Regina and Meredith N. managed to get up early, breakfast, and still get out for a little shopping in Venice before we were scheduled to meet at 9:15 am. I did not think they would find much open, and they said most shops were closed, but they did find a few open and came back with a few things. They squeezed more time out of Venice. Sadly, we had to leave today.

On to Rome. It is a smooth train ride from Venice to Rome, taking three hours and forty-five minutes. Our hotel in Rome is only three blocks from the train station, so by 3:00 or so we were in our hotel room, topping off water bottles and dropping luggage before heading out to do a quick exploration of the city.

We stopped for a quick light lunch at a nearby pizza place, and then went back into the train station to buy three-day passes to the Metro system. Rome’s Metro is not extensive – only two main lines and a third under construction. It seems that when you dig in Rome, you tend to hit ruins, and then construction stops. Still, the two lines do an okay job of getting you to or near popular sites, so we wanted to get passes.

Enter the slight downside to Italy – sometimes frustrating inefficiency. The first pair of ticket machines we came to had two “helpers” standing at the machines – people who purported to help you figure out the ticket system (which is not hard and has an English option), in exchange for a tip. No problem – I found more machines down the stairs, and we tried using both bills and credit cards, but neither would work. So we tromped back upstairs to the main office, where we finally were able to buy tickets from a real person. We set off on the metro.

The Colosseum metro stop must be the most impressive in the world. You step out of the stop, and your vision is almost entirely filled with seeing the Colosseum. Tim wanted to see three things while in Rome – the Vatican, the Colosseum, and Trajan’s Column. We managed to check off the latter two within the first hour of being in Rome. We wandered around the Colosseum, checking out about half of the outside before turning aside to look at Constantine’s Arch, which commemorates Constantine becoming the sole emperor of the whole Roman Empire (and the battle which led him to adopt Christianity as the preferred religion in Rome). We walked up to the Forum’s gate so Jacob could see Titus’ Arch, which refers to the sacking of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Then, we tried to walk up toward the top of the hill to get to the main square around the Victor Emmanuel Monument, but we were hemmed in by Forum gates and construction walls where Rome was building part of the new third subway line. We backtracked to the main road, which did lead us up away from the Colosseum

The Victor Emmanuel monument is enormous – it is hard to grasp how big it is without seeing it. Our Rick Steves guidebook suggested it would be how Rome looked back in Roman times – a huge, sparkling, fairly new monument, and it was even designed in classical style when it was built in the 1860s. That was a helpful suggestion since it is sometimes hard to imagine some of these two-thousand-year-old ruins as new and shiny.

After the VE monument, we ate supper, where we got to eat outside for the third evening in a row. We had a mellow time, even after the entire restaurant was filled inside and partly outside with a huge group of French middle school students. I was amused to see the teachers sit together, light up cigarettes, and order beers and wine.

Refreshed from supper, we followed a walking tour from Rick Steves – we saw several emperor victory columns, some pretty squares, and a bunch of former palaces. We saw the Piazza Navona, which is huge and has a massive Bernini-sculpted fountain in the middle of it, which includes a fake Egyptian obelisk. We saw the outside of the Pantheon, which Jacob claimed to be the most impressive building he has ever seen, and we got to throw coins in the Trevi Fountain (which is supposed to ensure you come back to Rome). We finished the tour at the Spanish Steps, which are a wide and long set of steps that lead up to a pretty church where you have commanding views of Rome, including the dome of the Vatican in the distance.

That ended the tour, and we used the metro to get back to the train station and then walk home. I’ve summarized everything so it may seem short, but it all took over seven hours and resulted in our walking over ten miles for the day. That is a pretty good tour, considering we spent about four hours getting here and only had part of the day for sightseeing.

Italy, as a country, is already difficult to understand with regard to how it works and works pretty well. It is chaotic and full of energetic people who love the good life. In the middle of this improbable country is the impossible city of Venice. A city, built more or less in a swamp, should not function at all, let alone have been a world power just as a city for four hundred years. I love this place – it is simply magical.

Venice may be the most romantic and photographic city in the entire world. So naturally, Genius Boy hit something when putting the camera away last night that left it with no charge in the battery, so I took no pictures on my own camera at all, all day. Not when we took the water bus to St. Mark’s square or when we toured the Doge’s Palace. Not when we took the water taxi around the eastern end of the island and then out to the beautiful small island of Burano. And certainly not as we walked back home across much of Venice, including over the famous Rialto bridge. Happily, Meredith N. took a bunch of photos and gave them to me, so Ye Olde Blog is not barren.

So, we did indeed start our day taking the twenty-minute water bus down to St. Mark’s square. The bus goes right down the entire length of the Grand Canal, so it in itself is a good way to see Venice. The plan at St. Mark’s was to spend about four hours there, touring the Venice city museum, the Doge’s Palace, and St. Mark’s itself.

The main feature of the fine square around St. Mark’s is St. Mark’s – it is an amazing church, having been built around 1100, and is well decorated inside and out. The square is huge, with fine buildings all around it, with the city museum on the opposite end from St. Mark’s. There are multiple high-end restaurants that feature live music (classical or jazz) outside as a means to draw in customers, but it also adds great ambiance to the square.

We got our museum/Doge’s Palace combination tickets in the museum, which is supposed to have short lines. In our case, there was only one group of six or eight ahead of us, but they took about five minutes to process – I have no idea why. The museum is manageable sized, meaning you can see everything in about an hour if you don’t stop to read every description card, most of which are in Italian anyway. The museum contains things you would expect from a maritime power, like globes and models of ships and maps and such, but it also showcased some of the fine rooms that were in what is now the museum. It had several hoards of coins found around Italy. It had, oddly, a very old reliquary box discovered in Turkey about 100 years ago. It also had a small but respectable archaeological museum in one wing. Following what was to be the pattern of the day, we set a meet-back time so everyone could go where they wanted to, which we did again after we met up. As such, Meredith and I spent about thirty minutes more at the museum than the others, before we moved on to the Doge’s Palace.

The Doge was the elected-by-peers leader of Venice when it was powerful and rich. His palace reflected that by being perhaps the most impressive display of wealth and power I have ever seen in a building, and I have been to Versailles. Everything in the palace was ornately decorated – walls, ceilings, staircases – and most of the decorations either glorified Venice or the Doge specifically. The Doge’s seat, no matter which room we were in, always was in line with some artwork depicting Jesus, usually looking down at where the Doge would sit. That includes the biggest oil painting in the world, featuring Jesus in heaven with five hundred saints surrounding him. The entire palace was designed to let you know who was in charge, and it was not you.

We toured the entire palace, and the famous Bridge of Sighs where prisoners could see the outside world through a window before being brought to the cells, which we also saw. Most of the cells had a door that you would have to stoop through to get out of, and there were holes in the walls that I guessed were used to pass food though so you would not have to open the door. Combine that with corridor doors every few dozen feet, and I have no idea how anyone would ever escape from there.

We had lunch down a tiny little alley near St. Mark’s. It was full of eateries, including some fairly aggressive waiters out front telling us how sad we would be if we did not eat at their establishment. We found an inexpensive sandwich joint, and then agreed to meet in the square around 3:00. Meredith and I headed off to explore St. Mark’s.

For many years, my favorite church anywhere has been St. Paul’s in London. I love the majesty and simplicity of St. Paul’s, and having services in English helps. London has competition now. St. Mark’s is visually amazing. The floors are covered in mosaics of patterns, the walls are made of different types of marble, and the ceilings are fully covered in mosaics of biblical stories and tales of the saints. The dominant color is gold – everywhere on the ceiling that is not covered with figures is all in gold tiles. It is brilliant and awe-inspiring. It was hard to know where to look (other than up).

The only slight downside is we wandered in while the organ was being tuned, and it was the upper (piercing) register. I had never thought about an organ being tuned, but it involves playing the same note for a long time. Still, I suppose we got to hear the organ.

We wandered the main floor of the church, and then paid five euros to see the in-church museum, which takes up the balcony area. It has mosaics that were taken down in the late 1800s for a renovation, some paintings and tapestries, some huge choir books, and, most importantly, the four copper horses that used to stand on the balcony of the outside of the church. If I understood correctly. the horses were cast around the year 200, and were taken from somewhere that Venice conquered (maybe Byzantium?), and they were brought back to the church and put on display. They were moved inside the museum in the 1970s to protect them, and replicas were put outside.

The other reason to tour the balcony is to see some of the mosaics up close. There are some that come right down to the floor in the balcony, and even the ones on the ceiling are about fifty feet closer. There is even a stone ledge to sit on, so you can stare upwards in some comfort (and without running into other people). Finally, the museum tour lets you go outside on the balcony, which overlooks the square, and even out there you get very close-up looks of some of the exterior mosaics. You can see the lagoon with all the boat traffic, and the square with all the foot traffic. The sounds of the bands playing float up to you, and you can even sit down on a ledge next to the church facade. It is quite wonderful.

Our last stop in St. Mark’s was the golden altarpiece. You can pay two euros to go up front where the priest ministers from, and behind a screen, facing away from the congregation, is the elaborate altarpiece from around 1100. It is all gold, and covered in over a thousand precious stones, and it is quite large – probably six feet by twelve feet. We also got to see, close up, the standard altar with the tomb where St. Mark’s bones are kept (fun fact – while the church was being built, they forgot where they put the bones; after a public prayer service, the doge found them in a hollowed-out pillar).

We met up with the group in the square, as arranged, and walked over to the water buses. It took six of us, and asking an attendant, but we finally figured out how to get the two boats we needed to get out to one of the islands that I wanted to visit – Burano, where the people are famous for making lace. The first bus took us around the east edge of Venice, which Meredith and I had never seen. It ends in a huge park, with gardens sponsored by or inspired by various nations. It looked beautiful, and so is now on my list for my next visit to Venice. The boat ride was gentle and about forty minutes long, causing me to almost nod off and giving Jacob a chance to doze. We transferred to the next boat and rode it for another thirty minutes or so; the boat stopped briefly at the island of Murano, which is famous for glass, but we didn’t have time to get off and visit. That is also on the “next time” list.

We arrived at Burano about 5:30, and not surprisingly, our route took us through a narrow shopping street. When I heard that the island made lace, I pictured endless white doilies. I was quite wrong. The Venetians made lace into dresses and scarves of all colors, and they were beautiful. If we’d had more time on the island, Meredith would have had a new wardrobe. Instead, with a little help from a restaurant that was already fully booked, we found a restaurant on the main drag, which we had accidentally wandered off of. After a leisurely meal, we again split up, agreeing to meet at 9:00.

Burano in the evening is pure magic. The homes are all painted bright colors, and after 6:00 the vast majority of tourists go home, and the island is very quiet. Meredith, Tim, and I walked over to the local church, which has a tower that is visually leaning to one side. Toward a playground. That was being used by happy children. I assume they keep a close eye on the tower.

Tim wanted to sit in a park facing the lagoon, so Meredith and I strolled about, enjoying the quiet town. There were groups of older women talking together, and a few men puttering on boats in the small canals. We saw about ten cats, but only two were tame enough to let us pet them, and even that was warily. We were completely captivated. As darkness fell, we crossed a bridge over to the next island. It had a lighted path that went around the island, although we did not know that at the time (we found out by seeing a jogger reappear multiple times), We walked along that waterside path, eventually sitting on a bench, looking over that the fairy-light-lit town of Burano, while listening to a group of young Italian men playing soccer on a field behind us, unseen behind a high hedge. We happily sat there for about twenty-five minutes.

We met the others early, a little after 8:30, and about five minutes after the boat for Venice pulled out. That was fine, as we caught the next one at 9:10. The ride back in the dark was interesting, as we could only see the navigational lights dimly lighting the water behind us, as well as distant lights of the shore and the occasional boat, including a large and elegant party boat decked out as a pirate ship.

Once back in Venice, we walked back to the Grand Canal. There, Jacob said he wanted to cross the Rialto bridge and go back to the hotel a different way. We all agreed to go with him, and the trip back included a bonus stop for gelato, which kept our daily steak going. The walk back was wildly Venetian – some wide streets, crowded with people, some narrow alleys with no one around. It is all part of the package that makes Venice probably my favorite city in the word to visit.

The line at the Accademia, where the statue of Michelangelo’s David is housed, is long. Really long. The doors open at 9:00, and we got there around 8:50, and the line for the reserved entry was already fifty people deep, and the non-reserved line was even longer. By the time we came out around 11:30, the non-reserved line was around the corner, a half-block long.

We did get in around our reserved time of 9:00, and it turns out the Accademia is not all that big. We spent two hours there and covered the entire museum. The big draw is David, and there are always a bunch of people crowded around him. In the same hall are Michelangelo’s Prisoners statues – sculptures that he never finished that look as if they are escaping or are trapped in the marble block. That makes that hall the main attraction.

But there are other halls and exhibits, and I liked those as well. They have a small separate wing dedicated to musical instruments, including a very odd keyboard/guitar combination for which it was not fully clear how it worked. They had a special exhibit hall showing collected works of a circa-1400 painter, Giovanni dal Ponte. His works were mostly religious in nature, and you could see some hints of the Renaissance in his work. It was interesting to see him treat the same subject (like the Annunciation) multiple times in slightly different ways. One of his paintings of the Annunciation was the subject of a short film in the museum on restoring artwork, and it was impressive what a difference cleaning and restoring made.

Most of the other six or seven galleries were made up of religious paintings, and so we had a good time trying to figure out the stories being told or the saints included in the picture. One of my favorite ones was of Jesus, where above the main subject were small pictures of scenes from the Passion, in the form of disembodied hands and faces and such; so, for example, you had just the hand of Peter holding a sword, cutting off the ear (and just the ear is shown) of the high priest’s servant.

After the museum, we grabbed sandwiches from a shop, and then ate them in Piazza Santissima Annunziata, a square surrounded by entirely Renaissance architecture, with an orphanage, a church, and a hospital all from around the same time. It was a pleasant space to sit, and we took our time.

We then wandered the town a bit looking for a specific gift or two to buy, but failed to find what Regina was looking for. We did, however, find gelato. That wrapped up Florence for us, or so we thought, so we went and retrieved our luggage from the convent, where they had kindly let us store it for a few hours, and we made our way along the twenty-minute walk to the train station.

We were headed to Venice next, so we walked up to a ticket machine to buy tickets, and discovered the next train was in three hours, at 4:00. So we had some time on our hands. These things happen when you travel. Much later, Meredith realized there were two different ticket machines for the two different train companies, so it is possible we could have gotten an earlier train from the other line, but we had no idea.

At any rate, we sat outside on the curb for a little over two hours. Regina and Meredith N. went shopping (and found some things), and we were able to help out a nice German man whose phone was out of charge. I had my charged laptop, so I let him charge off of that, while we chatted with him. He was in Florence visiting a friend, and then was going to Milan to meet his girlfriend, and then on to Croatia. He was working on an advanced degree in classical archaeology. He charged his phone for about twenty minutes, was very grateful, and then went his way.

After Meredith N. and Regina got back, Meredith and Jacob wandered off to browse. Jacob found some things as well, and so we passed the time. It was not an efficient use of two-plus hours, but it was not wasted either.

The train to Venice took two hours, and we got settled in our very swanky hotel. It is a Best Western brand, but it is not like any I have stayed in anywhere in the States. Our room is a three-room suite with gold wallpaper, and the hotel is right on a canal. Great location.

We got a recommendation from the man at the desk on where to go to eat, and while we did not find his restaurant (never a surprise in serpentine Venice), we did get off the beaten path and found an excellent restaurant, where we ate a very leisurely meal, outside, next to a canal, as evening very softly fell. The lights came out and Venice became magical. So, while we did not do any official sightseeing or touring, it was a great introduction to Venice.

After breakfast at the nunnery (bread and butter with coffee or juice), we struck off toward the Arno River to go to the Museo Galileo (the Galileo Museum). Along the way, Jacob asked if he could grab a good-looking pastry from a cafe, so we sat in the square in front of Santa Croce while Jacob ate. It was another sunny day, if a little cool in the shade, and there are many worse ways to start your morning,

We got to the museum a few minutes before it opened, so we spent the time along looking at the rowers on the Arno while Meredith N. and Regina went along the outdoor gallery of statues along the Uffizi Museum, looking for a particular statue of a scientist. Once we reconvened, we waited for a couple of minutes for the museum to open.

The Museo Galileo was built from the private collections of two wealthy and powerful Florentine families, and is mostly made up of scientific instruments, maps, globes, and curiosities. The museum focuses on Galileo, as he was the first modern scientist and a contemporary of the Medici family, who ruled Florence.

The instruments and displays are very interesting in themselves, and the experimental equipment was often of the highest quality, made of stained wood or shaped glass, and often decorated. But, in addition to the objects on display, we had a guide for just the six of us – an ex-pat from California who became an Italian citizen about fifteen years ago and has since married an Italian man. As such, her English was flawless and she was able to make cultural references to things like Seinfeld. Meredith and I prefer guided tours, and this was no exception. She pointed out the major and/or interesting pieces and told us how they were used. It included a huge eight-foot-across complex globe showing the seven layers of the heavens going around the Earth (the Earth-centered model of the universe). We saw maps where the coasts were well mapped, but not so much for the interior. We saw dozens of early telescopes, including the only two surviving telescopes that Galileo made. There were lots of different types of clocks and early thermometers and barometers. We learned Florence founded the first scientific society in 1660. The tour was excellent.

We stayed after to tour for a bit to look at the part of the exhibit that we had not yet seen, the most striking of which were life-like models of babies in the womb, some of which had forceps around their heads, presumably as doctor training models. These were from the 1700s – I had no idea human anatomy was so well understood then. We finished the museum by spending a few minutes in the small hands-on area where you could roll balls down planes and the like.

By now it was around noon. On their wanderings the night before, Jacob and Regina had seen a line for a sandwich shop stretching a whole block, so they wanted to go there, and that sounded great. We had to wait in line for about thirty minutes, but we were able to grab huge sandwiches made on homemade focaccia-style bread, which we took with us to sit in the square outside the Uffizi. While we ate, we were entertained by a nearby person who played an excellent living statue that moved if you put money in his box. He especially was creeping out the grade school kids that came up to him.

After lunch, we ducked in the courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio, which is before you have to pay admission. The courtyard was lavish, and a good reminder that the owners of these places when they were still palaces liked to let you know you had entered a home of wealth and power. It was impressive.

The next stop on our little tour was all things Duomo. You can get into the church of the Duomo for free, but if you want to see the baptistery with its amazing murals, or climb the dome itself, or see the crypts, or climb the bell tower, you needed an all-in-one ticket for fifteen euros. Since we all wanted to do some of these things, we got tickets. We bought them through machines individually, and as such, only four of us got tickets before the dome-climbing option sold out. Since Regina and I are both afraid of heights, we volunteered to stay down on the ground. The others had different times, so Tim and Meredith were going up together, and Meredith N. and Jacob were going after them.

To start with, though, we went into the church, which is very plain and simple inside, except for the dome, which is lavishly decorated with scenes from the life of Christ and His final judgement. Inside was also where you could go into the church crypts, which in this case had been turned into an informative display showing the different archaeological periods of building on the site, starting with the Roman ruins found during renovation. It was a small exhibit, but was very well done.

The biggest surprise for me in the complex was the baptistery. I had expected it to be like the church, and the walls were simple, but the domed ceiling, which spanned the entire interior of the space, was covered in brilliant mosaics. Jesus on the judgement seat took up about a quarter of the space, and the rest was given over to illustrated stories from the Bible. The artwork was amazing.

After this, we split into our pairs based on climbing times. Meredith and Tim went to wait in line, while the rest of us went to get gelato. We failed at that because we got distracted by the display of pastries at the shop instead. I had one of the best desserts I have ever had there – profiteroles drenched in a fudge sauce. By the time we finished eating, Meredith N. and Jacob felt they should get in line, so Regina and I wandered off to explore.

We headed to the river and then down past the Ponte Vecchio. We took the first narrow-looking alley we found, and it led to a tiny 1823 church, which was sadly locked. The alley then led to the high-rent shopping district, where we wandered past Gucci and Armani and their ilk without stopping.

We got back to the Duomo about forty minutes before we were to meet the others, so Regina and I went back to a store where they embroidered things. Regina wanted to pick up a souvenir for her nephew, so we got to watch as a woman stitched his name and other words onto the cloth in excellent “handwriting” at high speed. It was a very impressive display of skill.

That still left us with about thirty minutes, and Regina wanted to sit in the sun, so I went back in the church, and eventually saw where people could come in to pray, over in a side chapel. That seemed like a great idea, so I went outside to find that door, where I ran into Tim and Meredith coming out from their climb, which they had loved. Meredith joined me, and we went inside to pray for a few minutes.

We all met together in front of the Duomo museum, where most of the original artwork has been moved for safekeeping. Replicas were made for the actual church. Regina suggested we all meet back in the lobby at 6:30 so we could go at our own pace, and that seemed like a great idea. I got separated from everyone when I used the bathroom, but that turned out to be okay, as I had a great time exploring the museum. I loved seeing the original cast doors up close, having a good time seeing if I could identify the scenes from the life of Jesus (I could for all nine scenes I could see up close). I also loved the small room dedicated to the music of the church, with huge choir books and an interactive display where you could hear the music being sung while seeing the page it was being sung from. The room dedicated to the building of the dome, an architectural marvel, was also great.

But my favorite display was the Duomo itself as seen from the rooftop terrace. I stumbled upon it almost by accident – there is only one staircase that goes all the way up, and I happened to find it. The view puts you right under the dome, about half-way up to it. It is by far the best view of the dome I have seen (other than maybe the bell tower, but that has screens in the way). I went back inside hoping to find the others, and found Tim and Regina. They were eager to see the view, so up we went, and they loved it too. So, we tried to find the others, but they had already left the museum. Jacob asked if he could come back through, and they let him, so I took him up, We were soon followed by Regina, Meredith, and Meredith N. Tim had gone out to get them, and they sneaked back in (which was fine since they had tickets and could not seem to get the attention of anyone to ask if it was okay). In the end, everyone got to see the terrace.

We turned our attentions to supper. Regina wanted pasta, which is not hard to sell me on, so we went to a nearby restaurant, only to be turned away for the lack of reservation. Happily, the second place we tried was able to seat us, and the food was quite excellent, especially Regina’s pasta. We followed supper up with a return visit to the pastry shop from earlier in the day so Meredith could try it, and I could not let her eat alone (nor could Jacob or Meredith N.).

We finished the day by doing an evening stroll across the Arno, and up to the Piazzale Michelangelo, which is built on a hill that overlooks the city. Regina has some leg problems with hard climbs, so she stopped and hung out with Tim about halfway up the hill. The rest of us made it to the top, where we had the piazzale, rather surprisingly, mostly to ourselves. The views of the city were magnificent, and as an added bonus there is a copy of the David statue there. It was a lovely spot, and we stayed for about twenty minutes before heading back down the hill to rejoin Tim and Regina and then walking home.

A full Florentine day, with about twelve miles of walking in it. That may have burned off the pastries. Maybe.

Actual travel, the process of getting from point A (Toronto) to point D (Florence), when things go well, is rather boring to narrate, so I’ll keep it short(er). We started the day in our Toronto hotel, and after a great breakfast, made out way to the airport in a very cold rain. Given the rain, it was unfortunate that I remembered that I had left my credit cards in my car only after we had walked across the whole parking lot. I let the others go on while I jogged back and got them.

The Toronto airport was a breeze – no line at check-in, and a very minimal wait at security, which included pre-filling out US customs forms since we were flying into Boston. That was a huge blessing for us since we had a tight window in Boston to catch our next flight (one hour and forty minutes). Anyway, the end result of no lines in Toronto was that we waited at the gate for about three hours. Ooops.

Boston worked out as well – no customs to clear, and even though we had to change terminals, there was a walkway connecting the two terminals that only took about five minutes to walk. Boston also had a minimal security line, and so we made it to the gate with about an hour to spare before take-off.

The flight to Rome was uneventful, which is always good. Meredith graded and I played the computer game Civilization 5. Once in Rome, we cleared customs, got our luggage, and headed for the train station, where an airport official spotted me trying to figure out which way to go and took that as a chance to tell us about how we could get a van to Rome’s main train station for 15 euros each, which is more or less what the train costs, but with no wait. I was a bit skeptical, but not very alert, and since it sounded like more or less the same cost, we agreed.

Our driver was nice, and spoke decent English. He did try to convince us he could take us all the way to Florence for the same cost as the train (he claimed about 95 euros each), even though he claimed he did not really want to drive us there. Again, Meredith and I were skeptical, and asked to just go to the train station. That was good, since the tickets to Florence on the 120 mph train were only 47 euros each, and not 95. Also our driver was conveniently bad at math – six people at 15 euros each is 90 euros, but he thanked us for the three euro tip when we gave him a total of 108 and were waiting on some change. Meredith questioned that, and we got it down closer to 90.

The train to Florence was fine, except the track number was not announced until very close to the scheduled departure time, and so while we made it to the train, we had not been sitting down long when the train moved out. The weather was perfect, and so barreling though the countryside for about ninety minutes was very pretty, when I could stay awake.

Our hotel was about a twenty-minute walk from the train station, so we managed the crowds and cobblestones and cars fairly well, often distracted by the beauty around us. We were staying at a nunnery that rents out rooms, and two of our three rooms were ready. Mer and I waited for our room in the pretty garden, where some flowers were already in full bloom, and there were a couple of orange trees bearing fruit.

Once our room was ready, we napped for about three hours, a tactic we use to make the first jet-lagged day much more bearable. We met up with Regina and Tim, Meredith N., and Jacob. Regina had said she could not sleep, so she had gone out and tried to order a pepperoni roll, and instead got an Italian beer, Peroni. When we left the nunnery to go to supper, as we stepped onto the street, we saw a group of young ladies all wearing fifties-style garments, with jackets that read, in English, “Pink Ladies.” Of course.

We had supper at a restaurant down near the Duomo (the cathedral), where the restaurant served organic pizzas. The food was welcome, and quite good, and the background music was mostly music from America in the fifties and sixties.

After our having eaten, Meredith took us on a foot tour of Florence, starting at the Duomo and the square it sits in, including its nearby baptistery. We walked down a wildly popular shopping street to a large square which was Florence’s equivalent to the Roman Forum. We then backtracked to the shopping street to see a church that had been converted from an old granary in the 1500s that is surrounded by excellent early Renaissance statues of saints and other biblical figures. We wound over to Pizza della Signoria, where the David statue used to be, now replaced with a replica. There is also a porch with a dozen classical and Renaissance statues decorating it, as well as being in one of the finest squares in the city.

We then head over to Florence’s river, the Arno, and the most famous bridge in Florence, the Ponte Vecchio (the Old Bridge). We walked across the bridge to the other side, and then returned back up the river so we could go find Meredith’s favorite gelato (Italian ice cream) place from when she was in school here back in 1993. We found it, had some excellent gelato, and then finished the tour by going by the square that has the Santa Croce church. It was uncrowded, the lights were on, and the evening was cool, but fine. It was a good way for most of us to end the evening, but Jacob and Regina decided to forge on for another hour on their own. That was bold of them, and I was pleased they felt comfortable doing that.

It all started back in October. We had a memorial service for Meredith’s mom, Carlene, at CVCA, in the library. Since Carlene had worked at CVCA for thirteen years and had loved books, we thought it would be appropriate. It also made it easy for our friends and colleagues to make it to the service since it was at CVCA itself – our colleagues could just stay.

The service was lovely, and the support was incredible. One of the things brought out in the service was how Carlene helped to lead several trips to Europe during her teaching career. One of our friends, Regina, came up to Meredith after the service and told her that was wonderful, and she (Meredith) should do the same, but with colleagues. Meredith laughed, but then told me the story later, half wondering if we could do it. So, when I saw Regina, I asked her how serious she was, to which she replied, “Very!” And so a trip was born.

Our trip consists of me and Meredith, Regina and her husband Tim, another English teacher also named Meredith, and our friend Jacob. We initially had two others on the trip, but things popped up to keep them from going. Still, six is a good (and mobile!) number for attempting this kind of trip for our first time.

We left after school yesterday in two cars. I don’t like to caravan since it is hard to coordinate two cars, so we agreed to meet at the hotel in Toronto. We left in our car, with Jacob, around 4:00. It was a fun little trip, taking about six hours with stops for supper and one rest stop, with a one-car wait at the Canadian border. Jacob got a text that Regina, Tim, and Meredith N. had checked in to the hotel about five minutes before we got here.

So, we leave today at 2:00. We fly in a small plane to Boston, where we have a slightly tight window (one hour and forty minutes) to get through customs and security to get to our next plane. I’m hoping and praying the first plane gets in ten or twenty minutes early. I have read several stories online of people making the same change successfully, so that is good.

We are off for a week, getting to Rome Sunday morning and scheduled to leave the following Sunday. In between, we hope to get to Florence and Venice. It should be a fun trip.

Today was our last full day of touring in Paris; to make our flight on Saturday, we needed to leave at 6:30 in the morning. That early departure meant we wanted to have a mellow, and early, evening. But first, the morning.

We went back to the Louvre for part deux of our tour. Monday’s tour of the Louvre was all about statues, mostly ancient ones. Ami wanted to take a closer look at paintings, and that was the focus of our trip this time. Specifically, we looked at Italian Renaissance and French Neoclassical paintings.

Again, having the art hung together in collections was very helpful. All the Italian paintings were in the same galleries, so you could get a big-picture view of the styles. The Italian paintings focused on religious themes and subjects, at least for the most part. The French collections focused more on human subjects.

I love religious art because I understand the material so well — I know the stories the painter is painting. Mer and I even got to explain the story of the Flood and Noah’s ark to an Asian man who was wondering what the picture was showing. I may not know too much about art, but I do know Biblical narratives.

The highlight of the painting galleries for me was that the Louvre has three paintings by Caravaggio — two secular and one religious. I like Caravaggio’s style very much, so I was excited to see the paintings in person. The French paintings were less familiar to me, but almost all of them were painted on enormous scales — paintings ten feet across were not unusual in the collection, and some were over twenty feet across.

We also ducked into the antiquities gallery as we were leaving, so we could see the Code of Hammurabi stone. It is in remarkably good condition for something 3,700 years old. Ami briefly did some shopping in the Louvre gift shop, and then we went around the corner for lunch.

Ami had a friend who happened to be in Paris, and so we waited at the cafe until Kevin got there. He wanted to hang out with Ami, so he came along as we went to the Arc de Triomphe. We had never met before, but he seemed a fun and funny guy, so his company was quite welcome. We took the Metro over to the Arc, where we wandered around it for a few minutes. During that time, Mer and I got separated from Kevin and Ami, and sadly, during that time Ami got pickpocketed to the tune of about thirty euros (thirty-five or forty dollars). I’m not sure it would have helped if Mer and I had been in the group, but I was sad she lost that much money.

Ami, Mer, and I walked up the 250+ steps to the top of the Arc, since it was free on our six-day museum passes. Kevin stayed at the base and wandered around in the area. I do not like heights, so although I did make it to the top of the monument, I did not stay too long. I waited in the “attic” of the Arc, in the small museum and gift shop, until Ami and then Mer came back down.

We met up with Kevin again, and then wandered aimlessly in a neighborhood near the Arc. We found and stopped in at a bakery since Kevin had not eaten, so he ate some bread (which was still warm — he gave us some) while we all chatted. Kevin lives in New York and works in the theaters there, so we were able to talk about plays. After the bakery, we went back to the Metro, where we said goodbye to Kevin before heading back to the apartment to rest and regroup.

Since we wanted a mellow evening, we decided to walk back up the hill to Sacre Coeur. Our taxi driver had pointed out a small square where he said there were good restaurants, so we aimed for that. It felt good to walk without needing the Metro — the walk was only about fifteen minutes. With a little irony, based on my saying all week that I wanted to go to a spa for my aching neck and back, we passed a massage place two blocks away from the apartment, and they were just closing for the night. Next trip to Paris.

The restaurant in which we ate was almost empty, except for three men playing some game with dice at a table across the room. We thought we were too early for European rush hour, since we were eating around 7:00 and supper in Europe is usually at 8:00 or 9:00, but we found out as we were leaving around 8:00 that they were closing up. We were not the last table out, so I did not feel too bad about that.

We finished the evening at Sacre Coeur, which also meant that we were ending our time in Paris where we had begun it. This time, however, Ami was able to come with us since her knee was working now. We all went inside, and since there was not an active service going on, we could wander around the church some.

It is a beautiful church — it is mostly white stone inside, and what decorations there are are all mosaics. Mer and I saw some amazing mosaics a few years ago in Ravenna, Italy, and these were of the same quality, especially above the altar. The church is only about one hundred years old, so it is good to know that grand churches can still be built.

We took some time to pray up near the front of the church. We found out from a sign near the door, as we left, that Sacre Coeur is a continuous-prayer church:  they have had at least one person at the church praying, every day and around the clock, since the church opened. That is pretty cool.

That was the perfect mellow evening with which to end our trip. We walked back to the apartment, and got things ready, either for packing or for going to bed. Beginning and ending the trip with a great church was a comforting way to frame the vacation.

Oh — and for those who wonder what vacations in Europe look like with us, we ended up walking 51.6 miles in five full days, at least according to the pedometer on my watch and by my tired feet. It almost balances out the hot chocolate and pastries.

We set off around 9:30 am, heading to the Musee d’Orsay. I knew almost nothing about the museum, other than that it was an art museum and had a lot of Impressionist painters. I like Impressionist painting, so I was happy enough going to the museum, but I was not prepared for what I saw when I entered the building. It was beautiful. The museum is housed in a circa-1900 train station, which was made for some special, show-off-Paris exposition, so it was made to be top-notch. The ceiling is arched and six stories tall, made of iron with decorative flowers between the girders, and the top is made of frosted glass. The space is about 190 yards long, and the museum had the foresight to leave the middle of the station open to the ceiling, so the space is vast and uncluttered. The main floor in the open gallery is filled with sculpture, which not only suits the space, but is my favorite art form. Between the building itself, and the art contents being my favorite forms, the Musee d’Orsay is hands-down my favorite art museum (sorry, Cleveland and Chicago).

Ami had a good plan for the museum, and we followed it. We started with the main floor of sculpture before we headed up to the fifth floor, where the bulk of the Impressionist paintings are. The fifth floor also has an observation deck, which I checked out with a little reservation, since I don’t like heights. The entrance to the galleries also had one of two glass clock faces from the original train station, and that was REALLY cool to see through the back side of a giant clock. The Impressionist galleries themselves are more or less laid out to show the progression of Impressionism, which I found helpful. There were still variations in the galleries, so that I saw a near-photographic painting next to a clearly Impressionist painting from just nine years later.

We took lunch then, more for pacing purposes than for hunger. We got to eat under the second of the two glass clocks, which was a great place to have lunch.

We headed back down to the second floor, where we were supposed to see some later-Impressionist works, but first I got distracted by an enormous and elaborate ballroom, which was lit to the hilt with decorated strings of lights and gilding everywhere. Ami’s opinion was that it was much better than the ballroom at Versailles, and I agreed. It was warmer with the lights, and was slightly bigger.

We hunted around for the post-Impressionism works, but we could not find the major works. It turns out they had been relocated for a special exhibition, which we found after asking about it right before we left. In between, we toured a wing dedicated to Art Nouveau, which included a lot of furniture, including one impressive entire room, including carved wooden panels. I have new decorating ideas for home.

So, the Musee d’Orsay was a major success. I would happily go back there again, if and when I got the chance. After the museum, we decided to go back to the apartment for a rest break for an hour. Naps may have been taken. Sometimes you have to recharge the touring batteries.

After the nap session, we headed down to the Seine River, and walked along the river, admiring the views, until we came to the Bateaux Mouche company, where we bought tickets for a one-hour river cruise. One of the great things about traveling “off season” (November) is that you often get a lack of crowds. As such, we had only thin crowds on the open-air second deck of the boat, so we had great views of everything. The down side to traveling off season is that we froze our duffs off. The temperature was in the high forties, on a body of water, with a pretty good wind. C’est la vie.

The boat tour starts just upstream from the Eiffel Tower, and starts by heading upstream. It took us past all the major river sites, with the multi-language commentary pointing out various important buildings, plus indicating where the very wealthy Parisians lived. The best part of the upstream portion was passing right next to Notre Dame, and seeing it from river-level. What a magnificent church. We continued upstream for a few minutes past Notre Dame, to the edge of the modern section of Paris, which is steel and glass and uninspiring after all the beautiful stone buildings of the historic section. The boat turned there, and we headed downstream, past where we started, to just past the Eiffel Tower, which was lit up and resplendent. After we turned just past the Tower, Mer and I headed downstairs into the heated section (Ami had gone there a little earlier). Seeing Paris from the river was grand, and I recommend it — just make sure you have the correct clothing!

We headed over to the Champs Elysees area, which was our ultimate destination, since they were having a several-blocks-long “Christmas Village” fair. We grabbed supper first at a sit-down restaurant before we dove into the bright lights of the big city villages. It was booth after booth after booth of fair food, Christmas lights, jewelry, and other wares. We found out that French fair food includes large chunks of salami, various sausages, crepes, and waffles with Nutella. Cotton candy is called “Daddy’s beard.” Holiday cheer includes the Thriller ride, with three floors of zombies, who were dressed in Santa outfits. We HAD to ride that ride, which was wonderfully ridiculous, and was much fun, especially since Ami screamed (on purpose) every time an animatronic monster jumped out at us. Ho ho ho.

It was delightful to see Parisians at play. The place was busy without being mobbed, and everyone I saw seemed to be having a good time. The oddest thing we came across was a display of dinosaurs, including one display that was just a leg, which was cut away on one side to show the anatomy. Yule-tide cheer!

The lights and the festive crowds and the different foods and displays all made me happy, and we had a blast, such that it came as some surprise to us to see that it was 10:00 pm. We quickly used Ami’s cell phone and some friendly directions from a man in a booth to get us to a nearby Metro stop so we could get home.

Today we started out a little later, heading out around 9:45, heading to Napoleon’s tomb and the Army Museum. It is yet another huge and impressive building, about the size of a city block, with a huge church as part of the complex (which includes a functional veterans’ hospital). The church was built by Louis XIV (of Versailles fame), but was co-opted to become the final resting place of Napoleon, along with some of his brothers and supporters (in more modest side-chapels, of course). Napoleon himself is inside multiple coffins, for reasons that escape me, but what you can actually see is a huge red stone tomb. You look down on the tomb from the second floor, where you enter, but you can go down to the tomb level, after you pass impressive stone statues depicting military and social governing. Napoleon is not wanting for good PR — his tomb is surrounded by friezes depicting him doing amazing and wonderful things, like dispensing justice, conquering other lands, making peace, and building things, all while dressed in the robes and laurel of a Roman emperor. Oddly, no mention of Waterloo anywhere.

We ducked into the complex’s chapel, which is large and simple, with what we think are flags flying from various military campaigns of France. There were staff people in the church setting up a nativity scene, which had a very French-looking Joseph.

We then proceeded upstairs to the second floor of the museum area; we went through the World War 1 display, which actually laid the foundations of the war by starting in the 1870s. I would have found the WW1 information interesting, but we did not have time to see it all; plus, most of it was written up in French.

We stopped in the World War 2 display, which was laid out on three floors, each of which showed a couple of years of the war, and focused on France’s role in the war, especially regarding the French resistance fighters and the free French army outside of France, with a strong section on the liberation of France, including D-Day. Many of the exhibits were in French, but the summaries of each section had a good English translation, and there were also supporting films and photos that did not need too much explaination. The museum is well done, and it is very understandable that it focuses so much on France. The parts of the exhibit that I understood about occupied France were interesting in that I did not know much about the resistance movement or about the tenuous “free” French state in the south of France.

We headed over toward the Rodin Museum, where we were going to grab lunch at a cafe near the museum. We first had to make our way through the edge of a small protest group surrounded by automatic-weapon-wielding riot police. That does get your attention when you have to walk past that many guns. None of us had any idea of what was being protested, and after lunch, the plexiglass-wielding officer let us go by when we said we were headed to the Rodin Museum. Very odd, and a little unnerving.

It was well worth it, though. I love sculpture, and Rodin is one of the best sculptors who ever lived. The museum exhibits show not only his finished work, both inside the museum and outside in the grounds and gardens, but also Rodin’s sketches and plaster work that led up to the final pieces. The museum had many of Rodin’s most famous works, including The Thinker, The Kiss, The Gates of Hell, statues of Balzac and Victor Hugo, and more. They are almost all laid out such that you can walk around them to see them from any angle. We even paid the four-euro fee to see the exhibit on the designing of The Gates of Hell, which included many sketches and mock-ups that evolved over ten years while Rodin planned the work. It was facsinating to see the evolution of his ideas over such a long time.

We closed the museum out, leaving around 5:00. Ami was meeting an old friend at 7:30, so we had time to wander. We stumbled across an inviting street that was well-lit with Christmas decorations, and so we took the road. It had a pastry place, so I hopped in and we bought some baked goods. We were a few blocks from the Seine River, so I wanted to eat them there, where I could watch the boats go by. As we came across the river, Ami got excited at our proximity to the new Paris Ferris wheel, the Roue de Paris. She, and Meredith, wanted to go on it, so after we ate, we walked over and saw that there was almost no line. In we went. I am scared of heights, so it was a little rough for me, but I made it by closing my eyes for the highest parts. It also helped that while we were near the top of our second rotation (you go around twice), the light show on the Eiffel Tower went off, and that distracted me fairly well. It is pretty to see a city lit up at night, especially one with as many famous sights as Paris.

We walked Ami over to her friend’s place, and then Mer and I went to dinner at a cafe for no other reason than it had the same name as a friend of ours – Mucha’s. After supper, we took the Metro home, where we got in at a fairly early 8:30.

We went to Versailles today. That’s it. A nice, simple day.

Ha!

Versailles is mind-blowingly big. Huge. Immense. Gargantuan. There is nothing even close, at least as far as I have seen. We spent over six hours there, from around 10:30 until closing at 5:00, and while we saw all of the highlights of the palace and grounds, we did not come close to seeing it all, and several of the sights were closed because it was off-season or because of renovation.

We took the train out to Versailles, about forty minutes away. We had simple directions (turn right from the station, turn left at the first intersection), but I was commenting that it seemed dumb that there were no signs to the palace; then I looked left at the first intersection, and it was obvious why there were no signs — the place is unmistakable.

Everywhere you look at Versailles, it is jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring. The palace is huge. The gates and the roof line are gilded. The grounds are vast, varied, and verdant.

Even though it was off-season, and there were not mobs of people, there was still a healthy line to get into the palace, so we started with the grounds, which was our plan anyway. We went around to the left side of the house, and there was an impressive garden there. It was formal, and Meredith read from her guidebook that King Louis XIV, who greatly expanded Versailles, had one thousand orange trees growing in greenhouses, and they could be wheeled out and placed around the garden when he wanted orange trees. Then we came around to the back of the house, and I realized that what we had just seen was a garden patch.

The park at the back of the house lines up with a long view of manicured and fountain-rich lawns. Oh, and there is a mile-long canal that was created so the guests could have actual, imported-from-Italy gondoliers gondola them about on it. You can still rent boats to go out on it today, but not today, since the boats don’t run off-season.

To save some walking, we paid to take a tram out to the far-flung parts of the grounds. Since Louis wanted to escape the pressures of politics in Paris, he expanded Versailles. When that became a nest of politics, he built a smaller, remote palace on the back-forty called the Grand Trianon. We stopped there to tour it. It was much smaller and simpler than the chateau, but still big, and the inside was pretty sumptuous. It was, after all, where the king stayed when he wanted to get away, and it was where his mistress lived (his wife lived in the palace). The Grand Trianon has its own formal grounds and gardens, and according to the guidebook, the gardeners changed out the flowers daily for the king. We did not have time to see the grounds there, since we wanted to spend more time at the Domaine de Marie-Antoinette, the full-scale play peasant village of the wife of Louis XVI.

We walked over to the Petit Trianon, the smaller remote palace where Marie-Antoinette lived, to tour that house. It was a little confusing in that the palace did not seem all that luxurious, until we went up to the second floor and realized we must have been down in the servants’ area. The second floor was okay — decked out in finery, with huge windows overlooking more gardens, including a “small” outbuilding where the guests would go to play cards or chat (while listening to live musicians, of course). We had lunch there, about 1:00.

We wandered down to the lake and the Greek-inspired Temple of Love, which all fashionable escape palaces have, before heading down to the play village, following the small man-made river that winds through the grounds. The play village has several buildings, including a lighthouse (what?) and a working farm. Marie-Antoinette had a huge house there, but it was under renovation, and so under wraps (literally — I assume it was covered to protect it from weather during the renovation). The renovation was partly being sponsored by Dior, so to our amusement, on the covering, there were severe, cutting-edge-fashion pictures of models set in formal gardens. It was incongruous.

We wandered the village, which was very pretty. None of the buildings were open, and it is certainly possible they never are, but they were definitely closed in November. We kept strolling through the grounds, heading back toward the Petit Trianon, and swung by the artificial grotto and alpine area, where the architect had built a stone waterfall next to a huge gazebo, as one does. That took us back to the Petit Trianon, where we caught the tram over to the Grand Canal, from whence we wanted to walk back up to the chateau.

The view of the main grounds is always-changing, and it is hard to know when to look up at the house and when to look back at the canal. Both views were spectacular. We ambled over to a Greek-style colonnade off to one side of the grounds, but it was locked off. The off-season has fewer crowds, but fewer sights as well.

We walked up to the gilded and impressive Latona Basin fountain, which is, like everything else, huge and over the top. That left the touring of the house itself, which we went to, noting with some smugness that there was now no line. In we went.

We started our tour by walking past the Royal Chapel, where the king would worship (while the nobles faced him!) with the daughters’ apartments, where King Louis’ daughters lived. Each room was sumptuously outfitted, and each had a ridiculously high canopy bed. Mer commented that if the curtains were drawn, it would feel as if you had fallen down a finely-lined elevator shaft.

The walk then led us into the king’s quarters, which included a ballroom, a reception area, a throne room, an official bedroom (the king had more than one bedroom), and some other rooms for the king’s use. Each room had a huge mural on it, usually of a Greek or Roman god, since the king styled himself the sun god. These rooms all led to the large Hall of Mirrors, which is still impressive today, with floor-to-ceiling mirrors facing each floor-to-ceiling window, built at a time when mirrors were rare and expensive. Normally, you could tour the queen’s quarters, but they are under renovation at this time, so our tour ended, which worked out okay since it was 5:00 and the place was closing for the evening.

We walked into town for supper, stopping several times as we went to look back and admire Versailles in the sunset. It is an amazing building, and the town is quite nice too. The bistro at which we ate was very good, and the waiter told Mer that she was the only American he had ever heard speak French. We stopped on the way to the train station to pick up a few pastries for the trip, and we headed home.

We sneaked in one quick walk down a couple of blocks near our apartment to look at Christmas lights strung along a street. It had the added bonus of allowing us to come across an open store where Mer and I could find chocolate and Dubbs could buy Earl Grey tea.

On a funny note, in light of her knee injury, Ami had asked that we not walk as far as we had on Monday, when we went 10 miles (20,300 steps). She forgot to be specific, as we did not walk that much — we walked a fair bit more, putting in 23,500 steps for about 12 miles. We were pretty tired. On the good-news front, Ami’s knee was much better, and she only used the cane for support on rough ground.