Travels with Grandma

Introduction to Amsterdam

2006-06-10T15:25:00.000+01:00

For my 30th birthday, Peter gave me a fully-upright arcade video game (Operation Wolf, complete with gun), accompanied me to the DuPage county fair, and took me and my brother Patrick on a 4-hour fishing charter on Lake Michigan. For Peter’s 30th birthday, he got to pack up our house in Wheaton, all by himself. Clearly, some restitution was in order and I told Peter we would go wherever he wanted for his birthday. (His present, which I’ve picked out, will have to wait until we have our own house.)

He selected Amsterdam and absolutely forbade me from doing any planning (other than the basics) and also issued a blanket-ban on museum passes. He made it perfectly clear that he wanted to have a nice, easy, relaxing sort of holiday. Yeah, I knew it was going to be a struggle to slow my pace down to his, but if that’s what was required, that’s what I would do.

I figured it would help that I’ve already been to Amsterdam. In 1994, I was doing a work experience/study program in London and took a weekend trip there by myself. Since I’d already seen what I absolutely had to see (the Van Gogh museum and the Anne Frank house), Peter could dictate our agenda without interference from me. Peter had also been to Amsterdam, but he was 11 or 12 and so not able to fully enjoy all of the city’s charms.

Day One: Beer and Movies, Pot and Coffee

2006-06-10T15:23:00.000+01:00

I arranged for a late morning flight to Amsterdam, figuring it would give us most of the day to enjoy the city without necessitating our getting up with the sun. Peter’s sister kindly dropped us off at Dublin airport, where the queues and mob-scene atmosphere of the place exceeded anything we’ve ever seen during the Christmas rush. Seems like everyone wanted to get out of Dublin that morning.

Our flight was just the way I like my flights – quick and uneventful. Thanks to a strong tail wind, we were there in just under an hour. Schiphol airport is huge but easy to navigate. I believe you can tell a lot about a country’s character by their passport control, which in this case was polite and efficient. We collected my rucksack and then headed out for the train station.

Buying train tickets was a bit of a struggle, since it was difficult to find a machine that would take cash and when we did find one, it only accepted coins. For some reason, the credit card machines didn’t like any of our cards. After a bit of scrambling and the purchase of a couple of diet Cokes to get change, we had our tickets and headed over to the track, where a train to Amsterdam was just arriving. Talk about good timing.

The train ride from Schiphol to Central Station, only takes about 15 minutes. The train station was as big and grand as I remembered and we followed the crowd outside where we had a decision to make. Would we walk to the hotel or take the tram? Since it looked like it was probably at least a kilometer to the hotel, we opted for the tram, so our next task was purchase a strippenkaart.

The strippenkaart is a pretty good system. It costs € 6.75 and is, as the name suggests, is a card with strips on it. When you get on the tram, you find the yellow validation box and you stamp your card so that you use a strip for each zone you’re traveling through plus one additional strip, which the handy guide to Amsterdam public transport calls the base zone. Multiple people can travel on the same strippenkaart and a stamp is good on any tram or bus for 1 hour.

We stopped into a newsagent right next to the train station to buy our strippenkaart. Peter insisted that I ask for it, as he felt (probably rightly so) that I enjoyed saying strippenkaart much more than he would. Plus, I suspect that sometimes Peter doubts my research on places and if one of us is going to look like an idiot, it may as well be the researcher who unearthed the faulty information.

I asked for and received our strippenkaart and we crossed the street and hopped on the number 1 tram. Peter struggled with the validation machine while I wrestled my rucksack over to an available seat and checked the map for our stop. Because of one-track sections and streetlights, the tram ride to Prinsengracht took longer than the train ride from Schiphol. I’d forgotten how the trams were right at street level and how, with the narrow streets and large crowds of pedestrians, it sometimes seems like the tram is driving on the sidewalks.

We got off the tram at our stop and walked the three long blocks to our hotel, Hotel Amsterdam Wiechmann. The neighbourhood was very residential and quiet, which was what I was looking for. The area is considered part of the Western Canal Belt, bit it's also rather close to the Jordaan.

The hotel itself was cheap, cheerful, and clean, which is really all you need when you're traveling. That and an en suite bathroom, of course, which is now practically a non-negotiable requirement for me.

When we checked in, we noticed a large, beautiful dog behind the counter. He was stretched out on the floor, panting, and was one of the fluffiest dogs I've ever seen. We reckon he's part-German shepherd and part-Chow. (I didn't see his tongue so I can't confirm the Chow part, we're basing it on his fluffiness.) Peter remarked to the desk clerk about the dog and the guy responded, "He's a very grumpy dog," which is really a shame, since he's so fluffy, his fur practically screams to be pet.

After unpacking and relaxing for a bit, we decided to set off for some exploring. I wanted to revisit the neighbourhood where I'd stayed the first time I went to Amsterdam, which was over near Rembrandtplein. The weather was just on the right side of pleasant, despite the misty rain and a bit of chill in the air. I found my old stomping grounds easily and I pointed out to Peter the hotel I'd stayed in. I was unable to find my favourite coffee shop though.

Yes, coffee shops. Seems you can't talk about Amsterdam without taking about coffees shops, a delightful euphemism used to navigate the tricky waters of acceptability in the international arena. Renowned for their tolerance and practicality, the Dutch decided that pot and hash weren't that bad in the grand scheme of things, so you might as well let people decide whether or not they want to do it, the same way people can decide with alcohol and tobacco.

Because of international law, the Dutch went the route of decriminalisation rather than legalisation of soft drugs. It's an interesting grey area, where coffees hops are technically illegal, but the laws against them are not enforced. You are permitted to carry a small amount of pot for your own personal use. Coffee shops are taxed and regulated just like every other business, although the tax is based on number of seats since the shops can't show receipts for their technically illegal products. They also can't advertise or sell to minors.

After walking around Rembrandtplein, we found a movie theatre and bought tickets for "X:Men 3." We had more than an hour to kill, so we went back to wandering around. Two streets over from the movie theatre, we found an Irish pub and I popped inside to verify that I'd be able to watch the Cork v. Clare Munster semi-final hurling match, which was scheduled for the next day. I was delighted to know that they would be showing it, since we were at the All-Ireland Cork-Clare semi-final last year and the rematch held the promise of a good fight from Clare.

Half a block down from the pub, we found an empty coffee shop blaring reggae music, so we went in. Back in his previously life (before he met me) Peter's was no stranger to pot smoking, so he was looking forward to the pot-smoking part of the trip. For a variety of boring personal reasons, I'd already decided to forego the pot smoking. I'd enjoyed it on my last trip though – legal, decriminalized, whatever you want to call it, it removes some of the risk and fear from pot smoking and makes the whole activity a lot more enjoyable.

Peter ordered a pre-rolled joint that had super-skunk and tobacco in it. One of the things that the guidebooks warn you about is that the THC content of pot in the Netherlands is extraordinarily high, up to twice that of pot from Columbia or Nigeria. Going slowly on the smoking is advisable, since the stuff is likely to be potent.

We passed an enjoyable bit of time in the coffee shop and had a good time people-watching. When we went into the place, it was empty. Shortly after we arrived, two different groups of trendy-ish college student types arrived. Then came a middle-aged American couple, achingly straight-laced and completely out of place. The man went up to the counter and Peter and I watched, curious as to whether or not he was going to buy pot. The woman waited at the table, her handbag clutched in her lap.

No pot for them, just a couple of coffees. I had to wonder about that. Why would you go to a coffee shop and only order coffee? Why not just go to one of the cafes? Peter clued me in that they were there for the atmosphere, the novelty, to observe pot smokers in their natural Dutch habitats. So they could go back to Kansas or Iowa and say that they'd been in one of those wild and crazy pot-smoking dens in Amsterdam. That intrigued me and I couldn't help watching them – it was sort of like monkeys in the zoo although I have to wonder who was the monkey in that analogy.

We left the coffee shop and headed over to the movie theatre to hit the concession stand before the film. Here's where I first noticed the effects of pot on Peter's brain. He doesn't really have a sweet tooth. When I bake, he prefers ginger snaps to chocolate chips. He's able to make a candy bar last several days. He typically goes for salty over sweet.

Me: What would you like?

Peter: Um, I don’t know. Chocolate-covered popcorn looks good. Or choco-crossies. What are choco-crossies? Do I want popcorn or chocolate popcorn? What do you think the chocolate popcorn will be like?

Me: What's up, Pothead? You never go for the sweets.

Peter: *giggle**giggle*

It was great – very funny. I much prefer a stoned person to a drunk person. In the end, Peter got sweet popcorn, I got salty popcorn and we each got a water. We stood by the side of the concession stand, waiting to be let into the cinema.

Ever since I saw "Pulp Fiction," which was after my trip to Amsterdam, I've wanted to have a beer at the movies. But the only beer the concession stand had was Heineken, which I just cannot drink. It doesn't bear thinking about. I prefer my beer thick and strong enough to practically require a fork. If I can easily see through it, I'm not drinking it.

I went back around the concession stand to see if I was missing anything, if there was any other beer on offer. No beer, but they did have a choice between Bacardi Breezers and Smirnoff Ice. I went for the Smirnoff and returned to Peter, where he shook my hand as I confessed my long-held beer-at-the-movies fascination.

The film was a great honking disappointment. I absolutely loved the first two films and had been looking forward to the third installment. It was one of those movies that was enjoyable enough to watch, although a little voice in the back of my head kept saying it was crap. Then, away from the inexplicable attraction I have to Wolverine, I had to accept that I was more disappointed in the film the more I thought about it.

After the movies, we had dinner at a cheap but tasty Italian place and then walked back to the hotel. The hotel dog was out in the middle of the reception area, stretched out on a rug. Peter approached him slowly and offered his hand for the dog to sniff. I watched the dog curl his lip before giving a little growl and Peter pulled his hand away pretty quickly. The guy was not joking about the dog being grumpy. It was such a disappointment and a tease, to have this lovely fluffy dog that you couldn't touch. That was the only thing I would have changed about the hotel.

Day Two: The White Widow Incident

2006-06-10T15:22:00.000+01:00

As part of our agreed upon go-slowly holiday plan, I let Peter sleep in on Sunday morning. I was up at 5 and read a book until 7. Then I went out for a 45-minute run, heading out toward Rembrandtplein, then into the Dam. I made a mistake and ended up near the train station instead of near our hotel, but I corrected the mistake easily enough. It just meant a longer run. The weather was a good bit better than Saturday, with some patches of blue sky and glimpses of the sun. It was humid but still a shade chilly.

We had an uninspired Continental breakfast in the hotel and then set off for more wandering. Amsterdam was my first introduction to a proper European city and my impressions have held up. I love the canals and the narrow houses. I like the public squares, particularly the Dam.

The only thing that really freaks me out in Amsterdam is the traffic. Not the cars, since aren't many cars on the road. I'm talking about the trams and the bikes. The trams are right at street level and you can easily wander onto the tracks if you're not paying attention. I took special care at corners and curves in the road, since you wouldn't want to be surprised by a tram. The bikes are even scarier.

Amsterdam is loaded with bikes. The guidebooks delight in telling you the facts – 750,000 residents, 600,000 bicycles. Near the train station, they have a multi-storey bike parking garage. The bikes are nearly uniformly big and old-fashioned looking. Bikes are THE way to get around and the cyclists are crazy. They consider themselves to be pedestrians, not cars, which means you're not guaranteed that they will stop at traffic lights. They don't really stop for anything and you wander onto the burgundy-coloured bike paths at your own peril.

Our plan for Sunday was very laid back. After our morning stroll, we were going to find a coffee shop that friends of ours recommended, hang out there for a bit, and then go to the Irish pub for the hurling match. We found the coffee shop, called the Greenhouse Effect, ] on one of the main streets-of-vice-and-corruption that are just a little to the east of the train station.

I sat down at a table to peruse the drinks menu while Peter went to the counter to order his pot. He came back with a large joint in an attractive little plastic carrying case that reminded me of a test tube. I asked him what it was and he said it was a pure pot joint, which is pure in that it contains no tobacco. It cost € 8, which was about right since the half-and-half joints at this place were € 4.

I made the decision that I wanted a chocolate milkshake and Peter asked for a vanilla shake. So I went up to the counter and placed our order. The woman behind the counter was young, hip, and had a nearly impenetrable accent. I'd guess Dutch although she looked exotic, like Moroccan or something. She repeated the order back to me and then said something, which I deciphered as "regular or special." I asked what the difference was and again, it took me a bit of deciphering to realise she was asking if I wanted hashish in it. I said "no" a bit too quickly and sharply, like I wouldn't have hashish in my drink if it were the last source of nutrition in the world. I don't really feel that way, but I wasn't interested in getting high and Peter had a pure joint in his hand, so hashish in the shakes was the last thing we needed.

The milkshakes were regular but were different than I expected. Instead of being ice-cream based, they were milk, ice, and flavouring, mixed well in a blender. I brought the shakes back to the table where Peter was starting to feel some mild effects of the joint. He commented that it was very smooth and easy to smoke. Despite the absence of ice cream, the shakes were pretty tasty. Peter seemed a bit drifty so I took out one of the Amsterdam guidebooks and started to look for a place for dinner.

Peter remarked that he was really starting the feel the effects. He said it was the first time that he felt unsafe to stand up, that he couldn't trust himself to walk. I told him to be careful, that I didn't want any reefer madness going on. He laughed and said he'd be fine. I told him he had a bit over 3 hours before the match started and that I hoped he'd be back to normalish by then. He laughed and nodded, then went back to staring into space. I read for a bit and the next time I looked up, Peter gave me a tight, almost grimace-y smile. But I knew it was meant to reassure so I tried to relax a little and went back to my reading.

I'm not sure how much longer I read for, but the next time I looked up, Peter seemed not right at all. He leaned forward and put his hand on my arm. He spoke slowly and carefully, like he was imparting a message of utmost urgency. "Can you please go up and ask them what is in this joint? I'm kind of starting to hallucinate and I don't know if that's normal." I looked down at the ashtray and could see that he'd only smoked about half of the joint.

I leapt up with what Peter later described as an "oh shit" look at my face. I had to wait a minute at the counter before the guy could answer my question, so I looked over the menu. Although the half-and-half joint was listed as containing super-skunk, the pure joint didn't have any designated pot breed next to it. If you remember, we'd already been warned about the wallop some of this Dutch pot could pack.

I asked the guy what was in the pure joint. He shrugged and said he thought it was White Widow. Upon hearing the name, all I could think was "damn, that doesn't sound so good." It was like finding out the slavering dog with big teeth that is blocking your path is called Satan or Killer. I asked the guy if the stuff was meant to make you hallucinate. The guy shook his head and said, "I've been smoking pot for 15 years and I've never hallucinated." He asked me if I wanted a glass of water and suggested putting sugar in it. I accepted the water and thanked him. He asked me if I was hallucinating. I told him no, that Peter was and then I went back to report my findings.

Peter seemed relieved to know that there was only pot in the joint although he remarked that any pot with "white" in the name is extra-super-strong. (We later found out online that White Widow has an average THC content in the neighbourhood of 20%.) I had to go to the bathroom, so I verified that he would be okay and then left for a few minutes. When I got back, the guy was talking to Peter. I missed part of the conversation, but the gist was that sometimes, if you smoke when you have low blood sugar (a possibility since it had been several hours since breakfast), it might hit you pretty hard and in a weird way. Or if you've been drinking alcohol, which Peter most definitely had not.

The guy brought Peter a Coke and suggested he eat chocolate or anything with sugar in it. He assured Peter that he'd be fine, that in 30 or 45 minutes, it would be over. Peter and I talked about how he was feeling, what he'd hallucinated. Colours, apparently. This relieved me – at least he hadn't been seeing killer rabbits or dancing bumblebees or something really freaking weird or unnerving. We had about 5 minutes of peacefulness, such as it was. The music was this hyper-fast dance music that sounded like a remix of Stevie Nicks, played at 78 RPM. Peter's eyes looked strange and it wasn't long before he asked me to get a bucket.

I dashed up to the counter and got a bucket. The guy followed me back to the table and suggested to Peter that we should go sit on the bench outside in front of the shop. That sitting in the smoky atmosphere probably wasn't great and that fresh air would help. The guy was completely nice and patient, but there was also a sense that he was being pragmatic. Better out than in has always been my motto when it comes to puking.

We made it outside without incident and settled onto the bench. For over an hour, I felt like a girl trapped in an After-School Special. The worst bit came shortly after we sat down outside. Peter vomited loudly and repeatedly into the bucket and then insisted that I get a fresh one because the bucket was making him sick. My response was, "you want another bucket?" as though he was requesting something extraordinary. I just didn't feel like I could abuse the hospitality of the coffee shop and I debated my options – dumping it in the sewer or in the ladies' room. The ladies' room seemed like the less rude option. When I entered the coffeeshop with the bucket, just about everyone in the place covered their noses. One guy even pulled his shirt up over his nose. I felt like a leper. After emptying the bucket in the toilet, I returned outside to find Peter rocking on the bench.

Peter: What just happened?

Me: I went inside to empty the bucket for you.

Peter: My eyes!

Me: (Thinking that he was possibly freaking out) What about your eyes?

Peter: They're full of vomit.

Me: (Thinking he was definitely freaking out. Gave him a napkin to wipe his face) I think I should take you to the hospital.

Peter: No, I'm fine, I just don't understand why my eyes are full of puke.

Me: Um, because you puked.

Peter: Oh, I did. I thought I imagined that.

Not only did he not imagine it, it happened again several times. I don't know if his body was trying to get rid of the intoxicating substance or what, but smoking pot is not like drinking alcohol. If you drink too much alcohol, you can puke and then feel moderately better within a short period of time. If you've smoked pot, the smoking provides a handy and direct route right into the blood stream. All you can do is wait it out, which is what we did, sitting on that wooden bench on a crowded crooked street in a raucous part of Amsterdam.

My job was pretty easy. I supplied water, Coke, napkins, and the bucket. I also silently encouraged his liver to process faster and gave unblinkingly mean looks to anyone who looked at us. Peter's job was a lot harder (and louder – I swear, I have never heard such loud up-chucking in all my life). The coffee shop staff was solicitous and helpful. I'm sure they didn't really want us hanging out in front of their shop, but they never made us feel that way.

About 75 minutes after Peter started to feel funny, he felt well enough to try out his legs. He wanted to go back to the hotel, which I agreed to on the condition that he not lie down. (I was terrified that he would aspirate on vomit like a 60s rock star.) The plan was to walk over to the main road and look for a cab, but once he got walking, he felt capable of walking all the way back to the hotel. He walked carefully, gingerly, as though he didn't really expect the ground to meet his feet.

I held his hand and it really felt like he could just drift away, like if I didn't hang on to him and mind him carefully, he'd disappear. I knew he was going to be fine, that the worst was over, but it was still not the most pleasant of experiences. It took us about a half-hour to get back to the hotel. Safely in our room, Peter agreed to sit in one of the chairs in the room and he dozed off and on. I sat on the bed, trying to read my book, but really watching him. I checked on him every 15 minutes.

The time for the hurling match came and went. It was clear that Peter was in no shape to go anywhere. He felt bad that we missed it, but there was no way I was going to leave him alone. I did turn on the television and flip through the channels, hoping for some sort of miraculous airing on one of the basic cable channels. I had a joyous moment when I saw men with sticks, but my joy turned to bitter disappointment when I realised it was just a field hockey match.

At about 3:45, a full 4 hours after he started smoking that infernal joint, Peter surfaced and declared that he was starting to feel more like himself. To say that we were both relieved would be a major understatement. He spent a few more hours in a daze and said, even around 11 pm, that he still felt not quite right. It wasn't a hangover exactly, just lingering effects. I guess if you're going for bang for the buck or excitement for the euro, White Widow will more than fit the bill. But if you just want to have a mellow chill-out in a coffee shop, a hit or two should do the job admirably for a good while.

Peter felt like he'd learned a lesson about pot in Amsterdam. He also felt like he didn't want to try it again for a good long while, if ever. I asked him what he was thinking, ordering the pure joint. He said that he wanted to see what it was like without tobacco and that he figured the pure joint would have whatever breed of pot that the mixed joint had, only the pure joint would be, you know, purely and only marijuana. I asked him if he'd known what was in the pure joint, if he still would have ordered it and he said absolutely not. We both think he was foolish for not asking, so let this be a lesson to you as well.

After resting up for a bit more, we went out for dinner and a movie. The dinner, at a place called Szmulewicz near the Rembrandtplein, was delicious. We shared warm bread with olive spread for our started. I had a goat cheese salad and Peter had skewers of chicken served with rice. For dessert, opted to have waffles from a nearby bakery.

For the movie, we bought tickets to "The DaVinci Code," which was showing in the Tuschinski Theatre, an amazing Art Deco theatre. Opened in 1921, the theatre is a masterpiece. I would have gladly handed over € 10 to tour the theatre. We sat in a side box, which was exciting but less novel than I'd expected because other people were also sitting in it. Still, we had a great vantage point for appreciating the art and architecture. The movie, on the other hand, was horrible. We felt that way even having gone in with low expectations. Imagine the most boring film you've ever seen. Multiple that by 100. You're in the neighbourhood of "The DaVinci Code."

Even after the film, a full 12 hours after the White Widow experience, Peter reported still feeling mildly out-of sorts. He was a bit sheepish about the whole thing. He explained to me that he had "severely underestimated" the strength of the pot, which was why it hit him so hard. Plus there was the unfortunately coincidental low blood sugar, which was an issue we didn't even know about until it was too late. All in all though, he was not too worse for the wear.

Day Three: Recovering a Harshed Mellow

2006-06-10T15:21:00.000+01:00

We agreed that Peter would sleep as long as he needed to in order to rid himself of his pot-hangover. I slept until 8, which is really late for me, and then spent the morning reading a book and studying Irish flashcards. (Consecutively, not concurrently, I hasten to point out.) I hung out in our room and also in the lobby.

The lobby had this cool rotating rack with little information cards on it. The cards were for local restaurants, museums, and tour places. I found one that was entitled "Hash and Marihuana Facts and Tips." The winking joint on the front of the card is a little freaky, but he has some important wisdom to report: "Using HASH or WEED can make you happy and relaxed, but there are also risks. Keep this card with you and read the tips on the reverse before use."

The reverse was, as promised, a virtual treasure trove of facts and tips. The first tip would have been most useful the day before: "Hash and weed come in different strengths. Always have a short puff and wait a few minutes before having the next." Then there is a little bit about possible side effects (heart palpitations and dizziness). The next tip also would have been handy to have in writing the day before: "Once is a while, cannabis may have an ill effect. If this happens you will feel sick and scared. This is annoying but not dangerous. Go to a quiet place and eat something sweet. After an hour the worst will be over."

Ed. Note: The above tips are direct quotes from the fact card, reported exactly as printed. Apparently, you have to pay extra for commas.

My favourite part of the card is at that bottom, where they list bad combinations. "Hash + magic mushrooms can lead to very nasty trips and may cause a trip to last longer." If you know me at all, you know that I will have nothing to do with mushrooms in any shape, form, or incarnation. I don't care if they are magic or made out of 24 carat gold. I asked Peter before our trip if he planned to try magic mushrooms (he didn't – he had no interest in hallucinogens), because there was no way I could be any part of that.

At 11, I had to wake Peter up because even sleeping-in has limits. He was in fair shape, not 100% though since the violent puking had given him muscle strain. For the rest of our trip, he couldn't breathe too deeply or suddenly because of his sore muscles. Mentally though, he was fine – no ill or lasting effects.

The plan for the rest of the day was simple – get some brunch somewhere, have a boat tour, do a bit of exploring and a bit more relaxing. We picked a pancake bakery that was rather close to our hotel and walked there along the Prinzengracht canal. It was sunny but chilly and we were just about near the Westerkerk when Peter's mobile rang. It was one of this IT-consulting clients, with, of course, an urgent computer problem. Peter settled onto a rather comfy wooden chair in the plaza next to the church while I wandered around. The sights included a shop selling postcards, a shop selling fragile ceramic things, a gay and lesbian information kiosk, a hot dog cart with two little sausage-shaped terriers tied up to it (makes you wonder, doesn't it?), a tram stop, and a bum peeing into the canal. Yeah, Peter was on the phone for a while.

Eventually, we started to walk while he did his consulting thing. To make a long story short, although we found the pancake place, we never went in. Peter was trying to clear up the problem, so I had a stroll along the canal. I found a street market and checked it out. It was the most claustrophobia-inducing street market I've ever seen. The tents were set up with virtually no space between them, resulting in narrow alleys that were completely choked with people. One person with a pram could cause a shopping traffic jam. Plus, most of the tents were full of absolute crap. It looked like 50 people had emptied the contents of their grannies' attics. There were a couple of tents selling what looked like nice bolts of fabric, but they were the exception. I had to fight my way out of the market and back to the road because the place was making me feel majorly trapped.

On my way back to Peter, he rang me and said he had to find an Internet café, right away. We met up, but somehow, the plan changed and instead he had to walk someone with minimal computer experience through a series of complex steps, all over the phone. I loitered by the canal and watched a family of weird moorhen-looking-things paddle around and eat their lunch.

An hour and a half after we'd set off for brunch, Peter was finished with his consulting. His mellow had been nearly irrevocably harshed and we were both starving. Plus, when we got back to the pancake place, we found a line out the door. Regular readers of my trip reports will know that low blood sugar, when combined with traveling, usually causes Peter and I to turn on each other like a pack of rabid dogs. Not this time, though. We enjoyed a walk in towards the city centre and went into a spacious and airy café bar type of place.

It was overpriced and too trendy by half, but we were starving so we didn't care too much. (I lie a little – I always care about value for money and I have a huge problem with paying € 7 for a brie sandwich that consists of only a partially stale roll and 2 slices of brie.) We sat by a window and watched the traffic go by, seeing the Heiniken horse wagon.

Fortified by lunch, we set out for a boat tour. For our trip, we used two guidebooks – Lonely Planet 's "Amsterdam City Guide" and "Amsterdam on a Budget" from Let's Go. Peter is a big fan of the two guidebook system, since it means that we can both look at a book at the same time without fighting over it. The two guidebook system was first pioneered on our honeymoon tour of the Scottish Highlands in 2004 and, like most great inventions, it was purely accidental. I couldn't decide which book I liked best, so I bought both. (One was a Lonely Planet – I can't remember what the other one was. Maybe a Frommer's. I can handle Frommer's in a pinch but I absolutely despise Fodor's.)

Although I have previously asserted that I am marching comfortably towards middle-age and am thus too old to use Let's Go travel guides, I do appreciate their budget-mindedness. I would not use them to find a place to stay (because, as was established in Slovenia, I am too f***ing old to stay in a hostel). But they do tend to have good advice on cheap eats and exploring off the beaten path. And Lonely Planet, well, they are my favourite manufacturer of guidebooks although I do not like their tendency to focus on the décor and clientele of restaurants at the expense of the food and service. But I know now – if the review of the place uses the words "trendy," "hip," "glitterati," "fashion models," or "contempo-cool," we are better off finding another restaurant.

We had pretty good luck with the guidebooks on this trip, but they did have one fatal failing – they had bugger-all useful information on the canal boat tours. It's my belief that at least 85% of tourists in Amsterdam have a checklist of 3 things they want to do. In no particular order, these are:
1. Smoke pot.
2. Visit the Van Gogh museum.
3. Take a canal boat tour.

The books are fantastic in giving minute detail on #1, they have a fair bit of information on #2, but they are so sleeping on the job when it comes to the canal boat tours. Maybe it's just the tours are all pretty much the same, but we could have used a decent recommendation. Our approach to selecting a tour left something to be desired. We walked down to Centraal Station to the tourist office in the hopes of finding some pamphlets or someone to offer advice. All we found was a queue 20-deep and some posters about train travel.

Our next strategy was to walk out along the canal, ostensibly looking for the launch spot for the boat line I used the last time I was in Amsterdam. (The memorably named Lovers company.) We didn't see them, so when a man dressed like a captain told us his boat was leaving in 2 minutes, we bought our tickets and hopped on board.

It was a passably fine way to spend an hour, but I had the nagging feeling that the tour could have been better. The 4-language audio track provided hints on where to look and a little context for what we were seeing, but I still had the nagging feeling that we weren't learning or seeing enough. The boat was comfortable enough although the glass ceiling and the beaming sun made me feel like I was in a greenhouse and it also made me more than a bit sleepy.

We were well into late afternoon when the boat tour was finished. We selected a bruin café from Lonely Planet and enjoyed our walk there. Bruin cafes are sort of like pubs. They are relaxed places where you can have a drink and hang out. The name comes from the way the walls inside are stained brown from centuries of cigarette smoke.

De Sluyswacht is right on a canal, in a ridiculously slanted small building that used to be a lock-keeper's house. It looks like it's been huffed at and puffed at but luckily, it was only put a little off-kilter. Peter had a beer and I had a Kuala with coffee, which we carried up a steep flight of wooden stairs to an open room that felt a lot like a club house. After a bit, we even managed to get a seat at the window, which has a tremendous view up the canal. (This link is just to some random guy's picture – Peter did not bring his camera on this trip.)

We passed an enjoyable bit of time alternating between staring out the window and perusing the guidebooks to locate a place to have dinner. Peter had decided he wanted sushi. I don't eat cooked fish, so you can be damn sure I don't eat raw fish. Getting sushi is a huge treat for Peter, especially now that we live in Dublin, so I am willing to suck it up and take one for the team, which usually means either having teriyaki-something or fashioning a dinner out of carefully selected appetizers.

Peter picked a place out near the museum campus, so we took the tram out there. This was only our second tram ride, which is a testament to how walk-able of a city Amsterdam is. The sushi establishment turned out to be not so much a restaurant as a sushi deli where a Dutch woman packaged of pre-made sushi pieces from a cold display case. There was no way I could eat anything from the place, so Peter got his sushi to go and we hopped on a different tram to get back near our hotel, where I'd remembered seeing an upscale cafeteria-like place.

The cafeteria place turned out to be a bit too upscale for my pedestrian tastes. I told Peter it was okay, that he should just have his sushi and then we could get my dinner later. So Peter had passable sushi, sitting on a park bench overlooking a canal, which I imagine is not exactly what he pictured when he said he wanted sushi for dinner. After his dinner, we hung out in our hotel room for a few hours until my hunger level made foraging necessary.

We ended up about a block from the hotel, at a place called Goodies, which turned out to be not just a clever name. I had the best fried-brie salad that I have ever had. The lettuce was crisp and deep green and most assuredly not of the wretched iceberg variety. The brie cubes were fried to perfection and when I cut them open, they became little cups of melted cheese. I was a happy girl and I think I got the much better end of our dinner bargain.

Goodies, like a lot of Amsterdam establishments, had a resident cat, a medium-sized black and white male whom we later learned was named Mickey When we came in, Mickey was sitting on the bar with his back to the restaurant, having a bit of a bath. It's apparently exhausting work, licking your fur, because when he was done, he curled up on the bar for a nap Sometime later, a guy came into the bar, scooped Mickey up and deposited him on a nearby table. Mickey remained in his curled-up position and kept napping on the table, eventually rolling onto his back with his paws delightfully curled over his chests. He reminded me so much of our old cat, Jeeves, that I wanted to scoop him up and bring him home with us.

Shortly after my dinner arrived, Mickey came over to check it out. He's quality control, you know. I wasn't going to feed someone else's cat, so he soon tired of me and went over to hang out with Peter, who had great fun trying to find that spot on the back of a cat that, when scratched vigorously, causes the cat to go into a frenzy of uncontrollable licking. But then, of course, another table got their dinners and Mickey had to fulfill his inspection duties.

We had another early night as we had big plans for the next day, Peter's birthday.

Day Four: Happy Birthday to Peter

2006-06-10T15:19:00.000+01:00

Extravagant birthday trip aside, I am still a big believer in the sanctity and enjoyability of birthdays. I know that some people tend to get a bit maudlin and hung up on the whole aging thing, but as far as I'm concerned, that's what the other 364 days of the year are for. Your birthday should be the one day that is all about you, the one day that you let yourself experience life with the unabashed joy and excitement of a child.

We went to the bakery near Rembrandtplein for breakfast waffles and then wandered our way up to Nieumarkt, where we were scheduled to meet up for a unique tour of Amsterdam – a tour by Segway. According to the official web site, the Segway is "a self-balancing personal transportation designed to go anywhere you go." It looks a bit like a skinny podium on wheels. We'd seen them before and always thought it would be a cool thing to try out, so we were happy to have an excuse.

I'd wondered how we were going to find the tour, but it turned out to be a stupid question. A couple of minutes before 10, we saw a young woman motoring around on a Segway. Pretty effective advertising. We met with Michael, the owner and tour guide, and Edith, the safety assistant. Michael gives the talks and leads the way while Edith handles the mop-up duties, including instructing errant Segway-ers and shouting warnings about approaching cars and cyclists.

Michael brought us back to the garage, where we had to sign the obligatory "I won't sue and I will be responsible for anything I break" documents. We were also outfitted with helmets. Well, we would have been but they didn't have a helmet big enough to fit Peter's head. (If we ever have children, I am going to be in so much trouble, between the Scanlan big-head and Peter's giant cranium. I will probably have to birth a baby with a beach ball-sized head.) I thought this might be a sticking point but both Michael and Peter were comfortable with a sans-helmet ride.

We were each assigned a Segway and told how to operate it in "power-assist mode," which basically entails using the motor to help with dragging the Segway behind you like a suitcase. Michael adjusted my Segway so I wouldn't have to drive it like a little old lady in a humungous Cadillac. We dragged our machines over to a basketball court to get our crash-course in learning how to use them. Happily, no crashing was involved.

Since we were the only two people on the tour, we had individualized tutoring. Peter worked with Edith and seemed to learn much more quickly than I did. Michael explained to me how to turn the machine on and make sure it was ready for me. (You get a happy smiley face in a small indicator window on the handlebars.) Stepping onto the Segway for the first time is a step into the unknown. It just doesn't seem possible that this platform will support you weight and remain stable. You expect to fall over, that the cosmic football will be yanked out from in front of you. But somehow, the Segway defies your expectations, even if it is a little wobbly for the couple of minutes that it takes you to work out what it's all about.

I can only imagine the technical and engineering wonders that are working under the platform because using the Segway is remarkably easy and intuitive. The move forward, you lean forward. To move backward, you lead back. Simple. Until you get the hang of how to stand neutrally though, there's a lot of going backwards, which resulted in me bailing out of the Segway a few times.

Turning is also easy although a little less intuitive. You have to twist a ring on one of the handlebars. One direction turns you right and the other direction turns you left. You can probably see the problem here – remembering which twist takes you in which direction. Yeah, I had that problem big-time. I would hope that future generations of the Segway let you lean in the direction you want to go.

Learning to ride a Segway takes about 2 minutes if you're Peter, with his fine motor skills and exquisite understanding of physics and machinery. Or, if you're me – a clumsy, physics-phobic dolt, it takes more like 15 minutes. But it is easily learnable, even for said physics-challenged dolt.

After Michael was satisfied that we were not a danger to ourselves or others, he led us out of the playground and onto the tour. Amsterdam, with its ample cycling lanes, is uniquely suited to this sort of tour. We made our way on the streets and cycle lanes, although I was finding it hard to enjoy the scenery since almost all of my concentration was focused on safely operating the Segway. I rode slowly and mincingly, not actually all that different than an ancient woman in a large Cadillac, except that I could see over the handlebars.

Before we'd even reached our first point of interest, I had an Incident. We had just made a turn onto a narrow-ish street when Edith announced an approaching car, which turned out to be a big blue van. I felt like I was too close to the van and attempted to steer closer to the curb, but I operated the steering ring wrong and started to veer into the van, which made me panic and over-correct so instead I bumped into the curb, which sent me back into the side of the van. I managed to jump off and pull the Segway back with one arm while hold the other out to stop our crashing into the van. I actually made contact with the van, enough that when the driver was clear, he stopped to make sure he hadn't hit me. All I could think of in that moment was how close I came to owing Michael $10,000 to replace the Segway.

Edith pulled up next to me and told me that I had plenty of room and that the street wasn't as narrow as I thought it was. She suggested that if I was worried about a passing car, that I should just stop and let the car pass. She said "That was pretty scary, wasn't it?" which was the exact perfect thing to say and I felt a lot better after that.

For the next two and a bit hours, we glided through Amsterdam, stopping periodically to learn more about a particular sight. At just about every stop, someone would come up and ask questions about the Segway. Edith would field these and hand out business cards while Michael did the tour-guide thing. Tourists took photographs of us, which is sort of weird to think that you're in some stranger's vacation slides.

We hit just about every major sight within 10 kilometers of the city centre – the Rembrandt house, the Rijksmuseum, the Leidseplein, the Anne Frank Huis, the Dam, the Neiuwe Kerk, the Oude Kerk, and the Red Light District. The weather ranged from pleasant but brisk to raining and freezing. Luckily, we are no strangers to quickly changeable weather and we both adhere to the "if you let a little rain stop you, you'd never do anything" philosophy.

We had a great time and I'd certainly recommend a Segway tour. The only downside is that it sort of ruins you for walking for a while after you do it. We were both starving when the tour was over so we walked over to a beer café, which happened to be closed. We poked around a bit and found two nearby alternatives – an Argentinean steakhouse or a bruin café. The steakhouse was a bit too meat-heavy for me, so we went with the café. It was suitably rustic yet cozy inside and was staffed by a single waiter who was much less hassled than you might expect, largely because he seemed to operate on his own timetable, regardless of how many people he had waiting for him. Let's just say that it was a long lunch.

Even though we'd both been there before, I was hoping we'd get a chance to go to the Van Gogh museum. He's my favourite painter and I remember really enjoying the museum. But the Birthday Boy is a photographer and had a professional interest in going to FOAM (Fotografie Museum Amsterdam). In retrospect, I should have pushed Van Gogh, as light plays such a large part of his paintings, Peter have seen lots of thought-provoking images. But, you know, birthdays are sacred and all of that.

FOAM turned out to be a miserable waste of time. We spent more time in the café slaking my ravaged thirst with 2 bottles of diet Coke than we did in the exhibits. To me, it seems like photography is sort of like the fringe theatre of the visual arts world – a very small percentage of it is great, technically-competent, cutting-edge, mind-expanding stuff and the rest is horribly pretentious crap masquerading as Art. FOAM was loaded with the second category. One exhibit, by Philip-Lorca diCorcia was good if a little unsettling. He had two series of large photographs, each in separate rooms. In the first room we went into, it was a series of portraits of rent boys, with each one's name, hometown, and price listed as part of the title information. They were well-composed and well-lit. The other series was of pole dancers, mid-dance, taken in a dark club with a sort of amorphous dark background. Again, very well-composed and showing interesting feats of acrobatics and flexibility. Both series had an element of desperation and sadness but also of getting on with things, which made the pictures resonate.

The other two exhibits we saw were crap. One was a sort of photo-journalist reportage of Palestinians and Israelis. Not great composition and nothing earth-shatteringly new about them. They were almost visual clichés, in some respects. The other was some minimalist exploration of lines in disused classrooms. Very senior-art-school-assignment.

We left FOAM and headed out to another nearby photography museum, whose name is escaping me. Probably because we weren't able to go into the museum because it was closed while they put up the next exhibition. Our final stop on our photographic tour was a gallery about a mile from our hotel. We hiked out there, our legs aching after 3 hours of standing on Segways and another few hours of walking around, only to find the place was closed. Argh.

So, it was a long walk back to the hotel, with me saying things like "Carry me!" We hung out in the hotel until it was time for dinner. Are you seeing a trend here, with our evenings? We had dinner at a , a great place located in a historic building that's been many things in its life. It was a weighing station where tax was assessed on goods going into the city. One of its towers was an operating theatre/lecture hall where Rembrandt painted The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp. It was also the location of Rembrandt's artist guild.

Although the interior wasn't quite what I was expecting (I was picturing the atmospheric and slightly creepy interiors of The Witchery in Edinburgh), the food was quite delicious. Peter had the lobster started while I had the Waag salad with the vegetarian option in full effect. (It came with quail eggs, but minus the calf tongue of the regular Waag salad.) Peter's main was fillet mignon and mine was a big bucket of melted cheese. OK, I exaggerate a little. It was a ceramic pot of melted cheese, with vegetables and bread. Practically a fondue but without the open flame. When we left the restaurant, I announced to Peter, "I have a belly full of cheese!" which made him laugh.

Since it was our last night, we decided there was one more thing we had to check off our Amsterdam to-do list, a walk through the Red Light District. I'd been there before, although since I was traveling by myself, I just made a quick scamper through at about 7am on a Sunday morning. My overriding memory was being shocked when the "mannequins" in the window moved, revealing themselves to be real women. That kind of freaked me out. Peter had never been through there, since on his first trip to Amsterdam he was about 12 and traveling with his parents.

You could pretty much go to Amsterdam and never go through the Red Light District and not really miss out on anything. It's an undeniably weird place. You have these women, wearing pretty much just bikinis (I swear that 12 years ago they were wearing lingerie that was less revealing), advertising their services by sitting in windows. It seems wrong to look at them, but you can't help it. The softie liberal side of me says that this sort of thing happens anyway, so you might as well provide a mechanism for the women to work safely. If you do the math - € 50 for 15 minutes of work, conservatively estimate 3 customers an hour, 7 hour day, that's € 1050 a day, minus the € 100 to rent the window for a net of € 950. Conservatively say 4 days in a week, for 42 weeks a year, that's just a shade under € 160,000.

So, that's the pragmatic side of it, but I can't help getting sucked into the emotional side of it. There's a tawdry depressing side of it that makes me want to take a shower and have a nap so I don't have to think about it anymore. So, that was my impression of the place – logically, it makes perfect sense, but emotionally, it does my head in and makes me very glad that I'm on the street side of the glass.

Day Five: Back to Life, Back to Reality

2006-06-10T15:17:00.000+01:00

I was up early so I could have a run to work off all that cheese and the nervous energy I always seem to accumulate on days that I have to fly. I am not the world's best flyer. I'm not the worst, either, but it's sure not my favourite part of traveling. After my run, I packed my rucksack while Peter got ready and then we set off for Centraal Station. I had already scouted the place out and knew that we could use the lockers to stow our stuff until it was time for the train. Mission accomplished, we spent the last few hours in Amsterdam wandering around and doing a little shopping. Hey, there was a Waterstone's right there and you can ALWAYS use another airplane book.

I actually have a very strict rule for my airplane reading – it has to be a mystery or a suspense novel. My theory is that I am then able to channel all my flying anxieties and fears into the book. Instead of being afraid of flying, I can transfer all that energy and invest it into the book. It makes the book more suspenseful because I am fully engaged in the reading and it also keeps my mind off the idea that we're 25,000 feet off the ground in a giant mailing tube.

Part of our wandering took us window shopping up Amsterdam's answer to Henry Street. We passed a shoe store that had the most kick-ass ass-kicking boots I'd ever seen. No, that's not a redundancy. They were big and black, with extraneous tough-looking buckles and studs. The best bit though were the flames painted on the sides. They were great boots. Peter encouraged me to take a look at them and think about getting them, but I told him there was no way, I don't have the street cred to wear boots like this.

Peter: So, if you'd seen these boots the first time you were in Amsterdam and you'd had the scratch, would you have bought them?

Me: Without a doubt. Although, those boots would have changed my entire life.

Peter: What do you mean?

Me: Well, if I'd had those boots, I probably wouldn't have canceled my trip to Berlin. I wouldn't have made 2 trips to Dublin. I would never have met you. I would have gone to Berlin, met some punk artist guy and ended up falling in love, dropping out of law school, staying in Berlin, and living in a squat with artist man.

Peter: But you're still living in a squat with an artist man.

Me: (After recovering from laughter) Good point, but at least we're not living in abject squalor.

When it was time to leave, we collected our baggage from the locker and then went back out to one of the canals so I could leave a little bit of Grandma. The train ride back to Schiphol was no trouble at all and we found our way around the immense airport with little difficulty.

The only weird thing about flying out of Schiphol is how they operate their security checks. There isn't one set point for security. Each gate has its own metal detector and x-ray machine. But the gates are only operational when a flight is scheduled to use it. So you congregate in the gate area until you get kicked out by the security crew.

They chase everyone out and then perform a thorough security check. They look under seats, move stuff around, carefully examine every potential hide-y hold in the gate area. Only then to they begin the security checks of people. It's sort of a pain, if you need to use the bathroom, to go through security again. But unlike the folks at Charles de Gaulle, they are efficient and are only checking the passengers for a single flight.

We had an uneventful flight back to Dublin, where Peter's sister picked us up to return us to our real lives. Peter was happy to get home. I could have traveled a bit more though. It was a good trip and notable for the absence of marital discord. Slowing myself down to Peter's pace eliminated the tension we usually experience on these trips. I don't know if I'd want to have every trip like that, but it's not a bad thing to slow down every now then.

Introduction to Patrick and Ann’s Excellent Adventure

2006-04-02T09:42:00.001+01:00

My grandmother’s parents were from Slovenia but my grandmother never got a chance to visit there. She told stories that her mother had told her about living on a farm and about having to hide in a hay wagon to avoid detection by a Turkish tax inspector. If I remember correctly, Nana used to talk about how the family’s spread was taken over by the Communists after World War II and turned into a day care centre.

For the anniversary of her 92nd birthday (19 January), our second birthday without her, I wanted to bring Nana to Slovenia and leave some of her ashes in her ancestral homeland. I was about 2 months late on my plan, but Nana would definitely say “better late than never.”

Unlike most of my travels so far, this trip was special in that it was with my youngest brother Patrick. Peter stayed home, perhaps wisely fearing too much Scanlan family togetherness. For Patrick and me, the trip was bittersweet since our other brother, Shane, wasn’t able to attend. But we made the best of it and had quite a full time traveling together for nearly two weeks.

Since I am the older, bossy sibling, I took up the mantle of Trip Planner (TM). Looking at the map, flying into Venice was the obvious choice since it was close to Slovenia and a fantastic destination in its own right. I’ve always wanted to see Venice and, given its sinking location, it seemed like I should do it sooner rather than later.

This is a story in five parts:

Part One: Venice, Days 1-3

Part Two: Ljubljana, Days 4-6

Part Three: Ukanc, Days 7-10

Part Four: Bled, Days 11-12

Part Five: Venice, Days 13-15

Enjoy!

Part One - Venice: Days 1-3

2006-04-02T09:41:00.000+01:00

Because of Aer Lingus’ every-other-day flight schedule to Venice, I arrived the day before Patrick. I was very nervous about arriving alone, after dark, in a place where I don’t know the language. (Yes, I know, everyone speaks English but bitter experience has taught me that the signage mightn’t be in English.)

I emailed the hotel and received detailed instructions on how to get to the Alloggi Agli Artisti. In the departures lounge of Dublin Airport, I studied these directions and the map with all the intensity of a general planning a battle. I compared the directions to the travel information in my Lonely Planet guide book and was starting to feel a little more confident and a little less anxious about my ability to get from Point A to Point B.

After an uneventful flight of just over two hours, we arrived at Marco Polo airport. As I’d expected, it was dark and chilly. We were herded off of the plane and onto a little articulated bus that zipped us over to the terminal. The immigration check was quick and by the time I set foot in the baggage area, the flight’s baggage was just starting to arrive. I’d purchased a special bag just for the trip, one of those enormous rucksacks that are the favoured luggage of college students and hard-core campers everywhere.

My bag arrived in no time, but my hurley was nowhere to be seen. Yeah, I’d insisted on bringing my hurley so I could practice roll-lifts, which my trainer showed me how to do the day before my holiday started. Besides, you never know when a big stick is going to come in handy. In Dublin airport, the baggage check-in person asked me to remove my hurley from my rucksack and checked it as a separate item.

So, there I was, standing at the luggage counter window, trying to explain to a puzzled woman who spoke great English but was understandably not au fait with GAA, that my hurley was missing. “It’s sort of like a hockey stick, but flatter at the end, like a giant wooden spoon.” I was saved when about a couple of luggage handlers brought it over to me.

Rucksack on my bag and hurley in my hand, I walked through a gauntlet of customs police and a too-friendly German sheperd police dog to the outer arrivals area of Marco Polo airport. I have nothing but good things to say about MP. It’s big, sleek, modern, clean, and spacious. The signage is fantastic, particularly for getting you to the section where they sell transportation tickets. The whole airport is very well designed and it’s obvious that they thought carefully about how best to get people out of the airport and into Venice or Padua or wherever the next destination is.

My directions from the wonderful Giacomo at the hotel told me to take the bus to Pizzalle Roma, the last place in Venice where cars are allowed. Then I was instructed to take the N-1 vaporetti (boat-bus) to the Ferrovia stop, which is at the Saint Lucia train station. My guide book, however, told me that it was possible to take a special water bus to the Saint Lucia train station.

I knew I should take the bus, but damn it, I was in Venice and I wanted to take a boat. The ticket window was for both bus tickets and boat tickets, so I figured if I told the woman I needed to get to Ferrovia, she would tell me the best way to do that. (By the way, I love that word, Ferrovia. Say it – it really is a lovely word. Fer-O-Vee-aaaah.) The woman charged me 2 euro for a bus ticket and sent me out the door to bus stand #1.

I felt something was odd, as I’d expected the ticket to cost 3 euro. Outside, I could see from the electronic board that bus stand #2 was for Pizzalle Roma. A nagging voice in my head reminded me that there was another train station in Venice, on the mainland. Mestre. Sure enough, that’s what my ticket was for. If I got on that bus, I’d end up miles and miles away from where I needed to be.

I waited for the Pizzalle Roma bus and when it arrived, I told the driver I’d been sold the wrong ticket. He made sure I wanted to go to Pizzalle Roma and I assured him that was my intended destination. He looked at my Mestre ticket and then waved me onto the bus with a shrug. I was heartily relieved that I’d avoided making such a stupid traveling mistake.

The bus set off for Venice, traveling past industrial waste grounds and car dealerships. Airports around the world seem to be located in similar areas. We drove down a long bridge, about 6 km, that reminded me of driving to Key West. The bus pulled into Pizzalle Roma and before I knew it, I was standing alone in a scrubby square trying to figure out where to go. Well, I wasn’t literally alone. There were other people around but I didn’t know anyone and wasn’t quite sure where I was going.

I took a deep breath, hoisted my pack and blundered off in the direction of the canal. I decided taking the vaporetti was the best way to go, so I bought a 24-hour pass, figuring I could use the ticket the next day in my explorations. When I shoved the ticket into the yellow validation machine, nothing happened. I tried it a couple of times, but the machine appeared to be broken. I pocketed the ticket, figuring that if stopped I’d be able to explain what had happened.

I followed the signs for the N1 vaporetti and got onto what I thought was the boat. I stood in a corner waiting for the boat to undock. When the actual boat arrived, I realised that I’d confused what was essentially a bus shelter with the boat. I stood in the middle part of the boat, feeling the chill winds and looking out at the dark water and shapes of buildings. I could hear maritime noises and it felt like I was in a spy movie. I kept expecting a bum to shamble up to me, whisper something nonsensical in Italian and drop a packet of classified documents into my purse.

My boat trip only lasted 2 minutes, since Ferrovia was the next stop. I followed Giacomo’s excellent directions and arrived at the hotel in no time, ready for dinner and a good long sleep to fortify me for my next day of exploring.

Explorations

The next morning, I was out early for a pre-breakfast walk. It is exactly like the pictures. I don’t think I’ve ever visited a place that compared so closely with my expectations. Canals, bridges, cobbled streets – it’s all the way it is on the postcards and in the travel books.

What struck me most thought was that Venice is a place with domestic needs and duties. It’s not just a holiday palace or a movie set. It’s a real working city with the demands of any city anywhere. It’s not Disneyland, where I imagine they go to great lengths to hude the garbage collections and the goods deliveries.

Within a few minutes, I saw a recycling boat, a boat carrying crates of Moet, a police boat, an ambulance boat, and a boat carrying construction materials. My perception of boats, with the exception of fishing boats, is that they are the playthings of the rich. Oh sure, I know that right now there are thousands of enormous cargo ships traversing the oceans. But when I think of small boats, I tend to think of sail boats and yachts, hobby boats for well-off sailors. In Venice, small boats are beasts of burden, carrying everything from fresh fruit and kegs of beer to toilet paper and two-by-fours.

Everyone talks about how expensive Venice is and I can’t disagree. You can find reasonably priced meals, but the minimum going rate for a 500 ml bottle of diet Coke is 2 euro, a good 70 cent more expensive than Ireland. The difference is that in Ireland, it’s hard sometimes to understand why things are so much more expensive. In Venice, after five minutes of looking around, you understand the price of things.

A supply boat pulls up to a dock. The supplies are unloaded and if your shop or restaurant is right on the canal, then getting the supplies into your business is relatively easy. If, on the other hand, your shop is in a picturesque little square tucked away in a quiet corner of Venice, your supplies are loaded onto a handcart. Someone has to then take that handcart and wheel it to your establishment. If there are several canals between your business and the boat dock, then the poor delivery person has to get that cart up and down the steps of the bridges, one bumping step at a time. So, you can see how the labour/delivery costs gets added into the price of goods.

(This is not to say that there isn’t tourist pricing in effect in some areas. For example, there is no reason why that bottle of diet coke should cost 2.50 or 3 euro in the San Marco area except that thirsty tourists, bedazzled by the splendor of the Basilica, will pay more for things because they either don’t know any better, aren’t thinking clearly, or can’t be arsed to shop around.)

On my first day in Venice, I steered clear of San Marco, figuring I should save that for when Patrick was there. Since our plan was to spend the next night in Venice, go to Slovenia for 10 days, and then return to Venice for 2 days, I didn’t feel like I had to cram in Venice. I knew that I would be returning so I could just relax and enjoy walking around and soaking in the sights.

One of the most important tenets, I think, of being a tourist is to recognise and seize opportunities. During one of my ambles, I needed to find a toilet, so I ducked into a hotel near Rialto. I blew past the front desk, acting like I knew where I was going and belonged there. (That’s another key skill, by the way.) On the way to the bathroom, I saw signs for a panoramic terrace. I decided to check it out and was rewarded some quiet time on a lovely little terrace overlooking the canal and Rialto.

I did take care of a couple pieces of business. Between my parents and my father-in-law, we’d been given 300 euro to use in our trip. Patrick and I decided we’d use it in Slovenia, mostly to rent a car for a day trip/adventure from Ljubljana. I wanted to get the euro converted into Slovenian tolars (SIT) in Venice because I hate arriving into a country without at least a little of the official cash on hand. I found a currency exchange near Rialto, handed over my euro and walked out with 60,000 SIT. As Patrick later remarked, it was like our very own Slovenian rap video.

The other thing I did was purchase our tickets for the train to Ljubljana. The EC Casanova goes direct, takes about four hours and is meant to cost around 30 euro. The ticket seller informed me that I could have a special rate of 15 euro, but I wouldn’t be able to change the tickets. Fair enough – it’s not like our plans were going to change.

I met a very jet-lagged Patrick at Marco Polo airport in the afternoon. He’d flown from Atlanta to Detroit, then from Detroit to Amsterdam. I think he had about a four hour layover in Amsterdam before flying to Venice. It was 4 pm in Venice, but it was 10 am in Patrick’s head and he’d been mostly awake for about 30 hours. He’d hoped to be able to sleep on the transatlantic flight, but the guy behind Patrick somehow kept poking him in the ribs with his feet. I’m not sure of the logistics of this, only that Patrick was not very amused.

We went back to the hotel, where Patrick was able to have a shower and feel a bit more human. I wouldn’t let him nap though. We watched a little Italian television and then headed out to get dinner. We got quite lost, wandering the twisty alleyways in search of a pizza place recommended in Lonely Planet. In the dark, it’s very difficult to see where the narrow walkways lead. As a result, it sometimes looks like people are bursting out of nowhere or walking into brick walls.

In the end, we did find the pizza place and then quite easily found our way back to the hotel. Patrick toughed it out until 9 pm and slept through the night, which is best (albeit hardest) way to tackle jetlag.

Goodbye Venice, Hello Ljubljana

After breakfast, we packed our rucksacks and checked out of the room. Since our trip was broken into discrete chunks, Patrick and I devised a scheme for who would pay for which lodging instead of splitting everything in half at each place. The end result was the same, but the mechanics were a bit easier. It was my job to pay for the first hotel in Venice, which I did with cash when we were checking out.

Patrick: Why didn’t you just pay with a credit card?

Me: Well, I used Peter’s credit card for the booking, but I’d rather just pay cash unless I have no choice but to pay online.

When I mentioned Peter’s credit card, the hotel desk clerk looked up sharply and gave me this sly, knowing smile. I was puzzled about this until later when Patrick said that she probably thought I was having an affair. This was such an alien concept to me. I mean, Patrick and I have been siblings for twenty-eight years. I barely think of him as a man – he’s my little brother.

We had a low-key day in Venice, just killing time until our train left in the afternoon. Patrick wanted a travel journal, so we made that our morning’s goal. My trusty Lonely Planet guide recommended an art store as having everything you could ever want, so we made that our first stop. When we went into the small shop, which also doubled as a photocopying and Internet place, it was hard to believe it was the same shop the guidebook boasted about.

The shop had art supplies, but it didn’t have sketchbooks. Or at least it had nothing visible. We tried to explain to the guy what we were looking for, but he didn’t speak English. We finally shrugged, thanked him, and left. The guidebook also recommended a couple of places that sold marbled paper (which sounds really difficult to write on, if you ask me), so we went to one of those – Legatoria Polliero. (One of the great games when you don’t speak the language is to make up the meaning of names. I decided that Legatoria Polliero meant “the Legal Chicken.”)

It was a great place – stacked haphazardly with journals, notebooks, picture frames, photograph albums and other hand-made paper-based goods. The owner was a grumpy-ish old man who didn’t speak English. Patrick selected a journal and a pencil, which the man very carefully and precisely wrapped. Patrick was so taken with the place that he said he wanted to beg the man to take him on as an apprentice.

In the afternoon, we caught our train to Ljubljana. It was a nice, modern train. No antiquated carriages with those horribly awkward little rooms although the seating was in groups of four around a table. I’m not sure I understand the rationale behind this decision, unless the bias is for social groups and sociable traveling. I much prefer bus-style, straight-ahead-in-pairs seating.

Patrick and I had facing window seats, so we kept crunching each other’s toes, which I guess is better than fighting over the arm rest. After the second or third stop, a guy got on and sat next to me. I did my best to politely ignore him, which is how I tend to treat strangers on these sorts of forced-close-quarters situations.

I read my book and tried not to listen to the obnoxious music of the guy behind me. I’ll need to rant about this on my other blog sometime, but it mystifies me that even with headphones, you often have to listen to other people’s music when you’re traveling via public transportation.

We had an uneventful trip, arriving into Ljubljana around 7.30 at night. It was dark and starting to rain. We found a cash machine so we could get some tolar. I was able to take out money from my Irish account without difficulty, but Patrick first didn’t know how much money he wanted to take out and then was having trouble getting his US-issued bank card to work properly.

This is where we had our first sibling spat. I got edgy, standing in front of a cash station in a potentially questionable part of town, with 35-pound rucksacks on our backs. In my paranoid mind, we might as well just issue written invitations to all the muggers in town. In Patrick’s head, he didn’t want to be cashless. I was annoyed with Patrick because I felt like he should have figured out how much he needed BEFORE we got to the cash machine and that his disorganization and technical difficulties were putting us in unnecessary potential danger.

I stepped over the line when I canceled his ATM transaction and told him we’d worry about it tomorrow and that I had plenty of cash to cover dinner. (It was my job to pay for lodging in Ljubljana, so he didn’t have to worry about that either.) This seizing of Patrick’s autonomy and reenactment of childhood roles (Bossy Old Sister vs. Incapable Baby Brother) understandably upset Patrick although I think he was a bit too sharp in expressing his feelings about the situation, which happened as we tromped the five blocks to the hostel I’d booked for us.

By the time we got to the hostel, I was ready to give up the trip as a bad job. I think I was also in the blood-sugar red zone, which certainly wasn’t helping matters. We got to the hostel and tried to check in only to find out that we didn’t have reservations.

Desk Attendant: I have no record of your reservation.
Me: I booked online. Room 107. Then I called in with the credit card. This was about a month ago.
DA: No, I don’t see any record of that here.
Me (temper barely in check): Here’s my e-mail confirmation.
DA (compares print-out to the computer): This is for 4 March through 7 March. Today is 3 March. Your reservation doesn’t start until tomorrow.
Me (wiping egg off my face): Right. Do you have any beds for tonight? Doesn’t have to be a double.
DA: Sorry, I don’t even have half a bed for tonight. The whole place is booked solid.

The Desk Attendant was fantastically helpful though. She gave us a map and marked the location of the nearest hostel, which looked like it was about a half mile away. I asked about a closer hotel and there was one just at the end of the street. So, off we trudged, with one of us trying desperately to salvage the tattered shreds of her Organizing Queen title. How could I possibly have let that happen? I had visions of us trekking for ages to get to the other hostel only to find that either they didn’t have any beds or they only had beds in a 32-bed dormitory room. Ugh. The best I could hope for was that the hotel would have available and affordable rooms.

Patrick and I also had a bit of patching up to do. This proved to be relatively straightforward and easy. Patrick, you see, is a much better person than I am. He graciously accepted my apology and proffered apologies of his own. We arrived at the Park Hotel with the ignominious incident well behind us.

The Park Hotel saved the day, coming through with a double room for a reasonable 72 euro total (and they accepted euro notes, so we didn’t have to dip into our tolar fund). The room was a bit odd, with the two single beds long-wise against one wall. Patrick said he felt like he was back in his college dorm room. We had everything we needed at the Park – beds, ensuite bathroom, and cable television. The only thing we were missing was dinner, which we got for carryout from a nearby kebab restaurant.

It took me about an hour of mulling it over to realise what had happened. In my original itinerary, I had us getting off the train in Postjona, spending the night there, and then touring the cave before catching a bus or train into Ljubljana. But then the lodging options in Postjona seemed a bit thin on the ground and it looked like a better option was to go there as a day trip. So I changed the logistics of our itinerary, but it never occurred to me to then extend the hostel stay in Ljubljana. I guess I thought the hostel would just magically know that I’d changed our plans. Duh.

After dinner, Patrick went to check out the local nightlife and I went to sleep. In the morning, I learned that he’d met a guy who was desperate to meet an American woman, preferably one in her 40s or 50s. It seems like Patrick had talked to this guy for about 5 minutes before the guy was handing over his email address and asking Pat to find him a girlfriend.

Part Two: Ljubljana – Days 4 – 6

2006-04-02T09:40:00.000+01:00

Searching for Ancestors

We had a few errands to take care of before we could set out on the centerpiece adventure of our trip. After breakfast, we set out to find Patrick a suitable cash machine and also to pick up a good map of the country. Our Aunt Lois had done a bit of detective work (i.e. she called a Great Aunt in California, which I think is sort of like an Aunt-escalation plan) to locate the name of Nana’s family’s village. My dad sent it in an email and it looked like this: Hrovaca.

I’d been unable to find it on a map but had found a short reference to it on the Slovenian Tourism web site. While Patrick handled his cash machine business, I went into the Tourist Information Centre where the most delightful young man helped me figure out where we wanted to go.

The first problem was that I was pronouncing the name all wrong, so wrong that poor David the kindly TIC worker had no clue what I was saying or how to spell it. The second problem was that I was remembering the spelling wrong: Hrovoca. And the third problem is that I didn’t have the email with me. I told David that I’d found reference to the place on tourism web site, that some famous writer guy was from there, and that I was pretty sure it was near Ribnica.

Patrick joined me in the TIC after his successful cash machine mission. I’d hoped he’d have the email, but he didn’t have it wit him. David tried searching the web site for my butchered spelling of the town but was coming up blank. He let me come around behind the counter and look up my email. Of course, I’d deleted the email but my dad’s blog saved the day. David was quite personable and chatted with me about a cycling trip he took in Ireland. He particularly enjoyed County Cork.

After I’d unearthed the name of the place we wanted to visit, David immediately realized what the problem was. The town isn’t Hrovaca at all. It’s Hrovača. The č makes all the difference. It also turns out that the town isn’t really on a map because it’s considered like a suburb of Ribnica. We bought a nice wire-bound driving atlas and a Slovenian phrase book, then said our good-byes and thanks to David.

As we were walking out the door, he told us that he’d learned a tiny bit of Irish on his travels. Grinning like an imp, he said “I know it’s not very nice, but it’s póg mahone. That’s it. That’s the Irish I know.” I had to laugh because it was clear he had been saving it up, not sure whether or not to use it since it is a bit rude. He was a fun guy and I know Nana would have loved him.

Patrick and I then walked nearly 3 miles in the rain to the hotel where we had to collect our rental car. I’d booked it online because it was cheap and hadn’t realized what a trek we would have. Under different circumstances, it probably wouldn’t have been a bad walk, but the weather was pretty bad.

When we got to the hotel, the rental car guy explained all of the rental details to us. He actually said things like "The deductible is 250 euro. That means if you get drunk and crash the car, you only have to pay 250 euro." He also told us that either of us could drive the car. I told him that we weren’t married and he said that didn’t matter. (In the States, it’s typical that either spouse can drive a rental car without having to pay the extra driver fee. But even then, they usually want to at least see said spouse’s license.) After going through the contract, he took us outside, introduced us to our little Fiat Punto, and gave Patrick a thorough tutorial on the car’s controls and the laws in Slovenia. (The big ones were no right turns on red and you have to drive with your lights on all the time.)

We drove to the hotel, checked out, and got on the road for Hrovača. I was navigating and Patrick was driving and we weren’t doing too badly although we did have a couple of dicey moments. The problem was that the road signs weren’t really labeled (like M-50 or N-11 or I-77). They just listed destination cities. So, when you don’t know where Maribor is or how to quickly find it on a map, it’s difficult to make a quick decision on whether or not the road to Maribor is for you or if you should hold out for the road to Zagreb.

We made a stop at a petrol station to get some snacks and also picked up a couple of coffees. The station had a café-bar attached to it. Yep, in Slovenia, you can stop on the side of the road, fill up on petrol, and have a couple of beers before heading off onto the twisty mountain roads. Speaking of which, the 1.2 liter Fiat Punto is not the car you want to have on those twisty mountain roads. (Especially the one we were on, which allowed passing even though it was only one lane in each direction and it was, you know, twisty and mountainous.)

It took us about 2 hours to get down to Ribnica. We drove through the town centre, but didn’t see any signs for Hrovača. So we went a few miles outside town then drove back into the centre to ask for directions. We went into a supermarket and I asked the butcher (who was a big roly-poly man who completely looked like a butcher) in Slovenian if he spoke English. He looked puzzled for a moment and then grabbed another supermarket worker and shoved her at us, saying something in Slovenian.

I showed her the map and pointed to a sticky note on which David, our TIC hero, had written Hrovača. She nodded and took us outside, where she proceeded to give us directions in German. (This sort of linguistic bait-and-switch happened a couple of times during our travels, which wasn’t too bad because I have just enough German to understand basic commands and directions. At least enough to head in the right direction or complete simple transactions.)

We were less than half a mile away from Hrovača, so we got there in about 2 minutes. It was a nice little collection of houses and other buildings, all grouped very close to each other. I looked for a day care centre, but didn’t see one. I have no idea which might have belonged to my grandmother’s grandparents.

We drove through the town, then turned around and drove back through it. We parked the car near the church and had a wander through the graveyard.

It was very cold and blustery and I despaired of how we would ever locate any of the people on my grandmother’s family tree. There was no caretaker or directory and I’d guess the cemetery had at least 500 graves. We wandered through the first few rows and then Patrick noticed a headstone with my grandmother’s maiden name: Prelesnik. We spent the next 30 or 45 minutes searching for names and taking pictures.

We walked back to the main road and left a bit of Nana in a field. It didn’t seem right to leave her in the cemetery (weird, I know, her being dead and all) so we left her in a spot with a view of the distant hills.

Having completed our chief mission, we got back in the car and decided, since we were more than half-way there anyway, to go check out Croatia. At the border, we had to go through 4 separate checks – 2 by Slovenian officials and 2 by Croatian officials. The last guy came out of the little guard hut and told Patrick to open the boot. Patrick popped the release button and sat there, waiting for the guy to look in the trunk. Then the guy bellowed “OPEN!” and you could see Patrick flinch, no doubt envisioning the hardships of months in a Croatian work-prison for defying a customs official.

The guy poked our bags, felt up my hurley, and then declared us free to go. We drove across the border with vague plans to maybe drive to the next large town on the map, Delnica, and then head straight back. The Croatian countryside was gorgeous if a bit desolate. The road, narrow to the point of one lane in some places, wound along the path of a river, so we had river on one side and mountains on the other. It reminded me a little of driving in Scotland, only the roads in Scotland were in much better shape.

When we’d driven for 30 minutes and hadn’t found Delnica nor seen any signs for Delnica, we decided to turn around and give up Delnica for a bad job. It was starting to get late and our goal was to be back in Ljubljana safe and sound before nightfall. We did stop the car and walk around in little in the border town, Brod na Kupi, but it was a complete ghost town. Both the restaurant and the hotel were closed. I went into the shop but I didn’t have the right money. The shop keeper said I could change money in the police station around the corner, but there really wasn’t any reason to do that.

Our return trip into Slovenia was nothing – 4 sets of officials waving us along and our drive back to Ljubljana was uneventful. We arrived at Hostel Celica just before it got really dark, so our entire mission was a big success.

I’m Too F***ing Old To Stay In a Hostel

I selected Hostel Celica based on a recommendation in Lonely Planet. For an EU-accession state, Ljubljana’s hotel rooms aren’t all that cheap. Maybe it’s a capital-city thing. In any case, it seemed like the price for a double room in a hostel in Ljubljana was about the price for a double room in a B&B anywhere else in Slovenia. So I resigned myself to having to live like a backpacking 20-something.

Hostel Celica wasn’t a bad choice. Architecturally and historically, it’s a fascinating place. In its past life as part of an Austro-Hungarian military complex, it was a prison. Then it was taken over by squatters after the Yugoslav Army abandoned it and now it’s a hip and happening hostel. Almost too hip and happening.

On the ground floor, there’s an airy café and darker and more atmospheric Turkish hookah/water pipe bar. The water pipe bar is all cushions on a raised wooden floor and low-slung tables. Anyone can visit the café and bar, but you need a key to get up to the first floor where there are 20 renovated prison cells.

Teams of artists and architects designed each cell, so they are all completely different although I am pretty sure the dimensions are exactly the same. Each cell has two doors – an outer solid door and an inner prison bars door. (The doors are right up against each other, like a screen door and a regular door. It’s not like you have to go through an airlock to get into your room.) One of the house rules is that during the day, you can only lock your barred door. This is because they give tours of the hostel. There is a lot of peeking into other people’s cells as they are locking and unlocking the barred door.

Patrick and I were staying in Cell 107, which I’d selected because I was taken with the mural and I wanted to sleep on the top bunk. You can sort of see the top bunk in this picture here. What you can also see in that picture, or rather can't see, is a ladder. The ladder was a freestanding deal that wasn't the most stable ladder on the planet. It also didn't go up as high as the bunk. The pole that you see, went through the bunk, but it did not go up as high as the ceiling. It was also broken and unstable, since previous guests probably used it for leverage and balance when trying to get into the top bunk. Like most of the hostel, the room was designed for looks, not for practicality and usability.

I thought long and hard about the top bunk and decided that it would most likely be the cause of a broken limb in my near future. So I claimed the top bunk, dragged its mattress onto the floor and slept there for the duration of our stay. It actually wasn’t bad although I missed the up-high-thrill of the top bunk.

Besides my inability to get into the top bunk, there is the whole bathroom situation. I'm too old and weaned on comfort to find sharing a bathroom was 20+ other people a tenable situation. The hostel bathrooms were mostly clean, at least during the day. At night, they became a lot less clean and that's all I'm going to say about it. There was also the issue of getting to the bathroom – unlocking two sets of doors, relocking at least one door, walking the long, narrow prison hallway… It was all undeniably creepy.

Patrick is a nightlife kind of guy and we fell into an easy routine in our three nights at Hostel Celica. After our joint adventures were done for the day (usually after dinner), Patrick would go out for a beer or two or to spend some time and money at the casino. I'd retire to our cell and read until my eyeballs gave up. Then I'd fall asleep and Patrick would come in sometime after midnight saying "Hello, it's me. It's Patrick. It's me" because he knows about my propensity for waking in a panic and trying to hit perceived intruders with my hurley.

Caves, Castles, and Careening Through the Snow

On Sunday, we took the Fiat out to Postojna, which is about 40 kilometers from Ljubljana. It's the site of one of the most fantastic caves in Slovenia. Postojna Cave is immense and the entire system covers 21 kilometers although only the dry parts are accessible to the average visitor. Peter's father once derisively referred to a cave in Ireland (I think it might have been Ailwee) as being "too housebroken." Postojna Cave takes housebroken too a whole new level. It is, in fact, the Disneyland of caves.

The visit starts in an indoor waiting area where you can rent a heavy wool cape to wear while you're braving the wilds of the cold, dark cave. When it was time for the tour to start, we were ushered through the doorways and down the stairs to the waiting tram. The tram travels through about several kilometers of cave. It's a twisting route through breathtaking stalactites and stalagmites, each formation more beautiful than the last. The tram moves at a fair clip, which adds an extra chill to the subterranean air. The tram also goes through formations that seem like they have a bit of a low ceiling. Poor Patrick spent most of the ride ducking.

After about 15 minutes, the tram let us off in a staging area where we were directed to language-based waiting areas. We set off for the English area and then waited for our guide. The tour of the cave took about an hour and we moved through various areas of the cave with names like the Concert Hall, the Red Room, and the White Room. We also went over a narrow bridge that Russian prisoners built during WWI. After the tour, we got to see the human fish, a weird little white salamander that only lives in these caves. Then it was back on the tram to the exit area, where you can see the river that carved out the cave. The exit for the cave is the natural opening to the cave. I think the impact would be greater if they'd used it as the start of the tour.

As it had been for the whole of our trip in Ljubljana, it was raining as we drove to the 9 km to Predjama castle, whose location alone is worth the trip to see it. The castle is perched high on a rocky outcropping over a river. If that's not enough of a cool factor, the castle is built into the mouth of a cave into the mountain. The mountain is apparently full of caves and secret passage ways.

Lonely Planet had a great little story about Erazem Lueger, who lived in the castle during the 1500s. Erazem apparently sided with one royal over another and his attacks on the other side were taken quite seriously. The bad royal lay siege to Predjama Castle in an attempt to put a stop to Erazem's marauding. Only Erazem was a tricky, resourceful chap and he was able to use the caves and secret passages to come and go as he pleased, sometimes raining cherry blossoms down on the attackers just to taunt them with proof that he could leave the castle at will.

Erazem met a bad end though when one of his workers accepted a bribe from the bad royal. The worker explained where the toilet area was (back in the day, you pretty much just hung your bottom out the window and let fly) and sent out a prearranged signal when Erazem went to do his business. One well-aimed cannonball later and Erazem was history.

This is about all I know about Predjama Castle. Unfortunately, in the off-season, they don't really do tours of the castle although you can pay a couple of euro to have a look-see. The thing about castles is that they all look more or less the same and it’s the extra information about history, architecture and the personality of past inhabitants that you can get from a knowledgeable guide that can add to the touring experience.

We tromped around the castle until we'd seen it all. On our short walk from the castle to the car, the relentless rain changed to sleet. We didn't think much of it, figuring that the sleet wouldn't last for long. Sleet usually doesn't, after all. Patrick did a good job of keeping calm and driving appropriately for the weather, along some pretty twisty roads. When we got onto the highway in Postojna, there was at least an inch of white stuff on the ground. We were a bit unsure about whether or not it was snow or sleet. At a certain point, I guess it doesn't matter.

The ride back to Ljubljana was a bit treacherous. We saw cars spun out and saw people using their hands to try to clear tracks so they could merge onto the highway. In an hour, we got about 4 inches of snow. Patrick managed to get us back to the hostel without any major incidents, although we did nearly get stuck pulling into the hostel driveway.

When we collected our keys from the front desk, I asked the girl if the snow had been forecast on the radio. She told me yes, that they were expecting up to half a meter. (Which is about a foot and a half.) She said it had been forecast for a couple of days and that more snow was expected on Thursday or Friday. To Patrick and me, this was shocking news. We'd been quite happily operating along in our little news-and-weahter-insulated cocoon. We'd listened to the radio in the car, but since we don't speak Slovenian, we'd had no clue what was coming.

Alone Day

After a good few days of family-togetherness, Patrick and I decided to spend our last day in Ljubljana alone. I got up early and shoveled out the car so that Patrick would be able to return it. Then I decided that I would spend a good chunk of my alone day at Klub Zlati, a sauna spa in Tivoli Park. I love a good sauna and it seemed like it would be a nice way to relax. The Lonely Planet listed opening hours as being Women only: 10 a.m. - 10 p.m. Tuesdays, 9 a.m. - 1 p.m. Fridays and then various open hours other days of the week, usually from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. during weekdays and 10 a.m. to midnight during the weekend. It was a Monday, so off I went, arriving a little bit after 10.

The woman who was working the front desk told me that she spoke a little English and was able to sell me an entry ticket and a towel. She gave me a locker key and pointed me in the direction of the locker room. I went into the vast locker room, where only a single elderly lady was getting change. I changed into my tankini swimming suit and went in search of the sauna.

All of the signs were in Slovenian and I really had no idea where I was going. I ended up opening a door and walking into a waiting area, where a receptionist stood at a desk. I asked her where I was supposed to go. She explained to me that this was the massage place and that she really didn't work for the sauna club, but that she would help me find where I needed to go.

She led me back through the changing room and out a different door into a place that looked like a café. We were now directly in front of the place where I'd entered and my new guide had a long conversation in Slovenian. I can only imagine what they talked about because the first thing my guide said to me when she led me back into the sauna club was "No clothing is allowed in the sauna. Nothing. Not even bathing suits." She showed me around the club – a hot bath, a cold bath, a whirlpool, an outdoor pool, two Finnish saunas, and an infrared sauna whose lights were so bright the man inside looked like he was baking in an oven. The steam rooms were being repaired. The place was a bit odd – the equipment was old and had a bit of a Soviet-era feel to it.

The place was also full of men. Mostly big, mostly old, and uniformly completely naked men. I saw two older ladies in one of the Finnish saunas but that was it. I was easily, by at least 20 years, the youngest person in the place.

My guide finished the tour back in the locker room where I now had to make a very difficult choice. I'd already paid my tolar. Would I get nekkid and give it a go Continental-style or would I put my clothes back on and make a hasty retreat? The temptation to run away was nearly overwhelming. But I do so enjoy a good sauna. So I sucked it up, stripped down, and tried not to be too embarrassed about it.

I nearly forgot –the creepiest guy wasn't naked at all. He was an artist working on a mosaic on the wall over the whirlpool. The whirlpool was still in operation but his close proximity and innate creepiness guaranteed that I wouldn't be using it. So, instead, I got into the hot pool.

I didn't quite know where to go in the pool, so I just went into one of the corners where I could look out the window at the outdoor swimming pool. I watched as, at various intervals, a guy would leave the Finnish sauna, go outside and jump in the pool. One guy was outside for ages, trudging through the snow while the steam rose on his body.

I knew my corner had a big downside for me because it contained a big black dial. I had no idea what the dial did, but I knew it was only a matter of time before someone joined me in the pool and needed to do something with the dial. Sure enough, a guy got into the pool and after 10 minutes of standing in his own area, going through the a routine of stretching exercises, the guy came over and said something to me in Slovenian. I stepped aside, expecting him to do whatever to the dial and then move off, but apparently you have to be right on top of the dial to get any benefit from it.

I found another corner to stand in for a few minutes more and then I got out of the pool. My next stop was the Finnish sauna. I picked the one that clearly had two women in it, thinking that there was a woman's sauna and a men's sauna. I was wrong, but that was okay. The guys were so not interested in me. They were there to take care of themselves and to do their little health routines. I was probably the biggest pervert in the place (save the creepy artist man) as I just couldn't help but peek at packages.

After 15 minutes in the sauna, I decided my only course of action was to go outside and jump in the pool. It was FREEZING in the water, but it was also weird because when I got out of the water, it didn't feel cold at all in the air. I stood outside for while, admiring the snow on the trees and clear blue sky. When I went back into the sauna, it took me a few minutes to register the heat. I also had a strange drug-like experience of being able to see the heat and feel an absolute stillness and relaxation in my head.

I repeated my sauna routine two more times then had a nice shower and decided to call it a day. I was proud that I'd managed to get over my reluctance and self-consciousness. I also felt incredibly well-rested and calm.

I spent the balance of my alone day walking around Ljubljana. I had a trip up to the castle and a wander through the old town. It was a good way to spend my time and when I retired to my cell, I was very tired.

Part Three – Ukanc : Days 7-10

2006-04-02T09:37:00.000+01:00

The Middle of Nowhere

When we were planning out trip, Patrick mentioned that he wanted to get some snowboarding in. He'd been really into the sport before he moved to Georgia and was looking forward to the opportunity to snowboard on some real mountains. I've got no interest in snowboarding and although I went skiing once and loved it, I felt like the risk of the alpine sports were too great to justify the rewards. I didn't want a second of bad judgment on the slopes to ruin my first full camogie season.

I did, however, feel that the rewards of horseback riding justified the risks. After researching the opportunities for snowboarding and horseback riding, I felt that the little town of Ukanc on Lake Bohinj offered Patrick and I the best opportunities for pursuing our activities. I also felt like since we'd be staying there for 4 nights, an apartment was the best lodging choice.

So we set out on the bus for the little town of Ukanc. I wasn’t even 100% sure that the town even existed. When I'd gone the day before we left to buy out bus tickets, I had an email from the apartment with the address. I told the ticket seller I wanted to go to Ukanc. She said there was no such place. I showed her the address:

Ukanc 85
Bohinj Jezero
Slovenia

She said "Oh, Bohinj Jezero" and sold me tickets there. I told her that my understanding was that the bus stopped at a hotel in Ukanc but she insisted I wanted Bohinj Jezero. I was so unnerved by this insistence that she couldn't sell me a ticket to where I wanted to go that I stopped into the tourist information centre in Ljubljana. Sadly, my good pal David wasn't working, but the woman there told me that maybe I could then get a local bus to Ukanc. She hadn't heard of the town either.

I don't like not knowing exactly where I'm going, so on the fine Tuesday morning when the Number 7 bus to Bohinj Jezero showed up, I asked the driver as he was helping us put out rucksacks into the belly of his bus:

Me: Do you go to Ukanc?
Driver: Ukanc? No. No Ukanc.
I looked at Patrick, eyes wide, panic starting to gnaw away at me.
Driver: Oh, oh, Ukanc! Yes! Yes Ukanc. Hotel Zlatarog. Last stop. Ukanc.

Then he laughed ruefully and shook his head at his own silliness in forgetting that his bus goes in fact go to Ukanc.

I already had enough anxiety about Ukanc before all of this bus nonsense started. When I booked our stay at the apartment I never received a confirmation from the proprietor that our booking had been successfully processed. So a week before the trip, I spent about 3 days trying to ring them without success. I finally emailed the proprietor and received a short email back, which essentially said "Your booking is good. I am in Switzerland. Will be back before your visit." I also emailed from Ljubljana to get clarification on where we were supposed to go and what time we'd be arriving because I had a vision of us arriving to a ghost town of an apartment building.

The bus trip was pleasant. The land got more and more rugged. We passed through Bled and saw the lake and the castle. We saw mountains, streams, trees, and lots of snow. In Ribčev Laz, the bus driver tried to turf us off the bus at Hotel Jezero. I guess he decided it wasn't worth arguing over one stop on the route.

It took about 15 minutes of driving on a curvy road through a deep dark forest to get from Ribčev Laz to Ukanc. We were dropped off in front of Hotel Zlatarog (the Golden Goat) and then walked the 100 meters to Alpik, where we were met by the cleaner. We got a note from the proprietor (had to go to Ljubljana urgently) and keys to apartment 1-A, which was perfect. It was on the first (i.e. second) floor of a lodge-like building. The apartment itself covered two floors with the bathroom, kitchen area and sitting room on the first floor and the bedroom upstairs. It was all wooden beams, white walls, and hardwood floors with functional yet comfortable furniture. The bathroom was fantastic – clean and marble with under-floor heating. I loved that bathroom, especially after 3 nights of roughing it in the jailhouse. We also had a porch with a great view of the mountains. (And all this for less per night than our cell cost – not bad, huh?)

Our first order of business, after unpacking our rucksacks, was to head into town to get provisions. When I say town, I mean Ribčev Laz. Ukanc is just barely a town. It has the hotel, a restaurant (which was closed for the off-season) and that's about it. I'm a bit surprised by this, since it's only 700 meters from Vogel, but it's also kind of nice to be in the wilderness.

It's kind of nice, but then, it's also kind of not. I have an incredibly conflicted relationship with the countryside. I start to get a little panicky when the land stretches between outposts of civilisation. I picture home invasion without the ability to save myself by running to the neighbour's house or to a public place. It's a completely irrational and unreasonable fear. I'm not afraid of nature, of wildlife, of weather. I'm afraid I'm going to be staying in the cabin that some crazed drifter with an axe decided would be just great to terrorize. I am always afraid of baddies. Always. Especially in the middle of nowhere.

Patrick and I walked the three and half miles to Ribčev Laz and I was feeling incredibly isolated and depressed. I was upset with myself for picking such isolated lodging. I had anxiety about how I was going to get myself to Studor, which was another 3 or 4 miles from Ribčev Laz. I saw days of isolation and fear stretched out in front of me.

I should also mention, at this point, how desperately I was missing Peter. He's spent the last week in February in Chicago, arriving back to Dublin the day I was leaving for Venice. I picked him up at the airport at 8 am and he dropped me off at the airport at 1 pm that very same day.

Missing Peter was a curse, but it was also a bit of a blessing. It made time pass much more slowly. The six days that I'd been gone felt like 6 weeks. I knew if I'd been taking this trip with Peter, the time would have flown and the trip would have felt like it had been 2 days instead of 2 weeks. That's the funny thing about time.

Back in Ribčev Laz, Patrick and I toured the Mercator grocery store with our list, hoping to assemble the right supplies to cook dinner for 4 nights. I'd brought some recipes for chili and lasagna, since they're easy-to-make comfort food that would really hit the spot after a day spent out in the cold. A great idea, to cook, but a difficult one to execute when you have no idea what the boxes and tins say. Sometimes, I'd get lucky and recognize the pictures on the tins. A kidney bean looks like a kidney bean in any language. Other times, I'd have to guess. This was especially true in the dairy aisle. I just grabbed, hoping that since the opaque container felt like it could contain ricotta cheese that it would contain ricotta cheese.

Patrick was a real trouper regarding the provisions. He'd brought his rucksack and was more than willing to haul everything 3.5 miles on his back. I was less interested in trudging back through the deep dark forest. We managed to catch the ski bus to Vogel and then walk back to the apartment.

Patrick was wrecked and just wanted to hang out, but I knew I might not get another chance to check out Vogel. Anyone can buy a ticket to the cable car that takes you up the mountain. I bought a ticket and then went up. It's a wild ride – it feels like you're just hanging on nothing with the ground dropping out from underneath you. Probably not that much fun if you're afraid of heights, but the views from the top are worth a little fright.

I also rang Mr. Robi at Ranch Mrcina to arrange for a horse ride the next day. I'd been pouring over his online brochure of routes, trying to determine which one I'd take. In the end, the snowiest winter in recent memory made the decision for me. The snow was so deep on the trails that there was only one ride on offer – a one-hour trek. Mr. Robi was greatly apologetic for this, asked me how much riding experience I had, and then arranged to meet at the ranch at 11 am the next morning.

At the Gallops

As I mentioned, I had a lot of anxiety about how I was going to get to the horse place. I'd checked out the bus schedule and I was pretty sure I could get a bus to Ribčev Laz every hour on the .40 but, given my experiences with Dublin bus, I tend to distrust bus schedules and doubt bus stops. I didn't fancy trekking 3.5 miles through the deep dark forest either.

The morning was beautiful though – an ice blue sky without a single cloud, a happy shimmering sun, crisp mountain air, clear views for miles. The weather has a great impact on my emotional outlook. Nothing bad could happen on such a splendid day – sure I'd get to the horse place, no trouble at all.

The bus arrived promptly at 8.40 and I was in Ribčev Laz before 9. I walked into the next town, Stara Fužina and knew I was going to be hopelessly early if I continued on, so I turned back. I meandered my way back to Ribčev Laz and checked out their "Internet Centre", which turned out to be a single PC on the bar at a pizzeria.

After checking my email and reading a bit of news, I walked back to Stara Fužina- and then on to Studor. Helpful signs labeled "Icelandic horses" guided my way. The fact that Ranch Mrcina had Icelandics was a major selling point for me. Ever since I'd seen them tolting their way around the arena at Danada's Fall Festival, I'd been obsessed with them. Finally, a chance to ride one and see what all the fuss was about.

Even with my time-killing in the Internet Centre, I still was 20 minutes early for my appointment. Mr. Robi was a lot younger than I expected, maybe 27. I honestly didn't know if Mr. Robi is his first name or last name, but since an email sent to me from the hotel referred to him as Mr. Robi, that's what I called him.

He didn't have the horses ready, so I offered to help him out. I groomed my horse, Geeta, a ridiculously tall Lipizzaner. She was beautiful and very gentle, but not an Icelandic horse so I couldn't help but feel a pang of disappointment. I groomed her and then Mr. Robi tacked her up I had to climb on a fence to get on her back, since her shoulder was higher than my head and I haven't quite mastered the art of ground-mounting.

We headed off along the paved road and then on a gravel road. We chatted occasionally, but were mostly quiet. When we got onto a small gravel path, Mr. Robi turned around and said "Now we go a little faster." His Icelandic tolted and my Lipizzanner trotted. It was a grand day out and a great way to enjoy the scenery. After a bit of trotting, Mr. Robi turned around and said "Now, we gallop!" and off we galloped. Geeta was fast and I'm not the most experienced of gallopers. I'll take a good canter over a gallop most days. The only small mishap in the galloping was when Mr. Robi's horse kicked up a gigantic iceball that hit me square in the eye. That was a little painful and galloping blind isn't something I'd ever been prepared for, but I survived.

At some point, Mr. Robi pulled his horse back to a walk and Geeta followed suit. We walked along the gravel path and then Mr. Robi turned his horse off the path and into a field of snow. For some reason, Geeta didn't want to walk exactly behind Mr. Robi's horse and she kept drifting off the left of the path. The snow was deep, but it was dense enough to support the horses' weight. With each step, they were only sinking maybe three or four inches. Until Geeta found more loosely packed snow and she sank right to her belly.

Since she was finding it difficult to step through the snow, she started trying to jump out of the snow. But she didn't have much momentum going, so it was a very bumpy process. It felt like bucking, only without malice. I shifted my weight over her shoulder and tried to stay still but not rigid, moving with her as much possible. I did fine although I lost my left stirrup on her last jump, so I don't know how much longer I would have been able to hang on had she not worked herself back into the safer snow. Shortly after this episode, Mr. Robi decided we would turn around and find a different way to complete the ride.

We crossed a stream and walked up near a small ski area. Geeta was walking next to Mr. Robi's horse, so I was asking him questions about his stable and his horses. I was trying to ascertain why he'd given me a Lipizzaner. I'm not complaining – Geeta was great and an original iteration of the trip had us going to Lipica, the home of the Lipizzaners, so that I could ride one. But I'd had my little heart set on an Icelandic.

I asked him how he chooses his horses and by that I meant for each rider. He thought I was asking in general and said that he'd wanted a whole stable of Lipizzaners, but they require experienced riders. Plus, Slovenians like to do things as a family and having a kid on a Lipizzaner isn't really practical. Icelandics cater to beginners and are perfect for children, which is why he selected them. As Patrick said later, Mr. Robi gave me the Cadillac of horses and all I wanted was the VW Polo.

When we were headed back toward the stables, Mr. Robi asked me if I'd like another gallop. I thought about it and the voice in my head told me galloping when pointing homeward is always a bad idea. But my stupid mouth said "Sure!" Off we went, much faster than the time before. I didn’t take any ice to the eye though. But this time, when Mr. Robi pulled up his horse, my horse thundered on. I was tightening my reins and trying to sit on her mouth and use my inner strength. I tried a nice loud "Whoa!" but guess who didn't speak English. I could see an icy slope up ahead and tried one last tightening of the reins and it worked. I was very relieved.

The rest of the ride was very calm and if Mr. Robi thought I was an amateur, he didn't let on to me. When we got back to the stable, I asked him if we could do the same ride the next day, but this time, I'd like to ride an Icelandic. He agreed and we arranged to meet again at 11.

I walked back to Ribčev Laz picked up some groceries in the Mercator, bought stamps in the post office, and then caught the bus to Ukanc. I spent the afternoon making lasagna, reading, and watching German television. I thought that except for missing Peter, I could get used to this sort of life.

Patrick got home around 5.30 and was thrilled to have a hot dinner cooking in the oven. He'd had a fantastic time snowboarding and was looking forward to the same-again the next day. He reported that the snow in Vogel was fantastic, the views were amazing, and the people were nice.

I've Ridden an Icelandic, Now I Can Die Happy

When we woke up the next day, Vogel was missing. You just couldn't see it at all for the clouds. The weather on the ground was okay – not as good as the day before though. It was partly cloudy with brilliant bursts of sunshine and harsh blasts of cold wind.

Someone else was missing – the proprietor of our apartment. He'd never stopped by on the night we arrived, or the next day, to collect the payment. Patrick opened the door to go snowboarding and we found a note from the proprietor saying he had to leave urgently and that his "housewife" would stop by to collect the payment. I don't know if he meant his wife or his maid. We didn't know this woman's name or when she would arrive. We weren't yet worried about it, but it is frustrating when you want to pay someone and can't find them.

I'd learned a little bit from my previous travels. I still caught the 8.40 bus, but this time, I spent a full hour in the Internet Centre. I managed to arrive at the ranch only 10 minutes early and Mr. Robi was ready for me.

My horse was a white Icelandic whose name sounds like Fire-nola. She was nice and small and delightfully friendly. I don't have a decent picture of her because she kept stepping forward to check out the camera.

I was able to get on her back in one try - without resorting to the fence. She was remarkably calm, allowing me to hop on her back even though a dog was barking and lunging at her. They're great little stoics, .

Mr. Robi reminded me about the route and then apologized profusely about not being able to offer me a better ride. He also briefed me on how to ride Fire-nola. He told me that when we tolted, I should stay seated. (This is different than a trot, where you can post, or bounce, up and down in time with the trot.) He started to give me directions about the galloping, mentioning that Firenola was a very fast horse, much faster than the one he was riding. I told Mr. Robi that I thought I might like to just skip the galloping and get more time tolting. Over the night, I'd grown a little superstitious and didn't want to press my luck.

I was really looking forward to the tolting and when Mr. Robi turned and said "Now, we go faster" I could scarcely contain my excitement. I later texted Peter and told him that tolting was everything I'd dreamt of and more. It's a smooth, gentle motion, very easy to sit.

We had a couple of tolting interludes and spent the rest of the time walking leisurely. Fire-nola was a complete trail horse. She wasn't happy unless her nose was halfway up the lead horse's butt. She had great manners though and was a joy to ride.

When the ride was over, I thanked Mr. Robi even as he tried again to apologize for the limited time and selection. I told him that the horses were the highlight of my trip and that I couldn’t wait until I was able to return. He seemed surprised by my excessive praise, but he doesn't know that I would have been happy just to walk in circles in the paddock.

I repeated my routine of walking back to Ribčev Laz, shopping, and then getting the bus to Ukanc. I was thrilled to find an episode of CSI on Slovenian television. Slovenian TV was much better for us than the German TV. (There wasn't really cable – we got 2 Slovenian channels, 2 German channels, 1 music video channel, and 1 German channel that seemed to be a gambling channel. I have no idea.) German TV will dub non-German shows. Slovenian TV uses subtitles.

As I cooked chili for the evening meal, I watched CSI and then watched an ancient episode (circa 1998) of Rikki Lake. Not my ideal viewing material, but after a week without much English-language media, I was starved for something I could understand. The Slovenian channel was playing ads for "Pirates of the Caribbean" and next to the time, there was the word "jutri". I scoured my Slovenian phrasebook, hopeful that it meant soon or tonight but it turned out to mean "tomorrow" so Patrick and I planned to have a movie night on Friday.

Patrick got back from his snowboarding a bit early as he'd had to give it up as a bad job. The clouds obscuring the mountain weren't so much clouds as a full-on blizzard. Apparently, workers who'd spent most of their lives working on the mountain swore they'd never seen snow that bad. It was blowing and drifting and nearly impossible to see where you were going.

We spent the whole of Friday morning waiting for the proprietor's housewife to arrived. It was snowing something fierce outside – we probably got about 20 inches over the course of the day. Patrick wrote his postcards and I read The Bourne Identity. We also watched "Air Bud", which was in English but, as Patrick rightly observed, it really could be in any language and you would still understand it.

Someone arrived around noon, but disappeared before we could pay her. I rang the proprietor on his mobile and he assured me that she would arrive at 9 am sharp the following morning to collect the payment. We could only hope that was the case since we were going to be on the 10.40 bus for Bled.

We had a walk into town to use the Internet Center and to get popcorn for movie night. We also left some of Nana in Lake Bohinj. Since the lake was frozen in places, we weren't sure of the best delivery method. We put some of her ashes into snowballs and threw them into the lake, aiming for the unfrozen areas. Since Nana was a keen swimmer in her youth, it always feels right to leave her in water.

We had a low-key last night in Ukanc, leftovers for dinner followed by "Pirates of the Caribbean" and popcorn.

Part Four – Bled: Days 11 – 12

2006-04-02T09:36:00.000+01:00

When we left Ukanc, we were happy that we'd finally been able to pay for the apartment but also sad to be leaving such a beautiful and relaxing little place. I was surprised how bereft I felt, especially given how much angst I'd felt at first from the isolation of the place. It's a great little town though, even if it is in the middle of nowhere.

The bus ride to Bled took about 30 minutes. It would have been shorter and we could have avoided trekking around with our packs had I realised the bus stopped in front of our Pension. By the time I realized, it was too late and we had to get off at Bled's bus station.

Lake Bled is a beautiful lake with a picturesque island in the middle. It's a classic Slovenian postcard/tourism image, usually with a couple of graceful swans gliding across the water. Bled is also a bit over-developed and over-touristed. The downside of Bled in the winter is you can't take the boat ride out to the island and you can't swim in the lake. The upside is that it's not quite as busy, although it was fairly busy when we were there because the Biathlon World Championships were going on not far from Bled. (You know, that mad sport that combines cross-country skiing with air rifle shooting.)

After dropping off our rucksacks in the pension, we walked back around the lake and up to Bled Castle. Lonely Planet had reliably informed us that there were 3 ways to get up to the castle. We chose one of the forest paths and it was a bit treacherous in places. We had to pay about five euro to get into the castle and, again, no guided tours in the off-season. As Patrick later observed, you're really just paying for the view.

We walked down from the castle using the nice, safe paved road and stopped in a café for a coffee before dinner. We scheduled another alone day for Sunday, with Patrick taking a ski lesson at the local ski area. I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but then decided a trip to a sauna/spa mightn't be a bad idea. After dinner, we did a little bit of reconnaissance and I settled on Wellness Ziva, even though it was a bit more expensive than the other choices. It had an enormous swimming pool complex with a water slide plus the spa/sauna area.

In the morning, it was a grey, dark day. It looked like it was snowing buckets even though the hotel desk clerk assured us it was just a strong wind blowing around snow that had fallen earlier in the week. Outside, the wind was pretty fierce and I was concerned that Patrick might have a miserable day of skiing ahead of him. The snowing/blowing ended up clearing off right around the time Patrick had his lesson.

Wellness Ziva was a calm, warm oasis in the blustery day. I paid for an entire day of swimming pool + sauna and was given a towel, a bed sheet, and a wristband with a microchip. I asked if there were any rules I needed to be aware of and was told no clothes in the sauna. Of course.

The wristband was interesting. The entrances to the pool and the sauna had turnstiles with a chip reader. You'd hold the chip up to the reader and then would be admitted if your chip granted access to the area. You could also use the chip to lock and then unlock a locker to store your belongings. Very high-tech.

The facilities were all new and sleek. The locker room was huge, spacious, and co-ed. There were small changing rooms you could use but most people seemed not to. The showers were a wide-open area with a glass wall, so everyone in the locker room could see into the showers. (Yep, some people still showered naked – and this was in the general swimming area, not the naked-naked spa.) There were even parts of the locker room that you could see into from the swimming pool. This all just struck me as very strange.

I swam for about an hour and then headed over to do some relaxing in the spa. This place was a million miles away from Klub Zlati in just about every respect. The clientele were younger and less naked (hooray for bed sheets). The standard for walking around seemed to be wrapped in the bed sheet. Even in the sauna and the steam rooms, there was a lot less nudity.

The facilities were top-of-the-line, brand-spanking new, and high-tech. They had fancy names like calderarium and laconium. They also had handy little signs in English that explained how to get the most out of them. I started with the laconium, which was a large comfy tiled couch with a tiled footrest in front of it. The sign said that it would slowly heat you to about 45 degrees Celsius and was ideal for those who found traditional steam rooms too hot. It also said you wouldn't feel it for at least 20 minutes and that you needed an hour to realise the full benefit. It was exactly as advertised.

I spent the next couple of hours trying out the various facilities. I especially enjoyed sitting outside in the hot pool, soaking in the gorgeous views of Lake Bled and the castle. When I got bored of the spa-ing, I went and enjoyed the swimming. I had a bowl of soup in the swimming pool's restaurant and then went back to the spa.

I enjoyed my relaxing day at the spa and was well on my way to being late to meet Patrick. Our plan was to meet at this café for a drink before dinner. When the room key wasn't at the desk, I knew he was in our room. I was just about to knock on the door when he pulled it open, on his way to the café. We had dinner at a very Slovenian restaurant, a fitting end to our travels in Slovenia. On our way back to the hotel, we left Nana in Lake Bled, again using the snowball delivery method. I think she would have found that amusing and practical.

Part Five – Venice: Days 13 - 15

2006-04-02T09:35:00.000+01:00

Winding Down

My original plan had entailed taking a train from Bled to Nova Gorica and then somehow taking a bus or a train from there to Venice. I was never able to get definitive information on how to do this, and I had nightmare visions of us stranded in Nova Gorica. I decided it was better for us to take the bus back to Ljubljana and then the EC Casanova to Venice. It was a proven, reliable method.

This proved a wise plan and the only bit of excitement came in the Ljubljana train station, when a drunken passerby decided that A.) Patrick and I were from New Mexico and B.) we were desperate to talk to him about US politics. He reliably informed us "your President George Bush is most…fucker."

Our train carriage to Venice was overrun with junior figure skating champions. The World Junior Figure Skating Championship was held in Ljubljana and there were 4 Italian skaters, 2 Americans and 1 Canadian, all headed for Venice. (The Italians were not traveling with their parents while the Americans and the Canadian were.) Two of the Italian girls in particular had no respect for assigned seating and were not very thoughtful about where they put their luggage. I don't have a lot of time for figure skating and I have even less time for teenaged figure-skating divas traveling without parental supervision. Let's just say that the trip to Venice seemed A LOT Longer than the trip from Venice.

We found Venice largely as we'd left it although there did seem to be more tourists, particularly large school groups of Italian kids. Every summer, Dublin is inundated with Spanish and Italian teenagers, sent to a fellow Catholic country to learn English in a "safe" environment. Everyone who lives in Dublin dreads this yearly invasion as the kids always travel in packs of 20 to 30 and have the ability to take over any public space. I'd always thought it was just the way they acted in Dublin. It turns out I was wrong.

The hotel Patrick selected on Orbitz was an ideal location, right where Piazzale Roma meets the Grand Canal. Since he was only paying $80/night for the room, we were also afraid it would be a pit. It turned out to be a truly Venetian and cute little hotel. Marble floors, wood beam ceilings, a small balcony, enormous shutters for the windows. And, depending which way you looked out our window, we had a range of views.

Left
Straight
Right

Patrick and I spent our afternoon and evening in Venice hanging out and shopping for souvenirs. We mostly rested up for tackling San Marco the next day.

Overrated

Visiting San Marco and the square is the high point for many tourists. I have to say, it didn't do much for me. I found it too big, too full of pigeons and people. It seemed to lack the simple character of the rest of Venice. To me, Venice is cobbled alleyways, humpbacked bridges, narrow canals, crumbling buildings, hanging laundry, hidden courtyards, and shuttered windows. The huge open space of the square, dominated by the over-done basilica just isn't for me.

We also visited the Palazzo Ducale and took the Secret Itineraries tour. In the end, it wasn't secret or illicit enough for us. The biggest thing I learned is that early Venetian republic was really into bureaucracy. They produced reams and reams of paperwork and, when faced with a problem, their instinct was to form a committee to investigate and propose solutions.

Don't get me wrong – it was a good tour, but it wasn't as cloak and dagger, non-stop excitement as the title would lead you to believe. It was also nearly impossible to leave the palace. It took us at least 30 minutes just to find our way out.

Even though I'm not a big fan of churches, we did go into San Marco Basilica. It's as gaudy and overdone on the inside as it is on the outside. Yes, I am a Philistine.

We did the separate afternoon thing and then met up for dinner. I gave Patrick my un-validated vaporetti ticket and my Lonely Planet guidebook and instructed him to follow the Grand Canal tour in the book. A trip to Venice wouldn't be complete if you never once set foot on a boat, after all.

We had an early night since Patrick had a ridiculously early flight. His plane was leaving for Amsterdam at 6:20 am. We weren't sure how to get him to the airport, but it turned out that the first bus left at 4.40 am, so he was able to take that. Being the mean sister, I made him get up at 3.30 to make sure he didn’t miss the bus.

I spent my last day in Venice riding the vaporetti and touring the islands. I made a crucial mistake at the start, leaping on the first vaporetti that came my way without knowing where it was going. My plan was to go to the fishing village in Burano. I ended up getting there in the most bass-ackards way possible.

I went from Piazzale Roma to San Zaccharrio, then from there to Lido. At Lido, I got on an enormous double-decker ferry to I-don't-even-know-where and from there, I got a regular vaporetti to Burano. A trip that should have taken 45 or 50 minutes took 2 hours. Ordinarily, I'd have been jumping out of my skin, but a calmer me prevailed. On this day, it was all about the journey and not so much about the destination.

As a bonus, I really enjoyed the destination when I finally got there. Burano is like a candy village, all of the houses painted different bright colours like candy wrappers. It's a quiet place and I just strolled around soaking in the sights. I bought a couple of things in the open market and met a very sweet dog. I was on a quest to find some souvenirs and to just relax and enjoy myself. I was successful on both counts.

After Burano, I headed to Murano, which is known for its glass industry. The glass blowers were relocated to the island in 1300s because of the fire risk of their kilns. I found Murano a bit of a tourist trap – full of shops selling expensive glass stuff.

After Murano, I spent my last few hours in Venice walking, shopping, and just relaxing. Someone who recommended things to do in Venice told me to buy a glass necklace. She said, "They're beautiful and cheap and whenever someone asks you where you got it, you can chuckle to yourself and then say 'Venice.'" I did look around for a necklace, but I never seemed to find exactly what I was looking for and besides, I have a necklace already. (Peter gave me a very nice necklace with a small sapphire and diamond pendant and the necklace has pretty much become a part of my body.)

I ended up with an array of glass hair clips. They're much more my style. One of them even looks like a Gustav Klimt painting, so I'm a happy girl.

Retracing my first vaporetti journey, I went from Ferrovia to Piazzale Roma. The boat was packed to the point of uncomfortable-ness, but I still managed to drop a bit of Nana in the canal.

Conclusion

2006-04-02T09:33:00.000+01:00

That's my report (and I'm sticking to it.) I loved Venice and Slovenia. If I had to do the trip over, I don't know that I would have changed anything. (Well, maybe I would have made it less snowy in the mountains so I could have had longer horse rides, but that's not exactly something that's inside my control.)

Venice is an amazing place and worth a visit before it sinks. It is a little expensive, but you can find bargain accommodation and reasonably priced meals if you know where to look. I didn't feel ripped off at all. (Traveling in the off-season is definitely the way to go.)

Slovenia is a fantastic hidden gem of a place. The Julian Alps are amazing. It's a relatively inexpensive place to visit, once you get out of the capital. On 1 January 2007, they're switching over to the euro, so I don't know how that's going to affect their prices. I'm very much looking forward to a return trip sometime soon with Peter.

Paris, Part One: Arrival

2006-02-19T21:44:00.000Z

Instead of getting each other useless junk that we might never use, Peter and I decided that we’d have a joint Christmas present of a short holiday in Paris. Neither of us had ever been there, it’s loaded to the brim with cool places to see, and Peter wanted to break out his school-learned French.

I was very excited to go on this short break as I had just finished up my tech writing contract and had a week off before starting my new job. It felt like my last taste of freedom before becoming a salaried, holiday-hording regular worker. I was also excited because it was PARIS and I was going to try to be fashionable. Or at least I had bought a couple of cute outfits just for the trip.

We arrived in Paris in the afternoon and found our way to the baggage claim area easily. Charles de Gaulle airport is much better to arrive into than to depart from. When you arrive there, you just follow the crowd and gape at how absolutely dated it looks. I’m sure it was all super-futuristic in 1970 but now it looks like it was built by the set designers of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

On the advice of a friend, we took the Roissybus to the Opera House because that’s supposed to be a cheap, convenient way to travel, especially if you’re staying in that general area. Unfortunately, there had been an accident between the airport and the Opera House and the bus ride was interminable. The bus had a ticker that would tell your destination and how much longer it was going to take to get there. A nifty idea but it gets completely disheartening when you start to see the time increase instead of decrease. We felt trapped in a nightmare as we watched the mocking little ticker, for an entire half-hour, tell us that we were 22 minutes from the Opera House.

We finally arrived at the Opera House, found a tourist office, and got directions to our hotel. We had to walk about 15 minutes to get to the hotel, but after the plane and the bus, it felt good. The air was cold and crisp. The buildings were huge, impressive, and very French-looking. After the luggage disaster of Berlin (in which I put a higher premium on packing efficiency than on practical carrying), I’d learned my lesson and we each had a large wheeled bag, which allowed us to zip easily along without the lugging, cursing, and whinging that occurred in Berlin.

At one point in the walk, we were crossing a street. It was beginning to get dark and when I looked up the street, I could see the Sacre Couer in the distance. Lit up, it looked like a ghost church floating above the city. It was almost mirage-like. That moment would become one of my favourite Paris memories.

Our hotel was in a little cul de sac called the Cite Berger, which is lined with at least 8 hotels. You get into the cul de sac through an arched gateway and although the street is narrow, cars can go through. I’d booked the hotel on Priceline and then looked it up on TripAdvisor, which allows people to post reviews for hotels.

Based on the reviews, we were expecting a basic budget hotel in an area that you would find either grotty or charming depending on your assumptions and biases. Yeah, the archway was a little dark and graffiti’d but it really wasn’t that bad. The lift was tiny but our room was only on the first floor (second floor really). Our room was small, but we’d expected that. The bathroom was really, really small, but still held a toilet, full bath, and sink. It was basic accommodation at a reasonable price and we came to Paris to see Paris, not to sit in our hotel room.

After dumping our bags, we set off to find this photography museum whose name escapes me. Wednesday nights are free and Peter’s a photographer, so this seemed to be a good idea. Oh, this reminds me, Peter’s camera was banned from this trip. I know, amen’t I a meanie? This trip was about us, about having a fun adventure and relaxing. If the camera came, then the trip would be about photography, talking about parallax distortion and density filters, and planning everything around sunset and sunrise.

So yes, we set off to find this museum, which after about an hour of walking, including a pit stop to buy Peter a nice winter overcoat (for the bargain basement price of 50 euro and a dashing hat for 20 euro), we found the museum. I’m glad it was free because it was a bit too bleeding-arty-edge for our tastes. We spent a minimal amount of time in the museum, then got out of there.

We decided to walk along the Seine with the intention of walking to the Eiffel Tower. It was cold but invigorating and we walked quite a distance before realizing we were still very far from the tower. As part of my fashion crusade, I was wearing a pair of Clarke’s slip-ons, which while comfortable and fashionable were not really made for walking miles and miles. My feet hurt something awful and I don’t think Peter’s were doing that well either.

We could see the Eiffel Tower in the distance and kept thinking it we would be there soon. When we pulled out the map, we were sorely disappointed. Paris is huge – way bigger than I really thought it was. I don’t know why I had the impression that it was somehow compact. It’s not. We decided to leave it for the night, hop on the Metro and find a place to have dinner near our hotel

I left the ticket purchase and Metro navigation in Peter’s capable hands. Our first experience on the Metro was in a station that also does suburban rail. I was half-convinced that we’d hop on the train and end up in Paris’ version of Wheaton, Illinois, but Peter’s an able navigator and he got us on the right train. Our Lonely Planet book recommended the Chartier Restaurant, which happened to be just across the street from our hotel. It was cheap, recommended, and well-located so that’s where we ate.

The place is described as a Paris institution and there’s a timelessness about it. The older waiters, the bored cashier, the smoking, the high ceilings – you could be dining there anytime in the last 100 years and it would be basically the same. It’s the sort of place where, of necessity, you share a table with strangers and the etiquette seems to be to studiously ignore the other party. We shared a table with some 30-something French women, one of whom spent part of the dinner yapping on her cell phone.

For my main course, I had an Alsace dish of sausages and sauerkraut. It was delicious, but sort of difficult to eat. The sausages were quite juicy – very tasty but a hazard to others. At one point, I cut into the sausage and released a stream of juice, which I’m pretty sure hit the woman next to me. I was mortified, but she appeared to either not notice or to be ignoring me with such ferocity that even if she had noticed, she couldn’t say anything.

The other mortifying moment for me was when I had to use the toilet. I have a special gift, an ability to find a bathroom in any public establishment. I got up from the table, followed by bathroom-senses to the front of the restaurant, edged to the right and found what seemed to be the entrance to the bathrooms. But all I could see was the outer door, which was unmarked. The first person to come out was a man and I glimpsed an inner door, which was opened to reveal a line of urinals.

I looked around, trying to see if the Ladies’ Room was somewhere else, but this seemed to be the only bathroom. In the five minutes I stood there, at least 4 guys came out of the bathroom, but no women. I stopped a waiter and asked him where the toilet was and he looked at me with the sort of pity mixed with contempt that made me want to shrivel up and blow away. He pointed to the very door I’d been eyeing and then he scurried away. When I went into the outer door, all became clear as the door to the Ladies’ Room was immediately behind it although it really did feel like you were going into the Men’s Room in order to get to the Ladies’ Room. (I soon got used to this though as it seems like this is how it is in a lot of Parisian establishments.)

We left the restaurant full and happy, stumbling across the street to our hotel for a well-earned rest.

Paris, Part Two: The Magic Museum Pass

2006-02-19T21:43:00.000Z

For the first time in I don’t know how long, I actually slept all the way through the night. I woke up around 8 am feeling well-rested and ready to take on the world. I knew Peter wouldn’t feel that way for at least another two or three hours, so I left him to it and set off on my own.

First, a word about fashion. In short, fashion went right out the door in favour of comfort. I’d planned to not really wear jeans, but I couldn’t wear my runners with my black trousers. Plus, wearing the black trousers with most of my blouses made me look like someone’s grandmother. I had to concede pretty early on that my clothes are just not that fashionable in general, with the exception of my cute little outfits. (More on this later.)

I don’t really speak any French. I know enough to ask for directions, but not enough to be able to follow those directions. The theme of my morning excursion was “I did it myself – in French!” I went to the Metro station and bought two 3-day museum passes. I went to a coffee shop and bought a cookie and an espresso. (Forget about regular filter coffee in Paris – you will drink espresso and you will like it because you will be wired for days on end.) I went into a store and bought 24 postcards. All by myself. All in French.

I stayed in the vicinity of our hotel and returned to get Peter so we could get on with our big adventure of a day. Since we’d had so much fun in Berlin buying our breakfast from a market, we decided to go to a Parisian market. We caught the Metro to the Bastille and were stopped by ticket inspectors. Peter found his ticket easily, but I had a couple of tickets from the night before in my pocket.

I kept pulling out tickets and the inspector kept looking at them carefully and shaking his head. He put one into a little validator machine and it came up invalid. I was starting to get nervous. He was talking to me in French. I had heard all about French Metro inspectors and knew I was going to be in trouble if I couldn’t produce a valid ticket. Peter was about 10 feet away, looking at me the way you’d look at someone whom you thought might be drowning, but you weren’t really sure they were in trouble and you weren’t confident enough in your swimming skills to know that you could save them if there were. Finally, after nearly emptying my pockets and turning them inside out, I found the right ticket and was let through.

The market was great – several long blocks of vendors selling everything from sea urchins to socks. What wasn’t so great was the weather. In my zeal to have a Berlin-like market experience, I’d conveniently forgotten that we went to Berlin in July and we were in Paris in January. It was cold (-1 C or about 29 F) and a bit windy. We ended up buying a scarf each and I got a pair of gloves. My scarf – a nice blue pashmina – didn’t leave my neck the whole time we were in Paris.

We found a café near the market and settled in for lunch. It was a nice enough place and the food was good. I had a delicious goat’s cheese sandwich. Peter had ordered the hamburger but the waiter “I’ve made a big mistake, I’ve ordered you rib eye steak” but Peter found it quite delicious so the mistake was forgiven. (We were not so amused to get charged for the rib eye steak, which was about 3 euro more expensive, but we didn’t complain about it. Peter did eat it and like it after all.)

After lunch, we went to Notre Dame, which Peter loved and I found a bit gloomy and depressing. The inside is enormous, cavernous and although it looks big from the outside, I don’t think anything prepares you for the inside. In addition to the large, traditional church area and alter, the sides and back are lines with small chapels and prayer areas. The choir loft is dominated by an enormous pipe organ. The ceilings are unreachably high. But I found it dark and foreboding. Of course, one girl’s dark and foreboding is another man’s magnificent and amazing.

Our museum passes got us into the top part of the church for free. We walked up a spiral stone staircase to the gift shop, where we waited to be allowed up to the top. After we’d served our time in the shop, we were allowed to walk up more spiral stone stairs until we reached the balcony where all the gargoyles sit. The view was amazing and I could have spent all day up there. (Although you wouldn’t want to be extraordinarily fat since the little archways into the various balcony sections are incredibly narrow.)

We also went into the bell tower and I now want to read The Hunchback of Notre Dame. (Or at least watch the Disney movie.) The entire supporting structure inside the bell tower is wooden and you can definitely appreciate the “No Smoking” sign. The bell is enormous and I’d love to see it swing, although it looks like they just use a striker on the side of it now.

After Notre Dame, we went to the crypts, which I’d unfortunately confused with the catacombs. Unless you’re really into archeology, the crypt is only interesting for about 5 minutes. Luckily, it was free with our magic museum pass, so we spent about 15 minutes there and then decamped for a café, where we enjoyed crepes and coffee. One thing that was difficult to get used to in Paris – the smoking indoors. The smoking ban in workplaces has been in effect in Dublin for nearly 2 years now and it’s completely spoilt us. We’re just not used to breathing other people’s smoke and going home smelling like smoke. To be fair, the ventilation in the Parisian cafes is hands-down better than that of Dublin pubs, but it’s still a shock to see someone light up indoors.

Our next point of interest was St. Chapelle, a chapel that was built to house the Crown of Thorns and other spoils from the crusades. To get into the church, we had to queue and go through a metal detector because the church is on the grounds of the Courts of Justice or some similarly official sounding French court system. The ground floor of the church is dark, dank and disappointing, probably because the stained glass windows were removed when the floor was used as a storage room for the courts. At first, we thought this was all there was and were feeling distinctly disappointed before we spotted the staircases to the upper floor.

The stained glass windows on the upper floor are outstanding. The information sheet explained that the windows tell the stories from the Bible and that each window is like its own comic strip. The detail in the windows is exquisite and you could easily spend hours getting cricks in your neck, examining each panel. Entry to the St. Chapelle also entitles you to see the Concierge, although we got into both for free because of…all together now…the magic museum pass.

The Concierge was used as a prison back in the French Revolution and we got to see the cell where Marie Antoinette was held before her execution. The prison was interesting in that how you were incarcerated depended on your station in life. If you were poor, you were going to be sharing with lots of other people and sleeping on straw. If you were wealthy, you could buy your way up into private accommodations with a bed and a writing desk.

After the Concierge, we went to our last tourist stop of the day: the Louvre. (And if you’re already thinking to yourself that we got in free because of the magic museum pass, you’re absolutely correct.) We arrived via the Metro so we didn’t get to really see the famous pyramid until we left the museum.

Unless you’re a scholar of Renaissance art, there’s only one reason for going to the Louvre. Sure, it’s a fantastic museum, stocked to the gills with 35,000 works of art and it is, in and of itself, a work of art. But really, everyone who walks through those doors has one thing in mind. Everyone wants to see this lady. The museum is designed to handle this overwhelming desire. Just about every sign in the place has a little picture of the Mona Lisa and an arrow pointing in her direction.

We followed the arrows like everyone else and ended up in front of her. They’ve built what looks like a little altar to keep people back and, since that’s apparently not enough, they also use those ugly bank-queue tensa-barriers to rope the area off. Everyone who sees the Mona Lisa reports that she’s much smaller than they thought. I was expecting something on the size of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” which I always thought was going to be the size of an entire wall and it’s not that much bigger than a sheet of paper. Given my expectations of “Starry Night,” I went into the Louvre half-expecting the Mona Lisa to be the size of a post card.

She’s not. She’s respectably sized. Not as big as some, not as small as others. You see, there’s a lot of hype over the Mona Lisa and at the end of our visit, we had to conclude that she’s famous just for being famous. Sort of like being the Kerry Katona of the Renaissance. Yes, it’s a great painting done by one of art’s great Masters, but it’s not the be-all end-all of portraiture. The Mona Lisa has had centuries of great PR and that’s why everyone flocks to see her. You go out of a sense of responsibility, a sense that if you go to Paris and don’t see her, you’ve somehow missed out. In the end, you get what you’ve paid for – you get to tick off a must-do on your great list of must-dos and then you go on to the next thing.

For us, the next thing was back to the hotel for a nap. Or at least a nap for Peter. I wandered around the area near our hotel and stopped into a café for an espresso. We had dinner at a Japanese place where Peter had reasonably priced sushi that later didn’t agree with him so well.

Paris, Part Three: Moving On Up

2006-02-19T21:40:00.000Z

I was up early, as in my wont, and I got dressed and slipped out of the hotel room without waking Peter. I’d decided to go to an indoor market, one that Lonely Planet listed as reminiscent of a North African bazaar. OK, maybe they didn’t exactly use those words, but that’s what I was expecting.

After a couple of mistakes on the Metro, I found my way to the right neighbourhood. I found the Metro more difficult to use than the trains in Berlin. For one thing, the colour-coding is hard to read. When you look at a transport map and find yourself saying things like “we have to take the mauve line to the pink line,” you know it’s all gone a bit mad.

Back to the market, which was a disappointment after my expectations. You see, for completely inexplicable reasons, I long to go to Morocco, particularly to go to a bazaar.
I probably wouldn’t have the balls to bargain, but I really just want to experience it all – the smell of the spices, the noise of the crowds, the jostling for position. When I walked into this market and found myself standing next to a stall selling beer, I knew I was going to be disappointed. It was just a large, indoor market, just a smaller, more square version of the West Side Market in Cleveland.

After the market, I walked around for awhile and then took the Metro back to near our hotel, which was in an area where there were a lot of Jewish bakeries. I went to a supermarket to buy butter, cheese and drinks. All I had on me was a 50 euro note and you’d have thought I’d handed the cashier a 5,000 euro note. After a lot of admonishing, eye-rolling, and sighing, she heaved herself out of her seat and went over to another cashier. There was more eye-rolling and sighing with a bit of finger-pointing thrown in for good measure before I got my change. Then I went to a Jewish bakery and bought some rolls and éclairs.

Peter and I had breakfast in our hotel room and then packed up. His sister is a member of the Hilton Rewards Club and had very generously given us 2 nights at the Hilton, which is conveniently located right next to the Eiffel Tower. We made our way to the Hilton, but our room wasn’t ready yet, so we left our bags and went to the tower.

The Eiffel Tower is, of course, the iconic image of Paris. You know it’s going to be there. You expect it to be big. But nothing really prepares you for how majestic it is – the metalwork, the graceful lines, the long stretch into the sky. It’s elegant and inexplicably delicate in a way that’s nearly impossible to describe. Even though you know what it looks like, you still can’t help feeling a bit awestruck when you finally see it up close.

We bought tickets and commenced our stair-climbing adventure. Up and up and up we climbed to the first stage, where you can find a post office, a café, and the toilets. You can also find, in winter, a small ice skating rink. Yes, you can ice skate up in the Eiffel Tower. I wasted no time trading in my runners for a pair of skates (amazingly enough, this amenity is also free) and taking to the ice. I had a great time teetering around in small circles, enjoying the view and the very idea of what I was doing.

One of the informative signs on the way up to the second stage informs you that the first skating rink was built on the tower in 1969 and the first individual to try out the rink was a bear from the Moscow circus. I’ve skated on the ice of greats, that’s for sure. After my skating fun, we clambered up the steps to stage 2. We appreciated the views and then tried to get to the very top and learned that it was closed for repairs. I sort of expected this, since I’d seen a sign in the ticket window and I knew the price we paid (3.70 euro) was way too cheap to get all the way to the top. Nevertheless, we were both pretty disappointed.

After a quick stop back at the hotel (nice big room, balcony with a view of the tower), we had lunch at a café and then went to the Musee d’Orsay. Ice skating on the Eiffel Tower is my favourite part of our trip, but the Musee d’Orsay is easily a very close second. As per usual, our magic museum pass got us in the door for free and we dumped our coats and bag in the coat check.

The museum is housed in a converted railway station and it retains the open-air feeling of the station along with the stately gigantic railway clocks. I love Impressionist art and was looking forward to seeing some of my favourites. I was taken with the Degas collection, particularly the ballerinas. The real star of the show for me was the room with the Van Gogh paintings. I absolutely fell in love with The Church in Auvers-sur-Oise, View from the Chevet .

Peter was quite taken with the gallery of Naturalists, particularly The Excommunication of Robert the Pious by Jean Paul Laurens. The online version doesn’t do the painting justice since you can’t really see the “oh shit, what have I done?” expression on Robert’s face. The painting tells a great story and you could look at it for hours, appreciating the various details.

Our plan for dinner was to go to a restaurant Peter’s father had recommended, Chez Frances, which was a favourite of James Joyce. We made reservations and learned that they had a “no jeans” dress code. Fair enough, I’d packed Peter’s sports coat, dress shirt, dress shoes, and dress slacks because I wanted to get dressed up go to the cabaret. (As a side note, I finally decided that I’d wanted to go the cabaret for the wrong reasons and that we’d end up spending a bomb for a disappointment. At root, I wanted to go to 1920’s France and was naively hoping the cabaret would provide a time machine into the Paris of the garishly gas-lamp-lit Toulouse-Lautrec cabaret paintings.)

I am going to gloss over a bit of a disagreement that we had over the dinner plans and just say that it very nearly ended in tears. Basically, I am a bitch when my blood sugar drops and it happens on a far too frequent occasion because I’m continually dieting. (I think this is proberly a topic for my other blog.) The trouble is that I seldom am able to realise that A.) my blood sugar level has dropped and B.) I’m being a bitch. It is to Peter’s credit that he did not just drop-kick me into the Seine. We talked it out, worked it out, and I went out to get a candy bar and some fresh air to defuse the situation.

In the end, it was a moot point because I’d inexplicably packed only Peter’s dress shoes and none of his other dress clothes. I don’t know how this happened but I felt horrible. In the end, we made plans to buy him some trousers the next day, changed our reservation at Chez Frances and had our dinner at a Moroccan-Mediterranean place. As a bit of poetic justice, the tangine I had gave me bloat-y tum. Serves me right.

Paris, Part Four: Every Last Drop of Fun

2006-02-19T21:38:00.000Z

I woke up on a mission to squeeze every last drop of holiday goodness from our short break. A few hours later, Peter woke up with the same determination. The problem was that our definitions of holiday goodness are radically different. For me, it means go to loads of museums, see everything, suck dry the wealth of opportunities. To Peter, it means primarily relax, see interesting things if they are there to be seen but basically chill and enjoy not having any responsibilities. You can see the conflict coming a mile away, can’t you? No, it really wasn’t bad, it’s just one of those things we have to recognize about each other and then work around.

Our first stop in the morning was the Sacre Couer, the church that first took my breath away when I glimpsed it in the distance on our first day in Paris. I’d also been looking forward to visiting Montmarte, given its artistic history. So it was with high expectations that I joined Peter on the Metro. If there’s one lesson I need to learn, it’s that high expectations are a bad thing. If there’s another lesson I need to learn, it’s that I don’t have now nor will I ever have a time machine and I need to visit places for what they are now, not what they were 100 years ago. (Yes, I know these are simple lessons. I am just a slow learner.)

The walk up to the Sacre Couer was nice, even though the day was chilly and grey. The only bad thing about the walk were these really aggressive guys trying to sell friendship bracelets. They’d clamp onto your arm and just not let go. I had to really yell “No” at the guy, which made Peter proud of me since I have a tendency to be a bit timid sometimes in confrontational situations. (That’s only because I don’t want to be rude, but this guy was touching me and I am very protective of my personal space so I had no problem being loud and rude.)

The inside of the church was nice although I think I was suffering from church fatigue. (I now realise that I feel about churches the same way Peter feels about castles – after you’ve seen one or two, they are all pretty much the same.) I was also suffering from gotta-pee-it is, which I was able to cure at a public convenience near the church. We walked down from the church and through part of Montmarte, on the look out for a creperie and a place to buy Peter trousers. We struck out on both counts and were disappointed by the parts of Montmarte that we saw, which were a little rough and uninteresting.

Back on the Metro with a new plan – to visit the Bon Marche department store to buy slacks for Peter. We were monitoring my blood sugar to make sure I wasn’t going to go all festering-hag on Peter and I conceded that I probably needed a candy bar or something to keep me stable until lunch.

The Bon Marche was something of a nightmare – big, sprawling, expensive, and its cafes and eating establishments didn’t have a single item priced under 5 euro. (At least that’s what it seemed like to me.) We ended up wandering around for awhile and then giving it up for a bad job. We had lunch at a nearby café and then went to the Arc de Triomphe. I was impressed with its size because I expected it to be as big as the Brandenburg Gate, but it’s much bigger than that. We used our magic museum pass to go inside and up to the top, where we had great views of Paris. I can see why people enjoy the walk from/to the Arc to/from the Louvre, but it was way too cold and blustery for us to attempt it.

I used the bathroom on the way out and was dismayed to find that one stall was entirely out of order and the other was entirely out of toilet paper. Not a good state of affairs. On the way out, I told one ticket-taker guy, who didn’t understand me and just kept giving me directions to the bathroom. I found another ticket-taker, a woman, whose English seemed a lot better than the guy’s. I told her that the bathroom was out of toilet paper and she shrugged dismissively. I said to her “But the other toilet is broken, so it’s very bad up there, with the other toilet out of paper.” She shrugged again and said “That is not my job.” Fair enough. That was me told, I guess.

Peter was tired and a bit grumpy after several days of forced-marching to view sights and I still wanted to get some more mileage out of the magic museum pass. He gave up the quest for a pair of trousers and went back to the room to relax. I went on the Les Egouts de Paris, more commonly known as the Paris Sewer Tour.

No I did not pay any money to get into this place. I used the magic museum pass. Yes, it sounds gross but it also sounds like somewhere you shouldn’t be allowed to go, so of course I wanted to go. I ended up having some mixed feelings about it. In a classic case of bad timing, I got caught behind a huge group of French people. They were getting a tour from the sewer worker, all in French. Through gestures, an odd word or two, and the signs on the wall, I had a faint clue of what he was saying. The group was so large that they choked off access to the rest of the tour and it was, at that point, unclear to me if you were allowed to wander the tour area unaccompanied, so I stayed at the back of the group like a good kid.

After the overall-wearing workman had finished his speaking bit, a guy from the tour stepped up and started to talk. A lot. In a very animated fashion. Everyone on the tour was rapt, listening intently to this guy who bore more than a passing resemblance to Santa Claus. The guy next to me was nodding in agreement so rapidly, I was afraid his head might fall off. I stood on my tip toes to get a better look at Santa and realised he was holding sheaves and sheaves of paper. Possibly an entire ream. And he looked like he could probably read and lecture from these pages for weeks.

When the group moved on to the next stop, I managed to worm my way into the middle of the group, but I was still trapped for another round of lecturing. The only thing I could guess was that this guy was some sort of Victor Hugo expert and was talking about the part the sewers played in Les Miserable. I’m not basing this guess on very much. I think I heard him say “Hugo” but he could have said any number of words.

It felt like months that I was trapped in the sewer with these people. The idea of standing near thousands of tonnes of untreated waste was fantastic in the abstract. In the concrete, it was getting old very fast. The only thing more boring than listening to someone talk in excruciating detail about sewers is listening to someone use a foreign language you don’t understand to talk in excruciating detail about sewers. On the move to the next stop, I broke out my elbows and very rudely jostled myself to the front of the pack and then got the gosh-heck out of dodge as quickly as I could. I didn’t feel a damn bit bad about it either.

I hopped on the Metro to try to go to the Picasso Museum. The Metro was jammed, my feet hurt, and I was starting to get cranky. When I realised that I’d have a fair hike to the Picasso Museum, I decided it was time to find a Plan B. I jumped off the Metro at the next stop, walked around a bit, and ended up in a creperie that had its own resident cat. I had great fun eating my crepe, writing post cards, and watching the cat scramble up its big scratching post/climbing tree.

When I joined Peter at the hotel, he was relieved to learn that he’d made the right choice in skipping the sewer tour. I’d planned for dinner to wear one of my little outfits, a cute little skirt with a blouse and knee-high boots, but forces conspired against me. (I got a run in my nylons and it was just too damn cold to go traipsing around in a short skirt. Not only am I unfashionable, I am also turning into an old sissy.) We ended up going to L’Epi D’Or, which was interesting.

The place is small, verging on tiny really. To get to my seat against the wall, the waiter had to pull the entire table out. It also has an amazing patina of oldness. In a time where every new restaurant has some gimmick to make it stand out (like having antique crap everywhere or trying to look old when it’s not), L’Epi D’Or is the genuine article. In fact, I think they blew a fuse when we were there because the lights all went out for about a minute. (They also went out later in the night, but that’s because it was another diner’s birthday and there was singing and a cake with sparklers.) We enjoyed the whole experience although we are looking forward to going back and finally trying Chez Frances.

Paris, Part Five: You Could Teach Monkeys To Design Better Airports Than This

2006-02-19T21:37:00.000Z

Our plane left in the late afternoon, so we had a leisurely morning of packing and then left our bags with the front desk so we could have a final walk around the area. We had brunch at a café and then went to another street market near the hotel. The weather was a bit better, sunny and not quite so cold. The Parisians were all out at the market, buying Sunday dinners, new socks, flowers, and whatever else they might need.

I saw things at this market that just amazed me. Giant pigs’ feet. (I don’t know why I always thought pigs’ feet would be small.) Hearts. Livers. Kidneys. Sea urchins. Enormous crabs. Whole chickens with the necks and heads still attached. A conger eel. A skinned rabbit.

The market was just incredible to me. I mean, do you know anyone who wakes up and thinks “I’d like to drop into the market today and pick up some octopus. And maybe a nice eel. I haven’t had eel in ages.” I can barely bring myself to make stew with pre-sliced meat chunks. I have no capacity to deal with food items that looks like what they used to be.

We decided to skip the Roissybus on the way back to the airport and instead took the train, which got us there in good time and for about the same price as the bus. I hate to end my travelogue of Paris on a bad note, but Charles de Gaulle airport is a nightmare.

We were flying Aer Lingus, which was listed as being Gate 5 for check-in. We made two complete circuits of their check-in hall and couldn’t find a Gate 5. We’d see Gate 3. Gate 6. Gate 4. No Gate 5. We saw a staircase that looked like it would take you down to Gate 5, but it just didn’t look like the kind of place you’d be permitted to go.

Peter stopped an airport worker and was in the process of asking him if he spoke English and was about to ask him where Gate 5 was when the guy took one look at him and said “Aer Lingus, Gate 5 is downstairs.” So, as you can see, they have a lot of pale-faced, ruddy-cheeked, red-haired Irish-looking people asking for Gate 5. It’s obviously a problem – why not put a big sign showing where Gate 5 is?

I guess because that would be too easy. After we were checked into our flight, we began our quest to find lunch. Charles de Gaulle has a satellite system where instead of long hallways with gates, they have circles with gates. The circles are dotted around the airport and you get to them via underground walkways and moving sidewalks. Peter was smart enough to ask the guy checking boarding cards at the entrance to the satellite system if there was food on the other side. The guy advised going to the food court in the main hall, so that’s what we did. (A good thing too, since there was only a coffee concession in the satellite.)

We had McDonald’s because the choices were thin on the ground and I think Peter just really wanted to order a Royale with Cheese. After lunch, we went on quest for bottled water. The shopping choices were pitiful and although we finally found a newsagent, they didn’t sell bottled water. (We ended up buying it from the aforementioned coffee concession.)

We went to our satellite, waited about 15 or 20 minutes to get through security and then I spent another 15 minutes queuing to buy our water. Maybe 30 minutes before our flight, I decided I’d better go to the bathroom. Guess what. Charles de Gaulle Airport was designed by monkeys. There’s no access to the bathrooms on the checked-side of security. In order to go to the bathroom, you have to leave the secure area and then go back through security. You have to leave through the sort of air-lock doors Dublin banks use to thwart robberies.

I was desperate and couldn’t wait until we boarded the plane, so I went through the air-lock doors and then got back into the security line when I was ready. The people in front of me were Irish and were complaining to the people in front of them about how badly designed the airport was. I told them “If you have to go the toilet, you better go now. You can’t get to them on the other side of security. You’ll have to come out and go through queuing for security all over again.” Hey, it was a public service. OK, it wasn’t entirely altruistic, since my little announcement resulted about half the people in front of me leaving the queue.

Our flight back to Dublin was swift and uneventful. We were sitting in the emergency exit row, so Peter had plenty of leg room and I had the illusion of increased survival prospects in the unlikely event of an uncontrolled landing.

In conclusion, we enjoyed Paris and are looking forward to going back in warmer, more hospitable weather.

September Trip: Counties Clare and Donegal

2005-09-11T13:18:00.001+01:00

Another wedding, another fabulous adventure. On September 2, our friends Kevin and Nicola were married in County Clare, which is about a three-hour drive from Dublin. We decided to make a trip out of it by spending a couple of days in Clare and then a couple of days in County Donegal. This was no ordinary holiday, however, this was a working trip for Peter as a newly professional photographer.

Without further ado, here is the trip report. Please note that in an effort to provide photographs and links without disrupting the narrative flow or spawning a zillion extra windows, I've used forms and buttons. I'm not sure how well this is solution is going to work on all browsers, so please let me know if you have any trouble.

The Wedding

2005-09-11T13:18:00.000+01:00

Not counting my own wedding (which was in Ireland but not really traditionally Irish as such), this was my first Irish wedding. The ceremony was in a church on the grounds of a hospital in Ennis. It was a modern church that sort of reminded me of my grandparent's church in New Jersey. A string quartet and a flute-guy provided the music. (I absolutely despise the word flautist - don't make me use it.)

Nicola looked great - very happy and beautiful. I loved her elegant dress, especially because it didn't have a train. Every bride I've ever known (me included) has bitched mercilessly about not wanting to drag a 20-pound train off our asses all nights. So what do we all do? Go out and buy perfect fairy-princess dresses with the aforementioned 20-pound train. Nic's dress proved that you could have beautiful and elegant without the dreaded train.

The ceremony was the standard-issue Catholic affair although through a combination of a thick accent and a faulty (or perhaps non-existent) microphone, I missed a fair bit of what the priest said. After exchanging the rings, Kevin gave Nicola a piece of silver (again, I was back pretty far so I think it was a coin and not like a fork or spoon or something) as a token of all he had. That was about the only unusual thing I noticed in the ceremony.

The reception was in Lakeside Hotel in Killaloe-Ballina. (Think Minneapolis-St. Paul, but on a town-level instead of a city-scale.) I had a bit of confusion over which town was which, but in practical terms it didn't really matter. It was just funny to realise that our B&B was only a 10-minute walk from the Lakeside, but was in a different town and county.

There was a coffee and hors d'oeuvres reception before dinner and we had a good time catching up with all of our friends. The college gang was spread out in the tables at dinner, which gave us a chance to meet some of the other guests. I sat next to a Canadian woman who came all the way over for the wedding.

Dinner passed fairly quickly and the highlight was definitely the profiteroles, which were the overwhelming dessert choice. The speeches were also a lot of fun since several tables had bets going on length of time they would take. Kevin's speech was off-the-cuff but very well delivered and included two pieces of advice from a stranger - "First thing, remember, you're much luckier than she is. Second thing, everything is going to be fine."

We were ushered out of the dining room so it could get set up for the dancing portion of the evening. The band was good but loud and conversation among the non-dancers was a bit tricky and involved bellowing directly into other people's ears.

The band played a good mix of favourites including the Beatles, the Saw Doctors and the Waterboys. I am pleased to report that the traditional Irish reception does NOT include the Hokey Pokey or the Chicken Dance. It did involve having to get up and stand holding hands in a big circle on the dance floor and then pushing in on Kevin and Nicola, who were standing in the centre. All of this pushing around involved some Irish dancing moves (or, in my case, Irish kicking and flailing) and went on while the band played "Galway Bay" with some bits of "Belle of Belfast City" and "It's a long way to Tipperary" interspersed. (And for the record, with modern Irish roads, it is no longer a long way to Tipperary. At least not from Dublin.)

All of that was probably my favourite part of the evening. It was something my brothers would have absolutely loved. The band finished up maybe around midnight and then a DJ came on to continue the music. Most of our friends retreated to the hallway, where we pulled up chairs and sofas and talked with our inside voices, which were at this point cracking from the strain of competing with the band all night.

A wedding of one of Peter's friends just wouldn't have been complete without some singing of Monty Python songs, so that also happened out in the hallway. We left shortly thereafter, around 2:30 am. (We're just getting too old for this staying up late thing.) Peter been drinking for part of the evening, although it had been awhile and he was fairly sobered up. We still decided it would be safer to walk back to our B&B.

Hold that thought. This was an Irish wedding and I haven't mentioned drinking yet. I hate to disappoint you, but either I've acclimitised completely into Irish culture or there just wasn't THAT much drinking. I didn't witness any puking, passing out or fist-fighting. The alcohol consumption seemed pretty normal and under control to me.

It was a cash bar and the Irish have an interesting social custom of ordering rounds. So, you're out with your friends and someone goes up and gets drinks for everyone. I guess the idea is that at some point, everyone will have bought everyone else a drink. Buying a round is known as your "shout" as in "It's my shout, what are you drinking?"

When someone else is buying my drink, I'm often difficult and just insist that they surprise me. Doing this got me a Bailey's (timeless classic, you must agree) and a Jameson and Red (an Irish peculiarity that must be had to be understood). When it was my shout, I was over-ruled by Big Kev, who is about a foot and a half taller than me. That's the other thing about buying rounds - it can be a contact sport. But it's a weird sport because you don't want to be seen to not be pulling your round weight but sometimes it's hard to get your round in. I guess this is why it's called a shout, because you have to shout that it's your round and whoever shouts the loudest wins.

With that insight into the Irish drinking culture completed, it's time to go back to the walk to the guesthouse. We stopped at the car so I could get my jacket since I was freezing and then we started the walk. It was pretty short and the only people we passed were some lager louts out near a pub. (One of whom was peeing on a wall.) We passed them without incident and then made our way across the long, narrow bridge to Killaloe.

This was the part of the evening I'd been dreading the most, since it was a one-lane bridge and the traffic lights were non-functional. I had visions of us getting wiped out by a bad driver, but in the end, we made it across the bridge without encountering a single car.

Well, I made it across the bridge without encountering a single car. Half-way across the bridge, Peter realised he'd left the room key in the pocket of his sports coat, which was in the car which was, of course, back at the hotel. Doh! We briefly debated our options and decided it was best that he dash back for it while I made my way to the guesthouse with his camera equipment.

This is how I found myself standing outside a locked guesthouse on the dark and deserted streets of a small Irish village at 3 am on a Friday night. I felt about as safe as a chicken in a fox den. I sat on the window sill of the guesthouse in such a way as to hide the camera equipment. I mentally measured the distance to the doorbell and tried to think of what I would do if something bad happened. The couple of cars that crossed the bridge into Killaloe gave me the heebies.

A guy crossed the bridge and walked towards me, telling me to smile and being typical Irish-chatty. Except it wasn't 2 in the afternoon and we weren't meeting in a supermarket so I couldn't really react like a normal person. I jumped up and stood closer to the doorbell, wondering when was the right time to panic. The guy stood WAY too close to me and tried to shake my hand while I shifted awkwardly and tried to find a polite way to say that he was making me uncomfortable. He asked what I was doing and told him that I was waiting for my husband.

I think either my deer-in-the-headlights expression or my hand edging toward the doorbell alerted him to unease. He jumped back and said "Oh, no, no don't be scared. I'm a good person. Really. You don't have to be afraid of me. I understand." Then he said goodnight and went on his way. Peter arrived in the car 2 minutes later. I'd been alone for about 10 minutes and was on the verge of collapsing in a panicky ball.

So, now we know, 10 minutes is how long I can stand by myself on a dark, deserted village road without having a total paranoid meltdown. I think I'm getting better. There's a time I wouldn't have been able to last 10 seconds.

County Clare

2005-09-11T13:14:00.000+01:00

We decided to use Doolin as our base in County Clare. We'd been there 10 years ago and had enjoyed its fishing village feel. I'd have to say that Doolin has been a victim of its own tourism success. Even though it's sliding into the off-season, the town was still packed. The land outside of Doolin is owned by farmers who are clearly completely sick of finding people in their fields. The area now has a sort of "gawk and then get out of here" feel to it.

I finally got to see the Cliffs of Moher, which look exactly like they do in the post cards. They're beautiful, really, but I guess I just have a troubled history with them. There's something about them that cause Peter and I to become very short tempered with each other. (I read once that the same thing happens to some couples in Ikea because the pressure to achieve domestic perfection hangs heavy in such an outlet.)

What interested me most at the Cliffs was how other people acted. They all seemed far too willing to climb over the slate barrier and get way too close to the edge. Peter even told one guy "The coast guard has enough to do without you adding to it."

Sunday was our big touring day. We went to the Burren, the Pol ne Brone dolmen, and Ailwee Cave. The landscape of the Burren was cool and I can't wait to see it in the spring, when it's full of all manner of wild flowers. (The Burren is a biological oddity because it can support alpine, arctic and Mediterranean species.) The dolmen was impressive in its Stone-Age-artifact sort of way. I enjoyed visiting it although, after reading the rules sign, I had to restrain myself from violating the third rule.

My favourite though was Ailwee Cave, which is called Ireland's premier showcave for a reason (although Peter insists Michellstown is better - I will have to reserve judgment until I've seen them both). The cave was discovered in 1940 by a local guy who was out walking his dog. I give the guy a lot of credit for crawling into the unknown like that, These days, the cave has been renovated particularly for tours, with a concrete walkway, steps, lights and handrails in places. Interestingly enough, no evidence of human habitation was ever found in the cave.

Bears were the main residents of the first part of the cave, because a dry lair area and the constant 50 degree temperature was perfect for their hibernation needs. We got to see 1000 year old bear bones in the first section of the cave. We also got to see some spectacular rock formations and a waterfall. We pictured these great big grizzly bears hunkering down in the cave and then going out in the spring to terrorise the early humans. We were disappointed when we learned a few days later that the European black bear was only about the size of a sheep or a dog.

The highlight for me was when our guide turned off the lights to show us how dark it really was deep in the cave. It's a cliché to say that you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, but it was very true. Complete, pitch darkness is pretty damn impressive. If you go into your darkest closet, put your hands over your eyes and then close your eyes you might get a slight taste of the total darkness.

After the cave, we did another thing that I totally enjoyed. As Peter said, it's not a trip unless we visit a petting farm.

Admission included a bag of food for the animals, so I was a happy girl indeed. I've been to a lot of petting farms and there was something a little depressing about this one. Nearly all the animals were skilled in the art of creeping forward, grabbing the food and then jumping away so as not having to provide the quid pro quo petting opportunity. "Betty" the llama was particular skilled and suspicious. She was also actually a he, so perhaps there were greater problems there.

The best part of the petting farm was feeding She quite willingly ate out of my hand, even trying to eat my hand, my jacket cuff and my zipper. Peter was trying to take a picture of us with his cell phone, so I thought I'd be clever. I opened up the feed bag, thinking Ossie would have a struggle to peck her beak into the bag and that would provide enough time for Peter to take the picture. Ossie outsmarted me by grabbing the whole bag out of my hand. She stretched out her neck high above her head, brandishing her prize nearly out of my reach. I was able to grab the bag before she swallowed the whole thing.

The biggest disappointment of the farm was not seeing the brochure-promised family of Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs. We found their field, but the pigs were nowhere to be seen. On balance though, Ossie more than made up for the missing pigs and the sneaky llama.

Driving to Donegal

2005-09-11T13:06:00.000+01:00

One of our most fun days was Monday, when we drove from Doolin to Killybegs, County Donegal. We were up early so Peter could photograph the sun rising on the rocks in the Burren. Yes, I mentioned that this was a working trip of sorts but I bet you didn't think about what that meant.

What it means isn't entirely unpleasant for me, since Peter goes out of his way to make sure we do things I want to do (see Moher Hill Farm). It's just that there is a lot of waiting for him while he takes photographs. Sometimes I wait in the car, other times I hang out where he is. A book is indispensable to this waiting around business. I also get to carry his camera bag, which I usually don't mind all that much even though that sucker is heavy and it makes me nervous to tote around all those delicate, expensive lenses.

So, I'm basically the lovely assistant, the pack mule and the lady in waiting while Peter does his thing. It's not a bad life, really.

After the morning photo shoot, we drove north, through County Galway and then County Mayo. We stopped in Aghamore, the village where Peter's mother grew up and had a look around her childhood home, which for reasons I don't really understand is in an abandoned, state of disrepair. We also stopped at the cemetery.

We were making good time so we were able to slow down in County Sligo, which was much prettier than I'd expected. I don't know why I didn't expect it to be pretty - it is Yeats Country after all. We went to Lough Gill, saw the inspiration for Yeats' "Lake Isle of Innisfree" and had a guided tour of Parkes Castle.

The castle tour was cool although I guess Peter is right that when you've seen one castle, you've pretty much seen them all. I should probably limit our castle excursions to ones that are historically or architecturally significant.

We tried to stop in Sligo town to find a bookstore. We'd been using a Fodor's guide to Ireland that we'd picked up in Ennis and were finding it lacking. It's like it was written for rich people with no imagination. Drive to Town A. Look at Sight 1 and Sight 2. Have lunch in upscale restaurant X. Stay in hideously expensive 4-star hotel Y. Drive to Town B. I'm more of a Lonely Planet girl myself.

Sligo is a town under massive construction and their traffic patterns were greatly suffering from it. We couldn't easily figure out how to get where we needed to go, so we decided to just press on to Donegal town, which turned out to be much more navigable. It also had a great little bookstore where we were able to buy the Lonely Planet guide for Ireland, which we used to book accommodation for the next two nights.

I love the Lonely Planet guides for their attention to budget and insider details. We decided we'd stay in Killybegs, since it was near enough to Slieve League and Fodor's had called it a nice little fishing village. Lonely Planet let us know that the emphasis in that sentence should be on fishing and that a fishmeal processing centre on the east side of town pumped extra fishy smells into the air. We took LP's advice to heart and booked a B&B on the west side of town.

On the way out to Killybegs, we took a diversion down a peninsula and ended up at Unlike County Clare, where the lands are all "preserved" by their owners (essential a posted/no trespassing type deal), the private land we came across in Donegal had signs that said the land was private and asked cars to keep off the grass or do other reasonable neighbourly things while accessing the land.

We shared the land around St. Johns's Point lighthouse with a herd of bulls. Yep, bulls. Not cows. Bulls. For the most part, we ignored them and they ignored us, but I can't pretend that they didn't make me a little nervous. Call me crazy, but 1-tonne animals with horns do that to me. The herd grazed closer down the point and when we were ready to leave, they were between us and our car. We debated walking through them to the car but decided, since we don't have health insurance, to err on the side of caution and take the long way around the lighthouse back to the car. We did and arrived back to the vehicle without incident.

Our last stop, after checking into the B&B, was to head out to Slieve League for the sunset. The cliffs at go up to 2,000 feet and are all sloping jagged beauty. They're not sheer like the Cliffs of Moher but they are no less impressive or beautiful. Peter took his photographs and I hung around and provided a decoy for the midges. Midges are about the size of gnats, come in large swarms and bite like mosquitoes. I have quite a few souvenirs of our time with the midges, mostly on the right side of my face. Despite the midges, it was a good day.

The Bloody Foreland

2005-09-11T12:52:00.000+01:00

The plan for Tuesday was to explore every tiny road to nowhere on our segment of the map. I'm exaggerating, but not by much. We went out toward Glencolumbkille , stopping to explore dead-end roads and sieze photographic opportunities along the way. I persuaded Peter to make a detour into the Folk Village and Museum, a collection of cottages that portray village life in 1720, 1820 and 1920. It was interesting to see the changes between the cottages and compare them to modern life.

The museum also honored Father McDyer, the village priest in the 1960s who brought electricity to the area and helped preserve the village. That aspect of the museum was a bit creepy, like a cult of personality, especially the building that had all these displays on the guy's life that you could walk through while a mannequin of the guy sat at the front of the room watching you. Weird.

After the museum, we headed out to a few more sights of photographic interest. We followed a long, narrow, twisty road that bore absolutely no resemblence to our map to a small

on the water. It was beautiful and pretty much deserted. Peter didn't like the way any of his photographs from here turned out but I like this one. We checked out the
and the

We also saw a lot of sheep. The Fodor's guide said that in parts of Donegal, it wasn't unusual to find sheep on the road and have them look at you like you were in the wrong place.

Our other major photographic opportunity was the area in and around 24,000 acres of isolated mountain and forest beauty. The weather was not cooperating as it was dark, grey and threatening to rain, so Peter wasn't able to take many photographs. I've no doubt we'll be back there soon, particularly to photograph Mount Errigal.

Glenveigh was originally the estate of John Adair, whom the Fodor's book describes as "a ruthless gentleman farmer", a phrase that has oxymoron written all over it. Adair didn't appreciate having his tenant farmers ruining his view of the valley, so in 1861 he evicted them all without any sort of compensation. Fodor's also says that he destroyed all the tenant cottages, but with the number of abandoned cottage ruins with trees growing out of them, it makes me wonder if Adair got to all of them.

We did make a brief stop in the guest centre at Glenveigh because the trusty Lonely Planet guide informed us that we could buy midge repellent there. (In case you're ever there, wandering around and looking for a shop, the midge repellent is sold from wall-mounted vending machines next to the information desk. Bring 2 euro coins.) To get to the centre, we had to park the car and walk along a brick-paved walkway.

We were walking along when a pack of pigs rounded the corner at the far end of the walkway and headed right toward us. There were about 5 or 6 of them and they were small, maybe the size of a West Highland white terrier. I got within a of them before they plunged into the
snorting and rooting around for food. It was an unexpected highlight of the trip, especially after I'd been cheated at Moher Hill.

Midge repellent in hand, we set out to check out the mountains and then continued to the coast road and headed up to the small hotel we'd booked a room in - the Foreland Heights Hotel on the Bloody Foreland. Before you go thinking the area got its name from a mythic battle or an insurgency, it's because the setting sun makes the rocks look red. We thought this sounded like an ideal photographic opportunity, which it would have been if we'd been able to see the sun at all. After a couple of good days, the weather had well and truly turned on us.

We checked into the hotel and then went out for a drive up the north way. We'd come from the south, where a profusion of holiday cottages had ruined the views. The north way was much more deserted, a fact that we'd later wish we'd noticed better. We did a scenic tour around Mount Muckish and then had dinner at a pizza place in Gortahork.

It was completely dark and raining when we left Gortahork (cue creepy music). Our first problem was that I'd forgotten we were going back the northern route and was expecting a lot of holiday cottages. Our second problem was that Peter made a couple of turns where he'd go for a little bit, second-guess himself and then turn us around and head back to the last intersection. Our third problem is that it was very dark and some of the roads felt like they were going nowhere, or at least nowhere good.

I was trying to keep it together but I wasn't doing a great job. I don't like getting lost, especially not in the dark in the middle of nowhere. I didn't want to end up in the Irish version of Deliverance. I also didn't want to drive off a cliff or hit a sheep or become "carnage on the road" as the radio and TV reporters always say. And remember, it's not like there are gas stations and quicky-marts to stop for directions.

Peter became convinced that he knew where we were and that dark-scary-road-to-nowhere would take us back to our hotel. My eyes were glued to the map. I was looking at the inviting green-and-white striped secondary road and comparing it to the yellow squiggle of a country road that we were on. The green-and-white would take us to the orange road in the south that we'd used to get to the hotel that afternoon. The orange road that was lined with holiday homes and had occasional bursts of civilisation, like petrol stations and sweater outlets. Guess which route I wanted to take.

Now, I want you to stop for a minute and appreciate Peter's position. He'd spent all day driving. He was exhausted and eager to get to sleep. It was dark and misty, the rain was blowing sideways. He was convinced that he knew where he was and that he could be home in about 10 or 15 minutes. Going my way would significantly lengthen the trip and the only benefit would be to me, that it would make me feel a bit more comfortable.

It is a credit to Peter's empathy and loving character that he turned the car around and went my way. It is a sad trick of fate that my way sucked so bad. I blame myself and my scaredy-cat nature foremost, but the Irish road-labeling system and woefully inaccurate map industry are close behind.

On the map, it looked like the green-and-white road would take us to Gweedore quite nicely and efficiently. It didn't look like we'd encounter cross-roads and if we did, it should be obvious which road was ours. Right? Not quite. We blew through a couple of cross-roads and none of them were marked, leading us to believe that the side-streets were merely residential streets, not thorough fares.

Then, we got to a marked intersection that had a sign pointing to Bunbeg, 3 km. Fantastic, right near where we needed to be. Only we had no way of knowing if the sign was pointed in the right direction. Ireland still uses the quaint arrow-shaped signs on a single pole for marking direction. In theory (and in postcards), these look great. They show you which direction to go. In practice, a strong gust of wind or a couple of bored teenagers can turn the sign around without much effort. Sure, you think you're going to Bunbeg but really your car is straining up a steep hill and edging along narrow country roads, sure you've found a short cut when really all you've found is the path to a cul de sac or a dark middle-of-nowhere outpost.

We finally ended up in Derrybeg, which was good because it was quite near to our hotel. It was bad though because we never went through Gweedore or Bunbeg like we should have, so we were never on the roads we should have been on. Our arriving close to our hotel was just a matter of desperately needed luck.

At the hotel, I sent Peter upstairs to the room so that I could settle the bill, in case we wanted to leave early to photograph the sunrise. Reception was empty so I rang the bell and waited. Then I rang the bell a little more and waited some more. I rinsed and repeated a third time before deciding to have a look for someone. I went through the empty restaurant, which didn't feel strange because they'd stopped serving dinner an hour before. I walked down the long, narrow corridor to get to the bar. The hallway was dimly lit and had various doors leading to the kitchen, bathrooms, etc. Some of these doors seemed to creak and move a little on their hinges. An objective scientific mind would tell you that this was because of pressure differentials from an open outside door or wind or whatever. A less objective, borderline hysterical mind like mine would just tell you that it was really damn creepy.

And it was made even creepier by the fact that the bar was empty. Completely empty. No bar man, no waitress, no crusty auld fella holding the bar up. Nothing. Not only that, there was no evidence that there had been anyone in the bar the whole night. In Ireland, this is just plain wrong. On my hurried walk back through the scary hallway, it struck me that this isolated resort hotel was the perfect location for the Irish version of The Shining.

I spent the rest of the night in restless sleep, half-convinced that each time I got up to use the bathroom, I'd see those creepy twin girls from the movie. It was all too easy to think that an empty hotel in an area called the Bloody Foreland could host all sorts of delusion-inspired violence.

Weather Delay

2005-09-11T12:50:00.000+01:00

Our plan had been to spend one more night in Donegal, maybe in Letterkenny, so that Peter could get sunset photographs of Mount Errigal. The weather forecast predicted rain and clouds for the next several days, so we decided to end the trip and come back for a short break when the weather was better. It's about 200 miles from Dublin to Letterkenny, so it's definitely a doable short trip.

We did get in a little driving and hiking before completely packing it in. We drove around and the Rossgull penninsulas, both of which are beautiful but somewhat marred by manky holiday caravan parks. Horn Head itself was rustic and pretty. We hiked through the blanket bog out to a ruin. It had a real "edge of the world" feeling, especially when we started to see squalls out over the Atlantic Ocean.

We drove home, cutting across Northern Ireland, in the pouring rain. The sun came out in Dublin, but that was probably just to taunt us. I know it was still rainy and grey in Donegal. After spending several days sharing the road with sheep, it was weird to be back in busy, traffic-choked Dublin. I'm anxiously awaiting our trip back.

Introduction

2005-07-27T09:43:00.000+01:00

People get interested in places and things for weird reasons. Why do some people love dogs and other people can’t stand to be in the same room with them? What makes you prefer chocolate to vanilla?

I wanted to go to Edinburgh because of Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus books. I wanted to go to Amsterdam to see the Van Gogh museum. (Yes, I also wanted to indulge in some legalized pot smoking – I’m not going to lie about that.)

And I wanted to go to Berlin because of a movie I was never able to watch – Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire. The image of a melancholy angel perched above a black and white Berlin touched me – I couldn’t understand how a creature that should be happy – eternal life in heaven and all of that – could look so sad. Even though I never found the attention span to watch the film all the way through, the picture stayed with me.

I was supposed to go to Berlin eleven years ago, when I was in London and then Belfast doing law internships. As much as I wanted to go to Berlin, Dublin made a big impression on me and I changed my travel plans to include a return trip to Dublin. Berlin was put on the back-burner and this year, we had the perfect reason to make the trip - the wedding of our friends Colm and Heidi.

Day One: The Little Differences

2005-07-27T09:42:00.000+01:00

When I arrived in Berlin, I didn’t really know what to expect, I was just very excited to experience a new foreign adventure. Our flight was uneventful although poor Peter was about ready to keel over. Because he had to attend the visitation services for an uncle in County Mayo the night before we left, he was operating on less than 2 hours of sleep. I’d been too excited to sleep well but at least I was operating on more like 5 hours of sleep. The result was that we were both tired and more than a little cranky.

We took the Airport Express train from Schönefeld Airport to Zoo Station. The train arrived right on time, as German trains are wont to do, and we piled on. It was a nice, clean, modern double-decker train with very flexible seating arrangements. The train moved at a good clip and only stopped at the major stations. From the train, we could see a lot of graffiti and a couple of landmarks, like the TV tower and the glass dome of the Reichstag.

At our stop, we struggled out to the street with our bags. I made the executive decision that since we were both so wrecked, we should take a cab to the hotel. I knew the hotel was close, but I had a nightmare vision of leading us the wrong way and then one or both of us having a meltdown. Peter told me, as we slid into the cab, that I would do the talking.

I told the cabbie the address of the hotel and he shook his head and said “No! That’s too close.” I explained to him that we had heavy luggage but he didn’t care. For a minute, I thought he was really going to refuse to take us. Instead, he just ranted about it bitterly and then topped it off with a vehement “Scheiβe!” The cab ride took about 5 minutes, cost 4 euro and resulted in more ear-bending about how he’d waited at the station for an hour for a fare that wasn’t worth it.

Not exactly the Welcome Wagon, but at least we were at the hotel. We got checked in and then crammed into a closet-sized elevator to get to our third-floor room. Or, should I say, our third-floor suite. And what a sweet suite it was. We had two rooms with 15-foot high ceilings, very tall windows, and hardwood floors. One of the rooms had access to a little loft seating area and grand glass doors out onto a small balcony. This was definitely a case of lucky-draw, since I booked the hotel on the Internet and we were paying a special Internet rate. (a mind-boggling 55 euro a night, inclusive of tax and breakfast.)

My general philosophy on hotel rooms is that we’re not going to be spending much time in them, so size doesn’t matter but cost and location do. I loved the location of the hotel and the nice suite was just a bonus. It also took the sting out of the crappy taxi ride.

After a delicious lunch of beer and bratwurst at a tavern near the hotel, we stopped into the KaDeWa, which is basically the German answer to Harrod’s or Macy’s, to pick up some electricity adapters. Peter went back to the hotel for a nap and I did some exploring.

First exploration stop? The Victory monument in the Tiergarten Park, of course. I didn’t realize that you could go inside the monument, so I happily paid my € 2.20 to climb the 300 spiral steps to the upper observation deck. From the deck, I could look out at a dwarfed Brandenburg Gate and the glittery dome of the Reichstag. My next stop was the Gate and then Potsdamer Platz.

My overwhelming impression, that first day, was of how different and foreign everything was . It’s like in Pulp Fiction, where Vincent tells Jules that the funny thing about Europe is the little differences. “I mean they got the same sh** over there that they got here, but it's just – just there it's a little different .” On that first day, all I could see were the little differences.

Take something as simple as toilet handles. Instead of having small push buttons or silver levers, the toilets have large white panels that you push. In the U-Bahn and S-Bahn stations, instead of having crappy little fast food outlets, they have food kiosks where you can get all manner of freshly baked breads and pastries.

The streets are nearly devoid of litter, but there are sections where every square inch of a building façade is covered with graffiti. People seem to bring their dogs everywhere with them, especially on the trains. And not just little lap dogs – any kind of dog. (I saw a woman get on the train with a Harlequin Great Dane and a boxer – we’re talking at least a combined 180 pounds of dog right there.)

This was my first time visiting a country where English isn’t a major language. Even though English is not the official language of Holland, everyone speaks it and except for signage, it is the default language in shops and restaurants. This is not the case in Germany, where we soon learned that saying “Ich spreche kein Deutsche” or “Ich spreche nur biβchen Deutsche” would inevitably result in sympathetic smiles and nods, followed by friendly questions asking where we were from. Auf Deutsche, naturlich.

In the evening, we met our friends near the Unter Den Linden station (right in front of the gigantic Russian Embassy, actually) and went to dinner at a cool restaurant/book shop near the Brandenburg Gate. I had a delicious potato stew for a starter and disappointing spaetzel. (Disappointing only because my mother makes a mean pot of spaetzel and these were nowhere near as good as hers.) A nice dunkel bier rounded out the meal. We had a nice night and the dinner, although expensive by German standards, was actually fairly reasonable by Dublin standards.

Day Two: Searching for Goya, Turks and Punks

2005-07-27T09:41:00.000+01:00

The plan for day two was to meet our friends at the Checkpoint Charlie museum for a morning of Cold War edutainment and then split into two groups. Group A, the Boy Group, planned to go to the citadel at Spandau. Group B, the Girl Group (okay, just me), planned to find a Goya exhibition that I’d seen advertised on a bus stop and then check out the alternative/Turkish/rough-around-the-edges neighborhoods in the Kreuzberg area.

The Checkpoint Charlie museum was incredibly crowded. Since the English audio tours were sold out, we were forced to rely on very poor translations of old German signage. What the museum lacked in terms of an easy-to-follow historical timeline, it made up for in stunning pictures and artifacts used in daring escapes. From homemade SCUBA gear to cars with secret compartments, from hiding people in a large piece of welding equipment to hiding a little boy in a shopping bag and cart, the ingenuity and persistence of the escapees was astonishing.

I had two “favorite bits” in the museum. The first was the exhibit on the two families who escaped from East Germany in a balloon. The movie of their escape was one of my childhood favorites. I remember watching it many times, always with the same funny-stomach feeling that this time, the ending might be different.

The second was a picture of a young couple right after an escape. The boyfriend was on the West German side of the wall and he cut some barbed wire and helped his girlfriend and two other people over the wall, while the security forces scrambled to stop them. The hallmark of the photograph is the looks of utter relief and happiness on the faces of the boyfriend and girlfriend.

After I’d had my fill of black and white photographs and escape gadgets, I headed out in search of the Goya exhibition. Due to poor planning on my part, I didn’t really know where the exhibition was, so I did a little detective guesswork. I looked through my Lonely Planet guidebook, thinking “if I were this Goya show, where would I be?” I decided I would be at the Gemäldegalerie, a museum in the Kulturforum that specializes in 13th to 18th century European painters. The guidebook said that the museum had paintings from Renoir, Reubens, Boticelli, Velasquez and Goya.

I walked in the rain for a good 20 minutes – the kind of cold rain that comes at you on a windy slant that makes it impossible to use an umbrella. When I was close to the museum, a woman stopped me for directions. My German wasn’t up to snuff but her English was fantastic. She was looking for the Gemäldegalerie too, so I pulled out my map and showed her where it was. I asked her if she was going to the Goya exhibit and she said “Oh no! You have to wait in line for hours for that. I am an old woman. I cannot wait like that.”

We headed off to the Gemäldegalerie separately. I was relieved when I got there, sure that soon I would be dry, warm, and viewing dark and disturbing Goya paintings. Alas, it was not to be. It turns out that the Goya exhibit was at the Old National Gallery, which was on Museum Island, and was only accessible by bus. I decided that I didn’t want to trudge around on the rain, try to figure out the bus system with my pigeon-German, and then strand myself at some place where I might have to wait hours to see the paintings.

I figured that since the € 6 admission charge to the Gemäldegalerie included an audio tour, that I might as well check the place out. But, of course, they were out of English audio guides so I had to stumble around the museum with my shocking ignorance of painting and short attention span. I desperately wished that my brother Shane was with me to tell me all the stuff that he learned in art school.

I found the museum a bit disappointing because it seemed like all the paintings were hung in such a way as to ensure maximum glare. It was like watching TV in a very sunny room and got annoying pretty quickly. I don’t understand why they would have done that unless the angles are better for the taller folks.

My € 6 wasn’t totally wasted though. I saw a Carvaggio and several stunning Botticellis. I really liked the pleasant peasant scenes that Teniers did, which shared gallery space with Giovani Antonio’s views of the Venetian Canals. I think these paintings jumped out at me because their subject matter was markedly different than the others. Instead of painting exalted religious figures or nobility, Teniers showed peasants dancing and socializing. Instead of the bucolic countryside, Antonio showed a rare glimpse into a city.

And although I missed out on Goya’s grotesque world view, I did get to see some gory scenes of biblical justice. The worst (best?) was one by Luca Giordarno.

After about an hour and a half in the museum, I was dry and fairly museum-ed out. I’m just not good at appreciating art without context because I don’t understand enough about it. I was on my way to Kreuzberg, with grand plans of lunch in a Turkish café, when Peter called me. Turned out that the Spandau expedition was a big bust and he wanted to go back to the hotel room, change into dry clothes, and have a nap. The only potential flaw in his plan is that I had the room key.

I rode the train out and met him about halfway between Spandau and where I’d been. When the key delivery was successful, I went back and resumed my search for lunch and interesting sites. Going into this area of Berlin was something I’d wanted to do for more than 10 years, although the area has gentrified tremendously. It used to be the land of the punks and artists and immigrants. Now the immigrants and punks have been pushed farther east and some froufy boutiques and upscale restaurants and apartments have moved in. No matter, I pressed on looking for the scrappier sections.

I had lunch at a small Turkish café/restaurant. I asked for a Turkish coffee and a falafel. The guy told me I didn’t want a Turkish coffee. This conversation was in German so I’m not entirely sure if he thought I wouldn’t like it or that it would be too strong or what his reasoning was, but he told me to have tea and I said okay. The tea was delicious – very minty and tangy – and the falafel was tasty. Plus, this whole feast only cost € 2. In Dublin, you can get a candy bar and a bag of crisps for € 2.

Fortified with lunch, I headed out again, this time in the direction of Kottbusser Tor, which was meant to be a bit edgier and have cool second-hand stores and a small neighborhood museum. I saw a lot of graffiti, some cool public art and a pathetic little petting zoo before I was in a sort of urban wasteland without too much of a clue where exactly I was.

I didn’t want to pull out my map and I felt that I’d gone too far to turn around. I saw a brick church steeple on the horizon, a triple dome, and figured that would have to be some sort of landmark. So I made like Carol-Ann and headed for the light. The area got a little more nerve-wracking, with road construction on my left side and what looked suspiciously like a traveler encampment on my right side. I just kept walking, pretending like I knew were I was going, and when the church turned out to be in the middle of nowhere, I headed for what looked like a major road.

The only person I passed in this nerve-wracking wander was a girl with a blue mohawk who was walking a massive Rottweiler. They were both wearing studded collars. The irony of this moment was not lost on me. Part of the reason I wanted to go to Berlin in my law school years was to experience the resurgence of the punk culture. At that time, the idea of hacking up my hair, painting it a primary color and living in a trailer would have sounded like a capital idea. Now, in my reluctantly-bourgeois, quasi-respectable, nearly-middle-aged state, I am so far removed from that version of me that I couldn’t help but laugh. Quietly. Once I was well past the girl and her dog.

My head-for-the-main-artery approach brought me some reassurance, as I could see what looked like a train station in the distance. I followed a few other people who came off the main road and we did indeed end up at Ostbahnhof. Tour and excitement over.

Day Three: Trains, Busses, and Automobiles

2005-07-27T09:38:00.000+01:00

It looked like Friday was going to be another damp and depressing day, but we weren’t too concerned since we knew we going to spend most of the day in transit. The time had come to head down toward Dresden and onto the small town where our friends would be married. We got down to breakfast late and all the tables were occupied, so we headed out to a street market in Wittenberg Platz, which was very close to our hotel.

The market held an interesting mix of wares. They had butcher vans and fruit stands but also had jewelry and clothing for sale in some of the stalls. Peter bought a delicious pastry from a bakery truck and I got a crusty roll. Then I went to a cheese stand and after sampling some cheese bought a small slab of butterkäse to make a sandwich.

Peter spied something that looked like Armenian string cheese, one of his favorite Trader Joe buys. He ended up buying a bit, even though he had no idea what it was. The guy didn’t speak English and while Peter’s German pronunciation is nearly flawless after years of World War II movies, he has never actually studied the language. He gave it a good try though and remarked “It’s an act of hopeless optimism to ask ‘Was ist das?’ when you know you won’t understand a word of what is said.”

We settled onto a bench near the U-Bahn station and had our breakfast. It was a good time – the sun came out for a few minutes and a passerby asked us for directions. Of course, we weren’t much help but it felt good to be asked.

After breakfast, we checked out of the hotel and dragged our carcasses over to Ostbahnhof. Now, I had made a crucial packing error. I confused the concept of traveling light with traveling with few bags and crammed all of our stuff into a single garment bag. A single garment bag that seemed to get heavier with each step. The better option would have been to pack most of the stuff in a wheeled bag and then just put the dress clothes in a garment bag. But I saw the one-bag solution as a challenge and woe unto me when I decide to take on a packing challenge.

Peter and I traded off carrying the heavy bag and we made it to Ostbahnhof without any great catastrophe befalling us. When the train pulled up, we trooped on and found our compartment. We were a bit sad since our friends were sitting in a different compartment but it was only going to be a 2-hour train ride.

In one of his books, Bill Bryson laments the reality of the train compartment. To his American eyes, it looked like a glamorous way to travel. But in reality, he compared it to sitting in a doctor’s waiting office with several strangers for a doctor who never shows up. I can confirm that he hit the imagery nail right on the head. I am glad it was a relatively short ride.

Heidi and Colm met us at the station in Dresden and then showed us to the bus station and told us how to take the bus to Oberbärenburg. The bus showed up right on time and we made our connection in Dippsowold and arrived in Oberbärenburg without incident. Heidi made all of the reservation arrangements for us, so we knew our hotel name, but not which name the reservation was under. When we told the proprietor that we had reservations but didn’t know which name, he said “I have the names”. Indeed, he had all of our names and he doled out keys to us.

After some relaxing, we met up and had a walk around Oberbärenburg while we waited for further instructions. Heidi’s parents were intending on hosting a barbecue, but the weather seemed just as intent on canceling it. Colm, Heidi and her friend Claudia arrived in the evening to shuttle us to the barbecue.

Heidi’s parents live in an apartment, as do many people in Altenberg, but they are allotted a garden plot not too far from where they live. Their plot was large and had a small summerhouse on it. A tent was set up for the barbecue, which kept out the wind and mist quite nicely. We met Heidi’s parents, her grandparents, her sister and her sister’s boyfriend and re-met Colm’s parents, brother, sister and his sister’s boyfriend.

Heidi’s parents put on a magnificent barbecue, with a seemingly never-ending supply of steaks, juicy sausages, and assortment of salads. We had a nice time talking to everyone and spend a good part of the evening standing around the dying embers of coal, warming up a bit. The garden was beautiful, well organized with lots of flowers, and had a good view of the mountains. (Or, at least it would have if it hadn’t been quite so misty.)

Day Four: The Wedding

2005-07-27T09:37:00.000+01:00

I was up early so I could get in my 9 mile Long Run. Yes, marathon training waits for no wedding. It was cold and rained almost the whole time. I didn’t have any distance marked out, so I just went by time. I figured 10-minute miles because of the hills and the higher altitude, so I ran for 90 minutes. I just sort of toured through the town and out towards the outskirts a little bit. Every time I thought I was going to get brave and head along a road for a certain amount of time, I’d chicken out when I felt myself getting too far from “civilization”. I just couldn’t run too far into the deep, dark forest.

On my travels, I saw a giant hare, a black squirrel, a golden finch, and a red-headed sort of bird that flittered away before I could really identify it. In the end, I was very glad that my run was over and I told Peter that I had gotten “the hypothermia”. In fact, I was so cold that when the run was finished, I went into the town store and bought the warmest top I could find – an extra-large dark blue fleece that had a couple of embroidered flowers and the odd phrase “The Spirit of Sence” on it. (A quality that Peter was quick to point out that I did not possess.)

The wedding was at 2 pm, so we had time for breakfast and a nap before we had to get ready. The wedding was held in a registry office room in the building that holds the tourist information office and a shop. It was a nice room – not at all formal or bureaucratic. In fact, it felt more like a ski lodge than a government facility.

The ceremony was in German and then translated into English. The officiant gave a nice little counseling session on what is required for a good marriage and then did the marrying bit. I’ve never been to a registry office wedding before, so I was interested to see the differences from a church wedding. The big differences (besides the obvious non-religious nature) were the mentions of things like craving and desire (which I could never imagine a priest acknowledging) and the simplicity of the vows (pretty much just a simple yes – no promises of honoring and obeying).

Colm and Heidi left the ceremony in a horse-drawn carriage and the rest of us go to use what Colm called “the comedy transport”. The Bimmelbahn looked like a little novelty train but it ran on the ground like a golf cart or a bus. It sort of reminded me of the zoo train at the Cleveland Zoo, only smaller and quainter.

We had a nice tour of the area and eventually were taken up the steep mountainside to the reception site. We climbed the observation tower to admire the view and just hung out waiting for Heidi and Colm to arrive. There was some speculation about whether or not the horses could make it up the hill, but they were made of strong stuff and pulled the happy couple to the reception without trouble.

After some pictures, Heidi and Colm walked up to a log on a stand and put on some gardening gloves. I’d seen the log and I thought maybe the proprietor of the restaurant sawed off chunks for an outdoor fire or something. It turns out that the log was part of a German wedding tradition – it’s meant to be the first bit of work that the bride and groom do together. We watched Heidi and Colm work together to hack up the log and it looked to my inexperienced eye like they did a pretty good job.

The reception was very homey and sweet. There were only about 25 people there and the owners of the restaurant felt like they were part of the party. They were very kind and friendly and cooked some mean dishes. An extensive salad bar started out the dinner. The main theme of the dinner would have to be garlic. The appetizer choices included garlic bread and garlic soup, a dinner choice was garlic steak and for dessert, you could even have garlic ice cream. Peter went for the “straight garlic card” while I had garlic bread, breaded cauliflower medallion and chocolate ice cream with cherries for dessert.

The party went way into the night, with music and drinking and dancing. OK, not so much dancing for me (none, in fact), but the music and drinking were good. Everyone had a great time and even though I’d originally planned to leave early because I was tired, I found that I really didn’t want to leave.

At 1 am, we trundled into the Bimmelbahn (I was a bit worse for wear but still having a good time) and had a very cold ride down the mountain and back to Oberbärenburg, dropping off guests at various spots along the way.

Day Five: Mistakes, Miscalculations and Other Near Disasters

2005-07-27T09:36:00.000+01:00

As much as I enjoyed the wedding and our time in rural Germany, I was anxious to get back to the conveniences and excitement of Berlin. (I do want to return to the area, but only with a car.) In fact, I was so anxious that I misread the train schedule and herded Peter out of the hotel on a quest for a train that didn’t exist. The train plan looked simple enough – train from Altenberg to Heidenau, where we’d switch to a train for Dresden. I misread the schedule though and thought the train left Altenberg for Heidenau at 8:50. Actually, it was leaving Dresden for Heidenau. The train from Altenberg to Heidenau didn’t leave until 10:17.

Yeah. Peter was none too pleased that I dragged him out of bed early to catch a train that didn’t exist. So we were stranded at the Altenberg train station (the closed station with the deserted platform) until 10.17. Our trip into Dresden went smoothly enough and I went into the ticket office to sort out our trip to Berlin. Our tickets were open-ended on the return, so I needed to find out which train we should take.

The guy didn’t speak English but I was able to tell him I needed a non-stop train to Berlin. He charged me an upgrade to do that and printed me out a schedule and ticket supplement for the 12:05 train. I tried to reserve seats on the train, but he told me no. With my child’s vocabulary and comprehension, I didn’t know if it was a “no you can’t” or “no you don’t need to.”

We got the platform with about 25 minutes to spare and Peter went to get some lunch. About 5 minutes after he left, our train pulled up. I was worried we’d miss the train, so I texted Peter and then set out to make sure that it was our train, since the board said it was going to Hamburg. (But it was going to Berlin first.) Peter arrived, with a plate of bratwurst in hand, just as the doors seemed to be closing, at least the door where I was standing.

We hopped on the train and proceeded to struggle along the narrow corridors, looking for a compartment. After about two train cars, Peter had an unfortunate incident involving a rude man, a hyper-ish kid and a pair of insistent-on-closing-right-on-him automatic doors. The upshot of this incident was that his bratwurst went flying and his patience got a bit fried.

We got off the train and walked on the platform to another car, still looking for unreserved seats. We did find a pair in a compartment, but two different people in the compartment insisted to us in what I think were different languages that we could not have the seats. I didn’t know if they were just being rude or if someone really was sitting there, but it didn’t help our moods much.

We finally trudged into the car of last resort, the bar car, and dumped our bags down. Peter went to search the last train car and I resigned myself to having to sit in the corridor with a very disgruntled, tired Peter who would have every right to blame me for the ongoing train debacle.

Peter found a couple of seats in the last car, which just had regular seating, not compartment seating. We stowed our luggage and gratefully collapsed in the seats, only to become aware that we were most likely sitting in first class. Rather than wait to get turfed out, Peter sent me on a mission to get it sorted out somehow.

I found the conductor having a smoking break and had a nice chat (in English) about our seat situation. I learned that we could upgrade our tickets for € 19 euro and I jumped on the chance. When the nice conductor printed out our upgrade slips, I thanked him profusely, saying “You’ve saved my marriage!” I don’t know if he understood exactly what I was saying, but the sentiment was clear enough.

We arrived back at our hotel in the mid-afternoon and received a room that was more along the lines of what we were paying for. We were disappointed not to have the suite, but the room had tall ceilings and big windows, so it was alright even though it was only just big enough to hold the bed.

In the evening, we had some time before we were meeting our friends for dinner, so we headed out to Alexander Platz and went to the top of the TV Tower. It was a good view, high enough so you could see everything but low enough so that you could still see details. It was also cool to see places after acquiring a certain familiarity with the city.

Since the weather was a lot more agreeable, we headed back outside after the TV Tower and lounged on a bench on the square. I thumbed through the guidebook and happened about Gendarmenmarkt, which was billed as the most spectacular square in Berlin. We hopped back on the U-Bahn and went to check it out.

I can concur that Gendarmenmarkt is indeed the most spectacular square in Berlin. It has three graceful old domed buildings and then a line of stately apartment blocks. Our experience was enhanced by a violin player busking near the national concert hall. It was the perfect way to unwind after a tiring and stressful day’s journey – laying on a bench, soaking up the architecture and ambiance while Vivaldi plays in the background.

One weird thing about Berlin is that you can’t forget World War II while you’re there. It’s a strange subtext, like the elephant in the middle of the room that no one talks about. The older buildings bear the scars of bullets and shells and so many of the reconstructed buildings, with their jarring 50s and 60s architecture are just a different sort of scar, like a skin graft instead of scar tissue. While we were in the Gendarmenmarkt, a DC-3 flew fairly low overhead.

I could clearly make out its shape and its two engines. I couldn’t identify what it was, but I could tell it wasn’t your standard commercial jet. For that passing moment, I could picture the doors opening up and bombs tumbling out. It was just an automatic vision, planted from years of newsreel and film footage.

When I asked Peter if he’d imagined it dropping bombs, he admitted that he sort of had for a second, but then knew it was A. not a bomber and B. was an Allied plane, so “it wouldn’t be dropping bombs….except, of course, this is Germany so it would have.”

Our dinner plans were to meet up with our friends at the Rosenthaler Platz U-Bahn station and then head out toward a couple of places recommended in the guidebook. We ended up eating at a place that was near the other places, although not specifically listed in the book. It was an open, airy Italian and pizza restaurant, whose menu was in both Italian and German (but no English).

I don’t think our waitress was German (if I had to guess, I’d say she was from one of the Eastern Bloc countries, but I could be wrong) but she did speak pretty good English and was happy to try it out on us. In fact, she was so happy to try it out on us that she pretty much ordered for us. Peter told her he wanted the prosciutto and mushroom pizza and she told him “no, that is too easy, I think you should have this”, indicating another pizza that she unfortunately was not able to translate entirely. She made recommendations and when we balked, she made her recommendations more forcefully. We got the sense that we could order whatever we wanted and she was still going to bring us whatever she thought we should have.

The antipasto platter she recommended was heartily enjoyed by all. The main courses met with varying degrees of appreciation. Peter and I swapped pizzas (his sausage and tomato for my chunky mozzarella, cherry tomato and spinach) and we all shared around. It was also stunningly cheap – it cost less for the four of us than the last meal Peter and I had together in Dublin. (And the places were probably of similar status although the food was much better at the place in Berlin.)

Conclusion

2005-07-27T09:26:00.000+01:00

I won’t bore you with the details of our trip back to Dublin. We obviously made it here. We had a great trip and it definitely has set off the “exploring/traveling” impulse in me. One of my few regrets in life is that I rushed through college and into law school without ever having a proper European backpacker phase. I’d like to do that while I’m still young enough to enjoy it. Now that we live in Europe, the possibilities are much more frequent.