To All Well, we are back from another adventure. We have discovered a European airlines that operates ALOT like military space A - more so than we had counted on. Thanks to Ryanair our 5 day trip to Pisa, Italy and the Cinque Terre turned into a 7 day trip with Rome tacked on at the end. Sunday evening as Deanna, Mike and I were sitting at the departure gate at the Pisa International Airport, ready to head for home, we were talking to another American Army family about the similarities between Ryanair flights and military space A flights --- small airports, check-in counters that are only open a few hours a day, walking or riding a bus across the tarmack to the plane, no assigned seats, no free drink service, etc. etc. We all agreed that there was one big difference: no stress about whether or not you were getting on the plane. Ooooops that was a big mistake. It turns out there IS reason to wonder if you're getting on the plane. In fact, we almost ended up spending a night in the terminal, too - that would have been one too many similarities.
So, the story is that it was foggy about 5:00PM on Sunday evening in Pisa, Italy and apparently the Pisa airport doesn't have any radar equipment so the plane that was supposed to take us home couldn't land. It was diverted to Genova, unloaded there and went back to Frankfurt without us. The only customer service that Ryanair offers in such situations is to book you on the "next available flight." After 6 hours of waiting in line at customer service, we discovered that the best they could offer us was a flight out of Rome on Tuesday morning - no compensation for the additional 2 nights of lodging or the train tickets to Rome. This is truly a cut-rate airline - we paid about $US240 for the 3 of us to fly to Pisa and back - and as always you get what you pay for. Our only gripe is that 6 hours is a long to wait in line with only rumors to go on as far as what is happening. Would you believe that 3 hours after our flight was canceled - while we were still standing in line at customer service - planes started taking off and landing again? Argh!!!
OK, that’s the bad news. On to the good news - the rest of the trip. We spent our first 2 nights in a hostel in the town of Lucca - about 30 minutes by
train from Pisa. Lucca has a rampart all the way around it - a wall that is wide enough to drive on (though cars aren't allowed). So now I understand how the wall around Babylon could be wide enough for chariots (6 abreast?) to ride around the top. We walked all the way around the rampart the first morning, took lots of pictures, and debated the differences in Italian architecture compared to German architecture. In the afternoon we rode the train to Pisa and visited the Leaning Tower and the other buildings on the "Field of Miracles" - all of which have leaning problems just not as severe as the bell tower. Supposedly after the base and the first arcade of the tower were finished in 1173 someone turned to Pisano (the architect) and said "Is it just me, or does that look crooked?" No, duh!!! Apparently the soil underneath was unstable and over the years there have been several attempts to stabilize the tower. Depending on who you talk to, it may still be slowly falling. Nonetheless, the whole complex of buildings were pretty impr
essive.
Our third and fourth days we spent in a coastal area of Italy called the Cinque Terre (CHINK-weh TAY-reh) meaning "the five lands." It consists of 5 small towns located right on the ocean in spectacular settings. They are accessible by car, but the use of cars within them is extremely limited - so again (like in Gimmelwald Switzerland) the silence created by NO VEHICLE NOISE is really awesome. You can hike from one town to another or ride the train. The towns depen
d on wine production and tourism for their existence an
d the steep hillsides are covered with vineyards (so now I also have a new understanding of the "vineyard" passages and parables in the Bible! Maintaining a vineyard is clearly alot of work.). We weren't ambitious enough to actually hike from Town #1 (Riomaggiore) to town #5 (Monterosse) - one of the trail segments was actually closed an
d a couple of them are pretty rigorous - but we took the train to the last town and worked our way back on the train, exploring each town briefly on foot. The temperature was mild - a little cloudy but no rain. There were interesting things to see in each town - churches, statues, cemeteries, etc. I would have gotten better pictures had it 
been sunny and it would have been fun to swim in the Mediterranean, but there are trade offs with every thing. It was nice to have relatively few tourists and no scorching heat. It was a beautiful couple of days. I would like to think that we will go back to all these places, but I'm beginning to understand that there is so much to see in Europe that that probably isn't likely to happen - unless of course some of YOU come to visit us and want us to take you there.
Sunday evening you've already heard about. Except that we did experience two incredible blessings about midnight as we were leaving the Pisa Airport. About 5 minutes before the Italian police told us that the airport was closing and we needed to leave SOON, we sort of "happened" by phone onto a hotel that was about 5 minutes away by cab and had an empty room for a reasonable price. Then after we moved ourselves outside to wait for a taxi the same Italian policeman came out and asked if any of us had left a piece of baggage inside. It turned that Deanna had left her purse with her SLR camera inside and about $US80!!!! Italy is the one place the tours books all still warn about professional thieves. Interestingly, our experience there included a very honest Italian policeman.
We got to Rome Monday afternoon about 3:00PM and squeezed in a 2 hour bus tour around the city. It was dark and rainy toward the end of the tour (a few idiots like me who insisted on riding on the uncovered top deck of the bus got rather wet!) but it was enough of a taste of Rome to assure us that we do want to go back at some point. Thanks to Rick Steves, we found a 4th floor hotel room about a 5 minute walk from "Roma Termini" (the train station) -- the cover of a Rick Steve's book was actually taped to the door. The next morning (Tuesday) at "O dark thirty" we managed to find our way to Rome's smaller airport - Ciampino (chahm-PEE-noh) - via the metro and a bus and this time Ryanair got us home.
So, here's some general observations about Italy. It is definitely a poorer country than Germany - almost Third World in some ways. It is cleaner than Mexico, but pretty run down and messy compared to Germany's almost fanatical tidiness. However the hotel and hostel rooms were all very clean. The people are very friendly. In Germany people don't talk on the trains and buses - in Italy they do. However the trains in Italy are less likely to be on time than in Germany. More people in Italy speak English, than in Germany. I have no idea why that would be.
Food in Italy is really interesting - lots of wonderful pizza and pasta and unusual, fresh fruits and vegetables - not alot of anything with meat in it (Amy, take note - this country is for you!). We spent a small fortune on drinks. Hopefully I have now purchased the most expensive Diet Coke I will ever purchase - it was $US 4.75 for about 20 oz - no ice, of course. Ice cream is a BIG deal in Italy - except that it's called gelato and places that sell it are gelaterias.
Before we left for Italy I asked several people if knowing a little Spanish was of any help in Italy and the answer I got was mixed but basically "yes." In retrospect I would say it was a little help, but not a lot. What is amusing to me is the way they use words that, to me, are "musical words" for totally non-musical things. A "piano" in Italy is no doubt a musical instrument, but it is also the "floor" of a building. So a "piano inferiore" is not a bad piano but a lower level. "Fermata" doesn't always mean "stop and look at the conductor." It can also mean "the bus stops here."
The next time you pass up "Delivery" and have "Di Giorno" instead, just know that "Di Giorno" is Italian for "of the day" or "daily" (and the TV has taught us all good Italian pronunciation!) "Lasagna" is another Italian word we all pronounce correctly -- "g" before "n" is silent and the "n" is pronounced as if it had a Spanish tilda. Unfortunately the same rule applies to "bologna" but we've butchered it -- should be buh-LOHN-yuh.
For those of you whom I didn't get to see on my trip to the states (inspite of my wondering all over the place!), everything there went well. Alan now has a car that he can drive -- sort of -- it's a standard! Amy is doing well in Redwood. She will leave there this Friday and do a little traveling with Greg before flying here for Christmas. It was really nice to see friends in Tacoma again. I did manage to resist the desire to just socialize long enough to benefit tremendously from my seminary class on the book of Numbers. (The title of the book of Numbers is truly a misnomer - the part dealing with "numbers" or "census-taking" is fairly minor. "In the Wilderness" would probably be a better title. It's a pretty interesting book.)
Amy, Morphy was totally unimpressed with my presence at Lisa's house, but I observed that she REALLY likes Lisa and Peter's heated waterbed - so much that she isn't very inclined to run off when anyone tries to pick her up or pet her.
Amy, Alan, and Dad, we didn't intend to totally blow you off over Thanksgiving. We just had lots of telephone problems. Apparently incoming calls on my cell phone aren't free in Italy as they are in Germany. Carl Strohm called and we naively talked until our card ran out and the phone went dead. We couldn't buy a new card because they don't sell the right kind in Italy. We couldn't use our MCI phone card because we didn't have all the country access codes with us. We couldn't use our credit card because somehow the Italian phone company didn't like the zipcode we put in for our billing address, etc etc. Anyway, we were lucky to get one phone call through to keep Mike from being AWOL when we were 2 days late getting back.
Marie, I hear that you have Amy's car AND her cell phone. Feel free to use both until Amy comes to retrieve them. The cell phone has 300 anytime minutes per month, unlimited night and week end minutes and free long distance. I have to pay for all that whether we use it or not -- so please use it.
I will try to attach a couple of pictures before I send this. We'll see how far my limited computer skills go.
Nancy
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