From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Wed, 03 Jun 1998 14:59:05 -0400
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: We made it! v2

Hello, everyone!

We are composing this email from our hotel room in Barcelona.  Here's what
happened so far:

We flew from Newark to Copenhagen in "EuroClass" on SAS - this was a
pleasant surprise. Apparently, getting to the airport early paid off,
because we got that upgrade from "tourist class" which allowed us to have
huge seats with tons of legroom. SAS serves good food and wine as well, so
it was a nice trip.

We got to Copenhagen during a light drizzle, but didn't care because we
weren't leaving the airport. The airport there is beautiful but sadly
lacking in any kind of anti-sneezing medication which, by the time we
arrrived there, Hillary desperately needed. Although she'd taken her usual
antihistamine AND some comtrex pre-departure, she was apparently VERY
allergic to something on the plane (or is coming down with a cold). She has
gone through 6 or so of those little travel sized kleenex packs and is kind
of bummed about that. One cool thing about the Copenhagen airport is the
existence of a "Quiet Area" for you to hang out in. Also, there were
numerous nifty and amusing Sun Microsystems advertisements lining the
walkways.

Anyway, we got on our connecting flight ok and the flight attendants gave
Hillary some medicine which helped a bit. We got to Barcelona on time and
due to Michael's outstanding grasp of the native tongue, we were able to
find our way to the Hotel Cadovanga via train and taxicab. Kudos to Michael
also for explaining to the saleswomnan at La Farmacia that Hillary needed
"mas kleenex" :)

We walked around briefly in downtown Barcelona, stopped at a cafe for dos
coca colas, and tried to do some planning using a map that was 4 times the
size of our table. We believe that we managed to tip the waiter (and cab
driver, for that matter) correctly; however we have concluded it not going
to kill us if we leave a tiny bit too much instead of not enough.

Refreshed from our cokes, we returned to our hotel room for una siesta
grande. We just recently awoke, and we plan to try to find somewhere to eat
some dinner and perhaps we will also look for the cybercafe listed in our
guidebook.

The weather is pretty nice - there was a quick thunderstorm while we were
on the train, but we somehow managed to avoid being rained on pretty much
entirely, and it was clearing up and then sunny by the time we finished our
walk.

We just heard over the AP feed to our cellphone that the FDA has approved a
large scale trial of an AIDS vaccine. This is pleasing to us, as we were
distressed by the news of the large German train crash earlier today.

So far everyone here has been very friendly and Michael has been truly
amazing with regard to speaking Spanish to them.  Hillary has piped in with
the occasional "gracias" but really isn't very much help in that regard.

One thing about our hotel: we realized that it is very good that Avi did
not come with us, as he would likely not fit into the elevator. Avi, if you
come to spain, check out the elevators in advance! This one is pea sized.

Well, since all we've really done so far is travel, buy some kleenex and
cokes, and take a nap, this is likely an extremely boring email for you to
read. Therefore, we regretfully say goodbye at this time, and we'll send
another email after we have done something interesting to tell you about.

ta ta for now,

Hillary and Michael

PS: late breaking news!  We just downloaded our mail and got Hillary's grades:

2001-Pharm-B
7002-IMD-A
7023-Pub.Health-A
8011-Anesthesia-A!
9001-Med/Surg-B

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Thu, 04 Jun 1998 15:06:14 -0400
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 4: en el Eixample

Hola!

Well, after we sent that email yesterday, we went out for dinner. We walked
down La Avinguda Diagonal, which is the big street our hotel is on, and we
went to a place called Quasi Queviures, but which goes by the nickname "Qu
Qu." It was a lovely post-thunderstorm evening; clear and mild, not too hot
or too cold. So, we sat outside in the large sidewalk seating area, and we
ordered an assortment of tapas, the little appetizer dishes everyone always
talks about when they talk about spanish food. We also ordered a bottle of
rose wine, and we sat and enjoyed ourselves for a while until we just
couldn't stay awake any longer. Then we headed back to the hotel and
crashed at about 1 am.

So, today we got up at about 9:30 am and prepared for a day of walking
around the city. We had breakfast in the hotel, and met a nice couple from
Phoenix, AZ, who were winding up their month in Europe, but were cutting
their trip short because they had to rush back to the states to sell their
house or something. They helped us out with learning how to make train
reservations and they are also giving us their "leftover" French francs :)

At about 10:30 am we headed out, guidebook in hand. We took the "Barcelona
modernisme" walking tour outlined in our Frommer's guidebook, but since it
started somewhere kind of far from our hotel, we figured we would take a
bus to get there....that didn't work out. we could not, and still have not,
figured out the bus system here. It looks great on the surface, but for
some reason the buses we want do not seem to stop at the stops marked with
that number. Oh well... cabs are cheap in Barcelona, the cab drivers thus
far have seemed honest or if not, at least they are very very good liars.
(that's a joke). The cabs are nice clean little yellow and black Fords with
blue upholstery.

So, we took a cab to the Placa Catalunya (the c in placa should have a
cedille under it but I do not know how to type that...) and started our
tour. The placa is a sort of a park, or town square. There was a large
slate or similar material surface surrounded by a number of benches, and
some grassy area with trees, and several statues and fountains. We took
some pictures there and we hope they come out ok.  

We walked from there along the Rambla de Catalunya, which is a tree lined
street with very broad sidewalks - typical of the
shopping/business/restaurant districts here, because the cafes and
restaurants all put out large groups of chairs and tables, and they charge
more for eating inside (or is it outside? we can't quite figure it out :))
We looked at a lot of buildings in the "modernisme" style of architechture
- many of the buildings in this district (the Eixample) were designed by
young spanish architects in the late 19th century, and they are very
intricate and colorful and beautiful.

We took some pictures of some of these buildings and then we took a break
(as directed by our book!) in a small cafe type place called "Cerveceria
d'Or". Here we again ordered dos coca colas. Hillary says she is going to
try to remember to order hers "sin lemon" next time, because for some
reason they always put a lemon slice in the bottom of the glass here.

>From there we walked some more - we have a map on which we have marked our
route, we can show you when we come home if you are interested - but we saw
some cool buildings, with griffons and eagles and flowers and maidens
clutching lightbulbs (really!) carved into them. Oh, also of note - the
weather today was beautiful. It was probably about 85 degrees F and very
sunny! Oh, and hey - Michael just turned on the TV and the Simpsons is on,
in Spanish of course. Lisa's voice sounds really weird and so does Bart's.
Anyway, in the area not too far from the restaurant we stopped at was
something called "the Block of Discord" although we know of no reason why
they call it that. One of the buildings here was very cool - we took
pictures but they will not do it justice because there were some trees in
the way. This was the "Casa Batllo," an 1877 building overhauled by one of
these modernisme guys named Gaudi,in 1906. 

The Casa Batllo is supposed to look like a dragon. Basically, there were
tiles - fragmented tiles - embedded into the front of it, and the effect is
that it looks like the building has scales. Also, the decorations around
the windows and terraces look like teeth, and bones and stuff. There is a
tower on the top that is believed to represent St. George, the patron saint
of Barcelona. We hope the photos show this building well.

We walked on, tirelessly :) to the Quadrat d'Or, which Hillary says is
misnamed, because it didn't look very gold to us, but whatever. We saw more
modernisme buildings with intricate ironwork on the terraces and lots of
flowers growing on the balconies. Then, starting to fade from the heat, we
sought a cool respite in a little underground place called "La Bodegueta"
on Rambla de Catalunya. This funky little place had a bar behind which were
many dusty wine casks. There was a sizable modern refrigerated wine cellar
system there near the bar. We sat at one of several small tables near the
bar and ordered dos copas de Cava, Cava being the popular sparkling wine of
Catalunya which we read about in our guidebook and just had to have.
Michael did an excellent job of explaining to the proprietor that no, we
did not want una botella de Cava, we wanted dos copas! I think if it had
been Hillary talking to the guy we might have gone home with a case of the
stuff. Anyway, it was a nice place and the Cava hit the spot. 
We took a quick photo from the door of the place but again, who knows if
this will do it justice...

Further along in our walking tour we passed a really trendy and expensive
restaurant called "El Tragaluz" which claimed to have Japanese appetizers
and therefore got our hopes up with regard to finding some sushi...but no,
no sushi there, sad to say. It looked like  a nice place but we didn't
really stop there. We continued onward until we reached Carrer Provenca
(that's a street) where there is a building our guidebook calls the most
striking of the modernista buildings - a very beautiful and unique building
called, believe it or not, "Casa Mila"!!! (note to the confused: Hillary's
mother's name is Mila. The building name has an accent over the A, but it's
close) This building is hard to describe. The limestone facade kind of
undulates - it's all cut limestone and it is made to look kind of like
waves in the ocean or something. We really can't describe it very well.
You'll have to check out our pictures.

We walked some more, checked out a department store called Vincon which
seems to be Spain's answer to Ikea, but on a smaller and more sophisticated
scale. We then deviated from our tour a bit, after checking out still more
of these really interesting buildings, and we stopped at a place called
"Fantapas" where we had some sheep milk cheese and some potatoes with spicy
pink sauce. Why did we have a plate of sheep milk cheese? well, because we
accidentally ordered it and didn't want to admit it, that's why :) - Hey,
Michael is good, but he isn't perfect. It was very good cheese, anyway.
Hillary figured out how to ask for hiela for her agua, too. She's picking
up some spanish pretty quickly but she is afraid to use it in public.

We walked to a small mercado - kind of like the Reading Terminal market -
and we bought some fruit there - peaches, tiny peaches which they call by
another name here, and one orange colored fruit called a nerido or nerida
or something, which had a good, sweet taste to it. Then we walked a long
way to the Sagrada Familia, where there is a huge and beautiful church
called the Templo Expiatori. This church was first started in 1925 but was
not finished. It got interrupted by the civil war and some other stuff.
They are working on finishing it up now, using Gaudi's drawings and plans,
and they hope to have it finished within the next *50* years. I guess they
have union workers on the site, or something... (seriously, the detail on
this building is amazing. We are sure it must be very difficult to do this
well.)

We decided to risk another attempt at public transportation but, still
fearful of the buses, went with the Metro instead. This worked well despite
some initial confusion due to the million or so escalators you are required
to go up and down before you get to where you are going. We took the metro
to the "Barcelona Sants" station (estancio) which is not only a metro
station but also the main transportation hub of  Barcelona, a la 30th St
Station in Philadelphia. While there we got a schedule of trains leaving
Barcelona for Madrid on Sunday the 7th. We did not make a reservation
because we didn't have all our stuff with us and didn't want to make any
mistakes. We will probably stop there again tomorrow. Hillary made sure to
pick up a few local timetables for Uncle Jeff, though. 

Hillary thought we should try to take the #27 bus back to our hotel from
Estacio Sants. This was the initial recommendation made by the Hotel
concierge when we called for directions from the airport - but yesterday we
were too tired to deal with it and took a cab. So, Michael said she would
have to ask where the bus stop was, since she was the one who wanted to try
the bus today. Hillary went up to the tourist office at the train station
and tried to say "Donde esta el autobus veinte y siete por favor" and she
made herself understood although perhaps less than eloquently. The woman
answered her really quickly and of course Hillary couldn't understand a
word of it, but Michael did, so we went out where she said the stop
was...and it wasn't there. So, Hillary fearlessly approached a Barcelonian
woman and tried again with "pardon, donde esta el autobus veinte y siete,
por favor?" This woman looked puzzled and said in spanish that the 27
wasn't aqui, and asked us where we wanted to go. We showed her on the map
and she helpfully showed us where the bus actually did stop. Hillary was
pretty excited about actually communicating with someone in Spanish :) but
in any case, we decided after walking to where the bus would stop that
really, we weren't so far from the hotel, and so we walked back to the
hotel by way of La Placa de Francisc Macia. 

This may not seem like much, but we had a really good time. We left our
hotel at about 10:30 am and did not get back til about 6:30 pm. So we did a
lot of walking and we are tired. We will rest for a bit before going out to
dinner. We get CNN and a European NBC channel on the TV here, so we are
trying to keep up with what's going on in the world also. Hillary doesn't
like it when she goes on vacation and loses touch completely with what's
happening globally. 

Other notes: Barcelona seems to be a city that is reasonably tolerant of
dogs. We saw muchos perros y perritos while walking around and we heard
some barking in the metro station. We saw one gato negro as well, but it
seemed to be a stray - although, it was plump, not skinny, so someone was
feeding it. People seem friendly and tolerant of Hillary's kindergarten
level spanish and Michael's mexican accented third grade spanish. Also, the
ambulances here have a different kind of siren, and we were playing a game
of judging the location of the ambulancia by the way the doppler effect was
changing the sound. Wherever we go, we are geeks. :)
We also noticed a place on the way back to the hotel which had a sign
advertising la videoconferencia and los telecomunicados, and a bigger sign
upon which it proclaimed itself to be "Supermercado Informatico," - the
Information Supermarket? Sounds about right for Barcelona :) No
superhighways here. We weren't sure what that was all about but we were
amused and so we took a picture of it.
That's about all we can think of right now. 

Love,
Hillary and Michael


From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Fri, 05 Jun 1998 13:10:32 -0400
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 5:  off the beaten path

Hola again!

Last night after we wrote to you we took a brief siesta and then headed out
to dinner at about 10 PM, as per local custom.  We went to a place on el
Passeig de Gracia called "Tapa Tapa," and (in a surprise move) we ate some
tapas and had a pitcher of sangria, which was very good. We ordered an
assortment of tapas and all of them were to our liking. So far, we haven't
had anything not to our liking. We found out why we had a plate full of
cheese the other day, though. Despite the fact that our berlitz menu guide
agrees with us that "taco" means "tortilla full of stuff," it seems that in
Catalan, the local pseudo-spanish dialect/language, "taco" means "chunks"!
so that explains that. Anyway, we ate and then we had dos cafes - which
really turned out to be dos espressos, but that was cool with us. We also
had un helado chocolate which was refreshing and really rich and creamy. We
entered into a conversation with the couple at the neighboring table when
it became apparent that not only were they americans, but they had the same
guidebooks that we had and were even ordering the same food! Every place we
go, we meet americans...

After dinner we headed back to the hotel and went to bed.  That's where we
stayed until about half past noon today!! I guess yesterday took a lot out
of us. When we got up today we decided we'd make our train reservations for
Sunday, so as to get that out of the way. We walked from the hotel out to a
little place on the corner called the Central Cafe. It was set up with a
long bar inside, and the whole front of the place was open, so that sitting
at the bar is almost like sitting outside.  We ordered dos capuccinos
freddos (a specialty of this establishment and very good!) and un xurro,
which was actually a whole plate of what they call "Churros" in the states
- cylindrical sweet breadlike things. After breakfast, we walked back out
to the Placa de Francesc Macio again - noticing that the nearby Rodier
store sells the same stuff as the Rodier boutique on Walnut St. We walked
back down the Carrer de Josep Tarradella that we walked up yesterday. We
stopped at a small shop where there is a soda machine with the cheapest
cokes in Barcelona - only 125 pesetas - and Michael got a coke. We also
stopped in that Information Supermarket place and asked them to show us on
our map where exactly the Cafe de Internet was located - they were friendly
and they seemed amused by our desire to schlep all the way across town to
get to the Internet place. 

Eventually we got to the Estancio Sants, and we took a number to be helped
at the ticket window. There was about a half an hour wait, during which
time we chatted with some girls who are travelling around Europe as well,
from Minnesota, Maine, and Calgary.  They had been travelling for many
weeks and seemed to know what they were doing, so we asked them about
navigating the European train system and they were pretty helpful - they
pulled out a timetable book they had and looked stuff up for us.

When we got to the window, we were helped by a friendly guy who spoke
little if any English. He and Michael discussed what we wanted and got
everything set up correctly without using any English at all except for the
word "smoking" accompanied by a vigorous shaking of the head to say "no!"
:) We paid our mil pesetos for the reservation (they require a nominal fee
for reservations apparently to avoid the problem of people making many
different reservations but only using one of them) and we were on our way. 

We walked out of the station and went down Carrer Sant Antoni through the
Sants district - this is more of a working class type district, from what
we could tell. We turned to walk down the Carrer de Sants and we passed
lots of small businesses, local type places...shoe stores, bakeries, etc.
Then, when we got to El Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, it became more
upscale. 

Before turning onto the Gran Via, we stopped to check out La Placa
d'Espanya. This is at the intersection of El Gran Via y Avinguda del
Parallel. There is a sort of a monument, with an eternal flame type of
thing at the top, in the middle of a traffic circle here. Also nearby was
the "Anello Olimpica," from when Barcelona hosted the Olympics. We wandered
into the Olympic area to check that out - we took some pictures of a
beautiful art museum in there and we also took some pictures of the Placa.
On the other side of the Placa is the Barcelona Arena - their version of
the Spectrum? It was a pretty brick building and we took a photo of that as
well. Then we moved on out onto the Gran Via.

We were walking through the area between the Sant Antoni district and the
De Eixample and we walked a long way down Gran Via - 2.5 kilometers (that
may not seem that much, but realize we had already walked 3 kilometers
before that!). While walking down Gran Via we passed some interesting
places. We stopped and took a photo at a "Sex Shop" which claimed to be a
"general store of sex" - we couldn't go in and check it out because they
were on siesta at the time. We saw a "perruqueria de caninos" which we
think was a grooming salon for dogs. They sold Iams food there :).  We
walked past a University (conveniently located across the street from Placa
Universitat, where there is a metro stop and a nice park area) - it was
another stunning example of old architecture. This was simply a few blocks
away from the Placa de Catalunya, where we began our walk yesterday, by the
way. Anyway, also near the University was El Bar Estudiantes, which seemed
to be full of students relaxing and enjoying themselves. We noticed that
there really are not many homeless people here in Barcelona. We have seen
one or two people who looked as if they were down and out, but nothing like
we see in Philadelphia, that's for sure. 

Finally we got to the Internet Cafe. We stopped in and had dos bocadillos -
un bocadillo de tortilla espanol (tortilla espanol is sort of like a potato
quiche, presented here as a few slices of the stuff on some bread), y un
bocadillo de salchichon (salami). Of note is the local custom of doing
something people always laugh at Hillary for doing in the states....they
seem to rub the bread with the cut surface of a ripe tomato, just enough to
turn the bread sort of pink, and leave behind the tiniest bit of pulp and
the occasional seed. This is done in place of any kind of mayonnaise or
mustard and it tastes very good! After we ate we moved upstairs to the
Internet area of the cafe and spent half an hour checking email - hillary
had to erase a bunch of spam, as well as a bunch of error messages, and it
was really annoying. Oh well. 

After leaving the Internet Cafe we toyed briefly with the idea of riding
the metro back to the hotel, but the weather was so nice that we decided to
walk as far as we could. So, we walked up Carrer Roger de Lluria towards
the Avinguda Diagonal. This was about another kilometer or so. We passed
the cafe "Fantapas" where we ate lunch yesterday, and Michael took a
picture of hillary standing outside of it.  We also noticed the law school
across the street from that cafe, which we hadn't really noticed the other
day. 

When we got to Avinguda Diagonal, we observed and went into a small
courtyard full of pretty flowers and trees - Hillary is pretty sure that
one of the plants was on her poisonous plant test, but she can't remember
the name of it.  She did take a picture of Michael standing near some of
the flowers, though. Oh, btw, we also noticed a few orange trees with
actual oranges on them! 

When we walked out the gate on the other side of this little park, we found
ourselves in a little pedestrian mall area - maybe about 50 yards long? -
kind of like what Chestnut Street wants to be. We sat on a bench there and
watched some local skateboarders making idiots of themselves. Then we
continued on our way toward the hotel.  We accidentally walked too far,
though, and found ourselves back yet again at La Placa de Francesc Macio!
So, we went around the block and stopped at a small store to purchase a
large bottle of water - boy, were we thirsty! :)

Other things - we forget where exactly, but somewhere on our walk we
stopped at a small grocery store and took a picture inside. Very
picturesque place...
We saw a lot more dogs today, too - but we haven't seen any veterinary
hospitals! We noticed that all the male dogs were un-neutered - but they do
not seem to have a problem with stray dogs, so it isn't that bad of a
situation.

Mila, Dan, Jason, Jeff, Joan, and Avi: Hillary would like to mention to you
that she got an email from Kristen Morris, nee Cooper, today - and Kristen
remarked that it has been too long since we last spoke, and she sends her
love to the family and says hi to everyone and wants to get together when
we get back, as she has recently moved to Wilmington from Virginia.

Everyone - we hear on CNN that as of today the trains and taxis as well as
the Air France pilots are on strike in France. We fervently hope that this
is resolved before we reach Paris!! We assume it will be as we have 3 weeks
 before we go there. Still, we'd be mas contento if they were not on
strike, as it would be one less thing to worry about. 

Hillary managed to order a coca cola and pay for it and everything and do
the whole thing without Michael's help at all. A landmark occasion!

We are not sure what we will do tomorrow. Perhaps we will walk around the
"Cuitat Vella" area and then go to the Zoo...perhaps we'll do something
else. Barcelona is a very very large city and there is simply no way we
will cover all of it. We'd be exhausted if we tried.  We are also
considering taking a ride on the tourist bus, which stops at 17 places
along a loop - kind of like the Phlash.

Well, that's about it for now. We'll write more when we have more to say!

-Hillary and Michael

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Sat, 06 Jun 1998 17:22:32 -0400
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: review: Citrus Restaurantus / June 6 / review: La Botiga

Hey y'all. We have just returned to our hotel at 1 am on Saturday the 6th
(that is, it is very early on the morning of the 6th, not late at night on
the 6th). We ate dinner this evening at a restaurant on Passeig de Gracia
near the tapas bars we patronized earlier this week - Citrus Restaurantus.
This was a very nice, very trendy kind of place. It reminded us a bit of
Pollo Rosso as far as decor and atmosphere, but different in that there
were tablecloths and of course the style was not Italian, but rather more
Barcelonian :). 

We arrived at Citrus Restaurantus (CR) at about 9:40 PM and were informed
that there would be a wait until about 10:15 PM. So, we put our name on the
list and went back out to a small cafe called Cafe di Roma, where we
ordered dos cervezas y una focaccia primavera to tide us over, as Hillary
was feeling a little peckish :)
At about 10:10 we went back to CR which was now very crowded in the foyer
area - after a short while we were seated at a very nice table. 

We were given menus which contained loose translations of the *real* and
much more formal looking menus given to the locals. These were large
notebook like menus containing detailed information in english, italian,
french, and german. Using these menus, we decided on a bottle of Cava,
which you may recall is the local sparkling wine which we enjoyed the other
day at the underground botega. We ordered zucchini with goat cheese and
parmesan as an appetizer, along with "Citrus Moussaka," their version of
the greek dish moussaka. For entrees we ordered chicken tourenados with
mushrooms and lamb stew with baby vegetables. We also had una botella aqua
con gas :)

The food was all very delicious. The moussaka was exquisitely prepared,
very unlike your standard greek restaurant fare but still representative of
the actual classic dish. The eggplant was layered with slices of tomato as
an upper layer, underneath which there was the usual potato and lamb
mixture. The zucchini appetizer was also good. 

The lamb stew was very rich and flavorful and contained large chunks of
tender lamb as well as tiny baby carrots and mushrooms and onions. The
chicken was beautifully presented as two rolled up pieces wrapped in some
kind of bacon type meat, served aside a mound of minced wild mushrooms with
peppers and onions. All of it was delicious and there was more food than we
had expected. Plus, the very very solicitous waiter kept bringing us more
bread, and the bread was especially tasty. 

BTW, the Cava we ordered was very good and we've decided we are going to
harass the state store people in PA and force them to stock this stuff if
they do not already carry it. You might look into this if you are interested.

Hillary wanted to find the bathroom at this point and Michael refused to
ask the waiter where it was for her so she went up to some random
restaurant guy and asked him "habla ingles?" to which he replied "un
poquito." She asked him in English where it was and he showed her. Michael
thinks this was cheating. She doesn't. 

Anyway, when she got back to the table Michael had ordered some dessert -
Citrus Sherbets - lemon, lime, and "sour pink citrus" which turned out to
be a yummy and low pH grapefruit flavor. After all of this, we sat back and
mentally figured about how much this would cost us in Philadelphia. We
figured for all of that it would be about $120 or so, considering the
champagne type wine and all. However, it came to a mere 6000 pesetas, which
depending on the exchange rate and stuff should be about $40. What a
bargain!!!! If you think about it, we're actually *saving* money...well,
not really, but it is amazing how cheap the food is here. Plus, you are
only supposed to tip about 10% in restaurants, although we do tend toward
the side of too much rather than too little.

During our walk this evening we noticed again the Casa Botllo (sp?) - the
building we remarked on before which resembles a dragon - in the dark, with
the lights shining on it, it is even more beautiful and striking.
Unfortunately, we were not able to get a picture of it tonight. We did get
the waiter to take a picture of us in CR, but we're not sure if it will
come out because he fumbled with the camera a bit.

FYI for Mila and Dan - prior to our departure Hillary posted a note to the
phl.food newsgroup about the updated menu at Pollo Rosso, and advising
readers to check it out, and also mentioning the review in the Philadelphia
Weekly. Well, today, she got email from some people who read the review and
are going to check out Pollo Rosso. You might mention this to Jon if you
feel like it.

Question for Joy: Michael and I are arguing about which modern languages
are considered "romance languages." Could you please settle this for us by
sending us a list? 

Of general interest - we noticed that Basset Hounds, small terriers, and
large mutts seem to be the most popular dogs around here. We have seen many
dogs of these types. We have also seen one dalmation, one golden retriever,
and one Italian greyhound. Still no veterinarians, though. Oh well.

Tomorrow (later today) we plan to ride the tourist bus - only 1700 pesetas
for unlimited rides on the bus, which stops at 24 interesting places. You
can get off and back on as much as you like. We will probably ride it to
the area near the Parca Cuitadella/Parca Zoologica, and get off, walk
around, check out the zoo, the park, and the nearby Olympic village, then
get back on the bus and check out the north part of Barcelona, which we
really haven't seen at all. Then we'll come back to the hotel and pack and
prepare for our train ride to Madrid on Sunday.

that's all for now. we hope that you are enjoying our travelogues at least
one half as much as we are enjoying experiencing the contents of them!!

------------------------------------------------------------

It is now 7pm here on June 6th in Barcelona.  We just got back from a very
long day of touring many parts of the city of Barcelona that we had not
seen yet.  Here's the story of our day:

We woke up late in the morning and headed over to the cafe which we ate at
yesterday.  We had dos cafes con leche which turned out to be similar to a
latte back in the states.  You can't really get a cup of coffee around
here.  If you order un cafe, you get a shot of espresso.  We also had some
type of pastry, but I forget the name of it.  We sat at the bar, drinking
our coffees, and we had some serious doubts about the weather.  It was
overcast and kind of cool out.  Michael even brought an umbrella just in case.

By the time we were done at the cafe, however, the sky had cleared up and
the sun came out.  It was actually kind of cooler today, and it turned out
to be a beautiful day, weather wise.  We decided that it would be a shame
not to see the far north and south parts of the city while we're here, so
we hopped on the tourist bus at the Placa de Francisc Macia stop. The first
part of the bus tour took us along the route we described earlier, past the
information supermarket down to the Barcelona Sants train station. We then
drove around it, and got a good view of the Parc Espanya Industrial, which
is kind of a plaza with a lot of water and trees and large metal sculptures.

We didn't stop there, though. We continued on past the Parc Joan Miro,
where Michael and Hillary attempted to take a photo of a very beautiful
sculpture, only to be told to sit down by the evil tour guide who seemed to
think we were going to fall off the top of the bus if we lifted our butts
off the seat by an inch. So maybe that photo won't come out. We continued
across the Placa d'Espanya, which we described to you in a previous email,
and then drove farther than we'd walked before, into the Anelia Olimpica
and up the mountain called "Montjuic," or "Mountain of the Jews." We went
past many interesting places here - stadiums, parks, museums, etc...of
particular note was the Montjuic fortress, beneath which there is a buried
Jewish cemetery, which of course we could not see as it was buried.  On the
way down the mountain we drove through some striking scenery - many
interesting and very tall flowering cactuses, trees, and succulent plants.
Hillary noticed many flowering oleander shrubs, and is pleased that her
poisonous plant class is coming in so handily. She made sure Michael didn't
eat any of the oleander :)

After we got down from the mountain we were in the harbor area, where there
was a cruise ship docked. Two apparently very travel-weary american women
sitting behind us remarked that they were really glad to be off the cruise
ship they had been on for the past couple of weeks because they had gotten
very fat on the boat! We drove past this harbor area and past a
resort/beach area where people were frolicing and enjoying the balmy
weather - note that we were enjoying it too, from the open-air upper deck
of the tour bus! We drove through the coastal area of the "Ciutat Vella"
part of Barcelona, and went through a trendy shopping area where there was
an Imax theater. Oh, also - these tour buses are apparently heavily
subsidized by KFC and Pizza Hut, because every time they announced a stop,
they also remarked on where the nearest one of those places was - often
right near the stop! And our bus tickets came with coupons for discount
meals at those places (we passed on that...) Also in this area we stopped
to see the "Mirador de Colon" - a monument to a general, we think, at the
base of the people-watching boulevard, La Rambla. Then we went through Port
Vell, which seems to be where the cargo ships come in.

We drove past the district they call "La Barceloneta," where there is more
trendy shopping, tourist stuff, and coastline, and we went through the Vila
Olimpica, which is just behind the two tallest buildings in Spain - they
call them the "twin towers" and they are a whole whopping 42 stories tall!!
woo. 

Then the bus made kind of a U turn and went inland a bit, taking us into
the Parc de la Ciutadella. This is a very large - about 3/4 kilometer by
1/2 kilometer - park, with beautiful trees, shrubs, and grassy areas,
fountains and sculptures, etc. It occupies the former site of an 18th
century citadel and houses several museums and the regional parliament
building. Also in this park is the Zoo. We got off at this bus stop and
walked around a bit. The park was full of picnicking locals and tourists.
We went to the zoo (our bus tickets gave us a discount) of course :). The
big thing about the Barcelona zoo is they have the *only* albino gorilla
ever seen - the only one anyone knows about, anyway. His name is Snowflake,
and he has five or six living offspring but they are all the usual black
color. The zoo had many other interesting exhibits as well. It was very
heavy on the birds - we saw a lot of parrots and many tropical birds like
toucans and others that we can't recall the names of but Hillary thinks
that some of them were related to the toucan. Hillary thinks Dr. Moffatt
would have enjoyed checking out the large aviary. We also went into an
exhibit of the rainforest of Madagascar, where there were interesting
lizards. Michael enjoyed seeing the marmosets and tamarins with their
infants clinging to their backs in the small primate area. So, anyway, we
had some sandwiches in the zoo, and took a photo of the statue of a stray
dog put up by the Barcelona society for the preservation of plants and
animals. there was a poem under the statue, written in Catalan, that we
couldn't fully translate but it seemed to say that people should be kind to
animals and that if you weren't, you were a big fat loser.

When we were done exploring this area we got back on the tour bus. It took
us past the Estancio Franca, another huge train station, which was built
originally for some world expo or something but is now just another train
station. We continued into the Gothic quarter, which had some interesting
architecture, a music museum, but wasn't as interesting to us as some of
the other stuff we had seen. We did notice a french poodle strolling about
one of the parks, though.

The next stop was Placa Catalunya of which we wrote before. Today the
fountains weren't on. We changed buses here, to get onto the one which goes
to the west of the city. The second bus first took us through the
moderniste area which we already described in detail, so we won't discuss
it again - although we did get another good look at the Casas Botlle and
Mila :). We drove on past the Sagrada Familia, getting a better look at
some of the detailed carvings, and then drove up the Passeig Sant Joan
until we were near the Parc Guell. We disembarked at that stop and after
Hillary recovered from practically impaling herself on a waist high pole
that was located exactly in the wrong place, requiring Michael to purchase
an ice-cream bar with which to distract her from the pain, we walked
through the Gracia neighborhood into the park. This was originally supposed
to be a chi-chi housing development with homes, markets and schools, but it
turned into something very different. Only two houses were ever built here
and one is now a museum. The place is designed by Gaudi, the same guy who
did many of the other things we've seen, and who also designed the
sidewalks Hillary so admires on the Passeig de Gracia. There is in the park
a big ceramic lizard, which Michael posed next to for a photo. Also there
are many benches inlaid with broken tile in mosaic fashion, and some
interesting walkways lined by unique stone carvings of which we took a
couple of pictures. We also went through the Hall of a Hundred Columns, but
couldn't get a good picture of the beautiful mosaic ceiling because it was
kind of dim in there.

After we finished walking around this park, we walked back down to the bus
stop.
We got on the next bus and drove through the La Sarria neighborhood, which
our guide told us is the most exclusive quarter, but which Hillary thought
was not as impressive as the Eixample, by any stretch. There were many
beautiful gardens, however, with lots of bright purple and red flowers we
didn't recognize as well as the omnipresent oleander in pink and white, and
some orange trees lining the streets. 

We drove along a main road all the way until we got to the Monestir de
Pedralbes-Thyssen, an ancient monastery which is now a museum. It is "the
best example of the Catalan Gothic style of architecture," which leads us
to believe that the Catalan gothic style of architecture is nothing to
write home about. Ooops. I guess we just did. Well, anyway, this very old
building houses art and other items collected by a Catalan Queen, by the
name of Elizabetta or something like that, many years ago.

>From there we drove down to the Futbol Club of Barcelona, where some guys
in rugby shirts got off to go look around. They have a big museum of Futbol
here, and the largest sports arena in Europe with 150,000 spectator seats.
Nearby was a school of Pharmacy and a maternity hospital. Also in the
surrounding area was a sculpture garden. 

After leaving the futbol club we drove along the section of Avinguda
Diagonal which is opposite the Placa Francesc Macia from our hotel (that
is, it is beyond the Placa, in the part of the city we had not previously
visited) and we drove down this section toward the Placa. This is supposed
to be the most exclusive business area of Barcelona. We drove past the
Hilton, which was a nice black shiny glass building, and we drove past
several fancy restaurants, and a mexican place :)

Finally we got to the Placa de F.M. and got off the bus, and returned to
our hotel. Here we are, relaxing and recovering from our busy day. We will
pack our stuff up and prepare for our travel day tomorrow to Madrid. No
sleeping in for us tomorrow!!!

We got a lot of sun - Hillary has a criss-cross pattern on her feet from
wearing her sandals. Michael's freckles are coming out. No sunburn, though. 

That's about it for now. We hope things are going well for everyone!

-----------------------------------------------

It is now 11:10 PM on the 6th, and we have just returned from dinner at La
Botiga. This was a charming and very good restaurant located off La Placa
Francesc Macio. We were given the *real* menus this time, and had to ask
for English translations. I guess Michael is finally getting the local
accent down pat!  We had fried scallions and seafood stuffed eggplant to
start -both were very good, the scallions surprisingly so, served with a
Romesco sauce, and the eggplant indescribable really. Then we had
tourenados of beef with three different cheeses, and in a surprise move
hillary ordered the lamb chops :). Both entrees were served with a very
good side dish of potatoes with zucchini. We also had an excellent Rioja
(red wine from the region of spain near the French border) and a bottle of
mineral water, sin gas (we ordered it con gas, but that's not what we got.)

For dessert we had profiteroles with chocolate sauce, and green apple
sorbet with calvados. Both were excellent.

When we got the check, Hillary noticed that in addition to the items noted
above, there were listed on the bill un pastis y un yogurt. She asked the
waitress "que es el pastis y yogurt?" and the waitress took the bill away
and then came back with it corrected - we're not entirely sure what was up
with that - were they trying to rip us off because we told them we did not
speak very much spanish? we hope not and think probably not - it seemed
that they were having a problem with their computer, but we don't know for
sure. Anyway, it worked out and it was only about 6000 pesetas for the
whole shebang (that's about $37 or so). We wanted to leave a tip, but we
didn't have any change, so Michael sent Hillary to the bar to ask the
bartender "puede combiarme esto" (can I change this?) por favor. The
bartender said "si, no problema," and made change for her, and we left a
tip, and left.

Now we are back in the hotel. We are almost all packed up for Madrid -
except we have to pack up the computer! Anyway, we're pretty wiped out and
we have a busy travel day tomorrow so that's all for now.


Love,
hillary and michael

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Sun, 07 Jun 1998 14:40:14 -0400
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: up the down staircase, June 7th

The subject is a reference to the Madrid metro....but more on that later. 

A couple of general things we've not mentioned yet: 

- when we got to spain from copenhagen, we were waved directly on through -
no customs hassle of any kind.
- Michael is always correct with respect to which direction we ought to go
in order to find a hotel, a transportation site, or a point of interest.
- Hillary is almost always incorrect with respect to above.
- Sadly, we rediscover these tendencies vis a vis sense of direction daily.

We left off, we believe, with a tale of our final dinner in Barcelona. We
got up early today and had breakfast in the hotel, then took a cab to
Estacio Sants to catch the 10:30 Intercity train to Madrid. We had some
time to kill in the train station, so we took a picture for Uncle Jeff, and
then looked around a bit....Michael sent Hillary on an errand to purchase
some postage stamps. She managed to ask the information people where to buy
stamps (in Spanish), and then to actually find them, and to ask the woman
at the counter for them, and to pay for them and get change and everything
all by herself. This was a huge deal, you have to realize. Hillary also
went and bought some water and some melocotonitos (tiny peaches), using her
amazing linguistic skills to find out how much these items cost before
committing to the purchase. Michael, on the other hand, found a mailbox and
sent some postcards. 

So, we hopped on the train, which was very nice...lots of legroom!! and
good climate control, too.  The trip from Barcelona to Madrid started out
going kind of southwest along the Mediterranean coast. During the first
part of the trip we hugged the coastline, which reminded Hillary of the
northern California coast, especially certain parts of the coast we passed
by that greatly resembled Red Rock Beach in Marin County, CA - even down to
the nude sunbathers, who were completely visible from the train, by the way :)

We passed through some very upscale looking resort areas and these were
surrounded by cheaper looking apartment/motel type buildings. Maybe some
summer homes, too? we're not sure. There were many golf courses, tennis
courses, soccer fields (we saw some games going on). Many of the cheaper
looking buildings were orange, blue, yellow, or pink! There was a lot of
new construction going on as well. In between these resort areas were some
agricultural areas - some olive farms, some other kinds of farms, and there
were these very poor looking villages right up near the resorts. The trees
in the region were palm, fir, and maple. The wildflowers were mainly yellow
and white.
After a while we also passed some public campgrounds, which looked very
nice - subdivided by twine tied to stakes, large areas whithin which people
pitched tents or set up an RV or trailer or something. These had easy beach
access as well, and public playgrounds for the kids.

The next big stop was Tarragona, and that's where the train turned to start
going inland, more directly west. We passed through some large industrial
areas with tanks, and warehouses, and shipping areas. These were
interspersed with some beautiful countryside - trees, farms, hills, those
nice white and yellow wildflowers, and big open country areas....and some
mountainous areas. We can't really describe it that well. Imagine a cross
between the Irish countryside and the California countryside near
Yellowstone, with some mountains thrown in!

Michael slept for a while and Hillary read a book (surprise) during the
next hour or so, until the conductor came to check our tickets, which was
sort of anticlimactic after all the warnings we'd recieved about ensuring
that everything was perfect with respect to filling out our railpass
correctly. The next big stop was Zaragoza, which was a big station with a
lot of colorful graffiti on it. The city of Zaragoza was visible from the
train, and it looked really big. There was a large rail yard and we saw
some freight trains loaded up with shiny new automobiles. As we passed west
of the city, we observed some feedlot cattle (a feedlot is kind of a large,
dirt-floored, fenced in area, surrounded by feed troughs, where they fatten
up the cattle before shipping them to market) - several of which were
*ahem* having their way with each other.

After Zaragoza, but before we reached Calatayud, we saw a large herd of
white goats being sheperded along (goatherded?) by some guy with a stick.
It was comical because the goats extended to cover an area perhaps the size
of a football field, and there was this one man trying to herd them. We
passed through a very large farming region, with tons of olive trees
ranging from new saplings to ancient trees. Eventually we came to a
picturesque stop called Mora La Nueva, where the station was a yellow brick
building with white trim, somewhat reminiscent of Independence Hall in
Philadelphia. This station, unlike most of the others, was nicely tended,
with fir trees and oleander shrubs nearby.

Moving westward, we passed through another largely mountainous region,
where Hillary observed what she thinks was a plant called astralagus
growing on the hillside. This is another one of those poisonous plants :)
Michael noticed what he thinks was the cooling tower of a nuclear reactor,
and a nearby very large electrical plant of some kind.

Also of note on our journey - about an hour outside of Madrid we passed a
large group of cows grazing freely on the hillside, below a fortress of
some kind which looked like a castle out of Monty Python and the Holy
Grail. In this region the wildflowers were mostly red and purple, not
yellow and white.

The last big stop before Madrid was Guadalajara, a very large and modern
city with tall, square, buildings mostly of red brick. There were also some
older style buildings, including a church we had a good view of from the
train. On the way out of Guadalajara we saw a huge black cardboard cut out
of a cow in the middle of a field :)

About 1/2 hr outside of Madrid we passed a large hill or small mountain
above which there appeared to be about 8 or 10 hangliders. Then there was
just some open country and then finally.....Estancia Madrid-Chamartin!!!

Chamartin is the station we came into, it is in the north part of Madrid
and is not the station closest to our hotel, but all trains from Barcelona
go here. Upon arrival, we schlepped our stuff up a few flights of stairs
and then set about searching for the Eurorail Aid office which our pamphlet
clearly stated was in this station - because we wanted to get the updated
timetable we were told to get. After schlepping back and forth across the
station a few times and attempting to talk to three different officials, it
became clear that pamphlet or no pamphlet, the office was a figment of
someone's imagination. So we moved on to item 2 on our list of things to do
in Madrid - buy a map! that was a lot easier and quickly gotten out of the
way.

Feeling a bit more worldly after navigating thus far, we decided to take
the Metro to our hotel, instead of what would have been an expensive cab
ride. So, we schlepped our stuff down the stairs, across the platform, down
some more stairs, across another thing, and bought tickets and figured out
where we had to switch trains. Then, to enter the actual metro system....

*sigh*
You know those automatic turnstile things, you put your ticket in and it
sucks it through and spits it back out and lets you go through - like the
Septa subway? Well, Hillary had some trouble going through there....the
turnstile wouldn't let the suitcase through so she tried to lift it and
ended up doing a major pratfall, landing on her back with the suitcase on
top of her, feeling incredibly stupid and grouchy about the whole thing.
But, we survived. We schlepped down some stairs, across some platform, up
some stairs, and down some other stairs, or so it seemed, and eventually
got onto the train - which we rode to the next stop, then switched to
another line, which took us the rest of the way to Puerto del Sol, which is
right near our hotel. To get out of the metro, it was more of the same. Up,
down, over, yada yada. Finally, out into the sun!!

The metro ride was pretty unremarkable save for a tall, skinny, dour faced
man all dressed in brown who quite obvious about "adjusting himself."
Madrid seems much more frenetic, if you will, than Barcelona. While
Barcelona is a relaxed city full of American and European tourists and
light skinned locals, Madrid seems to be much more multicultural - we saw
people of many colors during our brief (3 minute?) walk from the metro to
the hotel, not to mention the ride on the metro itself. The streets are
much more crowded. Hillary notices that it is much more difficult for her
to read the signs and stuff in "regular" spanish (that is what Michael
calls Castillian :)) than it was for her to read the Catalan - which seemed
to have a lot of French mixed into it.

In any case, we arrived at the Hotel Madrid. Michael asked for and obtained
a change from a room with twin beds to a room with one larger bed. Yay! :)
The concierge was friendly and gave us some pamphlets with touring
information.
This is really about it. We checked out the shower, which is better than
the one in Barcelona as far as consistency of water temperature goes, and
we will probably go get some food sometime soon.

We hope that you all are doing well and that no one is too inconvenienced
by the Septa strike. Lisa, sorry to hear it's been such a problem for you.
Let us know when that resolves.

love,
hillary and michael

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Mon, 08 Jun 1998 13:47:56 -0400
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 8: siesta to fiesta?

Greetings from tropical Madrid!

It is warm and sunny here in central Spain - seems to us this is typical
spanish weather.  Today we got out a bit and we again noticed some definite
differences between Barcelona and Madrid - for one thing, Madrid is MUCH
more "big city"ish - lots more hustle, way more bustle. There are many many
shops and cafes and little stores and businesses and stuff all crammed
together here, the sidewalks for the most part are smaller, and people in
general seem to be busier.  There are also some similarities between Madrid
and Barcelona - most people still seem friendly, the automobile drivers are
pretty aggressive in both places, and the street signage is unbelievably
poor!! The names of the streets are (occasionally) posted on square plaques
on the corners of certain large buildings at intersections, but are often
either absent or covered up by the nearly ubiquitous green screens that are
used by the construction workers to cover their work area - it seems that
much of Spain is under continuous renovation.

Anyway. Last night, after we sent the email detailing our journey by train,
we went out to briefly explore the area near our hotel, which is called
Puerto del Sol - gate of the sun. This is the very center of Spain both
physically (there is a marker for "Kilometer 0" embedded into the sidewalk;
this is the point from which all distances are officially measured) and
politically - there was a big uprising in 1808, against the French troops,
during which many Madridilenos were executed - a memorial plaque and wreath
are present on the Communidad de Madrid building, which we took a photo of
today. This building is also of note because it was used during the reign
of Franco as the central police headquarters, and the key scene of Franco's
"interrogations." Apparently the deaths of the prisoners here were
regularly recorded as suicides. 

Anyway, last night we didn't really look around this area that much, but we
crossed over the plaza to an interesting looking area of two pedestrian
walkways which had been draped with festive looking streamers - sort of a
roof of streamers had been created, multicolored streamers strung between
the buildings on either side - and we wandered through that area looking at
the many cafes and restaurants and such. We walked through this area until
we reached the road called Gran Via, and then we doubled back on a tiny
street called Tres Cruces and went into a restaurant recommended by one of
our guidebooks, called Costa del Sol. This place was pretty interesting -
it was staffed by a bunch of old fat guys, one of whom greeted us and
directed us peremptorily into our seats at a paper covered table. He
brought us bread without butter or bread plates, which seems to be
customary here in Madrid. Note this is unlike the Catalan custom in
Barcelona of giving you the bread with the tomato rubbed onto it - that was
served on a large central plate. Anyway, this restaurant we went to last
night is known for serving "meat, and a lot of it, at reasonable prices."
So, we ordered some sangria (which was heavy on the brandy, very strong,
and  very sweet), a salad, a mushroom omelette, and a grilled veal dish.
(Yes, Mila and Dan, Hillary ate veal. Calm down.)  The salad was nothing
special but everything else was very good. 

We left this place and retraced our steps back to the hotel, stopping first
at a small restaurant to have dessert (a banana split and a flan). 

Today, we woke up just in time to miss breakfast in the hotel, so we went
to the Jamaica Coffee Bar on Calle Mayor in the del Sol area. We got some
espresso and a cappucino (they seemed to think we had "cafe italiano" and
"cafe con leche" but really, it was an espresso and a cappucino) and a
croissant. The coffee bar was a nice place, similar to the Cafe Central in
Barcelona but more indoors.

Then we began a walking tour. First we doubled back to get a good look (and
a photo op) at the Communidad de Madrid building, which we have already
described. Then we walked along the Carrera de San Jeronimo, which is one
of 10 streets that meets in the center of the Puerto del Sol. At the corner
of San Jeronimo and Calle Victoria we came to a funny restaurant called the
Museo del Jamon - the museum of ham! This place is to ham what Sonoma
restaurant in Manayunk is to vodka, or what Baskin Robbins is to ice cream.
They have "varietal" hams, they have parts of pigs hanging up all over the
place, they are really the place to check out of you are a ham fan, we're
told. Michael is not a ham fan by any stretch of the imagination, so after
a quick look around, we continued on. 

We walked up the Calle Victoria, which was lined with small restaurants and
taverns, many of which had interesting window displays consisting of
shellfish, octopus, and cuts of meat, sitting there in the window case. We
also noticed several windows where there were people selling bullfighting
tickets, and posters advertising bullfights. 

Then we walked down another small street called Nunes de Arce. This area
has many taverns and cervecerias. We walked along until we got to the Plaza
Santa Ana, a small but very nicely laid out park. We walked through and
around the park, checking out the statues and refreshment stands on the
way. The north and south sides of the park are lined by bars/restaurants,
including Cerveceria Alemana, which was apparently one of Hemingway's
favorites. The east side of the park is bordered by el Teatro Espanol, a
large building with columns which since the 16th century has been the site
of the center of Madrid's theatrical scene - although the building wasn't
put up until about 1869. 

The west side of the park is bordered by the Gran Hotel Reina Victoria,
which is a beautiful, elegant structure that was recently renovated (in the
80s) and which is apparently a kind of hangout for people who are into
bullfighting.  On the other side of this building is the Plaza del Angel,
which isn't really a plaza so much as it is an area where the narrow
sidewalk gets a bit wider. This area is of note because one of Madrid's
"top music emporiums" is here - Cafe Central (not the coffee bar in
Barcelona of the same name!), known for jazz and blues.

Then we turned down onto a larger street called Calle de las Huertas, which
really didn't look like very much because nearly everything was shuttered
and closed. This street houses many bars, which make it a real party scene
at night, we're told. 

We continued until we got the the Calle Lope de Vega, on which there is a
big brick building containing a plaque marking the burial site of Miguel de
Cervantes Saavedra, who died in a house around the corner shortly after
completing his great work, Don Quijote. The building housing the burial
site is called Convento de Trinitares Descalzas, and it is in fact a
convent, housing a group of nuns who shun contact with the outside world.
It looks like nothing so much as a prison complete with iron bars on the
windows. 

Nearby, around the corner on the Calle de Cervantes, we checked out Casa de
Lope de Vega, home of the playwright Lope de Vega - who was a rival and a
contemporary of Cervantes - note that Cervantes is buried on Calle Lope de
Vega, while Lope de Vega died on a street named Cervantes. Kind of ironic.
The Casa de Lope de Vega was recently renovated and restored to its
original appearance c. 1610.

We walked on, stopping to check out the Cortes, the national parliamentary
building, in which Colonel Tejera, leader of the right wing Guarda Civil,
attempted a coup by charging the building with a machine gun and holding
the officials hostage. Juan Carlos managed to squelch the coup, as must be
obvious, since he still rules.

We crossed Plaza de las Cortes and went onto Carrera de San Jeronimo,
walking along until we reached the Plaza Canovas del Castillo, which is a
traffic circle that has a fountain with a statue of Neptune in it, and some
lovely flowering shrubs around it. We tried to take a good photo of it, it
was a bit difficult since there were many cars and people around. While
standing looking at the fountain, we could see in the background off to our
right the Museo del Prado, perhaps Spain's most famous museum.

We zig zagged our way into the tree lined pedestrian median strip of El
Paseo del Prado, which they generally just call El Paseo because it changes
names as it passes other important sites (another reason not to drive
around in Spain - even if you figure out what street you are supposed to be
on, it will change names and confuse you!) The Prado is closed on Mondays
and we didn't want to go in there today anyway. We walked toward the end of
the building and reached the Jardin Botanico - a very large and old
botanical garden. We paid 200 pesetas each to get in - this was a real
bargain because the gardens were quite relaxing and beautiful. We wandered
through the medicinal plant section, back through the roses and other
ornamental plants, up around through the interesting tree section, and back
toward the front of the garden. We stopped frequently to rest in the shade.
We took a picture of one particular sign we found there, marking a tree
with pretty white flowers. The name of the tree was something like
"philadelphius pubescens," and we liked it :). Michael was very lucky that
he had Hillary with him today to point out the many, many, many poisonous
plants we passed by. :) :) :) :)

After we left the gardens, we decided we'd try a restaurant "recommended"
to us by a nice blond girl who was handing out flyers. She said it was her
family's place. We figured what the heck. Michael was starving. We went in
and ordered the menu del dia - bread, beverage, appetizer, main course, and
dessert for 1000 pesetas each. The food was in fact plentiful and good.
During the meal, Hillary realized she was simply too tired to continue on
the walking tour, which had easily another two hours to go. She has a cold
or something, and her Comtrex was kicking in. Michael was not averse to the
idea of our following local custom today, so we returned to our hotel for
una siesta. We took a nice long nap and are now preparing to go out and
check out the nightlife, baby. :)

By the way, Hillary is anxious for news from home, so please do not be shy
to send her some brief updates (to izzy@izzy.com, but don't quote this
entire message!).


love,
Michael and Hillary

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Tue, 09 Jun 1998 14:02:24 -0400
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 9: Las mujeres de la noche!!

Now, we left off, we believe, prior to our going out last night. We ended
up going to an  Italian place for pizza, believe it or not, because we just
couldn't face more spanish food :). It was a pretty good place. The pizza
was very thin and crunchy and we had a nice bottle of Rioja with it (which
cost oh, 6 bucks...)
The restaurant we went to last night was on Calle de Horteleza, a street we
walked up and down on - we first walked all the way to Plaza Santa Barbara,
where we saw some men on horseback leading two other horses each, and then
back down the street to the restaurant. After dinner we ended up just going
to bed, because we were very tired.

This morning we got up bright and early at about 7 am, had breakfast here
at the hotel, and went to get on a tour bus at 9:30 at the bus terminal in
front of the Royal Palace. The Royal Palace is an imposing structure with a
formal garden in front which contains many statues. We took a picture of
Michael with some of the statues. 

The tour we took took us around Madrid. We saw a LOT of stuff, but we're
not going to write it all down here because it would just take forever. The
most interesting parts of the city that we saw today were:

1. The university - it has about 95 buildings on campus and over 150,000
students!! We saw schools of engineering, medicine, dentistry, law, and
energy; plus many others we didn't catch the names of. In university city
we saw a wall with graffiti on it that says "Nazis No!" - which reminds us,
in Barcelona we saw a lot of anti-bilingual and pro-revolutionary graffiti;
here in Madrid we see mainly the same BS graffiti we see at home, plus some
anti-fascist graffiti. On our way out of university city we passed the
National School of Physical Education - of note here were the aluminum
people out on the lawn, which reminded us of the large sculpture of people
walking on the South St. Bridge over I-95, but on a much smaller scale.

2. Some famous chapels - two identical chapels, one of which was painted by
Goya in some famous painting, and one which has been dedicated to St.
Antony and is open to the public. As we drove by here, we saw a nice statue
of Goya, and some mounted policemen patrolling the area, which was being
prepared for a festival to celebrate St. Antony, on June 14.

3. This is for Jeff - Estancio del Norte - a big-ass train station from
which trains heading to the north of Spain depart. This station also houses
the Principio Pio metro station, which we observed from within a metro-car
while we were on the metro (later today).

4. Casa de Campo - this used to be the royal estate, prior to April 14,
1932 (when the king stepped down or something). This is a huge park which
contains a zoo, an aquarium, an amusement park, and lots of camping and
hiking areas, and also a lot of HOOKERS!! You wouldn't believe it if you
saw it. After our bus tour dropped us off at the zoo (where we spent some
time looking around and Michael made friends with a gosling) we eventually
walked about a kilometer to the metro station. On the way to the metro as
we walked through the park we kept seeing condoms on the side of the road.
Then, we noticed some women standing at the intersection of two remote
roads both lined by open park/wooded areas. Hillary pointed out that one of
the women appeared to be naked under her black lace see through body suit.
As it turned out, she wasn't entirely naked - she was wearing a skimpy
g-string and a push up bra that had no covering over her breasts (it was
more of a shelf for her breasts to sit on). She was accompanied by two
other women in lingerie and high heeled knee high boots. We walked past
them and noticed an increased number of condoms by the side of the road.
Further along were more of these women. As we neared the metro station, an
older man with no shirt on was heading down the road toward these
women...we beat it out of there and hopped on the next metro train. 

5. Old Madrid - at one point, our bus took us under a very old aqueduct,
and past the only remaining 14th century building in Madrid. The whole area
of what they call "old Madrid" was laid out in a very confusing way, and it
kind of reminded Hillary of the way Italy tends to be depicted in the
movies - narrow streets, etc. 

6. Numerous churches were pointed out to us, the one at Plaza de San
Francisco was designed by an Italian architect and currently houses many
paintings by Goya. 

7. The dolphin fountain in Plaza Republica Argentina is one of the most
beautiful fountains in Madrid. We tried to take a picture of it from the bus.

8. Alcala Gate - a very large stone gate made of several arches, in the
middle of Calle Alcala. We have no idea what it was for or what it
signifies but it sure is cool looking.

9. Near the zoo, we finally saw a veterinary hospital! Yay! Also,
yesterday, we forgot to tell you but we saw 4 or 5 very very large dogs in
the park across from Hemingway's favorite cafe. A Great Dane, a St.
Bernard, an Afghan, and some big mutts. It seems that Barcelona is a city
that prefers perritos, whereas in Madrid, they go for los perros grandes. :)

10. Plaza de Toros de las Ventas - or something like that - the
bullfighting arena where they still have bullfights. This used to be
located outside of the city limits, because bullfights within the city were
illegal - but now, the city has expanded and it is in the city - but it
hasn't moved or anything. From the outside this is a beautiful arena - we
hope our photo of it is ok - brick and ceramic tile, sort of similar to the
arena near the Olympic area in Barcelona.

Anyway, we have lots more written down (believe it or not, we took notes
while we were on the tour. Our biggest fear is getting home and realizing
we don't remember a thing...) but it would be tiresome to go through it
all. We hope that you can kind of get the flavor of our day from this email.

We were on the tour, by the way, with a family from Texas - at first we
thought they were the Hank Hill family (Fox TV reference) but no, alas,
that was not the case. The woman insisted that we must go to the Museo del
Jamon - the museum of ham - in fact, she says that the whole reason they
came to Madrid was because that is her favorite restaurant in the world.
They were really only coming to Spain to go to a wedding in Seville, but
she insisted on coming to Madrid for this restaurant. We had a chat with
them about the new subway system in Dallas - apparently it sucks and got
all messed up by the politicians and it is losing money.  Also, the woman
from Texas mentioned that we were lucky today was "cool" in Madrid,
because, she said, if it were hot, we'd have really been uncomfortable. We
aren't sure what the normal weather is like in Dallas, but it must be
really really hot there as a matter of course because it was NOT cool today
in Madrid! Now, our tour guide did mention that there are 320 sunny days
per year in Madrid, which means we were right about it being sunny most of
the time (and which is why they have a research center dedicated to solar
energy); but it must also be very hot here much of the time, because we've
been told that "when it gets hot" in August, everyone who can afford to
leaves the city. It is plenty hot enough for us as it is; Hillary says if
it were any hotter she wouldn't be able to walk around, Michael says
Hillary is a wimp. In any case, it was about 85 by our estimate - Hillary
was kind of melting during that 1 km walk to the metro station.

One other thing we noticed in downtown Madrid is that there are a number of
signs regarding PP O7 which is apparently a piece of proposed legislation
that has something to do with poor people. Some of the signs say that it is
for poor people, and some of the signs say it will hurt poor people. We
can't figure out what exactly it is, perhaps they are voting on some kind
of welfare reform or something.


Love,

Michael and Hillary
Anyway, that's all to report for now. It is now time for una siesta grande. 

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1998 19:50:49 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 10: the last day in Spain

Hi again, everyone.

Last night we went for a walk in the area north of Puerto del Sol, and we
ended up having dinner at a Tony Roma's, of all places - at least they have
a no smoking section!! We sat and ate and listened to the american country
music; the only thing of note really was that the food cost about half as
much as it would have at home.
While we were out walking we saw a store selling exotic reptiles, and we
checked it out - they had a variety of terrariums in there housing a
variety of unusual lizards, spiders, and snakes. We got a good look at
several fountains and ornate buildings lit up especially so they looked
really beautiful in the dark - but we hadn't taken our camera with us on
our walk, so we will have to remember that in our minds.

Some general comments about Madrid, for the record:

1. If you travel to Madrid and accidentally forget to bring any shoes, no
problema!! There are zapaterias (shoe stores) all over the place. On the
street with our hotel, there are at least four in this block!

2. Not only do Madrilenos seem to have some kind of shoe fetish, but also
there seems to be an inordinate number of places to eat and drink. We think
perhaps purchasing shoes makes you really hungry and thirsty.

3. Underwear is not popular among the Madrilenas. G-strings are plainly
seen through flimsy pants and skirts *if* they are worn; bras are seen on
the tourists only. Not that we're going around and checking this out
closely, but it is pretty obvious.

4. Our hotel seems to be a magnet for travelling Americans, in particular
Americans who were poorly brought up, and who do not realize that the
hallway of a hotel is not the place to run around screaming "woo hoo!
european vacation!!" and things like that. The people in Barcelona, even
the tourists, were much more civilized.

Today, we woke up kind of early for us and headed directly to the Prado -
the most famous art museum here. The building which contains this museum is
not exciting, although we did take a photo of it. It was supposed to be a
science museum but that never panned out, and after it was used by the
french troops as military headquarters during the french occupation of
Madrid, it became in 1819 an art museum. We spent a couple of hours in
there, checking out the works of Velazquez, Murillo, Goya, Titian, Rubens,
Rembrandt, and El Greco (et al.)  A highlight of the visit was the newly
reconditioned/cleaned/restored painting, Las Tres Gracias (the three
graces) by Peter Paul Rubens (aka Pedro Pablo Rubens :)) - a very very
large painting of three Rubenesque nude women. Hillary is a big fan of
Rubens. We also saw a lot of really wonderful marble, bronze, and alabaster
statues. Some of the marble work was amazing - women wearing robes that
looked so real, you couldn't believe it wasn't really cloth draping over
them.  Also in the museum we noticed some groups of cute spanish schoolkids
wearing uniforms and holding hands :) 

After we finished up in the Prado we walked down to El Parque del Retiro, a
huge 300+ acre park with lakes, exhibit halls, and all kinds of stuff. On
our way there, we walked up a street called Calle Claudio Moyano, which is
lined with booksellers. Hillary found a set of veterinary anatomy books,
and bought them, for 900 pesetas. (These are old books, written in spanish,
and really are just for Hillary's amusement, although the diagrams with
latin labels are actually useful.) 
We also stopped briefly at the Glorieta del Emperador Carlos V, a sort of a
traffic circle with a fountain in it, which is directly in front of the
Estacion de Atocha, yet another big train station - this one is where the
new high speed AVE trains to Seville originate. 

Anyway, in the park, they were having some kind of book festival. The
walkways were lined with booths selling various books on various topics and
there were big tents set up where corporate sponsors had exhibits. We saw a
little "history of Apple" museum set up by Apple corporation, and we
stumbled upon a tent set up by the local phone company which contained
Internet-connected computers. We sat down to check our email, and found
that our friend Patri was logged into izzy's server - so we were able to
talk to him, real-time. He was logged in from an Internet cafe in
Amsterdam! So that was interesting. We also browsed the cnn.com site and
are pleased to see that the French pilots and other transportation workers
have stopped striking. We checked the cnn.com weather pages and it seems
that Copenhagen and all of Norway are in for at least a few days of rain
coming up, so that's kind of a bummer, but at least we will be prepared and
can make sure we wear the appropriate clothing for our journey through
Denmark and Norway tomorrow.

We wended our way through the park and spent quite a bit of time there. We
found a really beautiful rose garden there and took several pictures of it
- it's been there for over two hundred years *point of contention here.
Hillary thinks the sign said 1820 or something like that and Michael thinks
it said 1920. Guess we'll never know. Anyway, we walked through there,
stopping to sit on a bench and relax for a while...then we walked out of
the park and wandered around until we found ourselves at...El Museo del
Jamon (jamon, jamon, jamon whole wheat....all right!)

We figured we had to give in, and we sat down and ordered two platos
combinados - a numero dos y un numero siete. The food was good, but, as
we'd been warned, the soup was god-awful. It was kind of weird eating while
surrounded by cured pig legs hanging from all the walls. We managed. While
in this restaurant, Hillary was shoved around quite a bit, by two different
old spanish women. We're not sure if this is normal behavior among old
spanish women, or if Hillary just seemed push-able today, or what...
During our meal, we observed un perro grande y negro, sitting in front of
the glass doors, looking in at us. We thought maybe he was hungry but it
turned out he was just being a good dog and waiting for his owner to finish
up inside.

We left the Museo del Jamon with full bellies and walked around the block
(because Hillary said we should go the wrong way again...) and finally
found our way back to the Paseo del Prado, and we basically retraced our
steps again until we were almost back to the hotel. We stopped off at a
parfumeria (this is kind of a small store that sells perfume, makeup,
soaps, and other bathroom products) because we needed to get Hillary some
conditioner for her hair. Then we headed back to the hotel for yet another
well earned siesta.

love,
Michael and Hillary 


From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 20:55:29 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 11: day of travel

Last night was our final one in Madrid (and for that matter Spain).  We
went out to an Italian restaurant on Calle Prim.  The pasta there was
excellent, and both also had Veal Scallopine prepared in a marsala sauce.
The cool thing about this restaurant was that they gave us a complementary
glass of Cava (champagne) upon seating us.  We also had a very nice
secluded, dark, candle lit table in a window nook.  We enjoyed it very much.

We got back to the hotel and packed up in preparation for leaving.

Today we woke up at 7am in order to have time to check out, have breakfast,
and head to the Madrid airport.  We had no trouble finding our way to the
gate and getting through customs.  The Spanish customs officials don't even
ask you any questions.  They look at your US passport, stamp it, and you
are on your way.

When our flight was ready to board, they loaded us onto a bus which drove
us out to some kind of airplane parking lot.  Our plane was actually a
SpanAir one - this flight was a cooperative one between SpanAir and SAS.

--Note: the above was written on the plane from Spain to Copenhagen. Now,
we are sitting in the airport in Copenhagen, having just returned from a
busy day of sightseeing! We have about an hour or so to kill, so we thought
we'd write some more.

We landed at about 2:30 and since we'd checked our bags through to Norway,
we deplaned and proceeded directly to customs, where we were waved through
the security area (although a little old lady near us got her bag
searched). The customs official who stamped our passports asked Michael how
long he'd be staying in Denmark, and when Michael told him just for the
day, the man said "that's too bad, but you are welcome to come here
anyway!" Then, when he looked at Hillary's passport, he asked, "Hillary? Is
that like..." and Hillary cut him off with a "yes," before he could make
the obligate Clinton joke. He said "oh, I guess you hear that all the time,
well, you are most welcome to come here anyway!" and waved her through. He
reminded Hillary of her neurosci professor in that both men have red skin
and pale white/blond hair - but the neurosci professor is the incarnation
of evil, and this customs guy was pretty nice.

We had read in our guidebook about the SAS express bus from the airport to
the city's Central Train station, so we took that - a great bargain, at a
mere 35 DKK (about $4.50) because a cab would have been much more. It runs
every 15 minutes and is pretty nice. It dropped us off about 25 minutes
later at the train station (yes, Jeff, we got a photo. It's a nice brick
building.) We headed across the street into the Tivoli gardens, which is a
combination amusement park/botanical garden/bunch of restaurants and fine
dining.  At first, we were kind of disappointed in it, but as we wandered
through we found some very cute ducks, which Michael befriended, feeding
them 2 DKK worth of duck food; and then we found some really beautiful
gardens and fountains and things, which we took photos of. We deliberately
passed straight by the Hard Rock Cafe located near the exit of the gardens.

After we finished in there, we walked down the "Stroget" (the o should have
a diagonal line through it; this is pronounced "STRO-yet." This is a mile
long pedestrian thoroughfare that runs through the heart of Copenhagen. It
is lined by designer shops, regular shops, and a plethora of shawarma
restaurants which also sell waffles and soft serve ice cream. As shoes are
to Madrid, so shawarma is to Copenhagen!! Who would have guessed? Why this
isn't mentioned in the guidebooks we have is a complete mystery. 

We walked all the way to the end of the Stroget, passing through the
Kongens Nytorv (King's Square) which is a plaza containing a statue of some
important guy on a horse, surrounded by some fancy hotels and the biggest
department store in Scandinavia, Magasin du Nord. Finally we came to an
area called Nyhavyn.

Nyhavyn used to be a wild area populated by sailors - it is a canal-front
part of town and there are still boats lining the sidewalk (boats in the
water, not on the land), and there are some tour boats which leave from
here. On either side of the canal there are buildings, and on one side of
the canal there is a large pedestrian walkway with many sidewalk cafes on
it. We stopped at a Mexican place and had beers and fajitas :). They were
good!

We hung out there for a while enjoying the amazing weather - while rain and
15 C had been forecast, it turned out to be sunny and warm at about 21 C or
so. However, it started cooling off so we decided to mosey. We walked back
along the pedestrian walkway, taking a turn we had not taken before, and
encountering the Museum of Erotica. This we couldn't miss! So, we went in.
The first thing we saw was a giant golden penis with the words "museum of
erotica" underneath it. This was a photo op we couldn't pass up :)

Things progressed....there were paintings, photographs, carvings, dioramas,
paraphernalia, videos, movies, magazines, you name it, they had it, and it
was in color too! A very strange place. Not only were there pictures and
things, but there were photos of famous people with dissertations on their
sex lives printed up next to them (in Danish and English). There were hard
core movies, soft core movies, sex aids, sex toys, sex drugs. There was a
lot of stuff in there. It took about an hour or so to see it all. Finally
we got out of there. On our way out we passed a group of four middle aged
Danish women heading in. :)

After that, we walked back to catch the SAS bus back to the airport. We
just missed one (remember, they come every 15 min) so we walked into the
train station to check it out. There was a gang of Danish soccer fans in
line to catch a train to France. They were wearing Danish "football"
jerseys and hats and stuff, all red and white like the flag - and one guy
had a buzz cut and had his white/blond hair dyed scarlet red - except for
leaving a white cross still white, so his hair was a flag!

Hillary had occasion to check out the rest room in the train station - it
was weird. You could get a shower there for 15 DKK. There was a sign next
to the sink that said "washing hands is free, washing for 'other purposes'
is 5 DKK." We're not sure what those "other purposes" are. Also, there was
a room in there where an attendent was selling a variety of panties (yes,
underwear) for 25 DKK a pair. Why you need to buy new underwear in the
restroom of the train station is beyond us. Maybe they are often crowded
and people find themselves unable to wait, and end up needing new undies?
Who knows.

Anyway, we caught the SAS bus and got back to the airport and here we are,
waiting for our plane to Bergen. We are excited about being reunited with
our luggage. Tomorrow, we will explore Bergen, and then hop on the Richard
With (that's a boat) to begin our 6 day cruise of the Fjords. Woo!

love,
Michael and Hillary


From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 21:57:15 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 12: Norwegian Wood

Ok, we made it to Norway!! Our plane from Copenhagen was a bit late, and
very crowded, and when the pilot made some announcements in Norwegian and
Danish as to the status of the flight (he said in English at one point that
there were some problems loading it), some good-natured passengers started
making jokes among each other in either Norwegian or Danish or possibly
Swedish, we really can't tell any of these languages apart. It was a
convivial crowd, though.

The flight was short, only an hour, and the remarkable thing was that as we
flew from Copenhagen (where it had been just starting to get dark at about
11 PM when we left) to Bergen, the sky got lighter and lighter! As we began
our descent over Norway, we were above a very dense cloud cover - above it,
it was quite light even though it was near midnight. As we dropped through
the cloud cover, it became darker because it was so very overcast, and when
we got beneath it, it was about what you would call twilight, or late
twilight. There was still at midnight plenty of light for us to see the
beautiful Norwegian coastline and the trees and homes we flew over. It's
not a sight we are likely to forget anytime soon. 

We landed and our bags were three of the first 7 bags off the conveyor, so
that was cool. We hopped on another of those nifty SAS airbuses which took
us to the center of town, about 40 minutes away, for about $5 bucks - our
guidebook informs us this would have been a $50  cab ride, so this was a
great deal.

We got off the bus about 3 blocks from our Guesteheusen. To get to the
Guesteheusen we had to go up a hill which was sad for Michael who was
schlepping a larger bag than I was. We finally got here at about 1 am - it
was pretty dark by now although still not DARK dark. We checked into our
room - although the propietors had lost the key, and had to get us in by
using the master key, we figured who cares, we're just sleeping over here
anyway. 

The place is nice, clean, and has everything we need - although, not only
were there twin beds, but the beds fold longitudinally - so we were on a
twin bed with a crack down the middle. We ameliorated this a bit by using
one of the nice soft down comforters as a bottom sheet. 

The weather here was a slight bit drizzly on our way into town last night
but again, we completely avoided being rained on, as by the time we got off
the bus it wasn't raining, and it was warm enough for us to be wearing T
shirts, windbreakers, and pants without freezing our butts off. It's
looking kind of mostly cloudy with some blue sky present as of today.

This message is being composed at about 9:45 am - we were awakened this
morning at about 9 am by the Norwegian sanitation engineers who seem to go
down the street very slowly in a big truck, doing something that makes a
lot of noise. Oh, btw - in Copenhagen they had automatic trash cans on the
street that kind of ate up your trash and compacted it on the spot!!
Anyway, we're packing stuff up and getting ready to go for a day of
sightseeing in Bergen.

Cellphone afficionados among you - though Omnipoint claimed to have no
roaming agreements in Denmark, they obviously did - we sent you email via
cellular from the airport there. Here in Norway, they claim to have one
roaming agreement only, but we are able to use either of two networks. Go
figure.

More later!!

------

Well, it's later :)
We're sitting in Cafe Latino on the waterfront here in tropical Bergen,
Norway. That's a joke because it isn't very tropical here today. Earlier we
had a waffle at a stand run by a nice girl who told us that last week, it
was so warm she was sunbathing in a bikini, but today it is "unseasonably"
cold. Yeah, sure, whatever. It's cold here. We went and bought ourselves
each a nice hand knitted wool Norwegian sweater, hat, and gloves - Hillary
immediately put on the gloves and would have put on the rest of the stuff
too but Michael would have laughed at her too much. We got a bargain on the
woolens - the woman selling them gave us a bulk rate discount and remarked
that she was very lucky we came by today because we bought so much! Michael
even talked her down further from NOK 1056 to NOK 1000, because that was
what we felt like spending, and that comes to about $130 or so - not bad
for two really nice sweaters plus hats and gloves!

We got email from Hillary's dad yesterday about a tram ride in Bergen that
we should take. He will be pleased to hear that we rode the "Floibanen"
from the city center near the fishmarket up to the top of Mount Floyen -
1050 feet up. This is an 8 minute ride that takes you to a nice plateau
where you can look down on the city and take photos and stuff. Then we
walked back down the mountain, through the Norwegian Forest - but we didn't
see any cats in there. We did meet a nice older couple who offered to take
a photo of the two of us together, though.

The views from up there and on the way down were lovely. The bottom part of
the mile long walk down the mountain (after we exited the forest) went
through a quaint residential area where there were homes with yards and
lovely gardens - lots of rhododendrons, huge lilac bushes/trees like in
Maine, bleeding hearts (yet another poisonous plant...), and some
unrecognizable yellow flowering trees/shrubs. We did see one cat wandering
through this area but it wasn't a Fuzzy - it was short haired. We took a
picture of it anyway.

After that we went back to the Fish Market we'd been to already - Hillary's
Uncle Sidney would probably love this place. Tons of fresh salmon, crab,
shrimp, other things, and even fresh WHALE! We ate some smoked salmon and
some gravlax. The coolest thing is you can go around and ask to try things
and the people will let you taste anything you want. Everything was
delicious :)

Then, a real stroke of luck. We were walking past a pet store and they had
a photo in the window of some Fuzzies (norwegian forest fuzzies!). We asked
the store manager about them and she took us next door into the flower
store and spoke in Norwegian to the guy there, who then took out a phone
book and called up a friend of his who turned out to be a breeder of NFCs,
and told him he had two americans here who had some Skaukatts (that's what
they call the NFC here) and put Michael on the phone with him. We are going
to visit the cattery in about half an hour or so - that's why we are
sitting down here at this cafe now - it's too cold to sit outside, we don't
want to walk too far from this place and get lost, and there isn't really
much else to do while we wait for the guy to get home from work.

--

Ok. Now we're on the boat!! Er, ship. Anyway, we did meet up with the
Norwegian Forest Cat (hereinafter: "Fuzzy") breeder, a very nice German guy
named Frank. He took us into his home (a third story walk up apartment that
was quite nice) to meet his six fuzzies. They were sooooo cuuuuuute!!!! We
played with some of them - one in particular was very friendly and reminded
us a bit of Rufus because he rubbed up to us with his head. Also, there was
a grey and white one who looked a little like Kanga. There was one great
big red one but he was very shy and ended up jumping onto the top of the
refrigerator. Frank talked with us a bit about Fuzzies in general and
breeding them and showing them and he told us a bit about the breeder where
he obtained his starter cats, and the stuff going on at that bigger
cattery. He gave us a couple of photos of his kittens, and we took some of
our own as well. He gave us his address so we can send him photos of our
Fuzzies after we get back home. He invited us to come back for a visit
anytime; we told him if he gets to Philadelphia he should come by and say hi.

After that nice visit we returned to the Rosenberg Gjestehus, picked up our
luggage which we'd stowed rather insecurely in a closet next to the coke
machine, and schlepped it over a hill and along a bunch of cobblestoned
streets to get to the dock. Several times along the way, passersby asked us
in Norwegian-accented english if we were headed to the north-bound ship,
and when we said yes, tried to give us directions. That was very helpful!
When we were almost there one guy actually pointed out the boat to us, in
the harbor, so then we were all set. We must have been a sight with our
bags and everything. :)

We got on the ship, checked in, had a nice dinner, and attended an
informational meeting, where we overheard the middle-aged folks at the next
table telling the other older people at the table after that that they were
from South Jersey (the other people being from Rochester, NY). We didn't
tell them we were almost neighbors.  We also overheard some poor people
trying to be polite in their dealings with the staff - apparently, they are
on their honeymoon and have been booked into the same type of room that we
have - two extremely narrow twin beds. These people are extremely upset and
since the ship sails in about 10 minutes, we hope they get it dealt with
soon. 

The ship, by the way, isn't a cruise ship per se. It is a working cargo
ship, a ferry that takes residents between cities, and takes cars and
stuff, as well as being a tourist/cruise type ship. So there is a lot going
on here.

So, we're all settled into our room, and we're looking forward to seeing
some beautiful scenery, and going on an excursion either tomorrow or the
next day (we have to check at the desk; we forget).

Love,
Hillary and Michael


From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 22:33:51 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 13: Climb every mountain; fjord every stream (ha ha)

Hi again!!

Last night we took the bottle of wine that our travel agent, Adele,
arranged to have waiting in our cabin, and sat on the observation deck
drinking it, until about 2 am. While we were sitting there we struck up
some conversation with an older couple - they are Australian by origin but
have been living in New Zealand for a number of years, and they take 3
months off to travel every year - must be nice. They are on this cruise
because the man, Steve, is a skipper on a smaller boat in New Zealand,
where they also have fjords, and he wanted to check out these fjords and
compare them.

We saw some very beautiful countryside while travelling north last night.
We went up the coast past the Oygardan chain of islands to the west and a
bunch of small villages on the coast to our right. Everything was beautiful
but the views today were better so I won't go into detail just yet. I'll
just mention this - as we sat on the deck in the rear of the boat and
watched the sun moving closer to the horizon, it went behind some clouds
and created a sort of a false sunset, it was still pretty light out but the
sun was behind a bank of clouds, making the clouds appear to be on fire,
with rays of sunlight coming out the top and making the other clouds to the
side look pink in the blue sky. It was really lovely.

Today we were awakened at about 7:30 am by a maid who entered our cabin
without knocking. She scurried away when she heard Michael's cry of
surprise. About half an hour later she came in *again*, this time to find
Michael standing in his underwear in the middle of the room. She went away
again and didn't come back til we left the cabin, at about 9:30. We sat on
the deck again and watched some very very beautiful scenery go by.  Today
the ship went up around the West Cape, past the Hornelen mountain where a
viking is said to have climbed to the peak. Then we passed Maloy, a big
fishing community; we also stopped briefly at Alesund - a charming
community nestled into the base of a huge mountain - this town burnt down
in 1904 and was rebuilt in an Art Nouveau style. We saw an old fashioned
wooden fishing boat here and took a photo of it.

It's pointless to list all of the places we went passed as the names mean
nothing to us. Suffice it to say that we traveled north on the ship to
Garaingefjord. During the journey to this fjord we passed much amazing
coastline. In some areas, there were vertically rising moutains, coming
directly out of the water - much of it covered with many many trees, with
some higher snow covered peaks producing snow-melt waterfalls - also in
many places the fjords are so steep, that no trees can grow; in these areas
the rock is sometimes dark brown, sometimes black from the water constantly
dripping down. Michael says that much of the coast here reminded him of the
fjords of Alaska. Of particular interest was the "Seven Sisters" waterfall
at Garaingefjord. We wish we could think of a really good way to describe
the scenery - it was really breathtaking - but it's pretty indescribable.
The weather during this part of the trip was mostly overcast with some
periods of sun - the low lying clouds covering parts of the steep mountains
were part of the charm. It only adds to the beauty, so you can't really
complain about rain here.

Today did turn out to be the day of our excursion. We disembarked from the
Richard With at Geirangerfjord, onto a smaller ferry which took us to the
shore of Gerainger where we boarded a very nice tour bus. The bus took us
along the "Eagle's Road," the only road out of Geiranger during the winter
because all the other roads go up too high and become too dangerous during
times of heavy snow. This road sort of wended its way up the mountain and
gave an excellent view of the fjord, the waterfalls and mountains - we saw
some truly amazing stuff. We saw some goats climbing up the mountain, some
farms and stuff - the oldest farm houses are 350 yrs old, but the farms
themselves are over 1000 yrs old. We noticed that some of the buildings
have sod roofs, such as Hillary recalls reading about in the Little House
on the Prairie books :) - apparently that is an old Scandinavian technique
and the roofs can last for over 80 years if made well. We also drove along
a lake to a town called Eidsal, and then the bus went on a ferryboat to a
place called Linge. We drove through what they call "strawberry valley"
because they grow a lot of strawberries there - which are not expected to
ripen until next month, by the way - and Hillary remembers eating some
strawberries out of her mom's garden shortly before we left Philly, so the
growing season here is obviously behind what it is at home. This was also
evidenced by the fact that the horse chestnut and locust trees we saw are
in full bloom - the ones in Rittenhouse Square were done blooming in May.
In this area we saw more beautiful countryside in the valley areas, and
more moutain stuff too. Everything was very verdant and fertile looking,
except for the frozen parts at the top. We saw many areas of sheep and
goats in the mountains, and in the valley we saw some cows. Then we drove
over what they call the Troll road, because it is very high up in a frozen
rocky area (we were able to get out and be in the snow; we took a picture
of Michael with a troll too!) - Mila would hate this road because it is
very very narrow and has a series of 11 hairpin turns as it descends this
very tall mountain, and it also goes over 2 seemingly sketchy bridges
because of the huge, beautiful waterfalls in the way. When we got down from
here we were again in a valley with cows and sheep and goats, the tour
guide mentioned there is a dairy back in Alesund to which they ship the
milk. We saw the cows actually coming home at one point - everyone always
talks about that, but you never see it. These cows were obviously due to be
milked and in a big hurry to get to the milking house.

It was really spectacular, as we went up and down the mountains, the
vegetation and the rock formations changed drastically. Up high there were
areas of boulders and rocks which formed when the mountains froze during an
ice age and shattered as the frozen water expanded. At the higher
elevations also the trees were very small and in many areas they were
growing horizontally as a result of being repeatedly covered with snow
during avalanches. Also in some areas there are avalanches every year and
the trees have given up entirely, so nothing grows there. As you get lower,
the trees (which are mostly birch trees) get bigger and lusher. Ferns and
mayapples begin to grow as groundcover, and along the side of the road in
many many areas there was lupine growing - those are those tall spiky cones
of flowers, with pretty lacy leaves - these were planted originally by
Norway's version of Johnny Appleseed, an older man who didn't like the
roadside after the road was built, so he planted some seeds along it, and
they spread all over the place. The flowers are pink, purple, and white.
Also when you get into the valleys where the farms are, there are lilac
trees and shrubs, with regular lilac colored flowers as well as purple,
indigo, and white. We saw some goats at one of these farms which were
standing on the roof of their barn :)

We drove past a big river which is the best salmon fishing river in Norway
and which is also quite beautiful. We followed it along for quite some
time. The water is clear and aquamarine colored and in some areas it has
impressive rapids and waterfalls - the energy of this river is harnessed in
a couple of areas and they are able to make enough electricity to power not
only the entire region but some neighboring areas as well (they sell power). 

We saw a monument to King Olav, and we saw some towns where British
soldiers landed in WWII - this resulted in the city being heavily bombed,
of course. Another city was heavily bombed in WWII because the king and his
son had fled to the region. 

We stopped at a train station, Jeff, because there was a girl who wanted to
take a train to Oslo. We learned that this region is served by one railway
line - they have both day and night trains to Oslo, that run on the
original track laid in about 1925.  Then we went through the Hannefjord
tunnel - this is a big tunnel that goes 100 meters under the sea and is
about 2800 meters long and has solid rock walls 30 meters thick. On the
other side was Molde! This is the "city of roses" but sadly we arrived too
early for the blooming season. There were plenty of other things blooming
though, like tulips and the ubiquitous rhododendron. We saw the Molde
cathedral which has a really interesting bell tower, and we were told about
the world renowned view of 222 mountain peaks from here - but as we said,
it was overcast, so we couldn't see all 222 peaks. We saw a few. We stopped
and had dinner here and it rained while we were in the restaurant - when we
went out, there was a rainbow at the harbor where we awaited our boat! We
tried to take a photo of it but who knows if that will come out.

We're back on the boat now, relaxing from our long day. It was good that we
had a day of sitting around today because our legs are sore from climbing
down the mountain in Bergen yesterday! We are sailing north of Molde now on
the way to Kristiansund. Tomorrow we will be in Trondheim, where Hillary
thinks is where Dr. Sorenmo (one of Wally's doctors) said she went to high
school. We will be probably getting off the boat early tomorrow morning and
walking around there a bit. We are also deciding if we want to do another
excursion the day after tomorrow - they take you out onto a glacier, it's
supposed to be pretty cool. We aren't sure yet, though.

It's currently about 10:30pm and mostly sunny, so we have a beautiful view
as our boat travels further up the coast.  We see green mountains against a
clear blue sky, and the sun is shining brightly in the west.  The sun still
is not very close to the horizon.  Yesterday, the sun set after midnight,
and now since we are further north, it probably won't set until closer to 1am.

We were very impressed by the cellular phone coverage here in Norway.  Even
in the middle of nowhere, there is excellent signal.  Even in that tunnel
under the sea.

Love,
Michael and Hillary

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 12:26:06 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 14: Trekking through Trondheim

Here's a tidbit of news we forgot to mention in our last mail, but were
reminded of when we got email from Hillary's Uncle Jeff describing his
traffic nightmare of being trapped at O'Hare airport - right now the air
traffic controllers in Norway are striking and as far as we can tell no
planes are landing in Norway at all. Some people have missed this boat
because of it, in fact - which allowed that honeymooning couple to end up
getting a better cabin, by the way. Good for them, but bad for the
travellers, and possibly bad for us. We will arrive in Kirkenes on the 18th
and are supposed to travel from there by plane to Oslo. If the planes are
not flying, we aren't sure what we will do. We may be able to get a train
but then again, we may not. There is a boat related Kirkenes excursion
which takes you to the Russian border and even in the river which IS the
border, and to the other side of it. If we get stuck in Kirkenes perhaps we
can do that - heck, that would kill two hours. If we end up REALLY stuck in
Kirkenes we aren't sure what we'll do but we are sure it will be
interesting in any case! If you hear any news about this, please let us
know. Today we asked a newsstand manager about it and she said that she
hadn't gotten any new newspapers for two days because of the pilot strike -
nothing is being flown in! She said she hoped to have news of the strike by
Monday.

Some other stuff we forgot to mention is that when we were on that bus tour
from Garaingefjord to Molde, while driving in the area approaching Molde
but before the big undersea tunnel, we passed by some people walking along
the road with one of those multiple leashes and it had about 10 to 15 dogs
at the end of it!! They were long haired dachshunds and they were very very
cute. Also on our drive we kept passing these vintage (1920s and up) Rolls
Royces which are here in Norway for some kind of special gathering/race. We
thought this road was not the best place for these cars. In addition to
this gathering there was a sign for a gathering of motorcycle riders, and
we saw some bikers heading toward that. Our tour guide also described for
us two other races that occur in the area - one was a marathon up the Eagle
whatever road that gave us the great view of the fjord, the other was a
bicycle race up that Troll road we described before, which occurs during
August in the warm weather. Both sounded extremely harrowing and unpleasant.

--

Today, June 14/Sunday we woke up early for us at about 9 am, when the boat
staff made some announcement about a bus that would be leaving at 9:15.
Shortly after this our alarm clock went off so we really had to get up
then. We prepared to spend a few hours wandering around today's first port
of call, Trondheim, where Dr. Sorenmo went to high school. This is Norway's
third largest city so we figured we should go check it out. First we had
breakfast on the boat, then we set out with map in hand to look around this
city. 

First we took the obligatory photo of a statue of Leiv Eriksson, and then
we walked past the harbor area and some shipping areas until we got to one
of the actual streets of Trondheim - this required going over a bridge and
past a cute little marina. We walked toward the city center - past the
Central train station and down a main road all the way through the heart of
the city. We stopped to take a photo of the Trondheim Cathedral, built
originally by King Olav Kyrre sometime between 1066 and 1093, and then
later enlarged in 1151 when they established this city as a religious
center for all of Norway. This church is supposed to be the most
magnificent one in Scandinavia, and for the moment we're willing to go
along with that although we did greatly appreciate the modern bell tower at
the church in Molde the other day. Anyway, this cathedral is built in what
the guidebook calls a "Late Romanesque transitional style, influenced by
Norman architecture and Gothic style". The church is built of "klebersten,"
a blue-grey colored soapstone which they quarry here to the south and east
of Trondheim.

After checking out this area, we crossed the Elgesester bru (that's a
bridge over the Nidelva river/canal that runs through Trondheim). From the
bridge we had a great view of the Kristiansten fort, on a low hill to the
east of the town, which is a 17th century fortress. Looking the other way
(west? it's hard to tell around here since there is water everywhere) we
saw some pretty green hills with some houses on them, which reminded
Hillary of the Berkeley Hills area of Berkeley, CA.

We headed for and found the student center, a big red round building which
houses a guesthouse, a couple of restaurants, and some other stuff - but
it, like everything else in Trondheim, was closed on Sunday morning.

That was a bit of a disappointment but not too much, since the walk over
was very pretty and the weather is sunny and about 55 degrees F. We decided
to walk back along the river at first, through the Erkebispegarden park
where there were many very pretty flowering horse chestnut trees, lilac
trees, rhododendrons and tulips. We saw some people walking their dogs. Oh,
they do not crop ears or dock tails here in Norway - it is against the law
- so we've seen some very cute dobermans and spaniels with long ears and
tails :). 

We then walked through the city up along Munkegata, the main road, all the
way up to the Kanalhavn which separates Trondheim proper from the finger of
land which houses the train station, the shipyards, and the railroad
tracks. We stopped for a photo op in front of the Stiftsgarden, the royal
residence, which is Scandinavia's second largest wooden building.
Apparently Trondheim is known for being a town of wooden buildings.
Trondheim also is the home of the largest research institute in Norway
(SINTEF) and the University of Trondheim, which we passed as we walked back
toward the boat. It says in our book that the University is known for
educating civil engineers who then seduce the female population of the
town.... hmmm. Sounds like someone we know!

Trondheim was very pretty with very wide sidewalks and lots of trees, and
on every other block it seemed there was a park with an open green space
and a garden and some benches. It's too bad that everything was closed and
everyone was either asleep or in church or something because we didn't
really get a feel for what it was actually like when the people were
around. We do think that David would like it here because the few people we
did see walking around or biking around looked like Lori. We noticed there
was a sushi bar here and we took a photo of it :) - it was across the
street from a fishmarket, so we suspect the sushi would be pretty good, but
we wouldn't know since it was closed.

We've picked up some Norwegian while we've been here. "Til" means "to,"
"laks" means "salmon," and "smor" means "butter." We're way to mature to
find any amusement in this but in case some of you less mature people find
it humorous, we also learned that the Norwegian word for "speed" is "fart."
Also, we keep hearing people who speak Norwegian using a word that sounds
like "fuktis" pronounced "fuck dis"; we're not sure what it means but
perhaps Hillary's mom wants to ask Dr. Sorenmo??

David, you will be happy to know that the lock on our cabin door uses a
Ving card!

Hillary would like to mention that they make the announcements over the PA
here in Norwegian, English, and German, in no particular order. The other
day she was listening and she heard the German announcment before the
English one, and understood it!

Regarding Norwegian food - it sure is odd and unusual seeming! At
breakfast, they serve these little toothpaste tubes of kaviar. At lunch,
they serve *seagull eggs* ! The seagulls here, by the way, are similar
looking to our seagulls but they squawk with Norwegian accents. We were
given a book about the coast when we got on the boat and it contains
information about the various birds we may see on our trip. We are hoping
to get a look at the puffins although they are greatly reduced in number
lately. Also about the food - pancakes and waffles are popular snacks,
served with coffee or tea, not as breakfast foods. Jams are served with
nearly everything. Potatoes are popular, and cream sauces are nearly
ubiquitious, on everything from beef to herring. We've been told that dill
is used a lot, but actually we haven't really encountered much dill which
is good because Michael dislikes it. On the boat, each meal includes an
offering of assorted cheeses. There is a sweetish, very creamy blue cheese
we've been greatly enjoying. Today at breakfast there were two sharper blue
cheeses (one may have been a roquefort) and a really bizarre cheese that
looked a bit like and tasted quite a bit like peanut butter!

Nonetheless, we are looking forward to some home cooking upon our return to
the states in July! 

Love,
Hillary and Michael



From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1998 19:17:57 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 15: to the glacier

Hey!

Yesterday we finally met our dining partners - we've been assigned to sit
for dinner on the ship with a couple from central NJ - two older folks who
are vacationing on this cruise. They were pretty amusing. The man is a
cross between Archie Bunker and Hillary's Uncle Helmut. He kept griping
about the fact that "they spell things funny here" - he complained that
"ol" is how they spell "beer" here, but that sometimes they also spell it
"pils." We tried to tell him that "ol" was "ale" and "pils" was "pilsner"
but he insisted that "ol" was no way for anyone to spell "beer," and that's
what the bartender had told him it meant. But then again, he told us that
whenever he travels, he always tries to find a beer that resembles his all
time favorite beer, Bud Light....He also complained that they let the
waffles and pancakes get cold (it is customary to serve cold waffles or
pancakes with jam or sugared butter as a snack with coffee here). The woman
was not so much of a complainer.

Today we got up really really early so that we could get ready and have
breakfast and leave the boat when we got into port at Gronoy at 8:20 AM. We
disembarked onto a smaller ferryboat and were taken by ferry into
Holandsfjord, where there are many islands and skerries, all the way inland
to Svartisen National Park, where we got off the ferry.

During the ferry-trip from Gronoy to Svartisen via Holandsfjord, we saw a
lot of beautiful coast moderately similar to the coast we've already
described, except that now that we are further north, not all of the leaves
and stuff are out - the growing season is a bit behind - and also, during
this small stretch, the land did not rise as steeply, but was more hilly
than mountainous. We saw a sea eagle fly near to the boat, but we were
unable to photograph him because he moved too quickly.

When we got to Svartisen National Park, we walked up a trail through an
area of birch woodland and some marshy area. About 1/3 of the way to the
end of the trail we entered an area where there were some cows and sheep
hanging around. We looked up to the side of the nearby mountain and saw
that there were also some cows up there. As we walked up this trail, ahead
of us we could see a piece of the Svartisen Glacier, which is what we were
walking toward. On either side of that were very large snowcovered
mountains. To our right was the tail end of Holandsfjord, in which the
water is colored an unusual green color due to glacial silt that the water
picks up as it flows out from beneath the glacier. We continued up the
trail until we got to the little tourist area across the water from the
glacier, were we had a snack and took some pictures of the beautiful
scenery (and got someone to take a photo of the two of us in front of the
Glacier). By the way, the weather today was again beautiful and very sunny
and clear!

Eventually we had to head out of the area. On the way back to the ferry we
stopped on the trail at a pen someone had set up for their pet rabbits.
This was a large penned in area with two little A frame houses in it and 5
or 6 rabbits hanging around in there. We took pictures of them too 'cause
they were cute - mini-lops and angoras, we think. Also, on the way back,
there were more cows and sheep. We got a picture of two sheep resting in
the woods and a picture of Hillary standing a couple of feet in front of a
large group of white and also some white and brown cows. The really cool
thing here was that the animals all had big cow bells on them, and as they
walked around they would ring, and also they were mooing and baaaing as we
went by, so it sounded sort of like music :)

The ferry then took us across Holandsfjord to the shore on the other side
where we boarded a tour bus. Of note at this point was the fact that the
tour people had prepared one tour guide to speak English and German, and
another guide to speak Norwegian and French - but the German speaking
people filled an entire bus, so the English, Norwegian, and French speaking
people ended up on the other bus. Therefore, our guide had not prepped
himself to give the tour in English and as a result, had some problems. He
obviously could speak the language, but when giving a tour you probably use
a lot of unusual words and this poor man kept having to stop and look
things up - and also for the first half of the tour he spoke a LOT more in
Norwegian and French than in English, until a kind Norwegian fellow behind
us went up to him and told him that all the Americans kept asking "what is
he saying?" and from that point on, the English portion of the tour improved. 

So, we drove on Norway's version of California's coastal highway 1 - Norway
Coastal Road 17. We were driving through the borough of Moloy, along this
road which they call the most picturesque of all roads in Norway. The first
town we passed through was Glomfjord - an "industrial" city, according to
the guide - and they do have a big power plant and chemical fertilizer
plant there - but really a very small town, more rural/suburban than city
like. The power plant here was built in 1920 and that is when the town
really "took off." The harbour became one of Norway's busiest ports and in
WWII, the Germans raided the harbor and bombed the plants and so forth.
During the wintertime, people take ski lifts located here up to the top of
the surrounding mountains, and go skiing. On our way through Glomfjord we
were driving past some homes located on the edge of the woods, and we saw
someone looking at us from the very edge of the woods - a black norwegian
forest cat!!

We drove through a tunnel out of Glomfjord (Rte 17 has many tunnels; these
are required because many areas suffer repeated avalanches which would wipe
out regular roads) and then we passed through Neverdal, at the base of the
Spilderhesten mountain which rises 851 meters above sea level.

We continued on through a very beautiful region of snow capped mountains
and white sandy seashore (where swimming is of course out of the question
due to the frigidity of the water, but fishing and boating remain popular)
until we reached Ornes, the administrative center (county seat, we think)
of Meloy. This is a beautiful city with a charming harbor, and it is very
popular with Swedish tourists who come to go fishing for weeks at a time in
the summer, so we are told. Again, many of the homes and other buildings
are wooden, although not all are. Some are built log cabin style, even
though they are obviously new. All throughout Norway, yellow and red are
traditional and popular colors of houses and barns.

We continued our drive through a lot of country which we really didn't
catch much information about, but at one point a very exciting thing
happened - we saw a small herd of reindeer! Yes, big brown animals with
huge antlers - the guide claimed he saw 5 but Hillary thinks she saw at
least 10 or more. These reindeer are not native to Norway. They are owned
by a Swedish family and apparently in the summer these reindeer come into
this area where there is better grazing for them, and they hang out here.
They were down in a valley, some were lying down and some were standing and
grazing.

Our next point of interest was "Saltstraumen," which is the strongest
"maelstrom," whatever that is, in the world. We believe from context that
"maelstrom" means "current," for what is going on in this area is that two
fjords are coming together and the water must pass at high speed through a
very narrow area. This creates a very very strong current and a lot of
whirlpools and stuff. We drove over a bridge to get a top view and then we
pulled over to a fishing area where there were some fishermen catching lots
of fish - apparently this place always has lots of fish in it, and we could
tell that because there were many sea birds here, fishing themselves! We
observed many Grey Gulls, with red spots under their beaks; we also saw and
got a photo of some Eider ducks. Other birds we have seen along the way
include Gannets and Guillemots, what looks like some kind of a tern (but
not the one in our book), and some kind of grey crane or egret that isn't
in our book. No puffins yet though. 

>From Saltstraumen we drove to Bodo, the administrative center of Nordland
county. There are many universities here, an airport that handles over 1/2
million passengers yearly, and an engine factory in addition to a big
fishing industry. Jeff will be interested to know that this city, Bodo, is
the end of the line for the Norwegian rail system. Here, they make
connections between the Coastal Express (which is the boat we're on) and
the railroads, buses, ferries, and airplanes (which still aren't landing in
Norway, by the way. We are awaiting word of the results of the meeting
between the Air Traffic Controllers and the Norwegian Government, which was
to happen some time today.) Of note regarding Bodo - prior to 1940 this was
already a large city (which got its start as a big herring processing
area). However, in 1940 sometime in May, the Germans bombed the hell out of
the city, destroying over 400 out of 700 buildings in the center of town.
They did this, we're told, because the Germans believed that the British
soldiers who had come here were in the harbor at the time - but in fact,
the soldiers had left to return to London two days before, or something, so
the bombing did not accomplish whatever it was the Germans wanted to do,
but it did result in the loss of the homes of 3,700 people - but as the
Norwegians were able to implement an excellent evacuation plan, only 15
people were killed. The airport and north Norway rail line, by the way,
were also built during the rebuilding of Bodo during WWII after the 1940
bombing. By 1956, the town was completely rebuilt into the huge modern
communications/transportation hub it is today.  In Bodo we got back on our
ship and we are now continuing northwest across the wide Vestfjord - right
now we are kind of in open water with distant land on either side, which is
why we are able to spend so much time writing this up. Later today we will
stop off at Stamsund and then still later in Svolvar. Our book says we will
be able to see a lot of very nice fishing villages and fisherman's cabins
lining the coast as we approach it later. After we stop at those two ports,
we'll be continuing in a more north/northeasterly course.

This was a great excursion today and we look forward to more wonderful
scenery later today. You should realize that we crossed over into the
Arctic circle at about 7:30 AM today, and we are now in the land of the
midnight sun, so we can expect to be able to see everything out there for
as long as we manage to stay awake! It is very strange how darkness never
really comes. Last night the sun did set for a short time (again very
beautifully through a cloud cover, giving the appearance of a bright orange
fire burning through the clouds, which had holes between them) which
resulted in a twilight/dusky period that lasted for about 2 1/2 hours
according to a woman from California named Annette, with whom we spoke
today, who told us that at 3 am she'd been awakened by bright sunlight
streaming into her cabin. We'd gone to bed shortly past midnight and we
suppose that one advantage of having one of the cabins in the middle of the
boat with no window (which the travel agent told us was all that was
available - she sounded apologetic about it) is that the sun being up at
odd hours can't possibly bother you! We like this feature.

Love,
Michael and Hillary

From izzy@izzy.com Sun Jul  5 08:36:59 1998
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 01:05:11 +0200
From: Michael Israeli <izzy@izzy.com>
Subject: June 15/16: the sun also rises

Hey there. We're still up at about 1 am on June 16th, preparing to go to
bed but we wanted to write this down first! After Michael finished his nap,
we had some dinner with Mr and Mrs Einstein from central NJ. Boy are they
odd. The guy is just a couple slices short of a loaf or something. He
thought the bowl of potatoes was a bowl of olives, he thought that the
string beans were salad, and he thought that the windows, which were dirty,
had some kind of special flocking on them. What a maroon.

Good news! The norwegian air traffic controllers' strike is over! Woo hoo!
They made an announcement about it as we were heading to dinner this evening.

As we ate, the ship docked at Svolvaer, one of those fishing villages we
had been told about. We were there for about an hour, so we got off the
boat and walked around a bit. Not a lot to see there - we took a photo of
some teepee like structures down by the dock  - we have no idea what they
were; we saw a nesting pair of Grey Gulls with two down-covered fledgelings
up on a roof but we couldn't get a photo of them because our camera doesn't
zoom in far enough. 

When we got back on the ship we sat out on the observation deck for a while
- the ship took a short diversionary turn at about 11:30 PM into the Troll
Fjord (we don't recall the Norwegian name for it) and while there the crew
served everyone "Troll soup" which was a kind of a chicken based soup with
veggies and stuff in it. This fjord was really awesome. We were in a very
narrow channel with huge rock faces coming out of the water vertically on
either side. There was a nice waterfall we tried to photograph; there were
some trees but very few due to the angle. The U-turn maneuvering the ship
did to get out of there was kinda scary.

While we were sitting there we were chatting with some Norwegian 9th
graders - one of whom aspires to be a veterinarian, another wants to be a
Hollywood actress :) - and also with a 70 yr old couple from New Hampshire.
The man of that couple has been teaching himself norwegian for the past
three weeks and was practicing it on these 9th graders, who were very
impressed (as were we.) It was fun chatting with them all.  We also got
visited by our New Zealand friends Jan and Steve who said they'd thought
maybe we'd left the ship and they were glad to see us again. They got to go
up into the area where they steer the ship and stuff, and show the captain
pictures of the New Zealand fjord and the boat that Steve captains there.
But they didn't get to see the glacier or the reindeer, so that kind of
makes us even, right?

As we were sitting there getting kind of tired, we realized that we were
finally moving out of the area of very tall mountains and that we'd get a
glimpse of the sun soon. We went out onto the outer deck and braved the
chilling wind as the boat moved forward, under a bridge, to reveal the
brightly shining one o'clock in the morning sun, about 20 degrees above the
horizon. Overall, the impression is that it is early morning at about 7 am
or perhaps late evening at about 8 pm, with plenty of light. It's really
eerie. The thought of what it's like in winter when the sun doesn't rise is
even worse, though.

Tonight as we sleep we will pass So