Twenty-Three: Eurothon

Jack and Laura (mom) came for a two month visit. We did a lot. We rummaged around the Netherlands for a couple of weeks, then embarked on an epic road trip that took us to the Czech Republic (Prague), northern Italy (Chianti, Venice), Croatia (Plitvice National Park), and Germany. Then we got on a boat and toured the south of France for a week. So much happened, it would take a novel to recount. So here are just the highlights.

Week One: We drove to Maastricht the day after Laura and Jack arrived. It was Queen's Day in the Netherlands, which we were sad about missing as it's supposed to be the most festive day of the year. From what we can tell people celebrate it by either a) Dressing in orange, drag, or orange drag and drinking a lot, or b) Selling their old crap on the street. Our neighborhood was gearing up for the latter form of celebration as we rode out of town.

We stopped at Keukenhof. It was even more spectacular the second time! We got there at 8am so we had it to ourselves for a while. When the tour buses started pulling in we headed out.

In Maastricht we stayed at the Kruisherenhotel again and had more great meals, but the highlight was our biking adventure. We rented bikes and rode all over south Limburg province. FYI, it is not flat like the rest of the Netherlands. It was exhausting but really fun.

Week Two: Kim worked most of the time, Laura, Jack and I went to museums, shopped, ate, visited Delft and Kroller Muller/Hogue Veluwe (Chapter Eleven). On Saturday we took a ferry to Texel - one of the Frisian Islands in North Holland province. It was a cute beach, dune and farmland scene - lots of sheep.

Week Three: We traded cars with one of Kim's co-workers (we needed a station wagon for the next part of our adventure) and drove to Prague. I had heard "Prague is beautiful" but was still expecting a seedy, run-down city. It's not. It's quite majestic. We met up with my aunt Elise who was performing (with a choir and orchestra) Verdi's Requiem at Terezin - the Nazi's "show camp". The concert was held on the anniversary of the camp's liberation to commemorate the (significant) role the Requiem played in the lives of prisoners. The piece alone is pretty moody, but with the story and the setting it was intense.

Highlights

• St. Vitus Cathedral.
• The Old Cemetery in the Jewish Quarter.
• The view from the clock tower in Stare Mesto's central square.
• The Castle District.
• The Charles Bridge at night.
• Dinner on a terrace overlooking Prague, then under the Charles Bridge.
• Krusovice on tap.

At the end of the week we all piled into the station wagon (luggage stacked to the roof) and headed for Italy. Our home base was a villa in Castellina in Chianti. It was farcically Italian. Hills of olive groves and vineyards, villas perched on top. We took day trips to San Giamignano, Radda, Gaiole and Monteriggioni. Quaint quaint quaint. We ate and ate and ate. We drank wine with lunch and dinner. Had a billion cappuccinos and gelatos. Pretty good pizza, too. We shopped Italian leather goods. It was unseasonably hot, so we spent afternoons by the villa's infinity pool. Don't hate.








Week Four: We dropped Elise at the bus station in Siena. She went on to visit friends in Berlin before heading back to Boston. Jack, Laura, Kim and I continued on to Venice. Our first view of it was from the ferry ride to our hotel on the neighboring island of Lido - the next day we moved to a hotel in the city center after Laura proclaimed the Lido hotel a "real shit hole". This initial detour turned out to be quite fortuitous, though, as it offered a spectacular view of Venice from the southern waterway. It was chaos! Pandemonium! It was Disney and Vegas and the old merchant city all at once.

When we started walking around it got a little depressing. One of the most powerful cities on earth, now a playground for goofy tourists in ball caps, Tevas and university T-shirts. It was almost impossible to escape the Epcot Center / Vegas feel of the place. Apparently there's some law that property owners can't do anything to the exterior of their buildings, so most look like vacant wrecks. Many first floors have been abandoned as the canals rise (or pilings sink). Sadly, for me it most strongly evoked Tomb Raider II (Lara Croft follows a mob leader to his hideout in Venice where she races through the canals in a speed boat and sneaks into deserted mansions through water garages).

Sometimes, though, at night or if you wandered down one of the hundreds of spooky deserted alleys off the main pedestrian drag, you'd get a feel for it - what Rick Steves describes as "elegant decay".

Highlights

• Ferry, water taxi and vaporetto (water bus) rides.
• St. Mark's Square at night - dueling orchestras echoing off the walls of the Procuratie.
• Doge Palace. Laura, Kim and I visited an hour before closing and had it mostly to ourselves. It's grand, opulent and generally palatial. Lots of paintings (Tintoretto, Titian,Veronese) including Tiepolo's Venice Receiving Neptune; Neptune deferentially presents Venice (as a lady) with a seashell full of gold ducats. Hello hubris.
• Fresh fish and pasta dinner canal side.

Week Five: After two days in Venice we were all ready to leave. We took another wild water taxi ride back to the parking garage, dropped Laura and Jack at Hertz, and drove on to Plitvice National Park in northern Croatia. L & J continued in Italy, visiting Florence and the west coast.

Our drive to Plitvice was beautiful and a little scary. Jane (our GPS) doesn't work there and we were traveling some pretty remote countryside. We passed deserted towns, abandoned factories, and burnt out villages (remnants of the 1991 Homeland War). But in some areas they seem to be making a comeback. Plitvice - a UNESCO World Heritage Site like Dubrovnik (Chapter Twenty-One) - is spectacular. We stayed at a bed and breakfast just outside the park entrance. I know yuck, but this one was bearable and a little quirky (the shower was one of those futuristic pods with blue LED lighting, blaring radio, and a gazillion water jets). The woman who ran the place was freakishly meticulous and suspiciously friendly. In the afternoon she brought us bowls of ice cream. I thought for sure she was trying to poison us.

We spent two nights in Plitvice, then began our drive back to Amsterdam via Germany's Alpine Highway and Romantic Road. "Romantic", by the way, is a misnomer. Much of it is dull and flat and strip-mally. Apparently the name signifies its one-time importance as the primary north-south trade route through Germany (though I don't see how this justifies the name). We did see some great mountain views, Bavarian castles, and a good number of medieval villages. In Rothenburg ob de Tauber, we unexpectedly encountered a boisterous drunken mob wearing armor, peasant clothes and leery grins that hearkened to a time before dentistry. It was like a medieval revival fair only scary rather than dorky. We learned from our inn-keeper that they were re-enacting the 1600's wars between Protestants and Catholics.


Highlights

• Idyllic German countryside (admitted grudgingly).
• The food is better than you think.
• Good beer, proper pubs.

Lowlights

• Scary re-enactments of medieval religious wars.
• Low level anxiety response to strong German accents.
• Vast (really, really vast) wind turbine farms and countless solar-paneled village rooftops. I know this seems like a good thing, but their efficient and methodical implementation of the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) is reminiscent of something...

Weeks 6 & 7: Back in Amsterdam, Kim worked for a few days and I did a whole lot of nothing. Then we packed, got in the car and drove to Montauban. Laura rented a canal barge from Le Boat - or as Jack coined it, "Le Tub". Our 7- day route along the Canal a la Garonne and Baise river took us through the Aquitaine region, just south of Bordeaux. This area turned out to be sort of the Mississippi of France. Not in a bad way, just... a little bit country. We visited Montech, Moissac, Valence, Agen, Buzet-sur-Baise, Vianne, Nerac, Damazan and Le Mas d’Agenais. We took the boat through about 35 locks (most self-operated) and over 4 viaducts (video at the end of the post). We rode bikes along the tow path (draft horses used to tow barges from them). We ate a lot of bread and cheese and drank good wine.




Highlights:

• Although it seemed grueling at first, working the locks turned out to be fun.
• The aquaducts.
• The farmers markets.
• The patisseries and boulangeries.
• The cheese.
• The ice cream.
• Driving a boat.
• Vianne and Nerac (on the Baise).

Lowlights

• Fermé. Everything in France est fermé on Sunday, on Monday, and from about noon until 2pm every other day, though half the time they decide not to open again at all.

Week 8: L & J took the train to Barcelona for a few days, Kim and I spent one night in Chenonceau on our way back to Amsterdam. We drove through the Loire Valley and visited Chateau de Chenonceau.

Laura and Jack spent four days in Amsterdam at the end of the week before heading home. We shopped, visited the Rijks Museum, went to Haarlem (an old Dutch town just outside of Amsterdam). Laura and Jack visited Amsterdam's flower market and Amnesia (yes, a coffee shop).

Now we're getting into the summer scene in Amsterdam for a couple of weeks before Kim's parents arrive and we take off for Rome and Paris. Oh, and the Madonna concern in London.

Phew! You're up to date.