The wait was over

If there was one place that came to the top of the list on the Europe tour, it was Paris. The kids have been wanting to go see the Eiffel Tower and see Paris with dreamy eyes for at least a few years now. Many of their classmates have visited Paris over the years and they were itching to go.. 

It was surprising that they allowed us to start the Europe tour in a place other than Paris and waited till day 9 of the trip to go see the sights there.

The previous post on this series is here...

Day 9 came and we were on an all day tour of Paris which started with two hours at the Louvre. The tour covered three famous ladies including the Mona Lisa and three hallways and galleries.  The Louvre being huge, this was like a trailer for a movie.. a  two hour trailer! 

The Louvre was amazing. The entryways, the grand staircase below the glass pyramid, the hallways, the water fountains! (yes, they were a contrast to the Palace of Versailles where one could easily faint of dehydration), and the amazing art work were a treat. 

We also were fortunate to have a great tour guide for the day. This lady knew what she was talking about and paced things resaonably well.

We saw the Mona Lisa and took a selfie. There was a huge crowd just to get to take a selfie.. We did the "engaththu kaararum kutcherikku ponar" shot with the Mona Lisa.. I never realized the actual painting size was so small!! Once the guide told me that this was different from previous portrait styles in the day, I humbly bowed and moved on..

I was amazed by some of the art that I did not know about before.. the paintings were amazing as were the sculptures.. 

This one piece with the sunlight on the marble made the whole thing surreal.. how a person could sculpt something with marble like this is beyond me.. truly amazing.

The rest of the art looked vaguely repetitive because we had seen them at the Vatican or Uffizi or Vechchio museums or we had just seen the same stuff at the Versailles palace the previous day.

Here are slide shows from the Louvre Visit..

We were rushed to see as much as possible in two hours and were happy to be rushed. We absorbed what we could, told ourselves that someday we should just do a one week tour of the Louvre and walked out with the rest of the group.

It was time to go on a boat trip on the Sienne to see the Eiffel tower! 

The video that captured the entire days trip!

The video has the entire day 9.. will be breaking the other places we visited as separate posts..

It was a packed day!

As unique as they come

Day 4 of the Europe trip was Venice. We reached on the evening of day 3 from Pisa (previous post on the series is here...) and saw Venice by night. Our first challenge was to go from the Train station to the Air B&B. It was a 10 minute walk but the challenge was crossing the bridge over the grand canal with a broken suitcase. It was done.. with great difficulty!

The Air B&B we had was on the "attic" floor. We had pretty much the entire floor to ourselves and a great view from the window. We dropped our bags and went back quickly to catch a gondola ride. We were very lucky as we got the last ride out. It was a 40 minute ride and the sun was just starting to set.

Right when we finished the ride and docked, it started raining. The views we got on the trip were amazing. Vibrant colors from the setting sun..

I got two photographs to cherish thanks to this Gondola ride... the first one with me and San 

and the second one when we were just about to go below a bridge. The kids were in focus and the bricks look like they are moving towards us..

a fun portrait session during breakfast time using the large mirror as a frame.. we were the only ones at breakfast and they had quite a spread!

We got dinner at different places (Jr. at a burger king, San and the little one went for an Italian place where the service was terrible and the food was okay and I decided to skip) and headed back to sleep. 

Day 4 was fully dedicated to Venice. We walked around on either side of the grand canal in the morning and took a boat to Murano island. 

How they make these pencil type structures is amazing..

This is an interesting place where they have all the glass factories and the museum. There was a glass blowing demo (no photos/videos allowed!) and elaborate descriptions of how they make the different glass pieces. We spent half a day there and took a boat back to the Grand Canal station. 

Here are two slide shows of photos from Venice and Murano..

After checking out a few places and realizing that the farther we went from the train station, the better the places for lunch (price, quality and service) and we had a really nice lunch at this place.. 

Saw a lot of interesting notices like this on displays..

The people of Venice see the tourists as a necessary evil. They are not nice to tourists. We saw some blatant xenophobia and racism. The only folks they hated more than dark skinned folks were Chinese. We were joking that if DJT wants to go win somewhere outside of US, he need to look no further than Venice! 

Funny thing was another note we had read earlier in the day at Murano..

did the Syrians have a similar notice about cheap Venitian glass being dumped into their market in 1500's ?! Who knows?

Venice is beautiful. The people understanably are stressed out by the influx of tourists and the strain has taken its toll.. Still, Venice is beautiful. When you go there, do spend money. Do be nice to the locals. Maybe things will change. 

We had already checked out and put our luggage at the train station. We were walking around with just our backpacks. 

One interesting thing is the service provided to take your luggage across the bridges. All they have to do is to put a ramp on the end of the stair case on either side so folks can drag their luggage up and down. Instead there is a thriving market for these porters with their dollys and they make a living moving luggage to either side. Most of them are from Bangladesh! Guess that is not helping with the strain.. (you can see it at the end of the video)

We had exactly 24 hours in Venice and we made the most of it. We did not want to go through more museums and cathedrals. So skipped those little tours. The glass museum was unique and we enjoyed it!

After some shopping for cute things in the shops, tasting things, some ice cream and buying a new suitcase, we made it to the bus station and were off to the Venice airport.

It was time to fly back to Zurich! 

Peru Day 5 - Cusco to Puno by bus

Finally after another fortnight, managed to get back to the photos and videos from the Peru trip! Family thinks it will be December by the time I get to Day 6 and the last day of the trip to this blog.. 

It has been a busy two weeks with work, yoga and things happening at home, thanks to some really heavy rain. 

The previous post on the series is here..

This time we start with the family portraits.. we got two on a 12 hour day. The first one was taken at the Raqchi ruins and the second one at Raya Pass.

Day 5 started okay. No waking up early for the kids. We had a taxi waiting to take us to the bus stop and once there we waited for everyone to load their suitcases into the bus. After a 30 minute wait we were off to Puno from Cusco. 

We had a nice driver, a tour guide and a lady who was serving coca tea and coke pepsi to the folks at regular intervals. The ride was 11+ hours at least, with 6 stops every hour and 15 minutes to hour and a half. That made the ladies very happy!

Our first stop was an amazing church built in the 1600's. There was no photography allowed inside. It is the most beautiful Church I have seen to date. Maybe the sistine chapel will top this when I get to see it someday. 

Every wall, every piece of the ceiling was covered with amazing art work. There were strategically placed mirrros everywhere that took sunlight from openings high up and reflected them everywhere to create a disco light effect. Locals who visited it for the first time probably just kneeled down and bowed their heads to this magnificence. I sure did!

We also saw the amazing scenery around the church and watched the dozen or so stray dogs outside for a good 15 minutes while waiting for everyone to come back to the bus and we saw a "Bajaj Auto". I was telling the kids "that is an Indian Auto". They agreed it was an auto but did not think it was a Bajaj.. 

Then we moved on to another place with a small museum of sorts that showed the history of the region between Cusco and Puno over time. This place had some mummies of royalty who used to compress their skulls and they had elongated skulls! I thought this was a hoax. Apparently it was very much in vogue 600 years ago.. 

 The first skull had a line across it.. the second one didnt. There were lot of photographs of other mummies that showed same thing. 

Like the display of the 100's of potato varieties in a previous museum, this one had corn varieties that grow in Peru. It was impressive. 

Then there was the usual jewelry and how they make it with natural materials show.. we got used to this one after three of these show rooms. 

The next stop after this was a rope bridge in another ancient city. The wife and kids decided to stay in the bus. I walked over the bridge and got some shots with a Japanese family while the rest of the bus visited the biggest attraction after a 90 minute ride.. aka restroom at Checacupe!

Apparently this was fixed after the original bridge collapsed. Still it was a neat experience. They are still excavating the place to find more ruins..

After this we went to the ruins at Raqchi. It was made of mud bricks and stone. This time they had figured out how to make the mud bricks stronger by mixing human and animal hair and feathers into the brick. The Incas had figured out "composite materials" by trial and error and perfected it enough to have a mud brick structure that was 50 feet tall stand for 600 years! 

There are more photos of Raqchi in the galleries..While coming out of the place saw this flower. We used to have a lot of flowers in our house. Thanks to the construction work, we have lost most of them. Watching a single plant with a flower when there was rocks and ruins everywhere made me smile!

We wandered around the shops outside the little museum and bought some local jewelry. 

It was back on the bus to our next stop.. Lunch! It was a beautiful drive with farm lands, grazing alpacas, waterfalls.. just frame after frame of beauty!

After lunch we were told to take a nap. It was going to be some serious driving along mountain passes and we would stop at the highest pass... we saw some wild alpaca, llamas and vicune on the way..

and we were there! 

and the locals had set up shops ready for the buses! They added color to the scenery..

Didn't even have to edit these photos. Most of them are just cropped. Next to Manali, this is the one place that makes me think beyond god!

We were given 20 minutes at Raya pass to take pictures. Then we were off to Pukara, which was the last stop. 

This place had a civilization before the Incas in 400 BC based on the finds. It was interesting to see three layers of excavations. There was an amazing church here as well but it was closed for visitors. There was some big peacock like native birds which were far away on a window making loud calls (got it on video). 

The tour guide gave us an elaborate explanation of what was going on in Peru with all the excavations, how they are now open to tourists etc. etc.. In short it was a "Make Peru Great Again" speech. 

We saw the museum, the ruins and finally made our way to Puno. We went through another big city 30 minutes before Puno called Juliaca, where the local airport was. I finally proved to the family that the autos were indeed Bajaj autos. We saw a few hundred of them on the roads there! 

It was late in the evening when we made it to our hotel. We had a couple of hours to explore the town square.

Then it was time for a good rest before we had to get ready at 6:30 for another interesting day.. 

Day 6 was going to be Lake Titicaca and a visit to the Isla de Tequile.