We flew from San Francisco to Boston on Northwest Airlines and were supposed to have about an hour and a half wait until our flight to Paris. But the plane had an oil leak, and so another plane had to be brought in from Minneapolis which meant we had a four hour layover in Boston. They did give us a voucher worth $5 apiece, though, which bought a couple of beers. Big deal! One good thing about the delay - we met a very nice French family who helped us find our way around once we reached the Paris airport. We arrived in Paris about 1:00 in the afternoon on August 1 and spent the next four nights there. The Louvre, Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, the Rodin Museum, the L'Orangerie Museum, the Tuileries, the Obelisk of Luxor, the Pompidou Centre, Montmarte, Sacre Coeur, the Seine (Rive Gauche et Rive Droit), the Palais-Royal, Sainte Chapelle, the Metro - they are all absolutely wonderful.
Paris does have a few tacky things, though. The Champs Elysees reminded Claudia of a flashy Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills; the Moulin Rouge is in the Pigal (sex) district that would make North Beach in San Francisco blush; and the Palace at Versailles is a monument to excess, over-indulgence, and man's inhumanity to man. We stayed in a small and cheap (for Paris) hotel; our room was on the fifth floor, there were no elevators, and we had full (and heavy) backpacks! The Hotel du Palais is in a great location though. We were on the Quay de la Megisserie directly on the Seine about two blocks from Notre Dame! Claudia especially loved Paris, and we would both love to return there. It is very expensive, though, as a coke costs about $2 or even more. The people, by the way, were friendly (as opposed to what I had heard), and I always tried to speak in French at first, which I think really helped.
Arc de Triomphe
The Eiffel Tower 
Notre Dame 
Windows in Notre Dame 
More windows in Notre Dame 
Notre Dame at night 
The Ile de Cite
The Obelisk at Place de Concorde 
The Vendome Column 
The River Seine 
A busy Paris train station 
A Paris sidewalk cafe
Sacre Coeur on Montmartre 
Inside the Louvre 
A flower window box 
Along the Champ Elysees 
Book sellers along the banks of the Seine
Notre Dame Cathedral
Sainte Chapelle
Hotel de Ville
Place du Tertre on Montmartre
Opera Garnier
Palais Royal
From Paris we traveled by train (the European trains are fantastic, and the Eurail Pass is a great buy) to Koblenz, Germany. The plan was to catch a boat at Koblenz and travel down the Rhine to Mainz. But we missed the last boat of the day by five minutes! I was really disappointed. And so we got back on the train and went to Wurzburg, a small (and lovely) Bavarian city.
Our hotel in Wurzburg was owned by a former G.I., a big Texan, Andy, and his wife, Frau Andersen. They were both extremely talkative and most friendly. Our first night there, we had dinner at an outdoor beer garden and struck up a conversation with the young couple, Tanja and Stephan (both about 23), seated next to us. We ended up talking and drinking beer with them for at least two hours. The next day, we toured Wurzburg a little but took the Andersen's advise and took a side trip to Rothenburg - a very good choice. Rothenburg is a walled medieval city that is what I have always pictured as a quaint Bavarian village.
Legend has it that the city was going to be destroyed in the Thirty Years' War after it was taken over by the Swedes, but the mayor made a deal with the Swedish general that if he could chug-a-lug three liters of wine in one gulp, the city would be spared. And the mayor did it! That event is relived every hour when two figures (a general and the mayor) come out on the clock tower in the town square, and the figure of the mayor empties his mug. Claudia did a lot of shopping in a huge Christmas store there, and I went to a very interesting (but somewhat gory) criminal museum.
Our next train trip took us from Wurzburg to Zurich, Switzerland, a somewhat unimpressive city on the River Limmat. It's pretty much a city filled with banks! Again, though, we were very fortunate at dinner time. We ate at an outdoor pizzeria in a very busy lane, and we again started talking to the couple next to us. Thomas and Cornelia (in their late 20s) then walked the city with us and showed us Zwingli's church and another church with a window by Chagall. They also bought us desert at an outdoor ice creamery in the heart of town. We exchanged addresses with them, as we had done with Tanja and Stephan in Wurzburg.
The trip from Zurich into Italy through the Swiss Alps was absolutely stunning. I figure whoever made up the word "breathtaking" must have been in the Alps at the time. I would really like to go back there and spend some time in a small village.
And then there was Italy! We had just come out of Germany and Switzerland which are both amazingly clean (I remarked somewhere in Germany to Claudia that even the dirt seemed clean) and where most of the houses have window boxes filled with geraniums and where the gardens are kept with obvious pride. And then we entered northern Italy, and I thought I had fallen asleep and had awakened in Oakland. The houses were rundown, unkempt, and there was a lot of garbage along the tracks. We pulled into the train station in Milan to transfer to another train to Venice. But our train to Venice didn't show up. When I asked about it at an information booth, I was rudely told (the only time I can remember being treated rudely in Europe) that there was a train workers' strike. I asked when the next train was and was told that it might be in an hour and a half. In Germany, in contrast, if a train was scheduled to leave at 6:37, it left at 6:37 not 6:38 - you could set your watch by it. Finally, thankfully, we left Milan and settled into our first class cabin (our Eurail passes were first class) when an Italian oriental man entered our cabin and was offended that I was sitting in "his" seat. It turns out he had reservations, and I hadn't seen the notification of that on the cabin's sliding glass door. I apologized and moved over, but he obviously did not like having to share the compartment with us because he kept drumming his fingers loudly on the arm rest and sighing. When he detrained at Padua, I remarked that Orientals are usually so polite, but it took Italy to drive that politeness out of him! We then passed Verona, and Claudia said, "Verona, that sounds familiar," and I said, "of course, Shakespeare's play ŒTwo Gentlemen from Verona.' " Claudia then asked how Shakespeare was able to find two! By this time she was giggling harder than I've ever seen her in our twenty-five years of marriage (our anniversary was four days ago - Aug. 24).
And then we entered Venice (Venezia). It too is basically a dirty, rundown city, but the water gives it great charm. It is so unique to be in a city of probably a few hundred thousand, and there is not one single car!
We stayed at a nearby island, Lido, and our hotel, Villa Mabapa, was by far the best on our trip. It was a family mansion which was turned into a hotel in the 30s. The owner, the granddaughter who had lived there as a child, has maintained the family atmosphere at the hotel, and we were treated elegantly. In Venice, I splurged and bought a decanter and glass set at the Mirano glass factory which were later shipped to us. It was not cheap, but it sure is beautiful. Claudia also bought a cameo for herself - something she has always wanted. We walked the streets of Venice and spent a lot of time in Saint Mark's Cathedral and the adjoining square. We traveled a lot by bus, but by "bus," I mean busboat. It was really something. I am glad we visited Venice, but now that we've seen it, I don't feel any desire to go back unless it were at Carnival time.
A scene on Lake Como in northern Italy
The Rialto Bridge
The Grand Canal
A gondola
The Bridge of Sighs
The Ducal Palace
St. Mark's
St. Mark's Square
St. Mark's Square
St. Mark's
St. Mark's Cathedral
The port of Venice
A gondola
After two days in Venice, we got back on the train for the trip through Tuscany to Florence, changing trains in Bologna.
Florence (Firenze) was a favorite spot for Claudia because of all its art treasures. We toured the famous Uffizi Museum near which the de Medicis lived, saw Michelangelo's "David" (stunningly beautiful) at the Academie, visited the Museum of Modern Art at the Pitti Palace, took in a Dali exhibit at a smaller museum (that and the Rodin in Paris were my favorites), and crossed the famous Ponte Vecchio (Arno River) many times.
We also had the best ice cream (actually, gelato) I've ever had (in fact the best by far) at the Gelateria del Neri. Even though my feet were killing me, I insisted we walk back there again our last night in Florence. Florence is famous also for its leather, and we spent a few hours one afternoon searching for a leather coat for Claudia, and we finally bought one (strangely enough back at the first shop of the many we looked in) for about half of what it would have cost in the U.S.
And then we left Florence on our way to Prague and took the train ride from hell! On most of the other train rides, we had a six-seat compartment to ourselves, as most Europeans now travel second-class because of the recession. But someone informed me that the night trains are usually very crowded and that we should make reservations. When I tried to do so (24 hours ahead of time) on the Florence-Vienna train, I learned that the train was already totally booked. I then asked about the Florence-Munich train, and everything was booked (sleepers, couchettes, first class) except for a few seats in second class, and so of course I reserved two of those. The train left about 9:30 at night, and when we got on, the train was like an oven (first class has air-conditioning; second class doesn't). When we entered our compartment, a young Italian was leaning out of the window, and his (and others') stuff was everywhere. He gave us a look as if we were intruding, and then I showed him our names on the reservation slots on the door. He yelled to his two companions outside, and one of them (a bearded Italian in his late 30s) came charging in in an attempt to intimidate us. It didn't work. We thus spent the night (and what a long and horrible night!) with three Italian men! Stephano, the bearded one, talked incessantly to his toady friends, Alex and Nicolo, both in their early 20s. We think he may have been their boss, as they hung on his every word and kept laughing at what he was saying. From our standpoint, he was a rude and very loud boor who pontificated all night long. Finally, about 2:30 or so, I walked over and turned off the overhead light to try to give the jerk a hint. He sort of took it, and all of us were soon asleep, but, alas, for only a short time, as he soon loudly smashed a fly against the glass door. And he did the same thing at least twice more. God, how I wanted to kick his butt. Italian men can sure be assholes, pardon my French! About 6:30 we detrained at Munich, and our Italian "friends" continued on to Berlin.
At Munich, we then caught a train to Prague. After we crossed the Czech border, when the conductor checked our tickets, he informed us that our Eurail passes were no good in the Czech Republic (it is no longer Czechoslovakia, by the way). We thus had to pay $16 apiece to go the 200 or so km. to Prague. We originally had hotel reservations in Prague (at $182 per night), but I canceled those by FAX from Venice. At the Prague train station, shortly after we detrained, a man in a suit and tie approached us and asked if we needed a place to stay. We told him (Vladimir Skuhrovec) we did, and he offered us his modest flat at $30 per night. Of course we agreed. Vladimir took us to his car and gave us a brief tour of Prague before taking us to his flat. He was leaving for the weekend with his girlfriend, something we later learned he does almost every weekend, and he showed us a nearby cafe, Ceska Hospoda, where I bought him a beer. He told us that even though the $60 for the weekend was a good thing for us, it was also wonderful for him, as it paid his entire month's rent! After he left, we rested for awhile at the flat, and then we began a walking tour of Prague.
Prague (Praha) is a phenomenally beautiful and historically rich city. It was the favorite place for both of us on the entire trip. St. Wenceslas Square, the Old Town, the Prague Castle, the Charles Bridge across the Vltava (Moldau) River, the graffiti (John Lennon) wall, Our Lady of Tyn Church, the street entertainers everywhere, the classical concert at the Chapel of Mirrors, the Tomas brewery, the magnificent architecture - what a treat it all was.
And how inexpensive! For instance, we ate five meals (I think) at the Ceska Hospoda, and I want to tell you about the biggest one. I had a large hors d'oeuvres plate of sliced beef and mustard, a main course of duck and dumplings, two beers (Stiegl - the best I've ever had), desert, and Claudia had comparable servings (wine, of course, instead of beer), and the total bill for the two of us came to less than $9! That same dinner would have cost us over $100 in Paris. We took advantage of the low prices and also bought Christmas presents for all the relatives (no, I'm not telling!). We've decided that the smart thing to do would be to rent an apartment for a month in Prague, sublet it on weekends to tourists, and then branch out to places like Vienna, Budapest, Warsaw, and Salzburg.
We had another interesting experience in Prague. We actually took an organized tour, our only one in Europe, on an air-conditioned bus in Prague. The tour, like everything else in Praha, was cheap, and our tour guide, Vera, a 75 year old native, was a kick. She spoke five languages and has lived all her life in Prague - through WWII, the Communist occupation, the Velvet Revolution, and now the beginnings of westernization. On the bus (which held 11) there were only English and German speaking tourists, and so she only had to speak those two languages. She would always begin by saying "please, my ladies and my gentlemen, look to your right . . ." She was really cute but also a toughie. In a church up near the Prague Castle, while she was explaining something to us, some outsiders were listening in, and she sharply asked them, "are you members of my group?" An air force colonel from the Pentagon, one of our group of 11, wandered off during one of her explanations, and she verbally ushered him back. I later walked over to him and said, "if you do that again, you'll have to stay after school!" His German fiancee fell apart laughing. By the way, we didn't see it on the tour, but we learned that Prague has a sports stadium on the hill, near the castle, that holds over 200,000 spectators! We sadly had to say good-bye to Prague after only two short days.
A Prague marketplace
A statue on the St. Charles Bridge
The Clock Tower
Wenceslas Square and the National Museum
Clock Tower and Our Lady of Tyn Church
15th century Town Hall Clock in Old Town Square
14th century Our Lady of Tyn Church, seen from the Town Hall Tower
Wenceslas Square
14th century Charles Bridge
From Prague, we headed towards Salzburg via Vienna. In the Prague train station, we bought tickets from Prague to the Czech border, and it only cost about $4 apiece as opposed to the $16 we paid coming in. Because Prague has only been open to the west since 1989, there are still no direct trains to Vienna, and so we had to get off the train just over the Austrian border, take about a one-hour bus ride to another Austrian city, and then board another train to Vienna. In Vienna, we had to then take a city bus from one train station to the main station and then catch a train to Salzburg. On that particular train, the conductor, Hans, took a special liking to us and spent at least one hour in our compartment talking.
Salzburg is an absolute treat for the eyes. The home of The Sound of Music, it is the most naturally beautiful city I have ever seen.
It's a small city in a valley, with the River Salzach winding through it, and it is surrounded by impressive mountains. Just above Old Town, there is a mountain capped by an ancient fortress. We took an elevator about half way up to the Winkler Restaurant and then wound our way up the rest of the way to the massive, impenetrable fortress. The view from up there was stunning. On our way down, we stopped at the Nonnberg Abbey where much of The Sound of Music was filmed and then had some beer and pretzels at a "biergarten" built into the side of the mountain. We saw the home where Mozart was born and visited the beautiful Mirabell Gardens, built by Franz Josef for his wife. One night we rode bikes along the river, and I even played (and won) two games of chess on a 25' x 25' board painted onto the blacktop in the massive town square below the fortress and behind the Cathedral. The pieces were about three feet tall and weighed about fifteen pounds. I played an Austrian and then an Italian. The second game lasted about an hour and a half, and there were upwards of about seventy spectators who clapped when the game ended. The setting was phenomenal, and there were even classical musicians in the background playing Mozart. What a fantastic experience! Salzburg, along with Paris and Prague, are the cities I would love to return to.
Downtown Salzburg
Mozart's home
Mirabell Castle and Gardens
Mirabell Gardens and Fort
Church of the Capuchin Order and the Salzach River
Capuchin Order Church and Old Salzburg
The Salzach River
When we had planned the trip, we left the last five days open (the days after Salzburg) to do whatever - try some new places or return to a place we had been. We had to fly back out of Paris, and so we felt we should at least head in that direction. And so we went to Strasbourg, France on the German border in Alsace-Lorraine.
We didn't have hotel reservations in Strasbourg, so we again sought aid from the tourist bureau as we had done in Wurzburg. The young ladies at the bureau were very helpful and very enthusiastic about Strasbourg, and Claudia commented that they were great ambassadors for their city and probably deserved a raise. They tried to hand her the phone to call their boss. They set us up at Hotel Beaucour, a nice, centrally located hotel less than a block from the Ill River, the river that runs in a circular fashion through Strasbourg. After settling in to the hotel, we walked over by the massive cathedral and then looked for a restaurant. Unfortunately, we chose Chez Yvonne, a cute little place that stuffed us in like sardines and fed us mediocre food for a big price. Yvonne walked by our card table sized table (which we, by the way, had to share with another couple) and said "bon appetit." We begrudgingly smiled.
A waiter-busboy at the hotel, Boz, a native of Mauritius, told us about a great restaurant in town and told us not to miss the water show at the Pont Couvert. We took a boat ride along the Ill to get the layout of the city, and we even went through a set of locks. We also saw where the European Parliaments meet, and we did some shopping in a very large mall where I bought a cheap watch and, Lord, forgive me for this, even bought a milkshake at a McDonalds.
Later, we ate dinner at Au Pont San Martin, a triple decker restaurant right on the river. I had a dish called Baeckoffe, and I don't ever remember enjoying a meal more. There were roast size chunks of beef and pork that had been marinating for 24 hours in some white wine sauce; there were many spices; there were vegetables and scallop-like potatoes, all served in a crock pot. It literally melted in the mouth. Of course, I had beer with it. The beer in Europe is so good, and now that I'm home, American beers taste like water.
After dinner, we took Boz's advise and walked over to the Pont Couvert, one of the oldest bridges in Europe. It is a covered bridge about a block or so long, and every August night, a water show takes place on top of the bridge. We, and a few thousand others, were treated to quite a sight. From a fantastic sound system, to the music of "Sound of Music," "Evita," "Phantom of the Opera," etc., spouts of water about 30 feet high danced and swayed in beautiful rhythm and in a myriad of colors. It was phenomenal and put to shame any fireworks display we have ever seen. That alone made the trip to Strasbourg worthwhile. Strasbourg, by the way, looks more like a German city than a French one, and about half the people speak each language.
Claudia had left her sun glasses at Chez Yvonne, and, before we left the city, we went back to retrieve them. We were laughing to think that maybe when Yvonne saw us walk in, she might have thought that we were coming back to have another of her fabulous meals!
From Strasbourg, we headed north to Bruges, Belgium via Brussels (Bruxelles). For the third time on the trip, we pulled into a town with no prior reservations, but again we had no problem, thanks to the tourist bureau. We ended up at Hotel Cordoeanier, a very modest place, but basically we were only in our various hotel rooms only to sleep, so who cares?
Bruges (Brugge) is a charming little city with small canals running through it. It is small, quaint, clean, and very friendly. There were tourists everywhere, and I couldn't believe it when one busload of Japanese tourists (almost entirely older women) got off the bus, and each person had a number! Thank God Claudia and I avoided tours and went off on our own. In the town square the first night, there was a concert by a local band, and they played a medley of old, favorite, patriotic American songs. We went to another Dali exhibit - this one combined with an exhibit of Miro, and Claudia and I went to a textile exhibition and even met the artist. Claudia shopped in a lace (Bruges' specialty) shop while I waited outside and watched the horses and buggies stop at a designated resting place for the horses. The horses ate a lot, but I saw very few of them drink any water, even though they had just been going for at least an hour at a trot down the cobblestone streets of Bruges on a rather hot day. It brought to mind the old saying, "you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink." I think I now understand that saying. Oh yeah, Claudia did buy a couple of lace hankies.
Speaking of weather, we had tremendous weather on the whole trip. It was warm but never too uncomfortable. It rained slightly for about an hour one of our days in Venice, and we had about five minutes of rain once in Paris, and one night in Salzburg we were treated to a spectacular thunder and lightening show sans rain.
Back to Bruges. We took a very pleasant boat ride around the canals, visited the fish market, and signed up for a four hour bike ride through the outlying Flanders fields. We met the biking group at 10:00, but there were too many, and four of us were told to return at 2:00 that afternoon. We showed, but the biking people didn't. We were pretty disappointed.
Another canal view
Tourists seeing Bruges by buggy
Bruges at night
We said good-bye to Bruges and headed back towards Paris. I had phoned Hotel du Palais, and they had a room for us for one more night. We arrived in Paris shortly after noon, went by Metro to the hotel, ate a lunch in a nearby cafe, and then walked to the Pompidou Centre. It is an art center, has one of the largest libraries in the world, and is somewhat controversial. The outside of the building is quite ugly, as they purposely left exposed all the pipes, duct work, etc. - why, I'll never now. We then bought a bottle of wine, a baguette, some salami and cheese, and we headed over to Notre Dame one more time and had our dinner, picnic style, in the park behind the church.
After our picnic, when we were walking back through the large courtyard in front of Notre Dame, I saw and heard people laughing. Then I noticed a clown was walking behind me and mimicking me. We stopped and watched him perform for about an hour doing all kinds of funny and clever things. One time, he snuck (is there such a word?) behind and between a couple and grabbed the hand of the man who thought it was the lady's hand. When the lady noticed what was going on, she started to beat him with a newspaper.
Sunday morning, August 22, we went to Mass at Notre Dame, had breakfast, and went by Metro back to the Charles de Gaulle Airport for our long flight home on Northwest Airlines via Detroit, of all places. We saw two movies in flight, and one was kind of entertaining - Sandlot. We arrived back in Livermore about midnight which was 9:00 to us - 26 hours since we had last slept.
Thoughts about Europe - Paris is alive and exciting; Germany is very clean, organized, and friendly (I could easily live in Wurzburg); the Alps are one of God's most beautiful creations; Italy is dirty, ugly, and unfriendly, and having met some Italian men, I now understand why the Church has so many problems; Venice is unique and interesting, but we've seen it now, and I have no desire to return; Florence has tons of class, but the people drive crazily, especially on motor scooters which outnumber the cars probably three to one; Prague has to be one of the great cities of the world, and it is so cheap; Salzburg is stunningly beautiful; Strasbourg was a good choice, but I don't think I'd return (wait a minute - there is that Baeckoffe); Bruges is charming, but there really isn't much there; the trains and train stations in Europe are fantastic; Europeans enjoy their meals (no fast food), and waiters will not bring the check until asked; the people (even the French, and with the possible exception of the Italians) are very friendly and went out of their way to help us.
Oh, and we saw the homes of many famous people - in Paris, two places where Van Gogh lived, as well as the homes of Baudelaire, Madame Curie, Cardinal Richelieu's nephew, and where Picasso lived when he painted Guernica; in Versailles, the palace inhabited by Louis XIV, XV, and XVI and Marie Antoinette; in Venice, the tomb of St. Mark; in Florence, besides the home of the de Medicis, the Church of Santa Croce where Michelangelo, Galileo, and Machiavelli are buried, as well as the house where Dostoievski lived when he wrote The Idiot; in Prague, the home of Franz Kafka; in Salzburg, two homes where Mozart lived; and I'm sure there are others I've forgotten.
What a great time we had! What have you been doing lately?
Love,
Jim
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