My Bag is Packed

Solving the Coat Issue and Other Travels

I have returned from the first free travel. I traveled with Robbie, Mona, and Tracy to Germany. I feel so honored to be able to say I have done that because they are usually so busy that they don’t get to go anywhere during free travel times. [has anyone noticed that I began the first three sentences of this paragraph with the word “I”?]

My first free travel began with a quick trip to Venice on Saturday to buy some ties for Ellis. His clients wanted more so I was happy to run that errand for him. I traveled by myself to Venice, got on the vaporetta alone and found the tie shop in Piazza San Marco. There were about 3.6 million people in Venice on that day. Actually, there was some kind of parade, or demonstration just beginning as I walked out of the train station. I never found out if they were protesting or tying to find a cure or just raise money for a worthy cause but there were a lot of them and they all had t-shirts and signs and even balloons.

On Sunday afternoon the four of us got on a plane from Pisa to a town just out of Stuttgart, Germany. You have to love those Ryan Air prices…total cost for roundtrip tickets was 45 euro. We rented a car and Robbie raced up the Autobahn to Heidelberg. I had stopped in Heidelberg four years ago but then we just spend a couple of hours at the Christmas Market. We spent the night and Monday we had a great time shopping, eating snitzel, pretzels, and visiting the castle. I also solved my coat dilemma there. I bought a beautiful black rough leather coat at the German equivalen of Lane Bryant. It is perfect!

Monday afternoon we drove to Aachen (I am not sure how to spell it) to the town where Charlemagne had one of his palaces and a beautiful chapel/cathedral. We arrived just at dusk and we had no idea the layout of the town. Robbie pulled into what we thought was a parking place and was going to run into a book store to buy a book on the town and hopefully a map. We had only been there a minute or two when we discovered we were in a spot where the buses had difficulty making the turn and a taxi driver yelled as us to move the car. So, Tracy jumped in the driver’s seat and we were going to go around the corner…only there is no around the corner in this town. We drove for about ten or fifteen minutes and had no idea where we had left Robbie. Mona tried to call his cell phone and to our horror his phone rang in the car. It was one of those awful moments like when the girl in the horror story hears that the person calling her threatening to kill her is upstairs…we had his cell phone ringing in the car with us and he was lost on the street in Aachen. We began to get worried. We drove for another 20 to 30 minutes without seeing any thing that looked familiar. We knew that we left him across the street from the “Bak Factory” and just down from “Killer Hair” but we could not find our way back. We asked directions from some English people on bikes and they said they said “go down to the right” which we did and did not find the right street. Then we asked directions from the guy with the blue Mohawk haircut who was cleaning car windows for handouts and he told us to “go down to the right” but we never found the “right.” Finally, Robbie’s cell phone rang and it was him calling us from a pay phone. We ended up stopping at a hotel and he took a taxi to us. It was traumatic!

The next morning we found the old town section and all really enjoyed wandering around the old streets. The Palace is, of course, gone but some of the foundation stones are here and there and the chapel was beautiful.

We made a quick stop in Koln (also known as Cologne) at the beautiful cathedral there. It is right in the middle of a very unattractive shopping area but still a beautiful building.

We spent the night in Mainz and had supper with J.R. Duke and a couple of our HUF students. J.R. is teaching there until sometime in July. Mainz also has a beautiful cathedral and quiet, clean streets lined with cute stores. After leaving Mainz we headed back to the airport and when we touched down in Pisa Reagan was waiting for us!!! I was so happy to see her.

Today we spent the day at the Scandicci Fair. It is a cross between a county fair and the Tuesday Market in Florence with a little of Canton, Texas First Monday thrown in. Great food, good shopping and a gazillion people. We met some of the other Americans who attend the Florence church, a couple of Avanti members, and Kate Tucker there. It was a fun morning of shopping and then a great picnic type lunch with us all buying different stuff from the food vendors and everyone sharing. After lunch, Reagan and I headed into Florence for her to show me where she lived while she was a nanny for Zoe and Renee. We even went back to the fair after supper tonight. All I have to say about that is Nutella Crepes! Oh my!!!

It has been a lovely, fun, busy and exciting week. Tomorrow is the first class day of the semester that I do not have to teach a class!!!! I think we will have breakfast at Mario’s. Tomorrow night is the opera, “The Barber of Seville.” Can’t wait.

posted by BW @ 1:57 AM