Orvieto

 As we sped along the freeway between Florence and Rome, Sabra, our tour director, pointed out the hill town of Orvieto looming five hundred feel above the plains of Umbria. "Look," she said. "You can see the walls of the old fort. You should go there. It's only an hour by train from Rome. It's wonderful."

  Right. Only an hour. No, I'll just stay in little old Rome. Have a cappuccino. Go to bed early. But it was too late. Teresa had been bitten by the Orvieto bug. I hoped she'd forget about it. But she never forgets these little jaunts into the wild.

  So, after we had seen the Colosseum and the Vatican, and while the other tour group people were sensibly descending into the catacombs of Rome, we were entering the gigantic Termini train station near our hotel.

  It was a mild sunny Saturday morning. In the busy station were rows of ticket machines. We selected English. But something was being lost in translation. The train we wanted disappeared on the English screen. And the prices were much higher.

  A guy, noticing our confusion, tried to help. His English was not good and Teresa said his clothes were raggedy. He whipped through the screens.  Did we really have to put in our home address? Both of us? Teresa said she saw a screen that said, "Don't let strangers see your card number. I didn't see that.

  Eventually we threw up our hands and walked away.  We found another machine, but it was just as hopeless. I noticed a line of people entering an office. These were ticket buyers in need of a human. They probably had complicated itineraries to Istanbul or Vladivostok. Fortunately a man at the office put us in a much shorter line for duffers. 

  It turned out we couldn't make the train we wanted. The next one was in an hour but we were worried about being back at the hotel in time to join the group for our farewell dinner so we postponed our trip till the next day, Sunday. We walked back to the hotel and had a second breakfast at the fabulous continental breakfast room just before it closed.

  When we were trying to buy tickets I saw something on the screen about service interruptions due to a work stoppage. That night Sabra confirmed there would be no trains on Sunday. The unions call these one day strikes to warn management not to be stingy during contract negotiations.

  Sunday was mild and sunny. A perfect day for visiting a hill town. It was also a perfect day for walking around Rome, my new favorite thing to do. We had seen Sabra at breakfast Sunday morning. She had just gotten the last of the tour group off to the airport. The train strike wasn't starting till ten am and before she left for her train home, she drew us a map of Orvieto on a napkin.  This would prove useful on Monday. Thank you Sabra. You were great!

  Monday dawned cool and cloudy.  We left the hotel at 8:30 planning to catch the 10:00 am train. These hourly inter urban trains run all the way to Florence. Things went smoothly at the ticket office for newbies. Now we had an hour to kill before our train. American train stations are nightmarish. Any restaurants there are an afterthought for people silly enough to take the train.

  In Europe, trains are a vital part of life.  The cafes in Termini were the equal of cafes on the street. We logged onto the station Wi-Fi and dawdled over our drinks. At twenty to ten I suggested we head for our train. No one warned us our train was an 18 minute walk away. A fast walk. Now we know for the next time.

  The train took a long time getting through the not so historical parts of Rome. At least out here there'd be no men on every corner getting in your face to buy a ticket for the Hop-on Hop-off tourist bus. Once out of the city, the train hit speeds of 100 mph. We arrived in Orvieto at 11:30. Across from the station was the funicular railway up the hill to the city.

  The high town area is kidney shaped, about a mile long and a half mile wide. I had looked up Orvieto before we left Rome and saw there was a place there called St Patrick’s Well. Had St Patrick gotten to Italy in his travels?

  It turns out the pope back in 1527 had retreated to his palace in Orvieto while the Holy Roman Emperor sacked Rome.  The pope had brought his personal army along and worried about the water supply in case Orvieto was besieged. He ordered his engineer to dig for water. What? The engineer asked. You want me to dig to St Patrick’s Purgatory? 

  So there's a well in Ireland that is so deep, people thought it went to purgatory.  It became a saying that any deep hole was called St Patrick's Purgatory, which is exactly what the pope wanted. So they began digging through the volcanic rock until they hit a good supply of water 175' down. There's a walkway spiraling around the well for the mules carrying water jugs to the bottom. They didn't want the mules going back up bumping into the mules coming down so they built another path going up. Yes, they dug a double helix, like DNA.

In Italy, when someone is asking for too much, you say, What do you think I am, St Patrick’s Well?

 I'm a sucker for anything St Patrick related. If I could walk down into this well, my trip to Orvieto would be worthwhile. According to Sabra's map, the well was a short walk to the right out of the funicular station. And there it was covered in scaffolding. Oh great, it was going to be closed. But no, it was open for the few tourists in town on a gloomy Monday. Five euros to walk down and back up the 248 steps. Only 3.50 for seniors. ID please. Teresa had left her purse back in the room. "Look," I said, rather ungallantly, "she's at least 65." Anything to save a euro. 

  Walking down into this well was the high point of the trip for me. Sure the Colosseum is nice and St Peter's is pretty, but no one goes to Italy to go down into St Patrick's Well. It's unique. That's what I loved about it. I was now ready to catch the next train home and have a late lunch in Rome. But Teresa wanted to see the cathedral. Yawn. After getting lost in the maze of medieval streets, we got back to the funicular down to the train station. On the funicular, we chatted with a woman who taught Greek and Latin in Orvieto. She had never been down in St Patrick’s Well. Unbelievable.

  We caught the two-thirty to Rome. Back in the room we (Teresa) packed for the flight home next morning and then we dined at the Cafe Washington on chicken fingers, burgers and fries. Our stomachs were getting homesick. 

Ciao Roma. Ciao Italia.

Flo-Ro

 My father once jumped off the bell tower in Florence. Actually it was a reproduction of the bell tower and it was in Boston, not Florence. He landed in a net held by his fellow fire department trainees. He had been made to jump so he would empathize with people in burning buildings he might be asking to jump.

  Ever since my father showed me the tower, I've wanted to see the original in Florence which I got to do on our recent Venice-Florence-Rome tour.  After our stay in Venice, our tour group of 17 and our director Sabra boarded a bus for the two hour drive to Florence. 

   Our bus was too big to unload on the narrow street in front of our hotel, so we walked a few minutes from a plaza to check in to our hotel while our bags were shuttled over in a van. After checking our room's bathroom facilities, we immediately hiked 15 minutes downtown, passing the museum where Michelangelo’s statue David is on display. We saw an exact copy of the statue downtown so we were able to skip the museum.

  Sabra suggested we have lunch before our tour of the old city center began. I was amused to watch a waitress sweeping pigeons off the outdoor tables the way we sweep crumbs off a tablecloth. In fact the pigeons were there for the crumbs.

  The central plaza is dominated by the Duomo cathedral. Elena, our lively Florence guide, told us this massive church was built in the Middle Ages to impress Florence’s enemies. I’d grown ho-hum about these gigantic Italian churches but this one was special. Maybe it was the beautiful pink, green, and white facade or the huge dome, the largest dome ever made of brick.

  We moved on to the statues of mighty men vanquishing with swords or clubs other mighty men. Elena said the message of these statues to visitors back in the day was, don’t even think of messing with Florence. We continued our walk along the Arno River, past the Uffizi Museum, ending at San Croce Church where Michelangelo, Galileo, and Machiavelli are buried. There's a large statue of Dante out front, but just as he was exiled from his beloved Florence in his lifetime, so he is buried up the road in Ravenna.

  Actually, the tour ended not at San Croce but at a leather store. Florence is famous for leather. We were taught how to tell great leather from not so great. The price tag can lie. Teresa was given the opportunity to model a jacket. The group approved, but Teresa is too practical to drop €500 on a jacket with limited options for wearing it. Now if she had found the jacket in a thrift store...

Christmas is coming 

  That evening the group walked to a restaurant near the hotel for a typical Florentine meal. Another tour group was sitting nearby. They were loud and rowdy and one them was making out with their waiter. Our group was primed to hoot and holler too, but we were all sitting at smaller tables while the rowdy group was at a long communal table. That was an interesting insight.

  Next day most of the group went off to the hill town of San Gimignano. Since we were only going to be in Florence for one full day Teresa and I opted to stay in town. We walked back down to the Duomo. We inspected all the classical statues under the large open portico. There was a sign to tell us who was who.

  We wandered through the leather market, past the pig you rubbed for luck, and across the Ponte Vecchio, the Old Bridge. The bridge has always had shops along its sides, butchers, bakers, and such. But nowadays the shops sell mostly souvenirs and jewelry.

  After a late lunch we returned to the hotel to relax. Later I went out and bought sandwiches for supper in the room. We just needed enough to make it to the great continental breakfast at the hotel. After breakfast  we walked to the plaza where our bus waited. It was a sunny morning and we walked along with kids being escorted to school by their parents.

  It was a three hour ride to Rome. As we got closer to the center, Sabre pointed out the various iconic sites of ancient and medieval Rome. And then the greatest icon of them all came into view, the Colosseum. The bus dropped us off then drove off to some distant bus lot. Sabra gave us an hour for lunch before our tour of the Colosseum. "Don't all go to the same restaurant," she said. "Pay your bill when your food comes." Service in Italy is efficient except when it comes to getting the bill.

  We headed up a side street and found a place making their pasta in-house. We knew we had chosen well when Sabra showed up to have her lunch here too. After lunch we met our guide Michele. Michele was great. He had a colorful book and every so often would say "Look at me." He'd point out the current sad state of the Colosseum then show us a picture of what the place looked like in its glory days.

  Michele had all the interesting facts about the place. The Colosseum held 80,000 spectators. It had giant awnings for shade. These sail-like shades were managed by sailors who kept them from flying off in the wind. The main forms of entertainment were gladiator fights, executions of criminals by starved lions, tigers and bears, and execution of animals by gladiators. No Christians were killed in the Colosseum. They were killed in a different place. 

  In ancient times admission to the Colosseum was free but you had to have a ticket. Good idea for crowd control. Before the movie Gladiator, tourists like us could get into the Colosseum for free. But the movie attracted the mobs and now there's an entry fee. Modern crowd control. The real gladiators were not all criminals. It was a career choice for many. The fights were more like in World Wrestling Entertainment than fights to the death, though an occasional gladiator might be killed. Probably the guy nobody liked.

No introduction needed 

  After the Colosseum Michele led us to the Forum, a maze of ruins and intact buildings. Many of these old temples and even parts of the Colosseum had been dismantled for use in other buildings in the centuries after the fall of Rome. The temples that survived were those that had been repurposed as churches when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380 A.D. Talk about repurposing a message of peace and love.

  The following morning, a Friday, we got up early for our 8:00 tour of the Vatican. This was really the highlight of the tour for me. Sadly I forget the name of our guide. I'll call her Maria for now. She had black curly hair and she did an excellent job. Like Michele, she had a little flag on a pole so we could always find her if we strayed. We assembled in the drizzle alongside the tall sloping walls of Vatican City. We were surrounded by crowds of fellow tourists and pilgrims.

  Vatican City at 120 acres is the smallest nation in the world. My friend Steve's tree farm is just as big. Through much of its history, this place was a big deal. The pope could bend the kings of Europe to his will. Some popes led armies on campaign. Some popes sent other armies to Jerusalem to wreak havoc on Muslims and Jews. Nowadays, the pope's power is more of the spiritual kind, which may prove most important after all.

  I'm a do-it-yourself kind of tourist, but having a guide in the Vatican to get us through the convolutions of entry was a wise idea. We kept having to pass through security checkpoints, showing our admission QR code while following Maria's flag  I'm surprised they didn't ask to see my St Joseph tattoo.

  We moved into another world when we passed from the admissions area into the actual museum. The museum was started by the pope in the 1500s and is now the second most visited art museum in the world after the Louvre. The first hall we passed was lined with statues and shelves loaded with parts of statues. We continued through halls filled with paintings and tapestries and more sculptures, sometimes crossing through gardens with more sculptures until we finally ended in the Sistine Chapel which is in its own building.

Vatican rule: Throw nothing away

  The Sistine is the pope's private chapel though I don't know when he would have any privacy there. The place is dimly lit and is supposed to be silent but there's a constant murmer which the guards try to tamp down. And no photos of course. Who needs photos of paintings imprinted in the brain of everyone with the least interest in art. There are no tourists during the days when the world's cardinals gather in the Chapel to elect a new pope.

  The crowds are drawn to the chapel by Michelangelo's frescos on the ceiling and walls. My cousin who was a design teacher in Chicago and who has been to Rome many times warned me about fresco neck, so I concentrated on the Last Judgement on the wall. There I found another good warning. We could have stayed as long as we wanted but when our group left after 20 minutes we were ready to go with them.

  Next stop was St Peters Square, the open area that leads to the Basilica of St Peter. People think St Peter's is the main church of the Catholic Church. St Peter's is rather the main church of Vatican City. The nearby Basilica of St John Lateran is Catholicism's ecumenical mother church. I used to wonder what the feast of St John Lateran every November was all about. I learned just a few years ago that it's to celebrate the dedication of the church way back in 324 A.D. I think I stick with the church because I appreciate its sense of tradition.

  We entered Peter's Basilica. Its size alone would give it five stars. A lack of pews increases the sense of vastness. There's a red carpet down the center running to the altar that only the pope can walk on. This must be annoying for workers trying to get from one side of the church to the other. Maria pointed out Michelangelo's Pieta. You're lucky, she said. It was under wraps until a couple of days ago. Then she pointed out an ugly chair on the altar. You're really lucky today. That's the pope's ivory chair. The Holy Roman Emperor gave it to him in the eleventh century. It's usually hidden from view but the area they hide it in is being worked on so they put the chair on the altar.

  The tour was finally over a little before noon. Time to hit the Vatican coffee shop. The place was surprisingly uncrowded. We sipped coffee and recovered our 21st century bearings. Sabra announced the bus was ready to take us back to the hotel. The hotel was only three miles away and the sun was out so Teresa and I opted to walk back. 

  There's extra construction in Rome now because next year is a Jubilee year. Every 25 years the church celebrates a year for forgiveness. Pilgrims come from all over the world so the city needs to be spiffed up. We wanted to walk to the Castel San Angelo next to the Vatican, but the bridge was covered in scaffolding. No worries. The Romans try to make a place at least partly accessible even as workmen clean the statues on the bridge.

  The Pantheon was next along our route. This is an ancient Roman building with an enormous dome that became a church. Just then a heavy rain began. We ducked into a cafe for a bowl of hot spaghetti bolognese. The shower soon passed and we continued on to the Trevi Fountain. Now we were in full tourist mode. The fountain was turned off for repairs, but there was a bridge across the fountain for our inspection. But the line for the bridge stretched a couple of blocks so we continued out of the tourist zone.

  It was now gelato time. Sabra had told us to avoid shops offering puffy mounds of gelato. It's mostly air she said. We found a shop where the server was digging deep to bring up the good stuff. Very tasty. We were only a mile from our hotel. I plugged the hotel name into Google maps and after a mile we were at a hotel with a name similar to our hotel's, but not exactly the same. Teresa was a good sport about it. After all, what's another mile after you've already gone six.

  That night the group boarded the bus and we traveled across the river to an old style restaurant. This was our farewell dinner and we were sitting at a long table like we wished we had in Florence. There was plenty of wine and good food and several musicians serenaded us.  It was a good chance to chat with some of the group we hadn't really gotten to know. Tomorrow everyone would head for the airport and home. Buon viaggio amici!!

Happy Birthday to our token Canadian!!

Venice

 Who hasn’t wanted to visit a city built on islands with canals for streets. I do. Well my time to do it has come. Venice is sinking as am I. Teresa and I kept talking about Italy until finally we heard about an eight day bus tour to the big three: Venice, Florence and Rome. 

  I’ve always been death on tours, wasting time waiting for a bunch of strangers while being bossed around by a tour guide. I tried to forget the negatives and look on the bright side. Someone else would take care of the stressful details and we'd meet some interesting people.

  We flew first to Amsterdam, another city of canals. We had always wanted to see Amsterdam so we spent three pleasant days there recovering from jet lag.  On the train to the airport to fly to Venice on November 15, Teresa discovered her suitcase handle wouldn’t go down. There was a convenient luggage shop at the airport and Teresa made the swap on the shop floor. The shop recycled her broken down suitcase. It's probably part of a homeless person's gear right now.

  After a ninety minute flight to Venice, we took a ferry to the Lido, a barrier island that forms the lagoon of Venice. The tour company had booked us here rather than in Venice itself. We had asked the company to book us two days early in the hotel our tour group would be staying in, which they did.  The Lido is a long narrow island. Its sandy beach makes it a summer tourist destination with plenty of hotels and restaurants. From the ferry pier it was a short walk to our hotel.  

   Our room was clean and roomy with all the amenities, hot water heater for tea, nice shower, but I thought it strange there was no TV. It was later lying in bed that I noticed the red dot in the corner of the ornate mirror.  What I thought was a remote for the AC was the TV remote.

  Next morning after the very good continental breakfast at the hotel, we bought ferry tickets to Venice. The ferries leave every few minutes and take about 15 minutes to get to Venice. There's a series of ferry stops around the island. We jumped off at the second one in the Castello area and joined the throng walking along the waterfront.

  Simplified map of  Venice: The island of Lido is off to the right. The airport is an hour to the north. We spent most of our time around San Marco. The blue line through the middle is the Grand Canal. Not shown are the 150 canals in the city.

  We ambled along the waterfront crossing humped bridges over the larger canals that lead into to the maze of little canals within the city. These bigger bridges along the waterfront had ramps for wheelchairs but the smaller bridges don't. We had just been in Amsterdam, another city of canals, but here there were no trams or speeding bikes to dodge. Just fellow tourists. It was a beautiful Saturday morning and even in the low season the place was busy.

Under the Bridge of Sighs. Bella

  The islands of Venice had been inhabited for hundreds of years before Christ, but people really started moving in after the fall of Rome in the sixth century. The islands were just poor enough to make them unappealing to the barbarians. Once the barbarians became civilized, Venice was in the perfect place to provide trade between the Christians in the west and the Moslems to the south and east. The Silk Road ended in Venice. The city grew rich enough to create an empire of its own.

  The empire of Venice collapsed in its turn and has been in decline for several centuries. But it's been a glorious decline and not all downhill. The government of Italy has been spending billions to keep Venice above sea level. Our guide says people who work in Venice can’t afford to live there but have take a bus in from the mainland. The barbarian Mussolini built the road in the 1930s. Our guide is in the tourism business but admits we tourists are killing the city.

  Until a solution is found, we tourists will continue to traipse around the maze, crossing the humped bridges, watching the gondolas; sometimes even paying to ride in a gondola. There are 400 gondolas in Venice. Many of them start from the waterfront, but every time you come to a wider place between the buildings, there'll be a cluster of gondolas waiting for riders. And they don't have to wait long. For a few euros more you can have a musician and a singer. At this point, why not.

O solo mio 🎵

  On Sunday we returned to Venice for mass. The church of San Guseppi was listed as having an eleven o'clock service.  But no one told Giuseppe that. The place was locked up tight. I checked my schedule and rolled the dice again and landed on Santi Giovanni e Paolo. There was supposedly an eleven there and we scurried through the alleyways and along the canals following the blue dot on google maps. The church was open for business. A sign by the door said tourist keep out during mass. We were worshipers not tourists, at least for the next hour.

 Reading the Wikipedia article about the church I discovered it was named for two obscure fourth century saints and not for John and Paul in the Bible  I also learned that the foot of St Catherine of Sienna was at a side altar, visible in an illuminated jar. I lit a candle at the altar for a sick friend.

After a post-mass pastry and coffee our goal was the iconic Santa Maria della Salute. This church is under the immense dome seen in all views of the Venice skyline. Artists have been loving Santa Maria since it was finished in 1687. It was built to give thanks for deliverance from the plague. Salute means health.

The Grand Canal

  Like most famous buildings in Italy, Santa Maria was under repair. These places are like old people who don't let a little major surgery prevent them from inviting you in for coffee. We took our pics, lit a candle at St Anthony's altar and headed back to the Lido. It was time to meet our new friends.

  We were to meet the other 15 tour members at supper that evening. But first we had a chance to meet Sabra, our very nice Italian tour director. Sabra told us that by a fluke in her family genome she had had red hair as a child and everyone called her Irish. She had no idea what that meant and resolved to visit Ireland. She liked Ireland so well she lived there for a while and went to school. So we got off to a good start with Sabra.

  At the communal supper we met the rest of the gang. These fifteen were self-selected to want to enjoy a trip to Italy, but it's only natural that some folks you would like right off while the rest would have to grow on you gradually. Wine is a good social lubricant.

  Next morning the group traveled over to the very photogenic Piazza San Marco for our tour of the Basilica of San Marco. The company always hired local guides in whichever city we were in. Rita led us into the congested basilica and up to the altar where the remains of the evangelist rest. We had headphones and Rita told the story of how St Mark's body had been stolen from the Muslims in Egypt and buried in Venice where it belonged. "You believe or you don't believe," Rita said. We heard that expression a lot visiting the churches of Italy. I tend to believe myself.

  After St Mark's we walked to the Murano Glass store. Venice is famous for glass but the glassmakers kept burning down the neighborhood so the factory was moved over to the nearby island of Murano.  At the store we were given a glass blowing demo and the chance to buy a beautiful glass piece for the price of many gondola rides.

  On the way to the store Sabra had pointed out a cafe. "Best pizza in Venice." At my funeral my fans will talk about my pizza so I'm always looking for a chance to kick up my pie. Sei bravo solo quanto la tua ultima pizza, as they say in Naples. You're only as good as your last pizza.

  The Neapolitan pizza at Rossopomodoro was fantastic. As I mulled over in my mind if I could replicate it at home, a pigeon flew in the open door, swooped past the dome of the wood fired oven and flew out the other door. The cook smiled and shrugged. Signs and wonders. They happen all the time in Venice.

There will be pizza

Holland

 Last year's trip was to Spain; this year it's Italy.  We started our overseas travels several years ago with a trip around Ireland, to pay respects to my ancestors. The big discovery was our residence in North America has changed us out of recognition to the locals. 

    We went to both Sweden and Scotland to do the same for Teresa's antecedents. We added France, Greece, and England. It was good to have the patches from those places sewn onto our backpacks. 

  But what was the reason for traveling after all? To have adventures. I want to share my adventures but people back home can only listen to so much. I appreciate that. Therefore my travels become fodder for this blog. 

People would always ask if we'd been to Italy and we'd have to say, sadly, no. Last year our son Matt's wife Heather took their son Luke on a tour of Venice, Florence, and Rome for his graduation trip. Heather said this would be a good way for us to see a chunk of Italy everyone had heard of.

  We signed up for a mid-November tour and decided to tack on Amsterdam before the Italy tour. We had always wanted to visit the Netherlands. I admired the Dutch for their tolerance for those with unorthodox views back when the rest of Europe was burning dissenters at the stake.

  The flight to Europe reminded me why I'm done going to Europe. Flights to Europe always take place in the evening when I'm normally getting ready for bed. Only my feet are able to fall asleep. My poor brain enters a dantesque coma in which a stream of demons slam the doors of purgatorial toilets.

  A few days before our trip we read about violent protests in Amsterdam having to do with a Palestinian flag being torn down, Israeli football fans getting beat up, and a taxi set on fire. It seems history is to blame. The only sign of the disruption when we got there was a movie marquee that read "Where's the peace and understanding?"

  Walking out of the Amsterdam airport terminal leads directly into the train station to downtown Amsterdam. Buying tickets was easy. No one checks your ticket. You scan it as you walk to your platform. If an inspector checks your ticket, it better show that it was scanned. 

  From the central station we took a tram to our hotel. In addition to the driver there's someone in the center of the two-car tram to sell tickets and give information. There's lots of trams running around and many more bicycles. I felt like the bikes were more dangerous to pedestrians, plus bikes have the right of way. We managed to stay alert and avoid close calls, but you can’t daydream as you walk around like you can in Roseau. 

  Museums have lost their charm for me. I'm like a soaked sponge and can't absorb any more, but we became Van Gogh junkies while traveling around Provence a few years ago and felt we owed it to our man to visit his Mother Church in Amsterdam. 

  The guide book advised getting in early before the tour busses arrive. I'd also advise starting on the middle floor where Van Gogh’s most famous paintings are located.  The lower floors feature artists who influenced Van Gogh. By the time we got to the sunflowers the crowds had caught up with us. 

  The gift shop is my favorite part of any museum. It's a synopsis of the whole place. The thrill won't be any greater standing on my tiptoes for a peek of a masterpiece over the heads of the other gawkers.

  The day before, we had toured the canals for an hour in a long, glass roofed boat. That was entertaining. Next day we took the train a few miles north to the windmill village.  That was also a good time killer. 

  The food in Amsterdam was hearty, at least at the places where we ate.  It's a great city for walking around in and seeing things you won't see at home, e.g. coffee shops that sell marijuana rather than coffee. 

  After three days in Amsterdam we took a short flight to Venice to start our official tour of Italy. Ciao for now. 

On the Road

  Originally published in the Wannaskan Almanac, November 7, 2024

  It's fall, a good time to travel. We've never been to Italy. The Romans built roads that lead there so we hopped on a modern extension of one of them. We started from home in northwest Minnesota and headed south and east. Our first stop would be in Delaware where Teresa's niece Abigail lives. We would also spend time in Annapolis, Maryland where Teresa's sister Cindy lives.

  Cindy owns two art galleries and it's time she cuts back. She's also thinking about selling her house.  We offered to give Cindy's daughter Abigail a couple of day's work to help. Abigail makes her living as an artist, but for the past year she's been helping her mother exclusively.

  Abigail accepted our offer. She said we could help clean out Cindy's garage and the upstairs of one of the galleries. Not knowing what she was asking for, Abigail assigned me some carpentry on the gallery counters. Both of them. 

  Our first work day was in Cindy's garage. She has one of those garages that hasn’t seen a car in twenty years. The climate in Maryland is mild and Cindy's Volvo is tough. As she passes from the driveway to the house, the garage is the perfect place to drop anything she doesn't want in the house. Over twenty years this has led to layers of stuff that would make any archeologist reach for their pick.

  The garage was originally built for two cars. The first door opens easily because Cindy uses it every day. We needed to open the other door to make a frontal attack on the pile of stuff. The bottom of the door had absorbed moisture and seemed glued to the ground. The handle for lifting the door started pulling away as Abigail lifted on it.

  Teresa and I were able to squeeze between the back side of the door and the mountain of stuff. Why was the door so heavy and why wouldn't it stay up? Ah, the cable attaching the door to the overhead spring had come off its wheel. We'll fix that later. For now a block of wood would hold the door up

  Just inside the door by the wall were four large chunks of concrete from Maryland's ancient Liberty Tree. As this famous tree started to decay over the centuries, concrete was poured into the center of the trunk to hold it up. When the tree finally went down, Abigail's father, Gardner, had these four pieces of concrete hauled to his garage as potentially valuable historical artifacts. 

  Abigail decided the artifacts would be safe in the woody ravine behind the house. We roped the first chunk onto a dolly and Abigail's boys, Max (15) and Roman (13), carefully transported it to the ravine. I said what we needed was a wheelbarrow. Teresa could see the tip of a wheelbarrow in the middle of the pile. After some digging we had our wheelbarrow.

  We loaded the second chunk of concrete into the wheelbarrow, but it was no go. Flat tire. We transferred the chunk into a small wagon. Even though the rubber tire was coming off one of the wheels, the wagon was better than the dolly. Now I wished we had a tire pump. Presto! A brand new pump appeared, still in the box. The wheelbarrow tire held air and off the third chunk went to the ravine. The pile had the magic power to produce anything we might need to get rid of the pile itself

  The final chunk weighed close to 200 pounds. We were relieved when Cindy suggested we turn the chunk into a Liberty Tree lawn ornament. Several of us dragged the chunk out onto the garage apron and tipped it down a short drop-off where it may sit another couple of hundred years.

Give me liberty!

  Now it was time to tackle the garage's toxic waste site. A large bag of garden fertilizer along the wall had tipped over and the contents had eaten through the base of an antique fire extinguisher and several paint cans. The contents had oozed out, creating a replica of a science fiction movie creature. We put the dripping cans into plastic bags, then into totes in our vehicles. Roman found a hammer and chisel and removed the Blob from the floor.

  Our plan was to haul the stuff in the garage out onto the lawn into two piles: good stuff for the estate sale and junk for the landfill. There ended up being a third pile of boating equipment: sails, lines, cushions, barometers, etc. Gardner owned a sailboat with a friend. The boat's location was vague. The boat's other owner was elderly and had supposedly given his interest to Gardner. Abigail didn't care about the boat. She just wanted the garage empty. Gardner was busy on a long-term project in Canada and had authorized Abigail to take care of business.

  The pile of boat stuff grew larger than the estate sale and junk piles together. By the time both vehicles were loaded with junk, Abigail discovered that the local landfills would be closed before we could reach them. Our option was to haul the junk to the gallery twenty minutes away that had a dumpster. It was a small dumpster with a monthly pick up. The extra junk could go behind the gallery, and Abigail would deliver the toxic waste to the landfill another day.

  Meanwhile I was sent to cut into the shelf under the front counter in the gallery. When staff sat at the computer, they couldn't get their legs under the counter and they didn't like it. Before our trip I had consulted with my brother, a competent carpenter. Of course reality never matches the ideal. I made a tentative cut into the plywood shelf. Sarah, the employee, suggested I cut out more and remove that support post she hit her knees on. With Abigail's ok I cut out the post and more of the shelf.

  Finally Abigail unleashed me for a deep squarish cut. The sawdust flew and blue smoke drifted up as my jig saw turned the corners. "Smells good in here," Abigail said. Abigail is such a positive person. That's the reason we love working for her.

  It was getting dark by now. Abigail called back to Cindy's and asked the crew there to put the good stuff back in the garage. When we arrived it looked like we had barely made a dent in the pile. This would be a job of many days. But it was satisfying to know that the legacy of the Liberty Tree was safe, the former toxic waste site was clean, and the  gallery workers’s backs would no longer be twisted.

Ergonomically correct 

Real Madrid

 

  After our hike along the northwest coast of Spain and after our week in Barcelona, we should have gone home, but for some reason we had tacked on a shapeless week in a small town in Andalusia, after which we had four days left over before our flight back to Boston from Madrid. 

  Madrid is an interesting place, but we had by now absorbed all the interesting things we could and were ready to go home. It didn't help that I had put off looking for a place too long and the hotels in Madrid were crazy expensive and all the Airbnbs seemed to be owned by the same guy. All his reviews were lumped together and you couldn't tell which places were great and which were dungeons.

  After much looking we settled on a place two miles north of the center of tourism. It cost much more than any other place we had stayed, but it had good reviews and the room photos looked good. The hotel appeared to be in a decent neighborhood based on Google street view. 

  "Should we be worried if he's never heard of our hotel?" Teresa wondered as we rode in a cab from the airport. The driver followed his GPS down a narrow street, craning his neck to spot Number 6. There was a sign that said Hotel Las Vegas, but it didn't look like there was a hotel behind the locked front door. With the cab gone, I felt like I was in one those dreams in which I'm trying to get somewhere but can't, and no one around me seems to care. 

    Fortunately the woman in the money transfer office at Number 8 made me understand that I needed to go to Number 12 to register. The door at Number 12 was also locked but the clerk buzzed me in. She didn't speak English, but found my penciled name in her spiral notebook. She gave me a key and a smile. Room 47, my birth year. This has to be good.

  The key was of no use getting into Number 6. Luckily two gentleman also going in indicated I needed to hold the little blue fob on the keychain up to a little 🔵 on the wall next to the door. Open sesame! We hauled our luggage up the steep steps to another locked door with a blue dot. It was reassuring to see that security here was top notch.

  We got in the elevator to the fourth floor. The two gentleman sensibly declined to join us since a sign said in Spanish and English "More than four people and you will be trapped". The elevator opened, rather weirdly I thought, onto a tiny roofless area with a chair and a potted plant. This must be the patio/smoking area. A doorway led to a hallway with our room and one other. Teresa was aghast when I opened the door.  Aesthetics are important to Teresa.

  I must give credit to the photographer who made this very ugly room look like something we would book. It was good that the room's ugliness was confined to such a small space. We had been spoiled by the roominess of our previous accommodations. The apartment in Barcelona had been strange, but this place outdid it. 

  The usual trim that cover pipes and wires had been left off which must have made maintenance a breeze. The window was tiny which was fine because the view was of a courtyard and many other tiny windows, which meant our room was blessedly quiet. The room was also clean. My three criteria for a room are cheap, clean, and quiet, so two out of three wasn't bad. And on the plus side there were excellent reading lamps. Yes, the lighting was good though what the lights revealed was bad.

The soccer pitch in front of No. 6, the Hotel Las Vegas.

  You don't hang around in a room like this. You get out and enjoy the sights of the beautiful capital of Spain.  The rain had other ideas. It rained heavily all the next day.  We walked a mile towards the tourist center which we would surely have had to ourselves had we made it that far. We had our raincoats on and Teresa had a little umbrella. I tried to buy a little umbrella for myself as we passed the many shops, but no luck. The next day I would see little umbrellas abandoned in the gutter.

  I had unwisely worn a pair of moisture absorbing pants and my sneakers were fairly soaked.  After a mile of this I called a halt. "Let's go into that cafe and have a nice cup of tea." Teresa gave the thumbs up. The great thing about Spanish restaurants is that you can sit over your cup of tea or coffee for hours on end. No Spanish restaurant would ever bring your check before you asked for it. That would be insulting. 

  We decided to order a late breakfast. We would share the Breakfast Americano. The huevos revueltos were not revolting eggs, but scrambled. The tortilla was a pancake with no syrup. The bacon was bacon. The fried potatoes were French fried potatoes. When dining in a foreign country, something is always lost in translation.

  We enjoyed the restaurant's Wi-Fi and after a couple of hours we split a late lunch. By three pm the rain had let up a bit and we walked back to our room. It may have been depressing but at least it was warm and dry. Wait a minute! Where's the Wi-Fi? As I headed over to Number 12 to complain, I noticed the Wi-Fi worked on the lower floors. I could not get that fact across to the clerk in reception. She kept pointing to the sign behind her with the password. "Take picture!" was her only English. I would have used the translation app on my phone, but Number 12 had a different password than Number 6. 

  When I told Teresa this she asked me to go down to floor three and download something for her to read. While there, I used the translation app to compose notes in Spanish describing the Wi-Fi problem. "Might as well complain about the mold spots near the ceiling too," Teresa suggested.

  Next morning there was a kindly old man at reception. He carefully read my phone note a couple of times then looked at me. I nodded and pointed at my note. He wrote my concern in his notebook. Then I showed him the note about the mold. He looked confused. I had used the Spanish word for the kind of mold you make jello in. Luckily a woman came in who knew English and supplied the right word. The clerk wrote the word moho in his notebook.

  The next two days were sunny and cool and we spent them down in the tourist district. We even went to the Prado Art Museum, not because we wanted to, but because two of our sons had gone there many years before during their season in Europe and it would have been shameful for us to blow it off.  We kept returning to branches of the restaurant that had sheltered us during the rainy day. The Wi-Fi clicked in automatically and we had their menu in English on our phones.

  When we returned to our room, the Wi-Fi was working and though we didn't expect this, the moho had been removed.  They tried at the Vegas, they really did.  No matter, we were up early Sunday morning, our suitcase wheels clicking over the quiet streets. We had figured out the mystery of the subway card system and spent a few stress-free hours at the airport awaiting our flight. I had my best meal of our entire month in Spain in the airport. Perhaps knowing Number 3 son would be waiting to pick us up at Logan had something to do with it.

Don Quixote was always in hot water because he lacked the sense to stay home.