city is built on the (significant) remains of the palace of the Emperior Diocletian. He moved his capital here over the decades as the western roman empire fell.

Visitors to Split can be mistaken that this is a small town since the old town is small, very walkable, and just around the harbor. Actually Split is a town of more than 300,000 spreading out inland. But the old town, the cruise ships and the tourists are the story of Split.

The extensive area of stone and marble buildings and medieval squares and lanes around the old palace make Split a very interesting place.

The road up to my apartment.

There are plenty of restaurants and shops. It is difficult to get out of the old town and although the food here is high quality, the tourist prices are also very high.

I have been seeking out some lesser places.

But still not suffering from good opportunities for recreational dining.

I am running the experiment this winter of living in apartments in the cities I am visiting, as opposed to hotels. A little more room, a kitchen, a washer and drier. And so far it is nice, but I am finding it gives me much more alone time than the comings and goings of hotel living.

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Marjan Park
One of the big reasons I like Split is that the huge Marian park sits just outside the old town, to the north. Except for the Oceanographic Institute at the tip it is empty and virtually pedestrian only.

There are roads and trails for extended walks.

You can walk along the water.

Or up over the sea or the city.

The last time I was here it was December and too cold. Although the hot wine they served in the streets was a treat. This visit at the end of October hit the weather just right.

But it is changing.  My next report will be from Sicily where it is still hot.

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And, a bonus factoid:

The limestone here in many places is comprised of tilted strata, not too thick,

such that it can be (you guessed it) Split!, and used as a building material.

 

A day trip from Split over to Hvar island is a pretty easy trip. This was a favorite of the Romans who came over for swimming and picnicking.

The ferry leaves from downtown Split and heads straight out of the harbor.

This ferry was pretty nice, a little dated perhaps.
The trip takes about two hours.

I took this trip on a warm fall day and it was a nice ride out through the islands.

My destination was Stari Grad, the oldest recorded settlement in Europe, a Greek colony established around 400 BC.

The Greeks selected the site mainly from two features: the inland of the island contains a large fertile plain excellent for farming. Today this is a World Heritage site showing how ancient Greek agriculture was regulated.
And the island city was established at the end of a long narrow comparatively easily defensible harbor.

It is about a half hour walk from the ferry landing into town.  There is a bus and taxis, but I enjoyed the walk just along the water.

Today there is only a very small town to see.  A fine landing for yachties and day trippers like me.  Fine stone buildings and narrow medieval streets.

And a handful of good restaurants.
Interesting enough for a day.