Trip to Chicago and San Francisco

I intended to write this entry really quickly after the trip (honest I did!), but if you know me then you'll know that these small unimportant parts of life tend to get sidelined for months at a time, then I send out a flurry of emails etc and then go quiet again for a few more months.

My trip to the US was a fairly hasty affair - I was on a customers site one day, and when I rang Kerstin afterwards, she told me that I was off to another continent about a week later. So after hurrying to organise everything, I managed to catch my plane and was off to Chicago.

The flight was quite surreal - I took off from Frankfurt at about 5.30pm or something, and it quickly went to twilight (before daylight savings started), which then lasted about 8 hours until we were over Canada.

When we arrived it was quite warm, which was a nice surprise - I've been used to nothing over 4 degrees for the last 4-5 months. The next day was also warm (17 degrees) - I was driving around with the window down, but I could see ice on all the streams etc and a little snow still piled up in the parking lots... The next day (Sunday) I found out why - it was back down to 3 degrees (and a nice cool breeze to go with it). The Monday morning it was warm again (so we walked to the office), and that evening it was freezing again (managed to get a ride back to the hotel...). After that it settled down and stayed cold (even snowed on Tuesday).

Chicago is an interesting place - the lake it so big that even looking across it (the short way) from the top of the Sears tower (highest building in the world before 1996), you still can't see the other side! So it is more like an ocean really. The central city shops etc are built on the second story - you can then go down a level and see more cars driving around (and its very easy to picture Al Capone down there blowing away some unfortunate). On top it is just like a normal city - buses and cars driving around amoungst the throngs of people that were braving the cold.

A view from the Sears tower













Other interesting things we did were seeing the 'Blue man show' - three guys (see the picture) who use colour, light, sound etc to produce a really entertaining show. We got to sit in the 'poncho' seats (to guard against splashing paint). Worth seeing if you are in any of the cities that it's spread to. We also visited the 'Green Mill' the old jazz club where Al Capone used to sit and watch both doors. Hence the cigar piccy below. The other thing worth mentioning was a mall that we found. I'm not entirely sure how big it was because the 2 or so hours we had weren't enough to get around it... The outdoors store in it was impressively huge by itself. It had a small pond with fish, plus a large fish tank over by the fishing rods... The gun selection was impressive too.

In the Green Mill













One of the blue men













The fish tank in the outdoors store













After finishing the training course I flew over to our development centre in Silicon Valley near San Francisco. Between meeting all the people that I work with from here, I found time to visit a few of the local attactions. First the cable cars which are funny little things, then Alcatraz island (the rock). Alcatraz is an interesting place - although its so damn hard to picture what it must have been like - you're in the middle of the harbour with fantastic views of San Francisco, the golden gate bridge etc - and obviously you're not stuck in one of the cages that aren't much bigger than the bed in them, and theres no one wandering around with a gun on the 'gun galley'.
A view from San Francisco of Alcatraz













A cell on Alcatraz













After that I visited the golden gate bridge, and then as light was fading on the one full day I had to look around, the John Muir forest with its giant redwoods trees.
DON'T JUMP













Some old chunk of wood I found lying around













One thing that will have a lasting impression on me regarding why americans are fat is shown below - it is the single worst meal I've ever eaten (one of the first in Chicago). The fat ran out in little rivers as you cut into the sandwich - its not often I can only eat half a meal and even then feel sick for the rest of the day. I really realised its not McDonalds that makes americans fat, its every restaurant - I started looking for the smallest portions I could find (I even took a half serving once and was still full). So the joke that is the american version of a diet (despite the size and fattiness of the meals it's nearly impossible to get proper milk - 2% fat is the closest), was fully shown.

My favorite meal of all time













By this time I was really keen to get back home - unfortunately Kerstin wasn't able to come along, so it was almost a relief to get into a plane for a gruelling 10 hours flight home.

Our Trip to Rome

Since our first ever wedding anniversary was coming up, Lindsay and I decided to treat ourselves to something special and we booked a flight with Ryan Air to Rome. We left very early on Saturday morning (we had to get up at 3:30am) and we got back very early on Wednesday morning (about 3am, with a 2 hour delay, because we had to drop an engineer off at Trevino (Venice) Airport on the way back), so we had 4 entire days to enjoy the ancient city of Rome. We had fantastic weather the entire time - above 20 degrees and hardly any clouds. We even got a little sunburned, which seems strange to me now, being back in Wiesbaden with its 4 degrees. The "Bed and Breakfast" we were staying at was only really a "Bed", as breakfast was not included. It was on the fifth story of an old townhouse with one of those old-style cage lifts. It was clean and tidy and with its 70 Euros a night, good value for money (in Roman-terms!).

On the first day, we tackled the Capitoline Hill including the Piazza designed by Michelangelo and the Roman Forum with its temple ruins. We then headed into the Centre and looked at the Pantheon and a couple of other impressive churches.

On the second day we visited the Colosseum, together with hundreds of other tourists and got a feel for the masses of people it used to take in the past. They would not have had to go through the security checks that we had to go through, though. We then went for a walk along a narrow street with walls on either side to a gate in the Aurelian Wall (old city wall) and to the Via Appia Antica. On the way back we walked across the Circus Maximus Arena, which is huge, but pretty much just a grass strip nowadays. Not really worrying about our feet very much, we did more walking on the Palatine Hill, which has got the ruins of the huge mansions of Augustus and Severus, in amonst trees. In the evening we really felt our feet and just went to the Spanish steps and sat down near it somewhere (there was no room on it, because of the thousands of tourists!).

The third day we had dedicated to the Vatican. We left early to try and beat the crowds a little, but that didn't really work. We visited the impressive St Peter's Cathedral and walked up the 500 steps to the top of the dome, from where you get a really awesome view of the city. You also get to look down into the church from the dome, which is really cool, because you see little things like painters restoring parts of the church, which you can't make out from the bottom because of the vastness of the building. We then went into the Vatican Museum, where we spent quite a few hours. We walked through most parts, taking in some pieces of work more thoroughly than others (you would never be able to look at everything and get back out in one day). Lindsay took some sneaky illegal photos in the Sistine Chapel. To round off the day we visited the Trevi Fountain and had a nice meal in a quiet little street.

On the last day we went to Piazza Navona and had our first italian ice cream. We then went to the markets at Campo di Fiori and bought some bright red strawberries. We had lunch beside the Tiber river and then split up for the rest of the day. Lindsay went to the beach as he had never seen the Mediteranean before, whereas I went through the medieval looking streets of Trastevere and to the botanical gardens. I then walked all the way back to the train station where we met up, taking in the major sights again one last time.


The Roman Forum.














The Pantheon.














View of Piazza Rotondo through the pillars of the Pantheon.













The Colosseum.














Lindsay and I inside the Colosseum.














On the Palatine Hill.














The Trevi Fountain.



















Me in front of St Peter's Cathedral.














The inside of St Peter's Cathedral.














The oldest bridge in Rome (Ponte Fabrizio) leading to the island in the Tiber.













The view of Rome from the Janiculum Hill.