Laure and Quarup

Q and I are switching up what we give each other for our birthdays. For the last two years, we have been trying to live with less stuff and focusing our resources towards what really matters in our lives. What we really value is having new experiences; and we have plenty of room for those. Inspired by our friends Sarah and Mike, we're starting a new tradition of giving each other a surprise weekend trip.

Here's how it works: The giver plans the entire trip - location, transportation, lodging, and activities - with no input from the birthday person. The only information the birthday person is allowed to know is the dates of the trip and what to pack. My birthday came first and landed next to a holiday - yay for long weekends. Q really set the bar high by planning an great trip for me.

We set off Friday morning for the airport and checked in at the Fin Air counter. Yes - we're going to somewhere in Finland! Then the woman behind the counter said confirmed our tickets to Tallinn. What? Where is in Tallinn, Finland? Not even Google Maps could even answer that one. Apparently, my geography knowledge was lacking because with a proper Google search I learned Tallinn is in Estonia - doh! It turned out that Q wanted to take me somewhere for my birthday that I would have never guessed - mission accomplished!

Ready to fly out.

Doh, turned out Helsinki was just a layover.

I knew almost nothing about Estonia, besides it being part of the former USSR. I had one hour before takeoff to learn about the place we were headed. For those of you in the dark about Tallin as I was, here's a little background on where we were headed:
Tallinn is the capital and the largest city in Estonia and best known to travelers for having the best preserved medieval town centers. The medieval old town, built by German crusaders in the Late Middle Ages, was formerly known as Reval from 13th century until 1917 and once again from 1941-44 during Nazi occupation. It was under Soviet occupation until 1991. Since gaining independence, Estonia joined the EU in 2004 and has been using the Euro since 2011. Today many websites list Tallinn as an up and coming travel destination.

View of Tallinn's old town from the center of town.

Q had everything lined up for us. He knew how to get from the airport to the hotel by public transit, had booked a nice new hotel located just outside the medieval town center for us, and a few tours set up. Q lined up a few things on and off the beaten tourist route.

Main Tourist Attractions

Exploring the Middle Age Town Center
We spent much of our free time exploring the old city center, wandering through narrow allies of boutiques, walking up along the fortress walls and towers and visiting the larger squares of middle aged themed restaurants and souvenir shops. The old town offers plenty to keep a tourist busy for the weekend, which is why many never venture outside of the old town walls.

Costumed merchants and Medieval themed pubs

Strolling the streets after dinner at 10PM at night and it's still bright outside - totally weird.

Roaming the upper town after dinner.

Felt like we stepped back in time.

Estonian Food Scene
We spent a good portion of our time trying out several cafes tucked away in charming courtyards and highly rated restaurants that Q picked out ahead of time. We were both impressed with the quality of food, variety of cuisines, service, and affordable prices. Every person we encountered was warm and spoke excellent English. There was only one restaurant we weren't crazy about but that may have been due to our expectations rather then the restaurant itself. It was a trendy vegan restaurant; actually the best vegan restaurant we had ever been to but we had meant to go to a traditional restaurant and just enter the wrong door. Doh.

Estonia exceeded our expectations. Dinner at Rataskaevu16

Little touches like this one from our waiter really made us feel welcomed.

One the hunt for the local Chocolatier, The Pierre Chocolaterie.

Starters at Vegan Restoran V, the best vegan meal we didn't intend to have.

Free Walking Tour
Of course we had to do a walking tour of the old town. The Tallinn Free Tour lasted 2 hours and covered the highlights of the old town. Our overall impression was that tour was somewhat informative but we were a bit let down by the quality of our young guide. She led our large group thought the lower and upper town, sharing great vista points, and local myths and ghost stories but I felt the guide was a bit quick with the information and could have been more engaging. As with many free walking tours, you always take a gamble with the guide.

Within 2 hours we actually covered a lot of ground.

 

 

Getting Off the Main Tourist Path

Prangli Island Tour
We try to make time every trip to get off the well worn tourist route and visit some of the lesser known parts of the region. Q booked an afternoon excursion with Prangli Travel to one of the small islands in the Baltic Sea with a private guide. There we learned about the seal hunting that used to take place in the winter when the sea freezes over and about simple Estonian island life. Being our first time in Estonia, this may have not been the best tour for us and perhaps better suited for those with more background knowledge of the country. Thankfully our guide was able to answer our non-stop questions about Estonia and we were able to gain more than if we had just gone to a touristic museum.

Touring the island from the truck bed added to the local simple lifestyle.

Exploring the Kalamaja Neighborhood
Kalamaja translates to "fish house" in Estonian, which was the original wooden home to fishermen between the old town and the Baltic Sea. With some of our down time we took the advice of our tour guide and ventured outside the typical tourist domain to roam around an up and coming hipster neighborhood and stopped for a coffee. Despite its current run down appearance, many of the buildings are under renovation and the neighborhood could be a lively place to hang out in a few years.

Checking out the century old Estonian architecture.

Outdoor Rooftop Movie
For our last evening, Q had pre-purchased tickets to an outdoor roof top movie. Older movies are featured each night and conveniently an English movie was playing the night we came. Being close to the Summer solstices, the sky never gets 100% dark - but at 11pm it was dark enough to grab a drink at the bar and sit back with the locals for a movie.

Wish we had something this laid back in the center of Zurich.

Tallinn wasn't all Q had planned for my birthday. After a couple days in Tallinn, we packed up our bags and set out for the bus station to start the second half of my birthday trip.

Early last Spring, Laure and I drove out to Lago di Como to meet up with our friends Llew and Gabbie.

This is not Lago di Como. We passed some beautiful lakes in the Alps on the way there.

This is it.

Lago di Como is hugged by mountains with many little hilly villages on its shore. We stayed at one such village named Varenna -- across from the world famous Bellagio, which bares little resemblance to its Las Vegas counterpart as we described when we first visited. For those of you that are Rick Steve's travel guide book fans, Varenna happens to be his favorite town along Lake Como.

We walked around Varenna and checked out some landmarks including an old fort up on the hill.

Gabbie found a ghostly friend by the old fort.

As it usually goes with Italian trips, my favorite part was the combination of tasty food outside with good ambiance and great company.

Assortment of cheeses and cold cuts is a good way to start a meal.

Llew eloquently expresses something exquisite.

Great company.

And an amazing sunset view.

At night, we took a couple of bottles of wine up to the rooftop, where we stayed and chatted until late. The view was amazing.

Bellagio across from the lake.

Llew and I look like Italian mobsters here.

Next day, we took a ferry across the lake to visit Bellagio with its cute narrow streets and some fancy shops before all driving back to Zürich together. A fun weekend adventure!

I really wanted my sister, Cat, to get the most out of her trip to Europe and thought we should visit one more place besides Rome and Zurich. With a little inspiration from an Eiffel Tower statue I gave my sister back in 2000, she decided it was time to see the real thing. So I planned a day and a half whirlwind tour of Paris for us.

We arrived late in the evening by bullet train from Zurich and didn't get our trip really started until the following morning. Our sightseeing began at the Arc de Triomphe, allowing my sister her first view of the Eiffel Tower and the rest of Paris. We made our way down to the Musée de l'Orangerie to view Claude Monet's eight Water Lilies murals. The series is amazing in person. My sister was taken aback by them. She had seen them in books before but wasn't expecting them to be so large.

View of the city from Arc de Triomphe

Thanks New York Times for the photo of Monet's Water Lilies paintings

We joined a free walking tour outside of the Notre Dame Cathedral and the surrounding neighborhood. Overall the tour was blah but we did walk away with one golden nugget of information -  that the real Sweeney Todd murders took place a stone's throw from the Cathedral.

Cat and I

We did a little window shopping at Galeries Lafayette and various other malls hoping to find a bride's maid dress for our cousin's upcoming wedding. No luck finding a dress but we later found a nice place to rest our feet and people watch at Sacré Coeur Church in the Montmartre neighborhood. We must have sat there for nearly and hour watching the street performers. I think my wallet enjoyed that over buying a dress in Galeries Lafayette.

One last look at Sacré Coeur Church before heading on.

It rained off and on throughout our Paris trip, conveniently more of the "on" happening during a meal. After dinner and a short rain shower we finish up our evening with watching the Eiffel Tower light up.

15 minute sparkles on the hour.

We started our next morning planning for our departure, we stored our luggage at the train station for a quick getaway and headed back into the city for the main reason we came to Paris, the Eiffel Tower. We paid a little extra for a reserved time for the Eiffel tower - and it was worth every cent. The reservation line was empty and we had a straight shot to the elevator. Otherwise we may have stood in an hour long line in the drizzle.

Sister time at the top of the tower.

After coming down from the tower my sister just gazed up at it. I asked her what she thought and all I got out of her was that it was a lot bigger then she had imagined. We grabbed a crepe on the street and soaked in the view of the Tower a little longer before making our way back to the Gare de Lyon Train Station and back towards Zurich.

I hope my sister enjoyed Paris enough to come back. I'd love to spend more time there doing more of my favorite Paris activity - a lot of aimlessly walking around and eating.

Last April, Laure and I drove down to meet her sister Catrina in Rome.

The drive down to Rome passes by some picture-perfect hill towns.

After arriving at night, Laure and I had an excellent dinner at The Library and walked around the city while checking out some of the famous outdoor highlights.

The Trevi fountain is a cool hangout spot at night. It is apparently also good for wedding photos.

Next morning, we visited National Roman Museum, which we quickly realized has an impressive but overwhelmingly huge collection of archeological findings spanning multiple ancient centuries.

These Roman "cheap" copies of the Greek Discobolus statue used to be popular decorations at Roman gyms.

The sarcophagus of some guy that killed a lot of people.

Then we then picked up Catrina from the Rome airport after her flight from San Francisco. We were impressed that she hit the floor running without letting jet lag stop her from getting the most out of her trip.

The next morning we went on a guided tour of the Vatican offered by their own official tours, which covered the must-sees. We really liked our Italian tour guide not only because she presented the information in an approachable manner, but also because after visiting each section, she would slowly say in an unforgettable way, "andiamo."

One of many extravagant hallways of the Vatican museum.

Raphael obviously stole the idea for this painting...

from the poster I used to have on my bedroom wall growing up.

We also visited the Sistine Chapel. They didn't allow photos, so I ripped this one off wikipedia.

Rug and Mochi pose for a photo at St. Peter's Square. Of course they came along!

Later in the afternoon, we had time to check out some more famous touristy spots.

Trevi fountain gets annoyingly packed during the day with tourists like us.

The Pantheon has been in continuous use for a couple of thousand years.

No visit to Italy is complete without some pizza. Dar Poeta didn't let us down.

Next day, we headed to the world-famous Colosseum. We had made reservations for the limited guided tours months in advance by phone with Coop Culture but they had never sent us a receipt, which turned out to be a tremendous headache. Because of this, we were not able to simply waltz up to the reservation window. We pleaded with security personnel to convince them about our story and that we were not just trying to skip the ridiculously long lines. After a bit of stress, we found a sympathetic person that found our names on a printed list in a big binder of papers. We were in.

The cultural guided tour took us to exclusive viewpoints away from regular visitors like this one and the underground area where gladiators and animals were held underneath the arena.

One of the exclusive viewpoints was on the top floor (third ring) looking down at the massive structure and masses of tourists.

Totally worth the headache.

When visiting the Colosseum, one must imagine the original building at its full grandeur including all the stones and sculptures before they were destroyed by conquerors and natural decay.

Hmm, maybe this...

used to look something like this. Photo credit: someinterestingfacts

Another place we visited was a fairly new museum named Le Domus Romane di Palazzo Valentini, which turned out to be my favorite. Guided tours are mandatory and we were lucky enough to snag an appointment. We joined a small group and walked through excavated ruins with a clever display of light projections and sounds, which recreated an immersive experience of ancient Roman life. When I was growing up, I would have paid much more attention to history classes if they would have been taught this way.

Lights virtually reconstruct the paint, artwork, and water of this excavated Roman bath house at Le Domus Romane.

Unsolicited Advice

For those planning a trip to Rome, I strongly suggest reserving tours for popular sights as early as possible. Thanks to Laure, we booked the Vatican and Colosseum tours months in advance basically as soon as they became available. Many people do not bother to reserve in advance and must wait many hours to get inside each place just to get a tour that may not be as good. We got lucky with last minute tickets for Le Domus Romane, but that is an exception rather than the norm.

One last thing: don't book a room right off Campo de' Fiori. Every night we had to deal with loud drunken people outside before being awakened by energetic vendors early in the morning. Earplugs helped us survive.