Clueless in the UK

But first, today Jason got in big trouble for something he did with another kid in the neighborhood … Problem is, he’s so cute even when he’s doing bad things! Anyway, resolving it involved walking to two houses in the neighborhood and apologizing to two different families. And he’s only 6!

When things like this happen I reach back into my childhood and say, “Ah yes, I screwed up in the same way … That’s my boy!” But now I am starting to wondering if I am rewriting history a little bit when I do that. I can’t be sure whether I am remembering things just so or whether I am inventing a few memories along the way. All I remember for sure is, I had troubles, one of the biggest ones being appropriate behavior at appropriate times. I sure hate to see Jason struggle the way I did.

But this post is about Venice. I’d love to pack in some more pictures about Rome but maybe I will let Sue get a word in edgewise.

We left Rome in this:

and arrived in Venice to this:

We arrived at our hotel 40 minutes later. This was the view out one of our windows:

That first night we went to dinner and were treated to this view:

When on vacation I usually need more of this:

than I actually get. But then again, I need more of that in general.

Here are my impressions of Venice: it’s neat, but crazy, wasteful, a bad idea in general. While we were there the water levels were high and lots of places just flooded at high tide, and shop owners mopped the water out of their shops as soon as the water receded. This is a recurring event, 200 times/year on average. Crazy way to live. This is what they do to allow people without boots (all the tourists) to get around during the floods:

The place is 100% tourist oriented, which means everything is expensive, a lot of it is garbage, and it’s relentless. I literally reached my limit on the third day and was getting a little grumpy. Still, despite the almost oppressive touristy atmosphere of on the island of Murano, we did manage to have a good time checking out some of the neat glass products. When we first got there:

I felt immense pressure to buy something and there was a period of awkwardness for me (and perhaps Sue) that made me very uncomfortable until I realized that I wasn’t going to do anything I didn’t want to do. Finally I said that I didn’t see anything we were interested in, and off we went. Bizarre situation that was probably blown up and out of proportion in my own mind more than anything else. But afterwards it was fun walking around and checking things out that we actually might be interested in buying, rather than £800 hunks of glass for our nonexistent coffee table: beautiful, amazing to look at, but not what we were looking for at all.

Sue says I like to focus on the negative and she might be right. There are lots of other pictures for the things we did in Rome and Venice I will let her share in a positive light. It was a truly amazing place to visit, I must say. Sue and I did have a fantastic dinner on her birthday: I didn’t screw up this time!! I’ll let her tell you all about it.

Before I go, however, I want to show you this picture we took with the new camera I mentioned in the first article. This ultra-compact camera has image stabilization, which allowed me to take the following picture without a tri-pod:

This shot was taken with “Slow-Syncro” flash mode, which is the mode I have talked about with my Rebel Xt, where the camera’s exposure is set based on the ambient lighting, but then the flash is fired as well just long enough to light up the foreground subjects. The end result is you can see the background as well as the foreground, and if you look at this shot closely you can see that the moon is only a little bit blurred despite the fact that I held the camera in my hands for a 1 second exposure. That is incredible. This picture came out so well.

Also in that general area was this happening place we didn’t find until it was too late the last night. A place for wine and fine foods. This was also taken without a flash, 1/3 second exposure, captures the essence quite nicely. You can see one person completely blurred out during that 1/3 second on the right hand side of the store. Good stuff!

[Here's just a few thoughts and pictures that I wrote the day after we arrived but wasn't able to finish or add photos to until now, a week later.]

We seem not to get very much done while we’re doing it but at the end of the day there seems to be quite a lot to talk about.

But before I forget, last night at dinner (where last night was about a week ago) we had the following exchange:

Dad: Jason - I am worried about your sprite getting knocked over.
Jason: Dad - I am worried about you dying of old age.
Dad: Jason - I am worried about your being tickled to death.
Jason: <something about Dad and farts>

Are we doing a good job raising our kids?

The day before at a nice church, Sue was introducing the kids to a confessional. She explained it to them as best she could given her vast experience with them, and then later came up to me to tell to me what happened. Apparently Madeline took it all in and said: “I pick my boogers and eat them, what should I do?” Jason said, “I kicked Madeline in the butt.” That is the extent of our kids’ sins, as far as they are concerned anyway.

But let’s back up to the ride to the hotel from the airport. We had hired a car to drive us straight to the hotel and thank goodness for that - there were lots of turns, lots of made up lanes, and one accident on the way to the hotel. The driver - he was a little iffy. He was holding up a sign with our name on it in the airport, but that’s where the warm fuzzy feeling ended: he was on his cell phone chatting away in an animated fashion, and just motioned that we should follow him. When we got to his car there were a couple others there arguing with him as we loaded the luggage in his trunk. We dutifully sat in the car waiting for him to get in, and I ended up with the impression that the two guys outside arguing with our guy … well, frankly I thought they wanted our car. All the driver said, as he popped his head into the car fumbling through his large wads of cash for a second, was “There is a problemmmmmmme.”

Once the car started moving things didn’t improve. He was counting his money, organizing the junk in dash storage (where the CDs used to go), and occasionally looking up to make adjustments to the path the car was taking, with the occasional glare from presumably other Italian drivers who were not used to this behavior. This guy made up lanes, ignored all stop signs (except that he admittedly did slow down a little) and basically just “used the force” to get us to our hotel.

But then Sue started chatting him up, and that’s when we found out that he can’t afford to live in Rome, that your white shirts turn black if you spend any time in Rome (referring to the car pollution - they are into diesels in Europe …), that he prefers the quiet of country living and … oh yeah, he needs room for his 100 snakes, 400 frogs, and various other reptiles I cannot remember anymore. The part which sticks out in my mind is the part about the white python (I need to look that up) which is 6 meters long, which started out 18″ when he first got it, and how he used to drive around with the snake in his shirt when the snakes were still small, until a lady passenger spotted the snake and screamed and made him pull over on the side of the road.

Still who am I to complain? We got to the hotel in one piece and we’re quite happy with the hotel. It has the best bed configuration we have ever encountered for a single room: Mom and Dad in the middle, the kids separated on each side:

The next day we took one of those open top bus tours of Rome, and got off near an area that included the Pantheon. To get there we drove by the Coliseum and Forum and promised the kids we would go there the next day with our private tour guide. Here is the teaser:

That is one awesome building.

We had to go to the bathroom so we stopped at a cafe with a bathroom and cappucinos. So, yes, I had two cappucinos in one day - very bad, normally reserved for days when we have evening parties where I plan to drink heavily.

We ended up in a nice piazza with lots of artists in the middle, lots of restaurants on the side, and the occasional church as well, which is where the kids made their first official confessions mentioned above. We had a nice lunch, I had 1/4 carafe of red wine, the kids had pizza and/or pasta, and everything was goooood. The Pantheon was impressive. It said, “This is a sacrad place, please be quiet” but it was so loud in there I had to yell at the kids to be quiet ;-)

While wandering around Madeline was practicing her French counting. She’s taking french in school because she has to. She was originally upset about it, and three years behind of course, but now she sees it as a challenge and is attacking it the way she attacks all challenges: head on and relentlessly. Here she can be seen counting in French as she hops over barriers in the streets of downtown Rome. The girl in back of her tried to follow in her footsteps and almost hurt herself in the process:

Below is the woman Madeline very nearly bumped into (I am not kidding) because she wasn’t looking where she was going:

Here are the kids at their first dinner:

It was threatening to rain all day yesterday. The weather forecasts for this trip have been as dour as all the forecasts we get in London - but it almost never materializes there and the same has been true here as well. Occasional light drizzle and lots of sun, not the heavy rain we had been promised every day since we got here. (And we have the pictures to prove it!) Today was no exception, so we wrapped our rain coats around our waistes and took off to meet our guide at the Coliseum.

Our tour guide today was Olivia. She came on recommendation from friends we met where we live in London, who had the pour taste to leave shortly after we got there. Apparently she was good at dealing with kids with lots and LOTS of questions. However, she wasn’t entirely prepared to deal with kids who wanted to “go back to england” within 15 minutes of starting the tour!

What did I learn about the Romans today (before I forget).

1. The Roman empire was … large.
2. So large it was split into west and east portions.
3. Constantinople was the capital of the Byzantine (or eastern Roman) empire, Rome was the capital of the western part.
4. It took 12 to 14 days for soldiers to march from Rome to London (amazing, if true).
5. Rome got Christianity around three or four hundred AD.
6. The western empire fell in the late four hundred AD time frame, the eastern one lasted another 1000 years or so until the Ottoman Empire kicked its butt (I think).
7. The Coliseum was built in 8 or 9 years, in 72 AD or thereabouts.
8. It was funded with Jewish gold stolen from Jeruselum. There’s a carving in one of the gates into the Forum showing a menorah in the hands of 12 men carrying it and the arc of the covenant.

This seems like a lame list. I was very interested at the time. Madeline just read some Roman series books (for kids) and since she has basically perfect memory (something I am very envious of, in a proud way) she was chatting away with our guide about all sorts of things. Things like, “Remember in such-and-such book when so-and-so said ‘blah’ around page 48 …” Madeline reads so much and clearly retains it all; it’s pretty scary for somebody like me to watch, since I read the same thing over and over just to retain 10% of it, and have been that way my whole life. Which is Jason’s lot in life for sure: if I ever get a whole sentence out of my mouth with him still listening at the end, it’s cause for celebration.

Here’s a typical scene with Madeline and Olivia going at it:

Here’s a picture as we approach the Coliseum of the extent of the Roman empire over time. I didn’t know until I moved here (sigh) that the Roman’s conquered England:

Here are some amazing pictures of the Coliseum. Wait - I said that wrong. Here are some pictures of the amazing Coliseum.

This one from the ground floor. They used to routinely flood and drain this place, to add variety to the ways people were killed:

Here we’re looking down into the arena, and Olivia is showing us a picture of how it looked back in its day. This picture was taken with our new, compact camera: Canon IXUS 800 SD with image stabilization (more on this sweet little camera, later …):

This one we’re just walking around looking for the beer before the game starts:

Back on the outside after our guided tour is done:

That is one kick ass building, still standing 2000 years later. I’d seen it 17 years ago, it’s still amazing.

The kids were quite bored today, to be sure. They said as much almost immediately. Still they stuck with it. On the way home we walked down a street which was basically closed to cars all day, closed as a suggestion more than anything. The reason they are doing it, apparently, is that they want to kill this particular road completely, a road built by Mussolini, because there is an ancient Roman city underneath it which is attached to the Forum that they’d kinda like to excavate. Here are some of the things we encountered along the way back to our hotel:

This guy was good, very good:

The next two are of Madeline and Jason looking at something. The purple on the side is a clue:

Here’s the wide-angle. It was just a fan blowing around this tube of plastic, to the delight of tons of kids and adults alike:

These “angels” ran around striking a pose trying to look like ancient statues:

Josh and Mike - I was sure we visited the Forum back in 1989. Do you remember when that young lady scolded us for being … um American dorks? Wasn’t that the Forum? If so … it’s changed. I am thinking it must have be some other place instead. Also, Josh, if you can remember where we stayed in Rome that would be great. I am curious. I have memories of it but really cannot figure out where it is on the map.

More later …

Talk about weekends in Paris! It was our first trip into Europe since we got here and I’ll just summarize it as follows: wicked cool!

I was a little nervous. I was really expecting the French to be rude because my French is not that good (i.e., I can’t speak it to save my life), and the French do have a reputation (not borne out by any of the great French people we know personally, of course) but they were quite friendly, except for this one guy. He was so rude I took his picture but I guess we got the authetic French cafe experience:

I loved remembering my French slowly over the course of the weekend, though. Even last night when I wasn’t sleeping, words from my past kept coming back into my head. The problem with my French is that I am confusing it with the Chinese I tried to learn last year. So I can be heard saying “Wo men voudrons si ge pain du chocolate. Xie xie!” That only worked at the Chinese/French bakery we frequented. Actually, my Chinese lessons were good for me because I have lost my embarrassment at sounding stupid speaking another language. After all, it never bothers me when somebody speaks English very badly: au contraire, mes amis, I’ve always been impressed by people willing to take the risk.

The kids held up very well. All the London walking made walking around in Paris practically effortless, although Madeline complained whenever the pavement wasn’t smooth enough for this:

As you can see, we’re being very discreet and trying to hide the fact that we’re Americans. Not pictured here is Sue filming Madeline with the video camera, screaming “You Go Girl!” at the top of her lungs (just kidding about the screaming part). The Parisians were more amazed than the Londonites with the wheels.

I found the Metro to be a lot nicer than the London underground. Trains were constantly pulling into the stations, they were quieter (rubber, not metal wheels) with wider carriages and not 15 to 20 degrees warmer than the outside temperature. I also like that it’s not a TUBE so that you can imagine getting off the train if it breaks down without being stuck in a tube that’s not big enough for you and the train at the same time (if it suddenly starts working again, ye ken):

(Another one of those Aperture Priority w/flash shots.)

While in Paris we saw a chunk of the normal sites, but really, how long can you expect to stay in the Louvre with two young kids? For us it was 2 hours. It might have been longer if Madeline had been allowed to keep the wheels in her Heelies:


No photos of the Mona Lisa because they’re not allowed, but we took a few pictures on the inside when we were allowed to.

Outside the Louvre was not without its entertainment. We ran into this guy, who was clearly a professional at what he does:

There were lots of people imitating him but nobody came close. He came prepared with a sack of bread hanging around his neck.

There were nice little attractions for the kids in various parks near the famous tourist spots. We checked out the Eiffel Tower on Saturday morning, which was very fun. Nice short lines when we got there in the morning, and a beautiful, warm, sunny day. My insides felt funny and my legs started to wobble on the way up because it was sooooo high up there, but once I got to the top and realized there was no easy way to fall off, I made a complete recovery:

(There’s lots more pictures from there but you get the idea.)

When we left the Eiffel Tower and walked down the long straight away of green grass pictured above, we stopped off at that big traffic circle and ran into this guy running his own little amusement park with a single attraction:

I am having a hard time remember where we were when we ran into the trampolines in the middle of a park. This could never happen in the States for fear of lawsuits. Indeed, while standing there waiting our turn one kid landed on his head and was holding his neck and crying … for a couple of minutes before he started up again. If at first you don’t succeed, keep trying flips until you land on your feet!

We visited Napoleon at L’hopital des Invalides or something like that. Or was it some place else? Argh - you know, this is why we write the blog: so we can remember. Sadly with me I might never have actually known what I need to remember. That’s where Sue comes in.


The last thing I remember about Napoleon was from 11th grade history with Mrs Sirkin. I loved her but I forgot to do the assignment on Napoleon between the time I left the classroom and arrived at the computer center. Therefore, the next class I was completely unprepared to answer the question: How can 300 thousand casualities that Napoleon caused be seen in a positive light? My answer at the time was, “What’s a few hundred thousand casualities between friends?” I wish I were kidding. Therefore, my next book (the one I read) is going to be about Napoleon. I need to know what happened next door a few hundred years ago.

This was the best picture I managed of the stained glass at Notre Dame Cathedral.

If I had a tri-pod these pictures from the top of the Arc D’Triumphe at 9pm would have been spectacular instead of just OK:

This one is during the hourly, 10 minute light show. You can see all the strobe lights that went off during the 1/2 second exposure on this shot. You can also see how much my hands shook during that period as well!

Here you can see how far the light travels around its circle in 1/4 second!

Finally, fair quantities of ice cream and popsicles were consumed throughout the visit. Jason seemed to have more trouble with his than Madeline, which is why he is the star of this portion of the show:

I’ve been reading a historical fiction/romance series on the Scottish Highlands with a time tavel element, and it’s making me want to visit Scotland, ye ken. It also makes me want to be big, strong, red headed and able to sword fight with both hands. Only one of these is ever likely to happen, which is left as an exercise for the reader. Oh, it also makes me want to be able to drink Scotch like it’s water and Brandy to keep me warm on the cold British winter nights. I’ve already started both those projects and will be sure to fill you in on my progress later.

Meanwhile, school starts in 3 days. Translation: when the kids are away …