Picture Dump

Here are the highlights of the past two weeks:

First up, Zermatt, home of the Matterhorn:

The view from our hostel window.

The view from outside the door to the hostel.

Japanese tourists taking pictures of the Matterhorn at sunrise (around 5:45am). We were only up because we had an insanely early train to Milan to catch.

The humungous Duomo in Milan.

Kate in front of La Scala.

Kate in front of Cathy Berberian's home in Milan.

On to Florence:

If women are dressed too revealingly, they have to wear these weird blue bibs. We found them highly amusing.

Venice:

A covertly taken picture in La Fenice.

At the tip of the island was this large statue of a naked boy holding a frog, and for some reason that cop seemed to be guarding it.

Here's us on the train to Munich.

That one on the right is a liter of beer. This was the only size available for the dark beer or anything other than wheat beer (a mere half-liter, shown at left). 

The most expensive (labeled) watch yet! Who is insane enough to spend that much money on a watch? And who is crazy enough to display it in a window? Patrick can't believe that 112 thousand euros doesn't even buy a digital display.

We biked around that park on my birthday. We saw nude sunbathers, but we didn't take any pictures of them.

Salzburg:

This is a fortress.

These are views from that fortress.

We visited this castle in Salzburg featuring trick fountains, which were apparently the height of humor and technological wonder in the 18th century. These kids got soaked.

We're in Vienna now, pictures coming soon!

Mullivans on the Move

Where have we been? Where are we going? Now you can see with a handy Google map!

Mullivans on the Move!

Lausanne and Geneva

Lausanne: what a disappointment! We stopped there yesterday on our way from Basel to Geneva thinking it would be beautiful, built on a hill overlooking Lake Geneva, but you couldn't see much of the lake without going all the way down there. Not quite the dramatic views we were hoping for, but it was OK.

We hopped on the short train to Geneva, which was beautiful. We spent a lot of time walking around the lake and looking at the big fountain:

While we were sitting on a bench enjoying the view and the people-watching, we noticed an interesting scam. This group walked over together and proceeded to pretend that they were playing this "where is the ball?" game over and over again, trading huge bills amongst themselves. They tried to get us and other people interested, but we didn't see anyone fall for it.

We noticed similar groups all over the place, and always the same game. What gives, Geneva?

On the way to the train station this morning we passed this:

Where's Patrick? There he is!

Bern

Last Saturday we went to Bern, despite the fact that it was cold and rainy. We therefore didn't think Bern was quite as amazing as we should have, because we couldn't wander in the sunshine.

We started the day by going to the Paul Klee museum:

They were showing a Klee/Picasso exhibit, which we decided made Picasso look really good and Klee less so. We also really like the building.

Bern is built along the Aare river, which provided some nice scenery:

Next to the river was the "Bear Park" housing the city mascots.

Bern is known for its covered sidewalks, which was convenient in the rain, but kind of hides the quaintness of the buildings:

The town is also filled with fountains and statues, featuring this gem:

Yes, that's an ogre eating a baby. Why? Who can say?

Here's a pretty dramatic hillside:

And here's Einstein's one-time house, which we went to:

We also saw the famous clock tower:

And the Swiss parliament:

There was some kind of crazy international festival going on in front of it, so we got to buy some cheap food from the different stalls, including "Ananas" which for some reason is the German word for pineapple.

St. Gallen

The first in a series of long overdue updates! We took a trip inspired by music history to St. Gall, home of some really old manuscripts showing some of the earliest forms of musical notation.  The famous library is decorated in a ridiculously ornate baroque style, is filled with much older books, and is housed in a weirdly incongruous modern building. We couldn't take pictures inside the library, so we bought postcards, and then we took pictures of those to post on here! This is what the library looks like:

It's kind of surreal to be in there. To protect the floors from being scuffed, everyone has to wear these enormous gray fleece slippers over their shoes. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a picture of those! Because they're one-size-fits-all, they were ridiculously oversized on me, and I couldn't walk normally. I had to shuffle and slide around the floor.

They had one music manuscript on display that dates from ca. 900. Luckily, I was able to buy a postcard with the image of the same page that was displayed (the one on the right):

We also walked around the town, which was cute, and which features these ornately decorated bay windows called oriels:

We also stopped in a local brewery, which is our favorite type of tourism.

After leaving St. Gall, we stopped in Winterthur, which is a small, quaint town. It apparently has some nice museums, but seeing as we got there after 5 pm, everything was closed. They did have some interesting benches/street art:

Winterthur also, amazingly, had this place:

I got a bagel with cream cheese for the first time in almost three months!

On the way back to Basel we stopped in Zurich to watch the first USA game vs. England, so that was fun.