Tromso, Norway

September 17 through 22, 2022

God morgen from Tromso! We bid farewell to Italy with a lovely dinner (finally got to try the veal milanese, which didn't disappoint). We never had a bad meal in Italy 🥘 

Our flight to Tromso was smooth albeit on airplanes with tight baggage space (they made Art gate check his bag, which totally would have fit). Tromso is an interesting place, located above the Arctic Circle, with a somewhat insular community. Their tag line is "Tromso, the Arctic Capital" but I think it should be "Tromso, a pretty chill place to live" or "Tromso, we're pretty chill." 😉 We thought it would be frigid but luckily temps have remained in the 40-50's, and our winter gear arrived just in time (we mailed it to Art's cousin's relatives when we were in Stavanger). There is a crispness to the clean air and nothing is really crowded. Our Airbnb is comfy and cozy and located at the top of a hill 😄 good thing we're still in good shape! There is a grocery store nearby (at the bottom of the hill, of course) so we're getting our steps in and stocking up on food instead of eating out (a much-needed change from Italy). Getting to the town center involves a bus and has been pretty convenient. Public transport has been efficient and relatively cheap throughout Europe (still waiting for the US to catch up 😂).

Among the highlights so far: we took a "minibus chase" tour of the Northern Lights and we got super lucky (!) and saw them; the tour company took photos and they came out way better than mine would have (never could figure out how to take them on my camera); historians will say the lights were just as colorful in person 😉; we bought Art a winter coat 😛; we met up with Art's cousin's girlfriend's daughter's family who lives in Tromso (cool to experience the local/expat view of things) and had reindeer for dinner 🤯; we got to go to a local swimming pool with them as well (the most amazing modern pool/sauna/fitness facility north of the Arctic Circle I've ever seen!); we went to the touristy Magic Ice bar (we just had to) to drink from an ice glass in 20 degrees among ice sculptures; we saw an almost-complete rainbow near our apartment one day 🌈; and we have generally explored the area.

We still have some more touring to do -- a sailing tour for more Northern Lights tonight (it's always debatable if the weather and the clouds will cooperate), a sailing tour of the fjords, checking out the movie theater (is it cooler up here?), and trying out bowling (because why not?). Practically everything we do here can be billed as the "northernmost whatever" so might as well check it out!

It's hard to believe that the High Holidays are this week. It has not been foremost on my mind (LOL) but I do plan to watch services remotely since there are NO synagogues in Tromso (or much of Norway for that matter). L'shana tova!

Photos below, enjoy 💝

Miss you all, Deena and Art

Rainbow in Tromso
 

Northern Lights in Tromso

More Northern Lights
 

Even more Northern Lights :)

Gnomes in town

Tromso city center

Tromso city center

 

the view from our Airbnb 😃

More gnomes

The Arctic Capital

View from Tromso harbor

the "cousins" and their trilingual baby

 

ice glass at Ice Bar

St Moritz, Switzerland

September 16, 2022

Even though I only spent a day in St Moritz, Switzerland, it deserves its own post. For one thing, it was one more country visited, and two, it was amazingly beautiful! I would go again in a heartbeat. Switzerland is just gorgeous and even though everyone on our Canadian Rockies trip kept saying "who needs to go to Switzerland when we have the Rockies right here?" I believe Switzerland wins this contest hands down 😀 

I took a day trip from Milan to a town called Tirano whose claim to fame is having a pretty church and being a gateway stop on the way to Switzerland (oh, and it's also a UNESCO world heritage site 😂). The Bernina express train goes from Tirano to St Moritz and then further afield. There is whole network of stops that stretches from St Moritz to Bern to other parts of the country. One cool thing about my ride was it is one of the highest altitude UNESCO railway lines in the world (almost 7400 ft high!). St Moritz is clearly an enclave for the rich, but is also famous for its ski slopes and for being the site of two winter Olympic games. The weird thing for me was we got 2 hours to wander around but there were no reasonably priced shops or restaurants 😑 I finally found the grocery store and a subpar doner kebab shop and that sufficed. I looked at souvenirs and considered buying a Swiss army knife (no shortage of those in Switzerland) but I was pretty sure it would be confiscated on our very next flight 😜.

The train and the tour was pretty uncrowded (maybe the tourist season is winding down) so we were able to nicely spread out and not climb over each other for photos. It made the 3 hour bus drive back to Milan much less onerous. I would totally come back and do other routes on this train, maybe even in winter when I'm sure it's a whole different kind of beautiful! 

Photos below (which don't really do it justice 🚞). Enjoy!

Deena

Another UNESCO site

Coastal view in St Moritz

St Moritz
 

Train views

More train views

Gets prettier and prettier

Lake along the way

More lake views

Train curve
 

View along the curve

Mountain views

Lake view

Veal Milanese (last photo from Milan LOL)

Tuscany, Italy

September 10 through 15, 2022

When I was younger, my parents used to reference an old movie called "If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium" about some people who went on a whirlwind tour of Europe in just a few weeks (I think; I never actually saw it LOL). Anyway I think about that a lot these days and keep planning to title the blog accordingly but then the "Tuesday" post never quite happens. So let's just call this one "If It's Thursday, It Must Be Italy" 😂 and leave it at that. We do find ourselves losing track of days and dates often, sometimes I'll say to Art "what day do you think it is?" and we'll guess and sometimes we even get it right 😜

We bid farewell to Venice after my birthday and headed to Florence and the surrounding areas. I've kept us busy for the past week 😀 (Art only opted out of two of the 6+ tours I lined up LOL). Among the highlights: we visited the Uffizi art museum which has a vast collection of Italian artists (all the famous ones you can think of - Botticelli, DaVinci, Caravaggio, Michaelangelo, - and then some!); saw the outside and inside of the famous Duomo in Florence, strolled the Ponte Vecchio area, took an all-day trip to see the picturesque villages of Cinque Terre, took a wine tour through Tuscany (I really enjoyed the Chianti 😉), had the best gelato in the world in San Gimigiano (they said it was ...), tried the famous Florentine steak, saw the Leaning Tower of Pisa *and* the statue of Leonardo Fibonacci (whoa), saw The Last Supper painting (did you know you're only allowed to view it for 15 minutes?) and took a day tour from Milan to Lake Como and the charming neighboring villages. Phew!

I have found Italy to be largely friendly but a bit chaotic. The tour guides can be hard to locate, the taxi queues are unclear, the drinks are often lukewarm (including my milk for cereal 😒), ice is hard to come by, and train workers can strike at any moment. But also ... the trains are frequent and go everywhere, the people *try* to speak English to us, and the scenery and landmarks are just beautiful and unbelievably old. Did you know that Italy has more UNESCO world heritage sites than any other country? Art says I should try to see all the UNESCO sites in the world, but I think there are several hundred, so maybe not....?

We loved Venice the best and Florence second-best. We've only seen a day and a half of Milan but it seems more geared toward fashion and money so less of my scene. The boat ride on Lake Como was gorgeous though 💗 Tomorrow I'm going on a train ride on the border of Italy and Switzerland (Art's sitting that one out) which I'm really excited about. [Last time Art stayed back from a tour, he did the laundry, so that was a win-win 💓] 

Fun connection: As it happened, Hannah Naiditch and her boyfriend Mickey were also in Florence this week so thanks to Mara, we were able to meet up for gelato! Crazy how worlds collide and how small it makes the world seem 😀 Also apparently no one told them about our sabbatical plan so they were gob-smacked at everything we told them.

Stressful connection: Over the past few months, I had been emailing Rosanne Welch's cousin in Milan for tips on how to plan our time in Italy. He was super helpful and we decided to meet up when we got here. So yesterday we had agreed to meet at a restaurant near our hotel at 9pm. We went to see the Last Supper at 5pm, then wandered around the Milan Duomo area from 6-8pm, then walked back toward our hotel and got miserably lost (in the dark no less). Our maps didn't help, directions from a nearby store didn't help, hailing a cab was useless, even turning my phone off of airplane mode didn't help ("no service" what??) so I had no way of telling Orazio we'd be late if we made it at all 😓 Super stressful! Eventually, I don't even know how, we found our way back by about 9:15pm and there was Orazio and his family waiting outside our hotel! They were worried about us, texted us several times, called the hotel, texted Rosanne (!), etc. We did go out to dinner and had a lovely time (their kids were so cute and loved Art's magic tricks 😉 which seemed to overcome the language barrier) and all was well. We were so exhausted when we got back, Art even slept a full 8 hours!

Next we head to Tromso, Norway for a week! Stay tuned.

Deena and Art

Tuscany vineyard

Cinque Terre

Yummy pizza

Gelato

Penne bolognese

Tuscany views

Fibonacci (aka Leonardo of Pisa)

That famous tower

Feeding pigeons in Milan

Milan architecture

Local flavor

More yummy pizza

Lake Como views

Lake Como

More lake views

Ponte Vecchio in Florence

Duomo in Florence
 

Venice, Italy

September 6 through 9, 2022

We are now in Italy and have hit the ground running (do I do things any other way?). Venice is our first stop and it was a bit of a culture shock. I think I'd been there once before (in high school?) but I barely remembered it. It is truly a city built on the water and it's currently celebrating its 1600th anniversary. I was amazed by how the city manages its transportation logistics (which are mostly boats). There are pretty much no vehicles on the island and everyone gets around by water bus or water taxi or on foot. I'm sure the economy lives off of tourists and there were certainly plenty of those 😀 I was also amazed at how much of it looks ancient (and in disrepair) but I guess it adds to the authenticity and charm 🙃

We spent the past few days exploring and taking tours -- to Burano (famous for lace-making), Murano  (famous for glass-blowing), the Jewish quarter, Cortina and the Dolomites (a world UNESCO heritage site famous for its breathtaking mountain ranges). Full days but so worth it. Art even stayed awake for most of it 😉 I really enjoyed the tours, especially seeing the glass-blowing in action. Murano glass is world famous and of course we had to support the local economy (especially since they told us it was the only place to buy authentic glass items 😉). And I just think glass-blowing is magical to watch ⭐ By the way Cortina is where the 2026 Winter Olympics will be; apparently they have some world-class ski slopes on those mountains!

We have also tasted much of the local cuisine (largely Italian food of course). Historians will say it was the best pasta we've ever had 😁 but it was pretty amazing actually. We collectively had spaghetti with marinara sauce, gnocchi bolognese, pizza, spaghetti carbonara, and wienerschnitzel (and lots of gelato!). I also made a point of getting to the supermarket for some alternative snacks so we have less-filling options to eat. It was a good call and our hotel fortunately had an empty fridge for us to use.

My birthday (9/9) started off with a hitch because there was an unexpected train strike and the train is the main way to get from our hotel (in Venezia Mestre) to the island of Venice. Almost all of the trains were canceled! We somehow managed to catch one of the few trains there 😟 and we had a lovely day. We got to take a long-anticipated gondola ride which was super romantic (and pricey and kinda short 😂) and we had a fantastic Italian dinner. We wandered all over the island which has millions of alleyways and makes it very easy to get lost (in a good way, I guess). If you don't have anywhere to be, it's fine (and fun?) to be lost. Not all who wander are lost... We also discovered the joys of Italian bureaucracy while trying to buy stamps at the local post office (not an easy or short process by any means), but successful in the end!

Fun little aside: On our first day's tour, we had to figure out the whole train-boat thing, which we did, but we didn't realize that they are super strict at requiring masks on the boats (and trains). This was not a problem fro me since I *always* have mine, but Art forgot his. He managed to get on the boat anyway but when he got up to ask if our stop was next, they told him he needed a mask. When he said he didn't have one, they kicked him off at the next stop 😟 Luckily it was only one stop from the one we needed, so he sprinted over there and I met up with him (it was also helpful that he got to the meetup spot before me to let the tour guide know I was coming shortly). The mask mandate is taken very seriously around here; maybe COVID is still a real problem or maybe they can't risk outbreaks on their tourist island? And by the way, buying a mask here wasn't so easy; there are no CVS or Target shops anywhere.

Weird little aside: In the Jewish quarter, Art saw two Jewish guys (they were wearing tzitzit) tossing around a football. He went over to chat with them (why?) and somehow they convinced him to wrap tefillin and listen to them blow shofar (huh?). I stayed at a distance but honestly found the whole thing very strange. (The rest of our Jewish quarter walk was just lovely...)

Heading to Florence by train tomorrow, but could have easily spent a week in Venice!

Deena and Art

Trying the local gelato
 

Views on Burano/Murano
 

Murano/Burano views

Birthday gondola ride

Venice canals

More beautiful canals

Boat ride in Venice (one of many)

Dolomites tour

Dolomites views

Dolomites beauty!

 

 

Wrapping tefillin in Venice ;)