BRUISED BUCKEYE LANDS IN FRANCE, ENDS TOUR IN PARIS

BRUISED BUCKEYE LANDS IN FRANCE, ENDS TOUR IN PARIS

BEAUVAIS to CHARTRES VIA GIVERNY

Our Ryanair flight from Barcelona to Beauvais, a small French town with a small airport about 48 miles north from Paris, took off on time and landed ten minutes early. Our rental car, this time a silver French four-door Peugeot, took us without incident to our night’s stay, a small motel a few kilometers away.

Although the weather between Barcelona and Beauvais was overcast, cooling things off for us in France, the following day the sun rose in a clear blue sky, making our drive through the grain fields that dominate the landscape where Brittany and Normandy meet on the Beauce Plain pleasurable and scenic.

Our destination of the day was the medieval city of Chartres, home to its eponymous two-towered Notre Dame Cathedral, which is one of the largest in Europe and “an unrivaled medieval splendor,” according to our Chartres guidebook. The French roads were enjoyable to drive on and with the roundabouts and clear signage along the way, our itinerary was achieved at each route point.

IMPRESSED WITH IMPRESSIONIST'S HOME IN GIVERNY

But before we would see the twin towers at Chartres, we would amble through and admire Claude Monet's home and gardens in the quiet, small locus of homes called Givern. Monet (1840-1926) is often called the father of impressionism. His beautiful country home is located in Giverny, a small town less than 50 miles from Paris where he lived and painted from 1883 to his death. The price of admission to his home and grounds [5.5 Euros per ticket] is good value because your mouth will water at the splendid display of greenery and flowers that surround his home like a quilted robe made of images from his own paintings.

His home, with its blue and yellow rooms that prominently feature his fascination with Japanese art, which hangs everywhere throughout his home [Van Gough was similarly smitten with the simple flourishes of oriental scenes], offers a view into his world and thus into his paintings. Next to his home is his painting studio, which is awash with natural light and that now serves as a retail shop for all products Monet.

Lunch at a nearby eatery, hugged in flowering trees and well manicured growings of all sizes and coors, was a cool and relaxing respite from our morning drive and self-guided tour of the impressionist's home and gardens, which include the famous pond [very Japanese, no surprise if you have seen the interior of his home] and its even more famous water lillys that he loved to paint.

In this region of France, where the quilt of wheat, bean and corn fields resemble the rolling farmlands of northwestern Ohio, the two towers of the cathedral, started in the 9the century, could be seen for dozens of miles away and served as guiding landmarks into the historic center of the city.

Our lodging for the night, the Chateau de Moresville, was still 20 or more miles away in the French countryside. Preferring not to return to Chartres the next day, we parked the car, walked to the cathedral, where we climbed the 300 stone steps to the crow’s nest at the pinnacle of the north and highest tower. After descending from the dizzying but panoramic heights, our plans called for us to find a boulangerie or chacuterie, where we would purchase bread, cheese, cold cuts, wine and something sweet to snack on overnight and in the morning. Our next day’s destination would be Blois, conveniently located about 48 miles to the south in the middle of the gorgeous, serene Loire river valley, home to a string of famous country chateau’s like Chenensceau and Abroise, where Leonardo da Vinci lived his last days.

NORTRE DAME OF CHARTRES

Acclaimed by our guidebook as “the most complete and well-preserved example of gothic Cathedrals, the climb to the top of the cathedral’s north [and tallest tower at about 121 feet], even 872 years after it was started is no easier now for the faint hearted or acrophobic than it was for the stone masons who no doubt climbed it repeatedly until their work was done. At 6.50 euro each for tickets to the top and with only 45 minutes until closing time, we wasted no time in ascending the narrow spiral stone staircase, which took us to the landing at the level where the tower’s giant metal bells hang silently. From this small landing, we mustered our energy to elevate our corporal bodies up the final flight of steps, which opened onto a narrow balcony that circumnavigated the tower. Looking down at the town far below us, whose homes appeared like tiny houses on a Monopoly board, the sheer height enabled us to see for miles upon miles as we peered out and scanned the semi-flat, agriculturally rich surrounding countryside from horizon to horizon.

60 years after the first stone was set in 1134, history says a fire consumed nearly everything except for the crypt and part of the western faced. I was amazed to learn that a crew of 300 hundred workers, building on what remained, reconstructed the stone structure in only 30 years, which was building quickly in an age when other cathedrals took hundreds of years to complete. The cathedral is registered on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Walking through the massive, dark stone structure, whose cool inside temperature was a welcomed contrast to the warm air outside, we found ourselves looking at, among many other unique contents, a small but impressive wood and gold case made in the early middle ages to hold the holy relic known as the “Virgin Mary’s veil.” Whether in fact it is her veil is clearly a matter of faith, but reputable scholars, according to a nearby written description of the relic that is folded and hangs behind glass panels, claim it unequivocally is from the Middle East and is dated to the first century A.D.

Once down on ground, we made our way through the town back to our car, which we parked in a conveniently located garage. Recalling how we exited from our parking garage in Milano by first validating our ticket through a machine, we followed a similar routine in Chartres and escaped without further embarassing ourselves or holding up traffic.

I openly confess: I have not walked into a boulangerie or pastiserrie I did not like. Boulangeries, bakery shops laden with bread, baguettes and all sorts of yummy treats, are common in France but not as pervasive as gelato shops in Italy. Nonetheless, we found one open and darted in and out with two small quiches, a loaf of dark crusty bread and a small but elegant tarte de pomme [apple].

OH BLOIS! THE LOIRE RIVER VALLEY, CHENONCEA AND TOURS

We arrived in Blois, which straddles the Loire River and is located about halfway between Orleans and Tours. We easily located and checked into our second Holiday Inn of the trip. Although it was early evening, the sky was still ablaze with pastel colors of sunset and night was still hours away. In Europe, it seems, the curtain of night does not fully descend until after 20:00 [10 o’clock GMT].

Although this Holiday Inn is not the equal of the one in Quarto D’Altino outside Venezia, it had one advantage – our nightly rate is only 65 euros [$83.20 USD], the second lowest of our trip. Conveniently located close to the city center, it was an easy walk downhill past shops, bars and restaurants to the river and the stone bridge that connects Blois nord with sud [north with south].

We checked out the local chateau, impressive with its now-public space and garden area, then enjoyed the evening with a glass of wine and a beer while watching Italy and America play to a 1-1 soccer World Cup tie. For those of us who did watch the game and are Italian, it was clear that Italy scored both goals but one went errantly into the Italian net by mistake when an Italian player, trying to clear the ball downfield, accidentally missed kicked the ball into the wrong goal.

CHATEAU CHENONCEAU

If you have to rule France from somewhere, Chateau Chenonceau is as good a place as any. Clearly, this is what Catherine de Medici [1519-1589] thought after ordering it out of the hands of her husband’s long time mistress and eminence grise, Diane de Poitiers, who was made a present of the picture-perfect structure when King Henry II of France took her as his mistress for 25 years, following the death of her husband, a friend and advisor to Henry. Following Henry’s death, Catherine reclaimed this property to show Diane that her privileged position, made possible only by her relationship to Henry, had come to an end and she, not Poitiers, was ruling it and the country.

The original and smaller structure was first constructed in the 1430s on the lazy, flowing River Cher, a tributary to the more famous Loire River. It came into Henry’s hands when he took it, essentially, for back taxes. Catherine, born in Florence, Italy, to Lorenzo II, used her Italian talents in style and cuisine to, among other accomplishments, become known as the “mother of French cuisine” and to create a style all her own that included the invention of lipstick, which historians say she made from beeswax [for its gloss] and coloring. Catholic by birth, she became also known for using poisons to assassinate her political and Protestant enemies of the day.

Her attention to architecture style manifested itself at Chenonceau when she added several floors of galleries that extended the small chateau to reach the south bank of the Cher. For a while, Catherine ruled France from a tiny room only steps from her bedroom. The chateau, which avoided destruction during France’s days of revolution by removing the “x” at the end of its original name to signal revolutionaries and their compatriots it was no longer a symbol of the ruling aristocracy, is now a tourist magnet with a strong field of attraction. Swarming with the other tourists who come in droves to see where its famous historical residents lived their lives of privilege and wealth, I marveled at its tantalizing tapestries and gazed in controlled awe at the nearby gardens, where Catherine grew orange trees, a popular, exotic addition to the grounds, and at the extensive timbered land where hunters harvested game and where the chateau’s farming operation were sited.

Looking into the chateau’s restaurant in the Orangerie, a magnificently maintained garden which features many orange trees, we choose not to dine there but instead to sit on one of the many benches that line the long path between the parking lot and the chateau that is shaded by the interlocking branches of the trees that grow along side it and eat the picnic lunch we had with us. In Blois that morning, I made crusty bread sandwiches of salami and cheese and tomatoes, which we ate leisurely with Provencal olives and that we coolly washed down with water collected from a public fountain in Blois. Although the weather was spectacular, it was a bit hot. But the breezes that swept through the shaded, wooded area cooled our skin and refreshed us for the drive to Tours and then home to Blois that night.

TOURS

Sunday or Dimanche in France finds most businesses closed, with the exception of eateries and others that choose to remain open. Accordingly, we found our way to the city center, where we walked through a lovely ceramic pottery exhibition in a panhandle park close to Tour’s impressive Hotel de Ville or city hall.

Now the capital city or prefecture of seven cantons comprising the Indre-et-Loire, Tours over the centuries has been a destination for Vikings, who came to sack it, Romans, who came to reorganize a small Christian community there, religious pilgrims who traveled to see the resting place of Saint Martin of Tours and where in the year 732 the northern march of Islam into Europe from Spain was stopped by the Battle of Tours. The name Tours, which in contemporary French means "towers," actually derives from the ancient Gallic tribe called the Turones. Now with a population of about 136,500, the town of Tours, where some way the purest form of French is spoken, prides itself on its moniker as Le Jardin de la France and serves as the ending point in the cycling race known as Paris-Tours.

PARIS IS BURNING

As we now know from the history of WWII and real records and research about the German occupation of France and Paris, one of the world’s most famous cities came within a hair’s breath of being both blown up and burned to the ground. But for one key German solider who uncharacteristically did not follow strict instructions to trigger explosives strategically placed to do great damage to the city’s signature monuments, cathedrals and the like, la Ville Lumiere or the City of Light would not be burning with the excitement, style, culture and cuisine that ignites the emotions of its contemporary residents and visitors today.

Although Paris, a name some say derived from that of a local Gallic tribe, the Parisi, which came to mean the working people or the craftsmen, was not set on fire by the Germans, it nonetheless is on fire each day. It's excitement is ignited each day by over two million residents who create flames of human movement and interaction that spread like wildfire from one of the 20 arrondissements or districts to another. Including the nine million or more residents who live in the banlieu or suburbs, Paris’ pulsating population, over 11 million or about the size of the population of the state of Ohio, is what makes this mega melting pot into a source of heat and light unlike any that could be produced by flames alone.

In our third visit to Paris, we retraced our steps to many of our favorite sites: Notre Dame on Ile de la Cite, Sacre Coeur on Montmartre, the Eiffel Tower and, of course, a leisurely walk up the Champs-Elysees from Place Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe, where we again climbed an upward spiraling stairway [284 steps] to the top of the colossal monument celebrating Napoleon's greatest military victories. From this unique vantage point, and with the brilliant pastel colors from the setting sun, we could see a colorized picture of the the 12 streets that converged into it and the outlying areas, like Montmartre, as well.

MONTPARNASSE

During this third visit, which came by car not airplane and gave me a chance to drive in Paris – as exhilarating as Rome, for sure, but without the demolition derby aspect to it – we also were pleasantly surprised by the diversity and cornucopia of offerings we found in arrondissement Montparnasse, home to France’s tallest modern office tower that pointed us to our hotel home like a terra firma North Star.

Hotel Lenox, located midway on the short Rue Delhambre, which boasts a Metro stop at each end of it [and different lines at that; a real bonus in Paris], is a pleasing mixture of Parisians and tourists, with handfuls of ethic restaurants on it and close by it; plus, it has a boulangerie/patisserie, several bars, an Italian food store, an actual miniature modern American-style grocery store and a Laundromat that offers washing and drying machines, a real find according to my wife Kathy who was tiring of our impromptu clothes washing that allowed us to put the standard bidet included in our bathrooms to a new and good use [perfect for underwear and socks].

LA DEFENSE

Purchasing a 24-hour Metro pass [also good for buses, trains and finiculars like the one at Montmarte] for each of us [total = 27 Euros or $34.50 USD], we had our tourist transportation tool in hand and were ready to again conquer the city. Having been on our feet and/or walked on average five hours per day, or a minimum of three miles each day, we estimated that we had trod close to 100 hundred miles on foot, and a good Metro seemed a good deal at any price. Among the new sites we visited was La Défense, Europe's largest business district, that also hosts the head offices of almost half of all French companies, as well as the offices of major international firms and the headquarters of many international organizations such as UNESCO, the OECD, or the ICC, our guidebook tells us.

LUXEMBOURG GARDENS

Close to Montparnasse we found the Jardin du Luxembourg or Luxembourg Gardens, a large, quiet and romantic pubic park situated at the foot of the French Senate, which is housed in the Luxembourg Palace. The palace and gardens, according to information sources, were built between 1615 to 1627 and among the many wonderful, tranquil features featured there is a shallow oval pond where children play with miniature boats. Spread across the approximately 550 acre site are individual and groupings of statutes, fountains big and small and, to our pleasant surprise, an art exhibit or two, as we found walking through it at sunset on our second day in Paris.

INVALIDES

On our list of places to visit for the first time was Invalides, a sort of a Veteran’s Administration Hospital of its time that the Sun King Louie XIV had built in 1671 to house soldiers – about 4,000, historical reports say -- who were wounded in or became disabled from fighting in his various wars. The gold-gilded dome of Invalides, an architectural marvel of its time, is another unmistakable Parisian landmark.

With 15 courtyards in it, the biggest is the cour d’honneur or court of honor, Invalides was typical of its time until the Sun King, on the advice of his war minister, built the church Saint-Louis as an annex. Soldiers who were taken care of there were eventually required to attend daily mass. And at one time, way before Napoleon's remains were brought there, King Louie thought he would lie there in repose for eternity, which accounts for its spectacular splendor inside.

But in 1861 to house forever the remains of Napoleon Bonaparte, which were disinterred and moved from the remote island of St-Helena where he died and was buried in 1821, Emperor Napoleon I’s tomb, started in 1840, was built in the center of church Saint-Louis. It consists of six coffins built from five different materials – iron, mahogany, lead, ebony and granite -- that nest inside each other and are protected by an exoskeleton sarcophagus made of red Finnish porphyry granite, a royal purple stone historically reserved for honoring the likes of Caesars, kings, queens and other noble or famous people, according to audio information offered in a self-guided tour.

As Invalides was built for solidiers, it comes as no surprise that it is also a military museum that displays many unique, historical military items and groupings. One of those groupings consists of cabinets filled from end to end with miniature soldiers from ancient to modern times dressed exactly as they fought, from their headgear to their shields and swords. Keeping an eye on the maneuverings of the partisan political armies back in Ohio, where as a statehouse journalist I came to know the political players controlling the fields of power and those whose goal this year is displace them, one miniature soldier in particular captured my attention as a historical figure that captures the crusading zeal of the man running for Governor of Ohio on the Republican ticket. As an office holder and candidate who has carefully cultivated his relationship with Ohio's Christian Right and who has taken up their banner on the political field of battle, this soldier, to me, perfectly captured what this year's race for governor will be about in the Buckeye State.

ROUSTED AT THE RITZ BUT BUTTERED UP AT MAISON DU CHOCOLATE

My wife wanted to visit Place Vendome to again peer [emphasis on peer] into the extravagent windows of such famed shops as Piaget, Versace and other super-high-end shops whose impressive store fronts line the buildings that surround the square. I also wanted to visit The Ritz Hotel in its original location there and gander at its sumptuous decor.

As we made our way to Place Vendome from the Opera Garnier, where we had enjoyed a true treat on Christmas Eve of 2003 when we surprsingly secured what we thought was the emperor's box as we watched supple, flexible ballet dancers spin and twirl to the music of Tchaikovsky and others on the giant stage inside the dazzling structure, I remembered that the Maison du Chocolate was located nearby. Finding it [the only other one is in New York], we entered the door and gazed at wood-paneled interior and at the variety of exquisit chocolates on display. A chocolate expert soon came to our aid and helped us choose among many selections that would fit our pocketbook, giving us technical information as well as pedigrees of the various beans used to make different confections. We bought some Orinoco [Venezuelan] chocolate and a tin of Poudre de Cacao for those special occasions when only the best hot chocolate is served.

At Place Vendome, whose signature monument is a center-square column with Napoleon atop it and a history in relief of his military accomlishments that swirl upward around it, The Ritz Hotel occupies some very valuable real estate. "The façade was designed by Jules Hardouin Mansart, the creator of the 'mansard' roof...and the building was converted to a luxury hotel by Cesar Ritz; it opened on June 1, 1898 and...together with the culinary talents of minority partner Auguste Escoffier [the dean of French cooking], César Ritz made the hotel synonymous with opulence, service, and fine dining," according to an online synopsis of the world-class facility.

Walking past the doormen who looked impressive in their uniforms, we were spotted immediately upon entering the foyer by a well-dressed man with a wire coming out of his security guard earpiece. Knowing without hesitation that we were merely gawkers, not guests, he approached us as to our business there. When I asked him if we could enter, he said we could not. When I asked him if I could take a picture, he again said that would not be possible. Stranded a few steps from the front doors, I was left to take a mental picture of the elaborate corridor with mirrors, tables, flower arrangements and small seating areas that ran on both sides of it from its front to where it disappeaared beyond my vision. Needless to say, we left; but outside I did snap a shot as we hustled away to our next stop on the road back to our hotel.

OUR LAST SUPPER IN PARIS IN ST. GERMAN DE PRES

Readying itself for a day of music, stages and chairs were being placed in various venues across Paris, from La Defense to Invalides, where Napoleon’s Tomb is found, to smaller venues like the courtyard outside the Iglese at St. German de Pres, a church older than famed Notre Dame, where we would rendezvous with Kathy’s cousin living and working in Paris and sally forth to find a spot for dinner.

The day had started with more dark clouds than we had seen in a while and we hoped our god of good weather would not forsake us on our last day. As the evening approached, the excitement surrounding the city-wide music that everyone was talking about got to us as well, creating a new perfume of adventure for us.

Having scouted our route to the Point Royal RER train station on Boulevard Montparnasse, where we purchased our two one-way train tickets to Aeroport Charles de Gaulle [8 Euros each, compared to a 60 Euros taxi fare] that we would use the next day, we set off for Iglise de Saint-German-des-Pres, where we would hook up with Kristin, Kathy’s first cousin, and her friend Nina, a registered nurse now living in New Mexico.

We arrive early and milled around with the other hundreds of people who had gathered to listen to the musicians who would be playing from the stage in the courtyard of the church. Completed in 588, the church built beyond the city limits of Paris at the time in the pres or fields, was to house the stole of Saint Vincent, which was given by the bishop of Saragossa as reward for the French army relinquishing their siege of his city.

A few minutes before Kristina and Nina appeared, the rain we feared might arrive, did. The musicians retreated to cover inside the church and the four of us retreated into a slender street that lead us deeper into the labyrinth of passageways that spread out like a spider’s web on the Left Bank of the River Seine.

With the crowds thickening quickly, we walked by a head-banger band still playing despite the rain raining on their parade. I thought their Goth eye makeup streaming down their face added a new touch to the black-on-black theme of their act. Turning a corner, we found a row of small eateries. Signaling from the street with four fingers raised high to the waiter whose eye I caught and who nodded approval, we dashed inside out of the rain and happily claimed our table.

Being at its core a Greek restaurant with French offerings, we opened our last supper in Paris with a bottle of wine [24 Euros] and nibbled on the basket of bread our waiter has brought us. In Europe in general, salt and pepper are not sitting on the table as they are in The States, and you need to ask for it. Our waiter, who would first constern us then make us laugh later, arrived to take our orders. Looking at the order of the young man sitting next to me whose order had arrived and that displayed a whole fish, tail to head, with a soufflé dish of mushrooms and peppers sitting along side it, I pointed to it – it was the 12 Euro daily special as well -- and he wrote it down. My other table guests ordered mousakka, very Greek and very good, and a vegetarian salad plate.

Dinner was wonderful. My Dorade, a small Mediterranean fish with tender white flesh that when grilled evokes memories of pompano or red snapper, was delicate in texture and taste notwithstanding the need to filet the fish of its bones on my plate.

Near the end of dinner and the energeteic exchange of information about living and working in Europe, we decided to venture out for doux or sweet desert elsewhere. I asked our vested waiter the check. Looking back at me as he carried dishes from one table back to the kitchen, he acknowledged my request. As the minutes passed and turned into tens of minutes, we tried again to ask for the check. Again he looked at us, nodding that he understood what we wanted. But he continued to take orders and deliver plates to various tables as the small restaurant was now filled with laughing, drinking patrons. Even Kristin, who has lived in Paris now for over eight months and who has lost what ever Texas twang she had in favor of a lilting French accent, pleaded with him for the bill.

Approaching 45 minutes since we first asked for the check, I suggested we stand up, walk away from the table and head for the door, which we did. Either they would come with the bill or dinner would be free, which was becoming an idea whose time had come. Our waiter looked at us with a smile and a slight shrug of his shoulders, as if to say “I’m busy but don’t leave without paying.” Like the well-dressed, goateed villain in The French Connection who waves goodbye to Popeye Doyle with a hand-puppet gesture from the subway as it pulls away, I did the same from outside the restaurant, where the stone pavement was wet from the rain but the crowds were thicker than ever as the Spanish brass band at the end of the street was riling up the walkers with nationalist soccer songs generating that elicited shouts and yells of revelry.

He beckoned me to come back, which I did. In my stunted French, I thanked him for the free dinner and told him how delicious it was. He smiled and apologized for the delay, explaining he was only the order taker and that the owner, a woman with red hair, would make up the bill. Retreating to her small desk at the rear of the stone-walled space and huddling around her as she fumbled through a stack of orders to find ours, I told her the meal was great and that as a former restaurant owner myself, I would be glad to wash dishes because I had no money to pay the bill. She smiled and laughed a bit, then totaled it all up. The bill came to 83 Euros [$106 USD].

The hour was now late and wandering aimlessly for an evening-ending desert was no long an option. We bid our goodbyes to Kristin and Nina as we parted company with them in the Metro station next to our rendezvous church.

The following morning, or later that night would be more accurate, Kathy and I headed out from our hotel at 4:30 am to clatter through the streets to our RER train station, where we would catch the first train of the day to the aeroport and our flight.

BRUISED BUT NOT BATTERED, MY PREDICTAMENT IN PARIS IS A TALE OF TWO HEALTH SYSTEMS

From the first, surprise occurrence in my life of a blood clot [lower left leg] in February of 2005 and the installation of three coronary stents – bloodstream culverts -- later that year on August 29, the day Hurricane Katrina washed away New Orleans, I have been pressed into service as a new paying member of Club Coumadin and have begrudging become a daily pill popper of Plavix. The drug is a good match up with Coumadin by preventing blood platelet’s from “sticking together,” thereby helping to avoid further clot formations that in many cases can cause strokes or sudden death. Coumadin, a French word, is also known by its generic name, Warfarin, a blood thinning drug first used to kill rats by causing massive internal hemorrhaging.

Of all the Paris guidebooks and travel articles I have read over the years, not one of them, discounting for the moment websites like that of our Secretary of State’s that provides more than just classic tourist information, invests more than a few lines to discuss or list Paris hospitals and what to do if you need one.

What is an INR and why am I talking about it in a travel blog? INR is code for International Normalized Ratio, a global standard, like ISO is for manufacturing, for gauging the clotting or coagulating ability of blood. The INR gold standard is between 2.0 – 3.0, unless you have artificial heart valves, which then allows for a higher INR. If the INR reading is below 2.0, either more Coumadin is needed or a change is diet is required; the same applies for readings above 3.0. Coumadin also has upwards of a 72-hour lag time between when ingested and when it becomes active in the blood stream. Vitamin K, the nemesis of Coumadin, works in real time. Before leaving on my trip, my last three INR readings put me in the landing zone as I call the midpoint in the INR Gold Standard.

When your membership in Club Coumadin is granted because of blood clots or other hematological problems that require thin blood, a balancing act or dance commences between your medication and other factors; most especially diet, which affects the fuel mixture as I call it between a drug that thins your blood to prevent future blood clots and foods like spinach, cauliflower and other cruciferous legumes rich in Vitamin K that cause your blood to clot or coagulate, and that may hasten the formation of future clots, which may lead to strokes or sudden death.

On the go as we have been for weeks now, finding and eating Vitamin K foods has been slapdash at best because restaurant menus do not always feature items with spinach, especially in the quantity I needed, and green grocers, which are easily found, often did not have spinach, my vegetable of choice I now look at as I do with my man-made drugs of Coumadin and Plavix. Spinach, as I look at, is not just for Popeye, anymore!

Spontaneous bruising from my growing imbalance between drugs and diet first surfaced in Barcelona. A quarter-sized spot on my left rib cage hurt when touched or when my camera, which I wore under my shirt or CNN flak jacket, bounced against it while walking. A Post-it-note-sized bruise caught my attention in the mirror one morning, but unsure at the time of what had caused it, we went walking as we did each day but made visiting a vegetable market to hunt down spinach [or spinaci in Italian or epinard in French or espinaca in Spanish] a must-do in the day. I was taking the daily regime of pills but my diet was not keeping pace with that dosage.

My bruises expanded, literally and in brilliant blues and purples [bad skin colors] in Blois, where we discussed whether to go to a hospital there or take off a day early for Paris. One night while writing a draft story, I rested my left elbow on the table top and felt a sensation of padding on its tip I had not felt before. Putting my hand on the padding, I realized it was a small sack of blood that had formed over night and was hot to the touch. Also, in Blois, where we wandered into a church garden that featured many culinary herbs and other plants that were grown for their ornamental value, I purloined a couple large leafs of Swiss Chard and chewed on them like a rabbit eating its last meal. Vitamin K is where you find it, and that night, I found it growing in a beautiful container in Blois.

We left Blois for Paris the next day. With great weather again greeting us, we drove the local scenic roads until we came to Orleans, the prefecture of the Centre region of France located about 80 miles southwest of Paris. At Orleans, we joined the streaming freeway traffic and headed to Paris.

Finding our Paris lodger, Hotel Lenox in Montparnasse, and returning our Hertz Peugeot to the Gare [station] Montparnasse, we availed ourselves of a farmacia, where I displayed my bruised arms to the farmacist, who then directed me to a nearby hospital. All important matters having gone our way so far, the fact that we were staying in a hospital district was in step with our luck to date.

Passports, American health cards and international driving license in tow, we sought and easily found Hospital Leopold Bellan, a semi private facility, close by at 19-21 Rue Vercingetorix.

Walking into the emergency room, we approached the front desk, where we first laid eyes on Natalie, our Paris-born nurse who spoke a smidgen of English but whose Spanish later turned out to be the Rosetta Stone of our conversation, and who looked at my passport and wrote down my name and address. When she saw my bruises, which looked like the sugar spots on a too ripe banana, and learned that they were five days old, her jaw dropped slightly as she directed us to take a seat in a nearby corridor with a row of chairs. We did so. But all the while we wondered to ourselves how long it would take for me to be seen or what it would cost and how we would pay for it.

Within two minutes of nestling into our chairs, a door opened and nurse Natalie called for us to enter. Her first instruction was for me to take off my clothes. Following instructions but keeping my undergarment in place, I dawned one of the open-paneled hospital garbs common place in hospitals in America and abroad. In as little time as it took to be seen, my French woman doctor walked into the room. She sat at a desk and started talking with Natalie, who would then try in her pigeon English to translate the doctor’s instructions to me. As someone who is moderately conversant in Spanish and who knocked some of the rust off the language while in Barcelona, I asked in Spanish if either of them spoke it? Natalie immediately replied that she did. She told me that even though she was born in Paris, her parents were Portuguese and for reasons she could not explain, it is easier for the Portuguese to learn Spanish than for a Spaniard to learn Portuguese.

Kathy had walked back to Hotel Lenox, a few streets away, to retrieve my medical records, which we had wisely brought with us, that listed all my medications and included a brief history about them. In the course of the two hours I was told to lay quietly in my hospital bed, Natalie and Docteur Dominique Menez, chef de service, and her team of adjoints or assistants, took blood and ran a full profile report that included an INR reading; they also performed an electrocardiogram and a urinalysis along with a blood pressure reading. Both members of my French medical team told me that I would be kept for two days if needed, to which I made a feeble effort to argue that my trip to Paris would be squandered. I did not argue it forcefully knowing who I was up against. That was not a well received argument, as both their stares told me in non verbal but no uncertain terms.

At the end of the nearly two hour wait, nurse Natalie and Docteur Menez returned and told me I was alright and could go. They downsized my Coumadin dose to 1mg per day and advised me to cut down on walking by using the Paris Metro or its buses. We said we would do that. Natalie then took me to the check out desk, where she disappeared for a minute only to return with an appointment time for a blood test two days later.

The time to pay arrived. The young man serving as the caissier or cashier punched his keyboard as he looked at his computer monitor. He printed our bill and gave it to us. Looking at the bill with a large dose of trepidation, given what we thought such an event might cost in The States, we looked hard at the number at the bottom of the page. We looked at the figure then looked at each other. A small smile of incredulity crept over our faces. For all that had been done, especially to us foreigners who just walked in off the street, the tab was 43.95 euros, or $56.25 in USD. We paid the bill, which could easily have been a bottle of wine and two dinner entrees that evening, with our MasterCard. Natalie, without understanding the system well enough to explain it to us, even in her slapdash English, said that anyone in France who has a credit card has access to health insurance.

What a novel and intriguing idea for the nation with the so-called greatest health care system in the world to consider. But not holding our breath for that breakthrough of understanding or political will, my quest to become an Italian citizen through heritage and the ability to live and work in the EU as a result of it takes on even more significance as health care comes to play a larger role in our remaining years.

When we first looked at the bill, we suggested to our young bursar that in America, where upwards of 45 million people do not have health care insurance to begin with and whose only option is to use emergency room and pay emergency room rates, for those that do, a $100 dollar co-payment would be par for the course and that the cost of all the work they had done could easily have come to $1,200 or more. He looked at us as incredulously as we had first looked at our paltry cost of care. Even though the Paris clay court tennis tournament had ended weeks before, for us in Paris, it was “Game, set, match.”

Not being held hostage for two of my three days in Paris was exhilarating. And now knowing my INR reading count and what spontaneously happens to me when I reach that level through an imbalance created from medication, diet or exercise, I had a vivid portrait in blue and purple of why I need to be vigilant in juggling medicines, diet and exercise to my best advantage.

My next posting will come from "The Divided States of America" and feature a roundup of observations and tips.

BUCKEYES BASKING IN BARCELONA

BASKING IN BUSTLING BARCELONA

Ryanair, Europe’s self-described “on time airline,” wins our vote for being on time and on the money. Their flights are crazy cheap compared to other name brand airlines but their airports are not the major hubs but outlying venues that, in some cases, take a while even by bus to get ot.

Such was the case flying to Barcelona from Venezia. Departing from tiny Treviso airport aboard a Ryanair bus [5 euros each], the ride lasted about an hour. Treviso, about as big as the bus station in Columbus, Ohio, features not one but two gates and is waiting for its new cousin, being built next door, to become operational. Taking a Ryanair bus guarantees that it will deliver you to the station in time for the flight, which we can tell you from experience is a no frills event that leaves on time and arrives on time. No micro bags of peanuts or pretzels; no isle stewards jockeying slender carts of beverages to passengers. Just efficient, timely take offs and arrivals. That’s a winning business model for me.

Once on the ground at Girona, our Ryanair bus [11 euros each one-way to Barcelona] motored for an hour through the countryside of Spain, which here was reminiscent of parts of California.

An auspicious event happened to us as we were walking our bags along the street, having left the bus station trying to find our way to our lodging quarters for the next three days, Residencia Australia, Ronda Universidad N 11, 4-1. Asking a passing woman directions, Bridgett, a German working in Spain for General Motors [as we learned later], not only gave us directions but offered to walk us to the nearby Metro stop and guide us through buying a ticket to our station. We bought a 10-ride pass for 6 euros each, a good deal, considering the length of our stay.

Even though Ryanair arrived 15 minutes early and our bus ride was 30 minutes shorter than advertised, night had fallen and we were strangers in a new, big city. Bridgett told us to be wary of pickpockets, who she said had stolen her purse three times in the month she has lived here. She said they come up, cut the strap of the purse or camera bag, and off they go. Thinking we were walking targets by virtue of dragging our four bags behind us, our newfound sense of paranoia tainted an otherwise warm and breezy night, as we became conspicuously aware of who was around us.

The crowd riding the Metro at this time of night was light and we our destination was only three stops away. Walking up to street level from the Metro exit, we found ourselves at a big circle where several major boulevards, like spokes on wheel, converged. The third person I asked for directions, a man standing in a doorway smoking a cigarette, pointed precisely to our destination door. But for a small sign that read “Hostal Central” and had a tiny postage stamp note on the door buzzer that read Residencia Australia, we would never have found it that night.

Just as we did walk up to it, a elderly man dressed in a suit opened our door and we swept in behind him. He was a resident but gave us a lift on the elevator that was old and small but worked, as it lifted us up to the fourth floor. Wondering the nature of our accommodations, we buzzed the bell on the door and Tom, our proprietor, opened the door, peered at us and asked us what we wanted. When we told him our names, he opened the door wider so we could move our luggage in.

Once at the desk, his cat Cha Cha leapt up onto the table top and stood resolute, arching his back as cats do in a gesture to be petted, which, as a cataficionado, I did kindly obliged. A few minutes later after our business was concluded, Tom helped carry our bags back down to street level. His elevator, a vintage but fully operational 1930’s model only works when its doors are closed. One was not, forcing us to hoof it down the marble steps to the street below and then to another building where our room and nearby bathroom were located. At 73 euros a night, the location was excellent and the room itself – one double bed and one single bed – was clean, had a tiny working frig [with the smallest ten unit ice cube tray I have ever seen in it], a TV and a small table stocked with coffee, tea, cups, and silverware.

Having eaten only sandwiches I made from the breads and meats I bought earlier in the day at the panificio in D’Altino across the railroad tracks from our hotel, we were tired but hungry and asked Tom where we could find something at the late hour. Although 10 p.m. in America is when restaurant kitchens start to close, throughout Europe and Spain, the dinner show is just getting started. We walked down the street and around the corner past a number of bars with outside seating until we arrived at a corner Spanish tapas bistro. Tapas are small servings, generally two on a plate, of menu choices including fish, prawns, meats, cheeses and vegetables. Tapas bars flourish in Spain and Barcelona like trattorias do in Italy.

At La Tramoia on Rambla De Catalunya, we had potatoes stuffed with shrimp and bacalao [cod fish] with melted cheese, brushcetta with salmon and asparagus, an order of tomatoes and fresh cheese and two San Miguel beers and a glass of house red wine. Total tab was 23.49 or $29.83 USD, more than we wanted to spend, but good nonetheless.

The markets scattered through out the city were truly amazing. The one near the Liceu Metro stop was full of stalls with the most amazingly fresh vegetables, fruit, meat and especially fish of all varieties. As a card carrying member of Club Coumadin, I must balance my blood thinning medicine with foods rich in Vitamin K. Going to the market for me is like going to the pharmacy for others. My hunt for spinach, one of Popeye's and my favorite foods, took me to the market, where we also tasted luscious fruit offerings and rounded up bread, meats and cheeses for our trip to the beach, where [if you look closely at the picture, past the topless woman standing in the foreground, you'll see my head in the Mediterranean waves].

GAUDI GALLENT IN USING NATURE AND NATURAL MATERIALS TO CREATE UNIQUE ARCHITECTURAL STATEMENTS

Antoni Gaudi, the architect of some of Barcelona's most buildings and churches, translated nature and its materials into works of art that seem to defy both. The Sagrada Familia, one of Barcelona's most recognized edifices, one that someday may come to be its symbol as much as the Eiffel Tower a symbol of Paris, is still under construction, even though he died in 1926.

Several of his drooping, liquid-like facades, in my opinion, may have inspired Salvado Dali to paint pictures of melting clocks. In his own way, he seems to have invented new design systems, using simple observations from nature, like that of a leaf to produce a roof where water flows effortlessly over curved forms.

The apartment we walked through, or I should say around, since it was circular like the building it was designed for, was beautiful in every detail from the doors to the ceilings and windows. Gaudi's unique style is not gaudy, which is to say it has no conspicuous display that is out of stetp with the natural flow of the brick, stone and metal he used so creatively.


HUMAN STATUES VERSUS HUMAN STATEMENTS

If you travel much, no doubt you have seen them. The men and women who disguise themselves with white faces, sheets, robes or other props as they stand motionless, sometimes on pedestals of their own making, and hope passersby will find their solo act amusing enough to pitch a few coins into the basket sitting a few feet in front of them.

In Piazza San Marco in Venezia, where tens of thousands of tourist visit each day to gawk at the stupendous architecture surrounding them or to feed the pigeons that fly in in equal numbers to the tourists to dine on an open air buffet of seeds and bread scraps, each human statute claims a prominent position. From their tiny stage of choice, the artist can perform [if that is the right term for standing motionless for long periods of time] their solo act, which often includes a “thank you” movement when money lands in their begging cup.

The variety show we saw in Venezia included a handful of Carrara Marble white acts, although one soul went south across the Mediterranean for inspiration, dressing up as King Tut in a head-to-toe gold outfit with azure-blue eye holes to watch who favored the Pharaoh.

Here in Barcelona, most notably along the long chain of streets collectively known as Las Ramblas, the preeminent boulevard linking the Naval monument to the south with fountains of Catalunya to the north, the number of human statues and the variety is impressive.

From mid morning to mid evening, which in Spain and Italy is the traditional time to amble with your family and friends through parks and along beautiful tree-lined walkways like Las Ramblas, human statues are on the job. Although the color white is a favorite among many, evoking a dreamy sense of spirituality, black is also a solid choice as it can startle some whose eyes do not see it for what it is at first but who then stop and stare as they look into the real human eyes behind the coal-black black face starring at them.

Rambling up Las Ramblas, from the southern end where the memorial monument to the naval sector has a pointing Christopher Columbus standing atop near the Drassanes Metro stop to the northern ending at the sprawling plaza Catalunya, we counted no fewer than 13 acts. They included a Pinocchio duo riding tricycles, two women dressed as butterflies, a nondescript statue, an Indian chief, another alabaster white act and others that filled the space along Barcelona’s most walked street, which guidebooks say is about 1.2 kilometers of about 7/10^th mile.

But as with any job, rest periods are needed and workers, even fake statues, go home when the workday is over. in Venezia, we saw one human statue, face as white as snow, carrying his gear, headed home after a hard day of standing around motionless. We have also seen some solo acts take a rest period. Stepping down from their homemade pedestals, they generally remove their headgear and sit down for a smoke or a drink.

However, in each city we visited, there are human statutes of a different sort. Not offering themselves up as entertainment to amuse the swarms of camera-totting tourists who pretend not to notice them, not dressed in stark white or black or assisted by religious props like angel wings, swords or flowers, these human statutes remain motion for even longer periods than their comical cousins. Unlike their competing commercial neighbors, these human statutes offer no flourish or acknowledgement for money received.

These human statutes, usually women who may have a small child close by, are the hard-working beggars of the streets of Europe. In a city like Roma or Venezia, where the American real estate term of “location, location, location” is not relevant because every location is nearly as good as another, kneeling in a narrow, shaded street may be as effective as standing in a sunny, broad piazza. The later is less intimate but offers a bigger audience while the former reduces the numbers but because it is up close and personal, it may heighten point of sale giving.

In Roma, while walking to the Trevi Fountain through another beautiful narrow passage way, we turned a corner and saw sitting in the sun, a short, barrel-chested man with his arm and part of his shoulder missing. The sun, bright and hot, reflected off his bronzed, sweaty body. In an ironic way, he appeared almost proud of his deformity. After seeing him and walking within inches of where he sat so no one could miss him, a conjured image of Victor Hugo’s tragic hero of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” Quasimodo, flashed through my mind as I tried in seconds to fathom whether his disability was a curse or a blessing.

Kneeling on the lagoon side of Piazza San Marco in Venezia, and located across the walkway from one commercial human statue, was a woman with tear-stained cheeks and arms out-stretched skyward, as if Raphael himself had painted her, silently asking for salvation from above while accepting money from below. The next day, as we stepped off one of the “vaporetto” boats that ferry passengers through the canals and between the islands, I saw her in the same spot, crying with as much passion as when I first saw her. Was this her everyday job, I asked myself or just an act to shake down loose change from sympathetic tourists?

In Barcelona, while riding the Metro, a man with no arms boarded the train, his beggar’s cup hanging around his neck. We saw one man, who face was tragically burned, sleeping in the street; then days later, we saw him again in two different spots offering himself up for contributions.

In Europe, where public statues abound everywhere, the real statues are bigger than life. The commercial human statues are life sized and entertaining. The statements of humanity, while the fewest in number, are really reflections of each of us, because but for the Grace of God, there go each of us.

BUCKEYES IN BOLOGNA AND VENEZIA

HOW GREEN (AND STONY) WAS MY FATHER'S VALLEY

After we ate the "primo colazione" or Italian breakfast and tossed down two cups of perfectly foamy Italian espresso coffee at Borgo Hotel Pace, where again we were the only ones seated in the dining area, we drove down the tiered stone stepped driveway, rustling two sleeping dogs in the process, and hit the road out of the green and stony valley my father left at age 12 to come to America. Seeing where he was born and walking the streets 50 years after his death, I appreciate his bravery in venturing to the far side of the world, knowing no one except his sister, who married another Italian from San Marco in Lamis. With my father's innate ingenuity, street smarts for business and determination to make something of himself, he and Matteo Capelli formed a business partnership and became well known and successful in their own rights as florists and flower growers in Springfield, Ohio, my hometown.

My father, who found my mother through a friend of a friend in America, not Italy, even though their two Italian small towns are less than 50 miles apart, was 11 years older than her and a tireless worker. Looking with new perspective at old dog-eared pictures from the tattered pages of the family album I've carted with me over the decades, I have come to understand that he was really a country boy and farmer at heart. When I gaze at pictures of him in his 20s hooked up to a horse and plow, tools he used to plant "fiore" or flowers for their blooms and bulbs, or look at him at age 36 standing proudly in the flower shop he built with his hands and wearing a snappy suit and tie with a white apron, I see his sense of personal and professional pride and style. Walking through the up and down stone streets and looking at the same stony hillsides that encompass the small hardscrabble town of San Marco in Lamis today as they did in 1902, his birth year, I admire and respect him even more for his effort to learn English on the fly while essentially working first as a migrant worker in his early years in America and the sense of accomplishment he earned the hardway, through hard work. Ever resourceful, he invested his hard-earned money into homes and land like other immigrants who turned their dreams into assets that paid dividends for the family.

Dressing up in Italy, even for laborers and the downtrodden, is a point of personal pride. In each Italian community we've visited, I watch older men meet in groups in the afternoon or walk arm-in-arm with their equally dapper silver-haired wives as they promenade slowly along the rough, black stone steps of their neighborhood. Pictures of him in 1928, when he returned to Italy to visit friends, show him a man of resources and respect. Reading from a journal of my brother's and aunt's trip to San Marco in Lamis in 1993, I found Via Magenta, the street he reportedly grew up on before he left friends and family to move to America and an unknown future awaiting him there. Once there, however, he pursued a legal path to American citizenship in 1917, seven years before the Immigration Act of 1924, which had it been passed years earlier may have made his passage more difficult if not impossible as the welcoming gates to opportunity closed to streams of Europeans like my father [For a ratifying, timely comment on this topic, read Frank Rich's column in the June 11 edition of The New York Times.]

I appreciate his pluck and determination even more [and see those qualities in me as well, along with his hair, which has been a source of amusement to me over the years]. My surviving brother tells another story of how my father Michele, when he returned to Italy in 1928, escaped being shanghaid into the Italian army because authorities there thought he was still an Italian citizen. To avoid military service in Italy, the story goes, he retrieved his American passport from the ship he arrived on as proof of his citizenship. This act staved off further hassles. He never returned to Italy.

My next oldest brother Joe, 67, a retired professor of Geography from Bowling Green State University, tells an important yet poignant story about my father, who as a "street urchin" in his hometown was thrown out of a nearby monastery by the ruling priests for trying to "dip a crust of bread into their water fountain." I understand, even more, why he was not a friend of the church or organized religion, opting instead to make his own way in life, which he did to great success before he died June 1, 1956 at age 54, when I, the youngest of his three sons, was eight years of age.

The march of this Italian penguin back to my parent's roots has been a personal goal for years. The need and desire to make the trip was accentuated in 2005 following the formation of a blood clot in my lower left leg calf that became more insidious when a piece broke off, floated upstream and lodged in my lung. In addition to this sudden, unforseen and asymptomatic event, I had three heart stents inserted on August 29, the day Hurricane Katrina blew and washed New Orleans. Adding to these unwanted situations, I became my uncle's caregiver when my aunt asked me to "look in on him." Nearly two months later, after removing him from his deplorable home situation and moving him like a chess piece through the health care system, he died the same day as Pope John Paul II from a combination of illnesses that could have been diagnosed earlier had he visited a family reguarly, which he did not do despite seeing many doctors over his life to attend to serious burns he suffered as a teenager.

Loosing my father at an early age from a heart attack was compounded when my mother died of cancer at the of 57 in 1969 when I was 21 years of age. My oldest brother, Louis, named for our parternal grandfather, died at age 49 in 1986. With men in my family dying at early ages and in the wake of my close encounter with mortality, the decision to leave my statehouse reporter job a few months ago to make this trip was not a hard one anymore. My wife's company of the last two years, a big Philadelphia business services company I'll refer to as ErrorMark, where "drinking the koolaid" of corporate BS is mandatory, fired her in early March. This reward for doing a spectacular job despite the soap-opera crew she inherited, suddenly gave us time to make this trip. Being modest and practial in life, we long ago learned the lesson of saving when you can so you have it when you need it. With a few dollars tucked away and the gift of time now here, we decided that time, not money, is what is imporant. It has been cathartic, in a free wheeling kind of way, to plan the trip, then do it. We are talented and resourceful and know that new, exciting jobs will find us. When Kathy's father died earlier this year, it put to rest internal obstacles she has wrestled with all her life. Even though we are now in our late 50s, we're not interested in running in the rat race anymore. Slowing down and enjoying what we now see as important -- family, friends, travel and personal [not corporate koolaid baloney] acheivement -- is what we will focus on going forward.

What I've gathered so far in my heritage hunt are the names of my paternal grandparents, Luigi Spinelli and Palma Sassano. I never knew my grandfather [who I was told was an itinerant olive oil salesman and who died from a heart attack at age 49] but my did dad took care of his mother, bringing her from Italy to live with him in Springfield, Ohio. One of my fond preschool childhood memories speaking Italian with her since she spoke no English. But my parent's aspiring to become Americans in every sense of the word, decided [much to my regret now] to speak their town dialects among themselves and their paisano compatriots and leave their children to use English as their native tongue. How I wish they had kept the language alive within us.

Speaking English, an increasingly hot topic as recent headlines fan the flames about the imposition of learning English on Hispanics swarming to America for a better life -- as did my father, is now ironic to me as I time travel to the Italian headwaters of my gene. As I tell people I meet here, I was born and raised in American but "la sangre mia e tutta Italiano." I look at the world and life they left as children and see Italy as the "new old world," a place I curiously feel at home in and a country and lifestyle I could reverse migrate to and adopt with few problems. In America, the land of boundless opportunity where everyone could make something of themselves -- as my parents did -- but which has told the world under the misguided leadership of Mr. Bush and his religious neocon "awks" that "you're either with us or against us," I understand from first hand observation that his arrogant, myopic, politically self-serving war of aggression has turned a country like Italy against us and, I fear, will do so with other nations as well. If America continues it quick descent from a Land of the Free to a Land of the Fear, for my remaining years I would have no problem becoming an expatriate. Just as my parents left their homeland to venture to America when America was still the America of the world's dreams, I could easily go eastward as I now feel abandoned and castigated by the religious, political zealots who hold office and whose policies Italians, who recently turned out of office former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a billionaire media mogul who like Tony Blair coddled up to Bush in the bogus war we are now in, opted away from by installing a left-center candidate, Romano Prodi, who will withdraw Italian troops for Bush's War in Iraq. Yester day in Plaza San Marcos in Venezia, I asked a caribinieri why the flags in the colossal square were flying at half mast. He told me they were honoring four Italian soldiers killed two days ago in Iraq.

Our original plans called for us to return our car in Foggia, the regional capital of Puglia, a chronically poor and downtrodden part of Italy located on the lower calf of the boot. Some travel writers are saying it is the next up and coming tourist destination for travelers seeking the next least traveled roads.

We decided otherwise. With another day to drive it before we returned it, which could be anywhere in Italy, we decided to cut our costs in half and drive instead of take a train to Bologna, the home of Italy's new Prime Minister Romano Prodi, a left of center leader from a city where socialists and communists are still active.

Rugged yet agriculturally rich, Puglia and the Gargano National Park, where my fatherÂ’s hometown of San Marco in Lamis resides, can at times resemble a curious blend of Wyoming buttes and Shenandoah Valley farms, only with olive trees and grape vines instead of feed crops like soybeans and corn.

Instead of turning our stalwart Fiat Panda in and taking a train to Bologna, we chose instead to drive leave my fatherÂ’s green and stony valley a day early and make the three hundred mile drive, half of which hugs the beautiful Adriatic coastline, to Bologna, where we hoped our bed and breakfast hosts would permit us to exchange one night for another.

The weather, which had been stormy and rainy the night before, again smiled on us and lit our way with sunshine and moderate temperatures. Although taking the train would have allowed me to shed my driving duties as I am the only one with an international driving license, it would also not have allowed us to see the signature agricultural quilt of Italy knitted mile upon mile with groves of olive and peach trees and vineyard after vineyard.

All the way up the A13, the Autostrada leading us to Bologna, an ancient city we would be pleasantly surprised by, we looked off at hilltop after hilltop to see church domes and campanile [bell towers] of the towns built there for purposes of defense and control of surrounding area.

BOLOGNA: OLD, BOLD, BEAUTIFUL AND BEGUILING

We arrived in Bologna late afternoon, a day earlier than planned. Hoping our Italian bed and breakfast there, I Portici, would look kindly on us and exchange one night for another. Following the simple concentrentric-circle "Centro" Italian city signs that direct drivers to the center of the city, we made our way through one of the still-standing ancient gates of the walled city and found Via Saragozza. With the sun sinking, we scanned house numbers until we came to our destination. Anna opened the big wooden street door, allowing me to move inside. Walking up three flights of marble stairs, I saw her looking through a strong iron gate that protected yet another formidable inner door.

After introducing myself, she recognized me as tomorrow's, not today's guest. But with both her guest bedrooms vacant, the switch in date was without problem. The room was spacious with a wonderful balcony overlooking the busy street below. The bathroom, which was not en-suite [in the room itself] was also large with an ample bathtub and all the comforts of home. Speaking Italian and French, Anna and I made it through a short conversation about where to park the car, which was wherever we could find a place, provided we secured parking tickets. Soon after our arrival, her husband Carlo Alberto Tozzola, a former economist turned bed and breakfast association organizer, arrived. Carlo spoke enough English to enable us to move into other areas of conversation, like where we could find a restaurant or what sites we could still see before night arrived.

Getting a good view of their charming apartment, we were happy with our our choice. In addition to their hospitality, which came in the form of a big bottle of water, a small basket of fresh fruit and several sweets, the real surprise of the room came when Carlo, responding to my query of where I could find a "punto de Internet" showed me a high-speed cable in the room.

Later that evening, after returning from a beautiful and intriguing walk through the old city's beguiling corridors, I relished not having to watch the clock as I had when buying an hour at a time online.

The day had turned sunny and the evening promised to be equally pleasant. As we walked eastward on Via Saragozza through the high-ceilinged sidewalk corridor that gave shade and protection from rain to the many storefronts along its length, we walked with increased anticipation of what old and bold Bologna would offer us before we left the next day for Venezia.

Walking through the narrow shaded streets, we were smitten with the old city's romantic and charm and intrigue. An unexpected treat was walking into the plaza to find a stage with dancers on it performing for anyone who cared to sit and watch them. Driving for over three hundred miles had stirred our appetites. Passing dozens of small bars and side walk cafe eateries, we spotted an attractive buffet [for only six euros at that] that featured a table filled plates of regular and new sidedishes. The really selling point to me was something I've never seen before, a half wheel of parmesan cheese with a spade to quarry chunks of it onto your plate. With a glass of "vino blanco," we ate our fill and topped it off, as we've become accustomed to of late, with a two-euro cup of gelato.

Resting comfortably and sleeping soundly in our well appointed room, we awoke the next morning to sun and a lovely breakfast includeding a hot, freshly baked cake by Carlo, who also is associated with a cooking school in Bologna. He and Anna, even though I asked them to come join us, chose instead to eat their morning repast a few feet away at a small table close to the kitchen. Carlo's high-rise hot breakfast cake gave the table butter good reason to melt. Covered with cookies and biscuits, mini bottles of "succor pesche" [peach juice], we drank our strong Italian coffee inbetween bites of croissants slathered with jam and marmalade.

Following payment for the room, Carlo provided a great service to us by calling the Holiday Inn in Quarto D'Altino outside Venezia where we had previously booked three days to gain the Ok for us to add another day to our package at the fabulous online rate of 81 euros per night. Exchanging business cards and showing each other our respective websites before saying "Ciao!," we toted our bags down to the car and set off for Venezia, 100 miles to the northeast. Raising her hands in a mock gesture of prayer, Anna told us of Venezia's beauty. She was right.

V for Venezia

Stepping off the train in Venezia's Santa Lucia station from Quarto D'Altino, where our "solo andata" or one-way ticket cost us 2.05 euros, our excitement meter started registering as we saw for the first time the famous canals that fanned out before us. The clear blue skies were assisted by a complimentary breeze from the still-sinking city on the sea. Walking from the train station over the first of many white stone bridges that provide passage from one bank of a canal to the other, I had a hard time visually digesting the spectacular scene that sprawled before us.

I only took 88 pictures that first day. I could have taken more but would have had to strap my camera to my forehead because every view was a postcard picture. Each street was packed with interesting, unique shops operating from intriguing and alluring architectural offerings. Venezia's moorish influences were clearly visible everywhere we walked. Taking that fact into consideration, I understand why Shakespeare placed his moorish merchant Shylock in Venice, a powerful and rich city where traders from across the known world interacted.

Appearing one arch at a time as we walked around a curving canal, we saw the famous Rialto Bridge, where jewlery merchants, operating cheek by jowel as they do on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, had dazzling displays featuring, along with masks of all kinds, the colorful glass blown on nearby Murano Island.

On our first day in Venezia, we walked five hours through the maze of streets [some only as wide as your outstretched arms] that parallel or intersect the narrow canals, home to all types of boats, the most famous of which, of course, are the slender Gondolas that can be three abreast as the stripped shirted Gondoliers silently ply the emerald green waters with their picture-taking and wine-drinking cargo of "touristi."

Following the signs to Piazza San Marco, arguable Venezia's most popular tourist destination, I was stunned by its breadth and scope, encompassed as it is on three sides by shops and restaurants that cater to tourists with plenty of seating and fabric covered venues where musicians, whose attire, equall to that of the waiters who look as smart and sharp as Annapolis cadets on graduation day, play melodicl, mostly Italian tunes for the thousands of tourists who are either taking pictures, waiting in line to enter the campanile or one of the many churches or chasing the thousands of pigeons who feed off of seeds sold by seed vendors. If "The Birds," Alfred Hitchcock's terror story about birds gone bad, scares you, Piazza San Marcos will be a living nightmare.

MY MIGRAINE ON MURANO (or how I voted myself off the island)

Running into two Americans at the train station the night before who were trying to figure out which train leaves when from which train or "binario" as we were, all four of us [Fred, a career Texas Nantional Guardsman on leave from his second deployment in Kosovo, and Melissa his wife and Texas elementary school teacher] decided to spend the day in each other's company.

Kathy and I had planned on taking a canal boat ride anyway, so when we walked from the train station to the first concourse of boats, public and private, that were docked closeby, we were approached by an English speaking salesman who said he was working with a Murano glass company and for five euros each could take us to the island, where we would watch a demonstration of glass blowing, tour the showroom and then be taken to Piazza San Marcos, which Fred and Melissa had not seen but wanted to.

The ride across the canals and into the wide lagoon was excillerating as the wind blew through our hair and the disappearing shoreline gave way to the appearing shoreline of Murano with its towers and unique landmarks. Once at the dock, we were escorted into the glass factory, where the showroom overwhelmed us with its colorful, delicate and very expensive art objects.

We found a nearby eatery, where I purchased a half carafe of white wine for five euros. Packing sandwhiches, water and Taralli [a small herbed Italian pretzel], I worked on my own trained pigeon act, with the assistance of two little girls to whom I gave pieces of Taralli so they could feed the pigeons with me.

Ready to head back to Piazza San Marco, we took the ticket and headed back to the boat dock where we had originally disembarked. A similar looking boat was bobbing on the waves. Presenting my ticket to the dark-haired, sun-glass wearing driver, he looked at it for a second, handed it back to me and said it wasn't any good with him. He then put his boat motors in reverse, slipped out of the slip and motored off.

I went back into the glass showroom, found the guy who spoke English and who narrated the glass blowing demonstration conducted by a guy in a white T-shirt with tattooes and knee-length pants, who was respectfully referred to as "The Maestro," and asked him to help. His first attempt, done with a smile, was to take me back outside and point in a general direction where he said we could catch our boat.

Going to that location, I again was told by the boat operator that our tickets were not valid for his service. All four of us were now upset, wondering whether the tickets were really worthless or we had not found the right boat dock. I went back into the glass showroom, collared my English-speaking narrator again and again dragged him out and asked to be taken to the specific spot where we could catch our boat. When I showed him the ticket we had purchased, he said it wasn't sold by anyone associated with his company. He shrugged his shoulders, said he wasn't the salesman and only worked at the glass factory. He apologized, saying his English was not that good, and returned to the showroom.

Not accepting being bamboozled or forced to pay 60 euros for a private boat ride off the island, I followed him back into the showroom, full of exquisitely delicate hand-blown glasswar [where's a bull when you need one], and became a uniter [Bush, take note] of others in my growing predictament. Each one fained knowledge of the ticketeer who made the sales pitch of a trip to and from the island for only five euros. Again, my inner Italian rose to the challenge. After a calm but determined conversation with a woman who did speak enough English to understand me, my solid indignation produced results as she begrudgingly opened her cash draw and handed me a 20-note euro. She said everyone knows paying 60 euros is the going private taxi rate and for us to pay another 20 to purchase tickets on the public water taxi system was clearly a good deal. Her reasoning was bold but expected and ultimately pathetic. But I had the 20-euro note in hand and that was that.

We went to the public boat line dock, got on the #5, which stops at Piazza San Marco, and laughed about our being marooned on Murano.