The Cast:
Debbie - 44 yr old nurse
Valerie - her 18 yr old daughter
Robert - Valerie's 19 yr old boyfriend
Our big trip started in stages... First Robert and I (Debbie) had to drive the 1,300 miles to get to Fort Lauderdale where Valerie had just finished up her spring semester at the University of Miami. She was staying at my sister Jane's home for a few days, awaiting our arrival. We rested for a day and a half, and made all our last-minute arrangements. By 7:30 PM on May 17th we were taking off from Miami towards London's Heathrow Airport.
The flight was uneventful, but awfully long. Each of us slept a little, but it really wasn't much... and we got off the plane at 9:20 AM local time, so the day was just starting all over for us! We got our luggage easily and then had to wait about 30 minutes for the shuttle to the car rental office. I think I got a bad deal on this first rental car. Although I had specifically asked if there were any mandatory additional charges at the time I made the reservation.... all of a sudden, I had to pay $15 a day for basic liability insurance which should have been included in the quote. But, we really didn't have time to go back to the airport and try to start over again with another company so we went ahead and took this car, a tiny Nissan Micra. You can rest assured, however, that I double-checked (and made several different reservations to cover our bases) for the next car we had reserved to pick up in Brussels the following week. This one was an automatic and made driving on the wrong side of the road a LITTLE easier. By the end of the first day in Ireland, this was Robert's opinion: "The car, by the way, is a pathetic little Nissan Micra hatchback that would barely hold six leprechauns!"
As soon as we got our bearings, we drove down to Stonehenge, where we viewed the site from outside the chain link fence, since it didn't seem like it would be worth the $10 each admission charge to get 30 feet closer. From there we headed north to Shakespeare's birthplace, but due to both lack of navigation skills, and a serious miscalculation in actual driving times in England, we were only able to visit one Shakespearian sight in Stratford upon Avon. Besides running into traffic in the most unlikely places, and of course, the ever-present RAIN, we found that the British have almost no highway system whatsoever! What is shown on the map as a highway is just a 2-lane road that goes through the middle of every little village, making our average speed for the journey less than 40 mph!
From Stratford, we made a mad dash toward Swansea, Wales on the coast to catch the ferry to Ireland. Lucky for us, this WAS one of the rare routes which had a fully fledged motorway and on this one the average speed was about eighty mph, so we made it....... with mere moments to spare! We drove our little Micra straight into the belly of the ship and checked into our cabin right away. Sea sickness was my worst problem, so I took a nice long hot shower and stayed in bed while Valerie and Robert explored the ship. We were all asleep by about midnight.
We arrived in Cork, Ireland and were awakened about 6.30 AM to vacate the cabin. I was feeling a little better, but still not completely back up to par. The port was about 15 miles outside of town, but we were soon in Cork. This is a medium-sized, industrial town with plenty of quaint little shops, pubs, and a shopping district in the center of town. Our plan was to go straight to the tourist information office to get directions to the hostel where we would be staying. We were off to a good start when we saw a small sign indicating the direction to the tourist office. But after 4 laps around the same set of one-way streets, we STILL hadn't found the tourist office. We got some further hints, and finally found it!
Then we had to find a parking place! After another 6 or 8 laps we finally found one. We had parked on the street, and there were no parking meters there so it never occurred to us that we were supposed to pay to park there. This was our first experience with the "parking disk" system that is used all over Europe. The idea of it is that you buy a little paper disk for a certain price (in Ireland they were purchased in stores and offices, whereas in most of the other countries they had vending machines every block that would dispense them) and, depending on the local rules, you could park for anywhere from 1 to 4 hours for each disk or ticket you bought.
With the vending machine tickets, the purchase time and expiration time and date is all printed in automatically by the machine.... but the Irish disks are a little trickier... you have to punch out the month-day-year-hour-minute you want to start using it. The parking enforcement people then have to figure out if you have overstayed the time from that. I think they only do spot checks, because the first 2 times we used our disk, we didn't understand the system. And of course, we NEVER thought to read the instructions on the back so we just stuck the disk up in the window without punching out the start time. This was, by far, the most serious of the listed offences, since it would seem to indicate that one was trying to defraud the system by buying a disk and then not marking it in order to use the same disk repeatedly. At any rate, we didn't get any tickets.
Before setting off to the hostel, I walked through an interesting grocery and butcher shop arcade. They eat a lot more lamb than we do, and the few pieces of beef I did see were cut differently than what I was used to seeing at home. The most popular of the odd cuts seemed to be the Clump Steak.... I think it was the same as what we call chuck steak, but cut thicker, more like a chuck roast. I bought some fruit and bread, and then met up with the other 2 at the car. They had bought a tin-whistle and songbook for it, but Valerie soon tired of hearing Robert playing "Old McDonald" on it, and she banished it from the passenger compartment of the car for the remainder of the vacation.
We checked in at Sheila's deluxe hostel, and then headed back out to visit the nearby town of Blarney. Valerie and Robert toured the castle there, but I was still trying to shake the mal-de-mer, so I chose to take a little nap in the car - I had already been through the tour before. We walked through the Woollen Mills outlet and the kids bought a couple of souvenirs, then I went to another grocery store. This one was more modern and larger than the one in Cork, and they had a pretty interesting cold cuts section. The sliced turkey breast had a section of stuffing right in the center of it, and the bologne was pretty hard to describe. Apparently they have added differing amounts of food coloring to it during processing and then pieced or pressed it together in such a way that when sliced for sandwiches, each slice looks like an in laid picture of a grinning clown in various shades of pink and beige. We passed on the clown meat, but the turkey was good.
Once we got back to Cork, I had my first little driving incident.... not only are the streets very narrow, but many are one-way.... so I turned down a very small street which shortly dead-ended with the choice of turning either left or right .... I looked right, and what I saw looked like a pedestrian mall where they were having a sidewalk sale, so I chose to turn left...WRONG!!! That was a one-way street going the wrong way.... a fact which was IMMEDIATELY clarified for me by a motorcycle cop who swooped down on us from out of nowhere! He said that the swap-meet sidewalk sale alley was actually the street and that my car WOULD be able to squeeze through.... so I turned around and we managed to snake our way through to the main street.
We had been noticing that we had not seen any police at all in Ireland, but apparently, they just keep a very low profile until they see a problem...a fact which was confirmed by a similar incident later that same night! After going back to Sheila's hostel, and settling in to the RED room (red bunkbeds, red sheets, red walls, red window shades.....) we had our dinner and Robert and Valerie took a walk around town. I took the opportunity to have a go at the "Internet Machine" in the sitting room. It was an odd sort of a cross between a computer and an arcade game. It was difficult to use and the connection was very slow, so to make a long story short.... the LONG STORY which I wrote as the first installment of the road trip e-mails EVAPORATED into cyberspace.... I was just going to get more change when the kids got back, so Valerie decided she would show me how it was done.... and the SAME thing happened to her!
By this time, we were both fed up, but Robert took a stab at it, and as luck would have it , the coin jammed in the slot this time, so the timer never stopped, allowing us as much time as we needed for Robert to complete the task. Robert is, however, a man of few words, so if it seemed like that first note was a little strange, that is why. He condensed what Valerie and I were dictating and threw in a little of his own editorializing while he was at it! Anyway, once that task was accomplished, we headed out for a night in a local pub.
We had read that there was free traditional Irish music and lots of fun at this particular pub, so that is where we went. It was,as advertised, VERY popular....so much so, in fact, that we could barely even squeeze in the door! It didn't take long for us to figure out that we weren't up for this. However they had an upstairs "quiet room" where a Irish singer-songwriter was performing his folk songs for a $7 cover charge, so we went for that. It was really enjoyable. He played several different acoustic guitars and even a ukulele, and gave a running monologue about his world travels, and the background of each of the songs. Robert got to try Guinness, and he managed to drink the whole thing, but Valerie and I thought it was awful!
We left there about midnight, and in an effort to get back to the hostel, I turned down another wrong-way street...this time I had already turned around by the time the cops (in a car this time) pulled me over. I think they had seen us come out of the pub and were more concerned that I might be drunk because as soon as they talked to me for a minute they showed us how to get back to the main street again - not an easy feat, even for them. There were several detours around a mid-city construction zone which had to be negotiated along the way.
We went to bed and in the morning, I let the kids sleep in a little while I went down to the communal kitchen and prepared our breakfast. I talked with a couple of interesting people there. One was a 24 year old BYU new graduate who was on his way to Japan to start his new job in computer sales. The other one was a guy, about 30 who was Irish, dressed in camouflage clothing, and had a shaved head. He was very interested in finding out what I thought would be the best way to sneak into the US! He really wanted to relocate here, but was certain that his criminal record would prevent him from getting a visa. I didn't ask! Soon enough the kids came in and we had breakfast, then packed up the car and headed out for our scenic Ring of Kerry drive. Getting out of town was even trickier than getting in, so we ended up asking a local, and they led us to the correct turn to take us to the main road out to the west.
The drive was really beautiful and sunny for a great deal of the way. Or maybe it was just raining more gently, who knows? We stopped several times to take pictures of the beautiful hillsides and coastal panoramas. At one point Robert said we should stop and rescue a couple of long-horned lambs who were apparently caught in the barbed wire fencing along the roadside. However, after I backed up about 50 yards and located the sheep-in-distress, Robert jumped out to try to free them. But when he got about 10 feet from them, they took one look at him, twisted their heads out from the fence and took off running! Soon we came to Ft. Staig, an ancient (1000 BC) ring fort, constructed of carefully stacked stones. We were able to go inside and walk around, and of course we took more pictures. The path up to the fort was really pretty too. We had to cross a small foot bridge covered with wild fuschias, and then walk through a brilliant green pasture with several grazing sheep. A little ways upstream, the river formed a cascading waterfall, and the tree-shaded grassy banks would have made a great place to have a little picnic.
We ended up in Dingle (cleverly located on a peninsula of the same goofy name) at the Ballintaggert House hostel. They were even friendlier than Sheila's, and the room again had 4 beds, but this time we had our own private bathroom and shower. This is the old manor house where the Earl of Cork poisoned his wife some time in the 1500's so we were warned that it was haunted. We all dreamed of dead relatives, but that was about it as far as any contact with the hereafter! The place had been remodelled on the inside but the courtyard was left pretty much original, and there was still a stone well and a huge cast iron vat that they told us was used during the great famine to feed the poor when this place had been used as a soup kitchen. Due to wet weather, we had to call off the bike riding (what a pity...) in favor of touring King John's Castle in Limerick. Very interesting, and a multimedia presentation in the visitor center brought us up to speed on the Irish history of the place. It was certainly obvious, though, that there is no love lost between the Irish and the English. The whole dramatization was very biased against those big, bad British.
We had a nice time in Ireland, though, we now KNOW why it's so green. It rains every day for at least 4 hours! From Limerick, we went straight to Dublin, and along the way we encountered several of the brightly painted horse-drawn gypsy caravans which hearty souls can rent by the week for a different kind of a camping vacation. Once in Dublin, we found another 4-bed room with our own bath so that was nice. The neighborhood, however, was apparently NOT that nice. We had to park in a gated, locked, secured parking area with cyclone wire fencing at the top! We checked in and then went out, on foot, in search of some good fish-n-chips. We hadn't realized it, but it was nearly midnight, so our options were pretty limited, but we were able to get some fish at an Irish fast food place.
In the morning we went to St Stephen's Green, and visited the historic library at Trinity College where we viewed the ancient Book of Kells. This is one of the oldest known, handwritten, illuminated (beautiful scrollwork, calligraphy and pen and ink drawings, highlighted with lots of gold-leaf) New Testaments. From the Book of Kells room, you are led into the main library which houses dozens of ancient books, several of them on display in glass showcases, as well as what is thought to be the oldest harp in Ireland today.
After that Robert and Valerie toured the Guinness Brewery, and then we headed out to the ancient passage tombs at Newgrange. It was very interesting, and the tour guide pointed out every little detail. There is a visitor center there with a small museum, and then you walk about 1/4 mile across the river to the area where you board a tour bus to ride a few miles up a private road to the actual site. The site itself is dome shaped, but seems to be designed similarly to the great pyramids of Egypt and Mexico, in that it is built in perfect alignment with the sun, so that on the winter solstice, the sun illuminates the inner chamber for just a few minutes each year! The rest of the time it is perfectly dark in there. By this time it was getting close to 6:00 PM and at this point it became obvious that we needed to make a midcourse correction. We would have to cut out our night at Carbisdale Castle in the northern part of Scotland which was scheduled for the next night.
So, instead of getting on a ferry from Dublin, we drove up to Belfast and then took a super speed luxury ferry over to Scotland. Unfortunately, this was a short trip. It would have been nice to spend the whole night on this ship. It held several hundred passengers but I don't think there were even 50 of us aboard. It had a theater lounge, 2 bars, a restaurant, Kid's Playground, a Casino, McDonald's, Ben and Jerry's Ice cream store, gift and Duty-free shops, and lots of very comfortable seats. Before we knew it, we had landed in Scotland, in a very small coastal town named Straenraer. It was already after 11:00 PM so we drove towards Glasgow, in hopes of finding an open hotel, but we were low on gas by this time, and it was getting later and later, so we decided to follow the signs to a local campground up in the hills.
The office was already closed but we were able to pitch our tent. The strangest thing about this place was the rabbits. There were literally hundreds of them, all over the place! Unfortunately, by this time it had started to drizzle, so Valerie said she preferred to just sleep in the car. Robert and I tried to persuade her, but she refused, so we slept in the tent without her. We packed up in the morning, and headed for Glasgow, first stopping to fill up the gas tank!
In Glasgow we visited a huge Cathedral, and then toured St. Mungo's Museum of Religions. This was a huge collection of religious artefacts and information about dozens of the world's religions. From Glasgow we headed on to Edinburgh, Scotland. I dropped Robert and Valerie up at the Castle, and went to locate the hostel where we would be staying. This was another very well-organized hostel, and we had a nice time there. I was able to park on the street right by the hostel, using the parking disk dispenser. Around the corner was an internet access store where I was able to send out some more updates, then it was time to pick up the kids.
We parked the car again, right across the street from the hostel, but this time the parking disk dispenser jammed and wouldn't give me a refund or a parking sticker, so I was on the horns of a dilemma. It was really too good a parking place to give up, yet I really didn't want to get a ticket either so I took a piece of paper and wrote the exact date and time, location of the malfunctioning machine, and a brief explanation of the problem and stuck THAT up in the window where I should have put the parking sticker. The next morning I saw a parking enforcement cop and was able to verify that this was, in fact, the approved procedure to follow in this circumstance - apparently this comes up frequently.
We had parked the car with the idea of buying a bus pass to ride around the city sightseeing, but the bus we got on headed straight for the suburbs, so we had to get off and go back on a different route. We stopped in town at a beautiful old-fashioned pub, with a restaurant upstairs, for dinner. They were out of their "famous" fish and chips, but the dinner was really good, and the atmospere was great - lots of dark woodwork and polished brasswork, and a big picture window, overlooking the busy street below. The next day we did a little more sightseeing around Edinburgh then headed south to have a second look at Stratford upon Avon.
We arrived earlier this time, but not early enough to avoid the rain, once again. Valerie and Robert headed for Shakespeare's birthplace and childhood home, while I wandered around the picturesque river area and photographed the "narrow boats" and the swans. The narrow boats are just like they sound - long narrow houseboats built specifically to navigate the network of small canals that criss cross central England. Some of them operate as small restaurants or snack bars, while others are rented to tourists by the week for leisurely vacation tours through the countryside. My next job was to secure lodging for the night hopefully at least halfway to London. Unfortunately, unknown to us, it was a 3-day holiday weekend in England and the first 8 or 9 hostels I called were all booked up!
I was really starting to get discouraged when, finally, I was able to get a reservation at the Backpacker's Hostel in Oxford. After that, I went shopping and then met the kids back at the car. We had had a discussion that afternoon as to whether or not I was legally parked. Of course I maintained that I was, but Robert wasn't so sure about it so they really got me. Before we met back up, they returned to the car and tore off part of a pink receipt for something or another and stuck it under the windshield wiper, making it look like a ticket. Between the soggy condition of the paper in the first place, and the heavy rain, I really couldn't make out much except that it looked like the figure £1,000 (about $1600!) was written on it. But, just when I was really getting puzzled, I looked over at Robert and saw he was snickering, so the jig was up! We all had a good laugh over that one, and then headed south for Oxford and the Backpacker's hostel, or as it later came to be known - "The Hostel from Hell" !
We found it easily enough, and right away we knew we were in for an interesting night. There were several colorful characters hanging out in the doorway, and when we went to check in, it was almost impossible to accomplish anything over the blaring music. The front desk area was located in a large room which also had a bar, pool table and dance floor, not to mention at least 50 people hanging around smoking, drinking and playing pool. I think it was about 10:00 PM by this time. The desk clerk informed us that we were in a dorm room (we knew that already from our reservation) but this was even worse than we expected. It was a small room with 6 sets of bunk beds and a wide assortment of people already occupying all but 3 top bunks - mine, Robert's and Valerie's.
We were told that our comforters and pillowcases (for which we had to put up a deposit) wouldn't be back from the laundry for about 30 minutes. The first glaring fact that I noticed was that there were no ladders to get to the top bunks, not a problem for the kids, but there was no way I was going to be able to get up there without some sort of apparatus to assist me! I went back out to the main room and found a straight chair which I appropriated for our use.
On the way back to the room, I encountered a group of college-age kids giggling around a small tape recorder. Apparently, while I was out scouting a chair, a couple of our bunkmates had gotten fed up with the snoring of another one, and had decided to record the offending party, to be used as evidence against him! That is what they were listening to in the hallway. Soon, the desk clerk, still WITHOUT our comforters, came in, woke up the guy and told him he was going to have to either stop it or leave. He turned over and that seemed to solve the problem, at least for the time being. I got up one more time. It was about midnight by now, and we still didn't have our comforters, and now the desk was closed! Luckily, we had our own sheets with us, so we managed. Now the REAL fun began.
For some reason, the guy in the upper bunk nearest to mine, kept banging on MY bedpost, saying to STOP THE SNORING even though I am pretty sure it was the other guy snoring again. He even did it once when I was awake, and therefore obviously NOT snoring. Anyway, I wasn't feeling well and had to make a trip to the bathroom at about 2:30 AM and I got quite a little surprise. Now keep in mind that this is like a regular, multi-stall public ladies room except that the stalls are separated by partitions clear to the floor with regular doors. But they still open up at the top, all the better to hear every little sound emanating from your stall mate(s).
Well, it seems that just as I was getting settled into my stall, I became acutely aware of an apparently quite ill girl in the next stall who wasn't feeling very well either. So I was just figuring that she must be having really bad stomach cramps or something, what with the whimpering and moaning. Then it even occurred to me that perhaps she was actually in labor, and I even thought of asking if she needed some assistance. But I figured I would wait until she screamed or yelled "help" or something. All of a sudden when I heard a distinctly male, German voice speaking, the picture became instantly clearer! At this point I was furious. I think if I could have found a bucket, I would have heaved a bucketful of cold water over the divider to register my complaint to them. Since I don't speak any German, I really couldn't even SAY anything appropriately insulting!
Looking back now, that was probably one of the funniest things that happened, in hindsight - but at the moment I was totally mortified! They FINALLY left and I was feeling better so I went back to our room, climbed back up into my bunk and slept, undisturbed, for the remainder of the night. In the morning, I got up first, with the idea of using the internet access, but found it was in a padlocked room, and apparently no one there at the moment had a clue as to why it was locked or where the key might be located! I added this to my list, then registered my complaints with the desk clerk, and told him I felt we deserved at least a partial refund but I got nowhere. So I just told the guy I would be disputing the charge on my credit card bill, so HE could explain the situation to his boss if any question should come up later about the matter.
After checking out of that bad Backpackers Hostel in Oxford we drove into London and I dropped the kids at the subway station while I tried to catch up on some things and get a hotel or something for the night. I am not sure about all that the kids did but this is at least a partial list - the FULL version of the changing of the guard (about 90 minutes long), the Tower of London, St. James Park, Westminster Abbey and Big Ben. I visited the EASY EVERYTHING store in London right on Knightsbridge Road, near Harrod's. They have 500 internet computers, and are by far the CHEAPEST (at £1 for 2.5 hours) and the most well-organized and user-friendly of all the internet access points we have used so far.
From there I was able to get a reservation at the Victoria Hotel which is actually more like a hostel. I was told that Valerie and I would be in a 6-bed female room, and that Robert would be in a different 6-bed room. I checked in and parked the car right near the hotel. I then took the subway over to the station nearest to the Old Globe Theater where we were supposed to meet up for our night of Shakespeare. They were already there when I arrived, so we picked up our tickets and went inside. We saw a very good (but completely UNCUT) production of The Tempest. We had the standing room "seats" in the front right by the stage. Good, in that you could see every little nuance in the action (and they were VERY cheap), but bad when the play turned out to be just over 3 and a half hours long after we had been walking all over London first!
We thoroughly enjoyed the play. The actors were really great, and the story was pretty funny in most parts. It wasn't over until about 10:45 so we just got on the subway, after about 1/2 mile hike to the nearest station (Blackfriars), and headed back to the hotel. It was about £15 (22 dollars) per person, including light breakfast, and was located right around the corner from a subway station - plus we got free overnight parking on the street right in front. Anyway, we checked in and went straight to our respective rooms. Poor Robert got quite a surprise, though.
When he tried to quietly climb into his bed, he heard a very feminine voice, speaking to him in French! At first, he thought that maybe one of his room mates had company but then he became aware of the fact that all 5 of his room-mates were, in fact, French girls! Once he ascertained that this was indeed the right room, all the girls decided they wanted to practise their English and talked to him for about 30 minutes - although he claims he didn't understand much of what they were saying, it seemed to involve a lot of giggling. The next morning we had almost no trouble getting back to the airport in plenty of time for our flight to Belgium at noon, even though I spent almost an hour on the internet computer in the hotel lobby, a nice regular computer like we have at home (except of course for the screwy European keyboard), before we left.
When we arrived at Heathrow, Robert and Valerie got out at the airport check-in area with the substantial pile of luggage, while I took the rental car back. The plane actually was set to depart from a different terminal than the one where I dropped them off so one of them had to take all the luggage while one waited there for me. Val was elected to take the luggage, so Robert packed the cart up for her, and inadvertently wrapped the bungee cord around the handbrake on the cart...Oops! Now, here's the picture. Valerie is pushing a fully loaded luggage cart (close to 400lbs.) for about half a mile (much of it up steep ramps) with the brake fully engaged. She had just barely made it to the check-in counter when Robert and I arrived there even though I had taken quite some time to return the car. She was exhausted and sweating profusely and imagine her surprise to find that the cart was considerably easier to push without the brake on! After a few choice words and a few physical blows, she evened the score with Robert and we checked in for our flight to Brussels.
The flight was nice and short and we got the rental car very quickly - and at the agreed-upon bargain rate (almost 80% less than the walk-up weekly rate posted.) And this one was a really nice car, a 4-dr Opel Vectra with 5 speed, a/c, cushy seats, a huge trunk, a nice am/fm/CD radio system, alarm and auto door locks not to mention about twice as much passenger room. It's only a little bigger than my Achieva but it feels like a Cadillac compared to that little Micra! And the best part is that I get to drive on the "normal" side again. So we took off from the airport and headed for downtown Brussels and our room at the Van Gogh Hostel.
It was fairly easy to find (comparatively speaking, that is) and we checked in quickly. It is composed of several buildings along one block of a narrow side street off the main street of the city. As we left the front desk we were warned about leaving our belongings in plain sight in the car. We went upstairs to check out our room (my camera was lying on the back seat in the car). Robert and Valerie went back to the car to get our stuff, but before I knew it, Robert reappeared at the door, without Valerie or the luggage, and with a calm voice said "I think you better come down here"…
As it turned out, in the few minutes we were away from the car, a young hoodlum had scoped out the car and was in the process of smashing the window with a rock. But Valerie had surprised him by clicking the remote auto-unlock button before she rounded the corner, so he made a quick retreat, but he left a chip in the glass. A man came out from the hostel and explained what had happened. He had seen the whole thing from his 2nd storey window and advised us on how to better protect our belongings. The same thing had happened to him last week.
We fixed our mistakes and went on to find food. We were ready for some good home cooking so we found a little grocery shop in a nearby neighborhood that seemed to be populated by Gypsies (at least they looked like gypsies to us). We got all the ingredients to make Spaghetti and garlic bread, and some almost-cold Coke (drinks are normally served just slightly cool all over Europe and ice is nearly unheard of!). We cooked the spaghetti and loved it, then began washing our clothes. Actually we were 2nd in line to start washing our clothes but soon the clothes were washed (the standard 60 minute European cycle) and we were ready to dry them. Unfortunately, the previous client's clothes were not dry yet, so we had to wait again. The kids were tired so I let them go to bed and volunteered to finish up the laundry detail. Big mistake!
This pitiful excuse for a dryer took 2 hours to get even a few of the lightest items dry, and I was literally falling asleep. I separated the dry items and threw all the wet stuff back in the plastic laundry bag and stashed them in the trunk. I figured we could locate a better dryer in the morning. We all slept quite well, so well, in fact, that we slept right through the free breakfast which ended at 9:30! We checked out, but not before Robert added our car-burglary incident to the long list of mishaps which had befallen several prior inhabitants of our room. The first writer had surmised that the room was cursed, and had scrawled his list of misfortunes on the emergency evacuation plan poster on the door as evidence to support this theory.
In keeping with our recurring theme, we got lost for a while trying to locate the famous Brussels Boy fountain (Mannekin Pis) but I found a big supermarket along the way. So, I went in and bought $15 worth of various chocolates for our "on the road" taste test ( since Belgium is supposed to have the world's best chocolate), while the kids studied the map closely getting us back on the right track. The malt balls were the best I have ever tasted. We couldn't find the Leonidas brand that all agree is the best. Ever the bargain hunter, I figured out (even though it was all written in French) that if I bought enough of the "Cote d' Or" brand I could get a free zippered tote bag so that became our official "chocolate bag" and we refilled it as often as necessary.
After locating, and of course photographing the famous statue, which was much smaller than we had expected, we set off for Paris. It was very difficult to follow the map, so we ended up asking a Belgian woman for directions. It was a little dicey, since apparently she couldn't remember any of the English words for "right" or "straight ahead", so her directions consisted of going "left" or "not left", requiring us to follow our intuition at a few of the forks in the road. Before long we found the motorway which indicated the direction to Paris, and we were off!
Anyway, we made it to the Parisian suburb of St. Brice on Saturday evening about 4 PM, checked into out Premier Class hotel (the one that is SOOOO cheap...owned by parent company of motel6 chain) and got cleaned up for our big night on the town. We drove into Paris with time to spare, or so we thought. Traffic was massive and the Eiffel Tower was nowhere to be found! With our 9PM dinner reservations looming large, we executed PLAN B, parked the car, and took the METRO subway to it. We had to transfer once and then walk about 3 blocks, in a drizzle, but we got there right at 9.
We checked in and got our tickets for the elevator and went up to the Altitude 95 restaurant located inside the Eiffel tower itself. WOW! My wonderful pen pal buddy in Paris, Dominique, (who made the reservations for me) must have really sweet-talked them for us because we got the best table in the place - a window table, dead center of the main bridge over the river. The view was marvelous and it seemed as though we were watching fireworks. As it got dark all the flashes from tourists taking pix of the tower sparkled, and the lights on the boats and the 2 carousels reflected off the water. The food was quite good, but the highlight HAD to be the seafood appetizer plate that Valerie and I got. It was a real spectacle. People from the next table even asked to take pix and a video of it! Afterwards we headed back to the metro, catching the last train at midnight, but not before seeing the dazzling Y2K light show on the Eiffel tower. What a beautiful night!
After the dinner in the Eiffel Tower, we went back to the hotel, and then the next day, drove around Paris taking pix. Robert and Valerie went to the Louvre Museum to see the Venus de Milo and Mona Lisa, among other things, LOTS of other things! Unfortunately, when it was time to pick them up, there was a gay pride demonstration happening and the police had the roads blocked at the place where I was supposed to pick them up. After circling a few times, I found a parking place and walked in to get them. Of course, by that time the road was re-opened! We spent the evening sightseeing in Paris at night, then back to the same hotel for another night. In the AM we left for the French Riviera, and after a long, but FAST (able to average almost 100 mph much of the way) trip, we arrived in Nice just about sundown. It was very pretty but we were tired and it was late so we didn't go out until the next AM. I knew we were parked in an alleged tow-away zone but so were about 100 other cars, so why worry, right? More later…
I guess I left off just after we checked into the hotel in Nice (France) on the Cote'd'Azur - the French Riviera. Our hotel was right on the beach road, but we were on the inland side of the building. Anyway, I was shocked to see, in the morning, a whole line of tow-trucks loading up all the illegally parked cars! I had figured that there was safety in numbers and since there were hundreds of cars parked along the same street that it couldn't REALLY be a TOW-AWAY ZONE. Luckily they hadn't gotten to our car yet, so we managed to escape!
We went down the coast a little and parked in a large underground parking lot. We took a little stroll through the shopping district and walked along the beach. We splurged and bought a small bag of Leonidas chocolates which are supposed to be the hands down BEST in the world and Godiva's main competition. We all had to admit they were pretty good! And we were definitely experts on chocolate by this point in the trip. We had purchased enough Cote d'Or chocolates in Belgium to qualify for the free tote bag, so we had been refilling that bag pretty often - all in the name of legitimate scientific investigation, mind you!
Valerie and Robert picked up some pretty rocks and I took a bunch of pictures, and we headed off to Monaco and Cap Ferrat. The drive was gorgeous, and we stopped several times to take some pix of the coastline and the yachts in the coves. We soon reached the Italian border and continued on toward our campground destination in Florence. We did have a little problem at the first tollbooth in Italy, though. All along we had been paying the tolls with credit cards, but this one had a live attendant (who spoke no English, of course) who just kept repeating the charge in Lire.
Finally he wrote down our license number and motioned for us to stay there and wait for something. He typed up some long form in triplicate and indicated that we must take it immediately to the Poste (post office) in this small Italian town. We got off the highway and found an ATM but the kids couldn't seem to get it to work and Valerie somehow set off the alarm, so they didn't want to try it again, for fear it might eat their ATM cards, so we searched out another one. Unfortunately all the parking spaces were occupied and when I tried to just double-park to wait for them, a Carbinieri (cop/thug with an Uzi, on a motor scooter) indicated that I had to move NOW! Well, I couldn't get the kids' attention, so I had to just turn down the next street to try to go around the block. Wrong!
As I left off last time, I was trying to simply go around the block to stall for time while waiting for Valerie and Robert to get the Lire from the second ATM so we could pay our toll or fine or whatever at the Post Office. Well, after being forced through a series of tiny tunnels and one-way allies, I finally made my way back to the spot where I left them. Time estimates vary wildly, but it was at least 20 minutes before I could get back there so of course, they were a bit miffed! We managed to find the post office and I paid the bill. We stopped for lunch and then got back on the Autostrade (Italian tollroad) towards Florence.
Florence was voted the unanimous low point of the whole trip. None of us had ever been there before, but we had heard glowing reports of it being a beautiful old city, and the cradle of Renaissance art, etc. We found it to be dirty, crowded, poorly laid-out, and nearly impossible to navigate.... and those were the good points! The campground was nice, and was located in the foothills above the city affording us a beautiful view of the entire city. From a distance, it appeared simpler than it actually was so we abandoned the plan to ride the bus back into the city. Very bad move! The traffic was horrendous, the streets narrow and cobblestoned in places, and were infested with more motor scooters than we had ever seen in one place before! And apparently the scooters have total immunity to any or all traffic laws and use this constantly to torment the car drivers!
My main goal in Florence was to see Michelangelo's statue of David so we finally got a parking place in a city-run parking area along a busy boulevard, seemingly near to the Uffizi Gallery. We were told we had to return to the car and pay the fee by 7:00 PM but this seemed like no problem since it was only about noon when we last saw the car. The parking attendant (another Carbiniere) cheerfully gave us what we later learned to recognize as typically inaccurate Italian directions to the gallery - 1 KM tops, he said!
To make a VERY long story short, after 3 hours of walking, during which I developed several massive blisters on my feet, we finally found the Uffizi Gallery - or more accurately, the LINE for the Ufizzi Gallery! We took turns alternately standing in line, going for ice cream, sitting down, and within about an hour and a half we were in the gallery. It was a beautiful collection from the Medici patrons, to be sure, but after enduring room after room, and hall after hall of artwork, I had yet to see the Statue.
In desperation, after going through what I thought must have been every single part of the museum, I finally broke down and asked where the statue was located. I am sure you can only IMAGINE how thrilled I was to find that that particular statue was located in the Acadamie Gallery, not the Uffizi Gallery, which was coincidentally located just a few blocks from where we had parked the car! It was now 6:40 and we had to find a fast way back to the car by the 7:00 deadline, so we mapped out a much more direct route than the circuitous path we had taken TO the Gallery, and the kids took off running with the car keys and the money to pay the parking attendant. Before this we had figured out that a bus would take us right to the street where the car was parked, but, in Italy you have to buy the bus tickets in the tobacco shops which line the main streets -the Tobacco shops which generally close at 6:00PM, I might add.
Well, it was still close to a mile back to the car, but I really had no choice but to keep going. After I was about 2/3 of the way there I saw a snack bar which was still open and they had a sign for bus tickets, so I bought 2. Why be half safe, right? Within a few minutes the right bus came along and I soon located the car. I had a little scare at first, because the kids had just sat down in the back seat of the car and not removed the bright yellow CLUB anti-theft device from the steering wheel. It was clearly visible from across the street, so I immediately panicked, thinking that they had never even made it to the car. I was quite relieved to see they were actually there!
By this time my feet were really killing me, so we headed straight back to the camp where I took 2 pain pills and immediately started feeling better. Valerie and Robert walked up to the camp market only to find out that they had just closed for the night. So we had to wait for the medicine to wear off a bit before I felt like tackling the Florence streets again, this time in search of food.
The next day we set off for Rome, via the Tuscany region, hopefully getting to make a stop at Saturnia, where the thermal springs and waterfalls are located. By the time we reached Chianti, it was clear that if we continued on these small, winding mountain roads, we wouldn't make it to Rome before midnight, so we cut back down to the autostrade, and headed for Rome at 100 mph. The mountain drive had been beautiful, though, with fields of red poppies interspersed between the vineyards and olive orchards.
We made it to the campground early and set up the tent. Valerie and Robert then went to sleep while I ventured into Rome, and the Vatican, by myself. I took pictures of the sights at night and made it back before 10 PM. I had told them not to worry until after midnight so I was well ahead of schedule.
In the morning we took the buses and subway over to St Peter's Square and toured the Vatican museums and The Sistine Chapel, both of which were really beautiful and the tours were well organized. We stopped for lunch at a nice Chinese restaurant, then took another bus over to the other end of Rome to the Appian Way, where the Catacombs are located. Again we had to walk a little more than I had anticipated, but it was worth it. The whole thing was a little spooky, but very interesting, and we had an English-speaking guide which helped. We caught the bus back to the main station just in time to get tickets for the Circle of Rome tour, on a very nice air-conditioned tour bus, and we got off by the Trevi Fountain and Spanish Steps. We finally gave in to our cravings and ate at McDonald's right near the fountain. We caught a couple of connecting buses which took us straight back to the campground by midnight. It was a very nice day.
The kids slept in until almost 10 while I repacked the car, and caught up on my journal. Then we headed off towards Venice. We stopped at an Autogrille (truck stop deal on the autostrade) and I got to try the Italian style hot chocolate. It is like a cross between hot chocolate and chocolate pudding, but really yummy!
We arrived in Venice before 4:00 PM and parked in the Tronchetto garage, and took the Vaporetto (water bus) over to San Marcos Square to start out tour. The kids had a lot of fun feeding the pigeons that land on you and eat out of your hand. We walked a lot, shopped for some souvenirs and then went to McDonald's again for dinner. It wasn't so much that we were craving the burgers, but it was the only place we could find sodas with ice... and we were REALLY craving our ice!!!! Venice was one of the highlights. In fact both Valerie and Robert rated it as number one on the favorite cities list. We rode the Vaporetto back to the garage as the sun was going down, and took lots of gondola pix along the way.
We left Venice and headed off towards Milan and the Alps. The kids went to sleep almost immediately, but I drove about 150 miles or so and then stopped to find a hotel in the small Italian town of Brieste. We ended up getting the last room at a small pension right next to the train station. It was really a 2-person room, but after sleeping several nights in the 3-man tent together, the queen size bed was quite adequate for the 3 of us. In the morning there was some sort of a citywide bicycle ride going on and we were awakened by the sounds of a thousand cyclists whizzing past our window. They ranged in age from little kids to some old men who appeared to be in their 80's, all with pink and green balloons tied to their bikes.
On the way back to the highway we stopped at a SMART CAR dealer to take some pix. Europe is positively teeming with goofy-looking little cars, and the SMART has to be the smallest, and arguably the goofiest-looking of the breed! I will attempt to send a picture of one when I get home. But anyway, the SMART is a 2-person sub-miniature vehicle that has a 3-cylinder Mercedes diesel engine and a 5-speed transmission, and claims to get 100 KM (about 61 miles) to the gallon. They are so short, lengthwise, that they can fit 2 in a standard sized parking place. So as an eye catching way to display them at a flashy dealership, they have them sort of stacked in a glass tower about 6 floors high. As I say, I took some pix, so hopefully the one at this dealership will come out.
Soon afterwards we crossed over into Switzerland and the land of mountains and tunnels - but not before coughing up $30 for the mandatory toll sticker to allow us to use their roads. The differences between Italy and Switzerland were dramatic. Italy tends toward the dirty side, and the bathrooms there are something else. You have to pay an entrance fee, and bring your own toilet paper, soap, paper towels, etc while in Switzerland the entire atmosphere is pristine...even extending as far as the restrooms! Which are FREE, I might add!
Shortly after entering Switzerland we stopped at a rest area where there was a beautiful cascading stream so we took a little walk and waded into the water a little. There was a lot of mica in the rock there, so all the sand was completely glittery. The kids added to their European rock collection, and we headed out again. Those Swiss are so clever. They even have robotic flagmen at dangerous construction areas, motorized mannequins dressed as highway department workers waving orange flags!
Between the long tunnels we saw beautiful Alpine landscapes and in the late afternoon found a quaint little town where we decided to camp. We were about 20 miles from Interlaken, and the Lauterbrunnen (waterfall) district. In the morning the kids hiked up to a waterfall by the campground and then we had breakfast, and packed a picnic lunch for later on. We next stopped in Lauterbrunnen where we rode a suspended cable tram up to the mountain town of Grindelwald. High in the Alps, it is pure alpine meadow, with wildflowers, Swiss chalets, and brown Swiss cows - each wearing a big clanging cowbell - everywhere.
If there is a more beautiful little town anywhere, I haven't seen it yet. All this is set against a backdrop of the snow-covered peaks of Mt Jungfrau and Eiger, and their glaciers between them. Waterfalls are everywhere and just a few hundred feet from the tram station is the Mountain Hostel of Grindelwald. According to all the research I did before the trip, this is the BEST hostel in all of Europe! I couldn't argue with that either.
It is built right out on the edge of the mountain, decorated like a dollhouse for Heidi, and has several dining platforms hanging out over the hillside meadows where you can hear the softly ringing cowbells in the distance. Flowerboxes are EVERYWHERE, mostly with bright red geraniums and purple and yellow pansies. I think you can see why I didn't feel like staying inside typing out these reports these last few days. The atmosphere was too good to waste. The kids went on a hike up a very steep trail and came back really exhilarated and exhausted. We ate a snack and then headed back to our driving tour of Switzerland. I called home to let them know we hadn't fallen off the face of the earth, and Robert talked to his mom for a minute or two also.
Somewhere in Italy, someone had apparently scraped the back corner of our car bumper while trying to parallel park by us. We had a small boo-boo that I really didn't want to have to explain at the car rental return desk so we launched an all out search for some silver touch up paint. I had a brainstorm, and went to an Opel dealer but they were fresh out of SILVER. So, we ended up in the model dept. of a German Toys-R-Us store searching for some adequate camouflage material. It wasn't a perfect match, but mixed with a little clear nail polish, a few coats did the trick! We soon crossed back into Belgium where we ate at Pizza Hut. We had had just TOO many ham sandwiches and chocolate bars by this time, and needed a real change of pace. It was pretty expensive but I think it was worth it!
Well, from the German Pizza Hut we continued on towards the Belgian border, deciding to drive through the Castle Country of the Rhine River region. It was a beautiful drive through the countryside but by the time we arrived at Koblenz for the night it was late and difficult to find anywhere with a vacancy. The fact that we didn't have a map of this particular city made things even more difficult! Robert and Valerie had already dozed off in the car so I just made an executive decision and stopped at the first open hotel I saw. It was over double the price we had paid anywhere else, but it seemed like a necessary evil. And at almost $100 for the night and breakfast buffet for the 3 of us, it wasn't really that much of a splurge. It was a very nice place with very crisp white sheets and fluffy white comforters, and loads of towels.... not to mention a color TV. We watched a little of Roseanne, Golden Girls and Mary Tyler Moore reruns, all dubbed into German, the next morning while we were preparing to leave.
The kids were very nervous about not being able to get to the airport on time the next morning if we stayed anywhere but Brussels, so we aimed for the same hostel where we had stayed the first night we spent in that city. To say we "already knew the way to the airport from there" would have been a stretch. At least we had some familiarity with the general layout of the city, and the relative placement of the Brussels airport, which, incidentally is not IN BRUSSELS but rather in the suburb of Zavantem about 10 miles northeast!
We took a minor highway much of the way, and stopped in a small town for snacks and stamps for our postcards. This is my own special complaint - POSTCARD STAMPS! Why do they cost SO much???? It seems like an obvious tourist rip off to me. I mean who ELSE sends postcards to international destinations? The cost of mailing a postcard from Germany to the US is just slightly over $1.00 each! Yet an airmail aerogram letter is half that... sounds like a racket to me!
Anyway, the post office was located inside a quaint little bakery so I bought an assortment of sweet rolls. Unfortunately, I forgot the first rule of European bakeries: never give a tourist a BAG for anything. It is however, apparently COMPLETELY permissible to cleverly disguise a large sheet of waxy wrapping paper AS A BAG, as long as you don't seal the ends in any secure manner! I looked away as the bakery lady was packing up the rolls, and failed to notice that this was indeed NOT a bag at all. So halfway back across the street, all 6 of the pastries slid right out the other end of the bottomless pseudo-bag and into the street - BUMMER! Not only that, but the place looked so tidy. I felt guilty just walking away and leaving such a mess, so I actually picked them all up, and carried them back to the car since there was no trash can in sight. The smell of those freshly baked, contaminated pastries tormented us until the next stop. The bakery lady undoubtedly got bonus points for THAT one from the E.A.A.T.P.B.I.T.F. (European Anti-American-Tourist Postage, Bag and Ice Task Force)!
As evening drew near we first located the Brussels airport, scoping out the car rental return area and the departure section, and then headed for our hostel. We had quite a bit of really aggravating traffic but soon found some familiar-looking landmarks and we found ourselves back at the Van Gogh Center with relative ease. We even got our SAME parking spot but now were much more savvy, making sure not to leave anything in the car. This time we got a 3-person room that was VERY nice. For $15 per person, including our private en-suite bathroom, and breakfast the next morning, it was a real bargain. It was a large room with a cathedral ceiling and a loft where one of the beds was located and the whole front wall was glass opening up onto a grassy little courtyard with a gazebo and small fountain.
We ate a snack and then set about getting everything organized and repacked for our flight in the morning. It took quite a while, so we just decided to go to bed instead of going out on the town. We got up and out of there by about 7.45, even having plenty of time for breakfast to my utter amazement! Despite the fact that both of them had been regularly attending classes all year long, and maintaining very good grades, even working at least 20 hours a week on " an average of 4 hours a night" of sleep ( a direct quote from them), prying them out of the hotel room or tent with anything less than a full 8 hours of sleep was a major project!
We got to the airport with time to spare and I dropped off Robert and Valerie at the terminal, while I returned the rental car. The check-in lady walked around the car twice, looking for damage, and didn't find any so I guess I did a good job with the touch-up paint. I got my receipt and met the kids back at the British Airways check-in area. We had a little problem with one of our carry-on pieces being overweight, but we were able to shuffle things around a bit to re-distribute the weight. We killed a little time in the duty-free shops and then boarded the flight to London, where we had to change to a bigger plane for our long flight home.
The flight was pretty uneventful and passed much more quickly than the flight from Miami to London ....and was very smooth, until the very last little while when we were delayed by some bad weather. We were about 45 minutes late, but went through Customs and Immigration quickly and Jane was there waiting to pick us up. The trip was now officially over!
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