Punta Arenas

Less than 12 hours after my mom and I got home from Europe, I was back at the airport starting my fourth journey to Antarctica--but my first journey through South America, to Palmer Station (on the Antarctic Peninsula).

It was a gorgeous flight from Santiago down to Punta Arenas, on the southern point of the South American continent, the Andes soaring out the window to our west.

And a relief to end another 24 hours of air travel and be able to take a little break in Punta Arenas. This fancy new town sign was recently built in anticipation of 2020 being the 500th anniversary of the explorer Magellan discovering the straits that are named for him, the first time a European, at least, had been able to sail around the Americas from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Though the town of Punta Arenas itself is only about 150 years old, it is known primarily for being the gateway to the Straits of Magellan, so this anniversary will be a big deal here.

And we had some atypically clear weather to enjoy this sweet town.

Snow crab empanadas...yum...

And of course, the frothing seas clapping up against the edge of town, relentlessly...

I appreciate how lazy Chilean dogs seem to be, even on a day where the temps are slightly below "crisp."

Fittingly, the main plaza of Punta Arenas is centered around a statue of Magellan.

And on one side of that statue column is a human depiction of Tierra del Fuego. It's said if you rub his toe, it will bring you good luck for a safe passage across the Drake. I rubbed that toe like no one's business. And we'll talk more about the Drake in a future post.

Lots of my first day in Punta Arenas was spent aboard the Lawrence M. Gould (hereafter, the LMG), an icebreaker that sails regularly for Palmer with passengers, and otherwise hosts science experiments in the Antarctic seas. Tomorrow we will all board the LMG, sleep aboard for the night, and--if everything goes according to plan--set sail first thing Wednesday morning for Antarctica.

Behind the LMG, you can see the Nathaniel B. Palmer, the second icebreaker owned by the U.S. Antarctic Program, and an even larger ship that never comes to Palmer because the Palmer dock cannot support it. I don't know how rare it is for both vessels to be docked at Punta Arenas simultaneously, but it was cool to see.

So, this is my last evening with good wifi. On the ship starting tomorrow, I'll really only be able to text a bit, so you won't hear from me here until after I've arrived at Palmer at least five days from now (tomorrow in port, one day making our way through the Straights of Magellan, two days across the Drake Passage, and a fourth day traveling down the Antarctic peninsula to Palmer Station). Then I will spend several posts, I'm sure, catching you up on the voyage before we start covering life in Palmer.

In any case, don't worry if you don't hear from me for a week or so; I'll be back with news from the 7th continent once we get there!

Warsaw

We have had just this one evening in Warsaw, and we leaving tomorrow morning to fly back to the States. But I'm so glad we had at least this short visit. Coming out of the main train station we were greeted by a VERY IMPOSING building, Stalin's "Palace of Culture and Science," which was quite a sight and introduction to Warsaw.

But our Airbnb was on the edge of the "Old Town" of the city, so we spent the rest of our time there. I put Old Town in quotes because it (along with 80% of the city in general--unlike Krakow, which came through relatively unscathed in terms of buildings and infrastructure) was totally obliterated by the Germans during WWII, most of it in the last year of the war (1944) when there was a local uprising against the Nazi occupation...which was temporarily successful (for a couple of months) until Hitler sent reinforcements. Which demolished most of the city in retaliation for the uprising. So pretty much everything you see in these pictures has been reconstructed to look like it did pre-war. (Look for my adorable mom in this picture.)

The Old Town Main Square, with a mermaid statue that legend says is a sister mermaid to the Little Mermaid you can see in Copenhagen.

Then there's the Castle Square, where there was a flaming baton troupe doing its thing.

And then my mom and I had our last dinner of the trip, delicious crepes. Not very Polish (or were they?...I mean, there WERE pickles on the plate...), but dang they were good.

As this whole trip has been, from beginning to end. Now that all that's left is to get an Uber to the airport in the morning, it's also safe now to say it out loud: We have had basically perfect weather. It was pouring rain when we arrived in Budapest 2+ weeks ago, we got to our Airbnb and laid down to take a nap after our overnight on the plane, and when we woke up, the rain has stopped and it hasn't rained since. We've had an unblemished streak of beautiful, sunny days, which doubtless made this trip even more lovely than it already was with great company in some really special cities.

I'm sad to see it end!

But I will be back here almost without break. Next week I'll already be on a new adventure, via southern Chile back to Antarctica. So bye just for now, and see you very soon....

Krakow

I'd heard from several people that Krakow is great and worth visiting...but WHOA. I was not expecting this. It's a BEAUTIFUL city.

Like any self-respecting European city, Krakow has an obligatory castle-on-a-hill. A lovely one.

I particularly enjoyed exploring outside the city center, in the former Jewish Quarter of Kazimierz, now a very hip area of young people and restaurants, along with lots of attempts to preserve the Jewish culture that once genuinely flourished here.

I ate pierogi until I was in danger of becoming a potato dumpling.

And I really liked the grittier side of the city we saw in Kazimierz. Because while the city center is very painted over, the things that have been metaphorically painted over in Poland are significant, and not something the country has moved past: the almost total obliteration of its Jewish population during WWII; 40 years of communist occupation; and even the general adoration of the late Pope John Paul II, who was Polish and lived and worked in Krakow for years before going to the Vatican...even as more and more is revealed about JPII's complicity in covering up the sexual abuse rampant in the church, and with 98% of Poland now Catholic.

We didn't have enough time to visit Auschwitz-Birchenau, but we did go to the former Jewish ghetto on the other side of the river, where the Schindler enamel factory is located. Now the factory (made famous by the movie Schindler's List) is a Holocaust museum, and Oskar Schindler's office space is preserved there.

We also made a trip just outside the city to the town of Wieliczka for a visit to its TOTALLY AMAZING salt mines. I should really do a completely separate post on this...but long story short, due to a shallow lake leaving extensive salt deposits here 13 million years ago, and the harvesting of this salt by humans for at least the past 6,000 years, and that evolving into more and more elaborate excavation deeper and deeper. Over the years, the mine was always a tourist destination and was a part of the culture and life of people here. This underground chapel--the walls, carvings, floors, chandelier crystals...EVERYTHING is rock salt!--has hosted concerts in addition to weekly services.

Horses lived their entire lives down in the mine, turning a mill day in and day out to operate the pulley system that moved things up and down within the mine, which had gotten to be 9 levels (and something like 450 feet) deep by the time (in the early 90's) when the bottom level flooded permanently and commercial operations largely wound down. I could go on about the salt mine forever; it was really mind-blowing. Suffice it to say, if you come to Krakow you should definitely visit the salt mines.

And you should DEFINITELY visit Krakow. I am definitely planning on coming back here someday again...

Prague

Another lovely, lovely city. I'm afraid that even though to me all these places feel distinct now, the pictures are all starting to look exactly the same. There are definitely similar themes running through the history of these Central European cities, but if you're reading this blog and thinking it's all the same and each place is not worth a visit, that's my fault! They're all incredible places worth seeing in their own right! And Prague is yet another....

That photo above is of the Old Town Square, the heart of the city, showing Prague's famous astrological clock on the left. Every hour the area in front of the clock is SWAMPED with tourists filming the clock's chiming. The first time I saw it I was watching the clock itself intently. But the second time I was there on the turn of an hour, I noticed how hilarious and remarkable it looked, a few hundred tourists all filming it on their phones. We people are so ridiculous.

But, then, I STILL had a hard time not taking a picture every time we turned a corner, because GOSH is it picturesque!

In a crazy coincidence, a friend of a friend of mine from New York just happened to be in Prague the first night we arrived, and by total serendipity we found out we were in the same city for one evening, so we met up and he taught my mom and me to use the boomerang feature of Instagram. Big deal for us!

On a walking tour, we got to visit the old Jewish Quarter, which in its current iteration has been revitalized as a primo shopping area and has some of the highest rents in the city. But when most of it was demolished from the slum it had become by the end of communism, the city did at least preserve a select group of buildings, including 5 synogagues, one of which is this one: the oldest (800 years old) still-active synagogue in Europe.

We went to more lovely, atmospheric cafes...



...and got to visit the catacombs beneath a building that housed alchemy labs back in the day.

We also took a chocolate-making class, which was crazy fun.

And delicious take-homes!

And we toured the Prague Castle complex, which is the largest in Europe. A few shots from that side of the city...

(The blue house, #22, on the left, was Franz Kafka's abode on Golden Lane for a while.)

And we swung by the amazingly graffiti'd John Lennon wall.

And were happy to see the city look even more beautiful at night.

The days and cities are flying by! Tomorrow we move on to yet another new country. I'll let you guess till the next post....

Vienna

Vienna! I was here 25 years ago (eek) on my first-ever trip to Europe (which was also my first-ever venture outside the US) with a group of my fellow high school students. It's kind of disturbing that I remember exactly NOTHING about that visit. At least I'm so lucky that I'm here again to get to know Vienna a little bit. It's so...GRAND!

And we had a lovely couple days here. We took a tour of much of the city center on electric bikes (here, pausing for a photo next to some graffiti by the river canal)...

...toured Schönbrunn Palace (a residence for the Habsburgs), where my mom flexed her royal posing muscles...

...checked out St. Stephen's Cathedral (including going down into the catacombs and up into a tower--the one that has an elevator!)...

...and did a food tasting tour of Naschtmarkt, one of the oldest markets in the city, which is now the place the Viennese go for the kinds of ingredients they can't get anywhere else in the city.

We tasted soooooo many yummy things, I could have taken 10 pictures similar to this one. But you get the idea.

And there was a section of the market we saw at the end of the tour where they sell more traditional, local foods.

We also dedicated quite a bit of time to experiencing Vienna's cafe culture, which was a very nice way to spend time!

We had amazing apple strudel and hot drinks and felt so cozy as we read our books on a chilly, cloudy afternoon.

If I don't remember this visit to Vienna with my mom in another 25 years, I feel pretty comfortable it will be because I am old and can't remember anything. :)