Steve’s Weblog

Took off at noon today for Tokyo. The flight is scheduled for 11.5 hours, but fortunately, we arrived an hour ahead of schedule. The flight was smooth, and comfortable, but the bus ride from the airport to the hotel was brutal, stop-and-go traffic, took two hours to get downtown, and now I feel like I’ve traveled 5000 miles.

Of course I brought my laptop with me, since I had been in a Java programming class last week, I downloaded the Sun Java tutorial, and was going to read through it on the plane. Turns out the power outlet on the plane was messed up, so I couldn’t get power for my laptop, and I wound up running out of battery after an hour or so. The guy in the seat next to me had a power adapter too, and neither one worked, either on his machine, or mine. Remind me to send a note to American Airlines. I’m sitting in the same seat on the way back too, hope it’s not the same plane.

I had originally created this blog because I was a bit skeptical about the whole blogging concept, and wanted to see what it was all about. It kind or reminded me a bit of the whole home page explosion in the mid-nineties, having been one of the first (only) people at my first ISP with a web page, and then watching how the furor caught on, and eventually, everyone had a home page! So, I figured I should have a blog too… let’s see where this thing is headed. I had an opportunity to create a blog for a project at work, and at about the same time, had been asked to order some new hardware for one of IBM’s executives, who just happens to also be an internet visionary. In our e-mail conversations back and forth about which hardware to order, he mentioned his weblog, and asked me to have a look. Anyway, the trip to Europe described below turned out to be a really great use of the technology, for me. John has some other interesting stuff about the next big things, like Wi-Fi and Web services… worth a read.

Home! Pictures at http://nhutat.thepond.com/gallery/europe2002.

London

Caught the Heathrow Express train this morning from Paddington station. That was certainly easy, worth the fare to avoid all the hassles. Heathrow is a nightmare, I’m so glad we arrived two hours early. We were able to avoid the bulk of the check-in line because we have Platinum status on AA, and were able to use the business class line. We went through security with no special preference, so that took a while, then of course you have to walk through duty free shopping, and unload the last of your £s. One other advantage of platinum status on AA was that we got to hang out in the admiral’s Club lounge while we waited for our flight, and helped ourselves to coffee, juice, muffins and shortbread.

Paris

We arrived at Paris-Austerlitz station, took the Metro over to Gare du Nord and dropped off our bags in a locker, then we bought a combination train/entrance ticket to Versailles. Brrr! It’s cold in Paris today. We toured through Versailles, including the state apartments and the King’s apartments, then headed back on the train to the Eiffel tower. We weren’t planning to go up, because we did that the last time we were here in 2000. Plus, the line was long, and it was cold and breezy at the base, I can just imagine how brutal it would be up top. No thanks. Next, we jumped back on the Metro and headed over to the Arche d’Triomphe. This time we did climb up to the top because we had missed doing that last time around. Nice view from the top, and the climb wasn’t too terrible. We stopped off at a restaurant, got some food, then back on the Metro again to go back to Gare du Nord. I have never seen a subway so packed as this one, wow! Well, we were like three hours early for our train, and it was dark out, nothing more we wanted to see or do in Paris, so we caught an earlier train back to London. Good thing too, the waiting area in Gare du Nord is basically outside, and it’s COLD here! Cold and foggy here in London tonight, we’ll just have enough time to get to the hotel, check in, have dinner and find the easyInternet place. The hotel we booked was cheap enough, well, for London, anyway… and now we know why. Third floor room, and no elevator. See, that’s one of the reasons to pack light. Who made me bring this huge suitcase and drag it all over Europe anyway?

Barcelona

Weather looks gloomy today, hope the rain holds off long enough to get out and see a few things… oh, now I see some sun coming out, maybe it won’t be so bad after all. We’re going to walk through the waterfront district, and see the palace here today. Not sure what else, we have a night train to catch at 9:00 PM. We’ll leave our bags with reception at the hotel this morning since it’s just above the train station, an elevator ride away. Very convenient. Well, back from one of the busiest days we’ve done so far, I think. And as it turns out, the warmest and sunniest. We got off the Metro near the waterfront, and walked over to the aquarium, we went inside to see the fish. That was interesting, well, the penguins were anyway. On the way back to the Metro we went up in the Christopher Columbus monument. Next we headed over to the Palacio Nacional to check it out… while we were there, we grabbed lunch at a little cafe. Back to the Metro again, sure am glad we bought that two day pass. We headed over to Mt. Tibidabo, where we took a street car/tram that actually looked like a San Francisco cable car up to a funicular, or incline railway. The funicular took us to the top of Mt. Tibidabo, where there is a church, and an amusement park. The view from the top of the mountain was awesome, took a few pics before we headed back over to Gruell Park which was on the list of tourist sites to see, but it started to get dark, so we didn’t get to see much. Headed back over to La Rambla for dinner, where we both had Paella, which was pretty good. Then we did a quick stop in the easyEverything internet cafe before jumping on the Metro again, back to the hotel to grab our bags and jump on the train. We cut it pretty close getting to the train, but no worries, we made it. Tomorrow we arrive in Paris, still haven’t made a final decision on what to do… Eiffel Tower or Versailles?

We´re in Barcelona tonight, just talked to Lisa and Catie and Qi and Nick and Kevin… Travelling is fun, but I´ll be glad to get home again and see everyone. Still waiting to find a place to get the laptop online to upload the journal I´ve been writing.

We saw some awesome stuff here in Barcelona today, and we´ll see more again tomorrow. So far I don´t think there have been any cities we visited that were a mistake. Wish we had more time in Munich, maybe. Oh well, it´s late have to head back to the hotel and stuff.

Barcelona

Took the night train out of Milan at 8:00 PM on Wednesday that was scheduled to arrive in Barcelona at 9:00 AM this morning. Well, it was an hour late, not too bad, so we got in at ten, and figured out where the right ticket window was, and booked our night train back to Paris where we’ll catch Eurostar to London. The next challenge was finding a hotel in Barcelona, for simplicity, we decided to go with the hotel in the train station. By the time we checked in it was 11 something, and the room was ready. We dropped our bags in the room, and hit the street. On the way out we picked up a two day metro pass, and lunch, and then headed out to see two cathedrals and La Rambla (street where lots of shops are). The first cathedral here was an example of Gothic style architecture. We paid to walk through, and take the elevator to the roof. The second one is actually over a hundred years old, quite new by European standards, and still under construction! That’s interesting, because most of the other cathedrals we’ve seen had construction dates spanning at least as long, but you would think, with modern construction tools and methods, they’d be done by now. Still, I guess there’s an issue with financing. It will be interesting to see this one when it’s finished. We walked up the stairs in the towers, which were the scariest yet… spirals with an open middle, yikes! We walked through an open market area, where butchers had rabbits and other interesting game meat for sale, as well as lots of fresh fruit, veggies, fish, and all other kinds of good stuff. We stopped off at a Dunkin donuts, had cafe con leche there, not at all like the American dunkin donuts coffee… better. Found the easyeverything internet cafe near the Plaza Catalunya, and we checked in with everyone back home and made hotel arrangements for Saturday night in London. We found a hotel near Paddington station, so we can catch the Heathrow express train to the airport on Sunday morning. My new laptop arrived, and Lisa and Catie locked it away for me. Talked to Kevin Driver too, looks like he will be getting a job offer from IBM’s Tivoli software division in Austin, so that was great news. Also talked to Joel Bethea, and I have to look into relocation rent assistance for him when I get back to the office. Ugh, we stayed at the internet cafe too long, all the restaurants are closed or closing! We found a baguette sandwich place that was still open, and a Burger King for Nhut. Wound up getting back to the hotel around 12:30 or so… looks like a late morning tomorrow.

Florence

We had made a call to reserve a spot on a walking tour, but decided when we woke up that we could walk just as far and as long and see all the sites from the inside if we wanted to. We walked over to the cathedral, and paid to walk up the inside to the top of the dome. The ceiling of the interior of the cathedral was painted with some really interesting artwork, we took some pictures, but it hardly does the ceiling justice. Interesting to see the perception of hell as painted on the ceiling, and the devil and his evildoers. The outside up top gave a great view of the city, had to be the highest point, which was kind of scary because the fence was low, and looked flimsy. We then walked over to see Michelangelo.s David. Wow. It’s amazing that someone could create a sculpture of that quality out of a block of marble. We checked out the other artwork in the museum there, and then headed back over to the Palazzo Vecchio, and the Ponte Vecchio. We stopped in at a restaurant and had some pasta which was pretty good, then stopped off in a bakery and had some sweets and a cappuccino. Yum! We finished walking around and headed back to the hotel, picked up our bags and walked back over to the train station to catch the Eurostar to Milan. We’ve booked a night train to Barcelona that leaves at 8:00 tonight. It’s raining again, and still, this part of Italy is really beautiful. You can see olive trees and grape vines growing on the hills.

Venice/Pisa/Florence

Yawn. We were up at 5:00 to catch the Eurostar from Venice to Florence. We got first class no-smoking seats, though not in the same car, it’s a three hour train ride from Venice to Florence. The smoking car was really close to where Nhut was sitting, everybody smokes here, it’s kind of disgusting. When the door to that car opens, the smoke wafts out, gross. We were booked from Florence to Milan in the smoking car, gonna have to make sure and change that. We checked our bags at the train station in Florence once we got there, no need to truck them over to Pisa. We’ll be back here later anyway. We headed over to the ticket office, and the power went off, so we had to wait for the lady’s computer to reboot before we could change our tickets. Her monitor was facing so that we could see it as it rebooted, and it was running OS/2 Warp 4. In case anyone wondered who was still using OS/2, here was one customer, FS (Ferrocarilles State or TrenItalia). Pisa was an hour by regular train, no first class on this train, but it’s empty, and second class is actually quite nice too. OK, our guide book was wrong, it said to take bus #1 over to the Piazza Duomo. Well, guess what? There.s no bus #1! There’s a 2, 3, 4, 5, 6…. Anyway, bus #3 was the right bus, and we made it. The other point that the book failed to mention is that you can catch the #3 from either side of the street, and unless you want to tour the neighborhoods of Pisa and pass the station twice, cross the street and catch the bus there. Wow. OK, this made the entire trip worth it. I’ve seen pictures of this place forever, but the pictures do NOT do it justice. The tower is really leaning! We paid for tickets to climb the tower, which was weird, the stairs run in a spiral inside the tower, and the pitch of the building makes walking up feel really weird. The cathedral, tower and battiserie were all built in the same style architecture, and were all really beautiful. We picked up a few souvenirs here too. Caught the #3 bus back to the train station, Nhut got McDonald’s, and I got some pizza, the pizza was pretty good actually, nice thin crust, and not greasy. Then we got on the train back to Florence, found a first class car, and made ourselves comfortable. We have to find a hotel in Florence, that should be fun. Well, it turns out that finding a hotel wasn’t so bad after all. We walked out of the station, and towards the right hand side we could see some hotels. So we walked over that way, and stopped in at the first one… the price was .230 a night, so we thanked the guy politely, and beat feet. The next place we stopped was .70 and included breakfast. We checked out the room, and it was pretty nice, so we checked in, and dropped off our bags and headed out to see what we could see. We stopped along one of the streets to sign a petition showing support for an HIV/AIDS referendum, and made a small donation. This cute Italian guy said I looked Italian (yeah, right), a clever ploy to get me to donate some cash. Well, he was half right anyway, since my Dad’s family is from Sicily. We realized that our hotel was centrally located near all the sites we wanted to see, and saw a few of them at night.

Venice

Arrived at 7:15 this morning, and walked over to the hotel, it was two blocks from the train station, and the room was clean and ready, so they let us check in early and we could shower up. Good thing, this night train was totally cheesy, no shower this time around. We walked over to San Marco plaza, which was flooded because of high tide; still it was nice in the clear morning sun. Stopped off for a cappuccino on the way back to the hotel, which was cool, people were much more social here. Chatting over coffee and a pastry, worthwhile just for the people watching aspect. And the Italian language is so much nicer than German. Well, Nhut went to sleep for a bit, and I walked around a bit more on my own. Once the princess and the pea woke up, we walked back out again to get some dinner and see some of the sights again. We had some pasta, which was only OK. Some of the pastries were pretty good though. We missed the tickets to the Palazzo, but did make it up to the bell tower and into the cathedral. Nhut bought some food for the pigeons, which were the fattest I’ve ever seen, and proceeded to throw it at my feet… I was chased across San Marco Piazza by a band of fat Venetian pigeons! We headed back over to the train station to plan the next couple of days. Yikes, the night train to Barcelona only runs M-W-F, so we booked it for Wednesday night, we will train over to Pisa to see the tower tomorrow, then back to Florence Tuesday night, and see some sights in Florence before catching the night train to Barcelona.