Week 12 – Arles and Barcelona

 Arles:

·         Aumar, someone we met on the bus from UK to Brussels, had suggested we visit Arles in our travels, so we did.  He grew up in Garda, Algeria and has lived in Arles for 5 years.  We hadn’t heard of Arles before.  He’s recently retired as a hotel clerk and was visiting his daughter in London.

·         We had thought we would meet Francoise, Martin, and Colleen in La Rochelle area on the west coast but the timing didn’t work out, although it’s still on our list for someday.

·         This was a Roman settlement during Julius Caesar’s time.  There is still an Amphitheater that went into disrepair for centuries and had 200 homes in it once upon a time, until a local pushed for restoring it.  Really cool spot.

·         Van Gogh spent about a year there and created 200 paintings, many of them in town.  This is where he cut his ear, then a local petition went around demanding him to leave town.  A tortured genius.  When he went back to Holland he gave a painting of a doctor to him.  The doctor didn’t care much for the painting and used it to keep his bard cage sheltered.  It sold recently for $50 million.

·         They have an archeology museum, including a barge dug up nearby from the River Rhone in 2010 after sinking with a load of stone around 60 AD.  They had a film explaining the restoration, which took painstaking to a new level.  Great history on Roman times.

·         A new draw in town is a funky building designed by Frank Gehry that is now mostly an art museum and made of 11,000 stainless steel panels.  The highlight was talking with Jean-Baptiste, a security guard on the observation level in his 20’s and glad to share his knowledge of the city on a slow, rainy day.

·         Aumar met us at the train station, walked us around, then met us the next day and visited the archeology museum with us and shared a drink (coffee for him, tea for KK, wine for me.)  He lived in Phoenix for a year, with his brother, who now lives in Tampa.  We said maybe we’ll visit Garda someday.  Just a very warm guy and I think we’ll keep in touch.

Barcelona:

·         Another city I had figured I would avoid because of stereotype of a tourist mecca.  Glad we avoided peak travel time but also glad Bobbie convinced us to stop there.

·         Miguel gave us a tour of the Gothic district, which included coverage of the Jewish quarter and some history.  To make up for making the Jews choose between converting, emigrating, or dying during the Inquisition, if you can prove you are descended from one of the victims, you can get Spanish citizenship.  By my math that would be about 20 generations back.  It was good to get a 5-star guide after a couple of 4-star ones (Aumar doesn’t count.)

·         Lisa gave us a tour of some of Gaudi’s homes.  She was enthusiastic and knowledgeable and gave us an appreciation for a genius with a difficult streak.  One of my favorite anecdotes was the wife of a client kept stressing to him to make sure the daughter’s grand piano could fit in a room.  When the day came, the piano didn’t fit and Gaudi’s response was, “Buy her a violin.”  His swan song was a cathedral, where work on it continues today, after 100 years (not a typo) and might finish in 2028.

·         We walked the beach one day.  There were about 10 swimmers and 20 surfers and it was easy to picture it packed on a summer day.

·         We rode the subway, then the funicular, then a cable car to the top of Mont Judic and wandered around, checking out the view of the city, including a working harbor that looked huge to me.

·         The fast train to Madrid felt more like a flight – checking tickets and scanning luggage to enter the terminal, then queuing again for another ticket check to walk onto the platform.  The train topped out around 265 kmph / 160 mph and was really smooth with seats approaching US business class in comfort.  But the tickets were more than 10 times as expensive per mile as the Balkans travel.

·         There is a public transportation mask mandate in Spain.  My guess is the compliance rate is around 20% on subway and train.  Minutes after I typed that, a conductor with a food cart just asked a bunch of us very politely to put our masks on.  The average is now above 20%.

·         The food was nothing special, except for an awesome 100% gluten-free bakery across the street.

Misc:

·         Karen and I have continued playing Wordle almost every day, at times trying to find a starting word that is decent and related to our travel.

I started down a rabbit hole on calendars – Julian vs. Gregorian vs. Napoleon.  Fascinating stuff but complicated:  Julian calendar set the 12 months and leap years but were adding an extra day every 128 years so that by 15^th century the solstice was almost 2 weeks early.  Gregorian calendar tweaked that (off by a day every 3,000 years) and for decades many documents listed dates in both formats (think standard and metric.)  Somewhere along the line they stopped denoting years by the emperors’ reigns.  Napoleon tried to erase all church influence and said to reset Year 1 to coincide soon after the French Revolution.  He made progress with metric, at least:  There are 3 countries left to get on board: Myanmar, Liberia, and the US.  Made me wonder about it from my work standpoint, thinking about “user adoption” (if we introduce a new version of software, how do we convince customers to switch, how long do we support the old one, etc.), only a slightly larger scale. 

Week 11 – Florence and Nice

Florence:

·         We might have been with more Americans on the train to Florence than we’ve seen the whole trip.  And then in Florence itself and in Venice, it’s loaded.  Felt like Boston waterfront on a sunny day in August.  I like Americans just fine, but I hope we see fewer on the last leg of our trip – it takes away from the exotic feeling.

·         We took a night walking tour with Irno, who was in his 60’s and studied architecture.  We don’t think he did the city justice and was mediocre at answering questions (language barrier and lack of interest

·         But the city is loaded with art all around, which a tour could spend all week on and not come close to exhausting. 

·         We met Claudia from Paris at breakfast.  She’s about our age and born to Spanish diplomats so lived all over the world (went to college and law school in Buenos Aries) and speaks 5 languages.  A rainy day (which we’ve learned it’s hard to dodge umbrellas in narrow alleys) so we rode the Hop On Hop Off with her and walked a little, with the highlight being the museum for Il Duomo, the landmark Catholic dome, which had a ton of sculptures.  I have seen enough of the Virgin Mary to last the rest of my life but was stunned by some of the craftmanship, staring at a marble statue from 15 feet away (there was a velvet rope in front) for minutes trying to decide whether the tapestry was textile or marble. It is marble.

·         We roadtripped via train to Venice, which is hard to comprehend from reading about it.  A set of islands who were at their peak of power in the 16^th century.  Luckily we had watched Merchant of Venice with Jeremy Irons and Al Pacino recently, which added to our tour by Francesco, who included a walk through the world’s first Jewish ghetto.  Geto was the area for metalworks where the Jews took refuge from the Spanish inquisition but were walled in with the doors locked at night.  Germans were locked in another section but only the Jews were deported to Auschwitz (268, with only 8 making it home.)  One of the interesting architectural features he pointed out was bricking in corners at an angle so a thief couldn’t stand there. 

·         Venice’s population is about the same as Krakow and others we’ve been to but felt much bigger because the city’s historic area consumes most of the space, instead of a small section in the middle.

·         We also took a day train to Siena, with Claudia, who was our de facto guide.  The churches were mostly brick instead of stone like Venice and Florence have.  The coolest part for me were the black and white striped columns to note the town colors, which were based on the horses they had.  I’m guessing they were shaped like curved Lego bricks on the inside but after 700 years they were in mint condition, which is mind-numbing to me.

·         I’m learning a little more about the competition for souls between Franciscans and Jesuits, etc.  Most of the churches had mausoleums or floor tiles they sold to raise money.  I think the most recent I saw was 1888.  Some were roped off, while others had thousands of tourists a day walking over them, slowly wearing away the names but maybe if they already bought their way into heaven they don’t care. 

·         I would like to learn more about the Medici family history (Irno covered it only briefly.)  Karen, Claudia, and I talked about how nothing built these days comes close to the beauty or durability of the 16^th century buildings but not having slave labor makes it cost prohibitive.

·         Venice and Florence were both crowded enough with tourists in November that we said we have zero interest in visiting in August.

·         The market in Florence felt like Mexico, with the stallkeepers mostly looking like they were Mediterranean immigrants, but they had the prices posted.

·         Our 14-room hotel was across the street from the train station.  Alex, one of the clerks, explained the hotel was trying to replace the warped 10-foot tall door/windows but the building is antique and tied up in red tape.  It came up because of the guy camped below our window who I’m guessing is homeless and loud at 3:00 AM (he speaks something other than Italian or English) and the tram stop.  Luckily we’re both heavy sleepers and it bothered me only one night.

·         But the morning we left we discovered there are two train stations in town.  Luckily, our train was delayed 6 minutes, which left 4 to spare after a quick cab ride.

·         Although you don’t need a passport to enter France from Italy, the border police got on the train at the first stop in France.  They didn’t ask for passports from anyone within my view but they walked about 8 nonwhite passengers (who didn’t seem to be travelling together) to a bench on the platform and it looks like they were holding their cell phones.  I might have read it wrong but my speculation is they asked for ID for those who looked like they might be illegal immigrants and were right.

·         We passed through maybe 20 tunnels enroute. The ride had some real beautiful stretches but so many I found myself becoming blasé about them.

·         Italy isn’t in the World Cup this year, so there wasn’t the excitement about it I was hoping for.  Maybe France will be different.

Nice:

·         Nice was almost as touristy as Venice but with a feeling more about money and less about history.  It’s 5^th in population for France but 2^nd in cost of living.

·         The beachfront promenade is the highlight of the city’s scenery, with a hillside park being second.  A lot of Gucci-type shops that weren’t tempting.

·         We took a tour with Janine (sp?) who moved here from Kherson 5 years ago.  Karen and I gave her a B but she was sweet and tried hard.  The most interesting story was about the bank robbery in 1974 via the sewer tunnels.  They convicted the mastermind, Albert Spaggiari, in absentia after he escaped to Argentina.

·         France played Denmark Saturday at 5:00 pm local time.  It was the first big event we saw, with the bars mostly full and a celebration in a square with chanting and fireworks, including one that caught the canvas awning of a restaurant on fire.

Misc:

·         After this trip, I have decided to make use of cement in my next house.  Not yet sure how – sink, bench, statue?

·         Throughout Europe we’ve seen a lot of food delivery on bike and scooter, usually with what seem to be immigrants.

·         Next big trip I won’t cheap out and instead just pay Verizon the $100/month for overseas use but be careful with my use.  The eSIM I bought doesn’t give me text coverage, which cause headaches with verifying some credit card and some account logins.

·         Throughout Europe it seems people dry more clothes on the line than in dryers.

·         If I lived in France or Italy I bet I could win worst dressed for 5 years in a row.

·         France has millions of people  I also bet nobody in the country could believe I studied French for 3 years.  I now know I’m no match for a language with such subtle pronunciations.

·         Karen and I have decided the restaurants that are 100% gluten free have generally been our best meals on this trip.