8 posts from 2007

Miles walked: seems like about 105

Churches visited: at least 10

Calories consumed: 12,854,913

Family togetherness: PRICELESS

We have had a hard time finding internet sites, so our posting has not been as frequent as I would have liked.

Since I last wrote, we have visited Paris (to the Eifel Tower - twice, Montmartre, Notre Dame, The Louvre, etc.), to Mont St. Michel, Normandy (Omaha Beach, the American Cemetery and museum and the German cemetery - all very outstanding) and now in Germany.

We are staying in the little town that the Rademachers came from. This place is crawling with Rademachers! At Mass on Sunday, the priest was none other than Fr. Michael Rademacher!! We met him in the pub after Mass. We went down to Koln (Cologne) for the day yesterday and saw the Cathedral.

Today we are exploring our family roots. We found out that Rademachers have lived in this area since the 1500s. We bought a history book and a calendar with some neat historical information. We might try to get over to the Dusseldorf area this afternoon to explore the Kreifels family origins.

On German keyboards, the "z" and "y" are switched, making tzping rather difficult. Not to mention that all the punctuation is switched around! So this is all I will write for now. Next post might be from home.

 

Here we are in Nice! The weather is nice and we've enjoyed some time on the beach. Sadly, the beach is all pebbles - no sand - but it was lovely nevertheless.

A couple of death marches since I last posted - to the top of the Duomo in Florence, and around the small village of "Eze" near Nice.

I don't have much time to write - we're about to leave for dinner in Monte Carlo (!) and I don't want to miss the bus.

Everyone is doing well and we're having a blast. Next time I write will probably be from Paris. Au revoir!

No death marches today.

However, I did DIE and GO TO HEAVEN. Yes, we found a Vivaldi concert in Venice yesterday - VIVALDI'S FOUR SEASONS!! LIVE!! So we abandoned the boys at the hotel and Dale, Katie and I went and heard this FABULOUS chamber group play at a Venetian church. I was just the most awesome thing ever. We can end the trip now and I'll be happy. Truly.

Venice was actually really fun and I could have stayed longer.

We had a long bus ride to Florence today. The weather here is hot, though not as hot as it sometimes can be, they say. Tomorrow is the Duomo and Michelangelo's "David". We have the afternoon to ourselves and we are trying to figure out something kid-friendly. It might be a hands-on exhibit of Leonardo Da Vinci's machines.

We had a spare hour and a half today which we devoted to laundry. Four loads, washed and dried, about a million Euros. Geesh, it's expensive over here.

Still can't load photos. Am totally frustrated.

Internet is five Euros for 15 minutes. Must go.

 

 

Still can't figure out how to post pictures, dang it.

We arrived in Venice yesterday afternoon. Dale insisted on another death march, all the way from the hotel to San Marco Piazza but it was too far. We made it as far as the Rialto Bridge and turned back to the hotel. We enjoyed a boat ride, a nice dinner, and ran barefoot in the rain through St. Mark's Plaza.

Today we rode by boat back to St. Mark's and toured the basilica and also inside the Doge's Palace. Now we are finishing up our pizza lunch and are headed over to a music museum about Vivaldi.

Later this afternoon we go by boat to another island called Burano, which is supposedly a lot less crowded.

Weather is nice - brief showers this morning, now warm and a bit sticky.

Some of our fellow tourists in the group are beginning to wilt. We've had a stolen purse and a fainting incident in the last 24 hours. Tomorrow we head to Florence.

Having a great time! Wish you were here!

 

We arrived in Rome after midnight on Sunday and endured a wild cab drive to our hotel. It was like something out of "Minority Report".

Our luggage did not arrive, however, so we had to wear our same clothes to Pompeii on Monday. Fortunatey, we had clean shirts and underwear in a carryon bag.

The train to Pompeii was awesome! The Naples train station was scary! A driver took us to Pompeii and it was a lot better than we thought - so many had told us it was a tourist trap (well, it was, sort of) but we really liked it. This was followed by the Vesuvian Death March up to the crater. Again, we had been warned about its tourist-trappy qualities but we totally loved it. I guess us Weld County types are easy to please. We got some sulfuric whiffs once in while but it easily could have been the reality of a day with no deodorant. Gross!

We got back on the train just in time to get to our hotel and step immediately onto the tour bus to an elegant dinner. Again, bear in mind that we've been wearing portions of our wardrobe for like two days now. Nobody sat with us... We drank enough wine to not really care anymore.

When we returned to the hotel, our suitcases were there. YAY! We also got ahold of Dale's cousin, Fr. Greg Ames, who is also in Rome this week. We arranged to meet up with him at St. Peter's Tuesday morning where he was scheduled to say mass.

Our wake-up call was late so we had to do a real fire drill to get out the door. But we made it to St. Peter's just in time and were thrilled to be there. We got a personal tour of St. Peter's from Fr. Greg, and then we did the Vatican Death March up to the top of the dome. Good lord.

We returned to the hotel for breakfast and then hopped on the bus to go see the Coliseum and the Forum. Way cool! The off to the Vatican again, this time to see the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel. Crowded.

We're back at the hotel now. Dale and kids are swimming and I've about had it trying to find all the punctuation keys on this funky Italian keyboard. It took me more than 5 minutes to find the stupid @ sign.

Am still having technical difficulties with getting pictures posted. Maybe I'll have better luck in Venice.

Yes, here we are in London! What a goofy first day we've had.

Evil Lufthansa overbooked our flight -  just as we got up to the ticket counter they ran out of seats. Two of us were ticketed; four of us weren't. After much hand-wringing, we agreed to accept their compensation vouchers and show up for the next day's flight - and likely to miss our day in Naples and Pompeii. Meanwhile, our baggage continued on to Rome without us (isn't that like illegal or something?)

Since our luggage was gone anyway, Dale started working the counters. He got us first on the stand-by list to London on British Airways with a guaranteed connecting flight to Rome on Alitalia. Lufthansa wrote us the transfer tickets but forgot to ask us to hand back in our voucners.

If a ticketed passenger would fail to show by 45 minutes before departure, we would get the seats. So at 60 minutes before departure, guess how many seats they had? SIX! They began the ticketing process, gave us some stand-by gate passes and sent us down Concourse A. Well, noboby showed and the seats were assigned to us! The last six seats on the 777 plane! We love BA!!

We left Denver at about 9:00 p.m. and had an uneventful flight. We've got quite a bit of time to kill here in London - yet not enough to leave the airport and actually see anything.

Thankfully, we will not miss our Pompeii trip on Monday, which was the cause of a lot of handwringing back in Denver. Plus, we made out like bandits with the Lufthansa vouchers. Looks like we were well-paid for our delay and will have all the spending money we need and more for the entire trip. WAY TO GO, DALE!

Can't post photos at this funky internet station here at the airport. Will try to do that when we get to Rome.

Ciao!

This is a test, this is only a test.