Tag: food

The Byzantine Empire, Christianity and lovely Athens

February 10, 2018 / Ulrika / 0 Comments

The Byzantine and Christian Museum was on our to do list in Athens and we can highly recommend spending an afternoon here if you want to learn more about the most powerful economic, cultural, and military force in Europe during the first thousand years of our western era. We had read about the museum beforehand and our awesome Airbnb-hosts also recommended the museum, so we had high expectations on our visit and we were not disappointed.

Museet “Byzantine and Christian Museum” var på vår att göra-lista i Aten och vi rekommenderar starkt att spendera en eftermiddag här om du vill lära dig mer om den starkaste ekonomiska, kulturella och militära kraften i Europa under de första tusen åren av vår västerländska tideräkning. Vi hade läst om museet på förhand och våra fantastiska Airbnb-värdar rekommenderade också museet, så vi hade höga förväntningar på besöket och vi blev inte besvikna.

The Byzantine and Christian Museum was recommended by our Airbnb-hosts. We wanted to learn more about the early days of Christianity, so why not acquire the knowledge in Athens.

The Byzantine Empire sprung from the fall of the Roman Empire during the 5th century AD. The Byzantine Empire is actually the surviving part of the Eastern Roman Empire. Its capital was Constantinople, which today is a part of Turkey, with the name changed to Istanbul. The Byzantine Empire existed for a thousand years until it fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.

The Byzantine Empire was founded by Constantine I in the 3rd century AD, and Christianity was legalized and became the official religion in the empire. In the 6th century AD, the Byzantine Empire switched from Latin to Greek as their official language.

There where different sections covering art, culture, everyday life, governance, administration and religious activities from different parts of the Byzantine Empire. They even had a section covering the Copts, the Christian population in Egypt. This is clothes and shoes that a Christian child would wear in the Egyptian part of the Byzantine Empire.

One part of the museum that we found very interesting, was the huge controversy and religious division over Iconoclasm (breakers of icons and religious images) over iconodules (supporters of icons and religious images) during the 8th and early 9th centuries. The iconoclasts banned all religious pictures of icons and christian heroes and wanted the cross to be the only symbol for worship, whilst iconodules wanted to keep the worship and veneration of images of Jesus, the Apostles and saints.

There were religious art hanging in the museum.

There were plenty of jewelry on display in the museum.

and equipment for everyday life like oil lamps.

Parts of houses where also displayed in the museum, so you got a feeling for Byzantine architecture. More pictures from the museum can be found in the slide show below.

Athens is huge, but we managed to get a feeling for the neighborhoods we where surrounded by. They grow non-eatable orange allées in the city.

Athens has a lot of smaller and bigger parks. We had a lovely pine forest park near us that we explored.

And their balconies are filled with green plants.

Sometimes there is a tree right on the streets. Vehicles be aware!

We walked by a beautifully painted school and we had to take a picture of it.

And we found a car repair shop with a go-cart like car on display showing the mechanism behind how a car works. Just small things that we love finding while walking around in a new city,

Pontus got himself a fresh haircut whilst in Athens.

OKEIO is our favorite restaurant in Athens. which is near the Byzantine Museum and the cliff railway that takes you up on the Lycabettus hill.

Both the interior design and food is lovely.

They serve a mix of Greek and European dishes.

We tried a local restaurant that we got recommended by our Airbnb-hosts and we got to taste many kinds of traditional Greek food here.

And eat meat German style here in Athens, which they call “Kotsi”, 8 euro for a huge chunk of tender meat.

We also got to hang out with our awesome Airbnb-hosts Khatchig and Matina. Blurry pictures, but lovely times!

Thank you M and K for all your help and recommendations while we stayed in Athens. It made our time in Athens so much easier!

Next up Acropolis. We just had to visit this place before we left Athens. More about this historical landmark in our next blog post.

Budapest by foot and a pinball museum

November 16, 2017 / Ulrika / 0 Comments

Now it is time for us to write about our last days in Budapest and pictures from our walks around the city. The last thing we did was to visit the famous Pinball Museum, with cool arcade games, even games from the early 1900’s.
The update here is quite sparse right now, while we are hanging out with near and dear to us, but our backlog is decreasing and soon we will be right on track again and somewhere else in the world.

Nu är det dags för oss att skriva om våra sista dagar i Budapest och visa bilder från våra promenader runt staden. Det sista vi gjorde var att besöka det berömda Pinball-museet, med coola arkadspel, till och med spel från början av 1900-talet. Uppdateringen här är ganska sparsam just nu, medan vi hänger med nära och kära till oss, men vårt eftersläp minskar och snart kommer vi att vara mer i fas igen och någon annanstans i världen.

The shoes on the Danube Promenade is a memorial of the 20 000 Jews that were executed here during the world war II. The victims were forced to remove their shoes before they were shot and falling in to the river.

You can feel the tides of history walking around in Budapest.

Just walking around in Budapest is interesting. We passed a lot of spectacular buildings, this one is the Hungarian Parliament Building. It is built in a Gothic revival style and stood finished in 1904.

The public transportation system works well here, but in some cities it is just nicer to walk around and Budapest is one of them.

We walked across the Danube river using the first permanent bridge, opened in 1849, across the river to the Buda side of the city

Buda Castle can be found on the Buda side of Budapest. The first castle to stand on Castle hill was completed in 1265, but the Baroque palace standing here today was built between 1749 and 1769.

We got a great vied over the Danube river and Gellert hill from the Chain bridge.

The sun was about to set and it covered Budapest in pink light that we managed to capture with our camera. We captured more buildings and art work on picture that we show in the slide show below.

We love the central European kitchen, so Ulrika’s eyes were glittering when she got to eat Lángos in Hungary.

We also tried the Chimney cake (Kürtőskalács or Trdelnik), a spit cake with cinnamon and sugar stuffed with ice cream!

The last thing we did in Budapest was to visit the Pinball Museum, which is an awesome museum where you can try all the games you want if you have purchased an entry ticket for 3000 HUF (~10 Euro).

There are a lot of Arcade games here from the early 1900’s to more modern ones.

The earlier mechanical arcade games are still working so you can play them as well.

The classic Pac Man game. More pictures from the Pinball Museum can be found in the slide show below.

Hagia Sofia, Blue Mosque & Turkish food

June 10, 2017 / Ulrika / 2 Comments

We had just landed in Turkey where we last left you and now it’s time to show you some pictures from our stay in Istanbul. Ulrika was sick most of our time here so the energy to edit movies and pictures was not there, but we managed to see a lot of Istanbul anyways, probably due to Ulrika’s persistence, and tried a lot of different Turkish food. Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque was also on our to-do list, so here is some pictures and videos from our visits there.

Vi hade just landat i Turkiet där vi lämnade er senast och nu känner vi att det är dags att visa några bilder från vår vistelse i Istanbul. Ulrika var sjuk mestadels av vår tid i Istanbul, så energin att redigera filmer och bilder fanns inte då, men vi lyckades ändå se mycket av Istanbul, troligtvis beroende på Ulrikas envishet, samt prova mycket turkisk mat. Hagia Sofia och den blå moskén var också på vår att göra-lista, så här är några bilder och videor från våra besök där.

Bosphorus – the waterway that separates Europe from Asia, and this view has been on Ulrika’s bucket list for a long time. We landed at the Sabiha Gökçen-airport on the Asian side of Turkey and took a bus over to the European side.

We had been travelling all night, with a transit in Iran, so seeing how the turks spell the word toilet was funny to us Swedes. It reminded us of a funny tv-sketch “Svenska för nybörjare” or Swedish for beginners 🙂

One of the reasons for our choice of destination was the food, or the craving for Turkish Kebab. Here, we’re eating two of our favorite dishes – Iskander Kebab and Beyti wrap drinking Ayran, a Turkisk sour milk drink which is really good, and ice tea.

The other reason to travel to Istanbul was this- Hagia Sofia. the 1500 year old church that is now a museum.

Hagia Sofia was a church for the first 1000 years, before the Ottoman empire transformed it into a mosque in the 15th century, It was a Mosque until 1935 when Mustafa Kemal Atatürk the first president of Turkey, transformed it into a museum.

The christian mosaic was covered with islamic patterns, because of the “do not portrait the image of god, which humans are”-rule in islam. However, the cover up has now been removed and the old mosaic pictures are being restored.

But you can still see the mix of islam and christianity in the church.

Inside the Hagia Sofia:

And some really old remnants are on display inside Hagia Sofia. Here is the lustration urn from Pergamom, an urn carved in a single marble block.

Hagia Sofia has a second floor from where you get a beautiful overview of the inside of the church, which you can see in the video above. The tunnel to the second flor is also remarkable. Think that here has humans walked up and down for 1500 years.

Here you also find a viking tag from a viking who took work in the guard force of Hagia Sofia approximately 1000 years ago.

When Ulrika was not feeling sick, we also tried to explore Istanbul. Public transportation in Istanbul is really cheap and easy to use. The Istanbulkart is the thing you want when using the trams, metro, buses etc in Istanbul.

Love the trams!

Also love the colors and patterns that are common here. The Shisha can be smoked everywhere here.

Turkish carpets!

We mostly enjoyed eating Turkish food, here is Pontus with an eggplant kebab.

Another favorite was the Turkish ravioli.

And the baklava. Here, together with apple tea another Turkish delight!

The Turkish ice-cream is our new favorite. It is similar to our Swedish favorite brand “Lejonet och björnen”.

We also tried roasted chestnuts, but Ulrika didn’t fancy them.

Turkish people really like their sweets!

We also visited the Blue Mosque while we were in Istanbul.

The Blue Mosque or the Sultan Ahmed Camii, was built under much controversy in the beginning of the 17th century. Sultan Ahmed I was not fortunate with winning wars, so he was not so popular. Then he financed the new mosque from the empires treasure promising a great mosque that ended up looking like the Hagia Sofia church, which just stands a few hundred meters from the blue mosque. However, the hand-painted blue tiles inside the mosque are beautiful to see.

Inside the Blue Mosque:

You have to cover up if you want to visit the church, so here is Ulrika looking like a “Påskkärrring”
Påskkärringar are seen in Sweden during Easter, where children dress up as witches and “travel” to Blåkulla on Maundy Thursday, for meeting with the devil. The children go around as witches, knocking the doors in the neighbourhood requesting treats and sing a song or give you a drawing.

We noticed that the number of tourists coming to Turkey are really low, illustrated by the picture. The prices has gone down because of that, so now you can find cheap accommodation in the old parts of Istanbul and it is not so crowded. We loved Istanbul so much that we decided to extend our stay here.

You’ll find the Hippodrome of Constantinople, today the Sultan Ahmet Square, with the obelisk remnants from the old days, just in front of the blue mosque. The first obelisk was erected during the 18th dynasty by Pharaoh Thutmose III (1479–1425 BC), but was transported to Constantinople in 390. The second obelisk is called the walled obelisk and it was erected in the 10th century by the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus. It was originally covered with gilded bronze plaques. The third obelisk (not shown here) is the serpent column, which was erected to celebrate the victory of the Greeks over the Persians during the Persian Wars in the 5th century BC.

Istanbul is beautiful and we met really nice people and animals here. Unfortunately, Ulrika caught the air-condition sickness just before we left Malaysia, so she’s lagging behind with the blog posts. She is much better now, so we will try to catch up in the coming weeks.

Atitlansjön! / Lake Atitlan!

May 27, 2016 / Ulrika / 4 Comments

(Please scroll down to the orange text for the English version)

Vi älskar verkligen Atitlansjön och med all vacker natur som omringar sjön så känns det som om man är i en annan värld. Det finns flera små samhällen runt sjön, men vi valde att bo i San Pedro La Laguna då vi fick veta att det var bästa stället att utgå ifrån om man vill vandra upp för vulkanen San Pedro. Det är också backpackerstället och det är här du hittar billiga barer och nattlivet. San Pedro ligger på 1600 meters höjd vid foten av vulkanen San Pedro, som skjuter upp 3000 meter över havet, och den verkar inte vara aktiv då vi inte kunde hitta någon information om den senaste gången som San Pedro hade ett utbrott. Vi har hunnit med en hel del roliga upplevelser här, exempelvis så har vi slagit vårat förra höjdrekord på 2400 meter när vi vandrade upp för vulkanen. Vi har även bestigit indiannäsan här, men Ulrika måste redigera och klippa ihop dessa videoklipp först innan de inläggen kommer upp på bloggen. Här får ni iallafall en första glimt från San Pedro La Laguna, som vi hoppas att ni gillar :)!

We really love Lake Atitlan, and with all the beautiful nature that surrounds the lake, it feels like you have arrived to another world. There are several small towns around the lake, but we chose to stay in San Pedro La Laguna, because we were told that it was the best place to start if you want to hike up the San Pedro volcano. It is also the backpacker place at Lake Atitlan and it is here you’ll find cheap bars and the nightlife. San Pedro is located at 1600 metres above sea level at the foot of the San Pedro volcano, which rises 3,000 meters above sea level. The volcano doesn’t seem to be active, we couldn’t find any information on when the last time was that San Pedro had an eruption. We’ve already done a lot of fun adventures here, e.g we have beaten our previous altitude record of 2,400 meters when we walked up the volcano. We have also hiked up the Indian nose here, but Ulrika must edit and cut together videos from our adventures before those posts will come up on the blog. We will at least give you a glimpse of San Pedro La Laguna below, so hope you enjoy it :)!

Nästa destination på vår resa är denna vackra plats, San Pedro La Laguna! The next destination on our journey is this beautiful place, San Pedro La Laguna!

Vi kom till Panajachel utan någon plan överhuvudtaget och det var våra resekamrater Meria och Dean som gav oss tipset att åka till San Pedro. We came to Panajachel without any plan at all and it was our travel companions Meria and Dean who gave us the advice to go to San Pedro.

Atitlansjön med vulkanen San Pedro i bakgrunden är så vacker! Lake Atitlan with the San Pedro volcano in the background is so beautiful!

Vi behövde ta en båt över till San Pedro då det skulle ta flera timmar att ta sig runt sjön med lokaltrafiken! Båtturen till San Pedro kostar 25 (+5 för varje stor ryggsäck) Quetzales vilket är cirka 33 Sek. We had to take a boat over to San Pedro, because it would take several hours to go around the lake with the public traffic! The boat trip to San Pedro is 25 (+5 for each large backpack) Quetzales which is approximately 3.5 Euro.

Båtresan över sjön bjuder på en fantastisk utsikt med otroligt vacker natur! The boat trip across the lake offers a fantastic view over beautiful nature!

Vi hade inte kollat upp något boende innan, utan vandrade omkring i San Pedro för att hitta en lugnare boende utanför partygatorna. We hadn't checked out any accommodation beforehand, so we walked around in San Pedro to find an accommodation far away form the party streets.

Vi hade inte kollat upp något boende innan, utan vandrade omkring i San Pedro för att hitta ett lugnare boende utanför partygatorna. We hadn’t checked out any accommodation beforehand, so we walked around in San Pedro to find an accommodation away form the party streets.

Tillslut hittade vi ett mysigt boende som vi verkligen kan rekommendera. Det går att förhandla om priset om man stännar några nätter och frukosten, som kan ingå i priset, är verkligen god! Eventually, we found a cozy accommodation that we really can recommend. It is possible to negotiate the price if you stay a few nights and the breakfast, which can be included in the price, is really good!

Tillslut hittade vi ett mysigt boende som vi verkligen kan rekommendera. Det går att förhandla om priset om man stannar några nätter, och frukosten som kan ingå i priset är verkligen god! Eventually we found a cozy accommodation that we really can recommend. It is possible to negotiate the price if you stay a few nights and the breakfast, which can be included in the price is really good!

En riktigt härlig trädgård ingår också :) A really lovely garden is also included :)

En riktigt härlig trädgård ingår också, Pontus ingår dock inte i priset 🙂 A really lovely garden is also included in the price, but Pontus is not 🙂

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Man kan hitta mycket billig öl här, endast 10 Quetzales (11 Sek) för en liter Brahva på vårt boende! You can find cheap beer here, only 10 Quetzales (1.2 Euro) for a liter of Brahva at our hotel/hostel!

Det är en rolig äldre herre som kommer förbi flera gånger per dag och säljer nötter! It's a funny, old gentleman who comes by several times a day and sells nuts!

Det är en rolig äldre herre som kommer förbi flera gånger per dag och säljer nötter! There is a funny, old gentleman who comes by several times a day and sells nuts!

Ulrika vid “hamnen” i San Pedro! Ulrika at the “port” of San Pedro!

Det är väldigt många israeler som kommer hit på semester, så man hittar många matställen som har menyer på hebreiska. Vi vill också berätta att Hummus Ya har väldigt god falafel! There are many Israelis who come here on their vacation, so you will find many restaurants that have menus in Hebrew. We also want to tell you that Hummus Ya has very good falafel!

Jakuu har också otroligt god och billig mat! Jakuu has also incredibly good and cheap food!

Jakuu har också otroligt god och billig mat! Jakuu also has incredibly good and cheap food!

Det var vår vän Satu som berättade om restaurangen och hon tog med oss dit en dag. Portionerna är enorma, så vår vän Donald fick äta upp våra rester! It was our friend Satu who told us about the restaurant and she brought us there one day. The portions are huge, so our friend Donald also got to eat our leftovers!

Det var vår vän Satu som berättade om Jakuu och hon tog med oss dit en dag. Portionerna är enorma, så vår vän Donald fick äta upp våra rester! It was our friend Satu who told us about the restaurant Jakuu and she brought us there one day. The portions are huge, so our friend Donald also got to eat our leftovers!

Det är också här i San Pedro som vi gör upp lite planer på vad vi vill se här i Guatemala! Guatemala är inte större än Lappland, Västerbotten och Norrbotten tillsammans! It is also here in San Pedro that we make up some plans on what we want to see here in Guatemala! Guatemala is not bigger than Ohio!

Det är också här i San Pedro som vi gör upp lite planer på vad vi vill se här i Guatemala! Rolig fakta är att Guatemala inte är större än Lappland, Västerbotten och Norrbotten tillsammans! It is also here in San Pedro that we’re making some plans on what we want to see here in Guatemala! Fun fact about Guatemala is that Guatemala is not bigger than Ohio!

Tag: food

The Byzantine Empire, Christianity and lovely Athens

Budapest by foot and a pinball museum

Hagia Sofia, Blue Mosque & Turkish food

Atitlansjön! / Lake Atitlan!

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