Holidays in Germantown, MD

After two weeks in Europe, we returned to Germantown, MD, to hang out with Chris's family at their new condo by the lake. We baked and cooked a ton: gingerbread cookies, molasses cookies, banana bread, pumpkin chocolate chip pancakes, aloo saag, butternut squash soup, and cucumber yogurt salad.

We also saw South Pacific at the Kennedy Performing Arts Center, and got ourselves hooked on Firefly.

But probably the most memorable theme of the holidays was "throwing things".

Chris's parents' new condo had an upstairs loft, a great place for launching stuffed animals at victims below. And the lake had a thin layer of ice on it, so we spent a great deal of time throwing rocks, logs, and basketballs into the lake, so we could hear the space-agey rattling when the ripples cracked the ice in waves.

Best sign we saw by the lake:

ICE NEVER SAFE. A little over-general maybe?

We also saw a hilarious bear at Cold Stone, lol.

A few more pictures of the lake and our first GeoCaching experience here.

Vacation in Rome, Continued

Appian Way and Catacombs of San Callisto

After seeing so much impressive art and architecture, we decided to spend some time visiting Roman feats of engineering, particularly the aqueducts and the ancient "queen of roads," the Appian Way.

Surprisingly, chunks of the ancient aqueducts are still in use (though this one below probably wasn't one of them).

The visit to the Appian Way was a near catastrophe. Various tour sites recommended taking the 218 bus from the San Giovanni Metro stop, but we looked at the map and said, "Hey, that looks like a nice stroll through the park, let's just walk!"

Bad choice. It turns out the Via Appia Antica is now used as a normal road, with ten-foot walls on either side, no sidewalk, and an endless stream of cars whizzing by at terrifying speeds. We were walking on a narrow cobblestone highway, and the cobblestones quickly lost their charm. My feet and ankles were screaming, it was getting dark, and prospects of getting hit by a car before seeing anything cool were steadily increasing.

Minutes before 5 p.m. we finally reached the Catacombs of San Callisto (St. Callixtus). The tour guides were locking up the shop before they noticed us and hustled us to the entrance. They almost didn't let me use the bathroom, until I set my foot down and said I wasn't going on the tour unless I got to go. (Yes, I was fairly grumpy by that point.)

As the tour began, I started to freak out. Everyone else had left, it was completely dark, and we were the last people going underground, into a crypt with miles and miles of tunnels. All the bodies had long since been removed, but in one of the holes was a marble statue of a corpse, a martyred Christian woman (St. Cecilia) who had been hit on the neck with an axe, and left to bleed to death over the course of three days as she was buried alive.

Chris thought the catacombs were the coolest thing ever. I was completely creeped out. Either way, it was very memorable.

We weren't allowed to take pictures, but if you want to see some, click on the links I added above, or do a Google Image Search for "catacombs of san callisto".

On the plus side, we gave our tour guide a nice tip for staying late for us, and he told us how to catch the 218 bus back to Rome. No more cobblestone hiking, thank goodness.

Ostia Antica

Ostia Antica is a remarkably well-preserved ancient Roman city, much like Pompeii, except without the volcano. It's located on the former mouth of the Tiber River, before natural phenomena caused the river to change course.

Really cool. It was especially lovely to be outside and wandering slowly through a quiet ruin, far from the bustle and traffic in Rome. Ostia Antica was an easy 1.5 hour train ride from Rome and well worth the visit.

St. Paul's Basilica

On the train ride back to Rome from Ostia Antica, we hopped off a few stops early to see the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls (Basilica di San Paolo).

I was curious why St. Peter's Basilica got all the attention, when Paul wrote more books of the Bible. The answer, I think, is that Paul was buried "outside the walls" of Rome, and that his basilica was sacked more frequently. In addition, 1823, a fire started by a negligent roof repair worker practically burned it to the ground.

We had a debate about whether it's more sad for an architectural wonder to be destroyed maliciously, or by accident. I somehow felt more sad that it was destroyed during modern times, by people who were supposedly taking care of it. Congratulations, you just burned down St. Paul's Basilica! "Need a moment?"

Anyways, the St. Paul's Basilica is being restored now, and recently (as in 2009) they carbon-dated the purple linen and bone fragments in Paul's tomb and confirmed that they're indeed from the first century. Bible stories seem so much more real when you're staring at the sarcophagus of the man who wrote Romans and Corinthians!

Musei Capitolini

On the last day, we considered going to Florence, but it was somewhat rainy, so we decided to see the Musei Capitolini. These were some of my favorites.

Medusa. (Wouldn't this be a great profile pic?)

She-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus.

Marcus Aurelius.

Funny epiphany moment: When museums label statues as "larger than life" they are not being cliche or making references to the Backstreet Boys. They actually mean that the statue is larger than the life-sized version of whatever is being sculpted.

And that's basically it for our trip!

Hotel Artemide

For anyone who's planning a trip to Rome and wondering where to stay, we thought our hotel, Hotel Artemide, was very good.

Pros:

• Location. Hotel Artemide is a ten-minute walk from Termini Station, which is where the train from Fiumicino Airport (FCO) stops. Actually, it's a ten-minute walk from basically everything we wanted to see, except Vatican City. The Colosseum, Pantheon, Spanish Steps, and Trevi Fountain were all easy to get to by walking.
• Breakfast. Every morning, we were greeted with an impressive spread of pastries, donuts, croissants, cheeses, meats, scrambled eggs, sausages, poached apples or pears, fruit salads, yogurts, and juices. The tea and cappuccino were great too! We really looked forward to Hotel Artemide's big yummy, and best of all, complimentary breakfasts every morning.
• Rooms. If I remember correctly, we got a free upgrade on our room, so we had a nice amount of space. There was a mini-fridge with a free mini-bar that got restocked every day! We especially liked the apple-banana juice and the Euro-style Fanta (that tasted a lot more like Orangina). The free cookies and wafers also got restocked everyday.
• Service. The staff was fluent in English and very nice about recommending restaurants and helping us get a cab to the airport when we left.
• Price. We paid $216 / night, which I think was pretty reasonable for what we got.

Cons:

• The bathroom smelled a little funny. I suspect that maybe some bad air was coming in through a vent or pipe. But airing it out for a few minutes basically got rid of the smell.

Good restaurant near Hotel Artemide – Berzitello. The front desk recommended this restaurant to us the first night we were in Rome, and I liked it a lot. We had buffalo-style mozzarella with tomato, and very good spinach and cheese ravioli. They apparently specialize in seafood, which we didn't realize at the time. It was a nice casual place very close to the hotel, and totally hit the spot after a long, tiring day of travel.

Okay restaurants near Hotel Artemide – La Taverna dei Monti, and Gran Caffe Strega.

At La Taverna dei Monti, Chris really liked what he ordered, which was a pork and bacon dish. I ordered lobster and pasta, but it was kind of gross. I was expecting lobster tail meat, but I was served a cut-open lobster head, which didn't have much meat and was very fishy-smelling. I wasn't very hungry to begin with, but I couldn't eat more than a few bites of my food, even to be polite. La Taverna dei Monti is very highly reviewed on TripAdvisor though, so perhaps I just ordered the wrong thing.

On the bright side, we were served limoncello after the meal! The limoncello was delicious, like drinking liquid lemon sunshine. We'd never had it before, but it's made from soaking lemon zest in some neutral alcohol like vodka and adding tons of sugar, so it's very citrusy and sweet, not sour or bitter at all, since no lemon juice is involved.

At Strega, the pizza we ordered was decent, but the house wine was so bad that Chris got a horrible hangover and couldn't face any more alcohol for two days afterwards. And he only had one glass!

I'll end this post by recommending...

A fantastic pizza restaurant in Trastevere – Dar Poeta. We ordered the "Dar Poeta" pizza and loved it. They describe their pizzas as being neither thin nor thick crust, but something perfect in the middle. I'm salivating just thinking about it. If you go to Dar Poeta, definitely save room for the nutella calzone for dessert too!

Vacation in Rome

We saw and ate so much stuff in Rome that it's a dilemma how I should write about all of it! But I guess I'll just dive in and tell all our most memorable stories. For the visual learners, here are our pictures from Rome.

We had fun exploring the city with Andrew and his girlfriend Lindsay during the first weekend. The two of them were studying abroad in London for the semester and basically went to a new country every weekend. (I think 22 countries was their final total?! So envious!!) Anyways, they kindly waited until their very last week in Europe to visit Rome, so their trip could could overlap with ours. Yay!

We spent Saturday at the Vatican. Various friends had advised us to find a tour guide, because as a group of four art-challenged engineers, we'd have no clue what we were looking at. We failed to do any advance planning for this though, so we ended up finding some British tour guide who approached us off the street. I was having flashbacks of Slumdog Millionaire and hoping fervently our metaphoric shoes wouldn't be stolen. But it out mostly turned out okay...

The tour guide's first comment, after finding out that everyone in the group was from the US, UK, or Australia, was about how nice it was to have an all-Anglo-Saxon group. I said, "Er, I think this is the first time anyone has called me an Anglo-Saxon." He replied with something like "well, actually, the true definition of "Anglo-Saxon" is really inclusive of everyone!"

Hm.

To be fair, the Wikipedia definition of Anglo-Saxon says that the term "can be used in a variety of contexts, often to identify the English-speaking world's distinctive language, culture, technology, wealth, markets, economy, and legal systems." Suffice it to say, we had an early warning to take what he said with a grain of salt.

I'm not sure how much of our tour was actually lies, but it was at least more interesting than us going around and thinking "hmmm, and this must be another painting...". Plus the tour guide legitimately seemed to know a lot about art (based on my extensive high school Art 1A training).

Both the ceilings and floors in the museum were surprisingly gorgeous.

The Sistine Chapel might have been more awesome with less noisy people and less security people shouting at the noisy people to shut up. Sadly, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside the actual Sistine Chapel, but here's Michaelangelo's Pieta, which we spent a LOT of slides on in Art 1A, so I know it's important.

Of all the lovely sights we saw in Rome, I think I was most impressed with the size and grandeur of St. Peter's Basilica.

Decent restaurant near St. Peter's Square (Piazza San Pietro): Arlu. This place was recommended by our tour guide. We stopped by for lunch and I got some excellent spinach and cheese gnocci there.

Later that night, we got some gelato (mmm, stracciatella) and walked to the Trevi Fountain. I had major deja vu when I saw the Trevi Fountain.

I swore I'd seen it before, despite never having been to Rome.

Me: "HEY!! Maybe I saw it in Las Vegas!!"
Me: "Yeah maybe at the Venetian or something!!"
Chris: "Um, try Caesar's Palace?"

And indeed, there is a fake Trevi Fountain at Caesar's Palace.

The Pantheon was under construction and had a nice two-face effect going.

A good restaurant near the Pantheon: Trattoria Dal Cav Gino – Warm, cozy, friendly restaurant in a little alley. I don't remember exactly what we ordered, but it was a very nice meal and the prices were very reasonable. It's about a five minute walk north of the Pantheon.

A GREAT restaurant near the Pantheon: Fortunato Al Pantheon – This was our favorite restaurant of the trip! I'm still salivating at the memory of what I ordered. Well actually they ran out of what I ordered (originally pasta with porcini mushrooms). They offered me pasta with artichoke and bacon instead. I realize this sounds completely plain and unexciting, but it was REALLY perfect. The artichoke was delicately done (cut up nicely, no chewy bits), and the bacon in Rome is more fatty and very flavorful. I wish I knew what they did so I could make this.

Chris ordered a steak in cream sauce with green peppercorns. The steak was so tender, and the cream sauce with peppercorns was divine.

We highly recommend Fortunato Al Pantheon if you're looking for a restaurant near the Pantheon. It's just a hundred meters away from the Pantheon, but shockingly not filled with obvious tourists. The meal was more expensive than other restaurants we went to but certainly not bad compared to anything in Zurich. Our waiter was super polite and helpful. The patrons were dressed nicely (business suits etc.) so we felt slightly underdressed in our nicest casual clothes, but this place was well worth the trip.

Okay, enough ranting about food (for the moment), haha.

The next day, we saw the Colosseum, which was much, bigger than I expected.

The audio tour claimed that in ancient times, they could probably jam in a maximum of 70,000 spectators. That means in comparison to other pro sports stadiums, the Colosseum might rank higher than Candlestick Park, whose capacity is a piddly 69,732. And Ancient Romans built this thing by stacking rocks on top of each other. Mind-blowing.

Also of note: I almost got robbed while taking the picture above.

People warned us repeatedly to watch out for pick-pockets in Rome, and it actually happened. I was listening to an audio tour with one hand, taking pictures with the other, and a bunch of kids were bumping my legs and purse. Perfect target right? By the time I got suspicious about the extra jostling, I whipped my head back just in time to see a man snatch his hand back from under my purse flap, turn around with his big black leather bag, and walk quickly away.

Scary. But at least I noticed before he took anything. Whew.

Good restaurant near the Colosseum: Naumachia (Na Machia?) – This was a really nice find just a couple blocks away from the Colosseum. We were too hungry to do much research on where to eat, so we wandered resolutely past all the restaurants trying to hustle tourists into their restaurants, and eventually stopped at Naumachia, precisely because they just said hello, and didn't try to push us in. I ordered the special, which was a lasagna in cream sauce with porcini mushrooms. Chris snarfed half of my meal it was so good.

After lunch, we went to the Basilica of San Clemente. This was an awesome layer cake of a church. It's a 12th century medieval church, built on top of a 4th century basilica / pagan mithraic temple, built on top of an ancient Roman citizen's home, which was in turn built on top of an underground river. We went all the way down to the bottom and saw the water flowing underneath.

What we still haven't figured out is how all these buildings accumulated enough dirt that subsequent inhabitants found it easier to build on top rather than demolish and start over. Could it really just be dirt carried in by the Tiber? Or dust blowing in?

Later in the afternoon, walked quickly around the Roman Forum, but it was raining, and Andrew and Lindsay had a flight to catch, so we didn't stay long. Thus ends the first half of our trip to Rome; I'm going to take a break and continue in a little bit.

Best picture of the first half of the trip: Italian leather roses!!

Some poor cow got made into ROSES.

Favorite Restaurants in Zurich

I can't believe it's 2011, and vacation's almost over! I guess that means it's a good time to jot down the highlights of our trip before we forget.

We spent about a week in Zurich, mostly working, but also wandering around town and eating. The sights were nice, especially since I'd never been in a European city before. (Wow, cobblestones!) But piggies that we were, the most memorable part was probably the food, so I'll write about the restaurants we went to and liked.

Hiltl

This is the best vegetarian restaurant I've ever eaten at. Granted, I don't eat at many vegetarian restaurants, but this was very yummy. Founded in 1898, Hiltl is also the oldest vegetarian restaurant in Europe. I ordered the Jalapeños and Salad, which was fried cheesy jalapenos with delicious quinoa, red rice, and green salad and guacamole.

Chris ordered the Green Thai Curry, which he said was good, but since he caught a cold, we should note that he couldn't taste much.

Le Dézaley

Since Switzerland is supposed to be known for its cheese, we decided we HAD to try some fondue. Mmmmmmmm!!! (Also, here's a fun fact. The Swiss don't call their cheese Swiss cheese; it's called Emmental.)

I liked the casual atmosphere at Le Dézaley (not too dressy), and our waiter was a nice smiley guy. We followed the advice of this nice blog post about Le Dézaley, and ordered the Käsefondue (cheese fondue) and Geschnetzeltes Kalbfleisch nach Zürcher Art mit Rösti (sliced veal "Zurich style" with rösti). We also ordered a few extra sides – potatoes, bread, and an assortment of pickled gherkins, baby onions, and baby corn to go with the fondue.

We devoured the fondue. We ate the entire pot of cheese, and then the waiter scraped out the bottom of the pot to give us two more bites of delicious chewy cheesy goodness. He mentioned that lots of people think that's the best part, haha.

I was expecting to dislike the pickles (because I don't like pickles), but these were a very pleasant surprise. Seems like the Swiss know how to make pickles better than Vlasic. I suppose that shouldn't surprise me.

The veal and rösti were also very good, although we were already feeling very full by the time it came. Veal is probably not our favorite meat, but it was very tender and the cream sauce was tasty.

Rösti, I learned, is a traditional Swiss dish that's exactly like hash browns, except that they sometimes put more cheese, meat, and seasoning on top.

The total bill (including the wine) came out to be around CHF 130, so this was probably the most expensive meal that Chris and I have ever eaten together, but hey, I guess this is what eating in Zurich is like!

Sternen Grill

Chris read that this was one of the best sausage stands in Zurich, and since they're supposed to be good at sausage in this part of the world, we were excited to give it a try. I was too hungry to take pictures, but you can see some on the Sternen Grill's photo gallery. Really excellent sausages. I thought the white ones were especially good.

Sprüngli

Sprüngli is a chain of cafes in Zurich. The luxembergerli were just heavenly. They're like tiny French macaroons, but the famous flavor at Sprüngli is champagne. The hazelnut and chocolate were terrific too. I really wish I could have brought some home to share with everyone, but they're very delicate and only last a couple days.

Luckily, since Sprüngli is the same company as Lindt, they also make delicious champagne-flavored chocolate, so we could send that instead!