The voyage home

I forgot to elaborate on my description of our drive home. We had a couple of interesting obstacles.

The first was in Italy. A couple of hours out of Venice, before we'd gotten to Milan, all traffic on the freeway came to a dead stop. We weren't moving at all. That's unusual, so we figured that something was wrong. Sure enough, after a few minutes, a police car and a fire engine came past us on the side of the freeway. All of us were out of our cars and walking around, and at least one guy took the opportunity to relieve himself at the side of the road. (Europeans tend to be less uptight about things like than Americans, and Italians tend to be less uptight than other Europeans.) We finally got moving after 45 minutes, and as we drove past the trouble spot, we could see that it had been a car fire that bascially left just the charred shell of a car. It must have been pretty spectacular at the time. We didn't see any signs that anyone had been hurt, but we're not sure.

The next hangup came as we were approaching the Gotthard tunnel in Switzerland. That's a very long tunnel through the Alps that links the German and Italian parts of Switzerland. When it was built, it was the longest road tunnel in the world. Without that tunnel, you either have to go a couple of hours out of the way, or you have to take one of those scary Swiss mountain passes that's full of hairpin turns and is only open in the summer. I've heard of waits as long as three hours, but it only took us an hour to get through.

So that's how a five-hour drive stretched into something a bit longer.

Last stop: Venice

All good things must come to an end. You can't have unlimited food and free housekeeping forever, right? Everyone was pretty tired when we got back to Venice, but we decided to stay there for an extra day because we knew we'd probably never get back there again. It was bit touristy for my liking, but it was good to walk around and see how things worked. And, to reiterate what I said before, if you take a bus or a taxi, that means you're getting on a boat.

Lindsey got herself a mask that she loved.



Here's a parking lot in Venice:



With the ocean levels rising, Venice is flooding more and more often. This happens predictably according to the tides, so there are raised sidewalks to get people over the floods when necessary.





Here's the famous Rialto Bridge, which crosses the Grand Canal in the heart of Venice:



Here's a shot from the bridge. (I don't know why Lindsey looks like her dog just died. I think she was just tired.)



I wept openly that evening as I saw our cruise ship, the Spendour of the Seas, leaving Venice without me on board.



Here's a shot of St. Mark's Square, which is where the action is in Venice. Our hotel was just north of the Square. At night, different musical ensembles were playing at the different cafes, so we just wandered from one to the next to listen to the music. They were all very good musicians. It was pretty cool.

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And, of course, no European city can be considered truly great without this landmark:

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One parting shot:

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So that's the trip. We don't know what's coming next. We know that we need to hit London, and we also need to hit Disneyland Paris again (ugh), but beyond that, we're not sure when we're doing anything. Time to start planning the next trip. In the meantime, I'm headed to Minnesota on Monday, so I won't have much to say for a while.

Greece, part 2

Our last stop was another island, this one containing the town of Corfu. It was also Tanner's birthday. We took a tour of the island that included, as usual, tons of gorgeous scenery, including a stop at a beach.

After our bus got back to the ship, Tanner and I stayed in town for a while to have a real Greek dinner to celebrate his birthday. I had kumquat chicken and Tanner and seafood penne. Pretty darn good.

Here are some pictures. Those of you who know Tanner will recognize, in the second picture, the unique pose that means that Tanner is enjoying himself.

Greece, part 1

The first of our two days in Greece found us on the island of Santorini. I'm not sure who decided that it would be a good idea to build a town at the top of a steep cliff that drops off into the ocean, but that's what they did. It was very scenic. We didn't take any organized tours or anything. The kids stayed on the boat while Stace and I went into town.

After a while, Stace and I split up so that she could shop and I couldn't. See the switchbacks on the left side of the first picture? There are three ways to get down the cliff: take a cable car, ride a donkey, or walk. When we split up, Stace left me with firm instructions that I was not to walk down the cliff. So, you can probably guess how I got down the cliff. We were far enough into the cruise that the Wood family finances were looking a bit grim, so I made the necessary sacrifice of saving us four euros by walking. She has yet to verbally thank me for my sacrifice, but I can see the gratitude in her eyes.

And now, an intermission

Before we get to pictures from Greece, let's throw in some pictures of life on the cruise ship. (The first picture, though, is just a random picture of the Swiss sunset from our terrace a few weeks ago. If I don't throw it in now, I'll forget about it. This is one of the things I'll miss the most when we leave.)

Ephesus

It's not really clear to me what divides Asia from Europe, but whatever it is, we were in the part of Turkey that's in Asia. (Always good to check off another entry on the list of things to do before I die. Now I just need to hit Africa, Australia, and Antarctica to visit all of the continents.)

Our tour that day consisted of two parts: a visit to the so-called House of the Virgin Mary and the ruins of Ephesus. (There was a third part in which Stace almost bought an $800 Turkish rug, but let's ignore that. Quote from Stace: "I looked interested, and suddenly I was alone in a room with four of them trying to sell me a rug!") In the end, Mary's house was kind of underwhelming. I think Mary was unhappy with us because it rained like crazy while we were there. Also, there's no concrete evidence that Mary ever lived there. Legend has it that John took her there sometime after the death of Jesus, but it's more a matter of faith than of science. One thing that was interesting is that the site has a Catholic version of Jerusalem's Wailing Wall. People scribble their wishes on tissues or scraps of paper and leave them tucked in the wall.

Then it was on to Ephesus. In some ways, Ephesus was even more cool than Pompeii, but it doesn't get the same publicity. I guess Ephesus doesn't have the same PR firm. Maybe it's the lack of a backstory involving a volcano, or maybe it's that Ephesus is a little more out of the way than Pompeii.

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Anyway, it was very interesting. I'll just throw in a few pictures.

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Dubrovnik

After we left Venice, our first stop was in Dubrovnik, Croatia. It was interesting to be at the scene of a war that took place while I was in law school rather than taking place way back in history that I can't remember, like World War II. Our tour guide lived in Dubrovnik during the war. She was about eleven when it was going on, and she had stories about knowing which kind of bomb was falling on the city based on how it sounded. The kids would run out and play in between the rounds of shelling.

We first took a cable car above the city, which gave us a nice view. You can see some of that, along with a damaged fort that still hasn't been repaired from the war.

We then went back down to the old town. That part of Dubrovnik is mostly just for tourists now, but it was interesting. Lindsey found a few new friends. She also spent some time filling in for the tour guide.

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All told, we found Dubrovnik to be a very nice place. I've mentioned before how hard it is for me to imagine Germany and France at war, even though World War II took place seventy years ago. It's equally hard to imagine a war right in the middle of Europe just fifteen years ago, but that's what was going on when Yugoslavia dissolved.