Florence

Florence, in addition to being a lovely girl who attended my elementary school, is also, apparently, a little-known city in the little-known Tuscany region of the little-known country, Italy. Today, Florence is best remembered for being the stomping ground of the Medici family, the birthplace of the Renaissance, and a lovely girl who attended my elementary school*. I frankly hadn’t expected to be terribly impressed by Florence. Yes, Florence is historically rich and has more treasured artwork per capita than almost any city in the world, but I’ve seen old European cities before, and they were nothing to write home about. Especially if you consider “home” at this point to be the average of England, America, and Sweden – floating around somewhere in the Atlantic.


*Yes, this blog is SO popular that anyone mentioned in it gains instant fame. You’re welcome, Elizabeth, Laura, and Djibouti

However, I was forced to rescind my pre-visit scoffing, because Florence is gorgeous. The city ain’t bad either.

The first place we visited was a lovely little open air market. It was crowded, of course, and touristy, but a lot of fun. There are no cars in the town of Florence (rather like Venice), so there was a lovely, walkable quality to the city that most other cities lack. The painted plaster walls are very Florentine architecture and also, incidentally, look quite a bit like Swedish architecture in the older parts of town, such as Gamla Stan. Florence is apparently well-known for its leather products, so I bought my lovely friend Hester* a belt there, as well as a moderately tasty lunch sandwich.

*Start barricading against the paparazzi now, Hester

After lunch, we wandered over to the magnificent Duomo, a portion of which is shown above. Florence is a very small city, so it was easy for us to walk from attraction to attraction within only ten minutes or so. It was a beautiful day as well, especially when gelato was factored into the equation (which it was), and was altogether a perfect time for wandering.

Here is a picture of another portion of the Duomo.

My parents were so struck by the majesty of the Duomo that they tried to jump in the air simultaneously. Sadly, their efforts were only rewarded with some very goofy photographs. Judging by my sister and myself, goofiness appears to be a heritable trait. I suggest that the geneticists at MIT get to work identifying that gene.

After the Duomo, we wandered over to the creatively named Ponte Vecchio, or “Old Bridge”. As my more astute readers will have gathered from the name, the Ponte Vecchio is, indeed, the oldest of Florence’s six bridges. It is also rather unique in that it has shops on both side of the street on the bridge. Apparently London Bridge boasted a similar setup until it fell down, as immortalized in the beloved-yet-faintly-depressing nursery rhyme.

Here is another photograph of the Ponte Vecchio, this one taken from the bridge itself.

This is not a photograph of anything in particular, but I hope it will give you a feel for the sort of old meandering Italian architecture and street layout that gave Florence such a distinct feel.

Sadly, the time did come to say farewell to Florence. We were sorry to leave, but I think the Florentinis were fairly relieved to see the crazy jumping Americans leave. Which, incidentally, was excactly what Florence in Belmont thought when I switched schools in fifth grade.

Vatican City and Rome

Early on the morning of July 13, the Roe family arrived in Rome and promptly ran as fast as we could to catch a 9 am tour of Vatican City. Vatican City, as my well-educated and enlightened readers are sure to know, is the world’s smallest independent state, with a population of under 1,000. This low population and the nature of the state leads to a few other interesting facts, that are not particularly surprising in and of themselves, but which make for good trivia: Vatican City is the richest country in the world per capita, and also has the least balanced gender ratio (of the 1,000 inhabitants, the only women are the 300 or so nuns). Interestingly, Vatican City’s status as an independent nation is much newer than I originally thought – it was only officially established in 1929. Another little-known fact about the Vatican is that the state (Vatican City) and the Holy See actually issue different passports, although both are very difficult to come by. Vatican City is a walled country, and I learned all these facts during the half hour or so wait to get inside, during which time I also developed a hearty appreciation of my own sweat glands and a hearty dislike for other peoples'. After this time had elapsed, we were pushed through security and entered the smallest sovereign state in the world.

One of the first things we saw upon entering the country was this rather large sculpture, prominently featured in the center of the courtyard. It was made by a rather well-known modern sculptor whose name I have since forgotten. I personally know about as much about sculptures as your typical slime mold, but apparently it represents the Vatican’s ability to connect to the world even in turbulent modern times.

It was easy to spot St. Peter’s Basilica, because it is the tallest building in the Vatican and also the largest cathedral in the world. It is built upon St. Peter’s death spot, and is the reason that Vatican City is located here instead of on some other square mile in Italy. On a slightly more personal note, St. Peter has inspired me to add Founding a Country to the list of things I do before after I die.

The interior was even more imposing than the exterior. The number of statues like these went far to convince me that Vatican City is, in fact, the richest city in the world.

To give you a sense of scale, the letters you can see in this photograph are 12 feet high. I am the shortest person in my family, and as you can imagine, this building gave me even more of a height-related inferiority complex.
Having seen all these sights, we left Vatican City. Because all roads lead to Rome, we shortly found ourselves there. Fortunately we took a road that also led to lunch, which was fairly delicious. Unfortunately, by the time we finished our lunch, we were almost out of time in Rome. We did, however, manage to stop by the Colosseum, which is, of course, one of the major tourist attractions in Rome.

The Colosseum, which hosted many of the famed gladiator fights of ancient Rome, is actually really interesting because, like the Parthenon, it is right in the middle of a bustling city. Having been raised in the relatively new cities of the United States, I found it a bit... different to have ruins rising only a few meters from traffic and sidewalks. However, I shortly got used to the juxtaposition, and am now heartily disappointed that Boston doesn't have an ancient monument to Russell Crowe in the middle of Beacon Hill.

Unfortunately, we had to leave Rome before exploring any more than just the Colosseum, but it's definitely on the To Re-Visit List next time I'm in Italy. Now Mum just has to win another contest for another free vacation...

Vatican City and Rome

Early on the morning of July 13, the Roe family arrived in Rome and promptly ran as fast as we could to catch a 9 am tour of Vatican City. Vatican City, as my well-educated and enlightened readers are sure to know, is the world’s smallest independent state, with a population of under 1,000. This low population and the nature of the state leads to a few other interesting facts, that are not particularly surprising in and of themselves, but which make for good trivia: Vatican City is the richest country in the world per capita, and also has the least balanced gender ratio (of the 1,000 inhabitants, the only women are the 300 or so nuns). Interestingly, Vatican City’s status as an independent nation is much newer than I originally thought – it was only officially established in 1929. Another little-known fact about the Vatican is that the state (Vatican City) and the Holy See actually issue different passports, although both are very difficult to come by. Vatican City is a walled country, and I learned all these facts during the half hour or so wait to get inside. After this time had elapsed, we were pushed through security and entered the smallest sovereign state in the world.

One of the first things we saw upon entering the country was this rather large sculpture, prominently featured in the center of the courtyard. It was made by a rather well-known modern sculptor whose name I have since forgotten. Apparently it represents the Vatican’s ability to connect to the world even in turbulent modern times.

It was easy to spot St. Peter’s Basilica, because it is the tallest building in the Vatican and also the largest cathedral in the world. It is built upon St. Peter’s death spot, and is the reason that Vatican City is located here instead of on some other square mile in Italy.

The interior was even more imposing than the exterior. The number of statues like these went far to convince me that Vatican City is, in fact, the richest city in the world.

To give you a sense of scale, the letters you can see in this photograph are 12 feet high. No, they didn’t seem that big in person either… but they were high up, and our tour guide pinky swore that it was so, so I believe her.

Having seen all these sights, we left Vatican City. Because all roads lead to Rome, we shortly found ourselves there. Fortunately we took a road that also led to lunch, which was fairly delicious. Unfortunately, by the time we finished our lunch, we were almost out of time in Rome. We did, however, manage to stop by the Colosseum, which is, of course, one of the major tourist attractions in Rome.

The Colosseum, which hosted many of the famed gladiator fights of ancient Rome, is actually really interesting because, like the Parthenon, it is right in the middle of a bustling city. Having been raised in the relatively new cities of the United States, I found it a bit disconcerting to have ruins rising only a few meters from traffic and sidewalks.

Mykonos and Naples

Having left Turkey in our wake, the next stop on the Roe Mediterranean Cruise Extravaganza was Mykonos, a little Greek island. Unfortunately, we only had a total of about half a day in Mykonos (are you detecting a theme here?), but we still got a chance to wander the island, see vacationing Greeks and a few native Mykonans, and see the delightful Greek quaintness.

Here is a beautiful little seaside church. As you can tell somewhat from the photograph, this church is incredibly tiny – I would say that it could fit a maximum of about fifteen people, and that would be rather crowded. The white walls and colored roof are very characteristic of architecture in Mykonos, and probably elsewhere in Greece as well. The buildings are apparently painted white because ants tend not to crawl on white things, and Mykonos is a major producer of ants.

Mykonos is also relatively famous for its windmills, which are several centuries old and are all aligned along the coast. They’re quite a bit different in their construction from your typical quixotic windmill, in that they have quite a bit more spokes and have removable sails (in this picture, the sails are down). You can see a little bit of the thatched roof here, as well.

Shortly before lunch, the Roe family had the honor of meeting Petros III, a local denizen. Petros’ grandfather, Petros I, was apparently discovered injured in Mykonos by locals, who took him in and nurtured him back to health back around World War II. Petros then founded a dynasty of pelicans that have had their run of the island, enjoying the choicest of scraps from the local restaurants and mating with only the most beautiful local pelicans.

After lunch, we wandered around the narrow little streets of Mykonos for a few hours before returning back to the ship and embarking for…

Naples!

OK, I’ll admit that I’m being a wee bit misleading here. The Roe family didn’t actually spend very much time at all in Naples the city. Instead, we piled onto a bus that traversed some alarmingly narrow mountain roads and, after about an hour, arrived at a beautiful little organic farm only about a mile from the sea. At one point, the bus stopped to allow photographs of the coast, as shown below:

Woefully, my camera died at this point, so I have no more photos of Naples. Here is a condensed version of what happened in Naples:

Farm = Beautiful

Sorrento = Crowded

Gelato = Delicious

Istanbul (Not Constantinople)

I had a date in Constantinople, but she was waiting in Istanbul.


As you may recall from the song, Istanbul was not always so named. Actually, the etymology of Istanbul goes even further back than that. Originally, the city was a Greek city called Byzantium, chosen for its advantageous location on the Bosphorus Strait, named for its founder, Byzas. When the Roman Empire overtook the failing Greek empire, the Emperor Constantine quickly realized how strategically Byzantium was located, and chose to center his newly founded Holy Roman Empire around the city. Naturally, Constantine changed the name from the original Greek, and the city was named after its new emperor – Constantinople. When the Roman Empire fell, the Ottoman Empire claimed the city and, unsurprisingly, didn’t want their new capital city named after a Roman Emperor. Instead, they changed the city’s name once more to Istanbul. The fact that Istanbul has been at the center of three empires (Greek, Roman, and Ottoman/Turkish) means that there is a huge diversity of architecture, monuments, and sights, so prepare yourself for some pretty neat sights.

One question that soon presented itself in my mind is why Istanbul, which is the economic, cultural, and historical capital of Turkey, in addition to its largest city, is no longer the political capital. It turns out that Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, overthrew the government that was centered in Istanbul in the 1920s and had to organize his subversive activities far outside the capital. So where did he organize this rebellion? You guessed it! (But not really). Ankara! Atatürk centered his government around Ankara, and it has remained the capital of Turkey ever since.

Alright, enough Turkish history, and onward to the fabulous adventures of Katie in Istanbul!

Here is one of the first sights I saw in Istanbul. It is an Egyptian obelisk that is Really Old (about 3000 years, I think) that some emperor or another ordered moved to Byzantium or Constantinople or Istanbul from Egypt. It probably has some historical significance other than that, but I seem to have forgotten it. Oops.

Also, it wasn’t actually slanted. That’s just bad photography on the part of Yours Truly.

Next, we walked about 300 meters to the rather imposing Blue Mosque, which is shown in a somewhat truncated photograph above. The Blue Mosque was apparently built by a Muslim emperor in the 17th century who wanted to rival the famous Haga Sophia church, which is shown a few paragraphs on (this is a chronological tour, so no complaints!). There is a funny story associated with the Blue Mosque – apparently most minarets have one, two, or sometimes four minarets, but the Blue Mosque has six. According to our tour guide, the emperor told the chief architect that he wanted a mosque with gold minarets. The architect, however, knew that the common people would all steal the gold off of the minarets, and the mosque would be destroyed within months. The architect craftily noticed that the word “gold” and “six” are almost identical in Turkish, so he instead designed a mosque with six minarets. When the emperor complained to him, the architect claimed that he had misheard, and thought that the emperor wanted a mosque with six minarets! What a clever clogs.

This is a picture of the interior of the Blue Mosque. The entire interior is made of mosaics. Impressive, no?

Next, we came to Hagia Sophia, the church that the Blue Mosque was built to best. Hagia Sophia’s exterior looks like a slightly smaller version of the Blue Mosque. What makes it truly amazing, however, is its age – Haga Sophia was built in the 6th century AD, and has remained intact ever since. Although it was originally a churich, it was later converted to a mosque, and finally to a museum (which it remains today).

This is the interior of Hagia Sophia – the place was blinking enormous!

Here is one of the many murals covering the walls of Hagia Sophia. At one point, they were covered over by Islamic murals, but the murals were removed when Hagia Sophia became a museum.

This building is very historically important. I can’t remember why, but I have enough pictures of it that I know it merits some sort of explanation. I am sorry to fail you, dear reader, but I have no explanation to offer.

Our final stop in Istanbul was the famed Turkish bazaar, the largest indoor bazaar in the world. I have been to a number of markets all over the world – everywhere from Quincy Market in Boston to Chinese, Cambodian, and Thai markets, and the Istanbul market was one of the nicest I have ever been to. Not only was the area very clean, but the venders themselves were very kind and were genuinely helpful. I was pleasantly surprised by how easy and pleasant shopping was here – in parts of China, for example, I often found that I couldn’t even walk past a shop without being practically chased into the street by the shop’s owner trying to sell me something.

A few purchases later, it was sadly time to get back on board the boat and head off for Greece again. I was sad to leave Istanbul, but I’m sure I’ll be back – I’d love to visit Constantinople at some point, and I hear it’s in the area.

Athens and Kuşadası

Early on the morning of July 7th, we arrived in Athens, Greece. Athens, the capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the world’s oldest cities, its history spans around 3,400 years. The previous sentence was in no way, shape, or form copied from the Wikipedia article on Athens. Any similarities between this blog post and the aforementioned Wikipedia article are entirely coincidence, and are certainly not due to unabashed plagiarism. Really.*

*Not really.

My family had decided beforehand that we didn’t want the typical tourist experience during our brief stay in Athens. We wanted to avoid the tourist traps and mobs of foreigners. We wanted to see the authentic city and culture as the locals did. That is to say, we decided to visit the Parthenon, shown in the obligatory Touristy Parthenon Photograph below:

Something I found rather intriguing about the Parthenon and surrounding area is how close the ancient temple and the modern city are. I suppose that it makes sense that the ruins should be smack in the center of town, because with three and a half millennia of uninterrupted inhabitation, it wouldn’t make sense for modern Athens to be any great distance from ancient Athens. Nevertheless, I found juxtaposed views like this one quite breathtaking:

Sadly, after only six hours in Athens, it was time to pack up and return to the ship, all set to embark to…

Kuşadası!

We arrived in Kuşadası*, Turkey, at about 6 am on July 8th. As in Athens, we only had about six hours, so we took a guided tour in order to see as much as possible in our limited time. A little background: Kuşadası is a small seaside city on the Asia Minor portion of Turkey, meaning that it was my mother’s and sister’s first time in Asia (I spent about three and a half weeks in Asia in December and January). The town itself is quite touristy, with a summertime population of about ten times its winter numbers. In Kuşadası’s case, the extensive tourism is certainly deserved, because Kuşadası is very close to the Ephesian ruins. The ancient Greek city of Ephesus is home to an archaeological site larger than Pompeii, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient Word (The Temple of Artemis), Saint John’s Basilica, and what is generally regarded as the Virgin Mary’s final resting place. The inhabitants of Ephesus also had the distinction of having a Biblical book written to them (the Book of Ephesians).

*I like writing about Kuşadası because I feel very clever typing the funky ş and ı

Above is a photograph of the exterior of the Virgin Mary’s House. This is actually a reconstruction of the original, which collapsed at some point over the centuries between its initial construction and when it was rediscovered by the Holy Roman Empire. Nevertheless, the foundations remained intact, and it was upon these original foundations that this reconstruction was built. I was surprised by how modest the house was – the final resting place of Saint Mary is a very important and holy place for billions of people around the world, and I was surprised that it had remained the same humble house that Mary herself had lived and died in. Near the shrine was a wall covered with prayers in dozens of languages written on cloth.

After seeing the Virgin Mary’s shrine, we continued our exploration of Christian history by visiting the remains of St. John’s Basilica, a photograph of which is shown below. I learned in Kuşadası that a church must contain a relic of the person for whom it is named in order to qualify as a Basilica; however, dear reader, please take this definition with a grain of salt, as I was unable to find corroboration anywhere on the Internet. St. John’s Basilica was supposedly built upon the spot where the Saint himself died, making it one of the most significant religious ruins in the world.

At this point, the poor Roe family was very overheated and exhausted – I assure you, Turkey in July is not for the faint of heart! Nevertheless, we managed to pull together a last rally and visit the ruins of Ephesus before returning to the ship. As I mentioned before, Ephesus is one of the largest ancient Greek ruins in the world, although it is currently only 15% excavated. A lot of work is still being done in the area, and we spotted a few archaeologists running around with their very professional looking tools during our exploration.

Here is a photograph that shows a very, very, very small portion of the excavated ruins of Ephesus. Ephesus is located in a valley and surrounded by mountains, and you can see a hint of the scrubby hills all around it behind the ruins.

Venice

Now, my dear reader, the next half dozen or so posts are going to chronicle a Mediterranean cruise I took with my family from July 4 to 16, courtesy of More Magazine (my lovely and talented mother won a contest that they sponsored… well done, Mum!).


The ship, which carried over 3000 (!!) passengers and probably caused the world’s ocean levels to rise several inches when it was constructed in 2008, embarked from Venice, giving me the chance to see the city for the first time. But before exploring Venice, I got to see a very special celebrity, here seen posing as a Greek goddess with a ‘tude:

It’s OK if you don’t recognize this particular celebrity. She hasn’t yet made her debut, but I’m pretty sure she’s going to be the Next Big Thing. This is Elizabeth Roe, my 11-year-old sister whom I have not seen for six months and at least two inches. When she gets famous and changes her surname to something less reminiscent of fish eggs, remember you saw her here first.

After unpacking and having a quick nap in the hotel, Mum, Dad, Elizabeth, and I ventured out into Venice in search of dinner. After a bit of wandering, we stumbled upon one of Venice’s major landmarks: the beautiful St. Mark’s Basilica, displayed in Figure 2 below:

Figure 2: St. Mark’s Basilica

Unfortunately, the Basilica was under construction. Nevertheless, the square was teeming with life, full of young couples, musicians, and a few entrepreneurial spirits attempting to sell innocent passers-by anything under the sun. Fortunately, we managed to escape from the square without buying anything and continued on our quest for a tasty Venetian dinner. After wandering through more twisted streets than I could hope to remember and asking for directions approximately 213 times, we managed to find a lovely restaurant, tucked far away from the main waterways, cathedrals, street signs, and any other imaginable landmarks to help us find our way home. Dinner was delicious, and consumed far too quickly to be photographed.

The next morning, my family woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for a tour to see the famous Murano glass being made. However, despite being armed with a map, a compass, and a GPS device*, we managed to get on a water taxi headed in the wrong direction. By the time we realized our error, we had missed the tour and were on the other side of Venice. Undaunted, we set forth on a self-guided walking tour of Venice.

*My father is an orienteer in the tradition of Columbus – very well equipped and often, but not always, able to determine correctly which continent he is on.

One of the first areas we stumbled upon was Venice’s historical Jewish ghetto, pictured above. According to a sign in a window, the ghetto is the oldest in Europe, founded in 1516. (Prior to 1516, Jews were not allowed to live anywhere in the city). It remained the only place Jews were allowed to reside legally until Napoleon conquered Venice in 1797. Unsurprisingly, the ghetto still has a very high concentration of synagogues and traditional Jewish shops, restaurants, and costume. I hadn’t been expecting to stumble upon such an oasis of Jewish culture in Venice, and it was interesting to see how those two cultures mixed.

On an interesting but unrelated architectural note, the black diagonal bolts you can see above some of the windows actually are attached to iron rods spanning the whole width of the building, bolting the walls parallel to each other. Buildings as old as these need a little bit of assistance in the battle against gravity.

After a lovely lunch at an Italian restaurant overlooking a canal and a bit more wandering, the Roes decided to go for a gondola ride, the local means of transport used by everyone except for locals. Here is a photo of Venice, as seen from a gondola:

I was so inspired by the gondola ride that I decided to write an entire musical devoted to gondoliers. It would be full of choral numbers, plot intrigue, and goofy puns, and would be creatively entitled “The Gondoliers”. Sadly, I discovered shortly thereafter that a couple of fellows by the name of Gilbert and Sullivan had already beaten me by a couple of centuries with that idea. Not to worry, though – I was inspired by my May trip to London to write a musical about a barber who kills his customers and makes them into pies. It’s a brilliant concept, and so sick that I’m quite certain no one could have scooped me on it.

Lovely as Venice was, we did eventually have to make our way to the ship, which was Huge. Seriously, I have never seen such a monstrosity. Nevertheless, it was a monstrosity I was prepared to love, because it had a tasty dinner and a cozy bed, as well as overnight transportation to Athens, Greece.