Row after row of hundreds of columns hold up arches and domes this stunning work of architecture that was never meant to be seen.
Descend into the Basilica Cistern with us to see the upside-down Medusa and other hidden oddities… CONTINUE READING >>
Several hundred ancient cisterns lie beneath Istanbul, but The Basilica Cistern is the largest, and the only one we knew how to get inside.
Descending into the damp darkness felt pretty darn good on a hot August Mediterranean day and, once our eyes adjusted, we were dumbfounded by the sight.
The cistern was built during the reign of Emperor Justinianus in the sixth century, in the heyday of the Eastern Roman Empire.
Larger than a football field, there are three hundred and thirty-six surprisingly ornate marble columns in a strange mishmash of styles.
The huge space was built as a water storage facility which was used by the city for around fifteen hundred years.
Situated below the Stoa Basilica in Byzantine times, its twelve-feet thick walls of waterproof brick and mortar held water transported from the Belgrad Forest some twelve miles away.
Row after row of hundreds of columns hold up arches and domes in a stunning work of architecture that was never meant to be seen.
Those zany Romans hid all of this work under twenty-one million gallons of water.
The relatively small amount of water remaining in the cistern lends itself to some fun reflection photography.
For unknown reasons, they also chose to hide oddly-angled sculpted heads of Medusa at the base of two pillars in one of the corners.
In order to keep bad omens away, statues of Medusa were common in the late Roman period. Normally, they were found in buildings and homes of importance — not buried in cisterns — leading to the theory that the heads were brought in from elsewhere.
Research shows that the heads were set sideways and upside-down intentionally, but the the reason remains a mystery.
You’ve heard the word picturesque, right? Trust us, this is not a word we throw around lightly – it’s a bit fancy-schmancy for everyday use.
BUT there can be no other word to describe Prince Edward Island. Pretty and quaint, it’s as if you’ve wandered into a painted picture.
Join us as we explore this beautiful island, learn about her people, her seafood, her farms, and her famous bridge. Find out why PEI is called The Cradle of the Canadian Confederacy and how foxes built mansions… CONTINUE READING >>
You’ve heard the word picturesque, right? Trust us, this is not a word we throw around lightly – it’s a bit fancy-schmancy for everyday use.
BUT there can be no other word to describe Prince Edward Island. Pretty and quaint, it’s as if you’ve wandered into a painted picture.
We were pretty jazzed at the prospect of having PEI as our home base for exploration of The Canadian Maritime Provinces. Having just spent the better part of a month crisscrossing Newfoundland, we loved the idea of spending some more time on one of Canada’s Atlantic Islands.
We arrived late in the day, so heading off to explore the rest of the island would have to wait.
But we were excited to see our new surroundings, so we took a short walk over The Stanley Bridge to the tiny harbor in the picturesque fishing village of the same name.
On the bridge we were surprised by what looked to be the most popular way to while away a Sunday afternoon, jumping off the bridge.
Fearless kids from about eight to eighteen were excitedly checking for boat traffic, and then leaping into the water about twenty feet below.
Fun to watch but we weren’t about to join in, the possibility of a horrifying belly flop was just too high… as was the bridge.
French River
Over the following days we learned that nearly all of the island’s little coastal towns are postcard worthy. Perhaps none more so than French River, which claims to be the most photographed scene on the island.
New London Bay Lighthouse
Obviously fishing is a huge part of life on PEI. Perhaps we should clarify, not just fish that swim, but all types of seafood have long been crucial to the islander’s existence.
Crab fishermen unload their catch in Victoria-by-the-sea.
Hands down our favorite of those is lobster, and we got to see first hand every detail involved in the catching, processing, and shipping of them at the L & C Fisheries.
Loretta Jollimore, who puts the L in L & C, showed us every step of the lobster operation, from how the traps work, to determining the sex, to separating the smaller “canners” (under a pound) from the larger “markets,” to shipping them out around the world either live or steamed.
WATCH: Loretta shows us how a lobster trap works and explains the difference between the boys and the girls!
With millions of pounds of lobster landed each year, along with tons of mussels, oysters, and other delicacies, seafood has historically sustained life on the island. But agriculture is equally as important to the economy.
Prince Edward Island sits just eight miles off the mainland in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Her green rolling hills – lush with fields of crops and berries – have also earned PEI the moniker of Garden of the Gulf.
Some of PEI’s offerings, Beach Chair Lager and Gahan Blueberry Ale.
Even though it is the smallest Canadian province by far, both in size and population, more than a quarter of all the potatoes grown in the country come from the island. PEI is famous for them, and from our sampling of them, rightly so.
Dairy, beef, pork, grain, and vegetables are common on the farms too.
David milks a “cow” at Green Gables National Historic Site.Anne’s bedroom, note the dress with the puffy sleeves!
Food and pastoral scenery are not the island’s only claims to fame, PEI was also home to Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of the iconic series of stories about Anne of Green Gables.
We stopped by Ms. Montgomery’s home and then the area of Prince Edward Island National Park where Parks Canada has restored and preserved the farm that inspired the books.
We stopped in for a Céilidh (pronounced Key-lee) in the town of Kensington. Stories and music keep the Scottish and Irish heritages of Prince Edward Island alive.Veronica attempts to model a fox stole, but is quite creeped out because the head is still on it!Fortunes were made as pelts and breeding pairs were sold for higher and higher prices, until war provided the pin to pop the bubble.
In Summerside, we learned about the turn-of-the-century fox business, a storied page in PEI’s history. When a viable way was discovered to breed silver foxes in captivity, a fur boom began.
A fox house in Summerside.
The prosperity gave rise to the term “fox house.”
This does not refer to a place where little furry fellahs lived, but the mansions that their owners built with the new found wealth.
Heritage Roads – paths free from asphalt covering the red clay – are scattered about the island.The Acadian Monument at Port-la-Joye.
While visiting Charlottetown, the provincial capital and largest city, we learned of the significant role Prince Edward Island played in the history of North America.
Certainly the tiny band of Acadians at the original French settlement of Port-la-Joye back in 1720 could never have imagined the future the island they named Île Saint-Jean would play in world affairs.
The British had their eyes on the continent as well, and attacked the French in 1745. The Brits were driven out the next year, but took the island for good in 1758.
Province House in Charlottetown
Following the victory General Jeffery Amherst ordered a second expulsion of the Acadians. Soon after, the island was renamed in honor of the fourth son of King George III, Prince Edward Augustus, the Duke of Kent, and the area around Port-la-Joye became Charlottetown.
The very room in Province House that hosted the Charlottetown Conference
History was far from finished with Charlottetown, as the city was destined to be known as The Cradle of The Confederation.
Back in 1864 the town hosted the Charlottetown Conference. This was the first meeting of representatives from the British North American colonies that didn’t participate in The American Revolution to discuss forming the new union that would become Canada.
The chamber where governmental duties are still performed. Hanging on a wall nearby is a painting of the ball that commemorated the signing of the confederation – same room!
In an ironic quirk, Prince Edward Island ended up declining to join the new country until several years later, in 1873.
In spite of that delay, the island fully embraces its role in the formation of Canada – even naming the bridge that connects it to the mainland The Confederation Bridge. The idea of a bridge had been bandied about for nearly 150 years, but didn’t become a reality until 1997.
During our exploration of The Maritimes we crossed the eight mile span three times, but only paid the toll twice. Wait, three trips would have left us still on the island, and no, we didn’t ever crash through a toll gate.
Before the bridge was built several ferries served the island – now only one is left – and that was how we made one of our crossings of the Northumberland Strait.
Returning to the island by ferry.
We only paid twice because tolls are charged only when leaving the island, even on the ferry. As scenic and serene as this prince of an island is, it seems like the payment method should have been the other way around.
Zhujiajiao is one of many small cities in China that are built along canals, water towns where transportation mainly involves feet and boats.
And getting around on foot means bridges, at least thirty-six of them, which are a big part of the city’s character… CONTINUE READING >>
Even though Volendam had arguably the best docking spot in the world, with two days in Shanghai we wanted to see something more than the hustle & bustle, and mind-boggling skyline of the city. So on our second morning we took a bus about an hour out of town to the ancient water city of Zhujiajiao.
This not only gave us a chance to see a small slice of the Chinese countryside, it allowed us to see just how huge Shanghai actually is.
Even though they are mostly stacked up in high-rise apartment buildings, twenty-four million people take up some space.
But in due time the scenery changed to small groups of farms, and soon we began seeing canals.
Zhujiajiao is one of many small cities in China that are built along canals, water towns where transportation mainly involves feet and boats.
And getting around on foot means bridges, at least thirty-six of them, which are a big part of the city’s character.
The first one we crossed, Fangsheng Bridge, is the longest and tallest of them, but built in 1571 it is far from the oldest.
It is known as the Setting-free Bridge because beneath it women sell goldfish and turtles just waiting to be released from their plastic bags.
The idea is to score some karma points for doing a good deed by setting them free.
No word on whether points are deducted for catching them in the first place.
On the other side of the bridge we were anything but set free, we were more like knocked back by an overwhelming stench that smelled very much like a rotting carcass.
Wow! Was it the water?
A dead animal left to decay?
What could this be?
The answer turned out to be the last thing we would have ever thought, food.
Chòu dòufu, fermented tofu, that was being cooked up in front of a little shop.
The idea is that the tofu is allowed to ferment in a seasoned brine for a while, sometimes months, to develop its pungent aroma, and a flavor the we were not about to experience (and we’re not wusses, we eat a lot of strange food).
We can only guess, but it seemed that grilling the stuff was really bringing out the nostril-stinging stink.
However, it also seemed to serve as a great advertisement, because flocks of school children made a beeline for the shop as soon as classes let out.
Ah yes, incredibly vile-smelling rotten soybean curd, the perfect after school snack.
We were eager to delve deeper into the city — not to mention escape the offensive odor — so we made our way over to the other side of the canal and into the narrow streets of the oldest part of the town.
The original settlement was founded around 1,700 years ago and recently it has become very popular with tourists so some of the historic charm has been overrun.
Two of the main attractions had issues with this, the old Post Office and the Tongtianhe Pharmacy.
Both date back to the Qing Dynasty, over a century ago, and were quite interesting, but extremely crowded.
We were herded through the post office fairly swiftly, but caught a little history of postal service in China which, according to the signs, has been delivering for over three thousand years.
The pharmacy was slightly less packed and unlike the post office it is still open for business so they must try to accommodate real customers along with us gawkers.
Most of the medicines were hidden away in drawers and jars, but there were a few strange remedies on display.
Most notably, what exactly is pickled snake and ginger root used to treat?
As with most tourist destinations we discovered two things:
The farther in we wandered, away from the initial crowds, the more authentic it got.
And it’s not Disneyland. It might have felt like a fantasy, but real people live in Zhujiajiao — around 60,000 — and they go about their day-to-day lives just like anywhere else.
Away from the typical tourist restaurants near the entrance, we found vendors selling lotus root stuffed with rice and cooked in honey, BBQ pork shanks, and one of our favorites, zongzi – rice and meat wrapped in bamboo, lotus, or banana leaves.
We snacked and walked until we managed to get ourselves fairly lost.
By backtracking we found our way to the main canal and decided to return by boat to where we started.
After all, we couldn’t truly experience a water town without getting on the water.
Not unlike the gondolas in Venice, these were reminiscent of the old boats that carried passengers for centuries, but now are used almost exclusively by tourists.
That’s OK, the view from the water — and riding under the bridges — was more than worth any embarrassment of not looking to be properly seasoned travelers.
Our perspective was surprisingly different from the canal. In fact, we hadn’t even noticed the city’s two temples while walking but from the water the Taoist City God Temple, and The Yunjin Buddhist Temple dominated our views.
WATCH: Feel the sights and sounds of
Zhujiajiao!
As we were heading back to the bus we encountered quite a crowd gathered around a small storefront.
Oh no, not the stinky tofu again!
It wasn’t, folks were gathering for a taste of something much sweeter, and downright artistic.
A young man was making lollipops in shapes from the Chinese zodiac out of melted sugar. His skill and speed were wildly impressive.
WATCH: The artist in action!
Almost effortlessly he poured the molten mixture out onto a marble slab in elaborate designs, gave them a few moments to cool, and handed them out to his audience of customers. Looked like one heck of a business to us.
But then what do we know? Folks’ll line up to buy fried putrid soybean curd too.
In the little watertown of Zhujiajiao we were blown away by a young man creating beautiful candy artwork of the symbols from the Chinese… CONTINUE READING >>
In the little watertown of Zhujiajiao we were intrigued by a young man creating beautiful candy artwork of the symbols from the Chinese zodiac.
Using only a spoon and a slab of marble to cool the molten sugar, he made remarkable lollypops in just a few seconds. It seemed a shame to eat such fine work, but we justified it because they were too delicate to try to keep. Plus the carmelized sugar was much too tasty to ignore.
Barcelona, Spain. Home to the most amazing church we’ve ever seen, a Gothic Quarter not to be missed, crazy wonderful human statues, and food to die for. If that’s not enough, meet a genius artist that changed the city forever and invokes so much emotion – you have to either love him or hate him… CONTINUE READING >>
Worship the Sagrada Família
Barcelona has many treasures, but one stood out to us above all the others, literally and figuratively, Sagrada Família. The massive basilica is without a doubt the pinnacle of architect and designer Antoni Gaudí’s incredible career. And we do mean pinnacle. Huge spires rise into the sky over fifty stories high – and it’s not even finished yet. More Sagrada Família…
Visit the Fantastical Park Güell
Barcelona quite frankly would not be the city that it is today had it not been for Antoni Gaudí. A walk up several hundred steps, to one of the world’s wildest parks, showed us how Gaudí really got to cut loose, not as a builder, but as a landscape architect. His concept’s incredible interaction with the natural world had us feeling like we were inside the pages of a Dr. Seuss book. More about Park Güell…
WATCH: Step insidePark Güell
Go Goth – Explore the Barri Gòtic
If the heart of Barcelona is the old city’s Gothic Quarter, known as Barri Gòtic in the local Catalan dialect, then the aorta must be La Rambla. The stretch of streets has become one giant open air theater and is truly one of the world’s premier venues for street performers. More Gothic Quarter…
What would a visit to Spain be without sampling the tapas? Incomplete we’d say. But then tapas are a culinary style that is right up our alley, kind of a national tradition of appy crawling. We were determined to get our mitts on every type of tapa we could during our stay in Barcelona. We believe we achieved greatness. More on Tapas…
Rome may not have been built in a day, but Pompeii was certainly destroyed in one.
Because of the unique nature of the calamity that buried the city, we have an incredibly well preserved peek into every day life two thousand years ago in The Roman Empire.
We had an amazing amount of history and emotion to absorb, making our day at Pompeii one of the most incredible… CONTINUE READING >>
Rome may not have been built in a day, but Pompeii was certainly destroyed in one.
Because of the unique nature of the calamity that buried the city, we have an incredibly well preserved peek into every day life two thousand years ago in The Roman Empire.
On our journey across The Mediterranean aboard The Royal Princess we would encounter a number of prominent historic sites, but this was without a doubt the most dramatic.
When Mount Vesuvius violently erupted in 79 AD the 20,000 citizens of Pompeii were essentially frozen in time, sealed under seventy five feet of volcanic ash and rock known as tephra.
One of the first things we learned at the site was that the material did not fall from the sky like snow, that would have allowed time for escape.
Instead the volcano created a pyroclastic flow, an avalanche of super heated gas carrying the tephra down the mountain at hundreds of miles per hour and instantly covering everything in its path.
For fifteen hundred years the city remained under this blanket of stone, long forgotten until a wall was accidentally uncovered in 1599.
It would be another one hundred and fifty years before serious excavations took place.
Now about two-thirds of the city has been excavated, but most attention is being directed at preserving the currently exposed ruins.
While we made our way to the gate we were blown away by the outer wall, and frantically snapped pictures while trying to keep up with our group.
We didn’t want to miss any of the information our guide was giving, but could barely believe what we were seeing.
Passing into the city through the Porta di Nocera we found ourselves in The Grand Palestra, a large open area surrounded by columns that is thought to have been a training area for athletes. There was even a huge swimming pool in the center.
Some of the training was likely in preparation for the gladiator’s performances in the adjacent amphitheater.
Entering the amphitheater we were stunned by the condition, it is in great shape.
In fact it is still fully functional, so much so that Pink Floyd recorded their Live at Pompeii concert film in it. Pretty remarkable for the oldest Roman theater known to exist.
Names engraved on the stadium seats. Season tickets, mayhaps?
Leaving the theater we meandered through narrow side streets that almost looked as if they could be in the old quarters of any modern Italian city.
While we walked, we poked our heads into several homes and shops before arriving at the Lupanar.
Lupanar is a common Latin term for brothel, and this was easy for the excavators to identify by the suggestive sex scenes painted on the walls.
Speculation is that the erotic paintings may have served as a menu of sorts. If that weren’t enough for a positive ID, rather lurid graffiti was also found left by both the customers and the workers.
Working our way toward The Forum, we learned about a couple ingenious features built into the roads.
Roads doubled as sewers, so sidewalks were made much higher than modern ones, and periodically large stones were placed in the middle of streets to use as crosswalks.
They served the dual purpose of allowing pedestrians to avoid walking in the disgusting mess and slowing cart traffic by forcing them to navigate their wheels between the rocks.
In some places we could even see ruts in the cobblestones left by the ancient chariots.
Pompeii, like any Roman city, was built around The Forum, which became the center for the rest of our tour.
Temples, government buildings, businesses, and baths surround the stadium-sized open area where citizens gathered in the shadow of their ultimate demise, Mount Vesuvius.
The Temple of Jupiter with Mount Vesuvisus in the background.
The Temple of Apollo, in the center of The Forum, was perhaps the most important religious shrine to the people of Pompeii, as The Cult of Apollo had been popular for centuries after spreading throughout the religion from Greece.
Unlike most other Greek gods, the Romans didn’t have an equivalent to Apollo so there are temples all across the former empire in his honor.
However, as the ruler of the gods, Jupiter’s temple held the prime real estate of The Forum, overlooking the entire plaza.
It is not nearly as well preserved as many of the other buildings, but just behind it may be the most intact of all the ruins, The Forum Baths.
These are one of three public baths and survived the eruption remarkably well.
Unlike most all of the other buildings, the roof of the baths remained in place so the inside was relatively unharmed.
In the neighborhood around the baths we got our best glimpse at regular life in a Roman city.
On one corner we found a bakery with large grinding stones in the yard and a brick oven that still looked as though a loaf of bread, or even a wood-fired pizza, could pop out any moment.
Curious, we tried to see if the millstones would move and to our surprise they turned with ease.
Across the street is one of the several bars or cafes that served the city. The counter is decorated with inlaid stone and even has holes on top for the pots of wine and food.
It was easy to imagine the customers lining up to grab a bite at lunch or on their way home. Some things never change.
One of Pompeii’s most famous homes is also nearby, the House of the Tragic Poet.
On the floor of the entryway we could still read the mosaic showing a chained dog with the words Cave Canem written below it.
Even two thousand years ago home owners were warning would-be burglars to Beware of the Dog.
Our last stop before going back outside the walls was the Forum Granary. Originally a storage facility and market for grain, it now houses a treasure of artifacts along with the disturbing, yet mesmerizing plaster casts of a few of the casualties.
The long, open building has been filled with shelves to hold a large number of clay storage pots, statues, stonework, and other items recovered during the excavation.
While these are all interesting and of great historical value, most everybody’s attention was focused on the human figures.
After taking over the excavations in 1863, Giuseppe Fiorelli realized that the open pockets of air he was periodically encountering were actually spaces left by bodies.
The extreme heat of the pyroclastic flow killed the victims and time did the rest, leaving what turned out to be molds that captured the moment of death.
It was his idea to fill the spaces with plaster, then carefully remove the surrounding volcanic material.
Viewing these stark statues brought a hush over everyone present.
It is difficult to describe our reactions, but it was a somber, moving experience to witness the anguish immortalized by the body positions, and on the featureless, yet expressive faces of these ancient sufferers.
We left the city quietly, with an amazing amount of history and emotion to absorb, but positive that this had been one of the most incredible days of our lives.
