Where Cameras Fear To Tread

I mentioned in a previous post that sometimes I forget things we've done because there were no cameras allowed, which means I don't have photos to jog my memory for the posts. Well, there were a number of those types of places in Padova. First up is the Cappella della Scrovegni, the exterior of which isn't much to look at. But the inside is covered by frescoes painted by Giotto.

I lifted the picture from Wikipedia for obvious reasons.

This is apparently the #1 thing to see in the city. You have to get your tickets ahead of time, and show up half an hour early for your scheduled time. And once it's your appointment time, you don't actually go directly into the chapel. You sit in a climate-controlled room and watch a video about it. After that, your group is finally allowed through the airlock into the chapel itself.

For 15 minutes.

To me, it wasn't that big of a deal because I'm no religious scholar so I mostly just saw "ooh, paintings," but I can imagine that if you were familiar with all the stories depicted and wanted to examine those, or the technique, or the restoration work in detail, you wouldn't have nearly enough time. There's still a lot of restoration work to be done because unfortunately over the years, the adjoining buildings were knocked down and the chapel had its bare brick walls left open to the elements, which took its toll on the frescoes.

My verdict on the whole thing: it's the thing to see, so you probably should, but go in with your expectations set. You're going to feel herded and you won't get as much time as you might want. On the other hand, the fact that 1. the whole thing arose because some guy felt guilty about his family being moneylenders and 2. Giotto painted essentially every square inch of the walls of the entire building, and did it in a spectacular style, make it pretty interesting.

While on the subject of frescoes, the baptistry in the Duomo di Padova (Padua Cathedral) was also decorated in the "more is more" style. These were done by Giusto de' Menabuoi in the 14th century. He's not a household name, but the paintings are pretty incredible. And at the baptistry, you pay your €5 and can stare at it for as long as you want, without any airlocks or associated hassles.

The rest of the Duomo is more recent. As is frequently the case, there were older churches on the site but one burned down and one was destroyed in an earthquake. The one that is currently in place was finished in 1754 and is curiously ordinary-looking outside, and very modern inside.

Effigy? Wax figure? Mummy? Cryogenically
preserved body? I have no idea.

We also visited the Palazzo Bo, which contains an operating theater which used to be used by the University of Padua. As a side note, the University of Padua is one of the oldest in continuous operation, and in Italy is second only to Bologna. That's nothing to sneeze at, since Bologna is the oldest one in the world. Some pretty famous names have found their way there, incuding Copernicus and Galileo, who was the chair of the mathematics department around 1600. (Also Casanova studied there, although I don't know that he's terribly famous academically speaking.)

Anyhow, back to the operating theater. This thing is awesome.

You can't go into it anymore, you can only look at it from below the spot where the body would have been laid. However, it's still amazing to see. This is the oldest operating theater in Europe, and it's hard to tell from the photo, but the space between railings was standing room only and it's a surprisingly tiny room. Students were crammed in there (capacity was 250 people) and apparently fainting was a problem, although since you were so well wedged in, you couldn't really fall anywhere. Very practical.

For the final no-cameras destination, Morgan and I visited St. Anthony's Basilica.

You can take pictures of the outside.

This was my first visit to a basilica associated with a real saint, by which I mean one I'd actually heard of. The inside is pretty ornate, although not wall-to-wall frescoes or anything.

Although you can't take pictures, there are no rules against drawing.

The two main attractions of the basilica are the Tomb of St. Anthony and the treasury that contains his relics. The treasury was all glass and gold, with containers which include St. Anthony's larynx and his tongue. I didn't really know what to think about that - bones don't seem that weird to me, but a jar with a tongue in it strikes me as maybe a little strange. (I just discovered that some of the relics have been on tour in the UK, which is also odd to me.)

The tomb is in another part of the church. On the day I was there, it was quite busy. A line of people shuffles past the tomb, and touch it and pray to St. Anthony.

I walked around it, but I didn't touch it as it just didn't seem right. It's not my religion; I am merely an observer. I felt even more strongly about that as I looked around - St. Anthony is the patron saint of lost things and people, and everywhere were photographs of children who are presumably missing.

I can't really think of anything to follow that up with, so I'll just leave it at that. Next time, a day trip to Venice.

I Say "Italy," You Say ...

I am currently sitting in Padova, writing a blog post about Padova as I saw it two months ago. I didn't expect to be back here - life is surreal sometimes.

As I said, this time, I'll show and talk about some of the typical Italian scenes and sights. One thing that people think of when you say "Italy": markets in the piazzas. At right is the Piazza dei Signori, with the Torre dell'Orologio at one end (more on that in a minute). This market spans 3 squares which are laid out one after the other - the Piazza dei Signori (Lords' Square), Piazza dei Frutti (Fruits Square) and Piazza delle Erbe (Herbs Square). The atmosphere is vibrant, and there are a variety of things for sale.

Mmm, veggies.

Meat and cheese shops are in a gallery next to the square.

Our hotel was not far on the other side of the arch in the tower, so I often started my morning by passing through the markets. Then in the afternoon, the booths are packed up and the area fills with tables and chairs for the bars and restaurants that surround the square.

Piazza dei Signori facing the other direction. After a short
rain shower, the tables start filling up again.

Back to the Torre dell'Orologio - on the tower is an astronomical clock that was built in the 15th century. It's a replacement for one that was from 1344. It displays the time, date, and current astrological sign. That is, unless the current sign is Libra, which is not represented. I've read a few different theories on why that is the case, but I can't tell you which one is true. It's not clear whether the original had Libra and the copy left it off for some reason, or if this is a faithful representation of the 1344 version as well. In any event, the clock has Scorpio taking up two spaces.

Another thing that comes to mind when someone mentions Italy: statues. And if you want to see statues, have I got the place for you ... Prato della Valle. Apparently, there are 78 statues in this park - I didn't count them, so I have to trust Wikipedia on that! But in any event, this spot is statue central.

How statues reproduce.

The park is a big oval surrounded by a canal, and the statues are lined up along both sides of the water. It's a terrific place for taking photos because it's got a bit of everything - in addition to the statues, there's greenery, bridges, reflections on the water, scenic buildings and churches in the background. One of the buildings you get a great view of is the Abbey of Santa Giustina - in the background of the photo at the bottom of this post. From another angle, you can see the Basilica of San Antonio, which I'm not going to talk about right now because churches will be the subject of another post (you can't throw a rock in Padua without hitting a church).

And that's it for this post! I'm guessing the next one will probably be about churches, unless something else strikes my fancy as I go through my photos.

The Taming of the...

Here we are, ready to talk about Italy, and I don't even know where to start. I've been staring at the beginnings of this blog post for far too long, trying to figure out how to approach it. We went to Padova (or Padua, as it's known in English) because Morgan had a math conference, so he was away all day every day for the entire week and I was wandering the streets by myself. Which, don't get me wrong, there are certainly worse fates that can befall a person, but it makes it a little different because it doesn't break down easily into an "on this day, I did this" sort of format. Plus, I was hoping to come up with some sort of witty and appropriate title that would rhyme with The Taming of the Shrew, since that was set in Padua, but I've got nothing.

Anyway, here goes. We flew from Brussels to Zurich (where one of the few airport food options was a US $29 club sandwich) to Venice, which is just about an hour away from Padova.

Yep, that's Venice.

We got into Padova at night, so it wasn't until the next morning that I got a good look at the place. And when I did, one of the first thing that struck me walking down the street was how friendly people were. It's a marked change from Belgium, where it's rare for anyone on the street to meet your eye. It was early, so there weren't a lot of people out, but everywhere I went I was greeted with "buongiorno!" One of the people I was greeted by was a woodworker with a little stand a few blocks from the hotel. You might be thinking, "Well of course he's friendly, he wants customers!" but seriously, even people like that don't say hello in Belgium. (They might yell "Echte Gentse neusjes!" in your direction from the cuberdon stands, but they don't say good morning.)

I can check Pinocchio off my "Italy Bingo" card.

Padova is a very walkable city, as long as you're paying attention. I've heard that the drivers in Italy get crazier the farther south you go, but that doesn't mean they're sedate in the north. It's the kind of place where even after the "walk" signal turns green, it's a good idea to check the road again - in both directions - before you start to cross. We had been happy to hear that the hotel had bikes for guests to use, but once I'd walked around for a day, I was too terrified to even get on one. The bikes I saw seemed to adhere to even fewer rules than the cars - they were on the street, on the sidewalk, going in either direction. It was a free-for-all.

If you want to know what Padova looks like, it mostly looks sort of like this. Most of the streets have these colonnaded walkways. (Now imagine people walking through here and bikes weaving through in both directions as well. Yeah.) The walkways are kind of great - they provide shade from the sun, shelter from the rain, and put a nice stone barrier between you and the cars. Okay, I'll stop about the cars. Except first I have to tell you a story. I was walking along, and came to an intersection where a woman was traveling in the same direction as me on a bike. A car approached from our right and was thoroughly into the intersection before he saw the bike and came to a sudden stop. The bicyclist started yelling at the driver, clearly telling him that he was supposed to have stopped (he had a stop sign, in fact) and he could have killed her. The driver's answer was also perfectly clear to me even though my Italian is marginal at best. He pointed at her undamaged bike and said, essentially, "I did stop."

Now I'm really done with harping on about the hazards of the roadways.

Anyone will tell you that Italy is full of art, and when they say that, they're probably mostly referring to Renaissance paintings and highbrow stuff like that. Yawn! (I kid, we saw some of that, too.) But there's also a lot of street art, so I'll share some photos of that now.

These are just a few examples of what I saw on the streets; I'll have the rest of them up on Flickr eventually. I enjoyed being surprised by pieces like these whenever I turned a corner.

I particularly liked the geometric ones I ran across like the pink one posted below. There was another one of these I found, but I couldn't get a very good picture of it, unfortunately.

The lighting makes it a little difficult to see, but
he's disdainfully holding up a graffiti tag.

I know this maybe hasn't been the typical view of Italy. I bet you were expecting more architecture and old frescoes. Or statues and pictures of food. I promise I took those photos too - well, actually, not many pictures of food, oddly enough - and they're coming up in future posts. And also probably some drawings of my own - I did a few while I was there. Hopefully the next post will come sooner, now that I've started.

 

Nothing Says "Party" Like Balloons!

Okay, let's get right to it. I said that there would be tons of photos in this post, and I am going to try to keep it to a reasonable number. If you still had dial-up, you'd hate me. (But come on, if you still had dial-up, you'd hate everything.)

Somewhere a while back, Morgan and I had seen a flyer for the Sint-Niklaas Vredefeesten, and it showed pictures of hot-air balloons. As a result, I figured "vrede" had something to do with balloons, but that was entirely wrong. Instead, it means "peace." Anyhow, based on spotty Dutch translation and a picture of a balloon, we found ourselves in Sint-Niklaas for the festival. We were there in spite of the fact that we were leaving for Italy the very next day. The timing was terrible, but: balloons!

The balloon launches were divided up by types of balloons - first the gas balloons, then the mini hot-air balloons, then the regular hot-air ones, and finally the "special form" balloons. We arrived just in time to see the gas balloons floating overhead. I guess these are not nearly as common as the hot-air ones, since there were three of these compared to ... well, let's just say lots more of the regular variety. The balloons were being launched from the main square in the town, which seemed awfully small to me for the purpose, and perhaps a little too surrounded by buildings with pointy tops, but obviously I'm no expert on ballooning.

Once the gas balloons were out of sight, the square came alive with people unrolling their mini balloons. Apparently, these are radio-controlled, so they're like RC airplanes. When I heard "mini," I thought they might be about 5 or 6 feet tall, all told.

I was wrong.

 We didn't get to see any of them being remote-controlled, however. I think it was too windy - no one wants to have their giant mini balloon go floating away! Instead, everyone just walked them around the square, holding onto the baskets.

I'm not sure their intentions are benign.

There were a lot of these suckers.

After all that excitement, we were hungry, so we went to investigate the food booths. What we found was that each side of the square had food that consisted of a hamburger stand (and the burgers looked absolutely terrifying; not anything like a self-respecting American burger), a gyro stand, and an Indonesian food stand. Well, then.

At least it was good Indonesian food.

Properly fortified, we made our way back into the crowd for the main event - the hot-air balloons.

Things started out pretty mellow ...

... but quickly got kind of crazy.

From that moment on, it was pretty much non-stop balloons being dragged over, unrolled, secured to a car, filled with air, having their fires lit, final checks made, ties loosed, and finally ending with waving to the crowd as they lifted off. All of those things, in different stages, all over the square at once. It looked like mass confusion, and I was pretty sure someone's balloon was going to be accidentally burnt to a crisp due to proximity to someone else's flame, but nothing dire happened.

This was only about 15 minutes since the first balloon launched. It was
like a balloon assembly line out there.

See? This looks like a bad idea.

Fast on the heels of the last regular balloons getting filled and ready for takeoff, the special-form balloons took over the stage. These are the ones people really want to see, mostly, because they're the ones that are in all sort of fun shapes.

That form is pretty special, all right.

The "Up" balloon pictured at left was actually pretty cleverly done. It's mostly just a basic balloon printed with an all-over pattern of smaller balloons, but some of them are little pockets that fill with air and give it a bumpy texture.

In the distance is the balloon that was being filled in the last picture, a girl in a flight helmet. I think she goes with the guy with the blue hair, but I'm not sure. The bit of yellow you see in the right corner turned into something kind of spectacular.

You can't tell what yet in this photo, but I'm including it anyway
because it cracks me up.

Ta-da!

I have to ask, would you be willing to go up in the air in that thing? It doesn't exactly look aerodynamic. And I suspect it needs better conditions than it had for really successful flights. As it was, it barely cleared the apartments on the other side of the square before it started descending. For all I know, it ended up in someone's back yard.

Only one more balloon made it off the ground after our princess here, and that was the lion that had been used on all the advertising for the festival.

It's a lion wearing a crown. I guess that makes him a lion king.

If you can believe it, I didn't post all the pictures I like from this experience. In fact, a couple of my favorites are missing because they didn't fit into the narrative. If you're curious, and you're not 100% sick of balloons (and the word "balloon," which I might be), then you should head over to my Flickr to see what you've missed.

And ... Roll Credits

This is the very last part of the Brussels post. Morgan and I dropped Emily off at the airport, and returned to spend the rest of the day in the city. Don't expect much from this post because it really consists of two things (spoiler!): wandering around, and spending the afternoon in a bar (but not just any bar!).

We got back into the city from the airport around lunchtime, which meant finding a place to eat was our first task. Morgan had read about a place that was supposed to serve real American-style hamburgers, so we made that our destination. It was kind of a gloomy day, which seemed appropriate in a way. We walked around a bit, just looking at the different types of architecture.


Brussels is certainly a lot more of a big city and a lot more modern than Gent is, with just over three times the population and the influence of being the seat of the EU and NATO. But there's a good amount of the old world on display, too.

One kid gets a lion, and then every kid has to have a lion.

Oh, and Tintin. There's also plenty of
Tintin on display.

The restaurant where we had lunch (Ellis Gourmet Burgers) did in fact have burgers mostly like home, if a bit on the fancy side. It's also the only place in this country I've ever been served ketchup with my fries. It's funny, because I have never considered myself really "into" burgers, but it was certainly a nice taste of home. I guess it was something I'd missed without even realizing it.

With lunch over, we made our way to the Delirium Tremens bar. As I mentioned in the last post, Delirium Tremens has been voted the best beer in the world. The bar has a different claim to fame, though. They got into the Guinness book of World Records for having the biggest beer selection. They have an absolutely gigantic menu of all their offerings, complete with pictures and descriptions. Even so, you might as well just open randomly to a page and point, really.

This is the Delirium Tremens Nocturnum, along with the standard
Delirium beer, which he poured for me by mistake.

I was absolutely in love with the Delirium Tremens Nocturnum, the dark beer in the photo above. If you're interested in what it tastes like, check out the comments on Beer Snob Central - I mean, Beer Advocate. I kid; I would like to learn to recognize more tastes in beers, but I'm not very good at it just yet. Anyhow, you can get this one bottled in the rest of the world, so you should go and do that.

Don't let the light color fool you; darker doesn't necessarily mean stronger.
Although the Waterloo is a mere 7.5% abv, the Urthel Hop-It is 9.5%

You may notice that we had different types of glasses for each beer (the two from Delirium used the same glass). Belgians are very serious about their glassware. Often, bars will have branded glasses that are used for each beer. In a pinch, there are some broader types that will suffice.

Like I said, they are serious about glassware.

It would have been easy to kill hours (or days) in the Delirium Cafe, and even if you should happen to get bored there, they have other options for you. On their tiny little street are also a Delirium Pub and Hop Loft (special assortment of hoppy beers), a rum bar, and an absinthe bar. We really wanted to check out the absinthe bar, but it didn't open till later in the evening and it was getting to be time to head back home to Gent. So, onto the "to do" list that went, for the next time we're in Brussels.

The next post here will be all about balloons! Prepare for tons of photos.

Brussels, No Sprouts

Before I get into this post, I have to say that I left a couple of things out of the last post about Gent. I tend to use my photos as a way to remember what we did, so when we go places that don't allow photos, I promptly forget about them. But I do want to mention that we saw Van Eyck's Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, which is a big altarpiece whose home is Sint-Baafs cathedral here in Gent. We saw most of it in the cathedral itself, but part of it was at the STAM museum being restored, so we viewed those panels there.

This is just one panel of it, but it's the part with the mystic lamb.

It's interesting to see, and worth the 6 Euros admission, standing in a crowded room with a bunch of other people, and the requirement of absolute silence while you view it.

Okay, on to Brussels. This was, sadly, Emily's last day with us. We'd planned to spend this day in Brussels so that we could just wake up and head to the airport from there instead of having to get up even earlier to accommodate the train ride from Gent. It was a good plan, because 6:45 was plenty early enough to be getting up.

The first spot we visited was the Grand Place. When you look around, it seems that "ornate" was the guiding principle for its design. It was full to overflowing with tourists, which made it difficult to get good photos, but easy to find someone to ask to take a photo of the three of us together. As it turns out, though, not everyone knows how to operate a camera all that well, so that photo will remain unseen. Never fear, though, other photos were taken.

Hello, Kitty.

We wandered in the direction of what is probably Brussels' best-known attraction, which is Mannekin Pis. I'm not sure how I'd feel if my city was known for a statue of a little boy peeing, but Brussels seems to have embraced it fully. Replicas of it fill the souvenir shops; variations on the theme abound everywhere you turn in the city.

How ... appetizing?

And as tacky and/or weird as the statue itself may be, we stumbled upon it at a most fortuitous moment which made it even tackier and weirder, but simultaneously more awesome. Some background: the statue gets periodically dressed up in a variety of costumes. There's a schedule, but we didn't bother to consult it because really, who cares? However, I had read that the statue has an extra-special costume that involves an extra-special ceremony, and as we approached the statue, I realized we had arrived at exactly the right moment.

Here is the statue, urinating normally. (I cannot
believe I just typed that sentence.)

He was wearing the colors and pink elephant logo of Delirium Tremens brewery. Delirium Tremens beer was at some point voted the best beer in the world. (And they don't intend to let you forget it.) Anyhow, there was a group of people dressed in the same outfit as the statue, holding forth about something (I don't speak French), and singing.


After that was done, they sprayed the crowd with water.

Yes, seriously.

Then it was time to really get down to business. They disconnected Manneken Pis from his water supply ... and hooked him up to a keg.

Again, seriously.

The cups they filled from the statue were only for the costumed folks involved in the ceremony, but once they'd hooked him back up to the regular water, they filled cups from the keg and passed out free beer.

Now you're talking.

We were pretty sure we weren't going to top that as far as being equal parts strange and cool, but we ventured on anyway.

Arcade of the Galeries Saint-Hubert

We did some chocolate shopping at Corné in the Galeries Saint-Hubert. It was a brand we hadn't seen in Gent, and we enjoyed their offerings very much.

Dinner was at a restaurant near our hotel, and it was an interesting experience. Although Brussels is in theory the only bilingual city in Belgium, in practice this doesn't mean quite what you'd expect. Signs and other notices are in both French and Dutch, in contrast to the rest of the country where only one language is used. However, French is overwhelmingly the language you'll hear in Brussels. So, back to the restaurant: we were greeted by the hostess with "Bon soir, goedenavond." The menu was in Dutch and French. Since we are considerably more comfortable with Dutch than French (which may tell you something about the state of our French!), we attempted to order in Dutch. What we got was a confused look from the waiter, so we attempted English. More baffled expressions. The absolute confusion on his part continued until we mangled our way through the French versions of what we wanted.

One might think, well, perhaps he doesn't speak Dutch very well. Or English. Maybe, but when a group of Chinese tourists came in to be seated, he spoke English to them. With us, however, it was the all-French hour. We made our way awkwardly through ordering, and were feeling a little unwelcome as he continued to speak English to the Chinese people and French to us, and shortly before our dinners arrived, I realized Emily's place setting didn't have a napkin. So I mustered up my courage and my tiny French vocabulary, and when the waiter returned, I said, "S'il vous plait ... une serviette?" After that, the mood seemed to change. He brought the napkin, and when he brought our meals, he also had a dish of potato croquettes we hadn't asked for. We joked that it seemed to be a "sorry I was being a jerk" offering, and indeed, he was much more friendly the rest of our time there. Go figure.

Unfortunately, the night ended all too soon and the next morning we went to the airport and had to say goodbye to Emily. Like all good vacations, it hadn't felt too hurried while we were seeing everything, but all of a sudden, it was over.

Good times, good times.

Next up: probably more Brussels (Morgan and I spent the rest of the day there after Emily headed home), and then hot air balloons in Sint-Niklaas.