The BEACH! - Sunday

We finally got Internetworking tonight after several days in which the network dissapeared. We're still at the window.

-D on Monday

I really wanted to get to the beach. It's been a couple of years since I've been to any beach. My swimming trunks have almost regained that new car smell. I came across Ostia ruins in Rick Steve's guide book and noticed it was close to a beach. There is a train that goes that way, and it is the closest beach to Rome.

I woke up before the alarm, ate a quick breakfast, packed a super quick lunch, and ran out the door to catch the 7:39 train. When I got to the station, it said 8:20 for the train (we can't find any documentation of the weekend schedules at the station). So I headed into Albano and tried the Cotral bus. It came at 8 am. When it says Rome, it really means the closest subway stop to us, Angina. I noticed that Angina has an Ikea (not exactly American but it inspires good feelings) and a McDonalds - definitely worth checking out later (Yes we will somehow drag a new bookcase across the Atlantic because they pack those things so tight). So the trip worked out to be: Walk to Albano Center - Bus to Angina - Subway to Termini - Transfer to Subway to Pyramide - Transfer to train to Ostia - Catch number 7 bus to beach. I left the house at 7:30 am. I saw the Mediterranean at 11 am. But it's the beach so it's worth it.

I walked for several miles; the beach keeps going, with people and vendors along the way. There are substantial dunes with trees and a strip of sand along the sea. The water was not North Carolina August warm, but it still nice for a short swim. I like to walk at home, maybe a couple of times a week, but here I'm been walking like ... a guy who walks a lot (or like a guy after his second DWI conviction - is that appropriate?).

I decided to leave time to get home, so I headed back around 3 pm. Shortly before I left, there was a min-cyclone - a tornado looking spiral out in the sea. It was unusual enough that everybody was grabbing his cell phone to take pictures. That was followed by very dark clouds. People streamed off the beaches. I noticed something very un-European. A few people went to the bus stops. But a flood of cars headed out of the many small parking lots. A lot of cars. A lot of motorcycles. It hit me: Italians don't like public transportation any more than Americans do. Europeans are supposed to be environmental and maybe their incredibly tiny cars (do tall people just not drive here?) make them more so than Americans. But they still like to drive many kilometers. They want to go to the beach in 40 minutes, not 180 minutes. And when America spends billions more on public transportation, people will still prefer to drive. Going to a city center may be easier with a subway, but moving around the city can be slow, very slow. Some times the trains just stop on the tracks for ten minutes. Then when they go, they travel at around 30 miles an hour.

And on the bus ride home, there were cars everywhere. Most things are closed on Sunday nights, so I don't know where they are going. I also noticed the two lane each way divided highway was almost an interstate, but it had crosswalks - no lights or anything, just frogger-style crossing.

The way home was also slow; this time I tried a different bus that was supposed to go directly to the Eur Fermini station. However it went in a loop and then proceeded back to the stop and then onto many other stops before getting to the subway station. We are learning these buses the hard way. I think the time was similar to the train. Then a subway, a transfer to another subway, and the bus. So around 4 hours of beach for 7 hours of traveling. I really like the beach; I might try again tomorrow. 5 hours to Wilmington, NC for some beach time and sea food has always been a good day trip.

-D

L's Musing about Italy

I am beginning to realize that traveling in another country means a lot of trial and error and getting lost. Well, technically, D & I get lost a lot in North Carolina, but we know the language and the main basic roads, so we don't stay lost for too long. Plus, since we retired Shea (our old Magellan GPS that led us astray a lot) for Mags (our British-accented Garmin), we hardly get lost at all. Well, we brought Mags, but she's about as reliable as Shea in Rome. Daniel tells me the problem is urban canyons where he can't pick up the signal, so we wander a bit until Mags rejoins us. This is not a big deal if we are not on a schedule, which is usually the case. However, we had to make reservations for the Borghese Gallery. The have a very strict reservation policy and you can only stay for two hours and then they give you the boot. You are supposed to arrive a half hour early to get your tickets. Well, we had spent the morning being lost, er, exploring Travastere. We were actually looking for a couple of different guide book recommended restaurants for lunch. Mags was confused again, the first place we tried didn't exist anymore, and Rick Steves' "homey" restaurant wasn't quite ready to serve yet. Side note: restaurants and shops post hours of operations, but they are really suggestions. They might open twenty or thirty minutes later, take siesta (a three-four hour period in the afternoon when all the shops close), or just decide to call it a day at 1pm on Saturday. I remember Rob saying once that he didn't like Denmark because he couldn't buy milk on Sunday. I remember thinking, "What's the big deal? Just buy it on Saturday." Now I understand the aggression. You probably tried to get milk for the last two days but were too early, too late, or came during siesta. Plus they sell the milk in such tiny containers that are clearly not for cereal eating (also suggested by the all of four cereal choices at the store).

Sorry. Got a bit off topic. Travastere was indeed very beautiful and did look like the Italy they show in movies all the time. I even got a picture of someone's wash on the line on a narrow street. There were beautiful flowerboxes in windows everywhere and the buildings were all painted in cheerful hues made a little less brilliant by age and dust. The objective of going there was to walk around and see it, not go to any particular site, so getting lost served our purpose nicely. We saw a great deal more of Travestere that we probably would have otherwise. We eventually just picked a restaurant that looked good and it was. It was still more trial and error, though. Once again I tried to order gnocchi. The first time was our first day in Rome. I was told I couldn't have it because it was only served on Tuesday. As it was Tuesday, I was a bit confused, but ordered the lasagna anyway. This time I ordered the gnocchitta in tomato cream sauce, thinking this just meant small gnocchi (it was listed with two other gnocchi dishes). It turns out that gnocchitta is the little shell pasta like you get in the Velveeta shells and cheese box. It was still good, though. Likewise, Daniel ordered the calzone with mushrooms and got instead the calzone with proscuitto. Again, still good, put not quite what we were expecting. I will say they make fabulous pizza/calzone crust here and many wonderful cheeses.

Again, I digress. Food always distracts me. Anyway, after lunch we realized we really needed to book it to get to the gallery on time. Ha, Ha. We got lost for over two hours. All those winding streets I had praised for their beauty suddenly became my worst enemy. My bad foot that still has the pinched nerve actually went numb at one point because we walked for so long. We finally made it to the gallery not 30 minutes early as they recommended, but twenty minutes after our reservation. We told the ticket lady we had reservations at 3pm and she said, "It is impossible! You must now wait to 5!" So, I gratefully sat on a bench for over an hour until 5pm when they would let us in. D, who has been Mr. Boundless Energy over here, decided to walk through the large park that connects with the gallery instead. We finally got in and found that the gallery was pretty small. They did have a lot of nice pieces, including some stunning sculptures and paintings done by Raphael, but we were still done in an hour. I'm not sure why they wouldn't just let us in at 3:20. Thankfully, in D's exploring the park he found a bus that got us back to Termini, where we take the train home. It was late and we were in a rush to catch the train, so we got McDonalds and ate it on the train. The fries aren't really the same, but I took great comfort in the fact that the Big Mac tasted just like the Roxboro Durham's, and they even had the mix on the Coke right.

I'm reading Bill Bryson's I'm a Stranger Here Myself while I am here. It's a book that compiles about two years worth of a weekly column he wrote after returning to the US after living in the UK for 20+ years. It is especially funny to me right now. I've never considered myself an America hater by any means, but I always kind of imagined us as inferior to Europe for some reason. I have to say, though, I love air conditioning and showers larger than a postage stamp, and hot water, and TOLIET SEATS!, and customer service. We may lack old world charm, but gosh darn it, we have convenience. Don't get me wrong, I am enjoying my time here, but I am appreciating home more than I thought I would.

Wednesday - the female perspective

Well, I thought I should probably put in my two cents worth. Daniel spends most of the evening either typing for the blog or doing window acrobatics to post the blog, plus I'm usually falling asleep on the couch, so I thought I'd try the morning shift while Daniel is still in bed. It is if Carolina is with me in spirit, because even though we have gone through a time change, I still wake up every morning at 6am when she normally wakes me up to come watch her eat breakfast.

Speaking of breakfast, Daniel is currently in Nutella heaven. There's not much in the way of cereal around here, although we do have a box of cornflakes. Still, seemed like a good idea to embrace the bread and nutella for breakfast habit. Apparently it's popular because Nutella comes in like 5 sizes here, including one made of glass with cartoon characters on it, so you can save it as a drinking glass. I have drunk out of one such Pink Panther glass that our host had in the cabinet. Making coffee has been more difficult that I thought. I was sure I was set bringing a grinder, my favorite beans, and a press. Unfortunately, I forgot that the coffeegrinder is 120v, and so I can't actually use it. I've been trying various methods of crushing and cutting the beans on my own. It sort of works, but creates weak coffee resembling coffee flavored tea. It's better than nothing, I suppose. I did have a strong but drinkable Cafe Americano at McDonald's yesterday. I still can't bring myself to try the sludge-like espresso that is everywhere.

We are already going to the market daily, if nothing else, to get bread. They have giant loaves of fresh bread with a very hard crust (read-crack a tooth crusty), and they are nice and slice off as much of the loaf as you want and charge you by weight. We've discovered it's stale after 24 hours, and can maybe stretch it 48 hours if you plan to toast it (in the oven, no toaster here). Actually, no microwave either, so we are back to Daniel's hamburger helper college days of make the baked pasta, put the dish in the fridge, and then put it back in the oven each night. Cooking has been interesting, but not too difficult. We arrived to find a giant bowl full of the real deal link sausage defrosting in the fridge for us. Andrea assured us "is good." It was good, and surprisingly lean. I've been trying to incorporate it into our meals, but I don't think I really can eat that much sausage. He also left us a hunk of spicy salami that smells like pepperoni, but I admit I'm a little afraid of that. I was told that Southern Italian cooking is less about spice and more about fresh ingredients. That has held true so far. The pizza is simple but good, and most things are not seasoned with much more than salt. I had lasagna in a restaurant yesterday. The pasta and cheese were very fresh and delicious, but the sauce was basically just tomato sauce. Even our host only had two spices in his house--salt and rosemary. He's got pepper now,too. I have this urge to load my pockets up with little spice jar and "kick it up a notch" as Emeril would say. We've had gelato a couple of times, but I think I've decided again, that while the ingredients are fresh, it's a bit too creamy for me and the flavor is not intense enough. It's possible I just haven't had good gelato yet, as I am told there can be a big difference between places, but I think it's a texture thing for me. Now I'm on the hunt for Italian ice. I read there were little carts selling it in Rome, but I haven't seen any yet. I am looking forward to the rich flavors of French cooking.

We came home last night and reevaluated what we still wanted to see and dicovered we were way too efficient the first day without meaning to. It looks like we have a day for Vatican touring (next Tuesday) and Wednesday we are going to see the Borghese Gallery (where they will only let you in for two hours), Jewish Ghetto, and Travstevere, and a couple of churches. However, this will mean we will have seen everything on our to do list and more in only three days. We could keep going in, but it would be for things like the museum that traces the history of Latin Language (I can hear Sarah H. getting excited) or one of the many "this is what's left of our sculpture" museums. I love sculpture, so I was a little sad to discover that aside from the Borghese and the Vatican, most of the art and sculpture museums resemble the Forum. "Here's a half a column that used to be a Temple," only at the art museums its more like, "While missing both arms, a chunck out of the hip, and half her face, this is clearly a fine example of an ancient statute of Venus." Daniel and I decided we just can't get too excited about ruins that are mostly just rubble. My imagination only goes so far. I was particularly disgusted reading this huge plaque in the Forum about this amazing equestrian statute that was supposed to be right in front of us. I kept asking Daniel, "Am I blind, I just don't see it?" Finally, D discovered in the fine print that all that was left of the statue was a line of square blocks in the grass. I guess if Harrison Ford, a hat, and a whip aren't involved, archeology doesn't hold our attention for long. It reminded me of when I took a summer archeology class with Mr. McGrew. He was actually disappointed with me. "You really don't like this, do you?" I think my reply had something do do with extreme boredom.

Still, I love the feel of Rome and all of the beautiful winding streets. They are so narrow you think they are pedestrian walkways, but in fact traffic goes down them both ways--thankfully they seem to be both understanding and patient with pedestrians. There are flowers everywhere, especially in the countryside, where red poppies grow wild. It's a lovely city to just absorb and take in. We are about 30 km from the center of Rome in Albano Laizle, not Castel Gandolfo as we originally thought, although it is only about a mile away. Where we are staying is more a working man's town, where Castel Gandolofo appears to be all lake houses for the rich. That means where we are staying is a normal town with a grocery store, cheap places to eat, etc., which is actually better for us. I also really like being out where it is smaller and quieter to recoop at night. Since it appears we will have some extra time when we are not in Rome, I'm trying to explore options in the countryside since it has been so pretty. I think we might go to Trivoli where there is a large estate that is similiar to Versailles. I would also like to take the train up through Tuscany to Florence, but I have yet to have good enough Internet to see how much that would cost. Plus, we seem to need a recoop day of not doing much for every day like yesterday. I think our goals today are sleep, see a bit more of Albano Laizle and do some laundry.

-L

Monday – Hills and Lakes

It turns out exhaustion really helps with adjusting to a new time zone. We were up early. We went to the market for food. There was a lot of unhealthy food. I thought Europeans were healthier than us. If it's up to grocery store aisle population, chips, cookies, and soda are very popular. We also bought toilet paper. The apartment had a bidet , but it holds no interest for us. Maybe useful as a flower pot?

We took the train to Castel Gandolfo, where there is a summer home for the Pope. We did a lot of uphill walking, but the lake on edge of town made it very beautiful. The GPS helped a lot with the winding roads. There was a working pay phone next to a beautiful church. We tried using three calling cards, so we ended up using a credit card at about 1 Euro/minute to call Dad. We also tried to send an e-mail from the payphone for 0.20 Euro to update the blog. It never posted. It took two tries. The instructions were in Italian, so the first time I entered the e-mail address as the body of the message and vice versa. The ATMs are very friendly with multiple languages, so the phones monolinguality was disappointing. We bought some post cards, but we couldn't quite figure out the post office.

Afterward, L made a great dinner - Italian of course. I traveled to the center of town and randomly found an electronics shop for the adapter that will let us plug American plugs into Europlugs. Again no language connection, but I brought an American plug and looked desperate. I thought I had brought an adapter, but it only works the GPS. On the way back, I got lost and the GPS couldn't get a signal. It turns out there are several busy streets when I thought there was one, and I lost track. I wandered down hill and found the train station near the house.

In the evening, we watched TV - American TV. Fortunately, there are multiple audio channels on the TV, so we can watch American shows in English. Today there was Star Trek and the Big Bang Theory. The same works with some Italian DVDs.

I spent a lot of time hunting wifi signals. On the roof I finally got an open signal. I then discovered if I put the laptop out of the window on its side, I can get the signal. Move it in too far or rotate it and the signal dies. But it's better than nothing.

Saturday-Sunday: Traveling to JFK to GTW to Rome

Quick Summary

We got here okay by Sunday afternoon and enjoy the city.

Check-in and JFK

We changed airlines in JFK, so we had to shuttle around bags. JFK is huge. I read that some people pay for a taxi to get between terminals, but I didn't believe until today. We arrived at terminal 8 and walked what seemed like a mile to get our bags. We were very fortunate to find a free cart right at the gate. We then went to terminal 1 to hold our carry-on bags while we were in Manhattan . Then it was off to terminal 7 to check our big bags with British Air.

Our check-in agent was like Dieter from Sprockets. "This interaction is cumbersome and bores me. This conversation is terminated," was his attitude.

NYC

Then we got back on the airport train to the Long Island Railroad transfer station. Then 20 minutes to Penn Station in Manhattan and another few on the subway to the Port Authority. We walked to the UN and took the M27 bus back. So we enjoyed almost every form of transportation today, from escalators to airplanes to trains(no ferries or rickshaws).

We walked around the UN visitor area for a little while. There were some cool photographs of animals from around the world. Showing my lack of refinement, I was thrilled to see the UN's support of ice cream technology with its ice cream vending machine, which is the kind that uses a vacuum hose to deliver the ice cream, in the basement.

We enjoyed the city, and it gave us a little trial run of navigating a busy city, albeit in English this time.

Back to JFK

Requirements for a good restaurant:

• It has the name McDonalds
• It has cheap chicken McNuggets
• It has free wifi
• It has CNN in high definition playing in the market
• It has free refills

Helpful, but not absolutely essential:

• It has a large table where ten old guys of various ethnicities sit around and argue for hours, in a way that you can hear what they are saying but not understand 90% of it. To be fair, only the Roxboro/I-85 McDonalds meets this requirement.

The JFK McDonalds fails on all but one requirement. Nevertheless, my last American McMeal was tasty and filling.

Flight to London Gattwick

We got an upgrade to World Traveler Plus from economy, right before we boarded the plane. We did not know why or even what it meant. It's one level up from "economy" or "commoners"-we couldn't tell with the accent of the stewardess and all. I quickly walked back to economy to see how much better we had it. We have a little more leg room. We get nicer headphones. I was a little surprised at that quick instinct to feel better than others.

We get a curtain. I've seen the first class curtain before, but I've always been behind it. We still are behind the black first class curtain, but a blue veil separates us from the truly unwashed masses. In reality, it just makes it hard to see when the loo is available.

Speaking of for-n-r speak (no offence meant to for-n-r's) , from the British paper, I deduce we are taking a break, not a vacation. Holiday seems to be okay as well, and it sounds less romanticaly disastrous. "We are taking a break" doesn't sound encouraging for a tenth anniversary trip.

The satellite phone in the seat cost $4 + $0.15/second. PER SECOND. So it might cost $10 to call and say, "Guess WHERE I am calling from? It is actually tempting. In fact, the phone also serves as the TV remote control. So it's always there, tempting you.

When I went to the WC in the economy section, I was afraid to cross the curtain. I went back around before realizing that my seat was beyond the great wall of blue.

Good conversation with my wife made the ride seem shorter!

Listened (accidentally) to Sunday, Bloody Sunday while approaching Ireland and heard Beautiful Day as the sun came up

London Gatwick to Albio Laziale

The 2 hours we spent on the runway waiting to take off at JFK almost led us to miss the connection to Rome. It took a lot of walking without much help from escalators, to do the rail transfers to get to our town, Albio Laziale. We asked some Nuns for their cell phone, when the pay phone wouldn't call. Without speaking their language, we gestured that the pay phone was kaput while they kept pointing us in that direction. They let us and refused a Euro as payment.

Our host picked us up at the train and delivered us to our apartment. We relaxed a little then hunted for food. A nearby pizza place closed when we initially passed. Very friendly people at a pharmacy helped us to find a restaurant after initially thinking we were looking for food in the pharmacy.

It turned out they had pointed us back to the pizza place, which was on siesta and would reopen at 5 pm. In the mean time we followed people to a neighborhood yard sale. Eight track tapes and George Michael records were available, and I was tempted. 100 year old antiques were next to 4 small animatronic feet that danced to "Unchained Melody." They had a lot of Italian books. I should have realized it earlier, really instantly, but the books drove it home that they really do speak a very different language here. Not just for fun between friends, but all the time.

At around 5, we went back for pizza. They were friendly but not in a hurry (it was really opening 5ish). After only snacks all day, we were very hungry and the pizza was good.

I was very tired by 9pm Sunday. From Thurs Noon to Sunday Noon EDT, I had about 6 hours of sleep.

You can tell I had a lot of time on the plane with the old pocket PC to write this all. I haven't written this much since writing VB code in 2005

-D