Barcelona, Spain

Our overnight ride to Barçelona went smoothly, including our cursory clearance by French customs; after all, one must pass through France to get from Switzerland to Spain. Our arrival at the station, however, was chaotic. We decided that our first priority upon arrival was to figure out how to leave again, Alas, Ferrocarril España is not terribly forthcoming with such things as train schedules. We were eventually given an outdated chart that confirmed that our departure options were limited. We made reservations for a departure two days hence, even though we were told they weren't necessary.


There was one thing we overlooked when we decided to stop in Barçelona when we did: the Formula One racing schedule. Every F1 fan in Europe (or so it seemed) was in town for the Grand Prix de Catalunya, and they had all gotten there before us and were occupying all the hotel rooms. The line outside the tourist office at the train station was short, but it hardly moved at all. Two hours after entering it, we were told by the clerk that the only room available in the city was a 25,000 Pta (about $200.00 US) luxury suite. This was a little beyond our budget, so we decided to try again later in the day. After storing our bags, we decided to try calling a few places in our guidebook. We figured that they would be already booked, but the first place we tried, the Pension Macarena (no, I'm not making it up), had a room for us, at only 4500 Pta ($36 US). Hurrah! In my less-than-exemplary Spanish, I made the reservation, then we grabbed our bags out of storage and hurried off to the hotel.


In our excitement over finding a place, we left our brand new, barely used 1000 Pta ($8 US) phone card in the pay phone. It was only there for a minute or so before we remembered and ran back for it, but it was already gone. They work fast! Fortunately, we no longer needed it and it would prove to be the only item lost or stolen from us on our whole trip.

The pension turned out to be our least desirable lodging of the trip, but given the circumstances we were glad to have it. The room itself was on the large side, but the sheets were well worn and the furniture was probably third- or fourth-hand, at least. The lock on the front door was questionable, and we had French doors that opened onto a sort of patio (really the building's light well), but they didn't lock at all. We felt the need to secure those doors with a belt when leaving the room. The real highlight of the room was the bath. The shower was just an area of the room surrounded in tiles with a drain on the floor. The only way to wash without spraying down the whole room was to sit on the floor, as illustrated. The hot-water-on-demand system was entertaining as well; whenever one of us was about to use the shower, the other would go to the "patio" and watch the butane water heater on the wall. Once it kicked in, flames would shoot out two to three feet! Very exciting! We are glad to be able to report that the room was (apparently) 100% cockroach free.


After checking in and washing up, we headed back out for lunch. (Tapas, of course.) Our first sightseeing stop was the Picasso museum, where we learned quite a bit about the "local boy made good." The museum is on three floors of a building and ordered chronologically from the ground up. We found that we liked his earliest stuff the best and the later work the least. (We should also add that the museum's signs were bilingual: Spanish and Catalan.)


Our next day in Barçelona began with a walk through the Barri Gotic (Gothic Quarter) and a visit to a dramatic Gothic cathedral, where we sat in on a mass to enjoy the music and singing. This church was in complete contrast to the next one we saw, Antoni Gaudí's Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Familia. It's still under construction, albeit slowly, as it has been since before the architect's death in 1926, but it's already massive. It is expected to take another hundred years to finish due to both the scale of the building and the scarcity of funds.

The whole building looks a though it was designed by Dr. Seuss, with a flowing and dripping concrete façade and ornamental animals and shells (and even fruit) rendered in concrete affixed to the exterior. The inside of the church is mostly incomplete, but there is a small museum of both the history of the church and of the architect and his techniques. Gaudí has many other fanciful buildings throughout Barçelona, but this is the most massive. Visitors are allowed to climb the spiral staircases in the four completed towers for a view of the city, but the stairs are so narrow and crowded with other tourists that it became a difficult trudge to a less-than-inspiring view on this gray day. I also managed to hit my head several times on the way down, as I was more occupied with watching where my feet were going to pay attention to what my head was about to hit. I had quite a headache once we got to the ground.

From there, we were off to Parc Montjuïc and the Olympic Stadium via the funicular railroad. The Parc is an expanse of green on a hill to the southwest of the city with a commanding view of the city and its harbor. There is a fortress, the Castell de Montjuïc, and a military museum, as well as some art museums, but we skipped all of that to watch the harbor and some rock climbers scaling the walls of the fort. We also ran into more Bayern München soccer fans who, in the middle of the day, were already quite rowdy, singing their team's songs and shouting "Ich liebe dich" from the gondola over the park.

Back down the hill, we visited a maritime museum which celebrated the local seafaring history. The museum was well done, its centerpiece being a set of walk through dioramas, some animated, telling the story of Catalan nautical achievement from the 16th Century onward, and using radio receiver headsets to do so in your choice of language. The exhibit was called "La Gran Aventura del Mar" and some of the displays were fantastic, such as the one that involved standing on the foredeck of a galleon in high seas, salt spraying in our faces. The display turned out to be more interesting than we had expected and we stayed until we were politely shooed out at closing time.

We finished our evening on La Rambla, Barçelona's pedestrian street, sipping beers and listening to the revelry of Mikka Hakkinen's fans as they celebrated his Grand Prix victory earlier that day. After stopping at La Boqueria, the local market, for food for the trip, we went back to the train station and boarded our train to France. As we were getting settled, a very distraught looking young woman came in and sat across from us and said "You look like you speak English. How do I get to Marseilles?" Just as we were about to tell her that this was the wrong train for Marseilles, the doors closed and we were on our way. This gave us lots of time to help her, and eventually we did help her transfer at Montpellier to another train heading for Marseilles. We'll never know if she got there, but she was last seen heading in the right direction.

Before we parted company, she told us that due to the lack of available lodging, she and her friends had slept on a median strip in the road, each taking turns guarding the others. That made us appreciate the Pension Macarena a bit more.

After a short stop in Nimes, France, where we called and made our next set of hotel reservations, we were back on a train, this time to Aigues-Mortes, France.

Geneva, Switzerland

On the train from Montreux, we began to ponder our options for our next destination. Stay in Geneva, visit Provence, or what? As it turned out, there was an overnight train leaving Geneva for Barcelona that fit our schedule. We purchased our tickets at the station in Geneva, then wandered around the city until our departure time. We saw Geneva's famous Horloge Fleurie (Flower Clock), as well as the World's Longest Bench (or so they say). We walked around the Promenade des Bastions and enjoyed a dinner at Geneva's oldest café, Les Armures. Soon, the sun was setting and we headed for the train station and our ride to Barcelona.

Interlaken, Switzerland

We knew when we left Ins that we wanted to see the Thunersee, a large lake in the Alps. We rode the train to Bern and then to Thun, where we boarded the passenger ferry Stadt Bern. We parked ourselves on the top deck, applied sunscreen (although the horse had long since been stolen), and acquired beer.

The beer turned out to be important to our decision-making process. We had boarded the boat thinking that we would disembark in Spiez, but as we approached the dock our beers weren't empty, so we decided to stay aboard until they were. That turned out to mean disembarking in Interlaken. Upon arrival, we met with another outstanding technological advance: the hotel board. The hotel board is a display of all the hotels in the city, showing amenities, location, price, and availability, all updated frequently by telephone. Each hotel has a code number, and a free telephone on the board connects you to the front desk.

We quickly found a hotel with both a reasonable price and an Alpine view. By the next morning though, the skies had clouded over and the scenery was lost. So, our plan to visit Jungfraujoch (the highest train station in the world) was scuttled and we instead took a short hike to a hill overlooking the city and then went to the model railroad museum. We decided to leave Interlaken, beautiful as it is, because of the weather, but we plan to return someday to enjoy the scenery at length.

We left Interlaken by train to Spiez, then Zweisimmen, Gstaad & Montreux. At Zweisimmen, we boarded the "Panoramic Express" train. This one had windows that went all the way up the sides of the car and wrapped over onto the roof, so the views were tremendous. We had the whole car to ourselves for most of the trip, so we each had a window seat and we spent the ride with our eyes fixed on the scenery. We switched trains at Montreaux on our way to Geneva.

Ins, Switzerland

Upon arrival in Ins, our first stop was... the prison. Markus, our host in Zurich, had arranged for us to stay at the Fanelhaus, the field house of an ornithological society to which he belongs. The house is owned by the Berner Ala, but the land it's on is leased from the prison, and that's where we had to pick up the keys. So, fully loaded with our packs and bags of groceries, we trudged off from the station to the prison. Obtaining the key was no problem, as in this part of the country Hannah's French came into use. We then walked through the minimum-security prison, out the unlocked gate, to the house.

The house is a little cottage with two rooms of bunk beds, a kitchen, bath and dining room. We were the only guests at the time, so we had the run of the house. Our reason for being there was the nearby marshland, the home and feeding ground of many bird species, but unfortunately recent heavy rains had flooded the marsh, and the birds left to find easier feeding. We did see more foxes, including one that was being chased around a pasture by a cow.

With the birds away, we were left to amuse ourselves. We spent one day out on the end of a jetty on Lake Neuchâtel, where we sat and relaxed and read and ate and completely forgot to apply sunscreen. We survived sunny Italy with no trouble, but we now had Swiss sunburns!

After two restful nights, we left Fanelhaus, hiking back through the prison, and on to the train station. This time we had no idea where we'd end up that night. It turned out to be Interlaken.

Bern, Switzerland

We only visited Bern for an afternoon. Our first stop was the bear pit, where five of the symbols of Bern are kept on display. We watched them frolic for a bit as other visitors tossed food to them.

After lunch, we waited for the hourly show at the Zietglockenturm, another animated clock as we'd seen in Prague and Munich. The display here was not what we had hoped for. Instead of dancing marionettes and musical chimes, we saw a sad little rooster who crowed three times and a king who turned over an hourglass. Not only that, but the date-keeping feature on the clock was a full four days off. Certainly not what one would expect from the Swiss.

We purchased some groceries for the days ahead and then took a train to Ins.

Zurich, Switzerland

We made it to Zurich in good time and went to Markus' office at the University of Zurich (he's an Assistant Professor of Neurobiology). While he checked his e-mail, we took in the expansive view from the balcony outside his office. The greenery was soothing, but we soon found a distraction: from the balcony we spotted a fox living under the foundation slab of one of the buildings. We went down to investigate and found that two foxes had established a den, right there in the middle of the campus. It was a wonderful "close encounter," but there was a better one yet to come.

We had dinner at a restaurant on campus as we watched the sun set. As we walked back to the car, we saw a small, fuzzy shape scurry across the path. Before I finished saying "What was that?" Markus had dived into the bushes and come out holding a hedgehog. It had reflexively curled itself up into a protective ball, as hedgehogs do, so we were able to pass it from hand to hand to all have a look. We set it back on the path, and before too long he (she?) uncurled and wandered away.

We only spent one night in Zurich, at the E.'s apartment. Markus got up early the next morning to head off for his compulsory military service, and Franziska set off to work. Before long, we were out the door. We didn't get to see much of Zurich, because we went straight to the train station and off to Bern.

St. Gallen, Switzerland

We crossed the border into Switzerland crammed, with our packs, into the back seat of the Ehrengrubers' Renault Twingo. Border crossing, again, proved to be uneventful as Markus cleverly held up only his and Franziska's Swiss passports (bright red with a big white cross) and kept ours out of the sight of the guard. (Just one hitch: Hannah spent the rest of our time in Switzerland fretting that we wouldn't be allowed to leave if we didn't have a proper entry stamp. No such difficulty awaited us.)

St. Gallen is a quiet little town. We stopped in for a look at their famous monastery, and, more importantly, for ice cream, but it was here in St. Gallen that we spotted a most impressive technological advance: the auto-sterilizing toilet. This fascinating device looked much like an ordinary toilet, but with four lights on the tank labeled "Please flush," "Sanitizing," "Ready," and "Out of order." When the "Please flush" light is lit, depressing the lever not only washes the bowl but causes the seat to rotate and pass beneath a device that presumably disinfects it. It was at this moment that I most wish we'd had a video camera. The seat chugged all the way around, slowly and meticulously, until it reached its starting point and the "Ready" light came on. Ah, progress!

After a post-ice cream stroll through the streets of St. Gallen we were back on our way to Zurich.

Munich, Germany, part 3

Returning to Munich for our third visit felt almost like a return to familiar surroundings. There we were again at the Hauptbahnhof, killing time waiting for the tourist office to open. I took the opportunity to send home a batch of souvenirs at the local post office, and after visiting the tourist office we made our way to the Hotel Bristol just a few tram stops away.

We were finally going to spend more than a few hours just passing through Munich. The city has a tremendous amount of sights to see and we had just scratched the surface on our previous stopovers. Our first visit this time was to the Deutsches Museum, a huge science and technology museum on an island in the Isar river. The museum is the largest of its type in the world, with six floors comprising 13 acres. We could have spent a whole week here, as enough (though not all) of the exhibits were labeled in English as well as German. Alas, closing time came and we returned to our hotel for a "nap." We slept right through dinner and into the next morning. We must have been a little tired!

Well rested, we went the next morning to Dachau. The feeling of the place was of overwhelming despair. The site itself is small, only a few acres. We began at the museum, a photo exhibition of the rise of Nazism through the end of the war which detailed the conditions and atrocities of Dachau. This was followed by an even more ghastly film. We then walked the camp, from the "Arbeit Macht Frei" gate, to a rebuilt barracks, to the crematorium. As detailed as the presentations were, it is still difficult to make a coherent picture of the suffering and oppression inflicted at Dachau, let alone all of the other camps. The numbers are just too large and the cruelty too great. It is incomprehensible both how it could happen and how it could be denied.

In order to see the better part of German society, we returned to the Deutsches Museum to see a few of the galleries we had missed. We may never see everything on display in that museum, but we wouldn't mind trying.

After a delicious dinner of suckling pig in beer sauce with potato dumplings (we must be the only people who prefer German cuisine to Italian), we went out for a nightcap. We found a great curiosity, a bar called Padres, entirely devoted to baseball and the San Diego Padres. This was in downtown Munich, of all places.

We spent the morning of our last day in Munich back at the Englischer Garten feeding the waterfowl, then we headed out into the outskirts of Munich to meet Markus and Franziska E. and two of their friends at a biergarten. After a nice relaxing chat, we said farewell to their friends and the remaining four of us squeezed into the E.'s Renault Twingo. They were returning home from a weekend in Salzburg, and we would be staying with them at their apartment in Zurich. Our first stop, however, was St. Gallen, Switzerland.

Venice, Italy

There is no good food in Venice. (This is a sad fact. It seems that the local restaurateurs prize quantity far above quality, since the tourist trade makes repeat business unlikely. You have been warned, as we were. It doesn't help.)

Other than the food, though, Venice is a wonderment. It is completely free of motorized land vehicles. Unlike everywhere else in Italy, there are no scooters to dodge! The city is a maze of canals and bridges, and rather than the north-south-east-west variety, the street signs give directions toward either the Piazza San Marco or the Rialto bridge.

Everywhere you look there are boats. While waiting for the morning vaporetto (water bus), sightseeing is still possible as the scenery comes to you and slowly parades by. We watched the morning commute, businessmen and women in suits, carrying briefcases, stepping aboard gondolas for the short ride across the canal in the absence of a bridge. We also saw a variety of boats to remind us that Venice is a living city, not just a tourist showplace; we saw garbage boats, a boat carrying gravel for a construction project, police boats, even a freezer-boat delivering gelati.

Just to stand still and watch Venice go by is a treat, but here, too, there are museums and sights to see. The Accademia dell'Arte was presenting an exhibit of drawings by DaVinci, and we saw some of his original works and his mirror-image journals. The rest of the Accademia has displays of Venetian art from the 14th to 18th centuries. From there, on to the Palazzo Ducale, the private residence of the Venetian Doges of centuries past, and the primary municipal building of the Venetian Republic. Inside, we saw the royal chambers and offices, including a room of maps and globes showing the extent of Venetian influence during its reign as the trading capital of the world. From there, we went to see how the "other half" lived, across the Bridge of Sighs and into the dank, dark dungeons.

Later, we visited Saint Mark's Basilica, and were able to join a guided tour in English. The guide, a local Venetian volunteer, interpreted the church's mosaics (Biblical scenes from Genesis to the Crucifixion) and showed us some of the more interesting architectural features of the building. We were also led to the Pala d'Oro, an altar screen covered in jewels and gold. A short walk across the Piazza (and then lots of hunting for the door) brought us to the Museo Correr, which is sort of half history museum, half art museum. The historical displays were very interesting and answered many of our questions about Venice, but the art was not of the caliber we'd seen the day before at the Accademia.

Of course, we eventually ended up in a gondola, touring down the Grand Canal and into some smaller side canals. It was absolutely fascinating to see Venice in such detail. We got to see close up how the combination of rising water levels and settling foundations is changing Venice. Most homes have canal access via doors that were intended to remain above water but which are now partially submerged. Some of the buildings show considerable wear at the corners from having been bumped by canal boats for centuries. The preservation of Venice must be extremely difficult.

Our last stop in Venice (this trip; we'll be back) was the Campanile San Marco. The bell tower is the highest point in Venice and offers a panoramic view of the city. Venice is so densely packed that it is difficult to discern individual canals, and the view showed us a city of few right angles and no straight lines.

Back to the subject of food: we had two meals in Venice that merit special mention. The first was at a restaurant called Iguana, purportedly the only Mexican food served for hundreds of miles. If what they serve passes for Mexican food around here, it's no wonder that it hasn't caught on. The other meal was at a canalside seafood restaurant, apparently a local hangout. This is always a good sign, so I ordered the specialty of the house, seppia alla Veneziana, or squid in its ink served with polenta. It was unspeakably foul. I managed, as a member in good standing of the clean plate club, to choke the whole thing down, but I did notice that the Japanese businessmen at the next table sent theirs back. I do not know if it is intended to taste the way it did or if there was a tragic mistake in the kitchen, and I do not intend to find out. Yuck!

We left Venice via an overnight train. This time we shared a sleeping compartment in second class with two other people, all on our way to Munich.

Florence, Italy

We arrived in Florence after all the sights had closed for the night, so after checking in to our Pension, we went for a walk. We got a great look at the outside of the Duomo, and walked through the Piazza del Duomo in air that finally seemed cool. We did our best to jump-start our appreciation of renaissance art with a visit to the Uffizi the next morning, but we spent more time outside on line looking at the Arno river than we did inside before reaching, again, our art-saturation points. Knowing that we weren't likely to be back in Florence again any time soon, we had to go see David at the Galleria Dell'Accademia. It's a stunning work, of course, but the rest of the gallery was wasted on us.

So back out into the city we went, where our architectural senses, not yet at overload, could be indulged. We saw the Duomo again by daylight, and went inside. (The outside is far more intriguing.) Our last stop in Florence was the Ponte Vecchio. Jewelry prices in lire look so outrageous that we didn't even think about buying any.

Florence is a fascinating and beautiful city, especially for art lovers, and we probably would have enjoyed it more had we paced ourselves better. But, we wanted to keep moving, so away we went, off to Venice.

Pisa, Italy

We were fortunate enough to spend our second anniversary traveling through Italy. After our departure from Gaeta, we traveled, via Rome, to Pisa for an afternoon before continuing on to Florence.

The train service in Italy is structured so that it's very easy to spend an hour or two in Pisa while on your way somewhere else. It seems that no one's destination is actually Pisa; they're all just here to see the tower. Here's the scene at the tourist office by the train station:

Me: "Buon giorno." (or a close approximation)
Attendant: "Map?"
Me:
"Si."
Attendant: "Tower?"
Me: "Si"

And with that, in one grand sweep of her arm, she drew on the map a path in pink highlighter from the tourist office to the Leaning Tower. She did it -I swear- without looking, and it was dead-on accurate. It's a short walk through the streets of Pisa from the station to the tower, and along the way there were signs and banners exhorting (rather pathetically: "Pisa is more than just a tower!") us to visit the other sights of Pisa. As our guidebook stated, were it not for the tower, Pisa would be just a mundane university town.

But the tower alone is well worth the detour. Tall buildings often give the impression, when you're standing near them, to be falling toward you; well, this one really is. We learned that the tower originally pitched in the other direction and it has been over-corrected to its current position. They'll never get it right, though, because the whole tower is bent. After the lean had begun to manifest itself when the first three floors were built, the builders tried to compensate by building the upper floors to lean in the other direction. (This from the country that now gives us Ferraris and Lamborghinis.)

We walked around the site of the tower for a while, the Campo dei Miracoli, and visited the adjacent Duomo and Baptistry. After a cold beer at a nearby pub, it was time to catch our train to Florence.

Gaeta, Italy, part 3

After several days of breakneck tourism, we decided to relax over the next few days in Gaeta. Greg drove us to the Grotto di Tiberio, a seaside grotto very near Gaeta where Emperor Tiberius had a summer retreat. There's a small museum displaying some marble statues from the grotto, and the foundations of the villa are still there to be climbed upon. We walked along the beach, getting our feet wet in the Mediterranean, and Hannah went all the way in for a swim. The afternoon was finished with all of us enjoying some fantastic tiramisu at a beach side restaurant.

Our travels brought us all to the Piana della Orme (Plain of Traces) Historical Exhibition Center, the local museum of, well, everything. It has galleries devoted to toys, hand carved model ships and airplanes, agricultural history, and local history. The town of Latina, where the museum is located, was the site of an extensive earthworks project devised by Il Duce himself, the draining of a swamp to create a planned community. The museum has Mussolini's very own tractor on display. The main exhibition in the museum, however, is a collection of World War II weapons and vehicles in life-size dioramas depicting the Anzio landing and the Battle of Cassino, both of which are nearby. The museum is very well done, and most of the equipment is restored and in excellent condition. Some of it had been used recently in the movies "The English Patient" and "Life is Beautiful."

We also visited the town of Sermoneta, a medieval walled village that is still occupied. The streets are narrow and winding, full of shops and restaurants and private homes. We took a tour of the Castello di Sermoneta and were very impressed. The castle is an ideal image of a medieval fortress and it was in outstanding condition. Our tour was conducted in Italian, but just being inside the castle was a treat.

We visited the Abbey at Monte Cassino to hear the monks chant, and we toured the abbey and enjoyed the view of the surrounding countryside that made the abbey such a prize during World War II.

On our final full day in Gaeta, Greg treated us to a tour of his ship, the USS LaSalle. We got a very thorough look at the life of a Navy Public Affairs Officer, from lunch in the wardroom to his office and stateroom. He led us on a tour of the ship from bow to stern, or, in Greg's naval lingo, "pointy end" to "back." After a walk along the beach, we went back to the Geisens' house, where company was expected after dinner (besides us). Two of Greg's contacts through work, photographers John Gaps (AP) and David Gilkey (Detroit Free Press/Knight Ridder) literally just arrived from Albania, where they had been covering the Kosovo conflict. Greg had met them on an earlier trip to Albania that went haywire. John and David had been in Albania for eight weeks, and therefore had a unique insight on the conflict. Their shop talk with Greg was fascinating, and it was a great way for us to learn more about Greg's job.

The next morning, our second wedding anniversary, we bid an early farewell to Greg and Linda (without waking Monique) and headed off through Rome to Pisa.

Pompeii, Italy

Our trip to Pompeii first had us take the train to Naples, then connect to the Circumvesuviana railway. The scheduling was not exactly clear, but we got on the right train, and soon enough we were at the entrance to the ruins.

Ever since I'd first heard of Pompeii I had wanted to visit, and when I finally got there, it was even better than I expected. The ruined city still seems intact and accessible. There's no difficulty in identifying with the long-absent owners of the houses and businesses we visited. We spent hours walking up and down streets, entering extensive villas, opulent homes, shops, taverns, the baths and the city's amphitheater.

The structures were more intact than I thought they would be. Some still had their roofs, at least in places, and the floor mosaics and frescoes were magnificent. Just that so much had survived was amazing to us. (As an extra bonus, Hannah spotted a hoopoe, one of the birds she most wanted to see on our trip.) We could easily have spent another day or two here, but the time came to catch our train back to Gaeta.

Rome, Italy, part 3

We were up early again this morning for our final visit to the Eternal City. The morning's standing-room-only commuter train brought us back to Roma Termini station, and we walked in the cool morning air to Catacombe di Cappuccini, an offbeat attraction we'd seen before on television. The catacombs house the Capuchin monks' remains, but they are more than a simple mausoleum, for the surviving monks have used the bones of their deceased brethren to make decorative patterns, rosettes and even chandeliers. It sound creepy, but it's not. Trust us.

From there, we went back to the ancient ruins, stopping first at the Termi di Caracalla (the Baths of Caracalla), an impressive set of remains of the center of ancient Roman life, the baths. No water in them now, of course, but that made it easier to view the surviving mosaics that lined the pools. We then walked by the Circo Massimo on our way to the Colle Palatino, the original high-rent district. We saw a large number of well preserved houses, and enjoyed the peace and quiet away from the other tourist sights. We meandered there until it was time to return to Gaeta.

Gaeta, Italy, part 2

Our second day of visiting to Rome concluded with a real adventure: the taxi ride from the Formia train station to the G.' house. After carefully confirming the price and that the driver knew our destination, we were off. Soon we found ourselves parked outside an ice cream shop as the driver went in to ask directions. Then, we were waved inside as, unbeknownst to us, they had called Linda for directions. (Linda had given us her address and phone number on a piece of paper to carry with us, just in case, and I had given it to the driver so that he could read the address.) Linda explained to the ice cream shop guy, who jumped into his own Fiat to guide our driver. Eventually, we made it to the front gate of the Villa G., and when we tried to pay the driver, we discovered that he had said "thirty," (as in thousands of lire) not "ten," as we had thought. (Italian for thirty is "trente," and this guy had some sort of speech problem. We thought he was telling us "ten" in English, but he was really saying "thirty" in Italian.) Ah, fun. We haggled out a twenty & change solution, then went inside to apologize for the late night disturbance.

Rome, Italy, part 2

After touring the Vatican, we spent the afternoon of our second day in Italy by visiting some of the famous sights of Rome; the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, and the Spanish Steps. It is almost impossible to believe that the Pantheon is over 1800 years old. It is too perfect mathematically. The height exactly matches the width of the base, and the dome is flawless. From the Pantheon, we braved the streets of Rome again to get to Trevi Fountain.

Roman traffic appears to follow no rules or order. Red lights are completely ignored. Pedestrians tempt fate with regularity. Jaywalking is the only way to get anywhere here. Crossing one of the bridges over the Tiber the traffic was backed up, so up onto the sidewalk with us came the scooters. Incredible. We are very glad not to rent a car here.

Trevi Fountain is a splendid piece of both raw marble and sculpted forms, telling the story of how water was first brought to Rome. The fountain, like the Spanish Steps we went to next, was covered with people. The two places were swarming with tourists as the sun sank and things cooled down. We could barely see the Spanish Steps, let alone walk up them, they were so crowded. We decided to leave the city and return to Gaeta.

Vatican City

Vatican City is tiny, but the volume of things to see is immense. We started at the Vatican Museum, which houses a staggering quantity of art and artifacts. The place is huge, with enormous galleries devoted to ancient Egyptian artifacts, Etruscan stuff, tapestries, maps, statuary (both whole and in ready-to-assemble kit form) and, of course, frescoes. Room after room of frescoes. Endless series of frescoes. Frescoes on all four walls and the ceiling, plus mosaics on the floor. We reached our saturation points early, but the way the museum is laid out you must travel through each and every room to find the exit. Fortunately, we reached the Sistine Chapel before complete overload set in. Although the room was severely overcrowded, we were able to spend some time with a guidebook examining the frescoes. The chapel truly is a renaissance art library all in one room.

After finally finding the uscita and leaving the museum, we set off for St. Peter's. We thought we were going by the shortest route and would have been there quickly were it not for two facts: 1) The Vatican is a walled city, and 2) we were outside the wall. We came pretty close to circumnavigating a whole country on foot, non-stop, before we found an entrance to the Piazza San Pietro. Our first look at St. Peter's Basilica was less than inspiring, as the whole facade was covered by a massive scaffolding. Once inside we were awestruck by the scale. I knew all along that the place was big, but I had no idea how imposing it would be. We walked all around the interior, identifying various statues with the help of our guidebook. We specifically sought out Michaelangelo's Pieta, which was not only protected behind glass, but we had to resort to binoculars to view it due to another enormous interior scaffolding.

As we were leaving, we spotted a line to go up to the cupola at the top of the dome. Of course we joined it, and an elevator ride later we began climbing steps, first to an interior viewing balcony overlooking the altar, then to the cupola itself and its panoramic views of the city. The weather was good and the sky clear, so we could see for miles.

After descending from the cupola, we visited the tombs below the church, then left the Vatican via the Piazza and headed back into Rome.

Gaeta, Italy

Our first week in Italy was spent as guests of our friends. Greg G. is in the U.S. Navy and was then stationed in Gaeta aboard the U.S.S. LaSalle, and he, Linda and Monique had rented a lovely villa overlooking the Mediterranean. We spent our first evening there catching up over a delicious dinner followed by sangria on the balcony. The next morning, Linda gave us a ride to the train station, and we were off to Vatican City.

Rome, Italy

Our overnight train ran a little late, as we were soon to find out is normal for Italian trains, and we awoke about an hour outside of Rome with time enough for a leisurely caffe Americano and hot tea before arrival. We needed the relaxation, because before long, we had pulled into Rome's Tibertino station. It's not the biggest station in Rome, but it was certainly the busiest station we'd seen so far on our trip.

Our first task was to turn ourselves into half-millionaires with the acquisition of 500,000 lire. Flush with this staggering amount of cash (actually only about $260 US), we took the subway to the even more chaotic main station in Rome, then headed out on foot to see the sights.

We stopped in the shadow of Trajan's column to enjoy our "breakfast" gelati, the first of many. It was staggeringly hot, but we couldn't hold ourselves back from exploring the Forum. We spent hours walking among the ruins, passing temples, markets, triumphal arches and other monuments. The scale of the Forum is stunning. It's hard to believe that all of these structures were built so long ago, without modern techniques, and that so many are still standing, at least in part.

Speaking of impressive scale, our next stop was the Coliseum. We walked through the interior, again marveling at the construction. Most of the damage to the structure was caused not by decay over time but from its use as a stone quarry for other building projects, and that's amazing for two reasons; first, that if left alone the building today would be in a far better state of repair, and second, that anyone could even think of dismantling it to build something else.

Many of the monuments in Rome are being unearthed after having been buried in the 1920's and 30's by Mussolini, so everywhere we looked we saw earth-moving equipment. In addition to the normal (read: excessive) Roman traffic, this kicked up quite a bit of dust. Feeling rather dusty ourselves, we headed back to the station to catch a train to Formia. We were met at the station by Linda and Monique G., who drove us (Linda did the driving, Monique navigated) to their home in Gaeta.

Munich, Germany, part 2

When our train pulled into the Hauptbahnhof, we closed the Austria-Slovakia-Czech Republic loop that we'd planned before we left. We only had an afternoon (again) on this visit to Munich, so we decided to spend most of it at the Augustiner Kellar, an authentic Münchner biergarten.

It was here that we first ran across a group that would continue to provide us with laughs throughout our trip, the fans of FC (Fußball Club) Bayern München. They were singing their team's songs, cheering, drinking, throwing coasters and having a grand old time. It was fun just to watch them. (Curiously enough, we were able to recognize most of the tunes they were singing. The lyrics were new to us, of course, but the tunes were old standards like "Yankee Doodle" and "Clementine.")

Our beer order was a sight to behold as well. One Maß each, a Maß being a full liter of beer. The steins were about a foot high. We drained them, but it took a while.

Afterward, we walked back to Marienplatz to see the famous Glockenspiel at the Neues Rathaus. Somehow we'd missed it on our first stop in Munich. At five o'clock, the bells began, and soon after, mechanical figures began parading in the bell tower. A multimedia display, nineteenth century style.

Our last stop of the day was at the Englischer Garten. According to our guidebook, it's the oldest and largest city park in the world. It's three miles long, so we just took a quick look around before hurrying back to the Hauptbahnhof to claim our packs and catch an overnight train to Rome.

Prague, Czech Republic, part 2

Once we returned form Plzen, we headed into Prague again to see the city by night. The Hrad, churches, and the Karluv Most were all lit up, and it made for a nice evening stroll.

The next day, our last full day in Prague, started with a visit to the local bazaar/flea market. It did not provide us with any good souvenir opportunities, but we did seem to find the inexhaustible source of all the brand-name rip-off track suits we'd been seeing throughout our trip so far.

We spent much of the day at Vyšehrad, the original Prague castle, during a light drizzle. Our guidebook led us around the complex, including the cemetery that is the final resting place of both Antonin Dvorak and Jan Purkyñe, among others. We toured the casemates within the castle walls, and when we reached the end of the tour the guide gave us a choice: leave the casemates and go outside, or walk back to the starting point with the overhead lights off. We couldn't pass up this opportunity, so the lights went out and we guided ourselves in authentic medieval fashion, running our hands along the wall in pitch darkness until we arrived at the gate. The only light came from the overhead ventilation shafts, and it formed small pools on the floor, but not enough light to see anything by.

We left Vyšehrad and went to the Staré Mesto (Old Town) on foot, visiting the botanical gardens en route. We watched the crowd at Staromestské námestí watch the animated clock in the tower of the Old Town Hall, and peeked into the Kostel sv. Mikuláše (St. Nicholas's Church, photo at left).

After dinner at the Maršáks', we waited for the rain to cease, then we decided to visit the city by night again. Prague is so beautiful it's difficult to pass up any opportunity to see it, especially since we knew this would be our last visit for a while. We went back to U Cerného Vola for a couple of pints, and then walked through the castle, leaving it just as one cadet was helping another return home from a night on the town.

The next morning we bid farewell to our hosts the Maršáks, and caught a train back to Munich.

Plzen, Czech Republic

We caught an early train out of Prague south to Plzen, and were fortunate enough to share our compartment with an adorable two-month-old puppy and his master.

Our first stop on arrival was the Pivovarské Museum, where we saw a display of artifacts relating to ancient brewing practices. It was mid-week, and we were the only visitors to the museum, so we got a private tour, which included a recreation of a late 19th century taproom, brewing tools, etc.

This got us in the right frame of mind for the real purpose of our trip, the Plzensky Prazdroje, or Pilsner Urquell brewery. The tour started with a short film, followed by a guided walk around the premises, including the fermentation tanks and cellars, but the highlight was the tasting of fresh Pilsner Urquell from a tap in the cellar. Absolutely delicious!

We had lunch at Na Spilce, the brewery's restaurant, then headed into the town square to do some shopping. Plzen really knows how to make an American like me feel welcome, as the whole town was decked out with U.S. flags on every lamppost, and streets and a bridge named after Roosevelt, Patton, and the whole U.S. Army. All this, of course, was in gratitude for Plzen's liberation 54 years earlier. (It's also worth noting that we were there the day before the anniversary of V-E Day, so maybe the flags aren't up all year round, but I bet they don't change the street signs.)

After shopping [here's a tip - everything is less expensive in Plzen than it is in Prague], we caught our train back to Prague.

Prague, Czech Republic

We stayed in Prague as guests of the Maršáks, friends of the Dvoraks' who now live in their (the Dvorak's) former apartment. Through the miracle of Soviet engineering, their apartment was a mirror image of the Vyšña's apartment in Poprad. We got a Prague orientation talk from Zdena Maršák, most of which boiled down to "look out for Gypsies," then dinner was served and we headed for bed.

Zdena escorted us the next morning to Hradcany and gave us more warnings about those nefarious Gypsies. Hradcany is the neighborhood around the Prague Castle, and it's crowded with both sights and tourists. The throng was thick, especially within the walls of the castle, and sometimes we were held immobile by the crush of the tour groups. At one point, I began holding our umbrella high overhead just to see if any bedazzled tourists would start following us. I wasn't sure what I'd do with them if they did, but maybe I could collect some tips.

We visited the Loreta church, chock full of precious ornamental art, including one piece with 6500 (so they say - we didn't count) diamonds. The Royal Gardens were, unfortunately for us, not yet in bloom, so we proceeded on to the Zlatá Ulicka (Golden Lane), a row of houses built into the wall of the castle. The houses are now occupied by vendors preying on tourists, but within the wall there is a passageway lined with displays of armor and weaponry of the middle ages, as well as a crossbow shooting range (5 bolts for 50 Kc). Lastly, we saw St. Vitus' Cathedral, a massive gothic church that took over 600 years to build.

For lunch, we stopped at the beer hall U Cerného Vola, apparently one of the few remaining places in Prague not trying to cater to western tourists. We sat at a long table with other patrons, and Hannah placed our orders after translating the menu for me. [We found out later from friends who visited on our recommendation that English menus are available.] Sausages and beer, in authentic surroundings, for a mere pittance. Yum.

After lunch, more walking around town took us across the Karluv Most (Charles Bridge). The bridge is lined with artists and performers, and we did a little souvenir shopping. Our last sight to see that day was the Václavský námestí, or Wenceslaus Square, famous for its role in the "Velvet Revolution." Aside from its historical significance, it is not as interesting as other parts of Prague, so we hopped a subway "home."

Once back at the Maršáks', we had a delicious home-cooked meal and watched some of the local television, including an American cop show broadcast in the original English, but narrated (not subtitled) in Polish. As far as we could tell, the narrator, in a golf-commentator whisper, was describing the dialogue for the non-English speaking audience. It was very entertaining.