Today, we had an almost 4 hour walking tour.  Our guide was a lovely young lady who was born here, but has lived in Scotland, so she has a wee bit of a brogue.  We started by seeing some of the buildings and churches in Old Town and then climbed about a jillion stairs up to the Old, Old Town way above the city.  There you can see the watch towers and parts of the original medieval walls.  And, there are some spots to overlook the town below and another spot to see the Baltic Sea and the ships.  And a hot air ballon!  We continued on to the Parliament building that was in session today as noted by all the cars in the parking lot.  Across the street is a beautiful Russian Orthodox Church with black onion domes.  We went inside and it is very beautiful with many altars, huge chandeliers and stunning icons.  All of the women wore head scarves.  At one time, the Soviets wanted to tear it down, but there wasn’t the money to do so, so they left it.  Most of the other churches in Talinn are Lutheran.  After the church, we walked thru a market place where all kinds of things are sold daily:  clothes, shoes, household items and beautiful fruits and vegetables.  Jars of pickles, berries, honeys, and there is a meat market inside a building.  The market is made up of small stalls.  We then Walked thru a beautiful park with children playing and lovely fountains.  A little dog was playing in one and in another two boys were racing their boats made from two plastic bottles tied together with an attached sail.  Looked like little Lego people were attached to help steer.  We found out the park had been a cemetery, dating back to the 1500’s, but during the Soviet occupation (after WWII) they decided to bulldoze the cemetery in the 1960’s.  The bodies were left in their graves.  Just no tombstones any longer.  Oh, that was another thing for sale in the market…different granite or marble tombstones…ready for engraving.     Then we walked to an area full of wooden houses that were built by the Russians after WWI.  They are apartment houses, with small apartments.  Many are covered with peeling paint and in need of scraping and painting, but some have been beautifully restored.  Many have the original gingerbread trim and all are colorfully painted.  The we walked along a path and could see the harbor of the Baltic Sea.  There are ferry boats leaving hourly for Finland, and if we had known about them, we would have gone instead of booking tours.  It takes two hours to reach Finland.  There was also a mega cruise ship docked…so we figured we would see all of the cruise ship folks back in town.  Finally, we ended up back in the Old Town Square where our tour ended…and yep…the cruise folks were there enmasse.  There was a big market going on today in the square.  All sorts of small kiosks selling souvenirs of all kinds.  Wooden toys and kitchen utensils, lots of linen cup towels, place mats and table runners, knitted sweaters, hats and socks, stuffed animals etc.  We had lunch in the square and then We split up to wander and shop.  There is a pharmacy in the square that has been in continuous operation since 1422…that made it 70 years old when America was discovered.  I met a lady there…off the cruise ship,from Noonan, Georgia…and Imtold her I had been there…it is famous for its beautiful AnteBellum houses.  My friend, Susie and I drove the streets looking at the houses on our famous road trip years ago.  (But that’s another story!). I went into lots of little shops, took some pictures, bought water and some merangues and finally hobbled home to lie down awhile before dinner.  The stairs going up and down from the Old Old Town and all the cobblestones had plCes hurting I had forgotten I had.  At dinner time it was raining and we were tired, so we ate in the hotel…it was quite good.  Now, after a HOT shower and some ibuprofen, we are in bed.  More tomorrow after our forest tour…by bus.  See you then.  

I got up at 3 this morning…2.5 hours before the alarm.  You would think after all these years I would be over being excited about an airplane ride to a new place.  We went to the airport and caught our flight to Paris, then changed airlines and flew to Tallinn, Estonia.  It isn’t too far from St.Petersburg, Russia and is across the Baltic Sea from Finland.  We were met by our driver and were taken to a very nice hotel that is about a 10 minute walk to Old Town.  We went there for dinner at a place recommended by our Hotel.  I had Pork Shank, with turnips and loganberries.  Very good.  Andy and I shared a split pea soup that was delicious.  It had a big dollop of sour cream or perhaps cream cheese mixed with rye.  We ate some black bread that is a rye bread…it almost tasted like date bread…not at sweet, but very good.   This was a typical Estonian meal.  Also had some cooked shredded cabbage and roasted potatoes.  A heavy, but very good hearty meal.  Got back to the hotel and ready for bed.  We are hoping for smoked salmon and pickled herring for breakfast tomorrow.  We go on a walking tour tomorrow of Old Town, so will report on that tomorrow.  Good night!   

in case you are wondering where I am and why I’m not writing, it’s because I have become a slug!  It is too hot to go out and do anything.  Even a walk to the mini mart two minutes away leaves you ‘glowing’ (since ladies don’t sweat!). Air conditioning here is all in their mind….even a restaurant that says it is air conditioned really it isn’t!  If it is 100 outside, it’s 95 inside…and we are just spoiled for,great air conditioning.

So, we are just staying in and not doing anything of interest.  We do leave on Tuesday for Estonia and Romania…so will have something fun to share with you then.  Stay cool…if possible.

Last week we finally got to do a tour of the Domus Aurea.  This was built by the Emperor Nero after he cleared all the houses that were damaged by the fire in 64AD.   Gold leaf was applied to this palace of entertainment with 300 rooms.  There is no evidence of kitchens or latrines in the Domus Aurea.  Nero committed suicide in 68 AD and within 10 years the palace had been stripped of the marble, ivory, jewels and statues and within 40 years, it was covered over to build the Baths of Trajen on top.  It wasn’t until the end of the 15th century that a boy fell thru a hole and ended up in a beautifully decorated grotto covered with colorful frescoes.  The famous painters of the day such as Rafael and Michelangelo were lowered down into the grotto to study the frescoes and their influence can be seen today in the Vatican paintings.  There are some beautiful black and white marble floors done in quilt patterns.   There are also mosaics on the ceilings.  This was a big departure from the common mosaics on floors…but this style continues in churches.  There had been a lot of damage over the centuries by water and the elements.  Tree roots from hundreds of years old trees are growing into the structure causing more damage.  We had to wear hard hats on the tour.  As recently as 2010 a large part of a ceiling collapsed.  Mold is growing on the walls and damaging the frescoes that remain.  Excavation and research by archeologists continue today.  This was a wonderful tour…and it is across the street from the Colosseum…which perhaps got its name from a huge statue of Nero that was moved from the Domus Aurea by Hadrian, an architect and 24 elephants!  We have been staying in a lot due to the heat and humidity in Rome, but this tour was very comfortable and cool as we went from room to room.   There is a large octagon shaped dining room with a large circular opening in the ceiling, much like the oculus in the Pantheon.  One can only imagine how beautiful and elegant these rooms were when built.

Each camp was used to learn how to exterminate the Jews and Poles more efficiently and quickly.  In the beginning, the Jews were shot in the head and shoved into huge pits, covered with lye and then bulldozed over.  It was soon discovered that this was a slow and expensive process.  The Jews from Warsaw were brought to Treblinka on trains…only about an hour from Warsaw.  When they arrived, they were told to remove their clothes and they were herded to a gas chamber.  In the beginning, the Nazis used carbon dioxide to kill the victims, but this took as long as 20 minutes.  Later, Zyklon B gas was developed which killed the victims in a matter of minutes.  After the victims were dead, the bodies were removed and cremated or dumped into mass graves.  The Nazis destroyed Treblika fairly early after an uprising and destroyed all evidence of a death camp.  They replanted the forest.

Today, there are large concrete blocks symbolizing the rail tracks and they stop where the people disembarked.  There are 216 granite blocks with the names of the locations from which the murdered Jews came…among 17 thousand smaller granite blocks to symbolize tombstones.  Where the gas chamber once stood is a giant monument symbolizing the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem with a giant slit up the middle.  The only stone with a person’s name on it is that of Janusz Korczak, the man who brought the children from the Warsaw orphanage to the camp and died with them.  

More than 800 thousand men, women and children were murdered at this site.  Jews, Poles, political prisoners and  Roma Gypsies were the main victims of Treblinka.  

Today we started by going to the Jewish Synagogue.  The oldest is now a museum and the next oldest is an active synagogue being renovated.  We stood in the women’s gallery and looked into the area closest to the Torah where the men worship.  Behind the Synagogue is the ancient cemetery.  The Nazis destroyed the cemetery by naming the Jews dismantle the headstones to be used for building materials or to pave roads.  There are even bullet holes in some of the headstones because the Nazis used them for target practice.  Today, the broken headstones that were recovered make up the mosaic of the cemetery walls.  Many ancient Rabbis are buried here.

Next, we moved to the Ghetto.  The Ghetto square has many empty chairs in metal as a memorial to,the Jews who were taken from the Ghetto to the death camps.  Right on the corner is the famous Pharmacy depicted in the Movie, Schindler’s List.  From the Ghetto, we went to Schindler’s factory  that is now a museum.  After an excellent tour of the factory, we went to the main Market Square of Kraków.  Had lunch of a typical Polish sour soup with sausages and potatoes served in a large bread bowl.  It was excellent.  We then had a tour of the Cathedral which is very beautiful.  The square is attached to a second square with lots of activity: shops, restaurants, artists, kiosks selling souvenirs, children playing.  There is a bronze statue of a man standing on a bronze suitcase with a horn in his hands.  I was admiring the statue she the thing moved!  I about fainted.  It was a real person!  The children loved him.  After they got over the fright!  Then we moved on thru a lovely park area to the castle.  At that point I had to leave with a couple on our tour who were as hot and tired as I was.  We walked along the beautiful River back to the hotel.  I took a cool shower and slept for about three hours.  It was really hot today, but expected to be cooler tomorrow.  

This evening, we went to a typical Jewish restaurant.  It had at one time been a bath house for the women called a Mikva.  The food was wonderful…a,pickled purple cabbage as a salad, then roast goose and a potato and onion kugel.  I had never had goose, but it was very tender and good.  We had Apple crisp for dessert like the dessert at almost every meal we have had.  The reason is….Poland is Europe’s largest Apple producer and used to sell 70% to the Russians.  When the Russians quit buying, the Poles had to find another market…which they did, but they still eat a lot of apples locally.  We had a klezmer band that played during dinner and they were good.  As we left for the hotel it was pouring rain…hope it cools the temperature way down!  I’m in bed now and keep hearing booming thunder.  Good night all.

We didn’t have wifi at our hotel last night, so I am behind on the blog.  But I have decided to wait a bit to tell you about the Concentration Camps we have visited after more personal reflection and thoughts about them.  We have seen several, all very different and we will see Auswitz- Berkenau on Monday.  This has been an amazing tour and experience and it is something I think  deserves the time I need to tell you all that I can about these places.  But, Imwill tell you about today…we left Lublin early after a delicious breakfast and drove most of the day to Kraków.  We had a good lunch at a rest stop…I had kielbasa with grilled onions.  Just delicious.  The we went to visit the Salt Mines near Kraków that have been mined for 1000 years.  We rode down to the mines in elevators and went to four different levels.  All along the mine, we saw dioramas carved out of salt that gave a visual picture of the history of the salt mining.  Finally, after hundreds of stairs down to the bottom, we arrived at a huge chapel carved out of the salt.  Scenes from the Bible are carved into the walls, as well as statues, crucifixes, and a statue of JohnPaul II.  The crystals for the huge and magnificent chandeliers in the church are made of salt. It was really hot on the surface, but as far below as we were it was very cool..  This mine is no longer being mined for the salt, but itmismthe 2nd biggest tourist attraction in Poland, after Auschwitz.  After our tour, we came to our hotel, had dinner and are now ready for bed.  

Today, we met our tuides and our group of 23 folks from the UK and the US.  Everyone seems really nice.  Our tour manager is a lovely young woman named Adda.  She was born in Poland and her family still lives here.  She lives  in England and is an independent tour manager.  Our guide is a young man with impressive credentials as a Holocaust expert.  We also have a local, Polish guide with us who remembers the Holocaust as a young boy.  He and his family lived in the area designated as the Ghetto and had to move five times as the borders of the Ghetto expanded, as his family was not Jewish.  Today, we saw the Jewish Cemetery with  perhaps thousands of graves crowded in the small area.  There are two large ‘blank’ areas where there are mass graves where the thousands are buried who died each month of starvation or disease.  There is a statue dedicated to the man who ran the orphanage and altho his name wasn’t on ‘the List’ went with the children in his care when they were shipped to the gas chamber.  The children felt safe with him.  More about him later in the tour.  We saw where Mila 18 was (book by the same name by Leon Uris) and the mound that is the mass grave of the Resistance fighters of the Ghetto Uprising of 1943.  Not,far away is the memorial we saw yesterday.  Ironically, the monument is made of the stone the Nazis had that were going to be used for their Victory Memeorial when they won the war.  We spent several hours at the museum that follows a 1000 years of the Jewish History in Poland.  A beautiful new building whose entrance depicts the parting of the Red Sea…the ceilings depict the desert where the Jews wandered and the back dePicts Noah’s Ark.  The exhibits are excellent and rival the Holocaust Museum in Washington…altho only a small part of the museum is dedicated to the Holocaust.  After, that we visited the orthodox Synagogue.  It was the second largest in Warsaw.  Hitler ordered the destruction of the Great Synangogue to punish the Jews for the Ghetto Uprising, altho there were no Jews left in Warsaw.  They were all gone.  After the Uprising of 1944, the entire city was razed.  All day, we have been seeing groups of Israeli school children.  They come to Poland every summer on school trips.  We returned to the hotel after a long, but very interesting and informative day.  Went to dinner at the same great restaurant Andy and I had been to twice.  We had a set menu of Greek Salad, cold cuts and smoked herring done several ways.  Delicious!  Even had a taste of lard…the we had a choice of salmon or chicken with grilled vegetables.  For dessert, there was an apple crisp with vanilla ice cream.  An excellent dinner thoroughly enjoyed by the group.  Tomorrow, we leave after breakfast for Treblinka.

Why have I never heard about how wonderful Warsaw is?  This is a beautiful city.  So clean and full of beautiful parks and green spaces.  Flowers in bloom everywhere.  Beautiful buildings and statues of their heros.  And good food!  Today, we had a three hour tour of the city highlights. Saw the Kings palace from the 1700’s with beautiful parks and lakes all around.  This is the King I just read about in the book, Push Not the River by James Martin.  Told of the May 3rd Constitution that gave rights to the peasants in the late 1700’s and the attack by the Serbians, Austrians and the Russians.  Poland lost and was divided between the three countries and ceased to exist as Poland for 123 years until it was restored in 1918 after WWI.  Poland was the first European country to have a democratic constitution.  We saw the monuments to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the area that was once the Jewish Ghetto.  Poland before  WW II had the second largest Jewish population in Europe…about 30% of the Poles were Jews.  After WWII only 1% remained.  During the 123 years that Poland didn’t exist, the Polish people kept their language, foods, traditions, catholic faith and heritage.  Very proud people.  During WWII, the Nazis bombed Warsaw to rubble.  But, a famous artist had painted the buildings in the Old Town in such detail that they were able to restore them almost exactly as before.  They reused every piece of building material that could be salvaged to rebuild.  In the 1980’s, Warsaw Old Town was named a Unesco World Heritage Site.  Most World Heritage Sites are old, but Warsaw was named because of the outstanding renovation that was done.  We went to a park dedicated to Chopin.  There is a beautiful statue of him under a willow tree statue.  Concerts  are played in this park that is full of white and pink rose bushes.  There are benches in 15 places in town that play Chopins music when a button is pushed.  We saw Madame Curie’s house, the first woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize and the only woman to win two.  After the tour, we stayed and walked around the big square in Old Town.  Eating places dot the square with outdoor tables and lots of flowers.  There is a statue of a mermaid in the center surrounded by a shallow pond.  She is said to be the older sister of the Hans Christian Anderson’s mermaid in Copenhagen.  Her name and her husband’s name combined in Polish make the word Warsaw.  Artists have their paintings in the square as well.  Great day.  Back in the hotel after dinner at the same place and same meal we had for lunch yesterday…minus the perogies.  Meet with our group tomorrow morning for a full day of sightseeing more of Warsaw.  I highly recommend a trip here.  A beautiful, historic city.  The only drawback is not understanding a word of Polsih.  We tried to learn Thank You from our waitress this morning.  Polish people around us were laughing at our attempts to say the word.  Utter failure!

Oh my…what a breakfast at the hotel in Warsaw!  Fresh fruit, melon, grapefruit, oranges, bananas,watermelon and fresh juices.  Breads of every description.  Cereals etc. Yogurts. Then…pickled herring, smoked fish, dill sauce, sour cream with herbs, pickles, cucumbers, radishes, tomatoes, cheeses, homemade jams and jellies…I’m sure I missed something…but what a spread!  The pickled herring was absolutely delicious.  I used to have it when a lady at my cousin’s church in Dallas used to make it.  Not something I think about having, but it sure is good!  More to follow.  We have our City Tour in about an hour.