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Adventure Brazil Colombia Guide Outdoor Peru Solo Travel South America Tours Travel

Ten Days in the Amazon on a Budget: Part 1

Part of the reason I chose to do an extended trip through South America was because I couldn’t choose where to visit first on a short vacation: Machu Picchu, Rio de Janeiro, Patagonia, or the Amazon. So naturally, I decided to do them all, plus a bunch of other awesome things in between.

As part of my budget adventure, I planned on taking the three-night slow boat through the Amazon from Leticia, Colombia to Manaus, Brazil because this would only cost me $75 with all meals included, as opposed to the $700+ to fly internationally from Colombia to Brazil (more on this coming soon, stay tuned!). So naturally, it made sense to fit my Amazon experience in during my time in Leticia or Manaus.

(Aside from the cost breakdown at the end, this post is all about the two-day tour I took from Leticia. More info about the other seven days in Leticia, Manaus, and the three-night boat journey coming soon.)

My initial search for Amazon tours brought up a ton of options from Manaus. But they also seemed a bit expensive, and seeing as Manaus is a city of nearly two million, I thought it might be an odd place to go off the grid and spend some time in the secluded depths of the Amazon. Luckily when I arrived in the small tri-border town of Leticia, I met three other solo travelers who wanted to do a tour from there. Since there were four of us it ended up being about 1/3 the price that I was budgeting for one from Manaus, at 240,000 COP (roughly $100 USD). Sold.

We chose the two-day, one-night Javari tour from La Jaganga Hostel, and it was everything I wanted in a quick trip to the rainforest. We considered the three-day, two-night trip, but it really didn’t seem to offer many more activities than the two-day.

The trip took us on the Javari River which separates Peru and Brazil. The idea of an organized Amazon tour was really off-putting to me at first, but it’s pretty much the only option unless you want to end up lost in the Amazon by yourself. Luckily, this didn’t feel like a tour at all. Instead it was just us four and our guide, Francisco, and it felt like we were hanging out with a friend who was just showing us around. We didn’t see another tourist until we were heading back to Leticia on day two.

Francisco
The man, Francisco, and his machete after chopping down some tree branches that once stood in our way

Here’s how our two days went:

DAY 1

We left the hostel around 8:30am in a ten-minute taxi ride to the port across the border in Tabatinga, Brazil, where we met with Francisco. With his round belly and beaming, gummy smile, we all instantly loved him. The five of us jumped in the wooden, canopied boat as Francisco turned in three different directions, pointing out Peru, Brazil, and Colombia. After crossing over to Peru for a quick, yet crucial beer run, we took a leisurely boat ride alongside pink and grey dolphins, brown water, and lush green trees.

Amazon Crew
L to R: Max the German, Josh the Aussie, Francisco the Colombian guide, and Susannah the Colombian

Canoeing through the Amazon

The perfect companion for an Amazon boat ride: rum

About three hours into the ride, we passed a house and waved at the kids as we zoomed past. Next thing we knew, Francisco was turning the boat around to take us for a visit. We climbed the stairs to the wide-open room that hovered over the water on stilts. The family of about nine kids and four adults sat inside, grating and cooking yucca, and spoke Portuguese despite being on the Peruvian side. The kids were in charge of peeling and cutting up the yucca before handing it off to the women to press through a machine and then grating it by hand. Then the man cooked it in a giant pan over a fire, and us gringos ate it by the handful. 

House on the Amazon

Making grated yucca

Cooking the yucca

After our afternoon snack, we continued down the river to another house which was one of only a couple that we passed during the whole 3-4 hour boat ride. Like the last, this house was also on stilts. Since it’s rainy season and the forest is flooded we weren’t able to find dry land to hang up the hammocks, so we stayed the night in this house. It was basically two separate “houses” joined by a short outdoor walkway. One was a fantastic, huge kitchen complete with hammocks, a portable cooktop, a wooden table and bench seats. The other was two stories high, and the main sleeping quarters. The top floor appeared to be for the family, and us guests were split up into rooms: boys in one, girls in the other. Each room had two mosquito-net covered beds and mesh windows that looked right out at the river. The three bathrooms each had a refreshing shower that used rainwater from a tub on the roof, and for the most part you felt like you were showering outside. Quite honestly, it was kind of like a wilderness dream house.

An inside shot of the main sleeping area of the house we stayed in. The downstairs had several different rooms and three bathrooms which you can see into there in the back.

My bed

The kitchen
The ginormous kitchen and baby Victoria who was very curious about my camera

Kitchen

View from the front door of the house. The room in the back is the kitchen area.
Neighbors
I think the family owned this house too, right next door

I unloaded my bag in the room and went for a quick swim because I couldn’t resist playing with the most adorable puppy ever who was climbing on some scraps of wood in front of the house. The water was only about thigh-high, a further reminder that the flooded area around the house is actually dry land during the dry season. Totally unimaginable.

Puppy
Baby puppy! The family pet was walking around on some floating boards trying to figure out how to get back up to the house. I just HAD to jump in the water and play with him!

The family prepared us food which was surprisingly phenomenal. I thought it would be a lot of bland rice and beans like most tours, but again, this was nothing like a normal tour. We had yucca, potatoes and beans, lentils, arepas, pork chops, eggs, fish, piranha, pasta, cucumber and onion salad, carambola juice, camu camu juice, spaghetti, and a few other things I didn’t really recognize but loved the taste. It was like eating at an old friend’s mom’s house; they fed us well and there was a ton food every time we sat down.

Dinner plate #1

Dinner plate #2

The family was so friendly. Apparently they live in town, but they built this house as their kind of getaway house, and to host tourists for an extra income. My only regret is that I didn’t speak more Spanish or Portuguese so that I could’ve conversed with them more like the two in our group who were fluent in Spanish.

After we ate, we set out on the boat again to visit a wildlife conservation area, which looked just like another house on stilts in the middle of the rainforest. When we pulled up in the boat two monkeys immediately ran aboard, climbing on our heads, curling up in our laps, and almost instantly finding and devouring the bag of camu camu berries we’d just picked. The whole time we wandered the property, the monkeys followed us around curiously, hanging from the trees while snacking on fruit and watching our every move.

Pepe, the rambunctious monkey

Monkey Business

Monkey
My flash accidentally went off (seriously, I never use a flash) and this monkey jumped and ran after me while screaming. Scariest moment in the Amazon so far.

Then we got the chance to play with an anaconda that was contained in a wooden shack. Snakes don’t scare me, so I wasn’t so much worried about it biting or choking me as I was about not being strong enough to lift it or take it off without dropping it to the ground and pissing it off. Turns out, with a little help, it wasn’t as heavy as I’d thought and I managed to get a photo with it.

Anaconda
Nevermind the snake, look at this guy’s adorable smile.
Prehistoric Turtle
I think this was called a Mata Mata Turtle, some sort of prehistoric turtle that’s only found in the Amazon region

En español, we learned a bit about the gigantic nearly-extinct arapaima fish and some pretty awesome looking turtles, when suddenly we heard this loud, barreling train-like noise, and looked over to see a wall of rain pouring down about a half mile away and a rainbow forming right in front of us. With my camera and lenses in my hand, two of us sought shelter under the house along with a dog and her pups, a few chickens, and a little girl, while everyone else went up into the house. 

Rainbow

After the brief rainstorm, the sky cleared and we headed to a lagoon to watch the sun set while pink dolphins swam around us. It was definitely one of those “holy shit I’m in the Amazon Rainforest” moments, where my dreams as a third grader were finally fulfilled. Now if only I could figure out a way to see dinosaurs and make it to outer space, third grade Kim would be so jealous.

Amazon Sunset

Sunset on the Amazon

We went back to a delicious candlelight dinner when I realized, and revealed, that this was my first candlelight dinner ever. I think everyone laughed at me. Afterwards, Max and I headed out on a canoe to search for some of the nocturnal animals of the Amazon with the neighbor. This guy had a flashlight that could easily illuminate trees fifty feet away as he searched for the different creatures of the night. It was all kinds of awesome just paddling around this wide open lagoon under the light from a nearly full moon and hundreds of stars. We floated around to the choir of jungle animals as our guide pointed out the different sounds of monkeys, tree rats, frogs, and other Amazonian creatures.

Every so often he’d spot a pair of red eyes and paddle closer. Before I knew it he was pulling small caimans into the boat, letting us hold them before throwing them back in the water. They seemed to freeze up as soon as you touched them, and when we threw them back in the water they swayed their body back and forth like they were still in shock before disappearing.

We also saw a snake swimming through the water, a wide-eyed owl perched on a branch only a few feet away, a tarantula clinging to the side of a tree, and I nearly bashed my face into a bat that was hanging on the side of a branch before it got startled and flew away. It was a truly amazing experience that I couldn’t believe the other two had missed out on by going to bed early.

When we got back, Francisco was partying down with some cachaça caipirinhas he’d mixed up. I tried one but it was a bit too sweet for me, and since I was the only non-Spanish speaker still in the room, I got ready for bed and retired for the night by 10pm.

DAY 2

It started getting light out at the absurd hour of 430AM and the family started stirring about just as early. I looked out the window to see grey skies and decided there wouldn’t be a great sunrise so I went back to sleep.

At a slightly more reasonable hour (about 7AM) I finally got up and showered. After another delicious breakfast, we set out in a canoe to go piranha fishing, which was probably the most hilarious experience of the entire two days. Five of us piled into what probably should’ve been a three-person canoe, without life jackets, and set out again with the neighbor guy. The water was about an inch from spilling into the boat and flooding us out, as we cautiously turned our way into the jungle. Every slight move tipped us to the side as I regretted bringing my SLR on board, so I shoved it in my waterproof bag for safe keeping. After about a half hour we ended up in a pretty strong current, which had us bashing into branches, careening straight for a tree. Josh, the Aussie in our group who was paddling in the front, looked for direction on which way to go but the tide carried us much quicker than the guide could direct us. We crashed right into the tree as Josh calmly stood up, quietly mumbled some profanities, and jumped into the water without even rocking the boat. I knew something had happened, but the slow rate at which he calculated his next move and jumped out without capsizing us was rather impressive. Just as quickly, I realized that he’d just ran right into a swarm of wasps when I saw at least a hundred of them flying around a grey nest. Both Josh and the paddle were being pushed downstream with the current and we kind of just sat there watching as the guide backed us up away from the wasps. Josh eventually climbed back on board with stings all over his face and neck, and I held off on making fun of him until later in the evening.

About an hour and a half after setting out, we dropped our poles (sticks with fishing line and a hook tied on, baited with fish) into the water right in the middle of some shrubbery. Almost immediately I could feel the piranhas biting, but the first few times I pulled the hook up those bitches robbed me of my bait. 

Now you should know that I’m a fairly poor sport. I’m fiercely competitive when it comes to dumb shit. I learned early on that I suck at sports and it’s a waste of energy to get pissed because I suck at soccer, basketball, kickball, running, etc. I just do what I can and have fun. But when it comes to things like bowling, beer pong, Mario Kart, tejo, and apparently fishing, I get livid when things don’t go my way. I focus intently and the only words to leave my mouth are usually curse words. So you can imagine the scene as we all sat quietly in a canoe while the piranhas stole my limited bait right off my hook.

Then the guide caught one.

Then Josh caught one.

Then I got pissed. 

Using that anger, on the next nibble I yanked the hook right from the water and voila—a piranha! I shouted a few obscenities, took some pictures, and to add insult to injury to the piranha, the bait was still in tact when we took it off the hook. I dropped the line back down into the water and felt another bite. Again, I pulled a second piranha up less than 20 seconds later, with the same piece of bait. Talk about killing two fish with one piece of bait, suckersss! 

Lunch! My first piranha catch

 

I was on a roll. At this point, Josh had also caught two and stopped for a smoke, Susannah had given up a long time ago, and I put another piece of bait on my hook. We only had a couple of pieces of bait left, and after my adrenaline wore off I realized what a dick I was for baiting up again when Max had yet to catch a fish and was still trying. After another piranha robbed me of that piece, I reluctantly put the pole down and decided to chill out and let Max try to wrangle one in with the last pieces of bait. He didn’t, by the way.

The ride back to the house wasn’t nearly as dramatic as the ride in, as the guide took the helm and guided us through a calmer area full of giant Amazon water lilies. We returned for our last delicious lunch which also included the freshly prepared piranha. They don’t have much meat on their bones, but piranha meat is delicious. It’s not fishy at all, just super juicy and tender.

Amazon Water Lilies
The giant Amazon water lilies are lined with spikes underneath to ward off predators, and can support around 20kg, if not more
Fish lunch
I took this pic through the green mesh screen of the girls preparing our fish right in the river. If I spoke their language I would’ve offered to help.
Sorry not sorry, piranhas. Thanks for being delicious.

Around 2pm we packed up and left the house for another leisurely ride back to Leticia. We saw toucans and tons of other colorful birds flying in the sky, sloths slowly climbing amongst the leaves, huge towering ceiba kapok trees, and all in all completely different scenery as we cut through the jungle.

I don’t really know what’s going on here, but we were trying to take an interesting selfie.

We made it back to Leticia around sunset, as James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful” BLARED from the Peruvian border. Definitely a weird choice considering how little English music I’ve heard down here, but it gave us a good laugh.

Should you do it?

Duh, that goes without saying. Visiting the Amazon was one of the coolest experiences I’ve had so far, and I barely scratched the surface. It was a fantastic two days and I really think we saw and did a lot. If you do the same tour during the dry season you’ll probably have more options to hike through the rainforest, sleep in hammocks outdoors, and possibly see even more wildlife. But we definitely got to see much more than I thought we would, and I can’t recommend this experience enough. I would love to go back during the dry season and do a longer trip, but come on, $100 for two days of transportation, food, lodging, and activities? Totally worth it. It’s worth noting that the more people you have, the cheaper it is. And if you need a translator you will pay even more, so it helps to have at least one person in your group be fluent in both Spanish and your native language.

Pricing breakdown for ten days in the Amazon region:
Flight from Bogotá to Leticia: $112 (though one guy I met said he booked one for $40, I have no idea how)
Three nights at La Jangada Hostel in Leticia: $30
Two-day, one-night tour: $100
Three-night boat from Leticia to Manaus: $75 (more on this adventure coming soon!)
Two nights in Manaus: $21 (I redeemed hotel points for a free stay, just had to pay taxes. But you can find a hostel for just as cheap.)

Grand total: $338, averaging about $33.80 per day, plus a little extra for food in Leticia and Manaus.

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Colombia Solo Travel South America Tours

Getting Dirty at Volcan el Totumo

So there’s this popular day trip from Cartagena to a place called Volcan el Totumo. It’s a so-called mud volcano, and the whole experience goes a little something like this: strip down to your bikini, climb a steep wooden staircase, descend into a thick, muddy pool of strangers, and get passed around by a bunch of Colombians while a whole slew of tourists watch. Then you walk down the death stairs covered in slippery mud, and join said strangers in a lagoon where you’ll get even more naked and let some women rinse (aka nearly drown) you with buckets of water.

 And yes, this is the most action I’ve gotten in South America. But anyways, I digress.

I first read about Volcan el Totumo in a book (What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding). Then a few travelers I met raved about how hilarious of an experience it was and insisted that I do it. Since I was still in those first days of a trip when money isn’t an issue, I was sold as soon as I heard the word volcano. So I spent about $35 USD to hitch a ride from Hostel Mamallena for a quick half day trip. Of course the 9:00 AM departure was more like 9:45 AM (because, Colombia), but after another hour or so on the road we pulled up to the giant ant hill.

The mud volcano

Maybe the word volcano doesn’t quite translate, but this thing looks like nothing more than a giant manmade pile of dirt. It juts out of nowhere, and it’s definitely everything you’d expect from a tourist trap. They claim that this measly 50-foot-high pile of dirt was once a legit volcano that used to erupt fire and lava, until one day a priest sprinkled holy water on it because he thought it was evil. Now it’s just full of non-evil mud.

Right. And I used to be a six-foot tall supermodel with a yoga body until some giant squished me back down to 5’2″. I’m calling bullshit on this one. 

When we arrived our group was told to store all of our valuables together in a locker and leave our shoes and clothes out on the table. I threw my stuff in, took off everything but my bikini and my camera, and walked my way barefoot across the stones to the wooden staircase. I followed a line of other tourists up to the top where we waited at least 25 minutes in the sun, awkwardly watching people get rubbed down in the mud.

Screen Shot 2015-01-25 at 12.10.48 AM

Mud pit

Finally when it was my turn I handed my camera over to a pre-pubescent boy who was also snapping pics with about four other cameras. I made my way down the mud-crusted ladder before the man at the bottom grabbed me and pulled me on my back. The mud was thick and gritty. There were bits of rocks, twigs, and who knows what else, but I was surprised how much I floated. I clenched my gut abs and lifted my neck to keep my hair out of the mud. The Colombian man shouted at me in Spanish, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Then he lifted handfuls of mud and poured them on my chest, and made a notion for me to lay my head back. I finally relaxed and lowered my hair into the thick mess, and immediately it filled my ears. I raised my head slightly to the side, thinking it would drain out like water does, but no such luck. This stuff was thick and it cut off my hearing almost completely, and the guy seemed annoyed that I was moving so much. So I just lay there partially deaf while this man ran his hands all over my body and people crashed into my feet.

Awkward
Okay… this is weird… 
Oh he’s taking a picture, do something cool!


After a minute or two he passed me along to the next woman in line. I wouldn’t say it’s as much of a massage as it is just some people rubbing their hands all over your body. There were way too many people in the mud hole to be comfortable or even the tiniest bit relaxed, and I kept bashing my head into the side while nearly scraping my nose on a beam that stuck out a good few inches from the side. 

Once the woman was finished with me she passed me on to another pre-teen boy who told me to flip over. I felt like I had entered the Superman pose, P90X style, while trying to keep my face above the mud. He rubbed my belly, which was super awkward as I totally gave up on sucking in.

When I was finished with my rubdown I decided to float around to try and understand why on earth so many people recommended this. And to at least feel like I got my money’s worth. I smeared the mud all over my face in hopes that I’d emerge with younger, healthier skin, or whatever sort of benefit this thing was supposed to have. But it was so crowded I just kept running into random people, our nearly naked bodies knocking against one another as I grabbed for something non-sexual to hold onto. 

Screen Shot 2015-01-25 at 12.12.15 AM

After a few minutes I’d had enough. I climbed the rungs of the slippery ladder, and the mud weighed down my already-loose bottoms as I struggled to hold them up and maintain my balance. Paying no mind to my disappearing bottoms, another Colombian man wiped the mud off of me. I climbed the rest of the way feeling like I’d dropped a huge load in my bottoms and they were sagging off of me. 

The first few steep, wooden steps down were terrifying. I thought for sure I was going to unintentionally slide my way down, breaking an ankle or two along the way. After arriving safely at the bottom I followed the herd to this small lagoon to be rinsed off. Before I was even in the water two women came over to me with buckets and started cleaning me like an infant. The expectation here is that you’ll tip them with a few thousand pesos once you’re sparkling clean from river water.

One woman took my hair out of the ponytail holder and dumped buckets of water over my head in what seemed like slow motion. After my upper half was clean, she then said “bottoms” in a thick accent, which I assumed meant to take off my bottoms. So in waist high water, I kneeled down and pulled my bottoms off. I felt strangely liberated, and the murky water made it so no one could see my girly bits, but I also wondered what was lurking next to my exposed womanhood.

SHOULD YOU DO IT?

I think it’d probably be a lot more fun if you’re with a group of friends, and probably even better if you drive yourselves there and arrive early ahead of the crowds. But when you go solo, it’s just borderline creepy because you have no one to laugh with. I really don’t think you’re missing out though if you skip this, as you can definitely recreate the situation in your own back yard, and probably pull in a profit if you throw in some wrestling.

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Europe Italy Tours Unesco World Heritage Sites

Pompeii in Pictures

I won’t give you a history lesson because I’m pretty sure everyone knows what happened to Pompeii in 79 AD. And if you don’t, well you can look at just about any other site and find out. More importantly, maybe you should dig yourself out from whatever rock or volcanic ash you’ve been living under (see what I did there?)

While in Italy I went on an 8-person day trip to the Amalfi Coast and Pompeii through Viator. After leaving Rome, we drove for a few hours before the unmistakable silhouette of Mount Vesuvius  began to peak above the horizon.

It was awesome. And it was kind of like love at first sight. I wanted to go straight there and climb to the top, then base jump right down into the crater. Fuck the Amalfi Coast. Who needs gorgeous cliffside scenery when you’ve got vengeful volcanoes of destruction to explore?

But Pompeii was the last stop on our trip so we kept driving (as a little piece of my heart broke), finally making our way to the cliff-hugging roads of the Amalfi Coast. The next few hours—spent exploring the painfully rocky Spiaggia Grande barefoot, doing shots of limoncello with two women who were probably as old as Italy itself, and coming back to the van late thanks to a poorly marked underground bathroom, causing me to lose my picture-taking window seat to a woman who couldn’t log off Facebook long enough to appreciate the view—is a totally different story in itself. But I was more than ready to leave the overcrowded coast behind and go wander around the ruins.

That winding cliffside road out of Amalfi was clearly built for tiny compact European cars. Hell, our eight-seater van was almost too big to comfortably zig and zag without riding the brakes, so I really don’t know what those truck drivers were thinking when they decided to take the coastal route with their eighteen wheelers. Every 50 feet or so we’d have to stop and wait for some unseen vehicle to make its way around the bend before proceeding. This was never a quick task, each stop took about 20 minutes while people put their cars in park and walked up to double check for oncoming traffic. This put us in Pompeii almost two hours later than expected.

When we finally got there our tour guide was kind of a huge jerk. Since we were late I understand he wanted us to see as much as possible still, but the constant rushing was really aggravating and left us with no time to explore or even take a decent photo. At first I was following his commands, running around snapping pictures ferociously and trying to absorb every bit of information he rattled off like an auctioneer. But then I just stopped listening and kept trying to take pictures.

The ruins were absolutely amazing, and so well preserved that it’s hard to believe they were constructed SO long ago, and were once covered in nine feet of volcanic ash.

Streets of Pompeii

Pompeii

Pompeii

Like seriously, how is it possible some of these pillars are still standing? Also, how much better would this shot have been if Vesuvius would’ve exploded with awesomely hot glowing lava right then and there?

Pompeii

Pompeii

Pompeii

 

Different areas seemed to have suffered varying degrees of damage, kind of like the path of a tornado. One of the most fascinating things I saw was inside some of the buildings like this bathhouse below. On the frescoes you can actually see the line of deterioration caused by the surge of volcanic ash that rushed in and destroyed all that it touched.

 

Inside Pompeii

Pompeii Fresco

Fresco

 

Another slightly unnerving sight that we’ve all seen in our middle school text books were the plaster casts of bodies in the position that they died in when the pyroclastic flow wiped out Pompeii. When archaeologists uncovered these empty cavities underneath the ash, they filled them with plaster before lifting them out, basically leaving an exact impression of that person at their moment of death. We only got to see two, but I’ve heard that some are so well preserved and detailed you can actually make out the wrinkles in their clothing and see the fur on a dog.

 

 

Every day the Romans would flood the streets to clean them, using stepping stones to create a crossway so they wouldn’t get their feet wet. Plus they were spaced perfectly for carriages to pass through. I don’t know why I found this so interesting, but I did. And I suddenly wished all streets in New York had these.

 

Streets of Pompeii

 

On the last stop of the tour our guide warned women and children who might be offended not to go in, so naturally I found myself paying attention to this jerkwad again. We were headed for the brothels. And how did we know that? Because of the stone penis on the ground pointing in the direction of their “red light district.”

 

Pompeii Penis

There were a series of rooms (with the most uncomfortable looking beds) reserved strictly for adult fun. I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone had been in these rooms when they died, and if so, where were their plaster casts?

Pompeii Brothel

There were paintings on the wall illustrating the different sex acts someone could walk in and order up. You know, kind of like a Baskin-Robbins. But with sex.

Sex Positions at Pompeii

And here’s my pervy prostitute “come hither” look. I’m pretty sure I would’ve made a killing back in the day with my creeper glare.

Me as a hooker in Pompeii  

SHOULD YOU VISIT POMPEII?

Yes! We only spent two hours at Pompeii, and while our tour was extremely rushed, it was a good way to see the highlights and learn a bit about the places we were looking at. I think a long tour with a very small group would be perfect. If I did it again I’d definitely spend at least an entire day wandering Pompeii on my own, picking up overheard information from all of the tour groups rushing around. Then I’d hike up to the top of Mount Vesuvius the next day.

I’ve heard that Italy is struggling to keep up with the preservation of the site, but I can only hope they find the funding to do so. Pompeii was a great experience and totally surreal, and I’d definitely visit again if I had the chance. I’d say it was actually my favorite part of Italy that I’ve visited. Plus admission is very reasonable (about 11 Euros, or $15 USD) and definitely worth every bit of it.