Swiss Family Abraham

Ali– As I’ve mentioned before, one of the best lessons we have learned from traveling is: Plan A rarely works out. It started on day 1 of our year abroad when our budget airline, Condor Air, cancelled our flight into Zurich, leaving us stranded in Frankfurt hauling a year’s worth of underwear around the airport. These misadventures always remind me of the days before Mays’s birth, when my obstetrician told me while chuckling  that I was free to write out a birth plan with my preferences.

So last weekend we had a plan to go hiking and see some castles. It was a good plan. It was World Heritage Day and the national treasures were open for free viewing. The three castles of Bellinzona in the Italian part of Switzerland were on the list. I found a nice 2.5 hour downhill hike in the hills right above the city that started with a cable car ride up to a cute stone village, went by an 11th century church with frescos, crossed a Tibetan suspension bridge, and then meandered through vineyards back to town. Perfect! I even invited another family, promising them easy hiking and castle viewing. 

We started out on the train at 8 am with pastries in hand for the 2 hour trip to Bellinzona. First task was to solve the mystery of the missing jelly in the jelly donut. Arriving in Bellinzona we made our way by bus to the cable car station in Monte Carasso. Here is where Plan A goes awry. The tiny cable car is booked out until noon. No problem! We’ll just reverse the plan: hike up and cable car down! Plan B here we come!

We found the trail head- which is always the first challenge with any hike – and headed up. Five minutes in the complaining begins. To be honest it was a bloody hot day and the girls had been lied to: this was not downhill. Things were made worse when I followed trail signs and missed the leisurely road that meandered through vineyards, instead heading us up the ‘bergweg’, which translates to oh-god-just-let-me-slip-into-a-coma-this-is-so-bloody-steep. So we spent a lot of time ‘resting’ on the way up with a couple of near pukes. We were now on Plan C.

After about an hour of steady uphill climbing we join back up with the leisurely road through the vineyards and everything flattens out. A couple more minutes and we reached the spectacular Tibetan bridge…which was only spectacular for the 1 out of 6 of us that doesn’t suffer from height discomfort. Turns out I had taken 5 people with moderate to severe dislike of high insecure places onto a 179 meter long bridge over a canyon. 

After a brief stop for lunch and discrete change of soiled drawers we continued on to San Barnárd, a Romanesque mountain church with frescos from the 14 and 15 centuries including one of the last supper. 

There was also some pretty awesome 18th century graffiti on the outside. Maya and Sara were slightly less impressed and chose to squat outside the church doing their best impression of exhausted hikers seeking salvation from a fate of more hiking. 

Onward we went despite their appeals to a higher power. Soon we reached the cute town of Curzútte, and the secret was out on this place. We managed to find patio seating at an upscale looking eatery and proceeded to sweat all over their nice outdoor furniture while slurping beers and ice cream.  We also noted the cable car going overhead about every 20 minutes, which was our plan for getting back to town. 

Beers emptied we headed for the cable car platform where a line had formed that looked to be about 2 cars worth of people or about a 40 minute wait. A guy in the line told us it was about a 40 minute hike down. Given the joint swelling and general fatigue we were in favor of waiting….then the cable car broke down. On to Plan D. 

By the time we stumbled back into town the crew barely had the stomach for trudging up to one castle. We all looked around blearily at the usual castle accessories- large stone walls. Check. Turrets. Check. – and then headed to the train station for the ride home. I’m sure the other castles were awesome but unless they had a shower and ibuprofen, they would have to wait for another day. 

Ali – Our friend, Laurel, had been threatening to organize a trip to Europa Park and managed to make good on her threat this past Saturday. Saturday morning at 7:30 am, Maya piled into our rented Land Rover with her two buddies, Sarah and Lil, for the two hour trip to Rust,  Germany. 

Laurel (Lil’s mom) and Rick and Manuela (Sarah’s parents) were meeting us somewhere on the road for the caravan to the park. 

Now I don’t know how you feel about amusement parks but I have a soft spot for them….as long as I am not forced into any line longer than 30 minutes. Mostly I love the roller coasters; don’t ask me why, just have always loved them. 

I have yet to look up the history of Europa Park and Disneyland but someone definitely copied. The place is divided into several different ‘lands’ – sound familiar??? In this case it’s actual country names : Russia, Greece, Iceland, etc. And then there are themed rides within each land. However, certain rides like the Eurosat: a trip through space, and the Geisterschloss: a haunted mansion, are ridiculously similar to the Disney versions: Space Mountain and Haunted Mansion.  

What makes this totally ok (I’m assuming Europark knocked off Disney) is the price: 40 Euros for a ticket instead of whatever ungodly and greedy sum Disney is charging nowadays. Plus there are huge beers in actual glasses and good German food to be had.

We focused on roller coasters and water rides, spending most of the day with wet underwear. The Europa Park app helped us find the short lines so we didn’t spend more than 30 minutes in a line until the end of the day. On the way out we thought we would try for the new attraction: an experience called Voletarium that had opened that day. The wait time was posted as 40 minutes and so, hoping that was an overestimate, we plunged in. Well a better name for this ride would have been the Waitatarium. You can just hear the sound of souls being crushed from the picture below of folk in the line after about 50 minutes.A hour later we made it through the line to what turned out to be a flying simulator, like at Epcott. Maya declared it totally worth the wait. I disagree. But that hour of my life is gone forever so I won’t look back. I still love amusement parks but perhaps will steer clear of rides on the opening day from now on.

Ali- Thursday/Friday before last weekend marked the second to last school holiday of the year:  Auffahrt. Now for those with no German skills this sounds like a holiday for flatulence but actually translates to Ascension, when Jesus went back up to Heaven to hang out with dad after a rather rough time on Earth. The Abrahams decided to ausfahrt Switzerland for Auffahrt and head to Austria, which we had yet to tour despite it being right next door.

Thursday morning we headed out in our rented Mercedes. Just over the Austrian border, we picked up a Swiss kid- Eileen- who is the daughter of our friends from the AirBnB boat rental back in one of our September posts. On the road again we headed over the mountains to the Tyrol region, which is well known for its skiing, hiking and river sports. We had rented a little AirBnB in Haiming, a sleepy little town with nothing to offer but it’s proximity to everything. 

After settling in I rousted the troops for an evening hike around Piburger See, which apparently is well known as the warmest lake in Tirol, or at least that’s what everyone said to us when we told them we hiked there. It’s a popular swimming spot so hard to say if it’s warmed by sun or urine. There was a nice 2 mile loop around the lake and a restaurant on the water’s edge where we could reward ourselves with beer and hot chocolate. 

Besides the beautiful view, the restaurant also served a pretty good Gulaschsuppe, which is a popular soup in both Austria and Switzerland. I was pretty excited to see that the serving bowls had the recipe printed on them (special translation note: mohre is the Austrian term for carrot.) 

The big event of the weekend was a rafting trip that I had booked for us through Area 47, this crazy outdoor aventure park that I had read about in the region. So Friday morning we show up at Area 47 and make our way to the gathering point, ogling all the crazy adrenaline junkie activities going on. In case you are wondering, the pictures below are indeed of an obstacle ropes course under a bridge, a giant rope swing, and a huge climbing wall

Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of the rafting trip, which was labeled ‘kiddie rafting’, because water and phone cameras don’t mix. But despite the ‘kiddie’ label, we were all fully outfitted in wet suites and there were enough rapids on the Inn River to make it fun. The tour was well done, with two boats and lots of games, water fights and kidnapping of passengers to keep us busy. The water was far from warm – 4C – and the kids were all blue and freezing by the time we got out. Here are the kids sucking down hot chocolates after the trip.We got entry to the water park with our rafting tickets and spent the rest of the afternoon playing on water slides and slack lines. The place has some amazing stuff for thrill seekers age 16 or so and older. You can see the sled and ski launches and this giant airbag thingy as well as the water slides in the back of the picture above. There was less for 11 year olds unfortunately but still well worth the visit. 

Saturday morning I once again force marched the kids to a hike. This time my destination was the Stuibenfall, the tallest waterfall in Tyrol at 159 meters. The supercool thing here was the Stuibenfall Erlebnis hike or adventure hike, which is a big suspension bridge and crazy staircase that follows the waterfall up to the top. It’s only about 3 miles of hiking but a lot of climbing. Of course, as is typical around here, there was a restaurant or Stübli at the top. We rewarded ourselves again with beer and ice cream.

The descent was quick and scenic and a good test of one’s comfort with heights.

Back at the car we headed back to Eileen’s house on the border where Gary and Miriam were cooking up a BBQ feast for us. They had just moved from Switzerland to a beautiful spot in Austria looking out at the mountains. 

They also have a new AirBnB venture: the Bubble. This is a big ….well….bubble that sits on their roof and you can rent it to sleep out in the stars. Joe, Maya and Eileen took it for a test drive Saturday night. I opted for a mattress inside the house. Don’t get me wrong; I would love sleeping in the bubble…I just wasn’t sure I wanted to sleep in a bubble with 3 other people after a full day of hiking. The bubble doesn’t come with a shower 😉

Ali – On the 15th of May we had to hand the keys to our fancy Zurich sublet back. We knew it was coming. Our central Zurich, 3 bedroom 3 bath flat was a fortuitous find on Sabbatical Homes.com where roving academics can exchange or rent houses for weird periods of time around the world. We rented the place site unseen from a couple doing a 2 year fellowship in Toronto for 4100 CHF per month including utilities. Now if you are like me, 4100 CHF sounds like a horrendous amount of cash. But go ahead and puruse the listings on a housing website and you quickly find out that this is standard…for like a studio apartment. The problem in Zurich is that there is relatively little stock to satisfy the large number of folk trying to rent. We heard horror stories about folk having to provide full financial statements and letters of reference in order to rent a place. One rental finder service I emailed told me to call a day before arriving and then they would get started. That’s right. They wouldn’t deal with us prior to our immediate need for a place….mind you this was a service that we were going to pay thousands of dollars to for the assistance. Many folk told us it was so difficult to find housing that they recommended a relocation service. Become Local was one such service and for only 3600 CHF they would haul our butts around Zurich for 3 days to find a rental and settle into it.

 However, we got lucky and instead simply had a nice Skype chat with the couple in Toronto and it was pretty much a done deal. 

Another interesting thing to note about roving academics is they leave all their stuff behind. So we just moved into this couple’s fully furnished place and used all their stuff. Meanwhile, back in Baltimore, a lovely couple from California moved into our place (also found through Sabbatical homes.com) and is enjoying all our stuff.  It’s an interesting process of letting go of your attachment to your stuff. 

But alas now we are in subsidized university housing in a 2 bedroom, one bathroom flat with a shared laundry for $1800 CHF. It’s not bad but certainly screams ‘university housing!’ The university rents housing to visiting academics on a temporary basis because of the challenge of finding permanent housing. It solves the problem of “call the day before you arrive and we’ll see what we can do”.  But we have had to share the apartment with a few thousand ants that have no sense of personal space. 

The other thing we have learned while here is that you really don’t need a lot of stuff to live. When we moved, we reduced our lives to about 10 boxes worth of stuff and have since found that we could have done without at least half of it….. particlary when we had to haul it by foot the 10 minutes up hill to the new appartment. Joe has worn two pairs of pants the whole year as far as I have observed. So the plan for our return is to ditch almost everything. I’m looking forward to a little purging when we get back to the states as well. I really find my life it much better when I only have 5 pairs of pants to choose from in the morning. 

Ali- A month ago we had Andreas and his family (Yana, Paulo and Mateo) over for dinner. You may recall from a past blog post that Andreas is the nephrologist here who pays most of my Swiss salary. You may also recall he’s not one for long term planning and detailed instruction (see post on how to break into a Swiss Chalet).

So during dinner it came out that the Abrahams had not spent any time in the Italian section of Switzerland. Andreas, being of Italian origins, has a soft spot for the area and had a line on a little cabin of some sort somewhere near Lugano or Locarno or ??? Details were fuzzy. So we made a tentative plan to all go for the weekend of the 13th-14th May. 

Flash forward and it’s the Monday before this penciled-in trip. I email Andreas asking for the probability that we are actually going and my email goes into an email black hole….no reply.  Sooooo I figured we were not going and had started to look at some hiking options. Thursday 10pm my phone buzzes and it’s a text from Andreas saying “Friday we will go to Tessin! Hope you are ready!” 

Tessin? Errrr ok. Where the heck is Tessin? We look up trains to wherever Tessin is and the SBB app tells us that it will take us 11 hours to get there on Friday night. So here I’ll just cut to punch line. After Andreas makes fun of us for 5 minutes via text, it turns out Tessin is the Canton (think State) and not the city and says we should just meet him at the train station because clearly we can’t be trusted to navigate around Switzerland on our own. I’ve added the actual texts so you can get a sense of the Swiss superiority. He also sends a picture of what he’s packing… all climbing equipment. That’s right. He’s taking the formerly active and sporty, now aged and decrepit Abrahams climbing. I, of course, respond with a picture of what my plan for the weekend was: wine and Harry Potter auf Deutsch. I was planning to exercise…. my liver and left hemisphere of my brain. 

Maya had big plans for the weekend as well, which involved hanging out with her buddies in Zurich. She took the news that we were going away with the Serras with angry disappointment and then resignation. Her main problem was that both Mateo (age 8) and Paulo (age 6) speak only German, and her confidence in her German had yet to fully blossom. 

So Friday night we all meet at the train station for a 3 hour ride to Locarno (turns out Lugano was another red herring direction from Andreas, who proceeded to use the two city names interchangeably for the rest of the trip). We arrive in Locarno and pile in a rented SUV for the 20 minute drive to a random road side parking spot next to a crazy bridge across a river. After a 10 minute hike we arrive at a cabin in the middle of nowhere backing up to a huge cliff face. 

Morning comes and we discover that there is no coffee bean grinder in the cabin with which to grind our whole bean coffee. After considering a cheese grater and a motar and pestle, we decide to walk back out to the car and head down the road to a campground where they have coffee and breakfast. 

There are tons of independent camp ground all over Switzerland highly reminiscent of KOAs in the US. This campground featured both miniput and ping-pong tables. Surprisingly the lure of miniput and coffee was far stronger than the lure of a cliff face, and we ended up spending the morning slurping capachinos rather than getting our climb on. Another thing happened at miniput. Maya discovered she was perfectly well equipped to communicate with Mateo in German. So just to give you some time reference here, in 10 months Maya has gone from zero German language skills to fully able to communicate, though it took a situation of no other communication option for her to fully realize it. 

Ok it’s noon and we are back at the cabin and out of excuses for not climbing. So we gathered up gear and walked all of 3 minutes to the cliff. At this point I discovered that the kind of climbing that at least one fully expendable person would be doing is lead climbing. I’m putting a link to a helpful you-tube video with tips for lead climbing that I did not watch before lead-climbing. Luckily 8 year old Mateo is the first climber and is therefore the one putting in the anchors that the rest of us will rely on to keep from plummeting to our deaths. Joe is designated as the belayer, a job he is qualified for only because Mateo weighs so little one can just hold the rope without any use of equipement or proper technique. 

Maya goes up next and makes a good start of it. However, coming down can be more disconcerting than going up, as one is completely at the mercy of your less than perfectly qualified belayer. Andreas had to go up and get her when she decided that staying up on the rock was a long term solution to Joe’s questionable qualifications as a  belayer.

Joe took a turn. Luckily photos don’t capture all the complaining and limb tremors so he just looks cool.

When everyone was pooped we headed the 3 minutes back to the cabin for playing in the tall grassy meadow. Hmmm tall grass. I feel like there’s something I should be watching for when playing in tall grass. Ah whatever. Another beer anyone? 

So the next morning was more climbing but now with sore muscles and the anemia that follows a full night of several ticks sucking your blood. 

I don’t have any pictures of me climbing, because I needed my hands and Joe refuses to participate in the blogging at this point, but that leaves me free to tell you all about my lead climbing awesomeness without any contradiction from visual evidence. Trust me. I was awesome. And I only wet my climbing shorts during a couple hard spots. 

Well all good things must come to an end. After a morning of climbing we headed out. The Serras took us to one of their favorite spots called the America. 

Here we got some Italian sodas and Joe showed off his muscles to a couple of female climbers at the next table.

Ok ok. He was showing them his tick head that was still imbedded in his bicep but ignore that and just let the picture speak for itself. 

Then we made our way back to the train station for the ride home. I end this post with the best ‘fart’ sign I have seen. It’s the German word for Drive but that doesn’t keep it from being funny to crass Americans. Gute Fahrt! 

Ali – Maya turned 11 years old on April 26th and had a birthday party sleepover last weekend. Right now you are feeling angry at the false advertising of the blog post title, as you realize this is just a boring post about Mays’s birthday but Ha! Elf means eleven in German so there. It’s not my fault you were picturing woodland dwellers with pointed ears. I suspect you have a desperate need to escape reality and suggest you seek counseling.

Anyway, as I was saying, last weekend Maya held her birthday party. 6 months before that, she was telling us that she didn’t really want a party because she had very few friends here and didn’t know who she could even invite. It’s not that Maya hadn’t made friends; she’s got by far more social ability than I and makes a new friend about every week. But the foreign immigrant/ ex-pat population that is the main source for her Aufnahmeklasse “integration” class in the Swiss public school system is pretty transient. So there was Ori who went back to Australia. Then Elouisa who transferred to another school. Then Maia and Eva who moved to Russia. Then Sixteen who went into the regular class in another school. Etc…etc….

But here we are at month 10 of our year stay and she has this solid friend group composed of Swiss, Expat Americans, Expat Canadians and Expat Brits. Four of the girls made it to the birthday party and we all started off in the woods grilling wurst over a fire, because that’s what Swiss people do on the weekend. Then I organized a scavenger hunt and sent them off into the woods to accost strangers and collect items. Mind you there is zero stranger danger in Switzerland. This is just not a thing here. So sending kids off alone to run through woods is not only ok, it is essential childhood training. I should also mention that every kid owns a pocket knife and is standing over a hot fire with a sharpened stick grilling meat by the age of 4. 

After the scavenger hunt, the girls came back to our place for chicken pot pie, cake, movies and, eventually, sleeping. The next morning there was a cook-off in our kitchen.  Poor Joe would have benefited from beta-blockers or heavy drinking, as the thought of 5 girls given free reign in our kitchen sent him into heart palpitations. 

I’m happy to report we all survived and Maya is a happy 11 year old who has made some very lovely friends. 

Ali– Our last destination in Italy was a place called Cinque Terre, which translates to ‘five cities’ or something like that…all I really know is that Cinque means 5. And for you monolinguals, it is said like Chinkway. This is important because if you use the ignorant American pronunciation, the Italians have zero clue what you are talking about. Now Cinque Terre is a region on the northern west coast of Italy that is famous for these 5 cities that are perched right next to the Mediterranean waters surrounded by terraced hills. I first read about this place in a NYTimes article 36 hours in Cinque Terre and I knew it was a good destination for the Abrahams, as the area is well known for all the hiking trails that connect the 5 towns. 

After some research I decided that Corniglia, the middle of the three towns, would be the best place to stay. It’s the only town not right on the water, which means that it’s slightly less touristy and also means a less than full day hiking commitment is necessary to reach either end of Cinque Terre. 

Now when I mentioned to my Italian friend that we were staying in Corniglia, she gave me a blank stare, having no clue to what I referred. Then, once she figured it, proceeded to spend 10 minutes trying to get me to correctly pronounce the town name. The ‘gl’ is pronounced like a ‘y’ so it ends up sounding like Corn-e-ye-a. But don’t feel bad when you fail at this the first 20 times. The Italians can’t pronounce ‘dehumidifier’.

It took us a whopping 6 hours to get to Corniglia from Orvieto on the Italian train system. But upon arriving we met our airBnB host, Cristiana, at the charming little cafe/bar, Pan e Vin that she and her husband own in town. This became our breakfast spot, as breakfast came with our AirBnB, making the other B actually stand for breakfast instead of what it typically stands for in our experience: bupkis.

Unlike most tourist places, where the AirBnB host will give you tips on what sites to see and maybe a primer on the local transportation system, Cristiana gave us a trail map. Blue trails were the tourist ones you pay for and red trails were the free ones for seasoned hikers and locals. We prepped ourselves that night by eating gelato and wandering around the town.

So Monday morning we roll out of bed at 9 am ish, stuff our faces with pastries at the Pan e Vin, go back to the apartment for ‘post-pastry activity’ and finally hit the trail at 10:30 am. We decided to take the red trail south, with a hike time estimated at around 3.5 hours. I decided these hiking times were clearly based on the average ‘just bought my hiking boots yesterday’ tourist hiker, as you can SEE the southern most town, Riomaggiore, just a couple bumps down the coastline. We manage to locate the trail head, which is hidden behind a church and start going up…and up….and up. Mind you it’s raining a bit and the trail is lined with stones, so it’s a bit like a slip ‘n slide on a hill. 

We finally arrive at a spot where a picturesque town is visable below us and Joe asks,”Is that our destination.” I giggled a little hysterically as I informed him that was Corniglia. We had only just arrived above it.

Luckily the trail did eventually flatten out and we found ourselves hiking through beautiful terraced vineyards with amazing views of the Mediterranean. We passed a lot of people on the trail speaking a bouquet of languages. Finally we hit the descent, which is also called the ‘place in the trail where I lost my knees’. Luckily, there were lots of beautiful wildflowers to look at to distract myself from the joint swelling. 

At last we reached Manarola, which is crazy packed with tourists. Now one of the specialties of the area is the focaccia with pesto. So I was immmediately on a quest to find some. Unfortunately every other damn tourist was also on a quest to find some. 

Bellies semi full, we started hiking round 2, climbing back up over the next hill and down again to Riomaggiore. When we reached the southern most town it was 5.5 hours after our departure from Corniglia.  We dragged ourselves onto the train, and in less than 10 minutes we undid 5.5 hours of hiking. By the time we dragged ourselves back up the hill to Corniglia, we had logged some impressive mileage and stair climbing.

As the sun set, we nursed our knees with ibuprofen, wine and more pesto.

So Tuesday morning comes and we follow the same morning routine. Then we head for the northbound blue route, known as the Via dell Amore, which I think translates in English to ‘The trail tourists pay twice the train ticket price to hike’. Joe and I can both say we have never hiked in crowds like this. It was like transporting a line for a Disneyland ride onto a mountain. Crazy. But still the views were spectacular. The trail is also surprisingly challenging given the general physical fitness level of the tourists we saw and you do meet some fun characters on the way. We stopped at a nice cafe with fresh squeezed lemon and orange juice along the way to momentarily get out of the crowds. That’s right. Let me repeat that. We got off the hiking trail and went into a cafe to avoid crowds. Never thought I would say that. 

So the first town north is the famous Vernazza, which is the most photogenic of the towns and has a big port. This place was too crazy for us, so after a desperate hunt for a cash machine, we headed on. The last town is Monterosso al Mare, which is the one with a beach. This was part of our plan for the day and we were packing suits. 

The Italians had told us that the water wasn’t quite warm enough yet ,but I had assumed they were all thin skinned and spoiled. I had grown up swimming in the brisk waters of Canada so would be fine. I did manage to achieve a semi-comfortable level of numbness during my 20 minute swim but can’t say my skin felt particularly thick. 

Back on the train we returned to Corniglia for more inbuprofen, wine and a nice dinner. 

Our last day we just puttered around. We visited a beach with the world’s largest sand. Then on the morning of our departure, the 26th of April, our hosts had a birthday torte for Maya and a gift. That made the 7 hour trip home on her birthday a bit nicer.

Ali – After the fall of the Roman Empire, there were dark days for the former Romans, who were harried and pillaged by roaming barbarians (and before you let your stereotypes of barbarians run away with you, I think these were mostly Germanic types so blond, blue eyed hunky dudes in metal hats). So what’s a Roman to do? Run to the hills and build a big fat wall all around your city-state. Et Voila! The Italian hill towns are born. Now I know you won’t be surprised to learn that Rick Steves has a segment on the hill towns, which are located in Umbria and Tuscany. All of the towns are ‘medieval’, which means they have that ‘we just got toilets yesterday!’ feel.

We chose the town of Orvieto to visit, which is in Umbria and relatively easy to get to unlike Civita di Bagnoregio. A two hour train ride from Rome and then a funicular and you are there. Once you get to the town, the view is astounding looking out over the vineyards and rolling green hills.

Now there’s not a ton to do in these places as they are literally walled off from the world, but Orvieto has a couple really cool sites… and by a couple I mean exactly 2: the Duomo and St Patrick’s Well. The Duomo is a giant cathedral that decided to dress in stripes, which honestly makes its butt–resses look big. Get it? Butt–resses?

 One of the chapels has some cool frescos by Luca Signorelli, who was apparently one of Michelangelo’s inspirations. If you are a fan of naked people in biblical scenes, then you will love these frescos.

Saint Patrick’s well is hill dwellers answer to the water problem. It was designed in the 16th century with a double-helix pattern so that folk going up didn’t bump into folk going down. It’s a total of 496 steps up and down.

So now you have visited the two sites in Orvieto and you still have 1.5 days left out of your 2 day stay. What do you do? Well it’s Italy so the easy answer is eat through the next 36 hours. Our favorite was the Grotte del Funaro, which was located in a cave. Not a lot of view but pretty darn cool.

So that’s about it folks. Our airBnB was right next to the primo sunset viewing spot and we did a lot of sunset gazing, which isn’t a bad way to spend your evenings, as the best thing about these towns is the view.

Ali – We arrived in Rome Monday evening and bumbled our way to our AirBnB located close to the Pyramid of Cestius, which legend had it was the tomb of Remus but was actually built in 30 BC during a Roman ‘All things Egypt’ fad. Think of it like the Luxor Las Vegas. 

The big thing we had planned in Rome was a private tour that we booked on the recommendation of sister-in-law Beth through Italy Rome Tour. Beth said the very steep price of admission was worth it and I planned to send her the bill if the tour sucked. However, that wasn’t until Wednesday so Tuesday we were on our own.

The thing about Rome is it is absolutely overwhelming if you have a need to see all the sites. Every 50 feet there is a priceless artifact, famous building, historical figure tomb or ancient Roman Taco stand. For Tuesday, we set our sights on the Pantheon because a) it wasn’t included on our tour on Wednesday and b) refer back to a. Not 10 minutes into the walk we came across a pastry shop and were sucked in past the pastry shop event horizon. Joe and I ordered coffee and discovered ‘coffee’ was Italian for ‘raw coffee grinds in a hint of liquid’. 
Overcaffinated and over sugared we resumed course, and started to encounter random ruins. The Italians have a very practical approach to their historic treasures. Given that Rome was a rather large city, they have recognized that they have neither the time nor the money to turn every ancient urinal into a pristine tourist trap. Instead they practice a sort of benevolent neglect, putting a fence around the site and letting it continue to be…well… a ruin. 

So random temple, ancient theater and former gate to something were all sitting in their delapidated glory, surrounded by overgrown weeds, like grandpa in his underwear out on the porch. Now for the do-it-yourself tourist, this is great. You can wander around the city with your google map and click on each icon, which will give you a link to a Wikipedia page or some other reference. Maya tolerated me narrating our walk for about 30 minutes before she put her earphones in and turned on an audio book. Joe seemed to tolerate me slightly longer, but I suspect was actually counting Italian sports cars while nodding politely. 

Now there are other very cool sites in Rome besides the historic buildings. There are walls of chocolate, nuns getting ice cream, funny Tourist crap and hunky priests. Clearly a city with something for everyone. 

Eventually we made it to the Pantheon, which turns out is a Roman temple turned church that was built and then rebuilt over a 150 year period and currently sports the world’s largest un-reinforced concrete dome. Pantheon Check. Next?

Next we decided to go to the Villa Borghese, which is a big park. We rented a power-assisted peddle cart thingy and took turns taking corners at high speed.

Those were probably the highlights of Tuesday. We covered a whopping 10 miles and we’re feeling a bit pooped when we got back to the apartment. 

Wednesday we were picked up at our AirBnB by Daniele and ushered into a plush black minivan with waters and candy. He took us first up one of the seven hills of Rome, Aventine hill, to see the Garden of Oranges, a fantastic lookout spot, the Basilica of Saint Sabina, which is the oldest preserved Roman Basilica (fun fact: Basilicas are churches where dead people are buried), and the home of the Knights of Malta, which are an order of knights hanging on to relevance since the Crusades. The thing about residence of the Knights of Malta is their keyhole, which you can peep through to see a cool sight. My picture through the keyhole was pretty lame but you can click on the link above to see a better one.

Next we were dropped off at the catacombs. This was honestly nothing special. We were joined by an entire bus load of English speakers and trailing after 40 mostly elderly Americans did not make for an excellent touring experience, although it did provide for one of the best quotes of the day. 

Tour guide: Though most famous for Christian burials, people of all the Roman religions are buried in here in the catacombs.

Tourist: So did they have the church services down here?

Tour guide: They would mostly perform rites above ground before the burial.

Tourist: You mean they buried savages down here??!?

Tour guide: [pause] Maybe we should continue.

After the catacombs we met up with our main tour guide, whose name I have shamefully forgotten. We’ll call her Maria because that sounds Italian. So Maria is an art history major who has a bubbly personality and an impressive ability to talk for hours about Roman history. She is also the Italian separated -at-birth twin of Jeanie Murphy from the Spain blog, I’m pretty sure. She completely endeared herself to me because she started the answer to every question with, “Well yes and no…”, which is akin to the Epidemiologist’s pat answer, “it depends.” First Maria took us to the Colloseum.  

“Did lions really eat the gladiators?” “Well yes and no…” “Were there really no toilets in the whole Colloseum?” “Well yes and no…”. I won’t tell you all the amazing information that came after the consistent preface but I can say I learned a lot.

After the Colloseum we toured around a bit in the area, delving into some interesting parallels between Roman mythology and Christianity (check out the original Easter Egg) . It was really a brilliant strategy on the part of the early Christians to convert pagans by making for a smooth and seamless transition between religions. Emperor Constantine chose the 25th of December for Christmas because it was winter solstice in the Julian Calendar, the birthday of dying and rising gods like Mithra from Persian tradition. Check out the Remus and Romulus story for more fun biblical parallels. 

Finally we hopped back in the minivan to head to Vatican City, the world’s smallest country (fun fact: the 200 some citizens of Vatican City pay no taxes). 

So there’s a lot to see at the Vatican but the big ones are the Sistine Chapel and St Peter’s Basilica. But aside from that there’s a ton of art and antiquities that the Catholic Church has managed to squirrel away. The mandatory flow of tourists takes you through a beautifully decorated hall towards the Sistine Chapel.What’s remarkable about it is it looks like there are decorations and reliefs across the surfaces. But No! It’s all painted and made to look three dimensional! Check this out and see if you can tell:

Before we went into the Chapel we got a full art lesson on Michelangelo’s frescos. He was apparently a cantankerous dude probably because he kept getting forced by various popes (I think Maria said he outlasted 7 of them) to work on church stuff. Anyway no pictures in the Sistine Chapel!

Next Saint Peter’s Basilica. Couple fun facts. Jesus named Peter Petrus because Pietra means stone in Greek and he was the rock of the church. Saint Peters Basilica was the last thing Michelangelo was forced to work on by a pope as he died in his 70s while working as the general contractor.  Finally in the whole bloody place there is only one symbolic reference to God.  

Well we were totally pooped (again!) after 7 hours of touring and called it a day. Buuuuut no trip to Vatican City is complete without checking out the Swiss Guard on the way out, who are the dedicated Vatican soldiers. They are apparently allowed to show up to work in their silk pajamas, which shows that the Catholic Church has a soft side. 

Ali– On Monday we said goodbye to Sorento, hopping back on the Circumvesuviana towards Pompeii. Disembarking, we followed the tourists into the station. We had all our luggage with us and were expressing a desire to ditch the bags somewhere when a naked guy with winged shoes, a winged hat and a caduceus appeared and escorted us to a luggage check counter. It was, of course, Mercury, the god of travellers who had heard our prayers. Incidentally Mercury is also the god of liars. 

Having ditched our luggage we stumbled around trying to get our bearings and noted a sign for Pompeii tours. Given that we had about 3 hours to see Pompeii before we were due on a train to Rome, we sprang for the full, skip-the-line guided tour. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The skip-the- line deals are money well spent for a tourist with limited time or patience. Following our guide, we marched past what the tour sales lady had called ‘quite a long line today’, which looked like a line at the only open gelato vendor in August. 

Once inside, we were treated to an excellent walk back in time. Pompeii was buried under so much ash and dirt that all inorganic matter was well preserved from ancient marauding bands of looters. Only the modern maurading bands of looters have done damage, and that was mostly in the form of hauling off all the marble for repurposing. 

We learned some fascinating things, like the fact that the Pompeiians created little raised stepping stone street crossing areas to both keep feet above the rivers of poo (Roman sewers never made it to Pompeii) and force travelers to hire local hackneys whose custom width could drive between stones. Also the things that looked like a bunch of toilets in a very friendly bathroom are in fact places for heated clay jars to keep food warm for customers coming for an afternoon snack. Lastly a Lupanare is not a place where they store the wolves. It’s errrr…. a place where ….. well so …. I’ll just post the pictures and you can figure it out. There was a convenient “menu” of sorts, as customers often spoke a variety of  languages. There were also distinctive signs that helped point interested folk in the right direction.It’s odd but the Lupanare had the biggest line of tourists waiting to check out the artifacts. 

The last thing you see on the tour are the famous casts of those that died. They were killed quickly by the gases coming off of the hot ash and then buried under more ash. All the organic matter decomposed but the cavity where the body had lain remained. A very morbidly ingenious archeologist decided to inject plastic into the ash during excavation and uncovered the worst selling  Barbie dolls ever. 

With that, we decided to hightail it back to the train.  Vesuvius is still active and our guide said the last eruption was way back in 1941. So she’s due to blow and I really didn’t want to be a gruesome Barbie in 2000 years.