A Traveling Fool

On a day trip to the Loire Valley, our first stop was Chateau d’Amboise.  It was perched high on a cliff over the Loire River.  What became after this visit, one of my favorite chateaux, Amboise was originally built some time before 900.  Confiscated by the monarchy in the 1434, in 1498, King Charles VIII died at Amboise after hitting his head on a door lintel.  That must have been quite a blow.  But then, the door lintels are all made of stone.

One of the interesting features of the place is an enormous circular entrance from below the castle up to the courtyard.  It was designed to allow horses and carriages to climb up a cobbled, interior road inside of a tower.  Sometimes though, during revelries accompanied by a great deal of alcohol, people would race their horses up and down the circular entrance.  I have to say that I’m surprised nobody lost their life during one of those races.

King Francis I invited Leonardo da Vinci to come and live at Amboise.  He gave him a house in town called Clos Lucé.  Da Vinci died at Amboise in 1519 and was buried in the chapel on the grounds of the chateau.

King Henry II and his wife, Catherine de Medici, raised their children at Amboise, including the future Francis II and his wife, Mary Queen of Scots.  They were married in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris as teenagers (Francis was fourteen and Mary sixteen), but had been raised together at Amboise from the time that Mary was six and Francis was four.  Francis became king at the age of fifteen, when his father died while jousting.  He only reigned for a little over a year before he died.

Next was Chateau de Chenonceau, which had been built 1514 – 1522 on the foundation of an old mill and later extended to span the River Cher.  King Henry II seized it from its owner and gave it to his mistress, Diana (who was twenty years his senior — atta girl, Diana!).  Once Henry died, his queen, Catherine de Medici, took the chateau from Diana and gave her Chateau Chaumont instead.  Fortunately for Chenonceau, its owner at the time of the Revolution, Madame Dupin, was popular with the people, so it wasn’t destroyed.

The third chateau we visited was Chateau de Chambord, which was built as a hunting lodge for Francis I 1519 – 1547.  It has over 200 rooms plus a double circular staircase in the center of the house and two outdoor circular staircases in the courtyard.  The building was never fully completed and was emptied of its furniture during the Revolution.  Then, it was abandoned for many years.  The majority of the rooms are still empty, although some have been furnished with pieces from museums.  During World War II, much of the art from the Louvre (including the Mona Lisa) was stored at Chambord for safe keeping.  We were allowed to go up on the roof, which was like its own little village.

Another day trip was to the town where Van Gogh died and the town where Monet lived.  Auvers-sur-Oise was where Vincent Van Gogh spent the last two months of his life and painted 70 to 80 paintings.  Our tour began with the church, where we saw the graves of Vincent and his brother, Theo, side by side.  We back-tracked from the church to the field where Van Gogh shot himself in the chest.  From there, we followed the route that he would have taken from the field back to the inn where Van Gogh had his room (and where he died after the fatal gunshot wound).

Theories abound as to just what was wrong with Vincent Van Gogh.  Some have said mental illnesses of various kinds.  Some have said Menieres (which is a balance disorder) and some have said Tinitis (which is a ringing in the ears and often exists with Menieres).  Nobody really knows.  But it seems so sad that someone so very talented suffered so badly.  He also never had much financial success during this lifetime.

Traveling to Giverny, we began with lunch at the American Impressionist Museum.  We also viewed the paintings there, which included several masterpieces.

Quite a contrast with Van Gogh, Claude Monet was very successful during his lifetime and his house and gardens at Giverny (to which he moved in 1883) reflected that success.  The house was pink with green shutters on the outside and blue, white and yellow inside.  It had a cottage feel to it — albeit a large cottage.  Mom was so taken with the bright and sunny interior that she changed the color palette of her bedroom to the same blue, white and yellow of Monet’s house.

The gardens were extensive — not only those surrounding the house, but the water gardens as well.  These were reached through a tunnel under the road that ran between them.  This was where Monet had painted all those famous waterlily paintings.

Claude Monet was the artist who had given the Impressionist movement its name with his 1872 painting titled “Impression, Sunrise”.  As a result, he was one of the most prosperous of the Impressionists as well as one of the most prolific.

The Orangery in the Tuilleries in Paris was closed for restoration, so we were unable to see the huge waterlilies paintings on display there.  Something for a future visit.

Our trip to Champagne country in France began with a visit to Chartres Cathedral.  Built in the 12^th century, it is the 5^th cathedral on the site since the 4^th century.  The feature that Chartres has is its spectacular stained glass windows, which I couldn’t capture all that well with the camera I was using back then.

Our next stop was Taittinger Champagne Cellars.  Although the company was formed in the 18^th century, many of the cellars have been there since the 4^th.  The tunnels and caves were dark and cool and the champagne was light and smooth.

By this time in my mom’s life, she was unable to drink alcohol any more due to medications she was taking.  So I would drink her share too.  This gave me a couple sample glasses of the champagne they produce.

After Taittinger’s, but before lunch, we visited Reims (or Rheims) Cathedral.  This was the coronation cathedral for all but three of the kings of France.  The cathedral was severely bombed during World War II.  Some of the stone even melted.  The windows at each end of the cathedral were restored, but the windows on the sides were replaced with white glass.  One of the chapels contains stained glass windows made by Chagall.

The cathedral also has a black Madonna and child.  This was because the earlier pagean goddess of the area was black and the early Christians wanted to give people something to which they could relate.

Lunch was in a lovely restaurant near the cathedral.  It was a three course meal included in the price of the tour that consisted of paté de foie grois, followed by mixed pork and beef with a timbale of vegetables and another of potatoes (all of which had rich sauces), and mousse a l’orange for dessert.  This was accompanied by a glass of a light Chardonnay with the paté, two glasses of a dry red wine with the main course, and a glass of sweet rosé with dessert.  For me, this meant eight glasses of wine.  They were all small glasses, but it was still eight glasses of wine.  I was feeling no pain by the time we left the restaurant and we still had one more stop to go before heading back to Paris.

Our last stop was the town of Epernay and the caves of Möet and Chandon (founded in 1749).  This is where Dom Perignon is made.  Dom Perignon is the name of the monk who is credited with inventing the method for making champagne.

Along with the various types of champagne they make, they also had on hand a cask of port that belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte.  He had been a friend of Jean-Remy Möet, grandson of the founder.  Napoleon would take bottles of Möet champagne with him when he went to fight his battles.  That was how their champagne became known in other countries.  They still have the largest percent of the export market of all French champagnes.  Napoleon left his cask of port behind to pick up later, but never returned to get it.  It still sits there, waiting.

By the time we left Epernay, I was ready for a nap.  Fortunately we only needed to return to Paris and get to our hotel.  The lunch had been large enough that no dinner was needed that night.  Just a couple of items from the small shop in between Cityrama and the hotel would do.  I kept pretty quiet and Mom steered me along.  So, to the casual observer, nothing appeared to be amiss.  But we both knew I was pretty well schnozzled, snockered, squiffy, and soused.  It was definitely the most inebriated I have ever been on any trip I have taken.

The cab driver from the airport to the hotel on a 2000 return trip to Paris was quite entertaining.  He swore at all the other drivers and kept up a running commentary in a mixture of French and English.  This was one of those times when I was trying hard not to watch what he was doing and just keep praying (when not answering one of his questions).  Mom kept up a running prayer, eyes closed.  I felt that I was doing well not to let out a scream at any of several points.  On a trip earlier this year, I actually did let out something between a gasp and a small scream while being driven from the airport to the hotel in London.

I planned and booked the entire trip myself.  The Paris version of Grey Lines (which is called Cityrama) was just around the corner from the hotel where we were staying.  So we had some days when we stayed in Paris and explored the city and others when we zipped around the corner and got on a tour coach to some place fun for the day.

At one time the hotel had been an apartment building, with an apartment (flat) on each floor.  Our room seemed to have been the sitting room of the apartment that had been on our floor.  It was light, airy, and roomy.  It also had a lovely balcony.  We could see the Tuileries garden, the Musee d’Orsay and the river when we looked in one direction, and Sacre Coeur in the other.  You would have thought that this would be an expensive hotel, but it wasn’t.  The price even included breakfast.

The hotel was just up the road, about a half a block, from the Louvre.  We walked down to the Tuileries, hung a left, and we were there.  I had learned of a second entrance to the museum that didn’t involve standing on line forever in the courtyard and entering through the pyramid.  We gave it try and found there was no line at all until we were inside under the pyramid and on the line for the actual entrance ticket.  Slick deal!  Did I feel guilty about all of the people waiting in that interminably long line?  Nope.  Normally I would have been with them (and on my first trip to Paris, I had been).

They had an exhibition of Rembrandt’s etchings in galleries in the Sully wing.  That’s where we began.  Then we went and said, “Hi” to the Winged Victory and the Mona Lisa (as well as a few other masterpieces) in the Donan wing.  When I had seen the Mona Lisa before, I hadn’t been able to get much of a view.  Too many people.  This time I was able to see it quite well and linger in front of her for a bit.

We had some lunch in the museum, then went on to explore the English artists (Constable, Turner, Gainesboro), followed by the period furniture and the Napoleon III rooms in the Richeleau wing.  By the time we were done, we were worn out.  We had dinner at a café just across the street from the Louvre which faced the golden statue of Joan of Arc, headed around the corner and up the Rue de St Roch to the hotel.

The day we went to the Musee d’Orsay was the day we ended up in the “line that snaked along forever”.  Unfortunately, I had chosen the day that the Louvre and most other museums were closed.  Well, so did everyone else.  We inched along for a good hour before we finally made it into the museum.  But, at least we spent most of the time on the side of the museum facing the Seine.  So we had something to watch.

I am a huge fan of the French Impressionists.  This museum was chock full of many of my favorite paintings, including those from which I had created my own version by attempting to copy a photo in an art book.  I was very surprised to find that the original of the Degas painting “L’etoile” was about the same size as the version I had painted of it.  I somehow expected the originals of all these works to be so much larger.  We spent much of the day there, having lunch in their café.  I found that the building itself was fascinating as it was a former rail station.  There were some men repairing one of the massive clocks high up above the galleries.

As we explored the city, I kept thinking of the film “An American in Paris” and imagined Gene Kelly gliding by.  Most of what we wanted to see in Paris itself was fairly easy walking distance from the hotel.  One day we walked up the Rue de Pyramides to Avenue de l’Opera.  We visited the Paris Opera — the Palais Garnier.  The exterior was in scaffolding, so I couldn’t get any really decent photos of it.  But I did get some good shots of the grand staircase.

We were disappointed to find that we could not tour the lower levels — especially the lake.  Yes, there really is a lake.  I suppose that there just isn’t a safe or convenient way to get tourists down there.  It probably would be rather boring in reality anyway.  The romantic image in our minds is more intriguing.

Because the water table was so high and the foundations needed to be so deep, the builders flooded one of the subterranean levels to have the pressure inside of the building counteract the pressure being exerted by the water outside of the building.  Ingenious really.  But that also means the water would be wall to wall.

We came back down towards the hotel via a route that allowed us to take in the Place Vendome and the Place du Concorde.  The Place Vendome is a grouping of very expensive shops (such as Chanel and Cartier), restaurants, hotels (such as the Ritz) and flats.  This is where Frederic Chopin and Coco Chanel both lived.

During the French Revolution, the Place du Concorde was renamed the Place du Revolution and was where the guillotine was set up to execute the more important figures such as King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette, Princess Elisabeth of France, Charlotte Corday, Madame du Barry, Georges Danton, and Maximilien Robespierre.  The obelisk in the center of the square is Egyptian, from the time of Ramses II and is said to be located on the spot where the guillotine used to be.  In 2000, there was a very large Ferris wheel erected in the square for the millennium celebrations.

Also connected to the Revolution was the church at the top of the street our hotel was on, Saint Roch.  The church had been built in the 1600s.  The Marquis de Sade was married there in the 1700s.  Several battles during the Revolution were fought around the church, including one in which a young lieutenant named Napoleon distinguished himself.  The façade of the church and the steps leading to it are pock-marked with bullet holes and damage from explosions.  Inside are several chapels.  The one Mom and I chose to sit down in was dedicated to the French Jews that had perished in the concentration camps during World War II.  The inscription on its wall says, “Mon Dieu, fait de moi un instrument du votre paix” — “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.”

Our last day spent in Paris, we walked over to the Isle de Cite, which was the island on which Paris was originally founded.  The Romans mentioned the island as being walled with wooden bridges in the 300s.  Our first stop was l’Conciergerie.  This had been where most the roughly 2,900 people guillotined during the Reign of Terror were imprisoned.  It is a pretty large building and was fascinating to visit — sort of like a French version of the Tower of London.  They had a recreation of Marie Antoinette’s cell, complete with a wax representation of her.  Parts of the building are medieval.

From l’Conciergerie, we went to Saint Chappelle.  This royal chapel was built in the 13^th century, by the king who later became known as Saint Louis (Louis IX), as part of the palace what was there at the time in order to house the crown of thorns, a piece of the cross, the lance that had pierced Christ’s side, and other relics.  The chapel was gorgeous.  It often is referred to as a jewel box and I would agree.  During the French Revolution, much damage was done to the chapel and the relics were dispersed.

After lunch in a café near Notre Dame, we visited Notre Dame.  Although we had been there before, it had been while on a tour, so it had been a relatively quick visit and rather overwhelming.  This time, we had all the time we wanted.  We not only explored every nook and cranny, but also spent some time just sitting in one of the pews (near the statue of Joan of Arc) and soaking it in.  The cathedral began being built in 1163.  It is enormous and quite dark inside.  I am looking forward to visiting it again with a digital camera that will be able to better capture the interior.  There are a few fairly decent shots included with this post.

In the next few posts, we’ll continue our time in France with visits to the Champagne Region, the Loire Valley, Normandy, Fontainebleau & Versailles, Monet’s house, plus the village where Van Gogh died.

In 1999 Mom and I both had enough frequent flyer miles to fly to London for free.  So we decided to go for my birthday in mid-December.  We liked the idea of the Fielding Hotel, which was at the intersection of two gas lit, cobblestoned, pedestrian-only streets near the Royal Opera House.  The Fielding was a stone’s throw from where Henry Fielding’s house had been and dated to the same period — the early 1700s.

Henry Fielding had been the author of the novel “Tom Jones”.  But he had also been a magistrate at the Bow Street Magistrate Court just across the street from the Royal Opera House.  He and his brother formed the first police force in 1749, called the Bow Street Runners.

Since the hotel was located in a former house, it had no lift (elevator).  Fortunately we knew that and packed accordingly.  We each brought one small case (a small version of the roller bags that people now bring on airplanes as carry-ons) plus a shoulder bag and wore everything multiple times.  In addition, I had a large duffle bag packed flat inside of my case to hold our clothing on the way home so we could pack the presents we planned to buy in the more structured cases.  The room was in the back of the building, which had a sloped roof.  The bathroom was down a half flight of stairs.  Getting ready to go out took planning to avoid traveling up and down the stairs multiple times.  We also left a light on down below when we went to bed should one of us need to negotiate the stairs in the middle of the night.

After settling in at the hotel, we went for a walk in the area, had lunch and then stopped in at Covent Garden to see what was going on there.  They always have musicians or singers performing for free.  We listened to two violinists and a cellist prior to two flutists.  We poked around in the various shops to pick up some Christmas gifts for family members and friends.  Covent Garden was decorated for Christmas and was very festive.

The next day, we traveled over to the Kensington area to visit the Victoria and Albert Museum.  They were having a special exhibit of costumes from the film Elizabeth, starring Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush and Joseph Fiennes.  After having lunch in the museum (they have a very good cafeteria), we headed for Harrods for some more Christmas shopping.

Harrods had a great pet section with lots of fun dog toys.  Bill Clinton was President at the time.  They had toys of both him and Tony Blair (who was Prime Minister).  I found out when going through Customs back in the States that dog toys are custom free.  Who knew?  Once we were done shopping, we went for a cream tea just across the street.  That filled us up enough that supper wasn’t necessary.

The following day we visited Prince Henry’s Room on Fleet Street.  Prince Henry was King James I’s eldest son.  But he died young and so his brother Charles I became king instead.  Charles was the one who lost his head to Oliver Cromwell.  The Great Fire of 1666 stopped just shortly before it would have reached this building, making it one of the few buildings prior to 1666 to survive.

The room was a museum dedicated to Samuel Pepys at the time.  He was the 17^th century diarist who wrote about the English Civil War and the Restoration of King Charles II to the throne.  He also wrote about both the plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of 1666.  Mom and I were the only people there, so the guide chatted with us quite freely.

He was a proponent of the theory that Sweeney Todd had been a real person (I have a book that says that he was and lays out his life).  According to both the book and this guide, the “real” Sweeney Todd lived in the 18^th century.  The guide pointed out where Todd’s barbershop used to be next to St Dunstan’s Church.  He said the Demon Barber of Fleet Street was found out when the aroma of the remains of the bodies that had been placed in the crypt of St Dunstan’s (his cellar connected to the crypts of the church) wafted up into the church.  Missus Lovett’s pie shop was supposedly in the lane next to the Royal Courts of Justice.  So the solicitors, barristers and judges likely were partaking of them.

The guide also pointed out the figure on the building opposite Prince Henry’s Room as Lady Caroline Lamb dressed as a pageboy.  Lady Caroline Lamb was the wife of Viscount Melbourne who was Queen Victoria’s first Prime Minister (and so memorably played in the Masterpiece series by Rufus Sewell).  Lady Caroline had a very famous affair with Lord Byron and was the person who said that he was “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”.

From Prince Henry’s Room, we went to Doctor Samuel Johnson’s House in Gough Square.  It was like finding our way through a maze to get there.  The house, which had been built in the late 17^th century, had been restored to what it would have looked like when Doctor Johnson lived there in the 18^th century.  He compiled his famous dictionary on the top floor.

On our way back to our hotel, we decided to stop in at the Temple Church (one of our favorite places in London).  There was a private service going on at the time and the church was closed to the public.  We could hear “O Come All Ye Faithful” being sung and sat down on a bench just outside of the ancient door to the original church built by the Knights Templar to listen before heading back to the hotel and to dinner at a nearby pub — the White Lion.

On the day of my birthday, we started out with a visit to the Jewel Tower.  It had been built in the 1360s as King Edward III’s treasury and part of Westminster Palace.  It and Westminster Hall are all that are now left of that palace.  From there, we crossed Westminster Bridge to visit the museum dedicated to Florence Nightingale in St Thomas Hospital.  My mom had once thought about becoming a nurse, but went into social work instead.  She had always admired Florence Nightingale.

That evening, we had booked dinner at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand where they offered a 3-course meal at the early dinner seating on Sunday’s for £19.25 (which would have been about $30).  Simpson’s has been in existence since 1828.  Dickens, Gladstone and Disraeli were regular patrons.  I recorded in my journal that I had crab with lemon mayonnaise, followed by the Roast Beef Dinner (roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and slow roasted carrots) and Bubble and Squeak, plus a plum crumble tart.  Looking at the restaurant’s website, the Roast Beef Dinner alone is now £35 (roughly $45).  Bubble and Squeak is made with mashed potatoes and cabbage (I often use a cheesy mashed potato and add both cabbage and shredded carrots).  It gets its name from the noise it makes while cooking.

The next day, we visited Charles Dickens’ house.  A more perfect place to visit at Christmas time, I could not imagine.  More of the house was open than when we had visited before, but it was now a self-guided tour instead of being with a costumed guide.  I missed the guide we had on our first visit.  He had been an absolute delight.  By the time we left, it was much colder and raining hard.  So we took a cab to Marks & Spencer to buy the last of (and majority of) our gifts.

We were unaware that Marks & Spencer didn’t take credit cards.  They also didn’t have a toilet for public use.  So, in order to purchase the items we had collected, we needed to shield each other while digging into the areas on our persons where we had secreted the bulk of our cash.  That had to have been an odd sight.  Fortunately we had enough on us.

We didn’t think that the personnel in the store were terribly friendly.  In fact, although we told them what we were doing and to hang on to our items until we got out the cash to pay for them, they were in the process of returning them to the racks and counters from which we had picked them up when we produced the necessary.  If it hadn’t been raining heavily and our last day in London, we would have walked out and gone elsewhere.  But we re-gathered the items, paid for them, and hailed another taxi to get us back to the hotel.  Actually we went to the American Express office next door to Simpson’s-in-the-Strand to get some more cash — just enough for dinner that night, breakfast the following day, and the cab ride to Victoria Station to get the train to Gatwick (which was the airport that had a direct flight to Minneapolis back then).  The rain had let up by then, so we were able to walk up the road to our hotel without getting ourselves or our packages drenched.

That night we went to a performance of “The Woman in Black” at the Fortune Theatre.  Our seats were in the front row of the upper circle.  This was about two stories above the stage with very steeply raked stairs.  We were terrified just getting to our seats.  The play was very cleverly done with just two actors and a minimum of props.  It was probably the scariest play I’ve ever seen.  Afterwards we walked back to our hotel along a gas lit, cobblestoned, narrow, pedestrian-only street.  I leaned over to Mom and said, “All we need now is a fog and Jack the Ripper”.  “Thanks”, she said.

Having grown up in Texas, which is where the Old South meets the Wild West, I had always been curious about the real South.  I saw photos of the houses in Charleston, SC, or read Gone With the Wind, or saw films set on plantations and thought that I’d like to see all of that someday.  The trip down the East Coast in 1999 was my first exposure to South Carolina and Georgia.

From Myrtle Beach, we continued down the South Carolina coast to Brookgreen Gardens.  This is a sculpture garden created in the 1930s from four rice plantations that had fallen into ruin after the American Civil War.  One of the former plantations (The Oaks) had been owned by the husband of Aaron Burr’s daughter, Theodosia, who disappeared at sea during the War of 1812 when sailing from Georgetown, South Carolina to New York City.

After a stop in Georgetown, we went on to Charleston, South Carolina, named after King Charles II of England and founded in 1670.  Portions of both the American Revolution and the American Civil War were fought at Charleston.  Revolutionary War action included the Battle of Sullivan’s Island in 1776 and the Siege of Charleston in 1780.  The first full battle of the Civil War occurred in April of 1861 when confederate General Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, which was held by the Union at the time.  In 1865, Union General Sherman marched into Charleston.  South Carolina had been the first state to secede from the Union so Sherman wanted to punish them after he completed his march to the sea.

The afternoon we arrived, we had a walking tour around the historic area of town.  We saw the oldest museum in the country, which was founded in 1773.  The Exchange and Provost, which has been a custom house, a mercantile exchange, a barracks, and a military prison in its long history also hosted several events for George Washington.  I found on this trip that good old George had pretty much been everywhere — busy fella.

The Old Slave Mart had been turned into an African American museum.  We saw Cabbage Row (1783) which was portrayed in Gershwin’s “Porgy & Bess” as Catfish Row.  The Rainbow Row, consists of colorfully painted houses that were built in the 1700s.  We went in a house that was near the Battery and learned about a period of time in 1718 when the pirate Blackbeard terrorized the city.  He managed to do quite a bit of plundering plus kidnapping and holding people for ransom before the city finally managed to convince him to move on.

We began the following day with a visit to Magnolia Plantation.  This rice plantation was owned by the Drayton Family beginning in 1670.  The original house had burned down in 1810.  Sherman burned down the second house in 1865.  The current house was built elsewhere in the 1700s, taken apart and rebuilt on the foundations of the original house.  Then it was enlarged.  So the house is a combination of Colonial and Victorian, with plantation-style verandas.

We toured the entire house.  The rooms were large and the ceilings were high (so the heat would rise up away from the people).  I remember houses in Texas with fourteen foot ceilings for the same reason, but they weren’t plantations.  They were just old houses.

In one area of the porch on the second floor was a bench designed for courting.  It had rockers on the ends and would rock and sway while the couple sat on each end until they ended up sliding towards the center (as the board is bowed).  It is known as both a courting bench and a joggling board.  It was said that, if you had one of these on your porch, you would never have an unmarried daughter.

The property has a beautiful foot bridge (see photo below) and they gave tours around the property so we could see the wildlife that lived in and around the swamps.  In addition to herons and egrets and quite a few other kinds of birds, we saw a large number of alligators — a few from fairly close up (see photo below).  I was quite glad to be in a jeep, which could hopefully move faster than the alligator.

After our visit to Magnolia Plantation, we returned to Charleston, where we had a couple hours of free time.  Mom and I went to lunch at a place called A.W. Shucks, which is a sea food chain, but had good food.  We had the She Crab Soup and some butterfly shrimp, stuffed with crab and wrapped in bacon.  It was all delicious.  After lunch, we walked around the historic commercial area.  I found a place that had some Civil War artifacts, which was where I bought an intact bullet (to go with the smushed one from Fredericksburg).  I also found a mourning pin, a Union uniform button, the cap from a powder flask, and a couple other small items.  I then bought some sweet grass hot mats that have seen quite a bit of use ever since when having a nice dinner in the dining room.

From Charleston, we traveled on to Beaufort, South Carolina.  The historic district contains several antebellum houses that are still privately owned.  You can walk by them, drive by them, or take a carriage ride by them, but only one house is open to the public.  We weren’t there long enough to allow for a visit.  But I really liked the town.  A fair amount of the film Forrest Gump was filmed there and in Savannah.  The harbor was used as the location of Bubba Gump Shrimp.

Beaufort was also close to Fort Wagner, where the 54^th Massachusetts was slaughtered as portrayed in the film Glory.  The survivors were taken to Beaufort after that battle in order to recuperate.  Those who died at Fort Wagner and were dumped into the mass grave there, were disinterred and reburied in Beaufort National Cemetery after the war ended.  Whenever I feel the need for a good cry, I put that movie on.  The entire last half hour (once the 54^th begins its march to Fort Wagner) brings me to strongly flowing tears every time (it’s disgusting really — I just blubber).

We had lunch in Hilton Head, South Carolina and continued on to Savannah, Georgia.  We were staying in a hotel just a block from Factors’ Walk.  This had been the main export area for cotton as well as the main import area for slaves.  Several antique shops, restaurants, pubs, and galleries are now in the buildings original used for the buying and selling of both cotton and slaves.  Out on the harbor side of the buildings, the replica of “The Bounty” that had been used in the 1962 film Mutiny on the Bounty, starring Marlon Brando, was just arriving.  It was to be docked in Savannah for a few days.  The ship ended up sinking in 2012 during Hurricane Sandy.

That evening, we went to dinner at The Pirates’ House.  The building was originally built in 1734, making it the oldest in Georgia.  A tavern was established there in 1753.  They have several copies of the book “Treasure Island” by Robert Louis Stevenson and claim that Captain Flint died in a room upstairs.  Although the book does say that Captain Flint died in Savannah, he was a totally fictional character, so they are just pulling your leg.

Emma Kelly, who features in the book “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” (and the movie version too), was playing piano upstairs on the night we were there, so we all went up to see her.  She was playing “Moon River”.

The food was really good.  I had the Pecan Fried Chicken (a specialty) with Bourbon Pecan Pie for dessert.

After dinner, we embarked on a nighttime “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” plus “Haunted Savannah” tour.  The book had come out in 1994 and the film in 1997.  Our visit was in 1999, so the film was still fresh on everyone’s minds.  Both the book and film locations were pointed out to us as well as the most haunted locations in the city — and there are a lot of them.  I enjoy ghost tours.  I like hearing the stories behind the hauntings.

The next day, we took a walking tour, which started at Factors’ Walk and continued along Bull Street into the part of town with all of the squares and mansions.  The church from the opening of Forrest Gump was along the way.  This was where the feather was floating around prior to landing near Forrest at the bus stop.  The bus stop had also been located in Savannah at Chippewa Square (it was just there for the movie).

There are times when Mom and I have enough of the “museum shuffle” on a walking tour and depart from it to do our own thing as long as we know where we are and how to get back to wherever we need to be after the tour.  In this case, we had a lot we wanted to see in a short period of time, felt we could cover ground faster on our own, knew exactly where we were and were still in walking distance to the hotel.  So we deserted the tour at Mercer House (after telling the guide, so they wouldn’t worry).

Mercer House wasn’t open to the public at that time.  For those not familiar with “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”, this was where millionaire antiques dealer Jim Williams had lived.  It was also where the shooting that killed his assistant, Danny Hansford, took place.  Roughly six months after Williams was finally acquitted of killing Hansford (after four trials and nearly a decade), Williams himself died of heart failure in the same room in which Hansford died.  His body was found in nearly the same spot where Hansford’s body had lain.

A short walk from Mercer House is Armstrong House, the home of Williams’ lawyer, Sonny Seiler.  Seiler was also the owner of Uga, the bulldog mascot for the University of Georgia.  Forsythe Park (the one with the beautiful fountain) is a short walk from Armstrong House.

After taking photos of the part and fountain, we back tracked up Bull Street to the Green-Meldrin House.  This was the house used by General Sherman as his headquarters, when he stayed in Savannah for a while after his march to the sea.  Then we stopped for lunch and continued on to the Owen-Thomas House.

This house had been built in 1816 in the Regency style and had remained in the hands of the original family until it became a museum.  It was said that Lafayette gave a speech from the balcony on the side of the house in 1825.  We could tour the entire house.  I love it when I can see an entire property as it gives a pretty clear picture of what life would have been like there.

The Isaiah Davenport House, in the Federal style, was the last house we toured before heading back to the hotel and then dinner at the Exchange Tavern (a former cotton warehouse, built in 1799) on Factor’s Walk.  Davenport’s widow converted the house into a boarding house after his death in 1827.  Over the years, the neighborhood became run down and the house was scheduled for demolition in 1955.  But a group of concerned citizens joined forces, purchased the house, and began restoring it.  It was opened as a museum on 1963 and was the first house to be saved and restored by Savannah’s preservation movement.

Fredericksburg, VA is a fascinating place.  George Washington’s family moved to the area in 1738 (Ferry Farm), when George was a six-year-old child.  He spent most of his childhood there (until his early twenties) and his mother moved into the town itself in her later years.  One of Washington’s closest friends, Hugh Mercer, owned an apothecary in Fredericksburg.  We were able to see the apothecary, Washington’s brother’s tavern (The Rising Sun), Washington’s sister Betty’s plantation (Kenmore), his mother’s home and his mother’s grave.  Both John Paul Jones and James Monroe also lived in Fredericksburg at some point in their lives.

Ferry Farm was the setting for the “cherry tree incident” — when little George was asked about what happened to a cherry tree on the property and answered with all honesty that he had chopped it down with his hatchet.  Not sure if this really happened or if it is simply a legend.  But the point of the story was to illustrate Washington’s character.

At the time of the Civil War, four battles were fought in and around the town — Fredericksburg, Chancelorsville, Spotsylvania Court House, and Wilderness.  The battle that we concentrated on for this visit was the Battle of Fredericksburg, which took place in December of 1862.  The Union, led by General Ambrose Burnside, crossed the Rappahannock River using pontoons, and raced across a field from the river to an area called Marye’s Heights, where the Confederates, led by General Robert E. Lee, were waiting for them behind a stone wall on the Sunken Road and up above on Marye’s Heights.  The Union forces were essentially slaughtered with over 12,000 casualties.

We were able to walk along the Sunken Road and climb up to the Marye’s Heights area above.  I managed to get a bullet from the Civil War era that had apparently hit something (or someone) as it was somewhat smushed from impact.  There were so many bullets flying during the battles in the area that people still find them in the dirt of the battlefields from time to time.  The bullet I got was one of those.  It sits next to an intact bullet acquired in Charleston on the mantel of the fireplace in my family room — two small pieces of US history.  The historic part of town is very well preserved (both Colonial and Civil War sites), so it feels like you are stepping back in time.  I would definitely like to return and spend more time there.

Our next stop was Colonial Williamsburg, which was founded under the name of Middle Plantation in 1632.  After Jamestown burned down, Williamsburg served as capital of the Colony of Virginia from 1699 to 1780.  In the 1930s, John D. Rockefeller and Reverend Goodwin of Williamsburg, began buying and restoring or rebuilding the homes and other buildings that had been part of Colonial Williamsburg.  The Capitol Building included the House of Burgesses, which was the first assembly of elected representatives in the colonies.  Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and several members of the Lee and Randolph families served in the House of Burgesses.  We spent a fair amount of the limited time we had on this trip in this building before having lunch at the King’s Arms Tavern, watching some Revolutionary War soldiers drill, checking out an Army camp, and making a brief visit to the Governor’s Palace.  Fortunately that later trip that took me back to Philadelphia and Washington, DC also brought me back to Williamsburg with much more time to explore.  This trip just scratched the surface.

It was fun watching and listening to the interpreters and actors.  I have sometimes thought that relocating to one of those historic places like Williamsburg or Plimoth Plantation after retirement and getting a job as an interpreter or acting the part of someone historic might be fun.

After all the history of NYC, Philadelphia, DC, Fredericksburg and Williamsburg, we headed for Myrtle Beach.  No history there.  Just tropical weather, beaches, shopping and the Dixie Stampede.

It used to be that the tour directors of every tour I ever went on were convinced that all women on their tour wanted to spend their time on the tour shopping.  They would even crack jokes about the women spending their man’s money.  I have to say that Mom and I always found that a bit disgusting.  We were on the trip to experience the history, art, architecture, culture, etc. of the place, not to shop.  We could do that at home.  Besides, long gone were the days when the “little woman” stayed home while the man was the sole bread winner.  We were spending our own money, thank you very much.

Most of the time, when the tour coach dropped everyone off for some shopping, there were other things in the vicinity — something historic or picturesque or an old church or someplace to have some ice cream and people watch or someplace interesting to take a walk.  But in Myrtle Beach, we were taken to a shopping complex called Barefoot Landing.  This was in the middle of nowhere with nothing else around it.  All of the shopping was pretty standard fare that we could get back home — nothing historic.  So we wandered around from shop to shop, quite bored, until we finally gave up and went outside to hang out in the fresh air before getting back on the coach.  This expedition was followed by a boat ride on the intra-coastal waterway.  Much better.  We both always liked taking boats rides on the water.  I still do.

The hotel was right on the ocean with an ocean view from our room (see photo below).  We were on the 14^th floor and had a balcony.  We opted for a nice walk along the beach, looking for interesting sea shells before dinner.

Dinner was at the Dixie Stampede.  The food was American country picnic kind of food — fried chicken, ribs, corn on the cob, cornbread, and coleslaw.  While eating, we were entertained by some trick horseback riding and patriotic displays.  There weren’t many Americans in our tour group other than us.  Most of the group was British or Australian.  The patriotic bits were quite over-the-top.  Then there was a big competition between the North and the South where the audience was divided depending upon where you were sitting.  This was followed by an ostrich race.

From Myrtle Beach, we dove deeper into the South — visiting plantations, Charleston, Beaufort and Savannah.  More about them next time.

When I used to live in New York City (which I did in between Dallas and Minneapolis), they had standing room only tickets for $10 for most of the Broadway shows.  For $10, I got a ticket with a designated place to stand.  Although I had to stand, I was young and saw a lot of great shows that way.  When Mom would come out to visit me, I would get some real tickets to a show or two where we could sit in seats.  Later, when we would go to London, we would pick up some tickets at the Half Price Booth in Leicester Square.  We often managed to get very good seats and saw many great performances by talented actors.  Sometimes we would seek out a particular actor, like on our first trip to London when we went to see Roger Rees and Felicity Kendall in “The Real Thing”.

In 1999, Mom and I decided to take a tour that began in NYC and meandered its way down the East Coast to end in Orlando.  We chose to arrive in NYC a couple days ahead of the start of the tour and see a couple of plays.  I had long had a crush on Matthew Broderick, who was starring in a revival of the 1930s thriller “Night Must Fall” along with British actress Judy Parfitt.  So I got us two tickets for that play for the second night.  For the first night, I managed a couple tickets to the revival of “The Iceman Cometh” starring Kevin Spacey.

“The Iceman Cometh” was at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre and was a four hour long production.  We were both mesmerized for the full four hours.  In addition to Kevin Spacey, the cast included Tony Danza, Robert Sean Leonard, Michael Emerson, Paul Giamatti, and Tim Pigott-Smith.  We were seated about 2/3 of the way back and over to the side.  We could still see everyone’s faces pretty well and felt we were fortunate to get in at all.  The play was a transfer from a successful and award-winning run in London and had opened only about a week before we got there.  If I remember correctly, I think it was a special deal through American Express that allowed us to get the tickets.

The next day we explored the Intrepid aircraft carrier and the Edison destroyer.  The Intrepid was my first aircraft carrier and was both enormous and fascinating.  There were several planes on the deck to look at as well as climbing all over the aircraft carrier.  Most of it was open to the public.  So a lot to see.

Then we took the 3-hour Circle Line boat tour around all of Manhattan.  It was a beautiful day.  That night was “Night Must Fall” at the Helen Hayes Theatre.  This was a much smaller theatre than the Brooks Atkinson and we had front row center seats.  Not only could we see the actors’ faces clearly, but we could see every freckle or bead of sweat.  Matthew Broderick was the bad guy in this one — a deranged serial killer, who seemed so charming.

The following day we visited Ellis Island and planned to do the Hop-On-Hop-Off Trolley tour after.  Most of my ancestors arrived in the US prior to the existence of Ellis Island.  But I do have a great-grandmother who would have come into the country through there with her brother and sister in the mid 1890s.

Once back on Manhattan Island, we barely made it onto the trolley when the rain came down in torrents.  It was what we used to call in Texas a “gully washer”.  It was raining so hard and had gotten so cold that we weren’t inspired to get off at any of the stops.  We could barely see anything out of the windows.  So we rode around through the entire route, shivering, until we got back to the hotel.  Then we made a mad dash inside and holed up for the rest of the afternoon.  This was the one and only time on any trip that either of us ever allowed the weather to dictate our plans.  We met up with the rest of our group that evening and began the tour the following morning — well rested, dried out, and warm.

After leaving New York, we headed for Philadelphia.  Mom had been there before when one of my cousins lived there for a couple years while attending school.  It was my first trip.  I was very excited about seeing it.  The Liberty Bell was included in the guided portion of the tour.  Then we were set loose to get lunch on our own and do whatever else we wanted while waiting for our specified time to enter Independence Hall.  We had a couple of hours to kill, so we got some lunch and headed for the house that Thomas Jefferson rented while he was writing the Declaration of Independence.  It was very much as it had been when he was living there, giving us a pretty good feel for life in 1776.  Once we had thoroughly explored the house, we stopped off at a couple other sites on the way back to Independence Hall.

At the time on our ticket, we were herded into a large room with several busloads of schoolchildren.  Before we could enter Independence Hall, we all received a long lecture regarding what took place there.  Even I, who love history, found it boring.  The children weren’t listening at all, but tussling and talking among themselves.

Next we were herded into the courtroom.  The children were all given precedence with all of the adults made to stand in the back.  Being only 5’3”, with some of the children taller than me, I couldn’t see a thing.  So Mom and I left the room and crossed the hall to the room in which the Declaration of Independence was signed.  We were told by the woman who barred our way that we were to stay with our group just before she slammed the door unceremoniously in our faces.  Pretty soon the mob came across the hall, the door was opened and we were herded into the room I was really there to see.  Once again, adults had to stay in the back, so I couldn’t see a thing.

Mom said she had not been treated so badly when she had been there before, but that there weren’t hoards of children at that time either.  We inched our way to the back corner of the room so that, when everyone else swarmed back out, we could linger, get some photos, and hopefully soak some of it in before we got kicked out.  As the others left the room, the same friendly lady as before barked at us again to stay with our group.  But we moved very slowly, stopping to take photos and trying to absorb this very important and historic room internally.  She kept yelling; we kept moving slowly.  The next day we left for Washington, D.C.

Our first night in the nation’s capital, we had dinner at a nice restaurant in Union Station.  It was a very pleasant location and atmosphere.  Then we took a night tour, visiting the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.  I was awestruck by the statues of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln — especially lit up as they were.  Mom had been here before too when she traveled to DC for business.

The following day we started out with Arlington National Cemetery, the Korean War Memorial, and the Vietnam War Memorial.  A neighbor of ours back in Dallas had been killed in the Vietnam War, so we looked for and found his name.  We circled the White House, had some lunch, and then were dropped off at the Capital to do our own exploring for the rest of the day.  Mom and I immediately got in line to tour the Capital.

After standing in line for nearly an hour (and getting quite sunburned — it was a warm and sunny April day) we were finally let in and discovered the same situation as back in Philadelphia.  Busloads of school children who were ushered to the front while the adults were relegated to the rear.  This taught me that, if I wanted to see anything historic in the US, I should go in early fall when school was just starting and no field trips were underway.  A more recent trip to the Historic East that took place in the fall and returned me to both Philadelphia and Washington, DC allowed me to see everything I wanted to see easily.  I could even hang out without being yelled at or herded.

We took a break after the Capital and got some ice cream (our favorite afternoon pick-me-up) before heading off to Ford’s Theatre.  Unfortunately the theatre itself was closed due to a performance that evening.  But we could see the museum down in the basement.  They had both the pistol that Booth used to kill President Lincoln and the boot that was cut from Booth’s broken leg by the doctor who set it.  Booth’s diary and several other items were there as well.  So it was well worth seeing.  That later trip gave me plenty of time to spend in the theatre.

From Ford’s Theatre, we ventured across the street to the Peterson House where Lincoln had been carried after he was shot and where he died.  Mom and I were alone in the house and could spend all the time we wanted looking at everything.  We could also talk with the person who worked there.  He pointed out several things we might not have noticed on our own and told us little tidbits of information about the house, the theatre and the neighborhood back in the 1860s.  It was a very informative visit that we both thoroughly enjoyed.  What he told us about poor Mary Todd Lincoln was very poignant.

My mom was not the history buff that I am, but she had majored in sociology and psychology when she went to the university, so she has always been fascinated by the human behavior side of things.  Of course, that’s what fascinates me about history.  The fact that it is “his story” and “her story” and “their story” and “our story”.  That’s also why I like genealogy.  It is cool to me to get an idea of where my own ancestors might have been when different things happened — especially if they had possibly been involved.

If I visit a battlefield, I wonder if I have an ancestor who might have fought there?  Did I have an ancestor who might have been injured there or died there or was taken prisoner there?  If I visit a castle someplace near where an ancestor lived, what was my ancestor’s relationship with that castle?  Did they just view it from outside?  Did they ever enter?  If they did enter, in what capacity was it?  A servant?  A noble?  A knight (who was essentially a type of servant)?  A tourist like me?  Did they dine there?  Were they imprisoned there?  Or were they executed or murdered there?  From what I have been able to find out so far from my research, the answers have sometimes involved many of the above.

Next time, the tour continues.

When I first saw Pompeii, I was somewhat surprised at just how intact it really was.  Yes, there are a lot of ruins.  But there are also several buildings that are very recognizable as to just what their original function was supposed to be.  There were a couple of villas that looked very close to having people currently living there.

Back in 79 AD when Vesuvius erupted, there were roughly thought to have been 11,000 to 11,500 people in Pompeii.  There was very little warning, and so a large number of people were caught unawares.  Numerous earthquakes struck Pompeii in the days before the eruption.  Some of the damage to the buildings found during the excavations is from the earthquakes rather than the eruption of Vesuvius.  Since earthquakes were relatively common there, not too many people took them as a sign of something worse to come.

Then there were the bodies.  Apparently the archeologists found voids in the ash where the bodies of the people and some animals had been.  The archeologists poured plaster into the voids, creating some very detailed and poignant casts of the people and animals who had perished when all of that ash and pumice descended upon them.  Back when Pompeii was initially being excavated, it was thought that the people and animals had been suffocated by the ash.  But now it is thought that it was the heat that killed them and that most were likely to have been killed pretty instantly.

One thing that I found interesting was a place in one of the streets where there were stepping stones to cross the street (as it would have been somewhat of an open sewer).  There were spaces between the stepping stones for the wheels of the chariots and wagons.

There is a bakery where you can see the ovens and the prep spaces and where the baked goods would have been sold.  Some of the bread had been found still there.  A brew house was also found in pretty good shape along with some remains of the grains used in brewing.

In a bordello and in some of the villas, plenty of erotic wall art was found.  Since the first excavations were in the 1700s, much of this was covered up or hidden.  In later years, some of the more portable items were removed and placed in a secret collection in Naples.  Now much of it can be readily viewed either in Pompeii itself or in a museum in Naples.

After several hours spent walking around Pompeii, we headed for Sorrento for the night.  Sorrento was built on the cliffs on a ledge between the mountains and the Mediterranean beginning in about 600 BC.  Views of the Mediterranean and of the island of Capri from Sorrento are quite beautiful.  The next morning, we took at boat to Capri.

Once we arrived in Capri, we were essentially on our own.  So Mom and I and a couple from Pittsburgh who were on our same tour decided to go in on a cab together to take us around to see the sights.  We agreed on where we would go and the price ahead of getting into the cab.  It was well worth it.  We went all over the island — to the Blue Grotto, the Marina Piccola, the town of Anacapri, the Villa San Michele, the Church of San Michele, the garden of Augustus, the town of Capri — we covered it all.  We also had time for a nice, leisurely lunch before returning to the Marina Grande to get the boat back to Sorrento.

We could only see the Blue Grotto from the outside as it was a rather rocky sea at the time.  But that was fine.  By the time we got to the Marina Piccola on the opposite side of the island, there were still waves, but the sea was a startling shade of blue that photographed well.

The Villa Jovis, built by Tiberius in 27 AD, was a ruin and rather inaccessible at the time, but we could see it clearly from the plaza where we had lunch.  I went for a walk around the area a bit after we ate.  An American couple commented on the “fact” that “we” Italians loved to dress in all black.  I was dressed in all black — black top and trousers, long black all-weather coat (with the lining taken out), black cap, black shoes and socks, sunglasses on my face, my hair pulled back into a black scrunchi, a black purse across my body and a black bag (containing my camera, a map, and other items) slung over my shoulder.  How someone as fair and blonde as me could be mistaken for Italian was beyond me.  But they were quite startled when I spoke to them, saying “I’m an American,” in perfect English.

The Villa San Michele had amazing views from every side.  It was built on one of the highest points of the island in the early 1900s, using bits and pieces of ancient palaces and such found on the land by the owner.  It was a favorite of ours as was the Church of San Michele Arcangelo in the town of Anacapri.  The church was built in 1719 and contains a beautiful floor painted with a scene of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden on ceramic tile.  They have a raised walkway around the outside edge of the floor against the walls of the octagonal church so you can see the floor without damaging it.  The colors are vivid (my photo doesn’t do it justice) and the images fanciful.

Back at the Marina Grande, while waiting for transportation back to Sorrento, Mom was dive-bombed by one of the sea gulls.  I can’t say that I often heard my mom swear, but that was one of those times.  Fortunately, it hit her coat, which was much better than her head or the outfit she had on under her coat.  Cleaning off the coat was still unpleasant.  We had the time to do it before the boat arrived, so we paid the fee to enter the ladies restroom and scrubbed it all off fairly well at the sink.  We laughed about it later once the evidence was gone.

The next day, we left Sorrento heading back to Rome all set to have a free afternoon in Rome before our farewell dinner that night.  Along the way, we we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a snowstorm!  It was supposed to be spring.  It had been quite warm for much of the trip.  We had been without coats most of the time, except when we were in high altitudes and had some cool breezes.  The day before in Pompeii it had been quite warm.  That day we had worn our coats (without the linings) because Capri was quite mountainous and it could be very breezy.

Our coach driver said that he was thirty and had never seen snow anywhere other than up in the mountains.  So he was pretty well surprised.  The traffic was down to a crawl.  They had no equipment to deal with it, so there were actually people out on the road tossing salt around by hand.

In an attempt to keep us entertained, the driver put a video on of the film “Cliffhanger” with Sylvester Stallone.  It was dubbed in Italian, so it was pretty funny.  I have never seen it in English.  I had thought at the time that “Rocky” might have been fun dubbed in Italian.

Our return to Rome was delayed by a couple of hours, essentially ruining our plans for the rest of our final day in Italy.  We did still go out for a final dinner.  The restaurant had a large Mouth of Truth, like the one in the film “Roman Holiday” that Gregory Peck used to frighten Audrey Hepburn by pretending to lose his hand.  Although I’m a pretty truthful person, I wasn’t interested in sticking my hand in its mouth.  I didn’t think it would be bitten off, but I wasn’t too sure about any possible snakes, rodents or large and aggressive insects that might be lurking inside.

Next time:  a trip to the East Coast of the US from NYC down to Orlando, Florida.

Once upon a time there lived a girl named Juliet who fell in love with a boy named Romeo.  There isn’t any evidence that either one of them actually existed.  But there is a house in Verona that does date back to the 14^th century and was purchased by the city of Verona from the Cappello family in 1905.  Cappello was close enough to Capulet.  So a balcony was cobbled together from pieces of a 17^th century sarcophagus and Casa di Giulietta (Juliet’s House) was born.

Over the years tourists have had a habit of sticking love notes to the walls of the courtyard where you can see the balcony and a statue of the non-existent Juliet.  The city of Verona has had enough of all of these notes and the gum, glue, tape, etc. used to stick them on the walls and now will fine anyone they catch leaving such a note €500.  The house has been furnished in the style of the 14^th century and contains some costumes from the most recent film version, so it could be fun to visit anyway — just keep those love notes to yourself.  When I visited in 1998, I don’t remember going inside as an option.  It was simply a matter of standing in a very crowded, very small courtyard while trying to get a decent photo of the balcony.  To my mind, it was a house of the right era in Verona, and that was good enough for me.

Having most of a day in Verona was great.  In addition to the balcony, there were several Roman ruins and fairly intact Roman buildings.  The Roman Arena, which once held 30,000 spectators in its heyday, can still hold 22,000 and continues to be used for concerts.  There is also a Roman Theatre by the river that is still used for things like opera performances.  The theatre had been built over at one point, but a wealth Veronese bought all of the houses and had them torn down in the 18^th century.

Back in the day, each of the main cities of what is now Italy were ruled as “city states” by powerful families, such as the Medici family of Florence, the Visconti and Sforza families of Milan and the Scala family of Verona.  I found it very intriguing that one of the important rulers of Verona was named Cangrande I della Scala.  “Cangrande” essentially means “Top Dog” (literally “Big Dog”).  He was born in 1291 and was a patron of Dante.  When he died in 1329, he was placed in a tomb in the courtyard of a church in Verona.  Over the years, he was joined in that same courtyard by several members of his family.  Some of the tombs are quite elaborate.

We also had a good, long visit in Venice on this trip — multiple days.  One of the highlights was an evening visit to St Mark’s Square to see the Doge’s Palace and the Basilica San Marco all lit up.  Behind San Marco, on the other side of a canal, was a music club called Ai Musicanti.  It was an opera club.  We heard three talented opera singers plus a violinist and a pianist performing all of the Italian opera greatest hits while munching on appetizers and sipping champagne.

We had a completely free afternoon one of the days.  So Mom and I decided to explore San Marco from top to bottom.  Up to that point, San Marco was pretty much the oldest building I had ever been in where we had the freedom and time to explore most of it.  The original building was completed in 832, in the form of a Greek cross.  But, in 976, the Doge at that time was locked inside of San Marco by a rebellious mob and the basilica burned down with him in it.  They must have really hated that guy.  San Marco was rebuilt in 978, but the present Byzantine-style building (complete with five domes) dates from roughly 1063.  Some parts of the building, especially down in the undercroft, were part of the older versions.

Mom and I decided to start at the top and work our way down.  After entering the center door, but before leaving the Narthex to enter the main part of the Basilica, is a very old, steep staircase leading up to the museum at the top of the building.  This is where the originals of the horses on the exterior of the building are kept.  There is also a gallery from which we could see the entire Basilica from on high.  We were a little closer to the glistening, golden mosaics up there.  Then we stepped out onto the part of the roof next to the replicas of the horses and looked out over Saint Mark’s Square.  We would go up the Campanile (Bell Tower) later and get some spectacular views of the entire Venice area.  That tower at least had a lift (elevator).

There seemed to be loads of places throughout San Marco where we could pass through a door, climb some stairs, venture down a corridor, and see a uniquely different part of the building.  We ended up in some rafters at one point, where we could see the structure of the building [see photo below].  We also wandered around in the undercroft for a while.  We were both just fascinated by the place.

Back in 1094, the Doge at that time found the remains of Saint Mark encased in a pillar in the aisle on the right side of the Basilica (when facing the high altar).  You would have thought he would have been in a special tomb instead, being that he is the Mark of “Matthew, Mark, Luke and John”.  His remains were taken from the pillar and reinterred in the high altar.  In the Cathedral in Kirkwall, Orkney (in Scotland) the relics of Saint Magnus were found in a column in 1919.  Maybe that’s what they did with the remains of a saint that they wanted to protect back about a thousand years ago.  Nobody would know where to find Saint Whoziss and therefore couldn’t steal the remains.  In Mark’s case, I believe the Venetians stole him in the first place.

There is a rumor that the body that was stolen from Alexandria, Egypt, by the Venetians wasn’t Mark at all, but Alexander the Great.  This is partially because Alexander’s body seems to have gone missing and partially because there are claims that Mark’s body was cremated after death.  First of all, the cremation story is not even remotely the accepted story.  Also, from what I have read about Alexander, I would think that he would not take it lying down to be called by another name.  He had a humongous ego.

After Venice, we headed for Ravenna on our way to Assisi.  We had thought that San Marco was old, having originated in the 800s.  The Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna was begun in 526.  In 554, Ravenna became the seat of the Byzantine government in Italy, so the basilica there became quite important.  It is also highly decorated with mosaics.  Some panels of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian and his Empress Theodora are especially treasured.  They date to 547.  But the oldest mosaics in all of Italy are in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, who was the daughter of the Roman Emperor Theodosius.  She died in 450.  So the mausoleum took the prize for the oldest building I had been in up to that point.  I would end up in much older structures on later adventures.

The next stop was Assisi.  This was the end of March in 1998.  In November and December of 1997, there had been some major earthquakes in Assisi.  Four people had been killed in the upper part of the Basilica of St Francis of Assisi (13^th century), which was still closed for repairs.  We could visit the lower part which contains St Francis’ tomb.  There was quite a bit of damage there too, but not so much that it had to be closed.

We also visited the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary of the Angels.  This is a very large cathedral that contains the site of St Francis’ hut, the cell in which he died, and the rose garden.  Sort of like the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, which was built over the sites of the Christ’s death and tomb, this one was built over and around several of the places featured in St Francis’ life.

At the very top of the cathedral was a statue of Saint Mary, which had fallen off during the earthquake.  Miraculously, it wasn’t damaged and had been set up near the front entrance of the cathedral [photo below].  It was nice, really, to see her close up instead of several stories away.

In our hotel in Assisi, we had a compact little bathroom where you could sit on the toilet, brush your teeth and take a shower all at the same time.  Handy.  But it could be disconcerting if you were really tired and pulled the wrong chain after using the loo while fully dressed.

From Assisi we went to Pompeii and Capri, plus experienced a snowstorm on the way back to Rome!  More about all that in the next post.

The European trip we took in 1984 convinced us that we needed to return to Italy.  It took us until 1998 to do it, but we had a full 16 days in a country where we had only spent a total of three days before.  We flew into Rome and were surprised at how casually the passport control agent greeted us.  He just glanced at our passports, didn’t ask any questions, said “you’re okay”, and waved us through.  I’ve had more scrutiny in the US, where I was born.

I wasn’t feeling too great at the time.  I had tried to allow myself to get some sleep on the flight over by drinking several glasses of red wine.  All I had managed to accomplish was a hangover and still didn’t sleep a wink.  Decided after that experience that I wouldn’t concern myself about whether or not I slept and would just relax and rest my eyes.

On our previous visit to Rome, we had just been driven among the ruins of the Roman Forum, although we did get to spend a little time in the Coliseum.  This time, we had quite a bit of time to wander around among the ruins and drink it all in.  I really enjoyed it, despite getting a sunburn on top of my hangover.

I remembered the Shakespearian play “Julius Caesar” pretty well from high school.  Our teacher thought it would be a good idea to read it out loud with class members playing the various roles.  Since I had already been in a few plays (Juliet in “Romeo & Juliet”, Abigail in “The Crucible”, Maggie in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”) he had me play Brutus.  This meant that, instead of Brutus being a tall, strapping, swarthy Italian man, he was a small, blue-eyed blonde high school girl.

I was tempted to give the “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears” speech when standing at the podium from which Marc Antony eulogized Julius Caesar, but was afraid of that being too much of a cliché.  Good thing.  There were several others who gave that first line in succession.  I actually could have gone for a few more lines (“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.  The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones; so let it be with Caesar.”), but that might have been showing off.

The first time I had seen the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, it had been very dark from centuries of dirt and smoke.  The ceiling had been cleaned between 1984 and 1998 and was absolutely glorious.  The colors were so vibrant and the whole ceiling now had a 3-D quality to it.  Figures were climbing out of the painting and coming towards me.

My mom had a balance disorder, so looking up was difficult.  There wasn’t any place to sit down either.  So I steered her to the center of the room, had her hold on tightly to me (and me to her), and told her to look up.  We were directly under The Creation of Adam.  She was so overcome that she cried.

This time in Rome, we didn’t have any road accidents.  In fact, traffic seemed to be moving more smoothly than it had in 1984.  We had a female tour director this time, who had been born in Bosnia and had immigrated to Italy when the conflicts began.  She was a huge fan of Andrea Bocelli, and played his music when we were on the road between cities and towns when she wasn’t telling us about something.  This was my mother’s and my first exposure to his singing.  We ended up buying CDs before we left Italy.

Our hotel in Rome had about the thinnest walls in any hotel anywhere.  We could actually hear the guy in the next room snoring.  Since we could hear conversations next door as well, we knew they could hear us too, so we were careful not to say anything we would have possibly found to be embarrassing — “did you see the toupee on that guy?”  It was after that trip that I bought a sound machine that I still take with me on every trip.  At least we didn’t get locked in the hotel room this time.  Of course we might have been able to get out by tearing through the wall to the next room.

After spending a few days in Rome, we left for Pisa and Florence.  London Bridge might not be falling down, but in 1998, the Leaning Tower of Pisa was.  They had closed the tower and were desperately trying to straighten it back up enough to keep it from toppling over.  They had the area around it completely blocked off so that, if it did fall, it wouldn’t land on anybody.  Cables were holding it up and counterweights were on it to help it to slowly shift back to a safer angle.

Begun in 1173, the tower had starting sinking in 1178 after the completion of the second floor.  Instead of starting over with a stronger foundation, the builders at the time opted for a change in the design to accommodate the tilt.  It took a long time to build.  The seventh floor wasn’t completed until 1319.

We had a fair amount of time in Pisa, so we explored the Cathedral, the Baptistery and the Cemetery.  Both the Cathedral and the Baptistery were older than the tower and fascinating to explore.  We also had lunch in Pisa.  Then we continued on to Florence.

This trip we had quite a bit of free time in Florence to explore on our own — a whole day.  Before setting us loose on the marble streets and sidewalks, our tour director took us to the Piazza de Michelangelo from which we could see the entire city laid out before us.  The piazza also contained a copy of Michelangelo’s most famous statue, the David, in green marble.  The museum containing the original was closed that day, so we were going to have to make do with this green David and the copy that stands where the original used to stand in front of the Palazzo Vecchio.  This made two trips to Florence without being able to see the actual David.

Once we were dropped off with the return time established, Mom and I were off and running.  Our first stop was Casa Buonarroti, which had been owned, but never lived in, by Michelangelo.  It was now a museum containing drawings, models and his early works.

Nearby was the Museo Nationale del Bargello, which was a medieval palazzo (1255), housing a museum devoted to sculpture.  They had a very early version of David by Michelangelo plus both Verrocchio’s and Donatelli’s Davids.

Before having lunch, Mom and I needed to exchange some more money, so we went to a bank near the Piazza della Signori.  It had the greatest security I had yet seen in a bank — and it wasn’t a terribly large bank either.  We had to enter one at a time.  After going through one door, that door had to be closed behind you before you could open the next one.  Once you got through the second door, it too had to be closed behind you.  Then you entered a metal detector.  When I came out of the other side of the metal detector, I couldn’t wait for Mom to make it through before approaching a teller.  We still needed to be separated and go to different tellers.  Good thing we had already decided how much money we each wanted to exchange before entering the bank.  We weren’t able to connect again or communicate until we were spit out through the doors on the opposite side of the building.

The whole time we were in there, I was concerned that I might do something stupid out of ignorance and/or lack of being able to fully understand the signs in Italian.  But we managed to complete our transactions without getting arrested.

When we came out of the other side of the bank, we were right where we wanted to be — the Piazza della Signori itself.  This is where the Palazzo Vecchio, the Uffizi Gallery, and the outdoor sculpture gallery (Loggia dei Lanzi) are located.  There is also a Neptune fountain and several cafes with outdoor tables.  We had lunch at one of those cafes.  Fortunately it was a beautiful day.  We lounged and people-watched for a while after lunch before dashing off to see the other places we wanted to see before meeting up with our tour director, driver and the rest of the group.

The Duomo, which began building in 1296, was a short walk from the piazza.  It is most famous for its dome by Brunelleschi that wasn’t completed until 1436.  It is massive and gorgeous on the outside, but quite simple in its decoration inside.  In 1478, Giuliano di Piero de Medici, ruler of Florence at the time, was murdered inside the Duomo.  His brother, Lorenzo, who was with him, managed to escape.  Lorenzo went on to rule Florence and become the patron of several artists, including both Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buornarroti.

Right across from the Duomo is the Baptistry, which is considerably older, having been constructed between 1059 and 1128.  The doors of the building are quite famous with the doors on the east side referred to as The Gates of Paradise.  The mosaic ceiling inside was done in the Byzantine style and reminded me a lot of the interior of San Marco in Venice.

Santa Croce (holy cross) must have originally had a piece of the cross as it is a basilica — a designation reserved for cathedrals with special relics.  It is the final resting place for several important people, such as Michelangelo, Gallileo, Amerigo Vespuci, Rossini, and Machiavelli.  There are also memorials to both Dante and Leonardo da Vinci, who were buried elsewhere.

The next day, we headed for Milan.  The Santa Maria delle Grazie, where da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” resides, was closed.  So we didn’t get to see that either.  It was in the process of being conserved (from 1978 to 1999).  It isn’t open to the public much anyway as it is difficult enough to keep in good shape without having all of that human breath hitting it.

We did get to see the Teatro de Scalla and the Cathedral (begun in 1386, but not completed until 1805).  The roof of the cathedral is open to the public for the wonderful views of the city it provides.  The main family of Milan was the Visconti family as Florence was a Medici stronghold.

When we got to Lake Como, we drove around to see all of the beautiful villas.  George Clooney did not yet live there or we might have tried to see where he lived.  I understand that, once he did move there, his villa was often pointed out to tour groups.

We stayed in Porlezza, which is on Lake Lugano and explored the medieval part of town, in easy walking distance to our hotel.  We bought some fruit in the market to carry with us on the trip.  Fresh fruit was not something we encountered often in the restaurants on the trip so we were pleased to get some oranges and bananas.

We took a day trip to Lugano in Switzerland.  At the border (Italy was not yet in the European Union), the border guard came on the coach to check the passports.  He didn’t seem to like me or mine for some reason.  In 1993, when I had gotten my passport renewed, they had given out green passports instead of the usual blue.  But there was another woman on the tour who also had a green passport and she didn’t seem to bug him like I did.  He kept looking at the passport and then at me; back at the passport and again at me.  We were becoming concerned that he wasn’t going to let me into Switzerland or turn the entire group away because of whatever reason was that he didn’t like me.  Eventually he gave my passport back to me and left, but not before giving me one last, lingering, nasty look.

Not having learned our lesson back on that earlier trip up Mount Titlis in Switzerland back in 1984, Mom and I went up Monte Tamaro in a four-person cable car.  At least it was just one cable car and it didn’t have any problems docking.  After tromping around in the snow for a while, we went back down and had some lunch in Lugano.  The border guard on the way back didn’t seem to be concerned about me at all so returning to Italy was not an issue.