article
aquamacs 2.0 elisp fun
- I cannot get MMM (multi-major-mode) to work properly. I wouldreally like to have both HTML and Javascript colorized properly whenI'm working on my Django projects. If anyone has any advice ongetting MMM to work right in emacs 23 I would really appreciate apointer.
- Completion in iPython does not work right. Instead of completingin the ipython shell it just indents more.
(defun muse-bold-word ()
(interactive)
(muse-wrap-with-string "**" 2)
)
(defun muse-ital-word ()
(interactive)
(muse-wrap-with-string "*" 1)
)
(defun muse-tt-word ()
(interactive)
(muse-wrap-with-string "=" 1)
)
(defun muse-wrap-with-string (str len)
(if mark-active
(progn
(kill-region (point) (mark))
(let ((myword (car kill-ring)))
(insert (concat str myword str) )))
(let ((myStr (thing-at-point 'word)))
(if myStr
(let ((myBounds (bounds-of-thing-at-point 'word)))
(kill-region (car myBounds) (cdr myBounds))
(insert (concat str myStr str)))
(progn
(insert (concat str str))
(goto-char (- (point) len)) ) ) ))
)
(define-key muse-mode-map `[(,osxkeys-command-key b)] 'muse-bold-word)
(define-key muse-mode-map `[(,osxkeys-command-key i)] 'muse-ital-word)
(define-key muse-mode-map `[(,osxkeys-command-key k)] 'muse-tt-word)
3 days of r&r in sedona
After all of our hiking and rafting adventure we are ending the trip with 3 days of rest and relaxation in Sedona. Our major activities here are a Pink Jeep tour, Golfing, and a massage for the women in the family. Otherwise we are doing lots of pool time and have even played a hand or two of 500. Sedona is known for its red rock and beautiful scenery, along with crystal shops and the Ye Olde UFO Shoppe.
We did the Broken Arrow tour with Pink Jeep, which was fun. I think we would have appreciated it even more if we had not already done all the hiking through Zion, Bryce, and the Grand Canyon. Nevertheless it was a good excursion. While we were out there the kids decided to do some rock climbing. Don’t let the pictures fool you this was dangerous stuff:
This morning Josh and I played a round of golf at the Sedona Country Club which is part of the Hilton complex. It was a very nice course and Josh and I both played well. It was a great morning to go as there was nobody in front of us and we were able to play at our own pace and move around the course pretty quickly.
Josh got a new shirt and hat out of the deal as the club had a dress code and Josh did not have any clean shirts that would get him on the tee. I played so well that I had to buy a new shirt to commemorate the occasion. It was 25% off for fathers day so happy fathers day to me.
Jane and Kaia both had facials and hot stone massages. I can’t go into any more detail about that. :-) But they were both glowing and relaxed when they got back.
Tonight we are going to go out for some barbeque and then come back to the room and get packed for the final leg of our journey. Its been a great trip!
grand canyon - river to rim
The call for “Hooaaahhht Coffeeeeee” went out at 4:30AM. It was already twilight in the East and it was time to pack up camp and get on the rafts for the final 3/4 mile of our journey. We had all come a long way on this trip. From the first night where everyone managed to find a place to sleep in private, this last night looked like a refugee camp. We didn’t have much room and everyone slept right next to everyone else. Here you can see everyone’s gear and a corner of what we at first called the “Miller plot” and then renamed to Miller Estate.
Here you can see the bridge that connects the Kaibab trail from the North to the South wall. We went a little further downstream to Phantom Ranch and crossed our own bridge.
The facts of the Phantom Ranch trail are as follows: Its a 10 mile hike from the river to the rim. It is a 1 mile vertical difference from the river to the rim. Now the mathematically inclined will say that is only a 10% grade. Not a problem… It was a challenge. They tell you to have two one liter water bottles and to fill them full at the bottom. there is a halfway stop called Indian Gardens with a water station and a 3 mile (from the top) stop with a water station and a 1.5 mile stop with a water station. We filled our water at every stop. You do drink a LOT of water on this hike. You are also advised to rest for 30 minutes at each stop if you are having difficulty.
We left the river at 7AM and were to Indian Gardens by 10:30. This is going well we thought. Unfortunately when you get to Indian Gardens you have only gone 1/4 of the vertical distance. We finally arrived at the rim at 3:30. We made a lot of extra stops on the last half of the hike. Jane did not drink enough water during the first half and was struggling a bit during the second part of the hike.
In fact with half a mile remaining she was completely pooped. We asked one of our fellow hikers to send Josh back to carry Jane’s pack the last half mile. Josh wins the good sport award for the day.
Now you might wonder is the hike worth it for all that work? Yes, absolutely you get to see the Canyon in a way that you just can’t imagine by looking down from the rim. Here you can see some of the trail we came up. But not all the way to the river that is hidden in the distance.
Pictures don’t do justice to the amazing beauty of this corner of the world. We are all really glad we did this trip. As I’m writing this from the comfort of the Sedona Hilton, I’m inspired by the message on my plastic Gin and Tonic glass which says that “Travel is not about getting from point A to B, Travel should renew your zest for life.” This trip has certainly done that.
down the colorado into the canyon
For three days we had a great raft trip with Wilderness River Adventures. The trip was amazing! For three days we saw the Grand Canyon in a way that few are lucky enough to see, from the bottom up. As we rafted along we literally saw the history of the world from today to 2 billion years ago. The beauty of this place is just awe inspiring.
We began our trip at Lee’s Ferry, just south of Page Arizona and ended up at Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. We shared the trip with another small group (Rocky, Joe, and Denise) and one large group from Lafayette College.
The Lafeyette group really made the trip for us. The group of Geology students was led by Dr. Larry Malinconico (Dr. M) and Dr. Dave Sunderlin. In my slightly biased opinion I thought that Luther students were the friendliest students anywhere. The group from Lafeyette taught me that there are other colleges with really great students. Not only did we learn a lot from lurking in the back of the impromptu lectures but we had a great time getting to know them all.
Here are a couple of examples of how beautiful the canyon is. Here we are in calm water:
Here was one of our short day hikes. You can see our rafts to the right.
Of course no rafting trip would be complete without the opportunity to get wet, which we are about to do here:
And no trip report from me would be complete without a review of the food. In a word, awesome. Here are the two swampers (Kari and Everett) preparing our last dinner. Spaghetti and meatballs, or Alfredo Sauce. We had Salmon and rice one night, grilled New York Strips and Baby Red Potatoes another night. It was all “good eats”.
The leaders of the trip were Richard and Matt. Two excellent raft drivers. Not sure what the proper term is for the captain of a giant rubber raft. But they got us safely through some really “fun” rapids. At one point the Miller family did experience a collective flashback to being stranded in the Everglades when our raft got hung up on Whale Rock. This was right in the middle of the biggest rapids of the trip and we were just starting to wonder how we were going to get rescued when the raft freed itself and we were on our way.
The sleeping accomodations were better than expected by my standards. For three nights we just slept on our mats under the stars. No tents, just sleeping bags, tarps and mats. It was great. Since Arizona does not observe daylight savings time, it was dark by 8:30PM and light by 5:00 AM. So it was an early to bed early to rise kind of trip. One night I woke up at midnight and got out the camera. This picture doesn’t really do justice to the beauty of the night sky in Arizona but it gives you some idea of what we saw from our sleeping bags:
The last day of our trip we got up at 4:30AM and went about half a mile downstream to Phantom Ranch. From there we hiked 10 miles linearly and 1 mile vertically to get out of the Grand Canyon. I’ll cover that experience in another post.
bryce canyon sunrise -- antelope canyon
It was an early morning today. The alarm went off at 5:30 and we were out of the hotel by 5:43. We made a short drive up to Bryce Point in twilight. The temperature was only 37 degrees but it did not seem too cold. We waited a few minutes for the sun to come up over the distant horizon. When it did we were rewarded with some amazing colors in the canyon:
After sunrise we had breakfast at the hotel and then headed south toward Page. We had a slot canyon tour booked for 10:30 Arizona time so we thought we had plenty of time. Unfortunately we ran into an accident that closed highway 89. We had a nice chat with an over-the-road truck driver as we waited for the ambulance and fire crew to clear the road.
We still made it in time for our Antelope Canyon tour. This was an amazing photographic experience. I took way to many pictures but I’m going to have a hard time picking out 10 favorites from the 200 I took. Here’s one as a sample.
After checking out the view of the Colorado River we relaxed at the hotel around the pool. We just got back from our orientation meeting tonight. We got our waterproof bags to pack all our luggage in. We are all looking forward to the raft trip starting at 8:15 tomorrow morning. This will be my last entry until we hike out of the Grand Canyon four days from now.
angel's landing
Our first day of hiking in Zion National Park was great! Here is our goal for the day:
From the bus stop known as “The Grotto” we hiked 2 miles and 1,800 feet up to the top of Angel’s Landing. The hike to the saddle point in the middle of the picture was a fairly easy hike on nice wide switchbacks. The rest of the hike was more exciting. The park service has helpfully installed chain handrails to help you climb over any rough spots or to help pull yourself up the steep bits.
Here’s a picture of the Miller’s at the saddle point:
Here you can see an example of what the last part of Angel’s landing hike looks like:
Here’s a picture of Kaia and I at the top
phoenix to springdale
Long day of traveling today. Left Minneapolis at 9:05 this morning and just got into our room in Springdale UT at 11:00 Mountain time, or midnight back home. Actually we checked in a while ago but went straight to the Bit and Spur to have some dinner since our last meal was at Schlotzky’s in Phoenix.
The GPS said it would be a 7 hour drive. it turned out to be longer than that because we took a side trip to the Desert View overlook in the Grand Canyon. Here is a view from the Desert View of the Colorado River. We’ll be rafting down that river and into the canyon in just a few days. We will be able to see the watchtower from the river on our way into the canyon!
It was still quite a drive from the Grand Canyon to Springdale UT. Along the way we crossed the colorado river just south of where we will get on the raft.
We drove through Zion National Park in the dark. We are all looking forward to a great day of hiking in Zion tomorrow.
mit uses python instead of scheme for intro cs
I’ve seen several interesting blog posts related to MIT switching from Scheme to Python for their intro course. This is really interesting to me since SICP is one of my favorite CS books of all time. Nevertheless I’m glad to see leading institutions change to my favorite language.
Paraphrase of Gerald Sussman’s remarks
Dan Weinreb’s blog
vpython version 5
The other day I discovered that the folks working on VPython have been very busy over the last couple of years. I had given up on VPython because the Mac distribution was so difficult to use. It required the X windows server and one point and lots of other extra junk at other times. But now things are easy! There is a great installer package and it just works.
For those of you who have not heard of VPython before it is a 3D graphics module called visual built on top of Python and OpenGL. You can do a lot of nice 3D graphics very simply with VPython. Its great for education in math and physics and introductory computer science.
So as an experiment I built a turtle graphics module on top of VPython. I use turtle graphics a lot in teaching but the TKinter turtles all suffer from some event loop problems when you use them with IDLE. VPython does not suffer from this problem plus gives you a lot of other cool benefits. One of the benefits is that the window resizes automatically for you based on the units you use in your application. Want to draw a picture at the atomic level of detail? No problem, want to draw planets circling each other? Again no problem.
Here’s a screen capture of a fractal tree created in 3-D using my new turtle.
Here’s the VPython turtle code:
def tree(t,trunkLength):
if trunkLength < 5:
return
else:
turnDz = random.randint(20,40)
turnDx = random.randint(20,40)
trunkShort = random.randint(10,20)
t.width(trunkLength/10.0)
if trunkLength < 25:
t.color(color.green)
else:
t.color((174/255.0,145/255.0,0))
t.forward(trunkLength)
# right trunk
t.right(turnDz,ZAXIS)
tree(t,trunkLength-trunkShort)
# left trunk
t.left(2turnDz,ZAXIS)
tree(t,trunkLength-trunkShort)
# front trunk
t.right(turnDz,ZAXIS)
t.right(turnDx,XAXIS)
tree(t,trunkLength-trunkShort)
# back trunk
t.left(2turnDx,XAXIS)
tree(t,trunkLength-trunkShort)
# restore
t.right(turnDx,XAXIS)
t.backward(trunkLength)
If you want to check out the turtle module and play with it, you are welcome to do so: hg clone bitbucket.org/bnmnetp/v… Or send me mail.
book plug
Here’s a little plug for our book from our Colleague Mark Guzdial at Georgia Tech. This was written last September right after the book was published but I didn’t find out about it until this morning. Thanks Mark!
In addition, David and I have started a new blog to post corrections and updates to Python Programming in Context Over here If you are already using the book please check it out.
remember the milk
In the past year, I've been a passionate supporter of three task management apps. OmniFocus, Things, and Remember The Milk (RTM). I've switched back and forth between them trying to decide which one works best for me. I think I'm finally ready to commit to RTM as my long term solution and here's why.
All three apps have an iPhone component and a desktop component. Although the primary RTM interface on the desktop is through the browser there are plenty of Widgets and other desktop friendly ways to access RTM on the desktop. What I really like about RTM for the desktop is its openness. In terms of the ability to dump stuff into RTM its cloud computing model really works.
With both OmniFocus and Things I have to be on the same subnet as my laptop in order for the wifi syncing between my Ipod Touch and the desktop to work. Unfortunately outside of my house this is rarely the case. With RTM I can be anywhere. That means I'm free to roam anywhere in the world with my iPod Touch and I know that when I dump a task or note into RTM it will be there on my desktop or the web interface when I come back to it. If I forget my iPod Touch (a very unlikely event) I can still dump tasks into RTM from any browser.
The second thing I really like about RTM is its openness. As you can see from my posts below I have developed my own desktop interface to RTM using the Python bindings and LaunchBar. The three things that I want to do most often, with as little fuss as possible are:
- Add a task
- Mark a task as complete
- display tasks
With my LaunchBar integration I don't ever have to take my fingers off the keyboard to do any of those tasks.
When I'm using my iPod Touch, I think that the RTM client is the best and most fully featured of the bunch. Since RTM has been around as a service for longer than either Things or OmniFocus they have had more time to work on polishing their iApp. It already supports tagging and searching. Things that are coming in the other apps but are already here for RTM on the iPod today.
Because RTM has an open API there are lots of other nice interfaces for you to use that make it easy to dump tasks and notes into your inbox. Do you Twitter? Send a direct message to your RTM inbox. Do you Text? Send using the Twitter RTM gateway you can text directly to your inbox. Email? yes. You can even email a whole list of stuff to RTM as a way to quickly import a long list of tasks or packing items you have copied from somewhere else. Jott, yes. The possibilities are endless and expanding all the time.
python + growl + remember the milk = launchbar task management
Intro
Once I could add tasks to my RTM account through LaunchBar I wanted a way to quickly pull up a view of what tasks were due today through LaunchBar. The Growl library provides a nice way of doing this.
The overview is as follows: Activate LaunchBar and type due. This due is installed as a search shortcut and you can search for today, tomorrow, or all (abbreviations are also easy). The search shortcut runs the python script that searches your tasks on Remember the Milk. For each task it finds it puts up a sticky Growl notification so you get a nice list of tasks on your screen. You could easily customize the script to put all the tasks in a single notification but I like them separate.
Since the Growl module registers this script as an application you can also use the Growl Preference Pane to customize the look and feel or even the location of your notifications. You can also customize whether you want the notifications to be sticky or not.
The Code
Here is the code for doing all of this. It makes use of the filter parameter on getList.
#!/usr/bin/env python
from rtm import *
import sys
import Growl
def sendNotify(ts):
if type(ts.task) == list:
for j in range(len(ts.task)):
notifier.notify("today","Task Due: "+ts.task[j].due[:10],ts.name,sticky=True)
else:
notifier.notify("today","Task Due: "+ts.task.due[:10],ts.name,sticky=True)
if len(sys.argv) == 2:
command = sys.argv[1]
else:
command = "today"
apiKey = "get your own"
secret = "this too"
token = "You will create this"
name = "RTMDue"
notifications = ["today","tomorrow"]
notifier = Growl.GrowlNotifier(name,notifications)
notifier.register()
if command[:3] == "tod" or command == '':
cutoff = 'today'
elif command[:3] == "tom":
cutoff = 'tomorrow'
else:
cutoff = None
rtm = createRTM(apiKey, secret, token)
if cutoff:
filterString = 'status:incomplete and (due:%s or dueBefore:%s)'%(cutoff,cutoff)
else:
filterString = 'status:incomplete'
theTasks = rtm.tasks.getList(filter=filterString)
if type(theTasks.tasks.list) == list:
for i in range(len(theTasks.tasks.list)):
if type(theTasks.tasks.list[i].taskseries) == list:
for j in range(len(theTasks.tasks.list[i].taskseries)):
ts = theTasks.tasks.list[i].taskseries[j]
sendNotify(ts)
else:
ts = theTasks.tasks.list[i].taskseries
sendNotify(ts)
else:
if type(theTasks.tasks.list.taskseries) == list:
for i in range(len(theTasks.tasks.list.taskseries)):
ts = theTasks.tasks.list.taskseries[i]
sendNotify(ts)
else:
ts = theTasks.tasks.list.taskseries
sendNotify(ts)
Next Steps
It would be great if I can figure out a way to have the Growl notification box call a script to mark the task as done. Feel free to leave comments or suggestions or improvements in the comments.
a mid-winter cycling treat
Although the weather back home may have been below zero, in Northern california he sun was out and it was 68 degrees. Perfect weather for a bikeride. So after talking to the nice folks at the Palo Alto Bike Shop Wes and I rented a couple of nice demo road bikes from Calmar bikes in Santa Clara. Calmar is right by our hotel and the staff there was super friendly and helpful in getting us set up for a ride. Incidentally Calmar has no relation to Calmar IA. I road a nice Spanish BH RoadROM and Wes road a hot pink Trek Pilot 5.2. Even though the bike was pink we felt pretty good passing all the californians on the way up Old La Honda Road.
Rather than head out from the hotel on the busy city streets I decided to take Novian’s advice and head into the foothills west of Palo Alto. You can see the ride we took on the map below. This is from a cool website called mapmyride.com that I will use in the future for keeping track of my rides.
The ride was just beautiful even though we had to climb 2500 feet to get to the view. On the way up we road through some big redwood trees.
Once you get on Skyline drive you can see the ocean on one side and the Valley on the other. Here’s me, I look more tired in the picture than I actually felt! Really, Honest!
The rest of the ride is a long coast down Page Mill Road and then some flat riding past the Stanford Dish and the Stanford Golf course. It would have been fun to stop and play 18 holes but I didn’t have my clubs with me.
creating a group twitter repository
For the trip to Silicon Valley I wanted to have everyone be able to twitter about the experience using their own twitter account, but I also want to have a central place for everyone following the trip as a whole to see all of our tweets. How to do that? Python and the Twitter API to the rescue. You can see the results of this by checking out @lutherlive on twitter
import twitter
USER = “Your group account”
PASS = “your group password”
TAG = “tag contained in each message”
api = twitter.Api(username=USER,password=PASS)
# figure out when my last post was
statuses = api.GetUserTimeline(user=USER)
last_post = statuses[0].GetCreatedAt()
# Get the timelines for all friends since my last_post
tl = api.GetFriendsTimeline(user=USER,since=last_post)
for post in tl:
# since my posts may show up in friends timelines avoid reposting loop
if post.user.screen_name != USER and TAG in post.text:
api.PostUpdate(post.user.screen_name + “: " + post.text)
This little script logs in using the twitter account you create for the group. Importantly, this account must follow all of the group members that you want to be able to re-tweet. When one of the group members wants a tweet to show up on the group account they must use the TAG, in our case @lutherlive, somewhere in their post.
After logging in, the script grabs the timeline for all of the members of the group. This timeline is restricted to the posts since the last a post was made by the group user. This is important to do otherwise you would end up with duplicate re-tweets every time the script is run.
Next the script simply loops over all of the posts and checks for the tag. If the tag is in the post the post is updated along with the screen name of the original group member that made the post.
I put the script into a cron-job on the computer science server at Luther to run every 15 minutes, so while the @lutherlive user isn’t a real time reflection of its group members tweets, its pretty darn close.
A Long Long Day
A Long Long Day
Not much to report today. We got up and rode the shuttle to the airport, we checked in, our flight was on time, we sat on the plane for 8 hours. Now we are sitting in the O’hare terminal hoping that everything will continue to be on-time for today.
We told the kids this morning that they were essentially getting up at midnight back in Iowa. So by the time we get hope tonight (hopefully by 7pm) they will have been up 19 hours. Josh of course immediately volunteered to stay up until midnight just so he could say he had stayed up 24 hours.
Summary Report:
- Favorite City of the Trip:
-
Zermatt and the Matterhorn - Dad Venice - Mom Rome - Josh Rome - Kaia
- Favorite Meal
-
Casa Masi -- Dad The Pici pasta really did it for me. breakfasts and fruit in Paris -- Kaia Pesto Ravioli at Grampis -- Kaia Barbeque night in Zermatt -- Josh
- Worst Meal
-
The venice meal with Ulrings -- Dad
- Souveniers Purchased:
-
- Josh:
-
- Totti Shirt
- Roma baseball hat
- Italia Sweatshirt
- Swiss army knife
- Kaia:
-
- Swatch
- Mirror
- New dress
- Ciao Bella shirt
- Shirt
- purse
- necklace
- Mom:
-
- purse
- necklace
- swatch
- Dad:
-
- Italia warmup suit
- Capri pants
A Day in Brussels
A Day in Brussels
We got up early this morning so we could have our breakfast and catch a cab to the Leonardo DaVinci airport. We had ordered a cab the night before so it was waiting for us right at 7:30. We arrived at the airport in plenty of time and got our first taste of how they allocate checkin space in a european airport. The trick is that all the checkin desks are common and the airlines are just assigned a desk or two for their flights for the day. After some looking we finally figured this out and found a display board that told us the number of the desk that Brussels Airline was working from.
After some initial difficulties with their computers we finally moved to a new desk and got checked in. Three security checkpoints later we were waiting at our gate for our flight to be called. The Brussels Air plane was an old 737 that was a 3 and 3 configuration with about 6 inches of legroom.
We arrived at the Brussels airport and were reminded how nice and new and clean it seems. After all the initial security in rome we were surprised that we did not need to go through customs or passport control after arriving in Brussels. In order to get our luggage we had to walk a very long way, after getting our luggage it was a very short walk to the hotel shuttles and our holiday inn van had just arrived.
The Holiday Inn was quite nice. The lobby was clean and nice and they had Internet! We were initially disappointed with our non-smoking room that smelled like an all night poker game had just wrapped up, but after opening the window and putting the air conditioner on vent it didn’t take very long to get things aired out to the point where it was OK.
In addition to the swimming pool the pool area also had a hot tub. This was a great way to relax a bit and any thoughts of catching a train to downtown for more site seeing vanished. We ate at the hotel bar for supper as we didn’t really feel like paying 40 euros for the evening buffet. Josh and I had a bacon cheeseburger, Kaia had pureed vegetable soup and pasta, Jane had shrimp skewers. The kids were very excited because they could get chocolate milk! Their first milk in many days. Jane and I had draft beers of the local Leffe variety. I had ‘Leffe brune’ and Jane had ‘Leffe Blonde.’
After dinner we retired to the room for a final night of 500. Josh and I were victorious again! We won two games quite convincingly with Josh carrying me on his back most of the way.
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome
We could subtitle today Information Overload. We spent today with our guide Tony and learned so much it is almost impossible to describe.
The major sites on our itinerary for today included: - Church of San Clemente - Flavian Amphitheater (Colloseum) - Roman Forum - Lunch on the Apian Antica - The Catacombes
- Things we learned today:
-
- Christmas and the Saturnalia. At the temple of Saturn we learned that christmas
- Spaghetti Westerns
- San Clemente
- San Lorenzo (patron saint of cooks)
- The founding of Rome and the vestal virgins
- Story of San Sebastian
After our long day of touring we finally walked next door to the hotel to see the pantheon. It was cool but after a full day of interesting stories and explanations from tony it was a bit of a letdown. Kaia really wanted to visit some of the exclusive shops along the street near the Spanish Steps. We had also decided that Kaia needed something to replace the green duffle that had been causing troubles the whole trip. So we found a relatively inexpensive piece that was larger than her carryon size at a shop along the way.
Josh and I were charged with bringing the luggage back to the hotel while Jane and Kaia continued on their shopping quest. I told Jane to buy me a new pen at the Mont Blanc store, but with prices starting at over 300 euros she and Kaia were too intimidated to even go in the store!
After our day of touring and shopping we headed for our dinner reservation at Alfredos Originale. The home of Fettucine Alfredo! Kaia was so excited she could hardly stand it, for her it was like a religious pilgrimage. I was also excited to see how my recipe compared with Alfredo’s. Alfredo’s was good but very different from mine. It was very light on the cream, but heavier on the butter and Parmiagano Reggiano.
Touring the Vatican
Touring the Vatican
The day started out on a bad note when Tony called to tell us that our guide for the day was sick. So, instead of touring the ancient roman ruins we decided to tour the vatican museum on our own. We decided that would be the easiest place to do an audio tour to get the most out of the day without a guide.
Before leaving the hotel we asked the concierge for dinner recommendations for someplace indian or Thai. We are so burned out on pasta that we are delaying our long anticipated trip to Alfredo’s (home of fettucine alfredo) until tomorrow night. We have a recommendation for an Indian restaurant called Maharajah. The concierge will make reservations while we are touring today.
The Vatican and St. Peters are within pretty easy walking distance of our hotel so we have a quick breakfast in the hotel breakfast salon and then head out. Even though it is just 9:00 the crowds are 2/3 of the way around the outer ring of statues at St. Peters when we get there. Not being very prepared we just get in back of the line and prepare ourselves for a wait.
After about 2 minutes in line we hear an english voice asking people near us if they would like to avoid the long lines and get a tour of the vatican in english. The 10:00 tour is just starting he said. We knew this was a bit of a risk, but since we had already committed to pay for a guide today we figured this would be better than standing in line all day and trying to follow an audio tour through the vatican museum.
It turned out to be a reasonably good decision. Our guide was a young women from Canada named Sandra who graduated with an art history degree from Queens college in Canada. The tour only cost 13 euros per person plus entry into the museum. In the end Josh did not cost anything and kaia was reduced price.
We started the tour in front of the Obelisk in St. Peters square. This obelisk came from Egypt as a gift many years ago. The egyptions asked for it back and rome refused. Unfortunately the the obelisk was not centered properly in front of St. Peters and so the pope decided it must be moved. The obelisk weighed 300 metric tons and 500 romans showed up to help move the obelisk. thousands of romans showed up to watch and the pope swore everyone to silence under pain of death so that the workmen could concentrate. (the only time that many romans have ever been quiet) After they had moved the obelisk, but just as they were raising it into its new position the ropes started to fray. everyone was absolutely silent until one man broke his vow to yell out that they should put water on the ropes to lubricate them. This saved the day and the man was not beheaded but was given a yearly salary in gratitude from the pope.
After that short story we walked around and away from St. Peters to the American Bar where we paid our guide and she told us that once we had paid here she would go stand in the security line to hold our places for approximately 40 minutes, after which time we could join her in the line. This was the point where more than one person in the group became a little suspicious that we might never find her in the line once we handed over the cash. 30 gullible tourists at 38 dollars a pop would be a pretty good mornings work!
Nevertheless Sandra was there in line or us 40 minutes later and even a bit longer than that as the security line was moving slowly this morning. After getting into the museum we realized that the really long line we were in this morning was only for the free visit to St. Peters and we could have come over here ourselves. Nevertheless Having Sandra as our guide turned out to be great. We learned a lot from her about the things that we stopped to see. She explained to us right away that this was just going to be the highlights and we would not stop to see everything. In fact to see everything in the museum for 45 seconds would take 10 years.
- pine cone garden
- the body statue -- inspiration for Rodin’s The Thinker
- Nero’s bathtub
- The Rafael rooms - Michaelangelos rival that painted the scholars
- The Sistine Chapel
By the time we got out of the Sistine chapel it was 3:30 and our two hour tour had lasted four and a half hours. We came right out of the chapel by the line to take the elevator up to the stairs leading up the cupola. Another 320 stairs to climb to the very top. the view from the top of St. Peter’s was spectacular.
After the climb and the view and the heat we were all more than a little dehydrated and hungry, luckily there was a (rather expensive) snack bar part of the way down. we bought some pop and water and then took some pictures by the statues of the apostles. when we got to the bottom of the stairs we came right out into the basilica so we looked around for a while but decided to pass on the trip through the crypt. We headed back towards our hotel with the idea of getting a snack along the way.
For dinner tonight we had a reservation at Maharajah, an Indian Restaurant. It was such a nice change of pace that everyone thought the food was delicious. Josh and Kaia had Chicken Shahi Korma. I had the Madras chicken curry. I was going to order the vindaloo chicken again but the manager told me that vindaloo was the hottest, 80% chili peppers and 20% tomatoe. The Madras was second hottest and was hot enough for me. Jane had a dish caled ‘Murg Peshwari’ a Kashmiri style curry with oriental herbs, capsicum, onion and tomato. Josh seemed to like that one even more than the chicken Korma. We are making a curry lover out of him yet.
The restaurant was about a 20 minute walk from our hotel so we had time to stop for a gelato on the way home. We had a chance to see the Tivoli fountain just as it was getting dark. We were all very tired after a long hot day of walking so we were ready for bed by 10:00.
Mamma Mia We are in Pompei
Mamma Mia We are in Pompei
This morning dawned bright and sunny. Once again the view of the Bay of Naples from our deck was spectacular. As we were eating breakfast we saw a cruise ship coming into the harboor. it looked like they would be tendering directly into Sorrento.
We got up early so we could meet our guide for a tour of Pompei. We arrived at Pompei right at 8:30, purchased our tickets, and looked for our guide. It turned out that we were looking for her in the wrong place. She was at the Camping Zeus parking lot (where we parked) and we were at the gate.
Our guides name was Patricia (Pah Tree tsee aah). She gave us a very good tour and turned out to be very quotable.
Moma Mia its hot! Moma Mia we must get away from the enemy (the other tourists)
Pompei was hot and busy even though we were some of the first people in line for tickets. But it was still very interesting and a fun tour again. It was even better after having read Harrison’s book about Pompei.
- Highlights of Pompei
-
- theater
- the baths
- houses
After the tour Patricia gave us a lunch recommendation for a restaurant right near the Cameo factory we had visited five years ago. She introduced us as her friends to the Maitre De and told him to take good care of us. We got off to a very good start when Jane asked for a Coke Light and he responded that they had Pepsi! Our first Diet Pepsi in many days! After that the rest of the lunch, Napoli style pizza was really irrelevant.
We walked around a few of the shops and then headed for our car. We knew we were a little ahead of schedule but there really was not time for any additional touring if we wanted to be in Rome by 5:00.
Thankfully I had been able to follow the directions the guy at Renault gave me and programmed in the right location for the drop off. It was in the same area as the airport but was next to a cow pasture! The office seemed to be some kind of cheap warehouse space they had rented with a bit of covered parking for the returned vehicles. After we inspected our car and signed over the lease the attendant drove us to the airport and dropped us off near the taxi line.
We headed for the start of the taxi queue and were met by a driver who told us it would be 90 euros for a ride downtown for all four of us with our luggage. That was much higher than we expected so we went inside to regroup and try to learn about the Rome shuttle service we had read about. We finally gave up and decided to pay the 90 dollars to just get going. On our way to the line we ran into a driver who told us he would take us for 65 euros. He appeared to be wearing a taxi drivers license around his neck, but he took us to the parking lot rather than the taxi line. We were really wondering if this guy was legit but he got us downtown in just 35 minutes for the agreed on price.
Our hotel, Albergo Santa Chiara, is right behind the Pantheon. When we checked in, the two managers were looking at us and their list of customers and speaking angrily as if to say ‘what are we going to do with them?’ I think it worked in our favor as they gave us one of their three apartments. We have a main room with TV and two pull out beds, a middle room with another bed, bathroom, and kitchen. However the porter told us “chicken is locked.” Finally, we have a master bedroom. So we have a great room for our last three nights of touring.
We all agreed that we were really really tired of pasta and heavy italian food. Unfortunately we did not have our Rick Steve’s book nor had we asked at the front desk about alternative food sources. So we settled for walking to Piazza Navonna to see what they had. We found a restaurant that offered hamburgers and chicken along with traditional italian food.
As we were sitting at our table waiting for service Kaia noticed a man drawing caricatures in the middle of the piazza. She went to talk to the guy who told her he would draw both of them for 20 euros. So, while we waited for our food Josh and Kaia each had a caricature drawn. They are both very good. Josh is a soccer player and Kaia is a runner.
Since we were seated on the outside table right next the the main traffic around the Piazza we were inundated with sales people trying to sell us flowers, and all kinds of glowing and buzzing things. In addition we had fun watching the people selling scarves and fake Prada purses playing cat and mouse with the two police officers patrolling the piazza. Everytime they would get their bags arranged on the side walk we would suddenly see a wave of them scooping up bags and heading down the sidewalk. Followed by one of the officers. As quickly as the officer passed they were back putting their wares down again.
Road Trip to Sorrento or Happy Birthday to Dad
Road Trip to Sorrento or Happy Birthday to Dad
Today we had a very long drive. We left Tuscany and headed all the way south bypassing Rome and Naples to Sorrento. This is the small city that we stopped at on our cruise with Brian and Holly five years ago so we were excited to see the city again and try to find a few of the places we remembered.
Our hotel, Settimo Cielo, was nice and clean but not spectacular. The View from the deck off our hotel room WAS spectacular. The hotel is built right into the side of the cliff overlooking the Bay of Naples. Looking out at the ships and the lights along the bay was really nice.
The hotel also had a small pool which gave the kids a chance to cool off and burn off some of the energy they had accumulated over the long drive from Tuscany. They had the coolest lounge chairs by the pool. Each chair had its own little adjustable sun shade built into it so if you wanted to read and shade your face you could flip it up and adjust it accordingly.
After we had rested up we walked into the shopping district in search of a nice bottle of Limoncello. We actually found one in the shape of a cello and so we have that as a nice souvenir to bring home. The streets were as narrow as I remembered, but were much more crowded than I remembered from a few years ago.
We thought we had a good general idea of where the restaurant we had eaten at was but it took us a few false starts before we finally found the right place. The restaurant is called La Lanterna and they seemed very happy that we had come back to have dinner with them again after five years. The food was good, but not as good as our memories had created. But we have had some exceptional meals on this trip and I think pasta burnout was starting to set in. I had some really nice Cannelonni which could have and should have been enough. Instead I had some Red Snapper for my secondi which was a bit on the tough and fishy side.
After dinner we walked back to our hotel to get a good night sleep knowing that we had to get going early in the morning.