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

1 week before we leave

6/11/2010, Friday
It is now one week before we leave for our trip to Europe. I feel like Bonnie, our Golden Retriever, chasing her tail with a chicken with it's head cut off thrown into the middle of the circle. Much preparation done, with still much preparation to do with a deadline to get everything done in a VERY short period of time.
In one week, on Friday 6/18/2010, at this time (about 5 am) we will be picking up Patricia Yacker in Spokane who will be driving us to the airport to drop us off for our flight @ 7 am to Minneapolis, then JFK airport, then to Pisa, Italy for the first leg of our trip. (Thank you Patricia!)
Today is a furlough day (office closure) for my state job, but I have much work to do today because I'll be gone for 3 weeks.
I hope to keep these posts interesting and brief so as to not lose your attention.
Later,
Todd Neel