So it’s been a long time without a post, so I guess it’s time I got back to work. In my defense, the reason I haven’t written more is that we’ve been busy. And as I mentioned before, I don’t write quickly.
Anne has done a good job with the chronicling our travels on Facebook, so I thought I’d write a bit about the places we’ve stayed. We’re currently at Fort Pickens Campground in Gulf Islands National Seashore, but in order to get this post finished, I’ll save writing about our last couple of stops until my next post.
We traveled from South Carolina to Faver-Dykes State Park in St. Augustine, Florida, arriving today. Saturday night we stayed at another Harvest Host. This one is at Debellation Brewing Company in Richmond Hill, Georgia. The beer was good, but the food selection was limited and we’d eaten out the last two nights, so we ate in the camper. The only downside was that Debellation was backed up to I-95, so it was pretty noisy. We had a little mishap when hitching up to leave Huntington Beach yesterday, so I thought I’d talk about that and some other travel and trailer-related topics.
Actually, more like “Ah, not cold!” We’re at Huntington Beach State Park in South Carolina, and it was 64 degrees this afternoon, with a forecast low of 54 tonight. It was in the twenties and snowing when we left Maine Sunday morning, so this is quite an improvement. We made it to my brother Pete and sister-in-law Kathleen’s in time to watch the Super Bowl with them and our niece Sara. We took our time getting moving Monday morning and headed off. I wanted to avoid the I-95 corridor from Philadelphia to Richmond with the camper, so we decided to head down the Delmarva peninsula and cross the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. We stopped in Middletown, Delaware for a nice lunch with my high school friend Dave Mumford. We didn’t leave there until almost 3, so we ended up crossing the bridge in the dark. Bad planning on my part! We’ll have to try another time to get the views.
We’re heading off to warmer climes! This has been our travel blog since 2015, and hasn’t been updated since out trip to Scandinavia in August 2019. So I’ll try to filling in a bit of the last two and a half years for Anne and me.
I retired in November 2019, and in January 2020 we bought a Safari Condo Alto F1743.
We planned to do a lot of traveling around the US and Canada. As we headed to Florida in late February, little did we know what awaited us and the world over the next two years. We had a nice three week trip along with my brother Pete and sister-in-law Kathleen.
Along the way we were hearing more and more about this new respiratory illness. We arrived home in Massachusetts on March 11, just as everything was locking down. Since then, lots of things have happened, to the world, to us and to our families and friends.
After a stop at the stave church in Lom, we made it to our lodging for the night, the Elveseter Hotel. We got moved in just before the rain started. We had a drink and a good dinner, then headed to bed. Tomorrow we would drive the Sognefjellet a scenic drive over the mountains and down to the fjords to the south.
Thursday
It was cloudy and misty when we woke up, but after breakfast we began to see patches of blue sky. After exploring the grounds of the hotel a bit, we headed further up into the mountains. The climb was gradual, and we stopped at several scenic overlooks along the way. While it wasn’t bright and sunny, most of the views weren’t obscured by clouds. The colors we mostly muted greens and browns. I was tempted to convert my pictures to black-and-white.
Monday afternoon it was time to leave Copenhagen and fly to Gothenburg (Göteborg), Sweden, the home of Volvo. The put us up at a nice hotel, including a great dinner. Tuesday morning we headed to the Factory Delivery Center to pick up Anne’s new car, a red XC40. After the orientation, a short test drive and lunch, it was time to continue our journey. We hit the road, heading north towards Norway. I hadn’t booked a hotel for Tuesday night because I didn’t know what time we would be leaving Gothenburg, or how far we would feel like driving. We got out around 2:30, and seemed to be making good time, so we decided to continue on to Lillehammer, best know to Americans as the site of the 1994 Winter Olympics. We made it there in time to check in to our hotel and get a great burger and beers at a nice pub called Heim.
As part of their Overseas Delivery program, Volvo is paying for round trip flights between Boston and Gothenburg, Sweden for Anne and me. SAS had a connection through Copenhagen, so we arranged to have a layover for a few days. We were in Premium Economy with extra legroom, wifi, upgraded meals and free booze. The only downside was that the flight left early, at 5:30. By the time I finished messing with the blog and decided to try to rest it was getting close to 11 Boston time. I had barely closed my eyes when they turned up the lights to serve breakfast! We were on the ground in Copenhagen before 6:30 am local time. We took the Metro into the city and had a fairly short walk to the Hotel Bethel. (It’s lucky the walk was fairly short, since pulling our suitcases over the cobblestone sidewalks was no fun.)
This blog hasn’t seen any updates in over four years, but as I write this, Anne and I are on a flight to Copenhagen to begin a two week trip to Scandinavia. The planning for this trip was less extensive than for our trip four years ago, but we’re still hoping for a good time! Once again we’re picking up a car–this time it’s Anne’s new Volvo XC40, so we’re picking it up in Gothenburg, Sweden.
It was a long drive (over 500 km/300 miles) to La Montalla, our
agriturismo in Tuscany. Since most of it was on the autostrada, we got
to experience sticker shock at Italian tolls–over 30 Euros due
when we got off. We arrived around 3 pm, only to encounter a note that
seemed to say (it was in Italian) that someone would be back at
3:30. So we decided to check out Contignano, the town nearby. In
truth, there wasn’t too much to check out–a small village with
narrow streets, a church, and very little open. It did have an ATM
and, down the street, a combined piscina (swimming pool)/bar with no water in
the pool. We finished our explorations and when we got back, Alphonso, the
owner’s son had arrived to check us in.
My original plan for the
drive to Italy was to make it into an all day scenic drive. But when
we woke up to another foggy, drizzly day, it seemed better to
just take the shortest route, and hope the weather was better on the
other side of the Alps. Anne wanted to get caches in three countries
on a single day. (It’s hard to do that where we live.) So we headed
back to Füssen (in Germany), where she did a couple at the Lech River falls. Then
back to Reutte for an Austrian cache as we headed south.
Thursday morning we packed up, bid farewell to Frau Lee and and headed off
for our next stop, Reutte, Austria. It was a pretty long ride and
rather than heading straight there we took a slight detour to Lindau
on the shore of the Bodensee (Lake Constance) a large alpine lake at
the junction of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The weather turned
out better than we expected–partly cloudy and in the 60’s. We got our
first view of as we headed down the autobahn towards Lindau and a
better view from the shore of the lake in the old town, which is
located on an island connected to the mainland by a causeway.
The drive from Rothenburg, mostly on the autobahn, wasn’t very
interesting. Some nice vistas of bright yellow fields of rape seed
(the source of canola oil), but many trucks to contend with on the
highway and rain for the second half of the trip. When we got to
Bacharach, it was much cooler–in the low 50’s. We checked in at
Hotel Kranenturm,
our base for the next few days and headed out to explore the town, or
at least find dinner. We finally ended up a a Greek restaurant called
Zeus. As we sat down, Anne said, “Is that Boy George on the radio?”
The couple next to us, who turned out to be from Philadelphia said,
“Yeah, we just heard Duran Duran a minute ago.” It turned out that for
some reason eighties music seemed to play in every restaurant we
visited in the Rhine valley.
After another good breakfast we bid “Auf Wiedersehen” to Munich and
Hotel Uhland. This hotel was the highlight of our trip so far, with a
great breakfast, friendly and helpful staff and convenient
services. (They did a load of laundry for us for 12 Euro. We spent 8
Euro to do it ourselves at a laundromat in Florence.)
I used the
Michelin Navigation app
to select a scenic route to Augsburg, where we picked up the
Romantische Straße (Romantic Road),
a scenic route that wends its way from Würzburg down to Füssen in the
Alps. Here’s a
map
of the Romantische Straße–it’s the North-South red line. We
traveled the middle part of it, from Augsburg up to Rothenburg (just
west of Nürnburg, you have to zoom in to see it). The
drive to Augsburg was pleasant–a short stretch on the autobahn,
followed by some scenic back roads the rest of the way there. I had
the car up to about 90 mph for a short while on the highway, and the
rest of the drive was pleasant once I figured how speed limits worked.
Our train arrived at Munich Hauptbahnhof (the main train station) at
just after 6 am. We decided to see if we could find coffee and
breakfast somewhere before walking to our
hotel. Our first
observation was that Munich is not an early rising town. We headed
out of the station and found that the nearby cafes didn’t open until 7 and Burger
King not until 8. So we headed back into the station and found the
shopping section we’d missed the first time and there our breakfast
and coffee.
We got to Venice on the train at about 1:30, figured out the Vaporetto
(Venice mass transit equivalent of a city bus) and got to our hotel,
Pensione Guerrato a little while
later. After unpacking we headed out for a short vaporetta cruise (we
bought the 48 hour transit pass) before heading to Rialto Bridge to
meet our guide, Alessandro Schezzini for
back-to-back walking tours. The first, the “offbeat” Venice tour took
us on a walk through the back streets and alleys, accompanied by
opinionated commentary from Alessandro. That was followed by the bar
tour, hitting three bacari (Venetian bars) where we drank wine and ate
cicchetti (tapas-style hors d’oeuvres), while chatting with Alessandro
and the other folks on the tour. Luckily the last bar was close to our
hotel. We managed to stumble back, stopping along the way to pick up a
few slices of pizza to supplement the cicchetti.
We’ve been here almost a week and the weather has been terrific. The
only rain was a sprinkle as we arrived in Florence on
Saturday. Yesterday (Sunday) was cool, with highs in the 50’s. The
Florentines were bundled up, but we were comfortable in jackets. Today
was glorious–bright sunshine and highs in the mid 70’s.
Day 3: Monday
So it’s official, we didn’t allow enough time for Florence, or I
didn’t plan it effectively, or both. It’s 6 pm on our last day here
and we feel like we haven’t scratched the surface.
It’s the end of our second day in Florence. Time flies when your
having fun! We’re back in our room relatively early for once–it’s
only 9:15. Last night at this time we hadn’t started dinner yet! And
we’re listening to the Red Sox broadcast, streaming on the Internet,
since they’re playing a day game today.
Florence is less overwhelming than Rome. It’s much smaller and very
walkable–everything is close together and the narrow streets keep
speeds under control. It’s also more “touristy.” And the tourists here
seem to be mostly American (or Japanese), while in Rome they were
equally likely to be speaking English, French, German, Spanish or some language I
didn’t recognize. On the other hand, the selfie stick and
flower sellers here aren’t ubiquitous and seem less aggressive.
We’re in Florence and here I am just starting on Rome days 3
and 4. I’ll try to get better at this. I think leaving Rome will
help. Rome is so huge and bustling, that you’re tempted to always do
one more thing, because there’s always one more great thing to do and
you can’t possibly do them all–especially in four days.
Well, life is trade-offs, and we had to make one on Thursday. We had
originally planned to go to the Colosseum and Forum on Wednesday afternoon, then
take the train to
Ostia Antica
on Thursday morning to see more Roman ruins. (Ostia Antica is sort of
a mini-Pompeii, just a half-hour train ride from Rome. But we didn’t
manage to get to the Colosseum on Wednesday so we decided to go
Thursday morning instead. The Colosseum is just a short walk from our
hotel, so we ran the gauntlet of selfie-stick sellers and fake
gladiators to start there. We used our Roma Pass to skip the ticket
lines and listened to a
Rick Steves audio tour
on our phones to get a sense of the history and what went on here. The
Steves audio tours are much like the TV show–lots of good
information and a bit hokey. They’re not as good as a well-done guided
tour, but they’re way better than trying to go it alone with just a
book, and they’re free!
So, we’re three days into our visit and I haven’t posted anything. I
plead exhaustion. Our trip was pretty uneventful, other than an hour
delay on the runway at Heathrow to resolve computer problems before
take-off on our leg to Rome.
Day 1
We got to our
hotel at around 3 pm. That was
about 18 hours after we left Boylston, with perhaps two or three hours of
sleep on the plane. The hotel room was very nice, but the wifi wasn’t
working–they hoped to have it fixed later in the day.
Internet access while travelling is pretty important to us–probably
more important than mobile phone service. All of the hotels we are
staying in advertise Wifi availability, but we’d really like to have
internet access on our phones, for things like navigation, as well as
posting to Facebook!
Both Anne and I have unlocked GSM phones that support European
frequencies. Our service at home is through T-Mobile, which offers
“free unlimited” international roaming. The
“unlimited” is in quotes because it’s throttled to 2G speeds unless
you pay quite a bit extra ($50 for 500 mb). But it turns out our plan
isn’t eligible for it anyway and it’s not a good enough deal to make
it worth upgrading.
Arrive late in the day after driving from Tuscany, with a stop in Lucca
along the way. We’re staying at
Il Saraceno in Volastra,
which has free parking.
Sunday May 10
Experience the Cinque Terre.
Monday May 11
Leave in the morning, drive to Nice, get car washed and drop it off. Fly home, departing at 3:25 pm.
Places to go and things to do
Hike the famous trails. We need to buy a trekking card, available at
trail heads for €7.50.
Leave Munich and drive the
Romantic Road
(map)
to Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Staying off the Autobahn, the trip is
about 4 hours of driving. We should plan to arrive in time
to check in to the hotel, get dinner and then take the
Might Watchman’s Tour
at 8 pm. Alternatively, we could eat afterwards.
Pickup Day at BMW Welt! We’re booked for a factory tour at 11:45 and
the actual pickup is at 3:30. We can use BMW’s complimentary shuttle
service from the hotel to die Welt.
Arrive at 1:35 pm. We’re staying at the
Hotel Pensione Guerrato.
To get there we’ll take the vaporetto (ferry) route 1 from the train
station to Rialto Mercato. From there it’s a one minute walk to the
hotel. We may want to pay €25 for a 36 hour vaporetto pass, since
individual rides are €7.
We arrive at about noon. We will take the
Leonardo Express from
the airport to the
Rome Termini station. I originally
thought that we would want to buy SIM cards at either the airport or
the station. It appears that all the cell providers have shops at
Termini. But I was able to purchase cards and activate them in
advance, so this shouldn’t be necessary. More on SIM cards and internet.
After quite a bit of research and discussion, we have at least the
outline of a plan for the
trip. Originally, my thought was
to pick up the car in Munich, drive south through Austria to Venice, then on to Rome
and Florence, making stops in the countryside (Umbria and Tuscany)
along the way. Then head back up through Switzerland to Germany and
finish our sightseeing there before dropping the car back in Munich
and flying home.
I’ve been working at Constant Contact
since March of 2005. One cool benefit we have is a paid one month
sabbatical (in addition to regular vacation) after ten years of
service. Around the holidays last December it occurred to me that mine
was coming up and I ought to start thinking about how to spend it.
Anne and I have done only a little overseas travel. We went to Vienna, Budapest and
Prague in 2000, had a
long weekend in London
right before I started at Constant Contact in 2005 and went to Paris
for a week in 2013. But having a month seems like a perfect chance to do
some European travel before retirement. Anne has been at least
temporarily retired from paid employment for the last couple of years,
so we don’t have to worry about time off for her.
