Transition Italy to Colombia: a long way

It was a long day too. It started early.

Dinner view in Fiumicino, last evening in Italy.

Fire hose welcome to Newark: Pilot's last flight.

Retired after 36 years with Continental and United.

Getting close to Medellin, 

after an overnight in Panama.

First dinner in Medellin.

Marvelous. 

Citta Di Fiumicino -City of Little River — "cino" is "little" in Italian

The six or eight fellow linguists that read this blog can figure out "river" and most of the rest can get "city." We have learned so many languages on this trip.  (Of course in about 30 minutes I could not tell you "river" from "tall building", but it was good to know for a minute or two.)

Got back to Italy — or the Rome airport area - and are staying in Fiumicino, where the airport is,  as we fly out early in the morning tomorrow for Newark, then Panama City, then overnight then Medellin - yes it will be a little more travelin'.

In addition to listening to and watching airplanes land and take off this is a fishing town. So that is what there is to do here - in the evening go watch the fishing boats come in and the activities on the fishing docks. So we did.

Fisherman selling just a few containers of fish from his boat— leftovers or samples, I don't know.

Unloading directly to be put on a large cart.

Carton after carton of various soft shelled shrimp and octopus as well as fish.

As a ship came in, crowds would cluster around each.

Sometimes arguing over who said/got/did/paid/what? when? — however this disagreement continued.  I watched it. White hat guy tried to console pointy finger guy to no avail after crowd broke up. Red shirt guy got the fish.

Fishermen mending nets -

the fishermen were a surprisingly older group of men.

Fishermen were cleaning nets, we watched this team for a while.

And as we were about to leave, this guy waved for us to not leave and stepped back into his boat and retrieved the object shown below for me to photograph. I bet he goes fishing at that location again. He was a proud looking man and happy to be photographed with his prize.

it was a windy hot day —

Just looking, not buying.

Lots of strange looking bottom living sea creatures.

Dock side fish market.

The harbor.

And a local in-store fish market.

Sharing Sicilian pizza and a local beer for lunch; 

it was very good.

Baked fish, potatoes with olive oil and spices for dinner.

It was great.

flying to Newark on way to South America in a few hours.

European Restaurant Review # 1 Salzburg's Taj Mahal

Weiner schnitzel, goulash, sausages of every type, potatoes cooked 6 or seven different ways (mostly boiled), pork chops, veal, duck, oxtail soup, lentil soup, even apfelstrudel— we were tired of Germanic and Slavic food. Good. Heavy. Yes. But we were tired of it — 

So out of 500+ restaurants on TripAdvisor in Salzburg - coming in at numero four-o, we are eating Indian!  And close to our hotel too on a cold rainy evening.  

The decor was awesome, the lighting, the decorations were just what we needed to clear the air.

It was just not the front room. The whole place was decked out. Our table was down that row on the left. Lucky to get one too as we had no reservation and the place was crowded.

Appetizers of vegetarian samosas, fried cheese and dips, oh those dips, or better yet toppings. The plum flavored one was just awesome. Patt liked the green one best.

Main dish was chicken marsala. Charles, Linda - hate to tell you but it was better than the same dish at the Indian restaurant that is across the street from your old Malaysian home. The naan and roti sadly did not come even close to as good as what you had on a regular basis at your neighborhood Indian restaurant. Now I do not mean to speak ill of your neighborhood Indian food place, it is  one of my favorite restaurants in the world.  Seriously; however, to potential visitors to Salzburg, make a reservation at the Taj Mahal.

An added bonus was this wonderful young Indian family who were at the next table. They are from Mumbai, gave us advice on menu choices, visiting India and in general were pleasant to have as neighbors at dinner. They practice Jainism, an ancient Indian religion of which there are only about 6 million adherents in the world. according to Wikipedia.  

He described Mumbai as a very busy place. When I asked about recommendation for Indian food, he said, "I am Indian".  As two of only about 5 non- Indians in the entire place I thought "well I sorta knew that, that is why I asked".  We got along great. I told him I was American.

Side note - back in Vienna now — flying to Rome the 26th then to Panama the 28th and on to Medellin on the 29th. Got more traveling to do.

A little touristing in Salzburg

First, we got to Salzburg driving from Ljubljana. We got off the interstate as it was high, straight, and went through mountains. We went through tunnels - one about 8 km long at the Slovenian/Austrian border, a couple of about 5 km and several more not quite as long.  We never did drive up a "hill" like US 421 going towards Boone or I-40 at Black Mountain, much to my disappointment. So we got off the interstate highway shown below as it goes over route 99 and later 158.

We rode through valleys, along side railroads,

and also through tunnels, just not as lengthy as the ones on the interstate, through valleys, little towns, small tunnels but no still no steep hills.

.

Salzburg is fun to visit. Old town, or the tourist part, is quaint, and on this side of the river - we are staying on the other side a couple of blocks up from the Salzburg River. This photo is taken from the fortress/castle on top of the hill that dominates the town.

The fortress has never been taken by force. Not sure if it was due to its strength or luck of geography or strong neighbors or just being irrelevant by the time Salzburg was on the losing side in wars as there was a stretch during the Napoleonic wars when Salzburg did indeed fall on hard times and was occupied by opposing forces several times.

In the fortress, there was an excellent museum of the military history of the Salzburg regiments that had participated in various military campaigns, battles and wars. I was most interested in their coverage of World War I which was extensive and fairly complete. The Salzburg regiment participated in the Russian Campaigns and on the Italian Front during World War I and as I imagine all German-Austrian units did, had a very high casualty rate.

While at the fortress clouds developed over the mountain and we had a brief heavy rain that we were able to dodge by ducking into the fortress chapel. The clouds came and went throughout the afternoon, keeping the sky dramatic and the temperature down a bit.

For the sake of all the piano lessons I took, I also visited Mozart's home!!

FYI -  this city has a music heritage too. 

And this impressive building is the Cathedral. 

The dome of the Cathedral was destroyed by a bomb burst from an allied bombing raid in October of 1944. It was repaired during the 50s'.

The arches on the sides of the building next to the seating areas had intricate carvings into the stone and of course the panels in the ceiling were painted too.

In the first photo above of the inside you can look closely and see that there are actually four sections of organ pipes on the pillars supporting the dome.

Salzburg is an "art" center and as the birth place of Mozart has been perceived as such at least since 1829 when the first of music - art tourists documented a pilgrimage to visit Mozart' birthplace. As the subject of art,  as below, Salzburg also became known as a place of beautiful scenery and as such became a tourist destination quite early.

And they are ready. A  ride in a horse drawn carriage is waiting for you.  

And the tourists are still here! I know we have several relatives in Asia,  if any of them notice the absence of several thousands of your fellow country men, we know where they are. And there is quite possibly no one left in Nebraska either.  Amazing. And getting off tour buses too.

Salzburg = Sound of Music and more

Ah, the back view of the Von Trapp's movie home — gracious lake side living- and the magic of movie. That is the house, where the kids and Maria fell out of the canoe, the ill matched baroness tried to play with the kids and several other scenes took place. It is now owned by Harvard U and it is private as are several of the former sites of filming - most of the inside filming done in Hollywood.  

In the movie we never saw the Salzburg Fortress behind the house as no scene showed the entire house that I recall. Of course my memory of the movie was poor compared to most of the dozen Americans on our tour group. The little glass house that Liesl danced with young Rolf in the rain used to be beside this house but has been moved to what is now a large park.

Our bike group was a great mix, four college kids from Boise who were freshmen at schools all over the US including one at WFU, a couple from SC whose sole purpose of going to Europe was touring Salzburg Sound of Music. The wife's family had watched SoM every Thanksgiving that she could remember and she had continued the tradition, and another young couple from Philadelphia who had gone to UNC. All the group had seen the movie within the last 24 hours except me. Patt had watched movie clips and cast reunion interviews on youtube the night before our tour. She has seen the movie more than once. Me too.

Oh I should mention we were on the Fraulein Maria bicycle tour — Bette was a terrific guide and what a lovely route through the town and countryside! The tour was recommended to us by friends Pam and Bill to whom we owe our thanks. Our bicycle tour group photos taken by our guide will be on the Fraulein Maria Facebook page in a few days. The bikes were nice cruisers with 7 gears.

The site of the abby, and still an abby, where the real Maria and the movie Maria were novice nuns. Nazi cars were parked there the night of the family escape. Movie sets with appropriate lighting, set design and staging sure look different in the daylight.

Patt next to the doors behind which the nuns spoke with the Nazi troops looking for the Von Trapps. Remember this dialogue from the movie? Happened right here.
      Sister Margaretta: Reverend Mother, I have sinned.

Sister Berthe: I, too, Reverend Mother.

Reverend Mother: What is this sin, my children?

[the nuns look at each other, then reveal from under their robes the distributor and coil they have removed from the Germans' cars]

The front of the Von Trapps movie house. It is a different house from the one on the lake. It is also yellow. Did not notice that when watching the movie. Check it out next time you watch — you will watch it again-  so remember. There was a fountain in the landscaped area in the movie. Not there now. That is Bette, our guide — from Spain. She was not in the movie.

And down the road came the bus that dropped Maria off when she was reporting for work and sang I have confidence, kicked up her heels and with great bravado pushed open the gates to the house above.

We rode down the road above for several miles to Hellbrunn Palace - the former estate of an archbishop from a time when those bishops must have been real crooks, as it was marvelously ostentatious. It is now a pubic park. We rode down the tree shaded lane and to the right were these beautiful fields.

It was a real Mr Blue Bird on My Shoulder kind of day. Whoops, wrong musical. Lets try Rain Drops on Roses. For the portion of the ride through the countryside, our guide had the movie sound track on a continuous loop through a speaker blue-toothed to her iPhone. It was nice. I did not get tired of Doe a Deer..

Like I said a Mr Blue Bird kind of day.

I am 17 going on 18.  Yes but this is not the one they danced in. That one is in Hollywood.  Oh the deception. And I am not 17 or even 18 either.

More gardens of the archbishop, but this time at the Mirabell Palace in town, those from the park above were out of town. The grounds are still constantly maintained and quiet beautiful. Several scenes were shot here. Skipping around the fountain for starters.

And Patt, not Maria splashing water on the horses. Patt could not jump up on the edge of the fountain? She would not even try!

Walking back to the hotel. Heck, even the password for our hotel wifi is soundofmusic all lower case.

But there is a lot more here, we did tour the fortress, several huge marvelous cathedrals/churches and  such. Patt even got in some shopping.