Babymoon! Or, three Telsons go to Athens.

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Sadly, this is our last “big” trip for the summer – but the reason behind it is a happy one! In case you missed our last postcard, we’re having a baby in August, which means that in a couple weeks I won’t be allowed to fly anywhere for a while. So we made sure to get in one “last” trip before then, and took a long weekend to Athens to enjoy some warmth and sunshine.

Sightseeing in Athens can be a bit difficult to plan, since many of the archaeological sites close at 3pm daily (we’re curious to know who thought this was a good idea, especially in the summer). But we squeezed a lot into just over three days, and I was especially delighted to be able to see in person so many sites and artifacts from my college archaeology course. We started with a visit to the Acropolis Museum, which contains artifacts from the buildings atop the oldest inhabited area of Athens (minus about half the sculptures from the Parthenon, appropriated in the early 19th century and now housed – wrongly, we think – in Britain). The following day we took a self-guided walking tour which included a number of Byzantine churches, the Arch of Hadrian, the Temple of Olympian Zeus (the largest temple in Greece during the Roman empire), and a maze-like walk through a gorgeous little neighborhood that straddles the Acropolis cliffside. This was the only overcast day on our trip, and also the only time we were able to climb the Acropolis, but the Parthenon and other temples were breathtaking nonetheless. On Sunday we visited the National Archaeological Museum, which houses the burial treasures from Myceneae, and had a temporary exhibition of incredible bronzes and fragments of an exquisite mathematical/astronomical mechanism – basically the first analog computer – from the Antikythera shipwreck; we also made short visits to the Ancient Agora and the Panathenaic Stadium (site of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896). On Monday we took a full-day bus tour to the Peloponnese to visit the acoustically-marvellous Epidaurus theater and the 4,000-year-old city of Mycenae (seeing the Lion Gate here was a treat for me, having recreated it out of snow with classmates during my freshman year of college). After a similarly frustrating experience in Cuba we now know that bus tours are not our thing, since we spent more time stopping for food and shopping than seeing the actual sites themselves!

It was a bit of a whirlwind weekend and we’re happy to be back home (my back and legs are relieved for the comfort of a cushy office chair during the day), but we saw some amazing things…and the little one is quickly becoming one well-traveled baby!

10 Days in Cuba

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It’s tough to figure out how to even begin this post, seeing as the trip it’s about was unlike anything else we’ve ever done. I guess that’s as good as an introduction as it’ll get. Meg and I just got back from 10 incredible, overwhelming and very hot days in Cuba. We spent most of the time in Havana, staying in a Casa Particular (B&B) next door to my brother Jonas’ place. Jonas has been in Cuba for 6 ½ years studying medicine at the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) and this was the first time I had the opportunity to visit him. He’s graduating in July and coming back to the States, so this was essentially our last chance.

There are a lot of misconceptions about Cuba, Cubans and Cuban-life in general. While it’s fair to describe much of the infrastructure, housing and transportation in the country as in pretty poor shape, people and life are not poor and most people are not unhappy. Life is not ‘hard.’ The standard of living is certainly lower than what most of us in the ‘first world’ are used to, but everyone has enough food, a roof over their heads, gets a free education, free healthcare and all the other necessities. For better or worse, the Cuban work ethic is nowhere near as intense as most of us are used to, and as a result the majority of Cubans don’t have to spend most of their lives working and have plenty of free time to enjoy themselves. The state-controlled economic and political system has more than its fair share of problems, not just to ‘first world’ outsiders looking in but to Cubans living there, as well, but Cuba is not the totalitarian, depressed wasteland that is often depicted in the U.S. media. I could write for hours about this, but seeing as it’s supposed to be a postcard I’m going to keep it at that.

We got to see a lot of Havana that most tourists don’t, since Jonas and his girlfriend took us around to their favorite places. We ate lunch and dinner at tiny restaurants being run out of people’s homes and garages; we walked through neighborhoods full of crumbling post-colonial apartment buildings but also full of life – dominos being played on a stoop, impromptu soccer games on the street; Meg even got a tour of the maternity hospital where Jonas was finishing up a rotation (I wasn’t allowed in!). We lucked out with the weather – plenty of sun and temperatures in the 80s and above Fahrenheit. We all took a day trip down to the Bay of Pigs, with stops at a recreated native-Cuban village (and hotel) called Guamá and at a crocodile farm. We happened to be going just a few days before the anniversary of the attempted invasion (known in Cuba as “La Batalla de Girón” after the beach where it took place) and there was a lot of activity in preparation for the annual celebrations. Meg and I also went a bit out of our wheelhouse of backpacking vacations and spent 2  days at a beachside resort in the Varadero peninsula, home to a dozen plus all-inclusive resorts. It was great getting to spend all day relaxing on the beach, snorkeling, and swimming, but the resort scene is definitely not for us. I feel sorry for the people who only go to these places and never see an authentic side of Cuba.

Needless to say, the trip was an extraordinary experience and one that definitely stands out. I would really encourage anyone who can to go and visit for themselves.

We have plenty of other stories but we’ll save that for when we (hopefully) see you all! There lot of photographs this time, it was just too tough to decide what to post.

Winter holiday in Budapest

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Wow, our first real trip in nearly six months! We need to get out more…

Over the weekend we took a 4-day trip to Budapest, Hungary (which inevitably resulted in lots of jokes from Josh whenever I said we should get something to eat). Historically, this city is two in one: quieter old-town Buda on the west side of the Danube, and busier, hipper Pest on the east. We stayed at a lovely B&B in Buda, one stone staircase downhill from Buda Castle and 700-year-old Matthias Church; our bedroom windows looked east across the Danube to the spindly, red-roofed national Parliament building. We wanted this to be a relaxing trip, so we took our time with a couple of self-guided walking tours, visits to the Opera House, Hungarian National Museum, and House of Terror (housed in the former communist secret police headquarters); and to St Stephen’s Basilica (home to the actual right hand of St Stephen, first king of Hungary), the Jewish Cemetery and Holocaust Memorial Park at the Dohány Street Synagogue, and the vast Central Market Hall. We spent a couple hours each day having coffee/tea and cake in traditional cafes, and savored national dishes including chicken paprikás, gulyás (goulash) soup, Lángos, chocolate mousse-like Rigó Jancsi cake, and poppyseed-stuffed crepes. YUM.

Sunday was the day-long Bartók marathon at the Palace of the Arts concert hall; when we stopped by to get tickets for a performance of the Miraculous Mandarin, we got lucky and also snagged fantastic seats for a later performance of Bluebeard’s Castle, with the world-renowned Budapest Festival Orchestra. Neither of us are huge opera fans, but the orchestral music was incredible.

We ended our trip on Monday with a morning-long soak at the Széchenyi baths, the largest medicinal bath in Europe. The indoor baths, quite green due to their mineral concentration, were great for a calm soak, but our favorite was the outdoor (yep, even in February!) thermal “amusement” pool with whirlpools and massaging water jets…the perfect way to end a holiday!

A Romanian Wedding

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Last week we traveled to western Romania for my cousin’s wedding. He worked in Romania for a number of years, met a Romanian and though they live in Germany now, they had the wedding in her hometown.

We had a great time, despite an incredibly long day getting there (5 hour flight delay!). It was an amazing experience getting to take part in a Romanian wedding celebration, though it required quite a bit of stamina – the ceremony was at 4p, the reception started at 7p and the main course wasn’t served til 2a! The weather was gorgeous, though, and there was plenty of wine and dancing.

It was equally amazing to see and explore an area in eastern Europe not heavily trafficked by tourists. The city we flew into, Timişoara, was the site of the first demonstrations against Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu that quickly led to his overthrow and execution in December 1989. 20+ years later and many signs of the communist, Soviet-style architecture and infrastructure still exist. One of the cities we drove through, Resita, used to be a major iron producing hub (apparently iron for the Eiffel Tower was produced here) and the city is a mixture of high-rise Soviet-style apartment buildings and huge industrial factories, all connected by an elevated track. It looked like something out of a graphic novel.

We took a small road trip the day after the wedding with family, driving into the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains for some amazing views, swimming in a mountain lake and Papanași (Romanian pastry) at an old resort hotel nearby. Our last day in the country we spent wandering (and sweating – 90 degress F!) around Timişoara itself. It’s a very interesting mix of eastern European and old Viennese architecture and ambience. It has several large squares lined with baroque/rococo buildings, and these are surrounded by rather bleak and boring concrete buildings.

All in all a very interesting trip!

Éire, Part Two

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The second week of our trip was a mix of old and new: it started off with a hike through the forest in Cong and a big band show at a pub in Galway. On Tuesday we took a ferry to windy Inishmore, the largest of the three Aran Islands, and biked through some very rocky hillsides out to Dún Aonghasa, a semi-circular Iron Age fort on the edge of a cliff that drops over 100 meters to the sea. On our way north to [London]derry (site of the 1972 Bogside Massacre/Bloody Sunday), we stopped off at the Carrowmore megalithic cemetery, Sligo abbey, and the Donegal castle; from Derry we visited the Old Bushmills Distillery, and hiked to the bizarre yet magnificent Giant’s Causeway, a tumble of over 40,000 interlocking hexagonal basalt columns. (Followers of our last trip will appreciate these two photos). Thursday saw us in Belfast where we visited the requisite Titanic sites, toured City Hall (it was the previous Lord Mayor’s last day in office!), and visited the Linen Hall Library with a great exhibition of political posters from the Troubles of the late 1960s.

After Belfast, we continued south to Dublin via Brú na Bóinne, a prehistoric megalithic site that is home to the three enormous mound and passage tombs of Dowth (unexcavated), Knowth (the largest, with passages aligned with the Equinox sunrise and sunset), and Newgrange (the most well-known, with a cross-shaped passage aligned with the winter Solstice sunrise, which you can go into). These monuments are over 5,000 years old: older than the pyramids at Giza. Once back in Dublin, we made a point of visiting the Kilmainham Gaol, which housed many of the leaders of the 1916 rebellion; the National Museum, home to Ireland’s goldwork hoards and the Iron Age bog bodies; Trinity College and the exquisitely intricate Book of Kells; and had a whirlwind tour of some of the highlights in the Chester Beatty Library. Josh was able to nab some last-minute tickets to the Saturday night show of Bill Bailey’s latest UK tour, which was a blast. And after the only two days of rain we saw on our trip, at 5am on Monday morning the Emerald Isle said goodbye with a glorious sunrise. What a way to see us off!