European Trip 1996 Prologue | Italy | France | Germany | Last Days (Home | E-Mail)

We met Andree on the train.

We took the night train to Rome, paying the supplement to get a couchette. Our compartment was supposed to sleep six people, but fortunately two never showed up. Unfortunately, a black man from Africa, who had bought many boxes of stuff to resell elsewhere had taken most of the available space in the compartment. Some of our luggage was put on the beds and in the space between the beds. Fortunately for us, very unfortunately for him, he and his travelling store were kicked off the train, by French customs, just before leaving France. Lyn learned some Italian from Andree, who was from Naples. Andree was a very nice lady and she invited us to visit her some day.

The Roman Colloseum

We arrived in Rome around 11a.m. on Wednesday. It was warmer and dryer than Paris, but still a little brisk. We found a room for 120,000 lire (about $80), which is less than half the high season rates. It was a nice room, except that the there was no hot water our last morning there and they wanted you to leave the key at the desk whenever you left. Our first meal in Italy was pizza and lasagna, but I felt a sense of forboding when they played the theme from The Godfather. We walked down to the Colloseum and viewed it both by day and night. I took a picture of Lyn with one of the local Gladiators, but when he asked for money, Lyn said just a minute, and we made our escape. We visited the Vatican, including St. Peter's Basilica and the Sisteen Chapel, but were thrown out of the Vatican Museum when it closed about 2 in the afternoon. Even though photography was not permitted, we managed to snap one non-flash photo. The Parthenon was incredible, such a grand building and only about 2,000 years old! The Trevi Fountain was also a beautiful sight, full of statues and spouting water. Rome is similar to Paris in that there are amazing structures wherever you look, but Rome is about twice as old.

The Italian bus system?

We made good use of the bus system, which was always packed to capacity. We brought our skates along, but they would have been no use in Rome's narrow streets and crowded sidewalks. The daredevil moped and motorscooter riders were amazing to watch, as they zipped around cars. Even girls in skirts chose this form of transportation and pratically none wore helmets.

On the bad side, one of Lyn's countrymen, a Filipino, seemed to charge us the full rate for half a sandwich and when Lyn asked for coffee, brought out a little cup with literally one teaspoon of liquid in it. At another restaurant, after ordering, our surly waiter ordered us to sit down. I wanted to leave, but we suffered through it and when the bill came we were charged for liter bottles of soda instead of the small bottles we got.

A secret Vatican photo

In the land of Catholicism, Italian television provided quite a dichotomy. One stations had ads for phone sex which showed strip-teasers and dancers and even transexuals. A game show had many types of ridiculous stunts for the contestants. One lady had her arms handcuffed behind her back; then she was raised up on a platform holding some kind of weight from her mouth. Apparently, she had to keep the object from dropping as the seconds ticked away. There were many scantily clad ladies decorating the program as well as some time reserved for the dancers, who were sometimes in thongs.

Yes, Italy had by far the best television. Germany and France had their share of skin flicks, some of which might not even be shown on the Playboy Channel. In France, I was walking down a street, passing a newstand, when I noticed a photography magazine with nudes on the front, prominently displayed for all passersby to see. In Paris, Lyn and I saw a large poster of a lady with her dress blown up into the air and her naked bottom attractively shown.

On our way out of Rome, as we were walking to the train station I spotted a group of children hovering around a woman. The children made a bee-line straight for us. I was pulling one bag, had my skate bag on top of that one, and was carrying a shoulder bag on the other side. I immediately sensed the danger. With my right hand I reached around, grabbed my skate bag, crouched down in a defensive position and started swinging the bag back and forth, and yelling "get away from me!". A travel guide book had described such gangs of children who act like they love you, but really love only your valuables. Once I realized they had given up on me as a target, I turned to see some of them on Lyn like a swarm of mosquitos. As I chased them away, I heard some other travellers saying "attencion, attencion". Lyn determined that nothing was missing, although her coat pocket had been unzipped. Maybe a second longer and the camera would not have taken any more pictures for us.

My wife made me put this photo here!

We spent two days in Rome and a day and about a day and a half in Florence which I thought provided the best food in the trip. In the central market, where people sell all kinds of goods in small stalls, there was a small food place that had large pots of pasta cooking on the stove. For a very reasonable price, we got plates of extremely tasty pasta. I asked for a glass of wine and what I got was a water glass size. I wish I could have eaten there the whole trip. Adding atmosphere to the meal was a flaminco guitarist.

From the internet - a worker is working on David.

Michaelangelo's David was awesome, 15 feet tall and perched up on a pedestal adding another 6 feet. How could anyone create something so perfect out of a block of stone? We saw the Duomo, a cathedral which looked very ornate from outside, but very plain inside. A very fun thing we did was to take a regular public bus which took a route which rose for several miles along a steep hill. The view of Florence way down below was gorgeous. Our trusty guide book told us about this cheap thrill.

We took a train to Milan on our way to the long train ride back to Paris, but were surprised to find out that a fifty dollar supplement was required. I asked about second class and that was only a thrity dollar suplement, which I begrunginly went for. I would not have had a problem with it if I understood the situation, which was that we were going to be on the TGV. The TGV, however, turned out to be not as much fun as the German ICE (high speed) trains. The ICE train cars had spedometers and reclining seats. With the short winter days, it was soon dark. As we passed over the Alps, I could barely see out the windows because of glare from the adjacent light which could not be turned out. Anyway, I woke up Lyn so that she could see the deep snow drifts.

On our way back from Italy we were going to visit Glenda and Jurg in Bern, Switzerland, but a phone call revealed them to be ill.

PreviousNext