Author Archives: Bob

Potluck in Sicily

One of the main things in our lives that we do not write about in this blog is Potluck, which tends to happen once a week. It happens at home, or at least close to home, which is why you never find it in our travel blog.

Except now we are combing our home life with our travel life in rural Sicily. We have packed up Potluck staples Karen and Tom Palmer and traveled here to visit original Potluck co-founding family Chris and Wendy Brooks in their lovely European headquarters.

In fact, we haven’t seen Chris and Wendy for quite some time because they have been preparing this place for us. It should also be noted that if not for schduling conflicts we may well have the remaining club members, Michael and Carla, along with us.

But they went to London last week instead, and now they are missing out.

What are they missing out on? Well…

We had a totally comfortable and not-at-all stressful succession of flights from Boston to Munich to Catania, one of the larger cities on Sicily. It was marred only when Karen’s suitcase failed to come out onto the baggage carousel. Lufthansa’s miscue ate up a little of our first day, and caused Karen a wee bit of stress, but managed to pick it up later in the day because…

We took a few hours to hike around on Mount Etna, which towers over Catania, is still topped with a frosting of snow, and is an active volcano! We drove up to where the snow starts and where a ski resort operates for at least part of the year. While there are slaloming trails visible in the remaining snow, it looks like the ski resort has shut down for the spring. Some people were sledding on the lower patches, but most people were hiking around the non-snowy parts or even taking atv tours. We chose a short walk around a crater that was created by eruptions 1892 and looked over a lava fields from various eruptions, some starting to show vegetation growing on them, and some still new enough to be completely black. We also had a sweeping view of the city of Catania and the ocean beyond it.

It was chilly up on the mountainside — we were at about 6,200 feet in altitude — and we retreated into a cafe near the parking lot to warm up. Here, we got to try this trip’s first Italian delicacy (the first of many, we expect) — arancini. These are fried rice balls with meat and cheese in the middle. The Sicilian version (we are learning there is a Sicilian version of a lot of things), is not round, but pointed at the top in homage to pointy-topped Mount Etna.

As we were riding back down the mountain back into Catania, we decided to check in at the airport to relay a suitable address for the airline to deliver Karen’s suitcase, should it ever be located. Chris and Wendy’s address was deemed not suitable for reasons we’ll see a little later. It turns out that they had managed to locate Karen’s suitcase and it was waiting for her at the airport when she checked in. What good news!

The only bad news was that all this driving up and down hills was making me carsick. This did not improve as we neared the Brooks’ home in a lovely city called Mussomeli in the Sicilian hill country. There was really nothing to be done. In order for us to get to our destination, we had to get through a tapestry of curves and switchbacks. Mussomeli was visible on its hillside for quite a while, but for much of the drive it did not seem to be getting any closer.

We did finally make it into town and got into our new accommodations. I recovered significanly once I got out of the car and saw the place. I even helped Chris walk the two local celebrities, the Brooks’ Newfoundlands Pippa and Arlo, though the narrow, winding cobblestone alleys of their neighborhood in the heart of Mussomeli’s historic s old district. Then I fell asleep pretty much as soon as I lay down in bed because it had been such a long day. Any lingering feeling of carsickness melted away overnight and was completel obliterated when I got up the next morning to see…

The lovely expanse of Sicilian countryside visible from Chris and Wendy’s sunroom. It beckoned us to explore, which we did for most of our first full day in town. Everywhere we walked in Mussomeli, people would call out to Wendy and ask where the dogs were. We got to meet many of Brooks’ new friends and neighbors and wander even more of the cobblestone streets.

We even got to take in the city’s the first ever auto race! The race cars had been parked along the main road the day before so Chris and Wendy looked into it and found some times when the cars would likely be zooming by. We were among a small crowd at the finish line and got to see several of the cars — all hatchbacks — navigate a traffic cone s-curve and then sprint up the hill to the end of the race. It was not something we had imagined we would get to see.

After seeing seven or eight cars finish the race, we contined our wanderings through town, taking in urban wildflowers and periodic vews of the farmland on the facing hillside. We made it to the dramatic Castle Manfredonico, which wraps itself around a giant pillar of craggy rock just outside of town. It was closed today, but we took the initiative to try to hike around the base of the stony island it sits on. At this point, it is not actually clear to us if there is a trail that goes all the way around it. We found a trail, but among the few thing we became certain about were that it puts you in close proximity to a lot of thorny thistle, and there is a random mud patch that took us all by surprise and muddied us up considerably. We abandoned our circumnavigation not long after the mud.

Still, there was more excitement to come. We saw two motorcyclists escape hot pursuit by the Carabinieri. We had a nice aperitivo on the sun porch. We played extensively with the two tiny kittens Chris and Wendy adopted just in time for our visit.

And we finished the evening in the most appropriate way possible: a potluck dinner thrown by some of Wendy’s friends in the old town’s main square.

An emerald gem

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We have focused a lot on the natural beauty of this region, and we’ll talk about it more today, but there really is a seemingly endless array of things to do around here, and they aren’t even all nature based. For instance, we haven’t talked a lot about the casino scene just across the border in Nevada because that really wasn’t our scene — until we were driving home from Sand Harbor yesterday, and at the place where we go between all the high-rise buildings, the girls saw a sign for a visiting musical act — Hosier. And the concerts were this week at an outdoor venue associated with one of the casinos right up the road from our condo!

Well, it didn’t take long to ascertain that affordable tickets were available. Zoe’s housemates were brought on board, and, poof, pretty high-profile plans are in place for this evening. No matter how nice things were in nature today, we had to get back in time to see Hosier. (Jen and I are moderate Hosier fans, ourselves, but we decided to let the kids have their fun, and we planned to hang around our resort this evening.)

As for the first part of the day, we headed out early (no bagels this morning) to Emerald Bay, and this time we got there early enough to find a suitable parking space in one of the small lots that were jam-packed a few days ago. This was a major accomplishment, and we rejoiced. Our feelings got boosted even more on the one-mile walk from the lot to the beach along the bay. Very enticing views of the harbor — again, this is the place with the island in the middle, a picture of which is hanging in our condo’s great room. Now we’re seeing it even closer.

We arrived at the beach so early that the kayak rental place wasn’t even open yet. It was a bit of a disappoinment because we were hoping it would be a kayak and paddleboard rental place, but they seem to have axed their paddleboard offering. Today would not be the day we try paddleboarding.

Instead we hiked for a bit along the Rubicon Trail, which goes about five miles to a point on the main lake. We just made it past the entrance of the bay, about three miles, and then headed back.

By then, the rental place was open and we decided on two tandem kayaks to carry us out to the island. Really, only four of us kayaked out (I stayed in the shade and watched). The kayak tour produced a full hour of exploring, though. It started in the wake of a large paddleboat, the Tahoe Queen, whose lap through Emerald Bay coincided with our kayak departures. This was one of many large water craft, large and small, looping through the bay.

On the island, Jen and the girls scrambled up to an abandoned tea house, the only structure on the island. It dates back to the early 1900s when a rich lady bought land on the bay, including the island, and built a Nordic castle to go along with her tea house. She must have been an awfully rich lady. The castle still stands just off the beach, but it is undergoing some renovations, and it was not clear if tours were actually being given.

After the island, they paddled over to the far side of the bay to scope out a bald eagle’s nest, an osprey’s nest, and a sunken forest created by a landslide. The woman who outfitted our group with the kayaks recommended these side trips, but neglected to mention what year the landslide was.

After kayaking, we had our pre-packed lunch and took a short hike to a nearby waterfall, but, really, our outdoor energies were starting to wane. We drove home (remember this is the drive that forced us to crawl along the ridge of a hill and execute mutliple switchbacks with minimal guardrails) successfully and dedicated the late afternoon to cooking an in-house Mexican feast and picking out which clothes to wear to the concert.

New vistas and new friends

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Yesterday’s bear proved that we don’t have to go far for interesting things here, so we just stuck around the resort all day.

No, of course we didn’t do that. Jen scrolled through the Internet last night (the resort does have excellent wifi, maybe we should have stuck around here), and told us about good hikes to do in the area. We settled on one that was not too far away and not too long in duration, and which promised a nice waterfall as it destination point.

We didn’t really get ourselves going particularly early, so when we got to the Emerald Bay area where our hike was, we found it crawling with fellow Tahoe worshippers. They were parking up one side of the highway and down the other. The three or four (smallish) parking lots provided were packed with cars already parked and other cars that had tried to pull themselves out of the way but still be in position to pounce when a spot became available.

There’s a lake to see, if you’re not driving.

Perhaps I should step back. Emerald Bay is a particularly scenic section of the lake. The name should give some description of what it looks like; I’ll add that right in the middle of the bay is a rocky island — the only island in the whole lake. Pictures of Emerald bay are everywhere, even above the fake fireplace of our condo unit.

We were offered excellent views of it as we drove in from the south. This is thanks in part, seemingly, to the state of California’s decision to fund many of its progressive initiatives by saving money on guardrails. I mentioned steep cliffs earlier. We had to traverse a few miles of switchbacks and cliff edges that offered, oh, a few dozen yards of railing on the edges of the road. The two-lane (barely) track had very, very little shoulder for most if its duration and extreme drop offs — sometimes on both sides of the road at the same time. If you want lovely views of Lake Tahoe and the adjacent Cascade Lake — and if you could bring yourself to look — the views were there.

Given the general confused state of parking in Emerald Bay — signs said you weren’t supposed to park in the gully alongside the road, but plenty of people were doing just that — we were faced with the dim prospect of tracing our precarious path back over the ridgeline and down the other side back to South Lake Tahoe empty handed. One last turn-off offered hope. It was a picnic area section of the National Forest, and it turned out to be just what we wanted. We happily paid $12 to park in a shaded, easy-to-navigate lot (I’d pay $12 not to have to parallel part in a gully alongside a busy highway any day), and we found the trailhead to the Cascade Trail only a few feet from our space.

Of course, the bulletin board at the head of the trail did mention that the squirrels in the surrounding forest might be carrying the plague, but we were so happy not to be still finding a parking space that we hardly broke stride to consider this information. We got what we came for: a relatively short, relatively level hike to a series of small waterfalls that eventually gave way to a tall waterfall. (As far as we know, we did not get what we didn’t come for: the plague.)

The waterfalls were fun to hop across, and spanned enough distance that, even though there were a lot of people enjoying the area, it did not seem overcrowded. Plus, whenever you looked up from the stream, there were views of the mountains in one direction and the twin views of Cascade Lake and Lake Tahoe in the other direction. It is starting to dawn on us that this is a top-notch hiking destination, at least on par with — and very similar to — Acadia National Park.

This could be Cadillac Mountain, but it’s not.

We would not have considered this as a vacation spot if Zoe had not drawn us here, but the views of the blue and blue green waters of the lake with the mountains immediately adjacent more than enough to justify the time and expense of getting here. Even if South Lake Tahoe bears very little physical resemblance to Bar Harbor, it is central to a lot of hiking opportunities, many within 45 minutes drive. The fact that we are overlooking a lake here and not the ocean does not seem to be much of an issue.

After finishing our hike and easing our way back around the ridge road (it’s easier on the way back because we were in the inside lane for most of the turns), we eventually met up with Zoe, who had gotten off work right about when we were getting back to our condo. She cleaned up and came over for a visit, and she brought her co-worker Pierre. We have heard a lot about all of her co-workers, and we knew Pierre was usually up for Ark Nova, a boardgame we have not played for months because Zoe brought it west with her. Laregely because we were rusty and also because he seems to be a sharp fellow, Pierre edged out Jen to be Ark Nova champion for the day. We showed no hard feelings by taking him out for pizza afterwards. The rest of Zoe’s team was invited, too, but for various reasons they could not make it.

If you can believe it, we had such a good time with Pierre that we did not take any pictures. We’ll have to see if we bump into him and Zoe’s other teammates tomorrow when we visit the farmer’s market.

Mountains and more

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Zoe was offering us an experience that was too good to refuse (for three of us, at least): She would guide us on a hike in a remote canyon that she has visited for her work. It would be away from the crowds that are coursing through the streets of South Lake Tahoe seemingly around the clock this high summer weekend, in a place that a lot of visitors to the area don’t get to see.

Actual jagged line on Googlemaps depicting the actual road Zoe drove us on

There were a few catches, though. Because the site was more than an hour away from our current home base, we would have to leave pretty early in the morning and take a rather curvy mountain route to get to the trailhead.

We did have a very nice morning outdoors. Zoe picked this particular hike because it is relatively level and wouldn’t be too taxing on lungs that are not yet acclimated to our current altitude. The trailhead is actually even higher up than the 6,000-ish feet of South Lake Tahoe, but that altitude gain would be achieved by Zoe driving us up into the hills.

And she’s quite a good driver these days. She did not whip around the blind corners with reckless abandon, but she also was not nearly as freaked out by narrow roads and hairpin turns as I would have been. Along the way, she pointed out several other sites where she and her team have been working.

Once on the trail, we wound our way through a dense pine forest with lots of examples of large, old-growth trees. Like every other moment we have been here so far, the temperature was perfect and the skies were deep blue, completely unblemished by clouds.

We got to ford a stream a few times and we eventually came to an overlook of canyon about 50 feet above the stream, just above the canopy of trees along its banks. Surrounding mountains, several of them still dotted with patches of snow, loomed over the tress. Zoe said when she first visited this site a few months ago all the mountain tops were covered with snow.

It was very quiet. We saw two other hikers (a person accompanied by a dog) during the trip. Zoe was able to tell us about her job. They are trying to locate nests to help inform the US Forest Service how to manage the area’s state and national forests. Knowing where certain birds nest will help the Forest Service plan its management operations.

Meanwhile, we experienced the greatest hike since the one we took through Grocery Outlet Bargain Market.

We got to see Zoe’s field pack, which includes her binoculars, a first aid kit, and bear spray. We did not see any bears on this hike, but Zoe has seen seven so far while she has been working. They were all black bears that she could easily scare off if she found them too close to her. There are no longer any grizzly bears in this part of California.

With that adventure done, we ziggzagged back down the mountain and back to South Lake Tahoe, where Nadia had been expecting us for a few hours. She failed to grasp the magnitude of our hike. We quickly laid plans for the rest of the day:

Swimming at our resort’s beach

Escape Room

We finished the evening at an out-of-the-way microbrewery that seemed to be a place that locals would want to haunt. There are at least a half dozen more accessible microbreweries that we have seen on the main drag. So, if you’re keeping score, we have talked today about mountains, lake life, snow, consistent beautiful weather, inexpensive groceries, wildlife, and plentiful beer. This really is a self-sufficient enclave where all one’s needs can be met without having to travel to Carson City, Reno, or Sacremento. Not a bad place to wind up in for vacation.

Florence’s way or the highway

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Here we are at the top of the tower, above the fray.

There are lots of kinds of buildings in Florence. Some are orange, and some have stripes. One has a great big half-egg dome on top. Another is a great big block with a tower sticking out of the top that we were able to climb on today.

All of them would be walking around Florence if they had legs. Instead, they’re relatively safe in the Galleria dell’ Academia.

There are lots of kinds of people in Florence. Sure, a lot of them are young college students who look astonishingly similar to Nadia and Lanie, but there are other kinds of people here, too. Tonight at dinner, I heard our watier speak Italian, English and Spanish. He was a good waiter. He had a lot of different people to take care of.

As far as I can tell, there are three kinds of streets in Florence. One kind is big and wide and has lots of lanes for cars to zoom around on. We saw some of these when Nadia took us for a walk along the river to a park on the other side of town from where our apartment is. We needed a nice park to eat our cinnamon roll brunch desserts in. Ironically, to get to a shady park we had to cross several lanes of traffic.

Not likely to block traffic here

Another kind of road we saw today when we were one our way to meet up with Nadia after her cooking class. The class is in this glass-walled classroom right in the middle of the Florence Central Market, which is a fresh food market on the first floor and a food court on the second floor, where Nadia’s class is. We even got to meet her professor. (We were forbidden to take pictures of either class or professor.)

in order to get there though we had to walk on a road choked with vending stalls, most of them selling leather goods. I checked behind the booths and there was usually a leather store right behind the booth. There were many, many booths on both sides of the street. Occasionally, the leather was interrupted by jewelry or soccer jerseys. It was very much a bazaar-like experience, and as Lanie looked at jewelry,

The Gallileo Museum showed his many inventions for detecting approaching traffic.

I could hear other people haggling with, or simply trying to avoid the advances of the leather sellers. I am pretty sure this kind of street is just for walkers. I don’t remember seeing any cars on these roads — and they seem to completely surround the Central Market — but really had my hands full trying to avoid the gaze of the leather salesmen, so if a car came by I probably would have been hit by it.

The third kind of road represents about 90 percent of the streets in Florence, as far as I can tell, and is combination of the other two. That is to say, they seem like they are pedestrian streets, but then all of a sudden a car comes roaming down the middle. It’s not exactly like in Cinque Terre, where it was almost always people except when a special taxi, a garbage truck, or an ambulance went by. Here, it can be any kind of vehicle, even a bus. And it can be on any kind of street, even ones that don’t seem like they can possibly fit a bus.

This is a Florentine car-accessible road. Note the skimpy sidewalks.

Many of these streets are narrow to begin with, and then they have half-hearted sidewalks on eather side that are maybe the width of someone’s body if they kept their arms straight down at their sides. In such a situation, it’s nearly impossible to walk on the sidewalk because there is almost always someone coming your way.

There are lots of people walking around Florence. And yet, they don’t seem to want to commit to having any pedestrian streets. For two days now, I have been lulled into a false sense of safety by crowded, cobblestone streets, only to have a Land Rover sneak up behind me. In fact, now I can’t be comfortable walking anywhere here. I barely looked up at David in the Galleria dell’ Accademia, because I was looking over my shoulder for a delivery truck to come driving down the main hall.

Michealangelo made his David extra tall, so he could spot oncoming Florentine motorists.

White van, having ignored concrete traffic discourager

It may sound like I’m going a little overboard, but it really has gotten into my head. Today, I thought I had finally found an example of a true pedestrian street. There were large round concrete creations in the road that held plants and also offered a people a surface to sit on. I thought it might be a test trail for a car-free zone. Then a van slalomed in between the structures on its way to a quite congested piazza. If it’s a test, they’re going to need some more time for the idea to stick.

Now, Florence does not owe me anything. It’s a great place — if a little nerve wracking — to walk around in. There are many, many interesting things to look at. There are many happy people here. If they want their streets to be mixed-use, then they are entitled to it.

Ancient traffic maps in the Palazzio Veccio Museum

If you can see this, you’re probably blocking traffic.

And I am by no means worried for my life while I’m walking around here. The cars can’t go very fast with people milling all around, but I do feel bad then I turn around to find a carbinieri car coming down the street. Nobody wants to stand in the way of justice. Also, I feel bad for the drivers, having to dodge a bunch of slow moving tourists all the time.

One last note about driving in Florence: Avoid the bridges in the late afternoon. Jen discovered that a large portion of the pedestrian population heads to one of the four bridges to get a good view as the sun goes down. So even the type 1 roads turn into type 3 roads without much warning.

Good luck, Florence drivers.

Things to know about Cinque Terre

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Here are a few things to know about Cinque Terre, and perhaps about Italy as a whole, if you are thinking about going there.

Off-peak does not mean empty trails, at least in the early parts of the hike

1. Monday is a better time to do most things than Sunday. Yesterday when we buckled and bought the CinqueTerre cards so that we could walk on the Via di Amore, it cost a small fortune. The man in the booth apologized to us, saying it was “Peak Season.” I made a joke, saying I was doing it for love (because Via di Amore means “Lovers’ Lane” or something close to that). I even managed to say my joke in Italian, and the man in the booth was mightily impressed. Today, we found out it isn’t peak season anymore.

Mondays are apparently off-peak, and the admission to walk the paths was half of what it was

An early glimpse of Vernazza

yesterday. Friends, take it easy on Sunday in Cinque Terre. Go to the beach or walk on one of the free trails. Then go crazy on Monday.

2. I’m not going to say that this place is a haven for smokers, but it is smoker friendly. Maybe half of the people milling about, or maybe a third, seem to be smoking either an e-cigarette or an analog one. Not in restaurants, mind you. But in the streets. Today while I was waiting outside the apartment on a nice bench they put there, a couple came by and they looked like they were in search of something. I told them I had only been here a day, but I

Getting closer to town

might be able to help them. They were looking for a trash reciptical. I had to admit that the closest one I could think of was a few hundred meters away, near the beach. But there were several cigarette receptacles within sight of where I was. Jen even saw honest-to-goodness ash trays (remember those things?) in several souvenir stands. It is possible that you can smoke in hotel rooms here, too. Our apartment definitely had the scent of smokers. It was like being back in the 80s.

3. It’s not actually super expensive here. This is especially true on Mondays (see #1 above). Our walk from Monterosso to Vernazza was absolutely worth the 7 euro per person we paid. It was my third favorite hiking experience ever (after the Bright Angel Trail at the Grand Canyon’s South Rim and the Franconia Notch loop). It was a strenuous two miles of absolute pleasure. Honestly, it was worth the whole extravagance of getting here. After a few hundred meters of climbing stairs with dozens of other tourists, things spread out and we were able to climb stairs pretty much in our group of four.

Eventually we started getting glimpses of the pink buildings or Vernazza. We began imagining ourselves under one of the multicolored umbrellas in the harbor-side piazza. Soon enough we were there, eating lunch under one of those umbrellas. From time to time we would look up into the hills above us and see the people we had passed on our way over, still making their way along the path. It’s not totally that we’re fine specims of health — I mean, we’re not bad, but there were a lot of people much older than us on the trail, and it was not an easy trail. Lots of stairs to climb along the way, and lots of twists and turns in the trail. It was not as tricky as yesterday’s hike, where there were not dedicated steps and a lot of the rocks were covered in moss, making them slippery. But it was not a total walk in the park, either.

There’s our village of Monterosso in the background.

In terms of expense, we ate lunch in a seaside resort, on the main piazza of what most people think is the most scenic of all the town in the Cinque Terre, and we paid about 85 euro for the four of us. I think we would have paid a lot more in the US, and the food was better than it had to be, given the prime real estate. We have found some nice value here. A liter of sangria at a cafe right above the main Monterosso beach — 20 euro. And they gave us snacks. We ordered another round because we still had an hour before our train left. That’s right, we were in a cafe five minutes from the train station, staring our at the Mediterranian Sea, and they didn’t really gouge us for booze. That price includes the tip. Did I mention that?

4. When you see the pictures of the sesaside villages here, you might notice that the buildings

Cheap sangria on the promenade

are pretty close together, and as a consequence they tend to stretch upward for lack of being able to expand sideways. This creates some interesting elements of interior design.

Our apartment is a prime example of maximizing vertical space — from the ship’s staircase you had to climb to get up to the main floor (our friend Eliza the mountain climber would have had a good time with that), to the loft where Nadia slept, it was not for the weak-kneed, but it was a very interesting space to inhabit for a few nights. Perhaps the most treacherous part was getting to the bathroom, which required walking across the ship’s ladder at a space where the stairway’s risers did not match the floor level. It was a potential cliff dive for someone waking up in the middle of the night needing to use the facilities. The proprietors have installed a gate to block off this section to prevent sleepwalking injuries, and fortunately we did not have any injuries.

Need the bathroom? Just step over my head.

5. There are benefits to renting an apartment. While our Air b’nb hostess apologized for not being able to help us with the lost luggage situation -(she had never dealt with a situation requiring a courrier to drive to the apartment, which is unaccessible to car traffic, arriving potentially at a moment’s notice — luckily, we figured it out), she was very gracious in letting us leave our luggage in her entryway after we checked out of the apartment and started our trek to Vernazza. Later in the day, that entry way served as a changing room for Lanie and Jen as they got their bathing suits on. That’s right! They went swimming in the Mediterranian Sea. It was right between our lunch on the piazza and our seaside sangrias.

The loft over the kitchen

6. It is not difficult to get around. We hopped on a train in Monterosso (You do have to be careful that you don’t get on the wrong train. A lot of people who just wanted to go to the next town tried to get onto our train, which was going all the way to another part of Italy) and that bought us to Pisa. There we changed trains, and fairly quickly (about three hours after we left Monterossa) we were in Florence. Nadia walked us confidently out of the train station and to our new apartment, and then we found a great (and inexpensive) restaurant a block away from our front door.

7. We have not really needed cash for anything here, except the “Tourist Tax,” which our hostess requested we leave in a basket on the kitchen table when we left. It was meant to be three euro per person per day we were in the CInque Terre — that’s 24 euro, if you are as good at math as we are. This out of pocket expense was reduced to 23 euro when I found a euro coin on the path up to the convent on the first evening we were in town. Of course, because we had extra euros on hand, I wanted to give some of it away to the man who drove our suitcase all the way from Milan out to Monterosso over what must be a very twisty and dark road through the hills. I gave him a 10 euro note as a tip, and he seemed very confused by it. He said, “You are very…” but he couldn’t think of the word to explain a person who would randomly give him money, at least not a complimentary one and not in English. Tiips are not standard here (see number 3 on this list); though most establishments have had tip jars near the register — they are hopeful, but usually empty. I finished the sentence for him, “We are very happy to have our luggage,” I said. He took the money and hopefully bought himself a drink with it, though not until after he made it back over the hills.

Traveling for a day or so

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There was a lot of traveling necessary for our trip to Florence to see Nadia. I guess, when you get down to it, it’s all traveling when we’re on these trips, but we’ve pretty much spent the last day and a half in constant motion. Also, we’re not actually going to be in Florence for a couple of days. So the traveling will continue.

It all started early Friday afternoon when I skipped out of school during lunch time, leaving the first graders with a substitute for the last 45 minutes of the day. We were facing Boston traffic on the first major leg of our trip, and we wanted to make sure we got an early start. Who knows what might be waiting on Route 1A in Roxbury?

Actually, we know because it was yesterday and it already happened. The answer is not much was waiting for us. We got to our parking lot and then the shuttle without any fuss. Security check was smooth. We arrived at our gate in plenty of time. We didn’t even have to find food in the the terminal because SAS airlines was giving us dinner and also a little breakfast on our way to our Copenhagen, where an hour-long layover waited for us.

Still, we had plenty to do with our time. Task 1 was to check out one of the travel lounges that our new credit card promises us access to. It costs us extra money in the form of an annual fee, but there is supposed be free food and drinks, and we’re travelling sorts of people, so we thought it would be worth it. This travel lounge was sponsored by Air France (I will not mention the name of the credit card company unless they offer to sponsor us or at least give us the travel lounges for free). It was very close to our gate. We took a special elevator to get there. There was a sign out front that said it was being rennovated and would be closed until this summer. We were disappointed, but not despondent. There was another lounge in Copenhagen that would surely have coffee and stuff for us during our hour-long layover tomorrow morning.

Instead of gorging ourselves on food we paid an unnamed credit card company to give us access to, we returned to our gate and played the game that we like to play that goes like this: We tell them we are carrying on our luggage; then, when they inevitably offer to gate check bags for free, we take them up on it. It costs a lot of money to check bags otherwise. We travel a lot and are very savvy.

Pleased with ourselves, we got onto our plane and started watching some movies while they fixed somthing that was preventing takeoff. It’s easy to distract us by putting screens in front of us, and we didn’t really catch what was going on. All three of us remember hearing it said that someone was fixing something and we would be leaving late, but we would not be arriving very late because of tail winds.

At some point during our movies, the plane took off. A lttle later we were fed — good stuff on SAS. We slept a little, watched stuff, read some things. They eventually brought us nice breakfast sandwiches and coffees. We got to Copenhagen to finish the second major leg of our travel day and a half, and wouldn’t you know it, the tail winds must not have been that great after all. We were 45 mintues later than we were supposed to be. We no longer had an hour-plus layover. We no longer planned to visit a travel lounge. We were worried we were going to miss our flight to Milan.

So began the shortest, but most exciting, leg of our travel day. We were in the E terminal and we had to get all the way to the A terminal. In between was passport control. We had about 20 mintues.

Don’t worry, everyone, we made our flight. Here’s what we had to do to make it: We had to wait patiently while every other row of the plane took their time getting their bags down and stretching and all else. When we finally got off the plane, we ran ran ran. This was made easier because we didn’t have our big bags. We gate checked them because we are clever.

All the running came to a stop when we crashed into the considerable passport control line. It did not look good, friends. Even after Jen informed a woman in an SAS uniform that we had an pressing need to get over to Gate A21, and even after the lady moved us 3/4 of the way up the line (as soon as she did that, EVERYONE started telling her about THEIR pressing connection concerns, and she stopped moving people up — she told us moving up in line wouldn’t make a difference, anyway, and she said they would not be holding flights for people arriving late), it still did not look good. The Copenhagen airport appeared to be expecting 40 people to need their passports checked, and there were 400 people who needed their passports checked. There were only two booths open! Eventually, they opened two more booths and we got through passport control.

Then we ran ran ran some more. It was about a mile of running, weaving in and out of people. I was clearly the weakest link, lagging behind Jen and Lanie. Then I saw the sign for Terminal A and I dodged around some people, cutting a corner close, and suddenly I was in front, leading the way. I was running and dodging and out of breath when everything fell out of my unzipped backpack. We were right about at Gate A14. Ugh.

Jen and a lady I had just dodged help me get my thing back in. We scurried the last seven gates fearing the worst.

And then, like I told you, we scanned our boarding passes and got on the plane, panting and coughing from our sprint.

After that we sat around on the plane for a while (panting and coughing) and the pilot came on to say we were waiting for people whose connecting flights were a little late.

At least we didn’t have to run across the airport with our big bags. Very wise of us to do the gate check.

Nadia gave us a lesson on wine tasting

Exhaustion helped us sleep a little on the hour long flight to Milan, though we got a cool view of the Alps as we started our descent. We had plenty of time to catch our train for leg…5, think. In this airport we just strolled leisurely to baggage check. We didn’t even have to have our passports checked because they did that in Copenhagen.

There was some concern as we walked that maybe our luggage didn’t manage to move across the Copenhagen airport as quickly as we had done, but that was followed by great relief when my bag and Jen’s bag were the practically the first ones we saw on the carousel. We refilled our water bottles — airport sprinting is dehydrating — and watched on as Lanie waited for her bag. We drank some water and watched and waited. We drank some more water and waited. Her bag didn’t come out. As we got less dehydrated, our hopes of finding Lanie’s suitcase sank.

It turns out, as Jen was able to ascertain, that Lanie’s luggage had not been left in Copenhagen like the bags of many people in line with Jen at the lost luggage desk. True, it did not get sent to Milan, but it wasn’t still in Copenhagen. What kind of fools gate-check their luggage?

SAS airlines knew where it went, though, and they told Jen they would drive it over to us at our temporary living accommodations when it comes in tomorrow.

This would have been a good time for there to be an airport lounge in the train station, but our credit card company does not offer such perks, even though we pay them extra money. We did manage to get onto our train to Milan Center — actaully, we got on a train that left 20 minutes earlier than the one Jen bought tickets for because the train manager said it was ok.

In Milan’s lovely train station, we admired the architecture, which combined classical and early 20th century elements with a special focus on hiding the bathrooms. I would call this leg 7 — finding the bathroooms in the Milan Center train station because we had to walk all over the place to find it.

We were not out of legs yet. Leg 8 was a three-hour train ride to the coast. Our stop was not the last one on the line, so someone would have to stay awake and pay attention to where we were. Jen set an alarm for 5 (our stop was scheduled for 5:10), just in case.

I wrote a lot of blog on that train, peeking out the window from time to time to take in the Italian scenery. Eventually, I could start to see the ocean between the buildings. The towns we traveled through startd to take on a seaside flavor — there were beaches and people swimming in the snippets I saw.

We finally made it to our stop in Monterosso, where Nadia and a nice apartment waited for us. We found Nadia right there at the station. Then we started Leg 9 of the trip, which was to walk to our accommodations. This is not a car-heavy place. There is a road that snakes along the cliffside and through a tunnel, but it was filled with pedestrian traffic. Eventually, we noticed a taxi or two beeping their way through the crowds, and at one point this evening an ambulance made its way through, but mostly it’s just people walking around.

After snaking our way along the hillside we turned a corner and village spread out on the far side of the beach. Most of the alleyways we walked through would be too small for a car, but we did pass a tiny pickup truck, which must be how they get things around here.

We were instantly charmed by the place. It is old and rustic and vibrant with beachgoers and hikers. From here, we will be able to walk to four other villages similarly tucked into crags along the coastline.

They won’t technically be counted as legs of our travel because we’ll be staing in this apartment for a few nights.

So, walking around to find a restaurant was just for fun, and finding a gelato shop afterwards was, too, even though we decided to go the long way. Our path led us up a series of ramps and many stairways to a hilltop convent that was crowned with a graveyard that offered views of the ocean and terraced hills. Even though we’d been awake for about 34 hours at this point, we were in no rush to get back to our apartment.

It was well-earned sleep when we finally stopped moving around for the day.

Boulder — Day 3

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Travel days can be tough for planners and participants alike, but we are fortunate that Colorado has put something cool between today’s point A (Denver) and Point B (Estes Park — gateway to the Rocky Mountain National Park). That cool thing is Boulder, a place that deserves its own stayover, at least, and perhaps even a good chunk of a week to give it its full due.

We just had today, though, so we set out to do our best with the time we had.

First things first, a planned stopover at Dutch Bros. coffee, a chain that Nadia knows from her visits to Arizona. She secured a highly caffeinated creation, and we were all suddenly ready for the day.

We moved on and made our way to our first point in Boulder, a park high above the city. We wandered through a wide inclining grassy field (and past at least two more weddings — or at least wedding photo sessions), and we crawled among the ankles of the famous Flatiron rock formations. Zoe even started a brief climb up Flatiron 3, which is accessible only via a very vertical route up a tree-less rock face.

It was crowded with Saturday morning adventurers, many who thought it was a great idea to run up the hill and then scale the rockface barely breaking stride. Several climbers made their way out of our sight line, gaining 100 feet in altitude, in the 10 minutes we watched. Zoe only made it about 20 feet befored she decided to come back down. Her sneakers did not make good climbing shoes.

We finished our loop and then hopped on a shuttle bus that connected the park to the downtown area that held our next points of interest. Down the hill we went and across town, through the impressive Colorado State University campus,

The trolley dropped us on the edge of the city’s bi-weekly farmers’ market. At the center of the tents and stands we found our brunch destination, a tea house donated to Boulder by its sister city, Dushanbe, Tajikistan. This was another point of interest uncovered by Zoe’s research.

On a Saturday morning in early August, the wait time to get in (they don’t take brunch reservations) is about 45 minutes. That gave us time to wander through the farmer’s market.

We saw a very good side of Boulder this morning. The park and hike offered a connection to nature, with a scenery scale that was off the charts, and free public transportation always gets our attention. The community’s embrace of the farmer’s market — it was quite crowded and supported a fair-like atmosphere — was also on full display.

And if that didn’t win us over, the brunch at the tea house sealed the deal. Our orders spanned from Indonesian to Indian to Persian to Mexican, and every one of us walked away full and satisfied.

Boulder is compact enough that we did not even need to walk far to get to the highly popular Pearl Street outdoor mall. We wandered a little here — it is quite extensive well laid-out.

Our guess is that Denver is trying to recreate this with its 16th Street Mall. One standout feature on the Pearl Street Mall: the only retail outlet for the Liberty Puzzle Company, whose intricate wooden jigsaw puzzles have given Jen many hours of entertainment.

The last stop in Boulder required us to collect the truck and head to the outskirts of town for another singular retail experience. All of the Celestial Seasonings Teas in the store are mixed and packed in a plant just outside of town.

They offer a very nice tour and an extensive gift shop that is the only place in the world where you can purchase all 100+ blends they create. Even cooler, they have a tasting room where you can request a samply of any of their teas. It was simultaneously very cool and very laid back.

We stayed there tasting right up to the 5 pm closing time, but when they kicked us out we realized that we were already well on the way from Denver to Estes Park. We pulled into our apartment well before sunset, and if I were to tell you there was an elk waiting for us in the front yard I would obviously be lying. In truth, there were THREE elk there to greet us.

It might have been a family, and they seemed completely disinterested in us and completely interested in eating the grass — though the biggest elk did walk over to check out the pickup truck.

For dinner, we decided to hit up the Estes Park Brewery — and realized that it looked familiar. The adults in our family had been here before. Just like last time, the Olympics were playing on the TV. Luckily, this time, it being Saturday night rather than Friday afternoon, we were able to watch something other than rhythmic gymnastics.

Denver Day 2

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Having checked a few Denver menu items off on day 1, we still had some highly anticipated experiences set up for day 2. An early-morning planning session, taking into account the relative locations of each experience, plus the predicted weather, led us to a plan, but the first stop of the day was a site none of us even knew about on day 1.

Jen received a message from our landlord informing us about a pop-up bakery several blocks from our house that was worth visiting. In fact, even though it did not advertise, it was so popular that it regularly sold out its stock. So, we rumbled the Tacoma all the way down Steele Street to beat the crowds to the baked goods. The croissants and pesto sourdough loaf were worth the effort.

Thus fueled, we were able to hit the town for another round of adventure. The new schedule kept the original plan offering an optional trip the the Red Rocks Park and Amphitheater — yes, that magical place of dreams where John Denver debuted his soon-to-be hit “Rocky Mountain High,” and countless other musical acts have performed in the presence of a lot of people, and a whole bunch of red rocks.

Four of us made the trip, and three of us took the 1.4-mile Trading Post Trail loop (another recommendation from our hosts). Nadia slept in and Lanie opted to spend her Red Rocks time appreciating the amphitheater — which was pretty deserving of appreciation. Built in the 30’s as part of a Civilian Conservation Corps. project that took 12 years to complete, the amphitheater is nestled between two huge rock protrusions. The gracefully curved rows of bench seats cascade from a concourse down rather steeply to a stage enclosed by structures built from brick the same color as the natural rock. Its accoustics rival natural Greek amphitheaters (according to a writeup I read on a sign in the gift shop), and it has hosted events ranging from rock concerts, to graduations, to Easter Sunday sunrise services.

While Lanie appreciated all this, the remaing three of us wound around and through the natural rocks with one eye on the scenery and another on the local bird population. Jen’s pre-trip preparation included printing out a checklist of Birds of Colorado. On this hike, we were able to check off the Lazuli Bunting, Black Beaked Magpie, and several types of swallow.

From the observation deck. Unfortunately the person we asked to photograph us managed to not include the Denver skyline.

Because of our speedy hiking skills, and because Red Rocks is only 25 minutes from our place in Denver, we were able to collect Nadia and move on with the plan for the day before much of the morning has passed. The plan had us visiting the science and nature museum first, then making our way across the large city park to the botanical gardens that were on the other side. All this was in manageable walking distance from our home base.

That’s what our plan said. Reality said something a little different. The first disconnect here was that the Science and Nature Museum held our attention much longer than anyone expected. We could have stayed here for the whole day. The special exhibit on poisons was very densely packed with information and incredibly interesting. (Nadia likes to keep us guessing. Normally she’s the first one done at any museum, impatiently waiting to move on while Zoe reads every word on every sign. This time around, the rest of us were all done with the whole museum and waiting in the atrium before she even got through the Poison exhibit. As a neuroscience major/chemistry minor who hopes to go into research, she had a professional interest in all of it.)

We also got pulled into exhibits on space exploration and archaeology. The natural history dioramas were extensive and brightly rendered. We made it up to the fourth floor terrace for a great view of the park with the city’s skyscrapers in the distance. (Beyond them, we knew, were the Rocky Mountains, but the day’s cloud cover kept them from our view.)

The second hitch in the plan was geographic in nature. The Botanical Gardens were located on the edge of a completely different park. Thankfully, we realized this before we started searching the park to find it. Jen and I left the girls immersed in the Science and Nature Museum while we walked back to HQ to collect the pickup. Then we got the girls for a quick jaunt a few parks over to the Botanical Gardens.

Close followers of our travel will know that science museums and botanical gardens are mainstays of our adventures. It’s rare that we go for both of these family favorites in one day, but Denver was obliging. Even though they weren’t in the same park, the musem and gardens here are on the same side of town, admid grids of appealing residential neighborhoods. We’ve even been able to find suitable parking when we need it, which doesn’t always seem likely given the girth of our pick up truck.

The botanical gardens were buzzing with activity, too. Lots of cars in the parking lot, lots of people milling around. Maybe 40 percent of them were on hand to witness a matrimonial ceremony. We managed to spy two brides walking around, but there were enough tuxedos, matching dresses, high heels and sport coats in the crowd to accommodate at least a few more. It clearly is a wonderful place to get married — there is practically no possible camera angle that would not have flowers in the background.

We saw a fancy herb garden and an elegant and extensive Japanese garden. A specialy here seems to be water lillies. We saw several pools filled with different examples, almost all of them in bloom.

It was all very nice, but to some minds on our tour it was all only the build-up to day 2’s most exciting feature. We grabbed a quick dinner at a microbrewery located in the center of an eerily deserted college campus that was only blocks from the city center. Then we ambled over to the outskirts of town for … well none of us were exactly sure what we headed for this evening.

Ever since she started research activities for this trip, Zoe has been a strong advocate for “The Convergence Zone,” an entertainment venue that offered lots of lore, but very little definitive information about what it entailed. From what we could gather, it was somewhat similar to the St. Louis City Museum, perhaps the best-loved experience from our whole cross-country trip. Like that instiution, the Convergence Station seemed to be at least half-way designed as an art installation. The other half sounded like we would be able to explore, like we had in St. Louis, and maybe solve a mystery?

It required us to reserve a time for entry — and after getting into the main concourse were were meant to take a shuttle to a world called C Street (the shuttle reminded us of an elevator), and then when we got out of the shuttle we were meant to “boop” a smart card against any swirling light logo we saw. This we did, and Zoe particularly loved it. She would have stayed all night, booping and bopping all around among the colorul lights, otherworldly structures, and winding passageways through four distinct worlds and three floors of access.

Zoe was about 30 minutes from solving the whole puzzle when the momentum from the rest of the group gave out, and we pulled her back down to the main concourse. (Unfortunately Lanie tends to get headaches from too much light and sound, both of which this place had in abundance. We knew it it was time to go when we found her curled up inside the darkness of a hollow tree.) We had been in the Convergence Station for about three hours by then. I’m sure if Zoe ever gets back to Denver, a return visit will be the first thing on her agenda.

Day 8: A home base

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Checking out the Copenhagen waterfront from deck seven of our cruise.

We have roamed much of the way around Scandinavia, staying in hostels, an apartment, a sleeper cabin on an overnight train, and — last night — a cruise ship cabin. Mostly we’ve been sleeping five to a room, and every night we’ve been sleeping in a new bed.

Here in Copenhagen we are looking forward to spreading out in one place for a bit. We’re still sleeping six to a room, but we get this room, in probably the hippest hostel we’ve experienced so far, for three nights.

We are also excited because we have ponied up for three days of the Copenhagen Card, which gets us into all kinds of experiences and attractions, including a lot of museums, the famous Tivoli Gardens amusement park, and all public transportation.

With mystery packets in hand, we are now on the case.

In fact, we weren’t on the ground here for more than an hour when Jen and Zoe signed us up to solve a few mysteries. A company has put together packets that mix historical crime information with famous city landmarks to add a little fun to sidewalk travels. The packets were available for pickup right in the train station. It’s on the Copenhagen Card, so we went for it.

Therefore, after storing our luggage in a locker at the New House hotel — just a few blocks from the train station and not quite ready to check us in — we headed toward a place called the Round Tower, where clues apparently awaited us.

Actually, the clues waited a little while, because it started to sprinkle and we decided to duck into a coffee shop. Then, when the showers intensified, we headed into the nearest indoor activity covered by the Copenhagen Card. As luck would have it, we were very close to a double attraction: Copenhagen’s Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum and the Hans Christian Anderson Experience. They’re right next to each other, and they’re on the Card.

These kept us interested, and dry. And possibly they gave us appreciation for wonders of the world at large, and for Copenhagen’s greatest contribution to children’s literature. Remember, we just had coffee, so we were pretty much raring to go. The rain just had to stop. And it did!

A nook for resting on the way up the Round Tower

At the Round Tower, also on the Card, we wound our way up a spiraling cobbelstone ramp to a place designed to hold an observatory. The tower pokes out over the surrounding neighborhood of old buildings and narrow streets.

See any ducks or dogs? Us neither.

It gives a nice view view of the surroundings, but, being in the center of the city, it probably isn’t that effective as an observatory anymore. There is still a telescople up there, but we did not get to see it.

No clues were apparent from the top of the tower, so we eased our way back down to street level where…still no clues were apparent. We were meant to be looking for a carving with three ducks and a dog. It was supposed to be somewhere near the tower. There were lots of people milling around, but not a lot of livestock.

We looked and looked until the coffee boost ran out totally, and a sizeable portion of us were dead on our feet. By now our room was ready for us, so we walked back to the hostel and settled in.

It is a very cool place. There are multiple bars, a restaurant, a workout facility, a yoga room, and an indoor soccer field. It has people of all types staying there, but it is geared toward backpacking types. There is a special dinner each night for people looking to connect with other travelers. There are also special events and meet-up spots to allow solo travelers to connect with each other.

Our room had sixs beds, each mostly enclosed, with power hookups inside each little pod. There is a bathroom and a shower — separate from each other — in the room. It’s actually pretty good for a family if you rent the whole thing out. So, that’s kind of the vibe of the place: A lot of young single people and a bunch of families with young kids. It is also very close to a lot of the downtown action.

We lugged our bags up to our room and lay them down to stay for a while. Some of us snuggled into our bunk pods, and those of us with energy remaining headed out for more Copenhagen Card adventure.

This time, it was the nearby National Museum, which occupied us with extensive exhibits on pre-historic Denmark and a Viking experience where we got to see a part of the longest Viking ship ever recovered.

They eventually kicked us out of the National Museum because it was closing. Back at the hostel, we tried to sign up for the night’s special dinner, but it was already filled up. (It turns out that we would have been out of place; the tacos were really meant for young single types.) Instead, we dove into the slightly more expensive, but amply-stocked salad and pizza buffet that was on the other side of the restaurant.

After all that, some of us still had energy to go out looking for dessert. Here, as in most parts of Scandinavia, ice cream is easier to find than murder clues.