Author Archives: Jen

Who let the dogs out?

Lanie did, as a matter of fact.

Dinner on the terrace

This morning started with a bang. Everyone was puttering around in various areas of the house, when Lanie and Ganya apparently decided to go play with the dogs. Except that they were no match for 100+ pound Silvio and his friend Joya, who bowled them over as soon as they unlatched the gate. Lanie came racing into the house in tears, yelling that the dogs were out. Quickly the whole house was roused (in many cases still in pajamas) and combing the copious trails of the hillside in every direction, frantically calling for the dogs. Eventually Joya was located and safely returned to her pen. However, there was no sign of Silvio.

This is where we get to sleep. Tough life.

Silvia and Stefano were away for a few days, while Silvia traveled to Romania to be with her mother during surgery. Now, I should emphasize here just how wonderful the owners of the villa have been to us. Not only did they ensure we had every convenience, not only did Silvia actually make an impromptu dinner for twelve on the night of our arrival, not only did Stefano and his friend push heavy bikes up a steep hillside for multiple kilometers – in addition to all that, they actually LEFT US THEIR CAR, thus saving the Brookses the inconvenience and expense of going to Florence to rent a car for the week. So suffice it to say that no one was looking forward to informing them that we had managed to lose their dog. But after a couple of hours of traipsing through the woods in all directions, we had to concede defeat.

Fortunately Silvia and Stefano were wonderful about this as well. They told us that Silvio has tags and a chip and is known to all the neighbors (this was not his first escape) and they didn’t seem overly concerned. We’re hoping for his speedy return.

In Radda in Chianti

This evening we left Sam in charge of the kids and went out for a grown-up dinner in the neighboring town of Radda in Chianti. It was quaint and beautiful like most of the other towns around here, with old stone buildings lining winding streets. We had a long, relaxed dinner where Wendy, Chris, and Bob sampled the Fionentino, a huge, thick steak that requires at least two people to consume. It was all delicious, from the fried bread they gave us before our meal to the homemade limoncello that they brought over afterward. And on the way home, while keeping their eyes peeled for Silvio, Bob and Chris saw a wild boar on the side of the road.

***

Wherefore art thou, Silvio? Your disappearance has really shaken us up. Especially before we heard back from Silvia and were unsure how your owners would take the news of your flight. I had visions of poor Stefano breaking down into tears in Nadia’s arms as they consoled each other – all the kids really took this hard.

Cultural differences are tough to track, and an Italian’s attitude toward his canino is not something I have studied. Are pets held in as high esteem here? Are you guys friends or servants? They did tell us you and Joya were just brought on here to scare away the wild boars and the deer.

To be honest, Silvio, we suspected that your owners wouldn’t be that surprised that you had snuck out. You’ve been ramming your nose into that gate opening from the moment we got here. It’s not that they don’t care about you, though, buddy. You’ve got the microchip and all. They clearly want you back. Go ahead, have your fun, but come back soon, d’accordo?

It’s bad luck that I won’t have a special treat for you when you get here. The outdoor market in Figline was not especially pet-centered. In fact, if Jen and I had not found the inconspicuous side street that led to the fruit and vegetable stands, we would have left thinking that the market was generally meant for women shopping for clothing. Any chance you’d come back for a nice pair of jeans, old buddy? I didn’t think so.

Then there was the huge bone

left over from tonight’s massive steak dinner. That would have been enough to get you running all the way from Greve in Chianti. At the restaurant, the waiter fiddled around with it for a minute and made like he thought I was going to gnaw on it. I asked him if we could take it home, but he must not have realized what I was asking.

It’s another cultural difference that we’re just going to have to live with, big guy. No doggy bags in Italy.

Under the Tuscan sun

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This is more like it. Our hosts gave us a quick and dense set of directions for the house and descriptions of nearby attractions, and then they were off for a few days. We explored the villa, talked and played – the latter occurred like this: Lanie and Africawit were constant companions, from their in-bed story telling In the morning to their seating (or for Lanie, napping) places at dinner; similar for

Nadia and Meredith, who spent much of their time looking after the villa’s resident canines, Joya and Silvio; the rest of the kids floated around reading, playing games, trying out the very cold swimming pool and even working out on the workout room. Just about all the kids got into a spa day, using the tub and sauna in the master bedroom. Jen and Wendy explored the woods; Chris and I played a game of bocce, which, in fact, does feel more authentic in Italy. (This also may be because I won.)

Chris and I also ventured into Figline, the nearest town with a decent supermarket. In fact it has at least three supermarkets and we went to two of them. The largest and newest, the COOP, was our actual destination because Silvia (our host, not to be confused with the larger of the villa’s dogs, Silvio) said it was the cheapest one around. Sadly, despite what Silvia calls its “Communist” leanings, COOP observes the Sabbath. We found another supermarket quickly and got most of what we wanted, but the only bread we could find was soft, sliced “Wonderbread”-style stuff. Imagine, coming to Italy and eating that kind of bread. So we found the third one and got some crusty bread, corn nuts, blood oranges and cookies. These were just the things to top off our provisions.

This was an exciting moment. Wendy
and Chris are staying in a little outbuilding,
and the keys got locked in. Chris managed
to retrieve them using a set of grabbers
and duct tape.

Checking out was not too bad, except the first place would not accept MasterCard, and the Pavliks are running low on Euro. At the second place, which does accept MasterCard, by the way, the lady in front of us at the checkout had a bit of a conundrum. From what we could gather, she didn’t have quite enough money to pay for what the checkout lady had scanned (they have checkout ladies and scanners here, just like at home). Slowly she started to alternately give items back to the teller and pull more loose change from her purse. She gave back her two bottles of Coke, her eggs, one of her sausages, and some kind of soft cheese or sour cream (I was really paying attention).

Every time she handed something back, the checkout lady would look at me and Chris, the next people in lline, rather intently. Did she want us to pay? Was this some sort of Italian tradition? On Tuscan Sundays everyone pays for the person before them? Cultures are so difficult to figure out, and, moreover, anyone who knows me knows that I pride myself on my impeccable supermarket etiquette. I was getting to feel uncomfortable.

Happily, the checkout lady was merely trying to mentally subtract returned items for the desperate lady’s total. Apparently, the Italian scanners can’t scan backwards.

In actuality, the lady wasn’t really that desperate. It was all very cordial and calm, unlike, I suspect, how something similar might go down at home. I watched and waited for the point where the lady would succumb and give back one of her several bottles and boxes of wine. She did not touch any of them. Eventually she managed to pull out enough Euros and Euro cents from her purse, and she handed back a package of cheese slices, so she could cover what she had left in her basket.

A Tuscan supermarket story with a happy ending – what could be better? We ate crusty bread, Romano cheese, prosciutto from a block that Jen carved up nicely, olive oil and garlic, sundried tomatoes, olives, pesto, balsamic vinegar, and probably some other stuff that seems to fit into our picture of a rustic Italian meal. We liked it a lot.

***

From Jen:

This place is pretty amazing, inside and out. As I was wandering around on that first morning, I wondered where the kids were. It turned out they were all in the GYM, of all places, working diligently on the various machines. Apparently this is great fun for them. (None of the adults have ventured into the gym at all.) You’d have thought the Brooks kids, at least, would have had enough exercise for this lifetime.

Lanie nodded off before the pizza
arrived, but luckily she came back
to life once it was in front of her.

We have this hillside to ourselves, and eventually the kids availed themselves of some of its other diversions: a small pond where you could catch tadpoles, a little playground, a soccer field, a badminton set. The pool, even though the weather is distinctly chilly. The dogs, which the owners had tentatively asked us to feed in the evening for the next two days, thinking we were doing them a big favor, when in reality this was a major highlight for the kids. And all of it set against a breathtaking background of Tuscan countryside. We’re staying in the middle of the Chianti region, and there are grape vines and olive trees everywhere.

We spent most of the day around the villa, no one feeling like going anywhere. For dinner we decided to head into the nearest village, Lucolena in Chianti, to a pizzeria that Silvia had highly recommended. Chris managed to successfully convey to them over the phone that a group of 12 of us would be arriving. The pizza and pasta were delicious, like everywhere else we’ve eaten here. It’s amazing to me that you can stop into any random restaurant in any tiny town you come across and expect a wonderful meal.

Our kingdom for a GPS

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Remember the three rules of The Princess Bride, like “Never get involved in a land war in Asia”? We have a fourth one to add: “Never attempt to drive anywhere in Tuscany without a superb GPS and a firm grasp of Italian.” Also, Dramamine.

We were so naïve this morning, optimistically setting out with Google directions and insufficiently detailed maps. The villa in Tuscany where we’ll be spending the next week was supposedly about 3.5 hours from Rome, and by going a bit out of our way, we could also hit a very cool-sounding attraction on the way: a thermal spring area with warm turquoise waters cascading down over a series of waterfalls. This area is known for the healing powers of its waters, and has been used for thousands of years. It’s also, we discovered, quite a bit off the beaten path.

We quickly discovered our Google directions were useless, since they said things like “Turn onto Provincial Route 105”. In Italy, provincial routes do not appear to be labeled by number. Instead, they’re labeled by the next (too small to appear on the map) village that they lead to. Also, in rural Tuscany no one seems to speak English.

It took hours to get to the Terme di Saturnia. Luckily it was a very cool place – beautiful and free and totally unspoiled, despite the substantial number of people there. It was fortunate that the waters were warm, because the day was quite chilly. It was unfortunate that we had no towels, but we managed none the less.

Then came more hours attempting to get back to the highway. We were winding through an absolutely beautiful landscape, but no one was much in the mood to appreciate it. We all chose to focus instead on not throwing up in our new rental car. Bob and I summoned up our Pimsleur-language-CD Italian skills and managed to ask for directions, but the flaw in this plan quickly became evident: we would be answered in a torrent of Italian of which we understood not a word. People were very friendly and helpful – one elderly man talked nonstop for five minutes, gesturing all the while – but we pretty much just had to rely on going the way they pointed then stopping to ask the next person along the road. (Bob and I later theorized that maybe they were saying things like, “Whatever you do, don’t go that way. That would be the WORST possible way to go.”)

We thought our troubles were over when we finally found the highway again, but we soon discovered that the directions to our villa were less than stellar. The first clue was when the exit we were supposed to be taking from the highway (again, not numbered) did not exist. There followed several more increasingly desperate hours of travel, particularly when we discovered our directions ended at a random point and there was no indication of where to go from there.

I think the low point was when we stopped at a random roadside house and I had a long conversation with an elderly deaf woman and her daughter, who tried valiantly to assist me. (At one point we even attempted to speak in French.) Eventually she pulled me to the window, and pointed across the steep valley to a distant house on the opposite hillside. “Ma dove es LA VIA?,” <”but where is THE ROAD?”, I think> I cried in despair, and there she couldn’t help me.

Now before you feel all sorry for us, let’s turn to the tale of our friends, the Brookses, who were BIKING to the villa from Florence. We passed them on the road at one point when we were all under the impression that we were a couple of kilometers away. This was a very mistaken impression. We were about 14 kilometers away, over very steep hills, and it was getting dark. Bob had been planning to go back for them but this didn’t quite work out when we couldn’t find the villa ourselves.

Asking directions in Greve in Chianti

Eventually, thankfully, we made it, thanks to a helpful resident of the tiny village of La Pescina, who was willing to walk with me and actually point out the (small, dirt) road we needed to take. Upon arrival our hostess Silvia came running out with a camera. Her husband Stefano and his friends had gone off to rescue the Brookses, and he’d called her and said, “You have to bring out your camera for this.” It was now fully dark; one of the friends drove home a few of the Brooks kids while the others walked the bikes up the final steep hill. The saintly Silvia made us a big pot of pasta since no one could conceive of getting back in a car (and it was now 8:30 at night). And she’d left an amazing tiramisu in the fridge. And the villa is amazing enough to make up for everything.

At this point Wendy cheerfully thinks she only has
2 km left to go.

***

From Bob:

We won’t talk too much about today, save to say that a few rules applied above and beyond Murphy’s Law. One is that the longer the road is, the better the meal at the end. Another is that anything is better with the Brookses involved.

We will get the added pleasure of seeing them observe the surrounding countryside for the first time tomorrow morning. Most of them arrived after dark and were only able to take in the building itself, which is plenty, really, to bite off in one sitting. Like the Coliseum, it loves up to our elevated expectations. Give it high marks for remoteness.

While we’re at it, we’ll give Europecar a thumbs up for convenience and for giving decent driving directions out of Rome. Driving there was something I’d been dreading. Thankfully, Jen planned for us to be leaving on a Saturday morning and traffic was light. Signage was not great, though, and we had one snag before we hit the A1. It would not be the last.

The girls also deserve much applause for rolling with the highs and lows of a marathon driving day. Zoe’s singing lessons carried them all through the worst of it.

That’s Stefano and Silvia in the background. Their four-year-old son, Andreas, took this photo. This room dates
from the 11th century! You can’t really tell but the whole thing slants to the right because it was starting to fall
over until a previous owner reinforced it.

Markets and gladiators and tired feet

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At the Campo de’Fiori

Our hotel is noisy. For such a dinky street outside our window, there’s a lot of traffic. Of course, this did not stop us from sleeping for 14 hours last night. Although the windows don’t seem to close well enough to keep out the street noise, the shutters and blinds really do well to keep out the light. I remember waking up a few times over night and thinking how strange it was that they were doing street construction in the middle of the night.

To add insult to injury, at the end of our
long walk, we had to climb these steps.

It wasn’t the middle of the night. It was probably 8 am. We didn’t really rouse ourselves until almost 10! This was ok. We’re half-acclimated to Italy time.

Missing the hotel breakfast was a little sad, but we hit the streets again, looking for more adventure. Our directional sense seems to have improved. We got around well enough to make it to the Campo di Fiori market by brunch time. And we were able to get the food we bought to the park next to the Forum square in the middle of lunch hour. Somehow we managed to find a quiet, shady park bench amid the throngs of people milling around the forum and Coliseum.

View from the top of those steps.

Our big tip of the day: Go to the Forum first. You get a combo ticket, see? (No discount for children originating outside the EU.) And the line to buy them at the Forum was 12 people deep. The line to buy tickets at the Coliseum when we finally got over there was 1,200 people deep. That was a good line to miss. The Coliseum was a good thing not to miss. Unlike many marquee tourist locations, this one held up to high expectations. Archeological exhibits inside the upper ring showed items from the everyday lives of the average Coliseum attendees — bone sewing needles, chicken bones from in-game snacks, glass beads from a bracelet, stylus pens – that were retrieved from the drains after they were swept there by workers a thousand years ago. There was much evidence of betting, ancient graffiti, and even game boards scratched into the benches to occupy people’s time while the games were at a lull.

The Roman Forum

The structure itself was solidly impressive, and larger than I expected. It was also so familiar that little description was necessary as we walked along the inner terraces. Crowds were large, but unobtrusive, except for when you were trying to take a picture or trying to avoid being in someone else picture. The gift shop was small and hidden way off to the side. That’s not to say there weren’t dozens of people milling about outside trying to sell us stuff, but the expectation has become that the whole tour would dump you into an elaborate gift store extravaganza finale. This was missing and probably will be until Disney takes over.

Orange tree

That left the walk home, which, after we ruled out a trip on the Metro, was not that bad. The area around the Coliseum, Forum and Piazza di Venizia were very crowded, but the people were genial. We may escape Rome without having our pockets picked. From there we had our bearings and it was not a long stroll at all home, with a detour for dinner for good measure.

A note on Roman dining: Those outdoor streetside cafes are inviting, especially on days like today, when the temperature was mild and you could sit outside in the evening without a jacket. The appeal of the quiet, narrow side streets is very strong; however, the streets are not always as quiet as they appear. They’re plenty narrow, alright. A few cars came surprisingly close to Jen, who occupied the end seat of our table.

Almost getting run over while
eating dinner

From Jen:

It was another gorgeous, sunny day today – an important factor given that everything we’ve been doing is outside. On the other hand, this may have encouraged us to become a little overambitious in the amount of walking we took on. In our defense, there was a transit strike today, so we didn’t have the option of taking a bus or metro anyway (though given our propensity to take wrong turns, we’re more comfortable on foot where the consequences aren’t as dramatic).

2/3 of the kids were beat by the time we got to the Roman Forum. Bob and I took turns exploring with Zoe while the other two rested (and Lanie actually fell asleep at one point). We all made it up Palatine Hill, which was my favorite part in any case – you could walk amongst the ruins and through beautiful gardens, with fragrant magnolias and orange trees, with a beautiful view of the Forum and Rome laid out beneath you. (Once we got done with this portion of the walking, Zoe joined the ranks of the exhausted.)

The kids rallied for the Colosseum, though. (This was mostly because we told them there would be gelato afterwards. This is a powerful motivator. And then we noticed that it was after 6:00 by the time we left the Colosseum, so we pulled a bait and switch and made them eat dinner first.)

All roads lead to here

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At Trevi Fountain. It seemed like everywhere we wanted to go involved going through this piazza, so we saw
quite a lot of Trevi Fountain. This is in the uncrowded early morning hours — usually it’s thronged with people.

Confession: I didn’t like Rome too much last time I was here. When you’re a 21-year old college student staying in youth hostels, it seems you get a lot of unwanted attention from various sleazy young men. Fortunately, it seems this is not a problem when you’re a 41-year old mother of three.

It’s evening in Rome, and we’re still standing. It’s been a very busy day. Our flight left Boston at 5 pm last night, and I have to say that we’ve become big fans of Alitalia. We got dinner – macaroni and cheese with what appeared to be pancetta – plus wine and various other snacks. We had pillows and blankets and headphones. The kids had Phineas and Ferb to watch on their individual TV sets. (We also got breakfast – pastry and yogurt and, unaccountably, Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies. But given that this was served at around midnight EST, we were marginally less enthusiastic.) Also, the coffee I had on the plane was better than just about anything I’ve had in an American restaurant.

The kids managed to sleep a few hours on the plane, before we were woken up for “breakfast” at 11:45 pm (or 5:45 am, as the case may be). Our flight landed an hour later and we were up for the day. The taxi ride to our hotel was a real thrill ride, careening down narrow cobblestone alleys that were completely unsuited to automotive traffic, buildings and pedestrians flashing by about 6 inches away on either side.

The Spanish Steps (again, early morning
hours; again, usually thronged)

It was much too early to get into our hotel, of course, so we set off on a walking tour of nearby landmarks. As it turns out, our hotel room doesn’t have a lot to recommend it (unless you’re a fan of aged décor and unreliable plumbing), but the location is great. We were a short walk from the Spanish Steps and the spectacular Trevi Fountain. These are normally packed with people, but at 7:30 am were only populated by a few street cleaners.

At this point we fell prey to what we’ve since found is the Rome Directional Vortex, which rendered both of us completely unable to read a map. We were supposedly about 5 minutes from the Pantheon, according to the Google directions I’d printed out earlier, and we were supposed to be meeting our friends the Brookses (whom we haven’t seen in 10 months) there. But somehow neither Bob nor I was at all able to navigate. We’d find where we were on the map, determine which direction to go, then stop a few minutes later, pull out the map to check our progress, scratch our heads, and discovered we had no idea where we were. We then had to find ourselves on the map again and restart the cycle. We must have walked for miles, mostly in the wrong direction, attempting to get to the Pantheon. Luckily, Rome offers many rewards to the wanderer, with amazing architecture, ancient ruins, and fascinating people-watching everywhere you looked.

Reunited at the Pantheon

Finally we made it, and there was much excitement being reunited with our friends again. It was clear that we needed to go somewhere where the kids could run around and squeal without disturbing hordes of people, so we set off for the Villa Borghese, a huge, beautiful park near our hotel. Here Bob and I managed to get lost in the park. We were attempting to find this particular playground, but eventually just gave up in despair.

Probably the kids’ favorite stop of the day was the Piazza Navona, a huge oval piazza with the famous Fountain of the Four Rivers and lots of artists and street performers. Nadia desperately wanted to give all of them coins, and given that the smallest coins we had were 2 euros each, that would have been a rather expensive proposition.

Despite all the horsey rides, Lanie didn’t
quite make it through the day.

The kids were rock stars today. We didn’t end up getting back to our hotel until after 7pm at night, so we all made it the full day on little to no sleep. In addition, we walked for miles and miles. (Lanie is the exception to this, as she convinced all of the other 7 kids to play a “horsey” game wherein they gave her piggy back rides. Somehow, Tom Sawyer-like, she managed to have them all fighting over the privilege of who would get to carry her around next while she crouched on their backs and shouted, “Canter! Gallop!”.)

***

From Bob:

This was a long day, indeed. Even beyond all the international travel elements, and the rigors of being in a different country, this family really pounds the pavement. I think most Romans would be ready for bed if they followed us around from the Spanish steps to all the way through our urban hike around town.

At one point, we decided it was just a little too early to pack it in, so we took a walk from the second-highest-rated restaurant in Rome (which happens to be a gelato shop) all the way to the Piazza Navona. Chris Brooks’ smart phone told us it would be .6 kilometers, which seemed like no sweat. Getting four adults across this particular .6 kilometers of Roman terrain would have been a nice stroll. There were mostly pedestrian-friendly alleyways and street vendors, and lots of pedestrians by this time of the evening.

Getting eight kids across this route was a little more involved, what with all the pedestrians, street

Gelato! At supposedly the 2nd best place in Rome.

vendors and small Roman automobiles that seem to consider themselves pedestrians. Oh, and I forgot Wendy’s mom Susan, she was there too. She was just as sturdy a travel as the kids were. My point is, that if you just counted our mileage it might not seem like that much, but we covered some ground. Enough ground, in fact, that Lanie gave out just as our final trip back to the hotel commenced. I had to carry her limp form all the way home. It actually wasn’t that bad, though I wish our hotel room was on the first floor and not the fourth.

Now for what we learned during all this walking. Somebody could write a book about all this old stuff here. It won’t be me though, because I really didn’t take a lot of the dates and facts in very well. I’m generally quite interested in history, but history here is rather oppressive. It keeps following you around and jumping out behind every corner. This little fountain here the middle of this lonely plaza used to be for cows, apparently. And this statue commemorates this incredibly famous person from antiquity, while that enormous edifice is for some guy I’ve never heard of who died in 1873 (which, in Rome, was yesterday). The ancient ruins on this block are different from the ancient ruins over there because…I’ve got nothing. I have no idea why these ruins are different from those. I won’t be able to relay how dense the historical atmosphere is here. Every five minutes, not at all figuratively, there is a new building in front of you that makes you say to your wife, “That must be special.” And you wife says back, “Yeah.” And then you complete the same conversation five minutes down the road.

One of the ubiquitous Roman fountains

What has stuck with me, and what I think the Romans do particularly well, is water. Yes, this includes the famous fountains, which are beautiful to behold, and offer a nice gathering point for living statues and spray paint artists. But I’m mostly referring to the small, barely conspicuous flows of water that we encountered countless times today just splashing away in little out of the way corners. Sometimes they’re just pipes sticking up out of the ground bubbling away, sometimes the water emerges from a lion’s mouth or a maiden’s bucket.

This is how old Europe does drinking water. I assume it’s carried in on the same aqueduct that brings water to the Trevi. It’s potable, we know, because we’ve been drinking it all day. We would not have thought to do this on our own, but we saw lots and lots of Roman folk walk right up and take a swig. Businessmen hold their ties out of the way and lean right in. Scores of school kids gather round with empty soda bottles and push each other out of the way to fill up. “Que fresca!” I heard one kid say. Although this sounded like Spanish to me, I did not disagree with the sentiment. It was quite good, fresh water.

At one point in the afternoon we knew we had pizza coming and we were in the middle of a park. We were out of water, but I knew there was water somewhere. We roamed the park looking for a drinking fountain. All we could find were the decorative kind. Maybe you could drink out of them, but we could only reach the standing water part of the fountain, and I wasn’t sure that the spraying part wasn’t just recycled from the pool anyway. There was one little fountain that had a trickle coming out of a rock that dripped down into a small, but deep pool. I was thinking about swinging in and trying to figure out how to snatch some, when a huge dog ran right in front of us and jumped in the pool and started licking the rock. The kids in my water search party did not think this was a good sign.

The last drinking fountain we remembered was at the top of the Spanish Steps, which didn’t seem too far away on the map. Jen and Nadia ventured out and were defeated by the Roman streets. It’s a tough city to get around in because of all the streets. It sounds weird, I know, but it’s true. They have so many streets here, but most of them are only 50 feet long. You’re on one street, then there’s a huge but otherwise nondescript piece of antiquity, and then you’re not on that street anymore, it’s another street and it’s difficult to figure out how you got there. It’s taking us quite a while to get used to this.

Luckily, Nadia and Jen made it back to o

ur playground headquarters, albeit without any water, and guess who managed to save the day? Me, of course. Well, it was really a school trip of third graders from Lazio or somewhere and they were all gathered in a big crowd right there next to our playground. A mass of orange baseball caps jostling for position in the middle of a Roman park can mean just one thing. I grabbed a water bottle and went right over and, after patiently waiting my turn, filled right up.

You can check this story out yourself. Just go to the big park up on the hill and go over to where the puppet theater is next to the playground and the hut with little kids’ rides like the ones in the mall that for some reason our kids did not seem to notice the whole time we were there today. There’s a fountain right in that place. Bathrooms are another story, though.

The pizza was really good, too.

At the Villa Borghese. That one boy on the left is not one of ours, lest you be confused.

On the road again

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Emboldened by our success this summer, we’re gearing up for our next adventure. This time, we’re off to Italy! So it’s not a “getaway van” so much as a “getaway plane/rental car”.

This is a big step for us. Bob and I haven’t been to Europe since our study abroad days half a lifetime ago. The kids have never been. Their only experience outside the U.S. was not exactly a culture shock (Day 2: O Canada!). Despite the fact that our 5-week cross-country road trip required LOTS of planning, it also seemed to me less intimidating than a trip that involves passports, foreign languages, different currency, and a six-hour time change.

While last summer we were engaged in laying in supply of beef jerky, peanut butter, and approximately 597 travel games/books for the car, this time our needs are somewhat different. Where should we change currency, and how much should we bring? What kind of rental car insurance do you need in Italy? We’re buying money belts, a power adapter, a cheap European cell phone. We’re listening to Pimsleur Conversational Italian CDs. (We’ve been impressed with these, but I also think they are designed for a certain kind of traveler. We’ve spent a lot of time learning such things as, “Do you want to come back to my place?” The kids are fond of pointing out that we’ve learned the words for beer and wine, but not water or milk. One particularly hilarious lesson involved a man repeatedly trying to get a woman to go back to his place, and her escalating series of refusals. (I guess the Pimsleur folks feel that a visitor to Italy is likely to be able to use either one side of this dialog or the other.) In any case, it’s entertaining listening to your 5-year-old dutifully parroting back such gems as “Would you like to drink something with me?” and “I’ll have two beers, please.”)

My friends Nancy and Julie with our ubiquitous backpacks

I’m the only one who’s been to Italy before, but under very different circumstances. It was my friend Julie and I (and sometimes her brother Jim, and possibly our friend Nancy – was Nancy with us in Italy at all? This is the kind of trip it was, where fellow travelers came and went, and the details fade after 20+ years). We were carefree college students rambling our way around Europe, carrying only our Eurail passes, passports, remnants of various currencies, and whatever small amount of clothing would fit into our backpacks. We rented bunk beds in cheap youth hostels and made meals out of bread and cheese bought from street vendors and rated museums by their “life-suck” potential.

This is the sort of scene that most likely will NOT occur
on this European vacation.

The regular American tourists we saw back then – people like we are now, with kids and rolling suitcases and rental cars – existed on a completely different plane than we did. Despite the fact that they had private hotel rooms and regular hot meals and various other creature comforts, I wouldn’t have traded places. To me, they were Tourists with a capital T, seeing the sights but not really feeling the life of whatever city we were in. For the most part the only locals they spoke with were those who were selling or trying to sell them something. Though we were often visiting the same sites they did, we felt like we were in a different world – immersed in the crowds of young multi-national grungy backpackers, riding city buses and striking up acquaintances from all over the world. (Also, given our appearance after weeks on the road, certainly no one would have bothered trying to sell us anything.)

I think this is the Spanish Steps in Rome.
When Bob saw this picture, he started
shouting, “The puzzle! The puzzle!” It seems
we spent several months of our lives this year
working on a puzzle of this very scene. (No, I
didn’t recognize it.) We had to get out
the box to confirm it.

With three kids in tow, and rather higher standards for safety and hygiene, I have no illusions that I can replicate this earlier experience. But I’m hoping to travel (relatively) light just the same. This passage from The Joy of Less by Francine Jay made me think of our earlier travels:

Think about what a pain it is to drag around two or three heavy suitcases when you’re on vacation. You’ve anticipated the trip for ages, and when you disembark from your plane you can’t wait to explore the sights. Not so fast — first you have to wait (and wait and wait) for your bags to appear on the luggage carousel. Next, you need to haul them through the airport. You might as well head to the taxi stand, as maneuvering them on the subway would be nearly impossible…When you finally reach [your hotel], you collapse in exhaustion…

This is the sort of classy accommodations
Julie and I stayed in. This was in Venice —
I wonder if they have any vacancies?

Imagine traveling with only a light backpack instead…You arrive at your destination, leap off the plane…jump on the subway, catch a bus, or start walking in the direction of your hotel. Along the way, you experience all the sights, sounds, and smells of a foreign city, with the time and energy to savor it all.

So my old friend the backpack is coming down from the attic. And we’re asking the kids to fit all their stuff into their school backpacks, so they can carry it themselves. We won’t have a car while we’re in Rome or Venice. Certainly we’ll do a lot of walking, and maybe we’ll take a city bus or two.

Our friends the Brookses, who we’re spending most of the trip with, certainly have this down. They’ve spent much of the past 8 months biking around Europe, lugging all their possessions (including camping gear) along with them and having fabulous adventures. Surely we can survive a 12-day trip with substantially less.

Days 35-77: Epilogue

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OK, so we’ve been a bit remiss in wrapping up this trip blog. I’m sure no one even remembers at this point that we were gone. (We sometimes can barely remember ourselves.) But I’m up to the final page in my online scrapbook, which has been so easy to put together thanks to this blog, so that has forced us to finally wrap this thing up.

The final 2.5 hours of our trip, home from western Massachusetts, proved uneventful. We were all pretty excited as we got close to home, especially the kids. (“Look, it’s Home Depot! OUR Home Depot!”) Though Zoe and Nadia were not in fact excited enough to make it all the way to our actual house. They’d gotten a better offer for a pool party at their friends’ house, so they elected to get dropped off there on our way back.

Bob, Lanie, and I were pleased to find that nothing had burned down or fallen over in our absence. The garden was wildly overgrown but we managed to find some vegetables lurking in the underbrush. Fang, our cat, was extremely happy to see us once he had expressed his initial displeasure with our being gone so long. (At 17 years old, Fang has abandoned the wilder tendencies of his youth and pretty much likes to spend all his time sleeping in one of our laps.)

Check out the size of the white carrot in
Lanie’s left hand!

I rejoiced in my brilliant decision to hire someone to clean our house a few days before we got back. (It took her twice as long as she had estimated based on the size of the house. She said, “Things were really dusty! I’m sure it was because you were away.” Because we were away — yes, let’s go with that.) Cleaning the car was bad enough — we couldn’t have coped with the house too.

We didn’t really get to ease back into normal life slowly, since school (which included new middle school for Zoe and the start of kindergarten for Lanie) began five days after our return. Though I had expected that life on the road, camping without creature comforts, would be stressful at times, we actually found it to be a refreshing break. We may have had to walk across a campground to get water, but what did it matter? We were in no rush. No one had to be anywhere at any particular time. We may have had to cook on a picnic table with minimal equipment and only basic ingredients, but that sure simplified the process of choosing and preparing meals. (The contrast between this and our normal existence became painfully obvious very quickly after returning home.)

*****

From Bob:

Last week, I finally vacuumed out the car.

We’ve been home from our trip for a month and a half, and not only have I not sat down to write a final blog posting, I’ve only just finished emptying the Getaway Van.

This is sad, I know; however, we’ve really been enjoying having faucets of hot and cold water close at hand. And sleeping quarters that we don’t have to roll up. And it’s been so long since we’ve had just peanuts for lunch.

Welcome back, says the rut. I knew I’d see you again.

No, not really. I wouldn’t say we’re in a rut. Life has taken off in different directions, with middle school and another round of kindergarten and two kids taking violin now. Cross country has just ended. Swimming is in full swing, and so is gymnastics.

Our first course on our
first night home

The garden was overgrown when we got back, but we got that under control and we were getting cucumbers and tomatoes until last week. There were good crops of leeks and tomatillos, but only a pint-sized butternut squash.

Fang has forgiven us – his hunger strike over, he’s started to put some weight back on. We still have the “Welcome Back, Pavliks” sign in the entryway. Many thanks to the Zamanskys.

Everything is ok.

Apparently the main thing Lanie missed
was her jewelry.

So, with so much else under control, I revisited the van and its sediment. In crevices I found almonds, likely distributed when the bag was dropped on day two as we left Niagara Falls. There were lots of crayons and granola bar wrappers. I found a ticket stub from our Chicago river cruise and a few unused post cards from Howe Caverns. There was also a wooden nickel from our Mammoth Cave tour. I found map of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone that (I hope) we paid 50 cents to take with us. I did not see, but it was probably there, way down deep, lots of red Arches sand. There probably is still more stuff in there – I eventually turned the job over to the eminently helpful, but not always thorough Lanie. We may have an almond tree growing behind the middle row in a year or two.

Despite my fears, the van has not fallen apart. I took her to the garage a week after we returned and we didn’t need new brakes at all, and the tires were good enough to carry us until winter (I just got them changed this week, because winter may be closer than we know – but the brakes are still good). All it took in August was an oil change to turn off the “Maintenance Required” light, and we were all set to roll on. All credit to Toyota engineering. Here are some details from our trip, as preserved in our trip journal:

o Total mileage covered: 7,042

o Gallons of gas purchased: 277.941*

o Average price per gallon: $3.64 (trip low: $3.38 Wyethville, VA; trip high: $3.89 in Yellowstone)

o Total paid in gas: $1,011.70*

o Average gas mileage: 25.336*

* We left Durham with a full tank of gas and returned with one a few gallons shy of full. I never registered the next fill up in the trip journal. If you want the precise numbers, you would have to factor this in. Also, I am suspicious of the gas mileage numbers, as the van is only rated for 19 city / 23 highway, and I considered it pretty weighed down. I may have failed to register a fill up or two along the way, although a quick analysis shows that we got really great mileage (like 26+ mpg) in Yellowstone and Utah. Is mileage usually better at higher elevations?

This is Fang showing his opinion of us leaving him for 5 weeks.
He got over it though.

This should answer a few of the most popular questions that remain about our trip. Luckily we blogged well – completely and with good detail. This has helped Jen as she has pieced together a book of our adventures, with text and plenty of pictures. Look for it on a coffee table in our house sometime soon. Judging by what I’ve seen of it so far, it will be stunning to see.

Once that’s finished…well, there may be another adventure on the horizon for Jen to get her traveling hands dirty. I won’t say too much, except that we may be leaving the Getaway Van behind this time.

Thank you for reading. See you soon. Arrivederci.

Dinner on the porch! One thing we did miss. And our friend Leah too.

Day 34 – Homeward Bound

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Arrival in Philadelphia

Bethesda, MD to Chicopee, MA

Our final real travel day! (After all this, the 2 ½ hours from my mom’s house to ours will seem like nothing.) We’d been planning to get a somewhat earlier start, but we all were having too much fun spending time with our friends to be too efficient in the morning. After Kathleen headed off to work we finally got everything packed up and on the road again.

The Liberty Torch in the Please Touch museum

When we’re looking for a break-up-the-long-drive destination, children’s museums are generally our go-to option. Kathleen suggested the Please Touch! Museum in Philadelphia, and that seemed to fit the bill perfectly. On the way we pretty much managed to eat up the last contents of our snack box – beef jerky, peanuts, granola bars, fruit leather – and call it lunch. (I think that after this trip all of us will be ready for a break from these items. Which is rather inconvenient with school starting so soon, as peanut-butter sandwiches are also a very popular school-lunch choice.)

The museum turned out to be quite stunning. The setting was a large city park, and the building had once been the art gallery for the centennial World’s Fair in 1876. It was ornate and beautiful, with a huge glass domed roof, and immaculately maintained. (The other stunning part was the price. It was very fortunate that we had our handy Children’s Museum Reciprocal Membership card with us, which covered four members of the family. The price for the remaining ticket for one child was $16!)

Actual walking piano used in the movie Big

In fitting with their environment, the exhibits were beautiful too. The kids had a great time playing in all the exhibits, but the part Bob and I liked best was a section on the 1876 World’s Fair. There was a very large model of the fairgrounds with lots of information, and some replicas of exhibits that were seen there. We also took in a show called “Eat Like a Pirate” (with an extremely heavy-handed message about healthy eating that I doubt took in even the two-year-olds).We got through the museum in about three hours, which was just right for our planned time for hitting the road.

Remember that Simpsons episode about the monorail?
I hear that song (“Monorail!”) in my head every
time I see the word.

Things did not go quite so smoothly for the remainder of the day. We figured that leaving Philadelphia at 3:30 we might have some issues getting through New York near rush hour, so we called our friend Justin, New Yorker extraordinaire, for guidance. He gave us some advice that I’m sure would have been very useful if we managed to follow it, but we ended up taking a wrong turn and going a substantial distance northWEST rather than northeast (though this certainly did help us avoid traffic, since apparently not too many people were interested in going to western New Jersey).

Dinner was a surprising problem too, given that we spent a large amount of time on a road covered in strip malls, with restaurants everywhere. The problem was that the restaurant we wanted always seemed to pop up at the last minute on the wrong side of the road with no break in the traffic to get to it, and an opportunity to turn around wouldn’t appear for so long that we couldn’t face the thought of going all the way back. Or, in one instance, we happily saw a billboard for a place “ahead on the left” and managed to get into the left lane, only to find that it was one of those stupid “jug handle” turns where you have to go right to go left that New Jersey seems unaccountably fond of. Eventually we made it into a Panera – which was fine until after we’d finished and the kids were crushed to discover an Olive Garden literally 100 feet down the road. (Luckily the box of frosted scones we’d bought on the way out seemed to help ease the pain.)

Kids in space

Lastly, we had to contend with rude, Type-A drivers. Usually we don’t have this problem unless we go to Boston. (If, say, a lane is closed in New Hampshire and traffic has built up, you will see the cars from each line politely taking turns, and everyone gets through as efficiently and calmly as possible. Connecticut drivers, on the other hand, seem to view this situation as some sort of contest for dominance, where their pride hangs on never allowing another driver in front of them, no matter the cost. At one point Bob and I were actually annoyed enough that we both opened our windows and yelled at this particular woman simultaneously, which is probably something neither of us have ever done before.) But eventually we made it to Grandma’s and comfortable beds.

On the positive side, our last few days of car rides have been made very pleasant by the two forms of CD entertainment we’ve been alternating – the radio drama version of the original three Star Wars movies (given to us by Bob’s sister Kris) and the four Melendy Quartet books loaned to us by our friend Katie, which were written way back in the forties but which everyone in the family loved. (This not that easy when kids’ ages range from 4 to 10. The other all-star in this department was Beverly Cleary – Ramona and Henry Huggins have stood the test of time well.) Much thanks to Kris and Katie.

***

From Bob:

Many people are asking us: “What is the worst state you’ve visited on this trip?” Until today we might have said Kansas, although that wasn’t that bad, or maybe mentioned our Great Salt Lake misadventure, though even that should not tarnish the whole state of Utah.

Now, we have a clear winner, and we had to wait until our last new state to find it. Connecticut stinks.

Having spent the first 23 years of my life there, I maybe should have known this. The 90s-era tourism posters that said, “Connecticut: It’s between Boston and New York,” may have given me some idea there really wasn’t much going on in my native state to crow about. In retrospect, is seems clear.

But I used to like Connecticut, and our drive through there today was filled with more than a tinge of nostalgia. The corridor between NYC and New Haven is pretty well known to me, and once you get near Bridgeport, you’re right up near my points of origin. It was a great place to grow up, largely because we took back roads everywhere.

Now I know that if you drive the highways in Connecticut, particularly after dark, you’re asking for congestion. The already smooth and comfortable roads need belt sanding or something. On 95 and 91 they’ve cut three lanes down to one in multiple places, and the population density of the lower half of the state can’t take it, even at 9 pm.

That wouldn’t be that bad of the Nutmeg Staters were not in some competition with Massachusetts and New York drivers for the mantle of rudest in the US. The captain of the Connecticut team drives a brown CRV and staunchly refused to let me merge at construction near the North Haven Costco. There was no reason for her not to let me in. Jen leaned out the window, arms spread wide in a “what’s your problem?” gesture but she squeezed on by. What we should have done was taken her picture and posted it on the blog where this person could live in ignominy. The best I can do it relay Nadia’s comment, “I can’t believe she was so rude; she was an old lady.” Take that, CRV woman.

This is all included not because I needed a rant – I’ve calmed down in the soothing environment of Grandma’s house (Grandma is never rude) – but because many readers of this blog are from Connecticut. We’ve been all across this great country and the Costco conflict was the only such effrontery we experienced. Just this one lady in five weeks of driving. I want all our Connecticut readers to know that there are other places you can go to get away from this lady and her ilk – an island in the middle of the Great Salt Lake, for instance.

Sunset over the George Washington Bridge

Day 33 – Dude, where’s our car?

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Washington, DC

We had a lazy start today, which I think we probably needed. The kids were having a great time eating pancakes and playing with their new friends, and Bob and I were enjoying a comfortable bed, showers, a reliable internet connection, and friends to talk to. (Interestingly, both friends we’ve stayed with on this trip were the ones who introduced us. Kathleen, Colleen, and I were good friends in college, and during junior year they studied abroad in Russia on the same program as Bob. We met when he came to visit them our senior year.)

Our announcement that it was time to go see monuments was met with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, in fact. Nevertheless, we hopped in our cars and began a caravan to the city. Kathleen was kind enough to call us from the road and give us a guided tour of all the sites we were passing, including a lot of embassies and eventually the White House.

Downtown Washington is really beautiful, with everything pristine and perfectly manicured. Apparently parking lots and/or garages are not sufficiently picturesque, because we discovered

parking is a major issue. In the midst of one of the biggest tourist attractions in the country (the Mall, the monuments, the Smithsonian, etc.), pretty much the only option seems to be on-street parking, which is limited and only lasts two hours. Eventually we managed to find a couple of spots along the Potomac and close to the Lincoln Memorial (which Zoe later admitted to me she did find very cool, despite her earlier resistance to “monuments”).

That’s them, in the spinning car.

In our second search for parking, we found a spot right in front of the Museum of Natural History, and Bob actually managed to parallel park the van very competently. We were very proud of ourselves. (Note: this is foreshadowing. If this were a film ominous music would be playing here.)

The Museum of Natural History is very large and information-dense, and we had to make a pretty high-level pass with all the little ones (despite the fact that Zoe wanted to stop and read every sign). Lanie takes a dim view of museums that don’t have the word “Children’s” in the title (apart from the City Museum, of course), and much of the crowd were eager to get to our next stop – ice cream and the carousel on the Mall.

When it was time to leave, we wandered back toward the car, until we eventually noticed that (1) we were now past the museum, and (2) there were no longer any cars parked on the street. Closer inspection of the sign that we’d blown past revealed that there was no parking from 4-6:30pm. This was not our happiest moment. Luckily we were able to get a little humor from the situation when Bob called the number on the sign and we learned that they don’t actually tow cars to a lot, but instead just tow them to a random “nearby street” – and no, the man on the phone did not in fact know which nearby street now contained our car. Quite a system! Too dispirited to randomly walk the streets in search of our car, we waited half an hour until the towing company figured out where it was.

The place where our car should be

Just to add insult to injury, two tickets — one for the
parking violation and one for the towing. As though
they were separate offenses.
Send donations to: Jen & Bob Pavlik, 4 Pinecrest Ln,
Durham, NH 03824.

The night ended on a higher note with a nice takeout BBQ dinner at Kathleen and Daniel’s, with a special guest appearance from our good friend Ken – who, even though he’s a hip, single, TV-industry type, was enough of a sport to drive out to Bethesda and eat dinner with 6 young children so he could see us. Ken gave me a very cool gift – a CD upon which he’d recreated a mix tape that he and I had made 20 years ago, in the summer of 1992. Remember mix tapes? A lost art. He and I even snuck out for a beer after the kids were in bed.

***

From Bob:

I have many really good ideas that I often just throw out there for people to use to make their fortunes. One I’ll throw out right now. It’s a company that gives demographic data based on t-shirt logos seen at various high-traffic areas. Someone must be interested in knowing which NFL franchise captures the most shirt space at Mount Rushmore or which corporate logos get the most walking billboard time in Times Square. I came up with this idea at Disney World. It’s a good place to people watch. Why not get paid for it? Go ahead, knock yourselves out.

For this trip, I have eight or so shirts and four logos among them. Two are on the oldest pieces of clothing in my entire wardrobe, I think. There’s the black Malerba’s Bail Bonds shirt given to me by my good friend Dee Dee Sonsini (whose grandfather played on a bocce team underwritten by said company). The other is a maroon shirt with a big silver star on it and the words “Central Star – Central Avenue School, Naugatuck, CT.” It was given to me by a lady who brought a bunch of kids to my office one a week for a while when I was a newspaper editor. I helped them with their school newspaper. Both of them prove conclusively that they made better t-shirts in the late 80s and early 90s than they do now. They’ve gotten a lot of wear, but they don’t get many comments from people who behold them.

The newest logo shirt in my suitcase is one that I just got for Father’s Day. It has a stair car on it and it says, “Watch out for hop-ons!” Some blog readers may get the reference. A youngish park ranger in a Grand Teton visitors’ center got it. She was the only one on the trip so far.

The most recognized shirt I’ve got with me is shiny blue with a red stripe at the collar, and has the logo of the US Soccer Federation on it. It was given to me a few years ago, and I treasure it. I also try to wear it on particularly patriotic occasions, such as today’s trip to the nation’s capital. Just about every time I’ve worn it this trip, someone has commented on it. In Custer State Park it led to a nice conversation with a high school soccer coach from Wisconsin. (I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but this guy gave me a pretty solid warning to be careful of bears in Yellowstone. I’m just remembering it right now. He wasn’t scary bear lady or anything, but for those who have commented on my bear paranoia, this guy may have planted the seeds of my cautious approach in Wyoming.)

Also, there was a fellow who worked at the YMCA camp who said he had a jersey from the year after the year the national team’s journey looked like mine. He is big fan of US soccer and also a season ticket holder for the Columbus Crew of the MLS. Later that day, there were the two ladies in Rocky Mountain National Park who noticed my shirt when we passed on the trail. They asked me if the US women won their gold medal game. The Columbus Crew man told me they had so I passed that along to the hikers, who were very happy.

One surprising place where no one commented on my shirt was St. Louis, which I had always heard was a center for the sport in this country. It might be that everyone was looking at all the other things in the City Museum and didn’t notice me.

Today, wearing the red, white and blue at the Smithsonian today, I was approached by a man who asked me if I knew who Sunil Gulati is. Of course, you may also know that this is the name of the president of the US Soccer Federation. This man sat behind Sunil Gulati in high school and says Gulati was a good forward on the soccer field despite being small in stature. Had I known then what I know now (I just looked up Gulati on Wikipidia to get the spelling of his name), I would have commented to the Smithsonian man about the quality of the high school team Gulati played on. I played against them several times in my own soccer career. Guliati went to Cheshire High School in Cheshire, CT (according to Wikipedia). Our paths did not cross on the field, however. He is 12 years older to me (also according to Wikipedia).

Aside from this Cheshirite Smithsonian man, we were pretty anonymous in DC. There is a lot going on here — rangers and Park Service here and everything. We got our own personal audio tour of Embassy Row and the environs from Kathleen, who works in DC and knows. The embassies we saw were too many to list, but some impressive ones were Togo, Indonesia, and, especially, Ivory Coast. Many of the diplomats in side these buildings were wearing their own national team jerseys. It was like a car ride through the World Cup.

I am left now only to lament that we did not return to our van a little earlier. The tow truck driver and/or parking code enforcement officer might have mistaken me for Carlos Bocanegra and torn up the ticket.

Patriotic popsicles

Day 31 – OK, just a little more about the cave

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Mammoth Caves to Wytheville, Virginia

It wasn’t easy to photograph the
lantern tour. Flash would not have
been appreciated.

Throughout all the many caves we’ve visited on this trip, Zoe has been desperate to get more of a genuine caving experience. She’s always disappointed when either she’s not old enough, or her sisters aren’t old enough, to do the tours she really wants to do. (It was a crushing disappointment to her that the Mammoth Cave Trog tour, which was for 7-12 year olds only and involved wearing overalls and headlamps and crawling through tunnels, was no longer running because the crazy Kentucky schools are back in session already.) So this morning she and I went on the Violet City Lantern tour, a 3-hour, 3-mile strenuous trek through the cave by lantern light.

The rangers had all raved about this tour, and we weren’t disappointed. In addition to the cool cave scenery, made especially romantic when lit only by old-fashioned gas lanterns, part of our route was along what’s called the Historic tour. Now I’m as shallow and easily bored as the next person, and I have to admit the words “historic cave tour” hadn’t jumped out at me as bursting with excitement. I thought it would be dry statistics about who discovered the cave and when and blah blah blah. Instead, we saw the following, perfectly preserved due to the cave’s constant 54 degree temperature and 80% humidity: wooden pipes, made of poplar trees, that were used in a saltpeter mining operation run during the War of 1812, a ladder installed by Native Americans 2000-3000 years ago, various other Native American artifacts and drawings, 2500-year-old human poop, and stone huts – build right in the middle of the cave’s large passages, about a mile in – that were used to house tuberculosis patients in the hopes that the “healthy” cave air would provide a cure. (In fact, it had the opposite effect – but the patients had agreed that they wouldn’t leave the cave until they were cured or dead. Some of them spent 10 months in the cold, damp darkness of the cave – until there were sufficient fatalities that the medical authorities in charge decided to ban the experiment. And in the meantime, tours were going through the cave, passing by the huts and peering at the patients.) We saw the original rock paths used by tours in the 1800s, and walked on paths built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. All in all, quite an experience and well worth the price of admission.

Endless Kentucky (or possibly Virginia) road

After this exciting morning, we got in the car and drove approximately 27 hours across Kentucky and Virginia. Or at least it felt that way. Someone needs to build an east/west highway here, stat. It seems impossible to believe that the route we took was the most efficient one, so maybe google was just messing with us.

***

From Bob:

The driving portion of this day got off to a bad start and it didn’t end that well, either. The best thing about today is that we got our laundry washed and dried (though not folded and sorted) and we got out of our campsite on time. Also, Zoe got to do a special lantern-lit cave tour with Jen. Nadia and Lanie are probably happy that they could afford Pop-Tarts from the camp store while we laundered. We managed to get some postcards off, too, and the laundry room had a few spare outlets that I could charge things in. So the morning was actually a pretty productive time.

Then we went to leave and drove around for a half hour and things started looking familiar. Hey, there’s a sign for Mammoth Caves. Is this a different part of the park? No, we just drove in a big circle. Jen was making sandwiches in the passenger seat and I must’ve got wrapped up in the book on CD (thanks for nothing, Crossman-Ellis family and your engaging audio literature).

After that it was just a slog through Kentucky, which I’m sure is a fine state, but it was like driving through molasses. Even the brief bit of Tennessee we got into (I would not have thought it was possible to be in a state for a shorter duration than we were in Idaho, but such was our experience in Tennessee) and the novelty of going through the Cumberland Gap did not save the afternoon. This is because driving through western Virginia is rather like driving through Kentucky.

Even the knowledge that there was a mattress waiting for me and not a Thermarest did not perk me up. I was perked up a little by the pizza from Pizza Plus in Duffield, VA. We’ve been pizza-starved this trip, so any that we get seems good. We may have left our one true chance for great pizza behind in Chicago with Colleen, but that was so early in the trip that it wasn’t high on our agenda. And Colleen took us to some really top-notch places to eat, too, so we have no complaints. It won’t be too long before we can order a White Buffalo at La Festa again.

Talking about pizza is not making my headache feel any better. I would say I’m dehydrated, but I had seven glasses of water at Pizza Plus. It’s rather a hybrid fast-food, waitress-service place and although we sat near the soda fountain, the waitress was pouring our waters from a pitcher she brought out from the back. If I could have gotten to that soda fountain, I might have drunk more water. I don’t feel thirsty now, I feel smoky. On this, our last night in a campground (we’re in spacious, two-room KOA cabin), we seem to be downwind from all the other sites.

Enough complaining. Good night.

One more complaint: Although they clearly call it Mammoth Caves, there was not a single mammoth to be seen. This seems like false advertising.

Nadia’s violin teacher was very insistent that she not skip five weeks of practicing. Through a combination of threats
and bribery, Bob was able to get her to practice on occasion. We expect a medal from Miss Louise for this.