Cities on Cliffs

Hello again, readers! Continuing on our Italy theme, we have ventured to the Cinque Terre (pronounced "Chinka Terra"), which are five cliffside cities connected only by train tracks and hiking trails. Most of the appeal of the area comes from hiking, so that is what we did- but we also found time to stare vacantly at the spectacular ocean-side views.

As a side note, this is the blog's 111th post. Numbers!

Our hotel was built on a sheer cliff face, with a precariously tiny road leading up to it. Cars drove on that road, and yet I've seen wider walking paths.

Vernaza, one of the five cities. We stayed in Monterosso al Mare.

These beautiful views were present for our entire hike to Cornigila, another one of the five cities.

We found a random, overgrown trail, and predictably decided to hike on it.

It is worth noting that we seem to have a particular attraction to things on cliffs. This is unfortunate for the less athletically-gifted members of our family such as myself.

Bonus: Funny signs!

We've encountered several amusing signs on our trip through Italy. Here are a few of them.

This one is a safety sign, warning you not to let your bags get stolen. The funny part is the thief being incredibly shifty-looking due to wearing a mask completely unnecessarily.

Very classy. 

This looks trustworthy!

Having a (Ve)Nice Day

Greetings, blog followers! Today I'll be reporting on our stay in Venice and Milan, two wonderful Italian cities. We only spent a day in each one, but that was more than enough to see the fascinating sights each city had to offer.

Venice

Venice's main "thing" that is known for is its canals. These trenches of water run through the city in a grid and act as the main alternative to roads. In fact, the city has no roads and no cars whatsoever- if your destination is far away, you have to either tough it out and walk or board a water taxi or water bus. This makes the city remarkably pleasant to walk through, with the minor downside of having to seek out one of the city's numerous bridges in order to cross the canals.

This is not a great photo, but we don't have many others because we were too busy admiring the unique city.

Milan

Milan is known as the fashion capital of the world, meaning that we stuck out like a sore thumb. Fashion isn't the only attraction, though, as we learned when we visited the stunning and intricate building known as the Duomo.

Each sculpture adorning the building would have been quite the work of art on its own- and yet, thousands of them all congregate here to make the building even more spectacular.

The inside of the Duomo.

Stained glass windows.

The duomo as seen from the roof.

Bonus Photo: Grilled cheese, take two!

This time, I got toasted french bread with huge blocks of cheese lining the middle. Closer than last time, but our quest for an actual grilled cheese sandwich remains unfinished.

Things on Cliffs

Welcome back once again! We have left Slovenia now, but hopefully I remember enough to give you an account of our last days there.

The last full day was mainly spent walking. There was a lot of walking. We trekked all the way around Lake Bled, with many detours up steep cliffs to visit various attractions. The first such attraction was a viewpoint- a difficult climb up, but astonishing views at the top.

Wow.

Stairs on the way down- who thought these were a good idea?

The second attraction was a castle on top of another cliff, because apparently everything we want to visit just has to be on a cliff.

The castle from afar. (It's the big castle-y thing on the left.)

Bonus points to whomever can guess which post this is a throwback to.

On our final day, we said goodbye to Lake Bled and drove to Ljubljana, the unpronounceable capital city of Slovenia, to see some sights.

A river cuts directly through the city.

Ljubljana is famous for the Dragon Bridge, a small bridge decorated with ornate dragons (and even a few gryphons on the lampposts.)

The city, by the way, is pronounced "Loob-lee-ah-nuh".

That's about all for now! Now that we've wrapped up in Slovenia, we're busy touring various Italian cities. And eating pasta every night.

See you next time!

The Lake Bled Crew

Welcome back to the blog! We have moved on to stage two of our vacation, the Slovenia Stage. We are staying in a small town called "Bled", which is built around the perimeter of a beautiful lake, the creatively named Lake Bled. As is to be expected from us, we promptly started adventuring upon arrival in Slovenia- in fact, we made a stop before we even reached our hotel.

This stop was the Postojna Caves, which seem to have a weird name at first glance, but are actually far easier to say than most Slovenian words. They are known mainly for being home to the proteus, a subterranean creature similar in appearance to an albino axolotl. Most people don't know what that is either, though, so I suggest you look it up.

We didn't see many of those, but we did see some fantastic rock formations. Check them out below.

We took a high-speed, open-topped train down into the interesting parts of the caves.

Selfie with rock.

Named "The Brilliant", this pure white rock is one of the most prominent formations in the cave.

After a thorough tour of the caves, my mom let us drive the rest of the way to our hotel to eat dinner and get some sleep. However, come morning, we were no longer safe from her planned activities. 

On the second day, we rented e-bikes (bikes with an electronic assist feature, to make the hilly terrain navigable) and biked our way to the Vintgar Gorge. This gorge has no interesting history or background to the extent of my knowledge, but it doesn't need any because it is so absurdly beautiful.

In places, the water was astoundingly clear and blue.

The water flow had a habit of changing from calm to rapid very suddenly.

I found a cave!

We even saw some wildlife in the area. Several fish could be seen using the running water like a treadmill, hovering motionless by swimming lazily against the current in slow portions. Also to be seen were... these.

Nature is beautiful or something???

Due to the time these activities took, they were our only major excursions for the day. I'll have more to report on next time.

BONUS: Restaurant mishap!

Mom ordered a grilled cheese, and... literally got a slab of grilled cheese.

New York Extravaganza

We're still working to catch up here at Wandering Aidan blog, so today's episode will feature two days of pure New York goodness.

Our second day of New Yorking was mainly dominated by an excursion to the famous Natural History museum. Continuing our theme of going to movie shoot locations, we tracked down a few of the parts of the museum featured in "Night at the Museum." We learned that, sadly, some of the exhibits from the movie don't actually exist in the museum, such as the displays of miniature cowboys and Roman soldiers. Even the entrance hall looks quite different, featuring two dinosaurs instead of one.

However, the museum still held some interesting surprises- for instance, a life-size model of a blue whale. As it turns out, whales are big!

Though it's not clear in this picture, the tail extends to the other end of the room.

Our personal favorite part of the museum, though, was the new dinosaur skeleton. The new find belongs to the group Titanosaur- meaning it is really, really, ridiculously big- but its species is currently unknown, and thought to be new.

That was all interesting, but the real reason we loved it was that it was too big to fit in the room, so its neck simply continued into the hallway.

The titanosaur welcomes visitors to the dinosaur section.

After we were done at the museum, we explored around Central Park a bit. The park is huge, boasting a perimeter of around 6 miles, so we only explored a small part of it- but we loved that small part. The part in question is Belvedere Castle, a small castle located towards the center of the park, and yet another out-of-place building in a modern city. As up-to-date as New York is, it still has its fair share of old buildings, and we found all of them.

Interestingly, the upper part of the tower has vines growing across it like a net.

On our third and final day in New York, we took a ferry past the Statue of Liberty. An interesting fact about this monument is that the waters surrounding the island are all part of New Jersey (the line between the states goes across water, and the Statue is on the New Jersey side). However, that small island still counts as part of New York.

The picture is a bit blurry, but you all know what the Statue of Liberty looks like anyway.

New York as seen from the water.

BONUS: Photos taken when people didn't know there was a photo being taken!

 These photos are just as artful and magnificent as the last bonus group.

Such a beautiful portrait. Such art.