travel – Page 12 – Messy Suitcase Travel Blog

February 25, 2019

Rain and Futbol

We’ve been in Tlaquepaque for five weeks now, and haven’t seen a drop of rain – until last night, after we decided to attend our first outdoor sporting event in Mexico.

The three of us decided to go to a Mexican futbol – Americans know it as soccer – game. Guadalajara hosts two teams that play in the top Mexican league, Liga MX. I initially wanted to go and see the better team, the Chivas, but it turns out that their stadium is pretty far away from our apartment, not near public transportation and difficult to get an Uber from after the game. So we decided to go see Atlas play. They play in an older stadium, Estadio Jalisco, and currently sit next to last in the league.

Buying Tickets

We started looking online for tickets and the site we went to told us that there were less than 4% of seats available for last night’s game, with the cheapest tickets being in the $40-$60 USD range. I found that hard to believe, so we asked the owner of the language school, and he told us that unless the game was against the Chivas, we could get cheaper tickets at the stadium.

We decided to get to the stadium an hour early so we could get our tickets and hopefully avoid the crowds. Unfortunately, after waiting nearly 15 minutes for our Uber driver, we arrived later than we wanted and crowds were forming. We managed to find the ticket kiosk, got into a line, and buy tickets for really good seats for just $12 each. When we got inside the stadium, we discovered that there wasn’t assigned seating, and that our tickets were good for a fairly large section of the stadium. So we found three seats and settled in to watch the game, which was set to begin at 9 PM. I’m not sure why there is a 9 PM start, but that seems to be the standard start time. A little late for me, but I can make a special occasion out of it.

It was only then we realized a second difference from US events – smoking was allowed in the stadium, which was pretty unpleasant for Lexie and Lisa. Lisa was prepared with ear plugs for Lexie as the noise was pretty loud before the game. The game started, with thousands of empty seats, so we learned never to trust that online ticket site again. The noise also subsided a bit as people and the PA system focused on the game.

The First Half

The game was as exciting as any US football game, with lots of running back and forth across the field. Vendors walked through the stands hawking cervesas (beer), donuts, palmitas (popcorn) and an assortment of Mexican snacks, and half the crowd wore bright red and black Atlas jerseys.

In the first half, Atlas didn’t convert on several good scoring opportunities, but the goalie made some impressive saves. As the half came to an end, Lisa noticed that a light rain had started. Rain? We hadn’t even seen rain before in Guadalajara. We were sitting under an upper deck, so we stayed dry, but we saw drops plop onto the heads of people sitting a couple rows in front of us.

The Second Half

The second half was still scoreless, and we kept rooting for Atlas to hold on and tie the game, although the Tigres had a couple of scoring opportunities. Regulation time ended with the game still tied, but a late, very questionable (at least in my mind), call resulted in a penalty kick for the Tigres, which they converted to a goal 3 minutes into the 4 minutes of injury time. Final score: 1-0. It was a disappointing loss for our new team.

Uber Adventures

It was still lightly raining when we left the stadium. We tried to beat the crowd and inevitable traffic jam by walking a few blocks before calling Uber. Our driver was just four minutes away, but after keeping us waiting 20 minutes, and giving us a thumbs up that he was still coming, he unceremoniously cancelled on us, leaving us wet on a street corner in what was now a big traffic jam.. (Anyone know how to give a bad rating to shithead Uber drivers who ditch you and leave you standing in the effing rain?) We walked a few blocks farther down to a main road where we waited for another driver, along with two other groups doing the same thing.

We got back to the apartment a bit before midnight, a little soggy, but having had an enjoyable evening. We’ll definitely do it again. Go, Atlas!

(Lisa’s note: Rooting for the Atlas is like rooting for the Mets. Most people root for the popular, winning Chivas, Guadalajara’s version of the Yankees. But we prefer the underdog!)

February 10, 2019

Mecca in Mexico

In mid-January, when we drove to Guadalajara from Leon, we passed mile after mile of people walking along the road. We must have passed eight miles of people walking, many with backpacks or bedrolls, adults and children, before we branched off the road and headed toward Tlaquepaque.

We speculated that this was a caravan of migrants headed toward the US border. Yet, we didn’t see anything in the press about anything the size of what we saw. We did, however, see some tweets and more tweets from the government of the state of Guanajuato about “pilgrims,” with estimates of 70,000 to 100,000 pilgrims. But we saw nothing in the US news.

When I asked about this on an expat forum, I discovered that these were actually religious pilgrims headed to the town of San Juan de los Lagos in the Mexican state of Jalisco to view a revered image of the Virgin Mary called Our Lady of San Juan de los Lagos. This Madonna is said to be responsible for tens of thousands of miracles dating back to 1623. (Read more here, and note some of the powerful comments from people who have visited the image.)

The image itself is made of sugar cane paste and stands about 38 centimeters high. It is believed to have been brought from Michoacán, Mexico, in the early 16th century and refurbished 400 years ago.

Somewhere between 7 and 9 million people yearly visit San Juan de los Lagos to see the image of the Virgin. The most heavily visited time, though, is Candelmas, when approximately 2 million people visit. Candelmas, or the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus, falls on Feb. 2, the 40th day of the Christmas Epiphany season. In San Juan de los Lagos, they celebrate with a festival extending from Jan. 25 to Feb. 2 that includes fireworks, music and amusement rides.

This was the destination of the pilgrimage that we saw. Organized groups walk or bike for hundreds of miles. Most come to repay the image for a miracle they have received. There is a popular belief that people who fail to repay the Virgin risk being turned into stone.

So, even though there is another, much smaller, caravan of Central American migrants currently headed to the US (learn about it here and here), the miles of sojourners that we saw were religious pilgrims headed to San Juan los Lagos to keep from getting turned into stone.

Here’s the caravan we saw:

January 16, 2019

Gas Crisis in Mexico

We didn’t make it to Tlaquepaque! We literally ran out of gas.

Well, we didn’t completely run out of gas, but we did get low enough on gas to not have enough make it to Tlaquepaque, and we couldn’t find any more.

Why No Gas?

Mexico has what are called huachicoleros, or gas thieves. The initial image that comes to mind is someone with a 5-gallon container and a hose that siphons gas out of cars. But in Mexico, the issue is far, far bigger, to the tune of $3B USD a year in stolen gas. And it’s not stolen from cars, it’s siphoned right out of the large gas pipelines that distribute the product from refineries to various points in the country.

The gas is stolen by the cartels in a very systematic, almost professional manner. Tapping these lines, with flammable gas running through them, is a dangerous process, and can only be done by extremely skilled people. The government says over 12,000 taps have been put into the gas distribution pipelines.

Sad, empty gas station

A Government Crackdown

This has been going on for years, but Mexico’s new, anti-corruption president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, took office last month and started cracking down. He decided to fight the huachicoleros by stopping the distribution of gas through the pipelines, identifying the taps and then more vigorously guarding those lines. The plan was to replace pipeline distribution with distribution by tanker truck.

Unfortunately, that distribution plan has failed to meet the needs of the population, leaving some areas, mostly central Mexico — where we are — with a gas shortage (actually a distribution shortage).

We knew about this 10 days ago before we left Pennsylvania. Fully aware that we were heading into the area hardest hit by the shortages, we thought that surely the kinks in the distribution system would be worked out by the time we got to Mexico, especially after we were delayed another two days at the border.

Our trip through northern Mexico was uneventful and there was plenty of gas. There was even plenty of gas in Matehuala, six hours in, where we stopped overnight and easily gassed up the next morning. We knew that one tank of gas wouldn’t get us to Tlaquepaque, so we wanted to go far enough before stopping to ensure we had enough in the tank to make it the rest of the way.

Unfortunately, when it came time to stop, first there weren’t any gas stations for miles, and then the next one we found didn’t have any gas. Its gas nozzles were just lying on the pavement, and a long line of cars idled a half mile back along the roadside. We drove 40 miles to the next town where there was a possibility of finding gas, but none of the five gas stations there had gas either.

Choosing a Detour

So we were faced with a decision, and discussed it while looking at a map of Mexico: continue on toward Tlaquepaque and hope we could find gas, or turn left and take a detour toward the closest city, Leon, where we could find pet-friendly lodging and hope to find gas. We chose the Leon option, not wanting to chance being stranded on a roadside with three cats.

We found the Hotel Soleil Business Class, an affordable, pet-friendly three-star hotel, and walked down the street to a gas station that didn’t have any gas. The attendant told us he wasn’t scheduled to get gas for 4 more days.

We knew we had a problem, so we went and booked a two-bedroom Airbnb apartment in Leon for a week iand decided to make lemonade out of lemons.

Making Lemonade

Leon wasn’t on our initial list of places to visit, but it has turned out to be a wonderful discovery! There’s lots to see and do here, the cats like the apartment, and we are really enjoying our stay.

Meanwhile, we’re monitoring the gas situation online. We have seen a few open gas stations with long lines, and have heard about people waiting four or six hours or more for gas, and then coming away with only a few pesos worth (because of 500-peso limits, about $28US), or not getting gas at all. We are not “line” people.

We are not getting in that line

At some point, when the situation improves, we’ll get in what should be shorter lines, only when we can get enough gas to make it all the way to Tlaquepaque. And then we’ll move on to our next adventure.

In the meantime, join us in exploring Leon!

January 14, 2019

How to Road-Trip with Cats

We have taken our three cats — Ellie, Equinox and Kaylee — thousands of miles in a 2015 Toyota Tacoma over the past three months.

These are ordinary cats who hate going to the vet. Yet they have road-tripped successfully across the country from Colorado to Pennsylvania, then PA to Vermont, then VT back to PA, then the big one: PA to central Mexico.

The ultimate destination for this marathon road trip is Tlaquepaque, near Guadalajara, which is still 250 kms away from where we are right now. (We are waiting to finish the trip until the gas shortages resolve enough for us to get the gas we need to make the final journey.)

In the meantime, as we all roost at a sweet little AirBnB apartment in Leon, I’d like to share a few tips about traveling with cats.

Tips for Traveling With Cats

Advance preparation is key
Introduce your cats to their cages well in advance so they can form a positive relationship. We put the cat cages out in the family room two weeks before the trip and placed our cats’ food bowls inside at mealtime, to give them a positive association with the cages. When it was time to leave on the trip, they got in happily. (This only works once.)

Expect them to hate it
“Put me in a cage for 8 hours and I will sit and not complain,” said no cat, ever. Expect a lot of yowling and complaining. Expect them to have accidents and to occasionally vomit from the motion of the vehicle.

Visit the vet in advance
The vet gave us ideas for reducing cat anxiety, including kitty valium and anti-nausea drugs. The nausea stuff helped Equinox but the valium made it worse for Ellie. But we also made sure they were up-to-date on their shots and in good general health, and got their claws trimmed.

The cats with their favorite handler, Lexie

Keep your expectations low
Don’t expect your feline companions to travel as long as you can. After all, humans can stop every couple of hours to stretch their legs, have a snack, and use a bathroom. Even dogs can get out of the car to exercise a little and relieve themselves. But cats are stuck in a tiny cage for the duration. No bathroom breaks. No chance to stretch, or even stand up. So don’t expect them to last 12 hours a day just because you can.

We learned this the hard way on the first leg of our journey, Colorado to Pennsylvania. Bob was trying to power-drive across the United States and the cats let him know in no uncertain terms that any more than 10 hours on the road was decidedly NOT OK with them. First, Equinox had diarrhea just an hour and a half into the first leg of the trip, which was a portent of things to come. The next day, poor Ellie, a fastidiously private litter box user, let out a long, throaty, almost otherworldly groan of embarrassment as she peed in her cage after 10 hours on the road. Every day for the first four days, at least one cat vomited in a cage.

Kaylee, the scaredy-cat at home, turned out to be a natural traveler. She never cried, peed or pooped; she was a perfect little angel in the car. She just hid in hotel rooms. (More on that later.)

So we had a family meeting and agreed: 8-hour limit, if possible. That’s nice for humans, too, because perhaps we can get a run in after eight hours on the road, or do some yoga, or move in some way to compensate for all the hours sitting in the truck.

Be prepared on the road
Here’s our advice for some advance moves to make to ensure success on the road with your cats:

Multiple stops present multiple chances to escape, and nothing can ruin an adventure more than losing a precious furry part of your family. So get your cats chipped and register them.
Get them collars with tags that have your email and phone number on them,
Pack a kitty emergency kit that includes cleaning supplies, wipes, washcloths and towels.
Create a bag of basic necessities: wet and dry cat food (with plastic lids for cans and clips for the food bag), a bottle of water, cat litter, a litter box or two, litter box bags (expensive but essential for travel), pooper scooper,food bowls, a plastic Tupperware container for water, plastic spoons for scooping out food, kitty toys and a scratching post.

Kaylee settling into a hotel room in Leon

Help them feel comfortable
Here’s what we did:

Lexie has a quilt the cats love. It went onto her bed first thing in each hotel room and gave them a sense of home.
We also threw out a couple of their favorite toys.
In the car, we made sure the music wasn’t too loud or jarring. They preferred Amazon Music’s soft pop station to rap, rock or even country.
We adjusted their food to minimize vomiting — just a little dry food first thing in the morning, and an anti-anxiety pill, if needed an hour before the trip.
Some cats like thundershirts to ease anxiety. Ellie likes to wear a harness.

Make sure they are secure
We initially had a vision of happy adventure cats wandering around the backseat, sleeping in our laps while tethered by harnesses to a cable Bob was going to run between the two front seats. But we discovered, after a little research, that that was a stupid and dangerous idea. Free-range cats can become like rockets in case of an accident.

So instead we bought two stackable, hard-plastic cat cages for Ellie and Equinox, who rode double-decker, Kaylee beside them in another cage. All were tightly secured by seatbelts to the back seat, and Lexie sat beside them murmuring words of comfort when needed.

Stacked cats

Expect resistance
Once the cats figure out that you will take them out of the car to stay in a hotel every night, and then put them back into the car the next morning to travel for another eight hours, they will try to thwart you. They will go into hiding as soon as you start re-packing your suitcases. In one hotel room, Kaylee found a spot deep inside the box springs of Lexie’s bed, and we had to disassemble the bed to root her out. In another, we came back from breakfast to find NO cats in the hotel room. They were all hiding deep in corners and crevices.

Can you find the two cats hiding in this picture?
(They are inside the trundle bed)
Note their favorite purple quilt, which was gifted to Lexie
from the Piecemakers at Evergreen Lutheran Church.

We finally learned to contain them early in the morning, before they could hide. In this photo, they are contained inside the shower in the Hotel Soleil in Leon.

Cats coralled into the shower at Hotel Soleil Business Class

Give them a break now and then
In the middle of our five-day trip to Mexico, we stopped in New Orleans for a short layover and rented an apartment with two bedrooms and lots of room to run around. They loved it!

Upon arrival, reward them
At each stop, the first priority was getting the cats out of the cages and giving them food and water immediately. Since they hadn’t had their usual half a can of wet food for breakfast, they would receive that right away, and then get the rest of the can at bedtime.

Find pet-friendly lodging
We found a website called Bring Fido that helps you find pet-friendly lodging (including in Mexico) and allows you to book through Booking.com. There are also certain hotel chains that are universally pet-friendly, including Days Inn (which also has laundry facilities), Super 8 (surprisingly nice for a budget chain), and TownPlace Suites by Marriott. For stays of more than one night, we would visit AirBnB or Homeaway and search for “pet-friendly” in the filters. Hotels usually charge an extra fee per day per pet and cap the number allowed at 2. If we were staying more than one night, renting an apartment was more economical and a lot more comfortable for everyone.

It gets easier
The initial three-person struggle to get each resisting, flailing cat into a cage became a two-person efficient system that became a one-person easily-managed task. A cat crying for 10 hours straight became crying half the time became crying just the first hour. Be patient. Traveling long hours in a car isn’t fun for anyone. Expect to be showered with affection in the hotel room, because they are so grateful to be out of the car and with you again.

Ellie still cries when she gets in the cage. But it doesn’t last the whole time anymore. Kaylee now sits like a Buddha watching the world go by out the front windshield, while Equinox, stomach calm from anti-nausea meds, just goes to sleep. We listen to more Ed Sheeran than we would like, and life on the road with cats is good.

The Buddha cat

January 5, 2019

Vermont – A Change in Plans

Over 15 years ago, when we were living in New York, we bought a house in Vermont that we began making plans to retire to.

We called the six-bedroom chalet The Lake House because it has a private dock on 200-acre Lake Rescue. Lisa and the kids spent half the summers there, while the kids attended Farm & Wilderness Day Camps, and I came up by train from Manhattan every weekend and took two weeks vacation in late August. Often extended family members and friends would join us.

When the house wasn’t rented out (which is how we paid for it), we spent winter weekends there, as the kids learned to ski at nearby Okemo. We went up in spring and fall to do projects, such as building a new back deck and tiling the kitchen. We read in the hammock, watched shooting stars from the hot tub, pulled the kids around in inner tubes from the back of a Zodiac inflatable boat. Lisa taught a number of children how to fish off the dock, and got up early many mornings to kayaked in the mist.

The Lake House

Even when we moved to Colorado and couldn’t get there anymore, we didn’t sell the place because of all of the fond memories. We just rented it out year-round, going up every couple of years just to check on it and make repairs. But as our retirement thinking evolved, we wondered whether we even wanted to go there after we stopped working. It was so cold compared to Colorado.

However, as part of our circuitous route to Mexico, we visited family and spent Christmas on the East Coast. That included five weeks, including Thanksgiving, in our house in Vermont. Ski resorts in Vermont typically try to get some runs open by Thanksgiving, usually with man-made snow, but we were “treated” to several unexpected snowfalls and temperatures that only on a few days exceeded freezing. Ludlow had gotten three feet of snow by the time we left.

Yet, even though it was cold and icy, we rediscovered what we loved about Vermont. We got up each morning, shoveled a new path to the hot tub on the back deck, and enjoyed an hour of warm, splashy solitude with mimosas while gazing up at snow-covered pine trees.

Snowy hot tub morning

In addition to hours and hours spent maintaining the house, hiring staff, and replacing a TV and a mattress, we played Pinochle or UNO at night. We cuddled up watching movies. Lisa had a rom-com marathon with Grandma. We worked on a 1,000-piece puzzle. We discovered new restaurants and revisited old favorites. We walked through the shops in downtown Ludlow, and did Christmas shopping in charming Woodstock. We enjoyed ice cream multiple times at Sewards, our favorite ice cream shop in Rutland. Lisa reconnected with friends from her summertime church. We had family members visit with babies that drooled all over Duplo and threw scraps of food to the cats.

It was divine.

To add to our rediscovery, Lexie plans to attend Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont, beginning in August, and we want to help her get settled in. So instead of flying Lexie to college, we plan to drive back up from Mexico to Vermont in July and spend a few months at our house. We can enjoy Vermont in the summertime, our favorite season. Lexie may be able to get a summer job at the little store up the road, or the Italian restaurant down the road. After we get Lexie settled into college in late August and return for Parents’ Weekend in late September, we may as well stay and enjoy the foliage season! Then we will head back to Mexico.

That may be the plan for every year Lexie is in college — back to Vermont for the summer so she has a home to go to and make a little money, then return to Mexico for the remaining nine months of the year.

We think this is a great way for us to get our fix of Vermont during a beautiful time of the year and still explore the world!

Running in the snow

Building a snowman

Visiting the Green Mountain Sugar House

Discovering Outback Pizza

Baking Christmas cookies

December 1, 2018

Italy, Part 7: Bob Visits Capri and Sorrento

I arrived in Sorrento by train late in the afternoon and checked into my apartment, which was perfectly located directly on the charming, vibrant town square. Sorrento is located atop a steep cliff face overlooking the southern tip of the Bay of Naples.

Checking the weather forecast, I realized that I would only have one good weather day, my first day there. So even though it was fairly late, I quickly found a tour company still open and booked a boat tour of the island of Capri that left at 8 AM the next day.

I got up early the next morning — Oct. 31 — and headed to the pickup point. A small bus came that subsequently took us to a small street in town, where we were met by a guide. We were taken to an elevator in a nondescript building that could hold at least 25 people, and in what seemed like a moment, we wooshed down 80 meters (260 feet) down to water level. For some reason, the boat was delayed about an hour, but then I boarded the small boat with 10 other people.

Here are some pictures, since Lisa says I didn’t describe it enough. (Pictures are worth a thousand words. Each.)

This is how far the elevator went, through sold rock 260 feet from Sorrento town to the marina below

The Sorrento Marina

The cliff

A look back at Sorrento from the boat

Capri

We spent the next hour traveling along the coast and out to the island of Capri, where we began a clockwise tour of the island.

First view of Capri

We briefly stopped at the Green Grotto and made our way to the famous Faraglioni of Capri. The sea was fairly choppy and I was already pretty surprised that the boat captain got us as close as he did to the Green Grotto, as we bounced around literally feet from the rocks.

The Green Grotto – I thought he was going to crash the boat

Now, we were heading directly toward the Faraglione di Mezzo, and as I saw the arch approaching, I was wondering how close he would get us to it. He didn’t even hesitate and as we bounced from side to side, he skillfully maneuvered the rocking boat through the arch, at times no more than six feet from the rocks. Granted, this wouldn’t have been a problem in calm seas, but the sea wasn’t calm this day and I was quite surprised he did it. There’s no way this would have been allowed in the US. The boat captain did make a joke (after he was successfully through) that the arch we just went through had been smaller in the spring before several boats bounced off the sides and made it wider. Ha!

We continued our tour around the island and got to the famous Blue Grotto. Normally, the boat would stop and allow the tourists an opportunity to take one of the local guided rowboats through the grotto. But that wasn’t happening today as it was far too rough.

The Blue Grotto

It was then on to dock at the marina in Capri, where we had 4 hours of free time. I hadn’t done any research on what there was on Capri itself, and honestly, I was a bit tired of walking and doing tourist things after 3 days in Rome and another in Pompeii. Nonetheless, I took the funicular up to the main tourist town. The view from the top was breathtaking.

Funicolare

View from the top

Capri itself, though picturesque, was a typical tourist town, built on a hillside. It had the usual tourist shops, but many were closed for the season, some with people inside boxing up the merchandise (Oct. 31 marks the last day of high season). I walked around for two hours, had some street food for lunch and got half a gallon of red Italian orange juice to take back with me. I decided to walk down the hill to the dock area, which turned out to be longer than I wanted to do, so I relaxed with a beer at a local restaurant. During the return boat ride, some of the other tourists talked about going to the top of the peak on the island, which I regretted not doing.

By pickup time, the weather had started to turn. The wind was up, the temperature was down, the water was quite choppy, and I became wet from wind spray during the chilly trip back. I was wishing for a hot tub by the time I got back to my apartment.

Back in Sorrento … Halloween

Soon though, I was back on the street when I saw that local kids were out in full force in costume on trick-or-treating at the local merchants. I hadn’t expected them to celebrate Halloween in Italy!

Lock of Love

The next morning, I woke up to rain. My original plan was to take a tour of the Amalfi coast, but the low clouds and heavy rain justified my decision to stay in. There was enough of a lull in the rain to allow me to go for a run, and I found a fence overlooking the bay that had a few Locks of Love locks attached. I had a padlock with me, but didn’t have a Sharpie to write Lisa and my initials. I made it my mission for the day to find one, not an easy task in a tourist town. I was eventually successful, but by then it was dark, so I had to wait until the next day to put it in place.

I woke up the next morning to find it raining too hard to run. I had to check out of my lodging, so all I was hoping for was for the rain to let up enough to allow me to walk the half mile to the fence and back without getting completely soaked. Finally, as I was at breakfast around 9 AM, I got that opportunity. I rushed to the fence, put the lock (inscribed RG + LH) in place, took some pictures to share with Lisa, and made it back to pick up my suitcase before it started raining hard again.

I got on the train, standing room only, for the 75-minute trip back to Naples to meet up with Lisa and Lexie for our flight to Athens the next day.

November 18, 2018

Greece, Part 3: Thoughts About Greece

Some thoughts about Greece:

It is clean! After dirty Naples, it was a refreshing change to see people out sweeping the sidewalks.
It is orderly! After chaotic Naples, it was a relief to see street lights and traffic lights and people who waited or the light to turn before crossing the street.
It is affordable! With a hotel in a prime location costing only $90 a night for a triple and meals costing as little as $6 for an entrée, we would recommend it to anyone seeking to visit a European capital on a budget. Entrance to the Acropolis was only 5 euros ($6), the National Archeological Museum was 10 euros, the Temple of Zeus was free on Sundays, the Olympic Stadium was only 5 euros – and everything was free for age 18 and under (with ID), or for EU students up to age 25. We could have taken a really nice bus from the airport for only 6 euros each, but we chose to take a taxi, which was also quite reasonable. The HoHo bus was by far the cheapest we’ve taken.
The food in Athens offered a different twist on the Mediterranean food we’ve had in the States, and quite wonderful. The desserts were amazing and the ice cream was excellent. The restaurants were stylish and innovative, and really made an effort to provide a comfortable atmosphere and entice people to come in and eat. Every one had a different selection, though many had the standards: moussaka, baklava, kebabs, yogurt, etc. Surprisingly, I never saw falafel on a menu.

There are cats everywhere. A black cat with no name resided at the café in front of the Arethusa, claiming a booth for herself out front and sleeping there all day, curled into a furry ball and occasionally opening one green eye, which delighted Lexie (who was missing her cat Ellie). A calico cat guarded the entrance to the National Garden. We ran into scores of cats on the Greek islands.
The weather is lovely. It was sunny and in the high 60s-mid 70s while we were there. When we ran, around 7:30 in the morning, the temperature was in the high 50s. I’m sure it gets hot in summer; the long pull-out awnings the restaurants on the islands have is proof of that. But they were tucked in for our visit and we enjoyed the warm sun.

I think early November was a great time to visit because it was officially “winter,” which meant fewer crowds for popular sites, but the weather was quite pleasant.

Two words: Visit Greece!

November 17, 2018

Italy, Part 4: Solofra, and Radical Discoveries

After we left Naples, we traveled into the mountains to dig deeper into the family history.

Solofra

My grandfather Domenic Troisi was actually born in a small mountain town called Solofra, about half an hour east of the city of Salerno. His father, Beniamino Troisi, met his mother, Maria Michele Buongiorno, in Solofra when she was working for his brother, the local priest. Here’s an excerpt from my grandfather’s Memory Book for his 50th anniversary:

BENIAMINO TROISI FU BIAGIO met Maria Michele Buongiorno at the home of Father Carmine Troisi who was later elevated to the Canonico and Primicerio Curato to the Parochial and Collegiate Church St. Michele Arcangelo of Solofra Province of Avellino, Italy, December 21, 1941. Miss Buongiorno at the time she met Beniamino, brother of the priest, was keeping house for Father Troisi. Both the Troisis and the Buongiornos were respected families of Solofra.

Entrance to Terranova Agriturismo

So our little group of family seekers – which consisted of my cousins Janice and Loraine Carapellucci, Loraine’s husband Dave Handley, sister Julie Holm, daughter Lexie and me – converged on Solofra on Oct. 31, settling into a charming farm BnB, Terranova Agriturismo, just outside of the village. Our plan was to experience Domenic’s Solofra by attending Mass at St. Michael the Archangel’s on All Saint’s Day.

Discovering family

But as we were eating an Italian breakfast of bread, pastry, cheese and cappuccino that morning, who should arrive in the BnB’s dining room but a man I’d never seen before who looked slightly familiar, named Alfonso Buongiorno. It turned out that Janice had made contact with Alfonso through a friend back in New York, and he was our third cousin! His great grandfather had been Maria Michele’s brother, so we shared great-great-grandparents.

Alfonso shared my cousin Janice’s passion for genealogy, and a generous Italian sense of hospitality. Over breakfast, he shared many things he had learned about our family over a decade of digging, while I took notes like crazy.

Here are the highlights:

Revelations

Buongiornos from both sides of the ocean

The first revelation was that the Buongiornos actually lived in Tuscany before coming to Solofra. But before that, they came from the Netherlands and Spain. In Spain, they were likely Sephardic Jews who had been forced to convert to Catholicism. Many families who did this changed their surnames to names like Buongiorno (which means Good Day) or Bonanno (which means good year) so that they could continue practicing Judaism undercover yet still be able to recognize each other.

Alfonso had done a little research on Troisis as well, and said the name was Norman in origin – which Janice, who had also learned this, had taken to mean Normandy, France. No, Alfonso said, it’s actually Norman as in Vikings, most likely from Norway and Sweden! He said many Troisis were blond and blue-eyed because of this heritage.

So we came to Italy to learn we were actually Spanish Jews, Dutch, and Vikings! This helped explain some of the oddities of the DNA test I took last year.

Leather and gold

For the last 500 years, Buongiornos have been tanners, producing fine-quality leather for overseas clients. A member of the family would live in Naples and act as a liaison to sell the product. They also used to be in the gold business until a king stopped buying their product. Today many of their leather clients are being lost to Chinese mass production and cost undercutting, so the family business is grappling with how to respond to a bit of a crisis. But the family also owns rental properties in Calabria, the southern coast of Italy across from Sicily.

Meeting family

The best part of Solofra was discovering family there! We were invited to Alfonso’s home and met his wife Maria and children Raffaela, 18, and Francisco, 15. We talked genealogy and he showed us a framed family tree he had commissioned. He presented Janice with a binder containing scanned copies of paperwork he had acquired through his own genealogy research, which almost made her drool with anticipation.

The church

The church has a plaque on the outside dedicated to Monsignor Carmine Buongiorno, also called Il Canonico, my great great uncle. Inside there is a chapel set up by the family through an endowment. His gravestone is in the floor of a back room, behind the sacristy.

All Saints Day

We joined the All Saints Day procession of Solofra residents walking in the rain under dark umbrellas down to the town cemetery, preceded by the town band playing mournful tunes. Once there, where you could buy colorful flowers from a roadside peddler, we entered the heavy gates and split up, looking for old Troisi and Buongiorno graves. As we wandered among the raised monuments, we watched people clean their family members’ graves and decorate them with flowers and pictures. A memorial mass was held in the chapel in the middle, and the choir voices drifted through the alleys between the small houses that held multiple family members’ graves. It was fascinating.

Here is Alfonso’s family tree:

Next up — Italy, Part 5: Lexie learns about her heritage

November 16, 2018

Greece, Part 2: The Islands, and Observations

On the third day in Greece, we marked the last day of our vacation by giving Lexie a day off to sleep late and do her own thing, while Bob and I embarked on a 12-hour cruise to visit three islands: Hydra, Poros and Aegina. It was a romantic and magical way to close the circle on our five weeks exploring Europe.

The cruise ship headed south through the Aegean Sea for three hours to the farthest island in the morning, and the views were spectacular. We sat on the deck drinking coffee and taking hundreds of pictures, each more beautiful than the next. The cruise ship also featured live Greek music and folkloric dancing, which was surprisingly good.

Hydra

Hydra was a picturesque walking island (they had donkeys you can rent to get around), and we just bopped around the alleys and up the hillside, where we found trails down to the sea for swimming and a cluster of old cannons. We loved it!

Poros

We were at Poros for such a short time we barely got a taste; we need to go back. We had time for a glass of ouzo, which made Bob a little woozy, in one of countless sidewalk cafes facing the sea. Then, still ravenous, we split a delicious waffle sundae with Nutella.

Aegina

Aegina, which has a surprisingly large port, is the Pistachio Island, so we bought pistachio liqueur and pistachio-chocolate bark, explored the shops (unfortunately closed because of the late hour), sat on a couch in a tavern facing the sea while we enjoyed some ouzo, and spent sunset on a pier watching the scarlet sun sink behind the distant mountains through the bobbing masts of wooden sailboats.

Our Cruise Ship

Couldn’t finish without some images of our cruise ship and the entertainment and food on board!

November 10, 2018

Greece, Part 1: Athens and Antiquity

We added Greece to our itinerary at the last minute. Bob said, “Hey, since we’ll be in Italy anyway and Greece is so close, how about we finish the vacation on a Greek Island?” He had been to Greece about 30 years ago and remembered it fondly.

I couldn’t think of a reason to say no, especially after we found incredibly cheap 4- and 5-star hotels and apartments available during the time we would be there – as low as $26 a night for a really nice two-bedroom apartment in a resort near the sea. The catch? November officially launches the winter season in Greece. So while we could find affordable, beautiful lodging, it would be too cold to go to the beach and no restaurants would be open.

So the islands were out

But then Lexie chimed in that she was really interested in mythology from her World Civilization class and books she had read, and she would LOVE to visit Athens and see the ruins and the seat of western civilization.

So Athens was in

So we added three days in Athens to the journey. I found a boutique hotel in a location that Booking.com gave a grade of 10. Bob did some research into what to do while there, finding guides to what to do in one day in Athens, or two days in Athens. He worried that we had booked too much time there and would be bored.

He was wrong.

Temple of Zeus, sunset

From the second we stepped off the plane, we were in love. The airport was new and modern and welcoming to tourists. The weather in early November was sunny and in the low 70s. (This is considered winter?) The cab driver was friendly, and his cab was large and state-of-the-art, with leather seats and the most advanced GPS we ever saw. A self-driving car (Lexie had a moment of panic about him not watching the road until he shared this piece of information), the Mercedes made its way to our hotel while he chatted away about sights we should see and places we should visit and pointed them out on his 3D, shape-shifting GPS screen.

The Arethusa Hotel, as it turned out, was just a short block to one of the main squares in Athens, Syntagma Square. When we arrived, a bellman promptly grabbed our luggage and delivered it to our room for us – a nice change from the hoofing around we had done in Naples, and a good idea since the elevators were tiny. From the wall to wall windows, the city view was delightful, the towels thick and fluffy, the beds soft and comfy. We looked at each other with delight and said, “We deserve this!”

The National Garden

National Garden selfie

Emporr busts in the National Garden

The next morning, getting up early to run, Bob and I discovered that the National Garden, with miles upon miles of running trails and views of the Temple of Zeus, was only two blocks away. We saw scores of fit runners covering the trails in small groups. Then we went to the breakfast room. Mama mia! Hotel Arethusa offered a delicious, abundant Greek/American buffet breakfast that included Greek yogurt, granola; spinach, meat and cheese pies; eggs, toast, fruit, cold cuts and cheese, Nutella and jams, eight kinds of coffee, juices, hot chocolate, and more. All this for just 80 euros a night ($90)!

Changing of the Guard

We started, at our cab driver’s recommendation, at the Parliament at 11 AM on Sunday morning to watch the Changing of the Guard. This happens quietly every hour round the clock, but the Sunday morning show is 30 minutes long and a spectacle designed to entertain a crowd. And in fact, hundreds of people turned out to watch, jostling with each other to get the best pictures and video. It was wonderful! Soldiers somehow managed to look manly high-kicking in perfect synchronization while wearing traditional country guard uniforms, which consisted of white tutus, matching white tights, red berets with long black feathers down one side, and black clogs with large tassels on top. Their serious faces and the long red and black rifles they carried certainly helped.

Hop On Hop Off Bus

Next we boarded the Hop On Hop Off bus to get a quick lay of the land. We took lots of great pictures from the top level of the double-decker, where every corner brought a new discovery. The tour was informative and comprehensive, and the headphones actually worked well. We used the bus as transit after the initial circle, and visited the original Olympic Stadium (including the underground tunnel, a museum that featured Olympic posters and torches, and of course the winners’ podium), the Temple of Zeus (our timing at sunset created amazing light for the pictures), Hadrian’s Arch, the Plaka (an atmospheric old city with wonderful shopping and dining options), the Acropolis and Parthenon (of course), the National Archeological Museum (where you can eat in a café surrounded by ancient sculptures), and even the Flea Market.

Views from the HoHo:

Acropolis

Fish market

Next … Greece, Part 2: The Islands, and Observations