Dad (Jon) and I are roughly three weeks into a month-long trip around Eastern Europe and the Caucasus region. We started in Armenia, made our way through Georgia, across the Black Sea to Ukraine, through Moldova and now to Kyiv, Ukraine. We have one more stop, Lviv, and then it’s back home to Idaho. I’ll cover our first two weeks(ish) in this post, from the start to the Black Sea ferry. This trip may sound familiar, as many of our destinations match up with a trip Dad and Phin took in August 2013. They wrote about their trip in several posts: Let sleeping dogs lie in Kiev Kiev Pechersk Lavra More Kiev churches and sights Ukrainian miscellany Tbilisi, Georgia Enlinking the Caucasus from Tbilisi to Yerevan Yerevan, Armenia sights Burning rubber in Yerevan, Armenia Garni & Geghard, Armenia Ejmiatsin, Armenia Dad and I have been interested in Eastern Europe for a long time, so this trip has been a great opportunity to see a lot of new places in the east. A lot of plac...
We took a train from Rome to Ancona, Italy, where we had a one-day stop. Ancona is about ¾ of the way up the east coast, on the Adriatic Sea. The next evening we planned to take an overnight ferry to Split, Croatia, so this seemed like a simple transfer place, but Ancona is a really neat city itself! At night I wandered around and ended up hiking to a functioning lighthouse. The stone sign is at 104 meters above sea level, about 341 feet. Our neighborhood had some nice murals / graffiti: Here is a view out over a pentagonal building formerly used as a quarantine colony, a little island right by the city, open to the public: There are quite a few drinking fountains scattered all over, and all the ones we tried worked! This is the correct way for a city to be. It is very hilly, with stairs and steep roads all over. Many narrow little alleys between buildings, and connecting passages and staircases up and down hills, between houses, churches, and pa...
Erin found us a nice apartment in Rome near Vatican City, with a view out the back to the dome of St. Peter's basilica in the Vatican. That wall contains the Passetto di Borgo which was an escape route for Popes in danger. Our apartment was just a few meters down the street through the gate. St. Peter's Square in the Vatican is a really impressive place, and very busy even on a not particulary busy day: I came upon the Spanish Steps by accident while walking around, which lead down to the Piazza di Spagna: The church is the church of the Santissima TrinitĂ dei Monti and the Egyptian obelisk is a copy, but itself a very old copy. According to Wikipedia, “It is a Roman obelisk in imitation of Egyptian ones, originally constructed in the early years of the Roman Empire.” All this is not too far from the H&M department store where Mira was shopping for clothes to replace those lost in her checked bag that Air France and/or Air Malta lo...
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