Tuesday in London

Karma and Kobi ride the carousel under the London Eye.

Villa in Tuscany

We spend the morning enjoying the beautiful Villa Di Bossi. The house is filled with enormous rooms of elegant antique furniture and family portraits. One wall is painted with a family tree that goes back to the 1300’s.

The Villa di Bossi in Arezzo.

The main entrance hall.

The upstairs sitting room, outside our bedrooms.

Kobi makes friends with Cosmo, their 4-year old son, and they all play at the pool for a few hours. Kobi, of course, falls in love with all of their dogs. Meanwhile, Mark and Jen walk the gardens.


Tenzin and Cosmo duel at the pool

Karma gets a sunburn.

We caught Tenzin smiling!

Kobi called this dog "squishy-face" and they spent many happy hours together.

The gardens around the villa are classic. Formal boxwood-edged geometric beds near the house, centered around a fountain. A wall of bamboo seperates the next garden, which has open lawns surrounding an allee of trees, leading to a tangled mess of nature in the back, with a treehouse.

After noon, we again realize that we’ve mis-timed the Italian siesta and its affect on open hours – if you want anything to eat between about 1 and 7 pm, the only places that are open (including grocery stores) are the bar and snack shops that sell cold pizza and panini. So we drive off to the town of Siena, about an hour-and-a-half away, which the kids have read about in the Stravaganza series. The center square is a giant open shell-shaped plaza where the Palio is held twice each summer. It’s a horse race – the winner gets bragging rights for their neighborhood, and each area has its own mascot – such as the frog. Today it is blazingly hot and we head off for the tiny medieval side streets, where we find shade, a nice slice pizzeria and an internet café – increasingly a necessity for teenage Tenzin.



A church in the Centro Storico in sienna.

Just in case anyone is doing research, there is a museum of torture in Siena. We thought you should know.

It seems like every town in Tuscany has one of these ancient town centers, where the cars are not allowed to drive unless you live there – the streets are sometimes even too small for motorcycles. The wayfinding signs in each town point to the “Centro” with a bullseye graphic, self-explanatory. Although America never had such civic antiquity, it does make me wonder if it could have survived since we can’t even manage to protect the buildings and streetscapes – just a few hundred years old – that we have inherited in New England. Was it appreciation for the past or just lack of development that saved these old European town centers? Certainly, they are thriving now. We’ve seen some filled with tourists, but we’ve also seen them bustling with local industry – they aren’t just a photo op.

We also like to see how modern life has shaped itself, so we pull into the mega-supermarket in Arezzo. It’s sort of a cross between a whole-foods and a super stop & shop, with a few huge aisles of wine added in. We get a kick out of it.

The only brand of Peanut Butter in this supermarket. Ultimately, it is confiscated by airport security when we try to take it in our carry-on luggage. Do you think it was the name?

Here's where people drop their kids off while they shop.

Despite the fact that this is a relatively suburban-type neighborhood, the entire supermarket is built over a level of underground parking. The few spaces outside have the spaces marked out with paving stones.

For dinner we follow the recommendation of Francesca at Villa di Bossi and get a table at the restaurant at Piazza Grande, the main square in Arezzo.


Entering the Piazza Grande in Arezzo.


It is a magical meal. The waiters bring treat after treat for the kids, and we take a picture of Maggie’s dessert since it is so spectacular.


According to its name, this is lemon sorbet with fruit salad. Wow!

Arriving in Venice

We rise early in Rome and catch the EuroStar train to Venice. Here’s a photo for you train buffs (Hi there, Lee).


The Eurostar from Rome to Venice

The kids made friends with a 12-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy from Austin, Texas who were also on their way to Venice. They played cards part of the time, but it sounds like they spent most of their time terrorizing the staff in the bar car. They were actually kicked out. Twice.




Being good and playing cards on the train.


Venice is amazing and improbable, with people’s front doors floating an inch or two above the salt-water canals. The streets are for feet – no bicycles even – and range from wide avenues lined with deep sidewalk cafes to alleys where you can touch the buildings on both sides without stretching.

To get around, you take the city bus – err – I mean boat – called the Vaporetto. We catch the #1 to our hotel, which is a grand antique of a place, in a 4th floor walkup called the Pensione Guerrato.


That's the Vaparetto -- public transportation Venice-Style.e

The sisters spend the ride cooking up ideas for a graphic novel.


Riding the boat is a blast, and Kobi is glued to the railing, watching the city. Maggie falls in love with a sculpture outside one of the many art museums


Public art on the canal in Venice.



We spent most of the afternoon at the Laundromat, listening to the chatter of the unrelenting stream of high-school and college-age Americans on package tours. There are lots of Italian tourists too (not in the Laundromat) but if there are locals, we haven’t seen any yet.

After a late-afternoon siesta, we ride the canal boat to St. Mark’s square and eat pizza and pasta next to the wateront. We end the evening wandering around St. Mark’s square, where hundreds of people mingle in the dark surrounded by grand buildings and dueling outdoor orchestras. Kobi dances around and begs to play in the water that is seeping up through the drains in the square (said to be Venice’s early warning system for flooding).



Maggie with Gondola.

Kobi in Pigeon Heaven -- St. Mark's Square.

A Practically Perfect Day

Picture us in the line for the Vatican museum with Jay and his tour-group of English-speakers. Snaking in and out of the shade, through the touts, pickpockets and beggars, we shuffle ahead with the line for an hour and a half, listening to Jay riff on life in Rome, Vatican politics, and where to buy the best polish sausage. He’s got the expat fantasy down – it’s all temporal poverty and cultural wealth, serendipity and opportunism. Then, a mere two hours after the tour begins, we enter the museum.

First stop is Raphael’s last painting, the kind of work that makes you gasp at the secret source of light that makes some figures shimmer while others are left in shadow. Jay leads us through the rudiments of Christian symbolism (St. Peter is the one holding a ring of keys – why? They’re the keys to heaven) which we’ve been reading about in preparation for this trip. I could stand here forever, but we’re roused by the sound of an alarm going off. Apparently, someone has allowed their five-year old to stray under the barrier which protects the priceless painting, bringing the museum guard to investigate…let’s draw a curtain of privacy around the remainder of this scene…



Raphael's last painting.


The hours fly by as we wander through gallery after gallery. Jay seems to have an inexhaustible knowledge of whatever comes up – minutia of catholic doctrine, mythology of various cultures, life stories of the artists, and the origin of everything in the museum, such as the mosaics underfoot (constructed in the first centuries AD, but moved here just a few hundred years ago. Now how did they manage that? I didn’t get to ask.) Kobi falls asleep and I carry him on my back for an hour or so, till we finally make our way inside the Sistine Chapel, which pictures a dizzying array of saints, including Middletown’s own St. Sebastian, shown with his arrow in the Last Judgment. Jay shows us where the floor was singed by the stove that sent up the smoke signal when the cardinals gathered here to choose the last pope –



Listening to Jay.

It feels quite strange that they let those millions of feet tromp across this artwork, just because it is on the floor!

It was the lion skin that tipped us off -- this is Hercules.

The vaulted ceiling in the hall of maps

In a courtyard, Jay delivers a lecture on Michaelangelo's Last Judgement, which covers one wall of the Sistine Chapel and was painted 14 years after the ceiling.


Now it’s been six hours. The tour is over, but Jay is still dispensing wisdom, and we collect some restaurant recommendations, which we are desperately in need of by now. Standing in St. Peter’s, which is so huge and beautiful, we reflect that we have been in Rome just 24 hours.


The main alter at St. Peter's Basilica, where only the Pope can lead mass.

Outside of St. Peter's Basilica

Now we make our way back to our hotel, stopping for a quick bite at another pizza joint, as all the Ristorante are closed – the chef is sleeping, it was explained to us. We catch the #40 bus and start a collection of photos of smart cars (which I'll post sometime when I have unlimited connectivity!)

While some of the family naps and relaxes in the cool of our room at the Anfiteatro Flavio, Karma and I pay 1.5 euros for 45 minutes of internet access down the street. We check in on Kidcity and send a few emails and determine that a hoped-for trip to the cinema to see the new Harry Potter movie in English (with Italian subtitles) is just impossible tonight.

The good news is that the Almost Corner Bookshop, carrying books in English, will be open until 8 pm, and is located in Travestere, a cluster of ancient and atmospheric streets. We gather the rest of the family and try the “H” bus, which takes us right there. We buy some cut watermelon from a street kiosk and locate the tiny shop on the twisty little “Via Del Moro” – and settle down for some book-choosing. Tenzin and Maggie still don’t find the next volumes of the Alexander & Roman Empire series they are reading, but Tenzin does find an Otori novel he hasn’t read and Karma gets an old-fashioned children’s novel and a mary-kate and Ashley she’s wanted. Kobi gets a sticker book on magic tricks, since he spent the day giggling at Mark pulling euros out of his ears whenever it looked like he was going to disrupt the Vatican. Maggie begs for the complete works of Alexander Pope, but we’ve already paid our bill, so she’ll have to wait for that one. Most important, we order our copy of the seventh Harry Potter, since we will be back in Rome on the 21st, though sadly not at 1 am when they will go on sale.

It's books floor to ceiling...

We have a fantastic dinner at a sidewalk cafe, where Maggie tries a remarkable 6 new foods, including salad and red wine, a miracle which I attribute to 6 hours spent in the presence of the Virgin Mary. (Maggie credits the several consecutive meals of pizza.)



Our table at dinner.

After we return to our part of town, we collect our nightly cones of gelato (amazing how quickly some habits can develop) mixing mint & tiramisu, raspberry and chocolate chip, strawberry and melon. And Vanilla for Kobi. Our hotel is just across the street, and bedtime comes quickly – or at least more quickly than usual. Counting blessings, I find that there’s nothing I would change on the day.

Sailing to Denmark

Now we're off to Denmark by Ferry Boat.

It turns out that the ferry boat is a giant floating casino with people holding their toddlers up to feed the slot machines. Weird.

Just off the Ferry Boat, here's what we see:

We were surprised to learn that Karma has been running a sushi bar in Frederikshavn, Denmark. Busy girl!

We head North to the very tip of Denmark -- a spit of land in the town of Skagen, where the Kattegat and Skagerrak seas (coming from different directions) meet in a clash of white-caps. It turns out that Maggie learned all about this in Ms. Warner's geography class, so she's pretty excited to actually be here.

The girls...

...and the boys. Interestingly, the hair to the right belongs to British street artists that, by coincidence, we pick up later hitchhiking.

Amazingly, the jellyfish in the Kattegat are copious and cobalt blue.

After getting our feet wet, we make the long drive to Arhus, Denmark's second largest city and sort of a big college town.

Arhus has an active harbor right next to the historic downtown.

Kobi meets some young sailors from the Russian Navy.

Next to the 12th century cathedral, we find a modern fountain sculpture, which acts as a magnet for all the kids in the area.

The kids fall asleep in the car as we head for our hotel in Billund. Tomorrow it's Legoland! Yipee!

Lessons from Gothenburg, Sweden

Wow, there sure are a lot of bicycle commuters in Stockholm. We saw suits, grandmothers, clerks and even a few eco-athletic types starting their day in the bike lane. They dominated the road!

We woke early to catch the train from Stockholm to Gothenburg (on the West Coast of Sweden) -- but not early enough. It turns out that 9:15 am was the train's arrival time, not the departure time (which was really at 6:05 am). Oops.

So we get to the Central Station in plenty of time to find out that we are three hours late. Mark gets us space on a local headed the same way. So instead of the supercool hi-speed train called the X-2000 that we were supposed to ride, we get the 5-hour scenic tour. Here's a little visual for you:

One train is cool. The other is not. We rode the train on the left.

We soon found there are benefits to the local. Specifically, the familjevagn:


Our ticket shows that we are in the Familjevagn car, especially for people traveling with children!

The next five hours pass quickly:


The front of the car had a playgym where Kobi met lots of Swedish kids en route to Gothenburg.

Here's one of the other Familjevagn parents leaving the train with their little one...


Gothenburg is a great city -- I'll be posting some photos of some of the city comforts we saw today...as soon as I can!

Exploring Oslo

Our first full day in Norway and we dive right into figuring out the fabulous public transport system. Just outside Alida’s little street of 10 or so houses, you can catch a variety of trams and buses which lead you all over town. We catch the #17 tram to downtown Oslo, and inevitably find ourselves making our first stop in Oslo at a bookstore, Norli, drawn in by the Harry Potter display in the window – clearly the whole world is waiting for July 21.

The Norli Bookstore in Oslo.

This store has an excellent English-language section and we pick up a Caesar-era historical novel called Emperor of the Gods for Tenzin, a book by one of Karma’s favorite author’s, Gwyneth Rees, who can’t be found in the USA, and a copy of King Harald’s Saga and the prose Edda for jen, just to brush up on Norse history/literature.

With our backpack a bit heavier, we continue walking past the wide boulevard, fountains and displays of Karl Johan’s Gate (the main drag) and come to the harbor, where we stop outside the Nobel Peace Prize museum. We explore the neighborhood for an hour or so, visiting a giant outdoor exhibit of nature photos that fills the square, as trams and ferrys meet and Kobi plays in a little park with a knot garden and a waterfall.


We think the exhibit is called Spirit of the Wild -- it's making the rounds in the big cities of the world.

Mark and gorilla in the rain.

Jen loves this knot garden, with a whimsical design created with annuals instead of the usual perennials.

Kobi behind the waterfall. It rains on and off here, so it's a good thing we brought Kobi's raincoat.

Look! A really small car!

We catch a ferry to visit two museums for the afternoon. First we come to the Viking Ship museum where three reconstructed boats and Viking artifacts are housed. We learn that the Vikings peaked in the years 800 to 1050. One of the boats was salvaged because it had been used as a burial vessel – they are huge and remarkably intact.

The reconstructed Viking boats can be viewed from the ground or from a small balcony.

The Norske Folk Museum is an open – air re-enactment museum of early, medieval and later Norwegian history. There are lots of re-located buildings, and people wandering around in costume. We chat with a young woman in a house that was moved from Finland, and she tells us about the discrimination against the Finns by the Norwegians.

At the top of the hill, we come to one of the oldest existing Stave Church. Maggie loves this stuff, and tries to figure out if this era is before or after Constantine. “Don’t you wish you had your own portable Andy and Elizabeth?” she asks? Sure we do!

A wooden stave church from the 12th or 13th century. Christianity became the official religion of Norway in about the year 1000 when King Olaf (the saint) converted.

A considerably lightened photo of the altar in the Stave Church.

Ok, it's not exactly historic, but we thought this was the prettiest fire escape we'd ever seen.

Here's a country-style house-barn combo with a green roof. Very eco-friendly!

The kids love the on-site playground, which has the kind of equipment which was banned in the US sometime in the 1980’s – merry-go-rounds anyone? There are some risky modern pieces too, like a giant tilted wheel, about 8 feet across, that begins to rotate when kids walk on the edge, and a log-rolling piece that none of them can stay up on. Pretty soon, our kids have made friends with all the other kids running around – and we have to drag them away at closing.

We take the public bus all the way back to Alida’s and have a lovely dinner. The kids plug into skype and introduce Katja to Pearse and Helen Pinch across the sea.



Alida's house in Oslo. Anyone up for a midnight bike ride?