Bob's Travelogue: The Trip Home

I was going to trust you guys to be able to make a meaningful and
enjoyable life for yourselves without the benefit of my wry and witty
commentary this week.  But my plane is delayed by three and a half
hours and I have nothing better to do, even if you do.

I'm sure most of you are eager to hear the details of Biola Beatke's
visit; however, BB is not here to censor me (more on how we got
separated later) so I dare not attempt a description.  I will say that
we kissed a lot, and occasionally did some sight-seeing.

However, I must tell you about the most extraordinary thing I have
ever seen, which Biola Beatke instructed me to see, if at all, before
she arrived.  The tomb of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini
(run by the Cappuccin monks, who invented Cappuccino!) is decorated
with the bones of 4000 servants of God.  I was expecting rows and rows
of skulls, which I got.  What I was not expecting was lacework with
femurs and jawbones, beautiful star patterns of vertebrae, and entire
skeletons dressed in monks' robes, in the pose of walking down the
street with a walking stick.  In short, it was not just macabre stacks
of bones, but macabre art of bones.  20 meters from the Barberini
Metro stop in Rome.

Fast forward through a perfect week in crisp late spring weather --
looking for the perfect photo in Abruzzo mountains, railroading
along the Adriatic coast, trying to find cappuccino for less than 5000 lire
in Venice (Venice is kind of like a great big airport, in that all the
vendors charge airport prices), dodging deadly motor scooters in the
stately streets of Florence, calling to vintners in Chianti fields
offering to buy a bottle, and traipsing among the monumental
monuments, ruinous ruins and artistic art of Rome.  

As our visit came to an end, we picked up a rental car in the center
of Rome for a last night in Paganica (to pick up some books and other
things I didn't want to drag all over the boot).  Since time was
short, I tried to break all the traffic laws before making it out of
Rome.  I accidentally misused a one-way street on the way to our Rome
hotel, then intentionally double-parked while retrieving our baggage.
We tried to follow the intermittent signs to the big city near
Paganica, but they often appeared too late leaving me no choice but to
make a series of illegal left turns.  I followed my usual strategy for
getting out of Rome, which consists of acting like I know what I'm
doing for about 20 minutes, then driving in one direction (any
direction) for about 30 minutes until I hit the big loop around the
city.

It was getting late by the time we got to Paganica, so we opted for a
quick bite at Pizzeria The Wolf.  I have been hitting it off with the
head waiter there, a guy about my age with a wonderfully expressive
face.  He seems to take great delight in listening to my remedial
Italian.  He laughed a lot and tried to tell Biola Beatke about some
of my gaffes.  I complimented the restaurant, and he gave us a free
bottle of the house-labeled red wine as we walked out.

We got a few minutes of sleep and drove to the Rome airport, where we
found that the reservation I thought I made 3 weeks ago was not in the
computer.  I did not learn the name of the woman assigned to resolve
our situation, so for purposes of identification I will refer to her
as The Bitch.  Not that I'm bitter.  Anyway, BB flew off without me
while The Bitch rebooked me on a later flight through Paris.  That
gave me time to drive back into town and spend my last few thousand
lire on a big block of Parmegian and some alfredo sauce.

I had a five hour layover in Paris, which (by the time I figured out
the system) allowed a half-hour visit to the Orsay museum, which I had
missed due to long lines on two previous visits to Paris.  I spent 20
minutes wandering around the lower levels, which is simply the most
gorgeous space for viewing art I have ever seen (though the collection
there is ho-hum).  Finally I discovered the upper galleries, where my
breathing became shallow and my pulse quickened -- 3 rooms of Degas, a
room of Monet, a room of Cezanne, a room of Renoir, a room of Van
Gogh.  I was almost weeping as I tried to tear myself away to go catch
my plane.  When I finally forced myself out of the galleries I could
not resist a visit to the gift shop, which was back-to-belly with
shoppers, to buy a few notecards of my favorite works.  I finally
started back to the station 27 minutes after my pre-determined
deadline, and did a lot of running through train stations.  I got a
little turned around in one station and decided to force my way out of
the in-gate, which drew a glare from the subway cop but no arrest.  I
got to the terminal 15 minutes before my scheduled departure time,
only to find that (a) the Rome agent had issued me a boarding pass for
an earlier Paris-LA flight I could not possibly have caught, and (b) I
had lost Biola Beatke's Vatican museum posters.

So Delta bought me dinner, a hotel and breakfast, and later Air France
bought me lunch due to the afore-mentioned 3 1/2 hour delay (which
became a 4-hour delay as I was typing this).  In between I got in
another 2-hour visit to the Orsay.

It's a nice bookend to my trip, to end by speaking the same
phrasebook-level French that I began the trip with.  However, my
strategy of speaking French until the other person grows disgusted and
starts speaking English to me does not work so well in Paris -- the
Parisians have been very patient, and left me twisting in the wind for
several minutes sometimes.  Still, it does allow me to improve my
vocabulary some -- an hour ago, I saw a brownie in a bakery and wanted
to order it, but I had no idea what the word for brownie was.

Me: (in French) I'll have one of these -- how do you say it?
She: Bu---- ---- (unintelligible)
Me:  What?
She: A buwowwnie.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: Sign in English at a Venice restaurant -- it went
on about how great the food is, then said, "Belive us and you will be
surprised!"