The Dream of Standing in the Homelands of My Ancestors

The Dream of Standing in the Homelands of My Ancestors
(And the Reality)

By Todd Neel

I began this chapter before this trip to Europe with just a title and a dream (sort of a “dream of a dream”, because it was a day dream, wanting to be inspired by a visit in the night from some ancestral ghosts that never came). Some of this chapter was also written during the trip to Europe, and now I finish it back home in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, about a week after our return. So this is kind of a “Back to the Future”/”Back from the Past” journey.

Flash back: Here, now, I sit about 1:45 am, Saturday 7/10/2010 in Edinburgh, Scotland, the homeland of my ancestors. I push a button on my Timex digital wristwatch, and I can see that it is 5:45 pm, Friday 7/9/2010 in our home town of Coeur d’Alene where we will be by 2 pm this afternoon, crossing 9 time zones to get there, flying about 10 hours in the air.

We are up early this morning to catch our flight home to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, after 3 weeks of “holiday” in Europe. This family vacation, that I had previously never before dreamed of as possible for me, is from the gracious generosity of my wife, Mary, and her decision to take our family to Europe on vacation with her inheritance from her parents. It was about a year ago, on July 11, 2009 (one year from tomorrow), that her mother, Phyllis, died. It has been from Mary’s parents’ choices in careers, investments, and lifestyle choices which has allowed us to live for three weeks like royalty in Europe! What a blessing this has been!

I choose the word “royalty” with a small “r” for a reason, as we have enjoyed four nights here at the Princes Street Suites here in Edinburgh. We are literally across the railroad tracks from the Queens’ Palace and the Scottish Parliament at the end of the Royal Mile, which runs from the Edinburgh Castle to the Holyrood Palace. There have been many be-headings of Royalty throughout history that we have heard about on our trip, and I don’t want to be a part of any of that Royalty.

Flash forward: Here, now, I sit about 6:45 am, Saturday 7/17/2010 in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Back home again.

Reflections: Part of this trip has been a pilgrimage for me. This pilgrimage has been a search in Scotland, the homeland of my ancestors, for traces, for some record, some sign of my ancestors that came before me. (My questions: Who were they? What were their lives like? What caused them to leave Scotland in the 1700’s? What did they dream about? Were they good people?)

This trip and the record of it is sort of a legacy that I will leave behind for family and friends on this Internet Blog and my self-published book “Family Hunger”. (Will my descendants come looking for traces of me someday? Will they find these words? Will they have an interest, a “family hunger”?) These words you are reading are evidence of my physical body, which has traces of our ancestors. The DNA from my ancestors that I carry through to the present day is in my body, in these fingers that type on this keyboard, in the neurons of my brain that play with these words. We are living legacies. We are miracles!

Will my descendants have questions someday, like: Who was this guy? What was his life like? What caused him to go to Scotland in 2010? What did he dream about? Was he a good guy?

Now, in case you didn’t know this about me, I’m kind of pre-occupied with our family’s genealogy. I was hoping that while in Scotland I would have found the gemstone of information that would be the key to my search to where I came from. But, alas, no gemstone. In Edinburgh, I did visit the Calton Cemetary right next to our hotel, and I did find the gravestone for John William Neill (an architect, d.o.b. 7/22/1781, and d.o.d. 1/28/1827) and other members of his family. But is this my family?

Now, this next paragraph may be “TMI” or “too much information” for those not interested in genealogy, so you can skip to the end if you wish: I did find the location of the national Scotland Registry of families (also known as and available over the Internet as ScotlandsPeople Centre), and I visited it. I found on their computers the same document that I had already found on the Internet through ancestry.com That is a scanned, digital copy of a parish record of John Neil, immigrant from Scotland: d.o.b. Dec. 8, 1716 from Kilwinning, Ayrshire, Scotland, and his parents John Neil and Margaret Johnstoun. (The staff at Scotlands People told me they have the original document, but they would not let me see it because of the age and the condition of that document). But is this my family?

On the last day of our stay in Edinburgh, I found The Scottish Genealogy Society Family History Center and Library, but it was closed! (I have been communicating with them by e-mail since we returned home).

I have submitted my own DNA sample and through ancestry.com and I found 1 genetic relative in Ireland, 3 genetic relatives in Scotland, and 11 genetic relatives in England. Some of these people have responded over the Internet, but I have not been able to meet any of them face-to-face yet.

So, I think you have read about my dream here (I did stand in the home land of my ancestors), and I have come to appreciate some of the hardships they may have gone through and the blessings of the beauty of their homeland as I walked the streets of Edinburgh, toured the Highlands by bus, and soaked up some of the history of Scotland and the United Kingdom. But the reality is that I did not get any real "hits", in genealogy terms. Not yet anyway. (I do believe in miracles!)

Edinburgh, Scotland – not enough time to experience all the history, but still great!

Tuesday 7/6/2010 - Saturday 7/10/2010.

In Edinburgh, we stayed at the Princes Street Suite, and this was by far our best accommodations with 2 separate bedrooms, a large living room/dining room combination, full kitchen with dishes, and laundry in the apartment! (None of our previous housing situations had laundry, and we had been washing our clothes in the sink and hanging them to dry in the humid European climate, as when we asked where Laundromats were, we were referred to dry cleaners who would do a shirt for 4 pounds – one pound was about $1.50). Each bedroom had a small flat screen television, and there was a large, flat screen TV in the living room (and the TV shows were in English!, including many American TV shows and movies). They also provided an iPod docking station, which the boys really liked.

We started out the visit in Edinburgh with a guided, double-decker tour bus of Old Town and New Town, to get oriented to the city and get a narration from a guide about things to see. (Sometimes we got very entertaining guides, and sometimes they were very dry and flat). We could hop on and off the bus, so we got off at the Edinburgh Castle to tour that, walking through the marching area where the famous Military Tattoo is held the full month of August every year (this is a bag pipes and drums competition - I suggest you hit YouTube and look up videos of these talented musicians). There was endless shopping to be done, and we supported their economy with our small donations (but I did not buy a kilt – too expensive).

The famous Edinburgh Castle, built on the rock of an extinct volcanic plug for visibility and protection, was at one end of the “Royal Mile”, and at the other end of the Royal Mile was the British Royal Palace and the Scottish Parliament. (The original Parliament of Scotland for the Kingdom of Scotland during the 13th century was ended for 300 years by the “Acts of Union” of 1707, and England ruled Scotland from the Parliament of the United Kingdom in London until just recently, when in 1999 the Scottish Parliament began again). The Queen of England still visits here regularly, and she was overdue for her spring visit.

Edinburgh seemed older than London, and/or what it could be was the presentation and maintenance of the buildings, or maybe the origin of the stones (granite vs. sandstone). The old stones of Edinburgh seem to have been allowed to age more naturally, as they were very dark and rough, while the stonework of London was lighter in color, and they were very clean and smooth.

On Thur. 7/8/2010, we rode for 12 hours on a tour bus to the mountainous Highlands north of Edinburgh to Inverness and back. We saw beautiful countryside, and if there are such things as genetic or “DNA memories”, I can see why my father and mother choose to live in western Montana as their final home after retirement. The land of the Scottish Highlands is a lot like the mountains of western Montana and in Idaho (where I currently live).

We stopped and visited the ruined Urquhart Castle on the shores of the famous Loch Ness (“Loch” means “lake). We took a boat ride from this castle to the end of the lake, where the tour bus picked us up again, drove through Inverness, and then back to Edinburgh. (Of course, we saw Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, but my camera wasn’t working for some reason).

Edinburgh is in the "lowlands" (rolling hills), and up north is the "highlands". Mountain peaks up there are not that high (the highest being Ben Nevis at 4409 ft. above sea level, and we would have seen this highest peak in the United Kingdom except for cloud cover on the day of this trip). We drove past ski areas, which closed about 3 weeks ago (but I did not see large enough snow fields to ski on right now). We saw where the Campbells attacked and killed hundreds the MacDonalds in their sleep (How does that saying go? “Never trust a Campbell”?). We saw where portions of the Harry Potter movies were made. It was beautiful country, again, looking like what you might find in western Montana and places in Idaho.

Loch Ness is connected by a chain of lakes and man-made canals and locks, which connects the Firth of Lorn and the Sea of Herbides and the Atlantic Ocean near Northern Ireland on the west coast of Scotland to the North Sea on the east coast of Scotland.

Scotland was beautiful, and it really tugged at my heartstrings. (See my next chapter “The Dream of Standing in the Homelands of My Ancestors”).

Todd

London – busy blur …

Saturday 7/3/2010 - Tuesday, 7/6/2010.

On Saturday, 7/3, we saw the changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, had lunch at the Hard Rock Café & saw The Vault (rock & roll museum next door for the Hard Rock Cafe), walked through Green Park & St. James Park, visited the Churchill Museum & War Room, rode on the London Eye (a giant ferris wheel built for the Millennium on the Thames river), and had dinner at the Shakespeare Pub.

On Sunday, 7/4, we went to the Tower of London, and visited the British Museum.

On Monday, 7/5, we went to Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral, had dinner at Garfunkel’s (I had a traditional British Breakfast for dinner, otherwise known as “heart attack on a plate” – it wasn’t very good). This was an ambitious day, as we ended the day with a live musical play @ Dominion Theatre called “We Will Rock You” with the music of Queen with a great, live rock band.

A little more on the Westminster Abbey, which was right next to Big Ben and the British Parliament on the River Thames. There is a lot of history in the Westminster Abbey, as Kings and Queens have been coronated and buried there, and there are many other famous people buried there, inside, or there are memorials are there for them. Famous people buried there are Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Keats, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Laurence Olivier, and George Fredrick Handel, among many others. (My mom sang Handel's Messiah with the Pensacola (Florida) Choir and we have a LP record of this). After the Westminster Abbey, we went to St. Paul's Cathedral that survived the aerial bombings of Britain by Germany during World War II.

We leave London by train on Tuesday, 7/6 for Edinburgh, Scotland, so we should be able to see the countryside during the 4 ½ hour train ride. We will have 4 days there in Scotland (4 nights, 3 full days for being tourists), which I'm really looking forward to. There's a lot of history there.

During the train ride from London to Edinburgh, we passed countryside that looks like the mid-west U.S., around Missouri that we are familiar with, with rolling hills, agricultural land, and older farm houses and villages. We also passed clusters of modern wind turbines and also what looked like many nuclear power plants (about a half-dozen sites with clusters of 4 to 7 cooling towers, the shapes of what look like our nuclear plants).

Todd

London

7/2/2010 Friday

We got into London last night, 7/3 Thursday. Our motel (The Elizabeth) is in an old, and expensive, neighborhood. Our room is very small, in the basement, and we do have a daylight window, but the air conditioner requires the window to be opened about 6 inches (by about 5 ft. wide), so it is only marginally effective. Mary didn't sleep well last night because of the heat.

I didn’t write that at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, there was a statue of Joan of Arc who was executed at age 19 for being a witch and a heretic, and then later a decision was made at Notre Dame to save her reputation and she was then made a Saint. (I started to look Joan of Arc up on Wikepedia – check it out, or read a book!).

Learning lot on this trip.

On this date, we took an open air, double-decker bus tour of London(“Original Tour”). We went to Picadilly Circus, had lunch, walked around. Back in our neighborhood, we had a bad Japanese dinner “walk-away” (take-out).

Todd

Writing From The Elizabeth Hotel in London about Paris

7/2/2010 Friday
We flew from Paris to London yesterday – some reflections here that I found in e-mails to family that I don’t want to miss … (hope I’m not boring you with duplicate entries) …
We arrived in London last night. Paris had been very hot, and transportation around that huge city was complicated, so that slowed us down. We got to see a lot, but you could spend a life time there (and some people do!).
Josh read something that if you spent 5 minutes at every exhibit at the Louve it would take 7 years. We did visit The Louve museum, but it was so huge we only saw a small portion. We tried to get an English speaking tour group, but they were all full. We can say we were there, but we didn't really appreciate what we were seeing, not knowing what they were. We recognized some classic pieces, but I think I would want to start reading history books about the artists and the times they lived in. We saw the Mona Lisa, and it was packed and difficult to get close to, so it was kind of disappointing. The public was kept about 30 ft. away from the Mona Lisa, and we read that at one time an employee had stolen it and kept it rolled up under his bed for 3 years (I wonder what they did with that guy when they caught him).
We rode up the elevator of the Eiffel Tower on Nathan's birthday at his request. We heard that when Hitler was in Paris that the elevator malfunctioned so he had to climb up the tower to the top. And after he left an employee figured out what was wrong and fixed it with a simple screwdriver. Poor Hitler.
There was a lot of blood shed in Paris. Nathan thinks our American soldiers fought in Paris, but someone said the German's left here before we arrived. We'll have to get out the history books (or look it up on Wikipedia).
I’ll keep this brief, and post more later.
Todd

Last day in Paris - Bus #69 to Notre Dame, and then some:

Report on last day in Paris, Thursday 7/1/2010 -
I got up early yesterday morning (4 am), and I took a city bus ride by myself (on route 69) from our neighborhood near the Eiffel Tower to the Notre Dame Cathedral and other places. (This bus route was made famous, to us, by Rick Steves’ travel books as one of the more local, “back door” ways of seeing this part of Europe). I got across town fairly quickly on the bus, and I started to recognize places we had seen on previous days on the tour bus, so I thought I could get off and back on the bus fairly quickly without getting lost, and see locations that were now more quiet and cooler (it being about 7 am, and many other tourists were still in bed or getting ready to amass on the cobblestones again soon). I got off near Notre Dame, walked to it, and walked quietly and peacefully among the local Parisians, workers, homeless people, pigeons, etc. I snapped a bunch of pictures, and remembered that being behind the camera is another way of being removed from really being there. I was admiring the beautiful stone work, towers, gargoyles, and other beauty that made this creation famous. I was reading information signs in front of the opening, and noticed people starting to gather around me, and a worker from inside the Cathedral come out, talk to some of the individuals as if they knew one another, and she opened the gate. Being that the gathering group of people was going inside, and I was one of them just by my physical presence, I went with the flow. Besides being able to see the beauty from the inside again, there was a Catholic mass scheduled, which I joined with my own mixed emotions. It seemed that all of the other people were local French people, or French travelers as some of them were wearing heavy backpacks. The language spoken was all in French so I didn’t understand the content, but it was emotional for me because it was so beautiful and it brought me to tears at times. When the priest started doing the ritual of the sacrament (the wine and wafers to symbolize the blood and body of Christ), I got uncomfortable and I left at that time, but I felt something and I couldn't quite put words to my feelings. (Some of the feelings I could recognize was my internal conflict because of my own belief systems and my High Power, and my judgments about the Catholic church, their history, etc. - remember I am a social worker with child protection services, and I read about John Knox ...). I left trying to sort out what my head and heart were telling me.
I worked my way back across the River Seine to the bus, and got back on again, soaking it in. Pedestrian, car, motorcycle and bike traffic was picking up, and the bus starting going into parts of Paris that I didn’t recognize. It stopped and parked suddenly, all of the people got off, and the bus driver indicated (not in English!) that I also needed to get off. I stood on the sidewalk trying to sort out the bus schedule, and then noticed that another, and then another, and then another bus, all with #69 on their fronts, pulled up, stopped, drivers got out, and four of them were left empty! (Rick Steves didn’t tell me about this!).
Thinking about being in this strange foreign city, with Mary and the boys back at the motel, and not having cell phones and not having experience using local phones, I started to worry a little, balanced out with trusting the process. Eventually another driver came and got on one of but buses, other passengers got on, and we started moving through the route again, trusting it would circle back to the Eiffel Tower and the neighborhood we were staying at.
I don't know if you have any experience traveling on the streets of large cities in Paris or not, it is scary! Some places they drive on the wrong side of the road (U.K.), and the streets are very narrow, and they hardly ever go straight. Bus Route #69 ended for me this morning with the driver stopping, getting out, and looking at his huge bus just inches away from a parked Volvo, waving traffic to back up, and trying to back up himself. I sauntered away, as I recognized the streets and knew I could walk back to the motel from here.
Later that morning we checked out of the Paris motel, juggling luggage, boys, currency (this is the last place for us to use our Euros), and the shuttle to the Paris airport (with the driver who spoke very little English). The shuttle picked up 2 other passengers from Scotland, which was very interesting ...
We caught the plane from the Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport to the London Heathrow Airport (quite an experience itself). We took a train from the airport to a London station (the Paddington Station), then hired a classic English taxi for ride to hotel in the Victoria neighborhood, checked into our motel (The Elizabeth), and walked to dinner at the Ebury Pub for fish and chips!
Enough for now!
Todd

Check In from Paris - Happy 18th Birthday Nathan!

Wednesday 6/30/2010

Today is Nathan's 18th birthday, and he got served breakfast in bed, and got the remote control for the TV at the same time. (French television is not much fun for me,as I don't understand it).
The family went to Notre Dame Cathedral yesterday, and the Arch de Triumph. It was hot and we were really on “survival mode”, trying to maintain liquid intake, heat, nutrition, energy, patience, communication, respect, karma … Travel like this as a family can magnify our strengths and weaknesses in challenging environments.
Notre Dame Cathedral was very crowded as we toured the inside of this historical, beautiful chapel. We considered climbing 400 steps up to the towers of the cathedral, and while eating ice cream and figuring the time standing and waiting in line in the sun, we didn’t figure it was worth it. (More on Notre Dame later when I make the trip back to it by myself).
We made our way back from Notre Dame in the open-air, double-decker tour bus, plugged in our English translating headphones again, and made our way towards the Arch de Triumph, which was only 284 steps to the top. The French started to build the 165 foot tall Arc de Triumph in 1809 to celebrate Napoleon as the emperor of a “New Rome”. It was not finished before his death, but “it was finished in time for his 1840 funeral procession to pass underneath, carrying his remains (19 years dead) from exile in St. Helena to Paris” (from Rick Steves’ book “Paris 2010”). It was a beautiful view of the Champs-d’Elysees and all of Paris, and I took a series of panoramic photos all around.
It's hard to get around Paris, and the heat and lack of air conditioning in public places make it difficult.
We saw the Pere La Chaise Cemetery today where many famous people are buried and we found many headstones, among them Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, and Jim Morrison (from the Doors). We did not find Fredrick Chopin’s marker. At Oscar Wilde’s marker, there was a brief resume for him on the back, and there was lipstick mark all over it as he was a “writer and martyr to homosexuality who is mourned by outcast men and by wearers of heavy lipstick …” There was a class tour of high school age kids there at the time we were there, and girls were posing for their photo by friends while kissing the marker, leaving their lipstick.
After the cemetery, we could only get reservations at 3 pm to go up the elevator in the Eiffel Tower, at Nathan's request. (We wanted to go up after dark to see the lights, but there were no openings at that time). It was very cool! The elevator stopped at two lower floors before going all the way to the top. Interesting that it was more windy on the ground, while the air was very calm on the top, just under the 1,063 ft. peak. This was built in 1889 for the World’s Fair there by Gustav Eiffel. He had an apartment at the top where he entertained guests, and this had a model displayed at the top posing Gustav with his daughter and Thomas Edison, who had visited there.
This is our last full day in Paris, as we get on a plane tomorrow afternoon for London.
Todd

Check In from Paris - Happy Birthday to Tim!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TIM!!!

I'd sing you a song, but you don't have Skype!

What are you going to do today?

We're sending you a package from Paris, so it will be late. Sorry about that.

It's Tuesday morning. Mary and I are awake, downstairs in the motel lobby having breakfast and coffee while the boys are sleeping in, again. Last night we took a cruise on the River Seine, starting near the Eiffel Tower, and cruising upriver for about 1/2 hour, passing Notre Dame, then turning around and getting off the boat just before the lights on the Eiffel Tower turned on. We're saving the elevator ride up the Eiffel Tower for Wed., for Nathan's 18th birthday, tomorrow night in the dark to see the lights of Paris from up there. It's only a few blocks from our motel.

The day after we arrived, Josh was going crazy wanting us to check see if tickets were available to the Green Day concert that night. They were, and we did. It took us two trips across Paris in the Metro (subway) to get the tickets, get back to the hotel and have dinner, and then get back across town for the concert at 6 pm. The four of us saw opening acts Billy Talent, Paramore, and then Green Day. The concert went from 6 pm to almost 11 pm, with Green Day on almost 3 hours! Billy Joe Armstrong, Tre' Cool, and Mike Dirnt, along with their support musicians (another guitar, and keyboard/sax player) put on an amazing show, really engaging the audience, a huge French crowd who seemed to know and sang along with all of Green Day's songs in English. Very entertaining. In Paris!

We've been taking bus tours to get oriented, and to have English piped into our ear buds so we have a better idea of what we are looking at. There is a LOT of history here. Hitler was here! Napoleon was here! Kings, Queens, Joan of Arc and many others were executed here. We visited the Louvre yesterday (a huge museum), that was way more than we could handle.

It has been very hot here. Josh has been getting sick from dehydration and the heat, making it very difficult for the rest of us. We're going to try to go see Notre Dame today.

You take care of yourself today, Tim, and have a Happy Birthday!

Love,
Todd and family

PARIS!

PARIS!
Saturday 6/26/2010

So, it's now 11 am, Saturday, and I'm sitting in the comfortable, old lobby of our Hotel de la Bourdonnais in Paris. We get free a Wifi Internet connection, so communication is easier from my laptop, although a secure connection to our bank to check balances is uncomfortable, because I'm a little concerned about someone seeing our passwords and account numbers.
We got here to the hotel about 11 pm last night after arriving in Paris on the high speed train from Nice, France about 9 pm.

The magazine in the seat pockets of the train said it traveled at 320 kph (and the staff on the train confirmed that). The Internet when we bought the tickets said it traveled at 185 mph. I'm sitting in the lobby with a gentleman named Steve who currently lives in Portland, and we visited. He works with lasers in Portland, and since he's a scientific guy so I asked about the kph translation to mph. He says 320 kph would be about 192 mph. It was amazingly fast watching things go by, but it was very smooth (glasses and dinner was on the table in front of us on the high-speed train, and nothing fell off until the water bottle was empty, and then it fell off).

Further visiting with Steve, here in the lobby in Paris, he grew up in Missoula, Montana (where I grew up from 1966 until 1984). We both went to Rattlesnake Grade School, and to Hellgate High School, (I graduated from high school in 1973, and he graduated high school in 1981). So far we haven't been able to connect any more common names that both he knew and I knew. He lived on Aspen Drive up the Rattlesnake, which is the road where some of my good childhood friends, like Allen Janes and Ken Weber lived, but he didn't know them.

(Note: I make reference to places often in these writings to try to be clear to the reader, and to myself for record-keeping).

Our family was scheduled to leave Nice yesterday about 3:30 pm (and if we left at that time we would have had 7 minutes to transfer between trains in Toulon, France). The clerk at the train ticket window in Nice, France said in broken English something about rain, and water over the tracks, and that our schedule wouldn't work and so we could leave on an earlier train at 2:30 instead of 3:30. (Someone is watching out for us!). So we left Nice an hour earlier @ 2:30, and the staff on the train said, in very poor English (after we pulled out of the station), that we should not get off in Toulon, but instead we should go further and get off in Marselles, France to transfer to the high speed train to Paris (Arrrrggggh!) This made us very anxious, but they were right, AND we barely had time to transfer from the Nice-Marselles train to the high-speed Marcelles-Paris train. (More blessings in disguise).

And I believe if we had kept to the original plan of doing the whole trip from Vernazza, Italy to Genoa, Italy to Ventimiglia, Italy to Nice, France, to Paris, France on Friday, we wouldn't have made it. Turns we were exhausted when we arrived in Paris, anyway.

So now we have 5 days and 6 nights in Paris before we get on a plane to London.
Josh is going crazy, because the rock band, Green Day, is playing a concert tonight, and he really wants to go. More later on that ...

Todd

Goodbye to Nice, Bonjour to Paris!

Goodbye to Nice, Bonjour to Paris! Traveling from Nice to Paris
Friday 6/25/2010
So, we had printed e-mail confirmations of e-tickets from Nice, France to Paris. We let the boys sleep in late in this comfortable motel (with 2 rooms), and after the boys got up, Mary stayed behind while I walked to the train station and tried to get the actual tickets. I was unsuccessful this time as I stood in lines, tried e-machines that wouldn’t work with my credit card, and gave up after about an hour so I ran back to the hotel as I was running out of time.
I was hot and tired, but we dragged the family and our bags to the train station, and I stood in line again while Josh sat with the bags and Mary and Nate went across the street for take-out Chinese food for the trip.
The clerk at the ticket window told me there had been rain water over tracks somewhere, and the scheduled 7 minutes between trains wasn’t enough time to change trains in Toulon, France. So we were able to go on another train an hour earlier hoping all our connections would be right. On the train, clerks told us to not get off the train in Toulon, but instead go on to Marcelles.
…
I am now writing while on a high speed TGV train, advertised in the magazine on board as going 320 kmh. It was posted in our e-mail when we bought these tickets on-line as going 185 mph. It doesn’t feel that fast, but it is very modern, it is moving fast, and when I could see a distant highway (like one of our Interstate highways), we were certainly moving well-faster that the fastest vehicles.
I’m looking out the window, traveling north from Marseille, France to Paris, France, through Avignon and other towns (and making very few stops since this is a high-speed train). We fly past ancient looking churches in the countryside, past electrical-generating windmills, past nuclear power plants … what a time-warp!
Todd

Nice is nice, but this isn’t where we planned to be tonight …

Nice is nice, but this isn’t where we planned to be tonight …
Thur. 6/24/2010
We're staying, unplanned, in a nice motel in Nice, France. There were rumors in Vernazza, Italy that Italian trains were going to strike on Friday, the day we planned to leave Vernazza. And as that was a big travel day for us out of Italy and we had to catch a train in Nice, France to Paris, we decided to leave Italy a day early to avoid the risk of not being able to get out at all.
But then we ran into another problem – avoiding the train strike in Italy on Friday, we found out there was a train strike in France, on Thursday. We didn’t find this out until we got to the last town in Italy (Ventimiglia) before crossing the border into France. We found out about this standing in line in Ventimiglia to get tickets to Nice when another customer told us that on this day, Thursday, the French trains were on strike! And so we couldn't get out of Italy by train on the French trains to Nice. There were other travelers who we talked with who helped us understand logistics (we needed to go about 90 km to Nice), and so we planned on sharing a taxi to France, but the taxis wouldn't take more than four people, so our family ended up taking a taxi to Nice by ourselves (not cheap). The taxi driver, Pierre, was French, and spoke fairly good English. He told us he lives in Nice, but his taxi business in his modern, small Mercedes was out of Monaco. (He had interesting stories about his other rich clients – not us!) He helped us find a motel room in Nice near the train station. Motels were crowed because of conventions and the Ironman competition in Nice this weekend (the same weekend it is also in Coeur d'Alene)
Ah, but it's nice here. Mary and the boys waded in the French Rivera, we had a good dinner, two deserts, and were entertained by great street artists.
Todd

Life in Vernazza

Life in Vernazza
6/24/2010 Thursday
Travel is amazing! The people, the richness of the variety of Life! The town of Vernazza, Italy was so sweet - it has been here since medieval times and 600 people still live here. There was a very old church right on the water, built in the 1300's I think. My son, Nathan, and I were looking inside, and a man came inside and started setting stuff up on the altar, and he then came and sat down in the pews near us and he started chanting in Italian with Rosary beads in his hand, and then little old Italian ladies, one after the another, came into the church and joined him in call-and-response until there were about 20 ladies all around us, saying the Rosary call-and-response in Italian to this man. (Why only this one man who appeared to be a priest or a lay person, and all of these old women? Where were the other men of the village?)
On the next day in Vernazza (the first whole day there in the Cinque Terra), I got up early to see the sun rise and had coffee at the Blue Marlin cafe while the family slept in. Later in the day the family took the train to Monterosso (the 5th of five communities in the Cinque Terra), and we took a boat back after walking along the water front of this resort community on the Italian Rivera.
On the second whole day in the Cinque Terra, I didn’t sleep well again and got up at 2:30 am. I took a walk, took the 6:30 am train to Riomaggiore (the 1st of five communities in the Cinque Terra) by myself and was unsuccessful in finding any coffee. I returned to Vernazza on the 7:30 am train but the family was still asleep until 8 am. I took a nap until 9:30 am while the family had breakfast without me at the il Pirate restaurant, ran by twin brothers who were very entertaining, so Mary made reservations for dinner there that night. I rented Internet time (30 minutes for 3 Euros). Then the whole family took the train back to Riomaggiore for a nice lunch and a boat ride back to Vernazza. (The famous trails between towns were too steep for this tired family). On this boat ride some of us got too hot, dehydrated, and sea sick, so I took another 90 minute nap, then we swam in the Italian Rivera before dinner.
On our last full day in Vernazza, we heard the church bells sounding differently, and we went down to the village center and found all these local people gathering in front of the church, then they started walking behind a vehicle with something like "Social Services" (in Italian) on the side, with a casket inside the vehicle. The gathering procession followed the vehicle and casket up and out of the village.
That night, in the dark, I found the cemetery high up on the mountain above the village - very, very beautiful that brought me to tears. I could feel the life, the history, the people, the spirits there.
It's so beautiful.
Todd

We Arrive in Vernazza

6/22/2010 Tuesday
My laptop tells me it’s 5 am Tuesday, but other than that, I wouldn’t know. My body woke me up about 4 am today (which is much better than it has been – I think yesterday I woke 1:30 am in Pisa, and didn’t sleep again – I took another great walk in the night on the streets along the river, this time with camera and monopod as my defensive weapon, which I didn’t need, and I watched the sun rise and got some great shots).
We arrived in Vernazza, in the Cinque Terra, Italy late yesterday afternoon by train after a very difficult journey. Check out time was 11 am yesterday at the Hotel Bologna, and as Josh and I hadn’t gotten a chance to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa, all four of us hired the hotel shuttle driver to take us over to the Leaning Tower for a quick eyes-on and photo shoot (that is NOT the way you're supposed to do it - so American!). Because of the time crunch, we had the driver wait about 10 minutes for us and then went back to the hotel to get our bags. Mary was feeling very ill, and then Josh started getting sick. Time was very pressing now, as we had to catch our train, which was about a 15 minute walk away with our bags. At the last minute, we hired the hotel shuttle again instead of walking as Mary and Josh were taking turns running to the bathroom. The train station was a little easier to negotiate for Josh and I since we were here the day before when we went to Florence, but it was all new to Mary and Nathan. Josh and Mary were still both sick and had to stay close to the bathrooms (we were expecting the train to NOT have a “WC” (or water closet), so it was NOT fun).
We did make the train on time, cramming into a small elevator and going underground to another train platform. This one took us from Pisa to LaSpezia, Italy to buy tickets and catch the next train to the Cinque Terra. We found a McDonalds (arrrrggg!) to get some drink and food. I got train tickets for the next ride, and hurriedly got to the next train out of LaSpezia.
The train enters the Cinque Terra through tunnels in the mountain rock (at sea level!), and comes out into the light only at the five towns to beautiful views of the Italian Rivera (the Mediterranean Sea). Ours is the fourth of five villages - Vernazza.
To quote Rick Steves Europe Through the Back Door, “The Cinque Terra (CHINK-weh TAY-reh), a remote chunk of the Italian Riviera (on the Mediterranean Sea) … not a museum in sight … God’s great gift to tourism … for a home base choose among five (cinque) villages, each of which fills a ravine with a lazy hive of human activity … the chunk of coast was first described in medieval times … this land was watched over by castles . Tiny communities grew in their protective shadows, ready to run at the first hint of a Turkish Saracen pirate raid. Marauding pirates from North Africa were a problem until about 1400 …”. (Well, enough homework for the moment … I’m on vacation …).
Arriving in Vernazza, communication with the Italians for us was difficult. With a printed copy of our Itinerary, we were somewhat able to communicate with the train clerk behind the counter, and he called the manager of our apartment, Francesca, who spoke very little English. We pulled out our index cards of English-Italian translations (that Lorissa Lotten had prepared for us – Thanks, Lorissa!) and we made attempts to flip through them to communicate the length of our stay, at the same time while negotiating stairs, crowded walk ways, and lugging our bags.
Our apartment is incredible. Certainly not fancy, but adequate in space with a small room for the boys with 2 beds, and a room for Mary and I, with windows that open up to the town square of a very colorful village and the bay.
After settling a little, looking out over the community center at a very old church, Nathan wanted to explore and go visit the church, so he and I left while Mary and Josh rested from being sick.
I did some catching up on writing while here, but as the Internet is not accessible in our room, and we have to pay for it in the village, I’m going to stop writing for awhile …
Ciao!
Todd

Florence vs. Pisa

6/21/2010 Monday
I’m writing about the trip that Josh and I took to Florence yesterday, Sunday 6/20 (it still gets confusing to me about this time tripping thing, so some reference to days may not always match up – I guess that’s what vacations are about).
With some stress in the family between Mary and myself about separating, Josh and I take the train from Pisa to Florence. We find ourselves sitting across from a couple from Australia, and since they can speak English it’s good to compare notes of travel through conversation and to do reality checks. We have to pay attention to the stops that the train makes to make sure we get off at the right station in Florence (population about 300,000). When we arrive, we are bothered that we have to pay to use the public toilets (I guess they are not so “public”). Exiting the train station into a large open area, we see many old buildings, lots of people, and know that we can’t hardly scratch the surface of how much there is to see, especially with the famous art, and the famous lines you have to stand in to see the popular exhibits. We decide to get on a tour bus for a quick orientation. We ride in the top level of the bus, which has open sides with a soft top, and ear buds to plug in to hear the recorded tour guide with selectable channels for different languages. We hear about Michelangelo, Galileo, and many other famous and not-so-famous people and places . It starts to rain hard, and it gets cold and wet, even under the cover of the roof of the bus. After the one-hour tour, we feel somewhat oriented to the town and places we want to try to see on foot, but we have the need for the bathroom, and don’t want to pay for toilets again, so there is a familiar sight – McDonalds! And yes, free toilets! After that, Josh and get cappuccinos (at McDonalds!) and wait for the rain to lighten up. Then we walk for awhile trying to find a famous building, and walk by poor people who are just pathetic in their condition (a woman in a dress in the gutter of the street, wet from the rain, curled up on her knees with her head down, hand out palm up and trembling as if having a seizure).
We attempt to enter a beautiful church, and are turned away with our camera but they are allowing local people in for what appears to be services (understandable). Another woman begging outside the church, and Josh gives her a coin, but in her Italian that we don’t understand, she gestures to try to tell us it wasn’t enough for her “cinque bambinos” (five children?). We wave her off, and she later tries to take another run at us, as if she didn’t remember us from the first time.
We tour a museum of photographs (which was expensive and disappointing). We walk more, and duck out of the rain for another bathroom stop at a local restaurant, crowded with local people watching the World Cup soccer match (Italy vs. New Zealand).
We finally surrender, glad we saw parts of this famous city, but disappointed it was too big and too crowded and too much for such a short time. We get back on the train to Pisa, get a quick dinner, and get back to the hotel before the agreed-on time, and find that Mary and Nathan attempted, unsuccessfully, to climb the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and got lost and scared trying to find hotel again. (I’ll let Mary tell that story).
Todd

Walking the streets at night ...

6/20/2010 Sunday
Ciao! (My intention to mean "Hello", but I'm not sure I've got it right).
It's now about 2 am Monday, local time in Pisa, and Josh and I weren't sleeping well, so I invited him downstairs with me to the lobby of our Hotel Bologna (like I did the night before by myself).
That night, Saturday night to Sunday morning, when I couldn't sleep I came downstairs to write, then I stepped out into what I had previously dreamed of ... walking the streets of a foreign country by myself in the middle of the night!
When I stepped outside to smell the night air and to listen to the night sounds, there was one man who looked like a local Italian, walking quietly and keeping to himself, and another man a few minutes later who looked possibly like an American or English man, walking quietly with an umbrella until he used it to test some loose stucco off the side of a building (not so quiet anymore, which caused some feelings of anxiety and fear in myself, thinking "That umbrella may be in case of rain, but it is also an assault weapon!"). I found a container of umbrellas just inside the motel door for what appeared to be us guests to use, so I borrowed one.
I left the motel last night about 3 am, walked toward the river and did a circuit, taking about an hour. It was very quiet, with occasional people walking around, and very few cars and motorcycles going by. Not interacting with the people left me to imagine what they were doing - some appeared to have been partying, like the young man who peed off the bridge into the river, some were in lively conversation, some were quiet leaving me to wonder and fill in the gaps with my imagination …
At 3 am with less stimulation of daily city sounds, and with my anxiety aroused in me by being out alone at night (with my very own assault umbrella), my senses were heightened, and I could hear echoes of the slightest sounds, and I smelled breads baking from imagined bakers. I could smell olive oils in their recipes …
The river was separated from the streets by a high (about 4 ft. tall) and thick (about 2 ft.) very old stone wall, making the river inaccessible to this pedestrian. I walked past a very old church along the river, which had amazing stone carvings. I crossed over the river by a very old, arched, stone bridge, then walked upstream about 400 yards (how many meters is that?) to another old, arched stone bridge. I walked past the city hall, which looked centuries old. I tried some alleys, looking at the local cars parked (Fiats, Citroens, Alpha Romeos, and even some Fords). An alley cat spooked me.
After returning “home” and replacing my assault umbrella in it’s place, I returned to bed and slept well.
More later about yesterday, Sunday, which was Father's Day in the U.S. (but not here in Italy) when Josh and I went to Florence, and Mary and Nate stayed in Pisa …
Todd

We’re In Italy!

6/19/2010, Saturday

We had a very rough night on the plane during the 8 hour flight from New York to Pisa, Italy. Nathan didn’t sleep at all, and Mary thinks she may have slept an hour, or none at all. Josh and I may have each slept a few hours, but it was hard to tell. It was very uncomfortable, as the seats didn’t recline very far back (on a Boeing 767), and space was tight in the cattle compartment. (Actually it was a very large plane, with 7 seats across and 2 aisles in the back of the plane where we were).

We arrived in Pisa on time, a little before noon, but it was raining so hard the pilots passed by on the first landing and flew out over the ocean again to wait for the storm to lighten up. We finally landed a little after noon, local time, and with a 9 hour time difference between here and home in Idaho, so that would be about 3 am for our body’s time. We were wasted.

We took a taxi to our Hotel Bologna, checked in, and we have a spacious, high ceiling room with 2 baths (one toilet), and 3 beds. We’re on the second floor where the windows open up to a narrow street – it sort of has a feel like pictures of New Orleans that I have seen. Our windows have shutters that open up across a narrow one-way street.

After showers (for all) and naps (for some), we walked through narrow streets, looking in shops and picking up book that are all in Italian. For dinner Mary and Nathan got tortellini and Josh and I got real Italian pizza – it’s really different!

Then we walked around more and got hand made Italian ice cream. It was great!

It’s now about 8:30 pm local time here now (11:30 am Pacific/Idaho time), and our body-clocks are still a little screwed up.

I’ll try to post some pictures on this Blog.

Arrivederci!

Todd

We’re Outa Here!

6/18/2010, Friday

After an incredible amount of work to cut the ties to “normal” daily living (and especially work obligations), we are in the air! (I’m writing this paragraph here from the plane between Spokane and Minneapolis). We got up 3 am this morning, got on the road (late) about 4:30 am, picked up Patricia Yacker (late) about 5:10 am, and got to the Spokane airport for a 7:10 am flight (on time!). Patricia and Marty will save us parking fees for 3 weeks, and they’ll pick us up at the airport when we return on 7/10.

Heading to Minneapolis, then JFK airport (in New York, where I haven’t been since 1966), and then our long flight to Pisa, Italy!

This second paragraph being written from the JFK airport. Three hours difference in time zones from when we got up this morning, and my body is already a little confused. We will get on the plane here at JFK airport @ 8:45 pm Eastern time (3 hours time difference from Idaho this morning), and we will fly to Pisa, Italy, arriving there tomorrow, Saturday 6/19/2010 @ 11:40 am (I think that’s about 8 or 9 hours difference from Pacific/Idaho time).

Bonjour!

Todd