I woke up in a strange city on my wife’s birthday. I was alone. A chair was broken.

I’m afraid that introduction over-promises, and I will certainly under deliver. This was our first morning in Porto and, as I mentioned in our last installment, I slept like a log. That meant that, while I slept, the other old people (and Kenza) had woken up and gone for coffee. (The chairs were poorly designed, and, while Amy was putting on her shoes, one of them had broken. Later we found a storage closet where two other broken chairs were stored. All of this made us suspicious of another one of the chairs, which was wobbly, which we put in the corner so no one tempted fate.)

After a time, the others returned with some eggs and bread, and the kids surfaced. After breakfast, my crew – Amy, Cole, Harper, and I – headed out to explore the city. Porto is somewhat less hilly than Lisbon, smaller, and somehow feels a bit more like an American city. Not entirely, obviously, but in comparison to Lisbon. It might have something to do with the place being a college town. Also, my Wikipedia-level understanding of the history is that the Moorish occupation was much shorter than with Lisbon, and Porto has historically maintained closer ties with England over the centuries. Or maybe I’m imagining things. After briefly strolling around Porto City Hall and enjoying the magnificent tiles in the São Bento train station, we fairly quickly found ourselves on the top deck of the Dom Luis I Bridge.  We spent more time with the bridge the following day, so I’ll hold off on saying much about it other than that it’s a beautiful double decked bridge spanning the Douro River build by a student of Gustave Eiffel.

After taking in some of the views from the bridge, we returned to the north side of the river and made our way back to the nearby Porto Cathedral. It’s a Romanesque structure with towers, crenellation, and flying buttresses. So, it looks a little like a castle. Despite it being her birthday and her general unease with heights, Amy gamely went up into one of the towers with us. The interior was gilded and busy. These old, European Catholic churches give me an appreciation for how and why the radical Protestant reformers came to insist on simplicity in their churches. If one assumes that a relationship with God is to be direct rather than mediated through the Church, I can see how the interior of these places would come to be seen as wasteful and expensive distractions. Still, they are something to see, and this was well worth the price of admission.

Following the tour of the cathedral, we made our way down to the bank of the Douro River. Porto has a really cool riverfront. Lots of outdoor dining, buskers, and energy in general. It being a sunny and warm Friday afternoon in early spring, it was hopping! In fact, this was the only time during the trip that I felt like it got positively hot out. The forecast before we left the U.S. called for it to be raining and in the 50s basically the entire week we were in Portugal. We never felt a drop, but the weather was generally in the 50s and sometimes cloudy or windy. But, for a period of time that afternoon, it was sunny, 70s, and not much wind. Our sweatshirts came off, and we were regretting the long pants.

We’d planned on meeting the other crew for a late lunch and, so, began the climb uphill from the river front. It was warm, we were walking a lot, and we hadn’t had much to eat. We were starting to bonk. We stopped in to a store for some drinks and some sunscreen. The guy working the cash register didn’t speak much English and, near as we could tell, not much Portuguese either. But, we figured out the transaction and made our way to Café Santiago for some Francesinhas. The restaurant was not really set up to accommodate a table of eight, so we basically remained split up, 4 and 4. A francesinha is a local Porto dish that Amy had had her eye on since we saw them in a Rick Steves video. It was entirely appropriate that we be able to hit Café Santiago on her birthday. Per the Wikipedia description, it is “made with bread, wet-cured ham, linguica, fresh sausage, steak or roast meat, and covered with melted cheese and a hot and thick spiced tomato and beer sauce, served with a side of French fries.” Amy and Harper split one. I was, frankly, intimidated by the description, so I got something similar but just a bit lighter on the menu. Everyone was more than happy with their selection. It was a fantastic lunch.

Properly fueled, we resumed our wanderings. The next stop ended up being a chocolate shop where we got a selection of chocolates and a round of hot chocolates. The hot chocolate was incredibly thick. It was like drinking the inside of a lava cake. By and by, we ended up at Praça de Lisboa which is a really neat park and commercial area. We enjoyed it just for its green space, sitting on a nice hill where we could do some people watching while kicking off our shoes and letting our dogs bark a bit. But, further in, there is a bar with low tables on the lawn, people sitting around them in the grass, studying, drinking, chatting, whatever. And all of this is kind of elevated. You find, sort of recessed underneath is a bit of an alley with stores. We didn’t take advantage of any of the commercial stuff, just the soft grass. At one point, I needed a bathroom and found a sign saying “WC” which I’d come to recognize as “water closet.” That took me to a stairwell which listed the women at “-1” and the men at “-2.” I went down two flights of stairs which spit me out into a parking garage. The “WC” signs were a bit ambiguous and kept leading me ever onward. I’d done quite a bit of walking and was starting to wonder just where the hell I was when I finally found the bathroom. It was serviceable but fairly disgusting. I went up the first available flight of stairs and emerged well away from the park, across and down the street a fair bit. The underground parking structure was apparently massive.

We capped off our wanderings with a Harry Potter tour of Porto. We met our tour guide at the São Bento railway station. This place is just beautiful. Wikipedia tells me that the vestibule has 20,000 azulejo tiles. There are depictions of battles and saints, travel and daily life, work and romance. Not your average metro station. The tiles took a decade to complete. Our guide met us between platforms 3 and 4 (there being no 9 ¾ here). He told us the train station used to be a convent and that the powers that be wanted to start building earlier, but one nun refused to leave and they had to wait for her to pass before construction could begin.

J.K. Rowling wrote a bit of Harry Potter in Porto, and a Brazilian student named Vini was a big fan and created a tour which combines places associated with Rowling as well as Porto places he felt were analogous to themes in Harry Potter, and turned them into our tour. Vini is an outstanding guide, very engaging and friendly. The tour itself was mostly just walking outside places where Vini would explain to us how they related to Harry Potter either through the literal presence of Rowling, presumed influence on the books, or sometimes just metaphorical similarities. Amy was, of course, the best at Harry Potter and, so, when Vini asked Potter questions, she was usually the one able to answer. In the course of our tour, we stopped at Manteigaria for some pasteis de nata. This was the place we hit on our food tour the night before, but, like I said, they were *so* good. We didn’t complain.

After the tour, it was about 8:30 at night, and we were hungry. Our first effort was to get a table at the sushi place near the tour’s end that Vini had said was very good. With no reservation, we were out of luck. We ended up at a place called Casa Guedes for a meal that was easily the most disappointing on the trip. I had a pork sandwich that was pretty dry and our table split a plate of fries that were bland and chewy. On the upside, their large beers were very large, so it wasn’t all bad. It had been another 25,000 step day.

 

Thursday was St. Patrick’s Day. So far as I could see, nobody in Portugal cared. The early risers decided to change things up for breakfast, and we went to Copenhagen Coffee Lab instead of our normal pastelaria. This was a chain restaurant, but not one we have at home, so we figured it was o.k. Amy, Cole, Kenza, and I made our way down (in Lisbon, you always remember whether the destination was up or down) to the restaurant. I had a double espresso along with some salmon and eggs. I am not used to espresso, and even though I know it’s strong, even a double seemed woefully insufficient given how little liquid was in the cup. After sipping the stuff, I realized it was plenty. It’s definitely potent.

We were headed to Porto that day and had to check out of our Lisbon apartment by 11, so we headed back and finished packing. There had been an incident with some wine and a chair the night before. Matt and Suzie were taking care of clean up. They indicated they were making progress. I was skeptical. I think we’re still kind of holding our breath to see if an extra charge materializes. We took an Uber to Oriente Station where we caught a train to Porto. There was a brief period of irritation as the girls disappeared into the train station just before it was time to head up to the platform. We had plenty of time as it turns out, but I get anxious about time when I am unfamiliar with the schedules and the terrain. The ride was reasonably comfortable and uneventful. I mostly spent my time reading “Drunk: How We Slipped, Danced, and Stumbled our Way to Civilization” by Edward Slingerland. (His theory is that inebriation, despite its obvious costs, has adaptive advantages for primates forced into close proximity with one another and facilitates creativity and collaboration.)

When we got to Porto, the station was under some construction, so for ground transportation, the signs had us exiting through featureless hallways and onto the sidewalk of a side street with no particular markings. We called another Uber that found us with no problem. But the second car for the rest of the crew was not so efficient. It took that group quite sometime to summon a car that could locate them. The Porto apartment made a good first impression. It looked clean, comfortable, and fairly modern. I think some of this was illusory. It wasn’t a bad apartment, but the furnishings made it look more comfortable than it actually was. And the layout kept confusing me. The door to the exterior hallway opened into a main living room with two side doors, one that led to an interior hallway going to the bedrooms and one that led to the kitchen. I think my confusion stemmed in part from the hallway to the bedrooms being between  the kitchen and the dining table. On some level, I think I kept expecting the door closest to the table to lead to the kitchen.

Cole and I immediately got the lay of the land by heading out on a quick beer run. There was a little store about two blocks away. (If we read the signs right, it was also next to a 24-hour marijuana dispensary). I grabbed a warm 15-pack of Super Bocks and two cold mini-bottles that we carried home. The cold mini bottles were a good idea, but the warm beers ended up being largely wasted because we just didn’t spend enough time in the apartment to drink them over the next couple of days. After unpacking and some beer, wine, and snacks, it was time to go on our food tour of Porto. We made our way down to the World War 1 memorial where we met our guide. I’ll call her “Julie,” but I’m not entirely sure I have that right. She was from France and married to someone local and was super nice. This tour was maybe heavier on the drinking than actual food when compared to our Porto tour. Whereas Irene in Lisbon was a chef, Julie was more of a drinking buddy. So, it was fun, but the cuisine was not quite as good.

Our first stop was for salty snacks at Paderia Ribero. This ended up being a place central to our future journeys, and we got comfortable using their bathroom over the next couple of days. Also, it was next door to a Steak n’ Shake which was pretty amazing to me. I didn’t even really think they had those outside of Indiana, let alone in Portugal. Wikipedia tells me they opened a few in Europe starting in 2014. Our second stop was at the Patio d’as Maria Merceria.  I think this was more like a specialty grocery where they seated us and served us down in a basement where we had meats, cheeses and port. Port is just a bit sweet for my tastes, but the set up was great, and I certainly like meat and cheese! Third on the tour was Garrafeira which was a cool bottle shop. We were set up at a long table and served sardines, mackerel, and green wine. The kids were maybe a little too enamored of green wine! It’s sweet and a little fizzy, so I can see the appeal. Since he’s 18 and it was legal, we were kind of letting Cole set his own pace with beer and wine. Further research suggests that Harper was probably also legal to drink. Even though we thought the drinking age was higher, it was pretty clear nobody cared if a 16 year old with her parents was drinking wine. Still, we kept a closer eye on Harper’s consumption.

Stop 4 was Tasquinha dos Sabores. The bread was good, and there was some wine. But this stop was a little bit forgettable. That might not be the fault of the restaurant so much as its position in our tour. Unlike everywhere else, there was quite a bit of food left on peoples’ plates. Stop 5 was Manteigaria for some pasteis de nata. They were *so* good here. The pastries had just enough crunch and the custard was not at all gelatinous and was delicious. And, the final stop on the tour was Capela Incomum which is a chapel converted into a really cozy place to have some drinks. The layout gives it a kind of atmosphere that I don’t really see in bars and restaurants in the Midwest. We had some kind of dessert wine which, again, was a little sweet for my tastes. But, still I was happy to have been there.

On the walk home, we encountered an initiation of some kind. A fairly large crowd of young adults, chanting, singing, and clapping which attracted various onlookers – ourselves included. Kenza, curious and always happy to strike up a conversation with a stranger, started talking with a guy from Iran who was in Porto by way of Finland. He said that these were nursing students being initiated and that it had been going on every night for 10 days. Eventually, the routine was that they’d end up in the fountain. We didn’t stick around to see that. It had been a long day, and I slept like a log.

 

Prior installments for the Portugal trip:
Part I: Travel to Lisbon
Part II: Lisbon – Castelo de São Jorge, Belém, and Food Tour
Part III: Sintra and Roaming Lisbon

The day began in the usual way with pastries and coffee at the local pastelaria, taking home piles of pastries for the kids. The plan for the day was a trip to Sintra, a town about 17 miles west of Lisbon. Only it was Europe, so they use kilometers and there are more of them. The good news is that it wasn’t raining. As recently as two days prior to us leaving on the trip, the weather apps were calling for rain basically the entire week. In reality, the only rain I experienced was during the five feet or so from an airport shuttle to the stairway up to the plane as we were departing. The bad news was that the day we were headed to Sintra, the winds out of the south were fierce and Saharan sand was in the air.

We made our way down hill to the Rossio train station where, following a delay owing to a bathroom search, we caught our train to Sintra. The train ride begins with a long tunnel which I found a little disorienting, but Wikipedia tells me is 2.9 km long and “is considered one of the most important works of engineering in Portugal.” We found ourselves in the Sintra town square and probably tackled the sightseeing in the least efficient possible way. The two main sites are the Moorish Castle and Pena Palace. Both places are cool, but less than authentic. The castle was built by the Moors in the 8^th and 9^th centuries after they conquered the Iberian peninsula. Its utility as a defensive site diminished over the years and, in the 19^th century, Ferdinand II rebuilt the walls, replanted some trees, and manicured the grounds inside the walls. If I recall the plaques correctly, Ferdinand used the place for meditation and reflection. In the mid-19^th century, the palace was on the site of a former monastery that was reduced to ruins by the 1755 earthquake.  The design is pure storybook which is a little odd considering it was built and used during a time period recent enough to include a telephone. Essentially the sites were play things for Portuguese nobility.

Even so, the first thing we wanted to see was the Moorish Castle. The thing about castles is that they work better when they are higher than the enemy. There are all kinds of options for having someone take you up to the top of the big hill – buses, cabs, tuktuks. But the area by the train station was crowded and we wanted to get away from the hordes. So, we just started walking and walking and walking, ever upward. It was actually a beautiful hike, but it did leave us with another 12 mile, 150 flight day.  The wind was strong, clocking in at 20 miles per hour, and as I mentioned, there was sand in the air from the Sahara. This phenomenon apparently affected a broad patch of Europe, including at least Spain and Germany as well.  For the most part, the hills surrounding the castle sheltered us from the wind, but occasionally you’d crest a hill or find yourself exposed to southerly winds and you could really feel it. You didn’t want to be wearing your hat when you climbed on top of one of the towers. Even with the dust limiting visibility, some of the views were pretty amazing. On a clear day, you must be able to see forever.

From the castle, we hiked down a bit, then took a bus from a lower parking lot up to the palace. By the time we got there, the dust was really obscuring any kind of view. The inside was kind of weird just because the furniture was recognizable – a lot of stuff that you could imagine maybe a rich grandparent having. It lives in an uncanny valley that’s not contemporary and is maybe historical, but only just barely. The colorful towers were pretty though.

By that time, it was probably 2 pm, we’d been working hard, and some of us were starting to bonk. It was a great time for lunch. Our food tour guide, Irene, had emailed us some potential recommendations, and we went with Apeadeiro. I had squid and chorizo. Harper had squid and shrimp. Both of them were good, but her fries were amazing. Sometimes it’s the simple things! After lunch, we broke up the band. Matt, Suzie, and Sydney headed back to Lisbon while Amy, Cole, Harper, Kenza, and I explored Sintra a bit more. Eventually it occurred to us that we didn’t know the train schedule. We got paranoid that the train that Google showed us might be the last one, so we rushed to catch it. I suspect it was not the last train, but better safe than sorry.

Once back in Lisbon, we still weren’t ready to be done, so we wandered. It seems to me that Lisbon would be a challenging place to live – although I’m sure you get used to it. But it is a remarkable place to be a tourist who is willing to walk but with no particular destination. The streets, alleys, stairs, and walkways twist and turn up and down, and it seems that there is always an unexpected and interesting shop or restaurant or bar crammed into every nook and cranny. In our wanderings, we came across a place purporting to be the world’s oldest book store, the Livraria Bertrand.

At that point, Harper was fading but Amy, Cole, and Kenza wanted to keep exploring. Harper and I started making our way back to the apartment. However, we hadn’t made it too far before we found a little record store that we had to check out. Harper has a turntable and is a budding fan of vinyl. This place had bins full of random 45s they were selling for 1 euro apiece. Harper picked up “Amanda” by Boston and “Come on Eileen” by Dexie’s Midnight Runners. I passed on but probably should’ve bought a copy of “Rapper’s Delight” by “Chagrill’s Gang.” When I got home, the Internet told me that this is an obscure Portuguese knock-off of the famous version by the Sugarhill Gang.  As we were leaving, what appeared to be the owner’s buddy came in with an armload of cold Super Bocks and was popping the tops. Tough to say whether they were making any money, but listening to music and drinking beers doesn’t seem like a bad way to spend a Wednesday night in Lisbon.

From the record store, the rest of the walk was surreal. We were following the path given to us by Google Maps. There was an outdoor escalator. There was an impossibly narrow alley. Then we passed a staircase that Harper said she was glad we didn’t have to take. But I’d navigated too far. The map was taking us up the stairs.

We have since named it the Stairway to Heaven. Just a never-ending staircase that went between buildings in some cases and between barren, graffiti-filled walls in others. We passed a guy talking on the phone about an increase in income which he planned to use to get a garden. Harper is convinced this was about drugs somehow. About 2/3 of the way up the stairway (though, at this point, we didn’t know how long we had left to climb), Harper was absolutely gassed. But, she heard some voices behind us and was paranoid, so she soldiered on. (To be clear, we never caught a whiff of trouble or danger from anyone the entire time we were in Portugal. But, it was dark and the environment was strange, so the mind plays tricks.) At long last, we made it to the top and, much to our surprise, we recognized the place. The point where the stairs ended were only about 1.5 blocks from our apartment. Home at last.

I’m certain that those stairs weren’t anywhere near as long as what they seemed at the time. And they will just grow longer, steeper, and weirder as we tell this story in years to come. And that’s what I love about these vacations. One day, Harper will probably be telling her kids about that walk home. It won’t be a big deal. Nothing life changing. Just a fun, peculiar moment with her Dad. And, even if we didn’t do anything else on this trip, that memory would’ve been worth all the price of admission.

The adults were up and about at 8 a.m. and went foraging. Up the hill was Pastelaria Baga Baga, a little pastry shop that we went to a few times. The coffee was good and the pastries were cheap. So, we ate pasteis de nata (a type of custard tart) and drank coffee at a table on the sidewalk, then took breakfast back for the kids. Then it was time to get walking. The first stop was Castelo de São Jorge, a place that has probably been fortified for a couple thousand years. The Moors built fortifications in the 900s and the Portuguese took it back during the Second Crusade. It was a pleasant place to stroll around as a tourist. Storming it as a hostile soldier must’ve been a nightmare. For most of the crowd, the peacocks on the grounds seemed to be the central attraction. I was partial to the views, the concession stand selling Sagres, and the sign next to a statute of Manuel I imploring visitors, “please do not lean on the foot.”

A note on the beers in Portugal: primarily they sell two kinds, Sagres and Super Bock. Most places will have one or the other but not both. With the huge selections we tend to have in U.S. establishments, there was something refreshing about being able to order “a beer” and getting whichever of the two they have on tap. Both are pleasant, if unremarkable. They put me in mind of Mexican beers, “Dos Equis” kept jumping to mind. As between the two, I’m on Team Super Bock.

Once we were finished with the castle, it was time for our first trolley ride. Amy had acquired 72 hour Lisboa passes for us which got us on and off the public transportation for no extra charge. The trolleys are very useful in a town as hilly as Lisbon. You need to have good balance and not mind crowds because they can get pretty full, and you’ll have to stand. I can’t imagine what Lisbon is like for folks who aren’t able to walk very well. Still, for us, the trolley rides were fun. We headed down to “Pink Street” which, true to its name, is a street painted pink. That stop was fairly underwhelming. I think it’s more of a night life type area, and there wasn’t a ton for a family of four to see on an early Tuesday afternoon.

From Pink Street, we took a tram to the Belém area where we saw Belém Tower, Padrãodos Descobrimentos, and Jerónimos Monastery. Of these, Jerónimos was the most interesting. The architecture is just stunning, and it contains the tomb of Vasco de Gama. The Monument of the Discoveries is a giant slab that takes the shape of the prow of a Portuguese caravel. It features Prince Henry the Navigator at the point, flanked by Portuguese discoverers. It was erected in the 1950s and 60s to commemorate 500 years since the death of Prince Henry and celebrate the Portuguese accomplishments during the Age of Discovery. Doing anything to commemorate that era is bound to generate mixed feelings, and this was no exception. Its importance to the Portuguese and the course of human history can hardly be overstated. Those voyages of discovery connected the civilizations of the world. That said, the impact of slavery, spread of disease, and misery that followed in the wake of those voyages can also hardly be overstated. A monument that is purely celebratory is going to miss the mark. At least it did for me, even as I was glad to see it. In particular, the limestone square adjacent to the monument, depicting a compass rose and a map of the world was stunning.

 

I would have liked to visit the Maritime Museum which is also in that area, but time simply did not permit. We had scheduled a food tour for that evening. We met our guide, Irene, at the Rua Augusta Arch. The arch and that whole area of Lisbon were constructed after the 1755 earthquake. I’m sure students of architecture will flinch at my characterization, but the layout is on the Enlightenment model – all straight lines and symmetry. I had forgotten about the earthquake until this trip, but the first time I learned about it was reading Candide where the fact of the earthquake and the destruction it caused were some of the challenges to Candide’s Panglossian worldview.

Our food tour guide, Irene, was a chef native to Italy who had lived in Lisbon for several years. (In fact, for whatever reason, all of the people who showed us around Portugal ended up being foreign to the country. Fabiola who drove us from the airport was Brazilian, Irene was from Italy, our food tour guide in Porto was French, and our Harry Potter tour guide in Porto was Brazilian.) The Lisbon food tour and the restaurants that Irene picked for us were fantastic. We had eight people in our crew, so we hogged most of the tour slots, but along with us were Nicole from Philly and Nathan from D.C. The first stop was Mantegeria Salva where we had meat, cheese, bread, and port wine. I’m certainly doing the food a disservice by failing to be more specific with my descriptions, but those details escape me. All I can say is that it was a great start. (I will mention that they had a cod refrigerator out on the sidewalk with the front wheels sitting on blocks. It was not the most stable design choice! No harm done, but there was a scare when those wheels came off the blocks.) The second stop was my favorite, Cantinho do Aziz, featuring cuisine from Mozambique. We had two kinds of samosas, one with meat and one without. Despite my carnivorous ways, the vegetarian option was easily my preference. There was also a curry dish that was pretty amazing.

I neglected to record the names of stop three, but it featured cod and potatoes. The potatoes were a kind of chip that struck exactly the right balance between crisp and soft. Irene said she was still trying to figure out how they did it. The last place was Amuralhas Tapas e Vinhos where, as the name would suggest we had wine and a number of tapas dishes. In particular, I recall the flamed sausages were good. We also had shot glasses of ginjinha, a sweet cherry drink (that you sip and do not shoot). I’m glad we had it because it’s a distinctive drink in Portugal, but it was a little sweet for my tastes (as was the port – which is why, even though I like wine, I ended up primarily drinking beer.) The guided food tours (we did another one in Porto) were Amy’s idea. She’s right that these are a great way to get introduced to a new place.

According to the data from my watch, we finished the day having climbed the equivalent of 146 floors and having walked about 12 miles.

This was a trip that was supposed to happen almost two years ago. I think a lot of people are having trips like that. We started making the plans in the latter part of 2019. As originally contemplated, it was going to be longer and take place in June 2020. Amy and her sister, Suzie, were going to attend an international WordPress conference in Porto, Portugal, and we were going to extend the itinerary to include Lisbon, Madrid, and Barcelona. And then the world shut down.

Fast forward to 2022, and – after an impressive Omicron jag – COVID cases were low, vaccinations were easily available, and the world was more or less open again. Also, our Air Portugal credits from 2020 were set to expire, so we booked a trip for Spring Break. We banked on the fact that Cole was going to make the Indiana All-State band and scheduled our departure to be during Spring Break but after his performance. Suzie’s daughter, Kenza, drove up from Tennessee, we caught Cole’s performance on Sunday the 13^th, and headed up to O’Hare that evening where we also met up with Sydney, Kenza’s step-sister. I suppose a dramatis personae is probably in order at this point: Myself, 50 year old Midwestern ne’er do-well. Amy, my long suffering wife and chief architect of this expedition. Cole, my son, age 18. Harper, my daughter, age 16. Amy’s sister and web-design business partner, Suzie. Suzie’s husband Matt. Suzie’s daughter, Kenza. And Matt’s daughter, Sydney.

When we got to the terminal, all of the restaurants and bars were closing down, which seems like a money-losing proposition. Even though it was a Sunday night, there were clearly still a lot of people in the terminal willing to spend money. But, Amy & Kenza saved the evening, bringing back an armload of booze and snacks from a cart that was just about to close. We set up shop at an empty section of the closed food-court and waited for our flight. Eventually, we made our way to the gate. The number of people getting turned away at the gate because they’d neglected the airline’s instructions to get a negative COVID test was, frankly, stunning. We must have counted at least 10 when while we were sitting there. O’Hare has a place where you can get the test if you wait until the last couple of hours. But waiting until the last hour on a Sunday night made it impossible for them to get back to the facility, get tested, clear security, and get back to the gate before the flight departed. The next flight out wasn’t until Wednesday. I can’t imagine spending that kind of money on international travel and then ignoring the travel requirements. Amy had us scheduled for a regular test on Friday and then a back up, rapid test for Sunday afternoon, just in case. (The regular test worked out fine, no problem.)

The flight was uneventful. Took off at around 11:15 (Central Daylight) and landed at about noon Lisbon time. Customs seemed like it was moving along fairly rapidly but at one point turned glacial. I think it was a shift change. We arranged for a driver to pick us up from the airport since we didn’t know our way around town yet. Fabiola was from Brazil and was terrific. She is originally from Brazil and is learning English. While I would always recommend learning as much of the local language as possible, I have to say, our almost total ignorance of Portuguese didn’t hurt us much. Seemed that most folks knew at least some English, and usually quite a bit. I know a fair amount of Spanish, so signs and other written material was usually pretty easy to follow. But understanding spoken Portuguese is well beyond me.

We met up with Matt & Suzie who had been in Lisbon for a couple of days. We had Fabiola drop us off at the little two-person studio they had rented because the four bedroom Airbnb we had booked wouldn’t be available for a couple of hours. In retrospect, with the delay in clearing customs, we probably could have just been delivered straight to our apartment. It was not that far from Matt & Suzie’s location, but that part of Lisbon is either in or very near the Alfama neighborhood and very hilly. So, we found ourselves dragging luggage across cobble stones and stairs, mostly going straight up. It was quite the workout!

We hit a grocery store for some necessities (chief among them, beer and wine). Cole, being 18 and legal to drink in Portugal, had his first (to our knowledge, and probably in reality) beer and wine samplings and hated them both. However, throughout the rest of the trip he would take well enough to the beer. Properly fortified, we headed back out into Lisbon to look for some dinner. Monday nights seem to be a slow night for restaurant operations. Matt had scoped out some likely locations in the previous few days, but they were closed. We ended up at a place called Grehaldor de Alfama.  The restaurant was at a location that seemed to be catering to tourists, but it was a cozy place that seemed to have a husband and wife running it. It could have been a function of a long day traveling, but for me, everything I ate there was fantastic. The lady taking our orders told me I didn’t want the sardines when I tried to order them, so I ended up having salmon and then variously eating the bass, steak, and cod that others didn’t quite finish. There was also some kind of sausage appetizer to which flame was applied at our table. It was also very good. We then climbed the hills back to our apartment and promptly crashed. I slept for about 11 hours. No problem with jet lag!

We had to put our dog Ollie to sleep last night. I started this blog with a remembrance of my dog, Shady, when she passed away more than 16 years ago. In July of 2010, we had to put our dog Keesha to sleep. And, in February of 2011, we lost Brooksey. We’ve had a good long stretch of healthy dogs since then. But, this is the hard part of dog ownership. They bring such joy, but the sadness at the end of life is part of the deal.

It was not long after Brooksey’s death that my wife was looking for puppies. She visited a lot of dog sites on Facebook and whatnot and would periodically send me pictures of puppies that she thought we really needed to have. It took me longer to get over the sadness of losing Brooksey and Keesha so close together and, frankly, the exhaustion that came with tending two dogs who grew very old at the same time. Eventually I acquiesced. She showed me the picture of a good looking puppy from the Peru animal shelter site. As I recall the story, he’d gotten loose from a place near Peru, and the owner didn’t want him back. So, I like to think he lucked out of a life of neglect to living with us — which, truth be told, his a pretty cushy posting for a dog. The folks from Peru met Amy halfway at the McDonalds in Delphi. I don’t think the paws had ever been visible in the pictures we’d seen. They were enormous. Amy brought him into my office on the way home, and my law partner commented on his tiger paws. Taking him for a walk his first time out, we heard this enormous bark coming out of the puppy with — getting gross for a moment — some poos to be reckoned with! This was going to be a bigger dog than we’d anticipated.

What had been billed as a “black lab mix” may or may not have had some lab in him. But he definitely had some Great Dane. And, we think, border collie. When another dog would be coming the other way, he’d crouch down like a border collie — as if hiding in the tall grass to pounce. The idea of stealth from a Great Dane mix on a suburban lawn was pretty funny. He was a challenging puppy — the size and energy was a daunting combination. We got in the habit of giving him kongs filled with frozen meat and cheese and rawhide first thing in the morning, just so we could have some time to wake up before he was on top of us. This became a life long entitlement. I’m happy to report that on the morning of his last day, he got to enjoy his kong and rawhide treats.

Ollie liked to lean on you. A “mighty lean” I called the good ones! It was his way of giving you a hug and saying good morning. He loved a good game of tug. As he grew large — 90 pounds or so — this became a real test of strength. When he was playing with you, sometimes he’d actually bend his front paw around your ankle to “hook” you. He loved his rawhide and he loved his walks. But, truth be told, he was something of a mess when another dog came around. He so desperately wanted to get at the other dog. And he must’ve looked like a menace to someone who didn’t know him. 90 pounds of urgent enthusiasm, struggling against his harness and his walker (almost always me) to get at the other dog. Once he got there, he was friendly, but we usually didn’t let him approach out of respect for the other dog owners. I feel like this habit intensified when we got Milo.

We got our other dog, Milo, in 2015, when Ollie would have been about 4 years old. Milo is a schnauzer/poodle mix (“schnoodle”) and when we got him, he was *tiny.* Ollie simply did not know what to make of Milo at first. He was interested when Milo came home, but so anxious about the whole thing that he was drooling buckets. It never occurred to Milo that he was smaller than Ollie. They’d play, making horrible noises at each other, and tiny Milo would give as good as he got. Giant Ollie and tiny Milo were such opposites and such good friends. They reminded me of the Spike and Chester cartoons where Spike was a big burly oaf and Chester was a yappy, peppy, and perky smaller dog talking trash because he had the big dog as muscle. As I said, Ollie’s bad habits with other dogs seemed to get worse when Milo came along. Milo would get loud as other dogs approached — not so much, I don’t think, because he was so interested in the other dog, but because it was fun for him to wind up Ollie.

On hot days, after our walks, if we didn’t close the dog door, Ollie had a tendency to slip out into the back yard and go for a dip in the pool to cool down. That wouldn’t be so bad except that he had a tendency to come back in and dry off on the couch — which apparently makes for a magnificent towel. His enjoyment of our pool earned him an occasional stint as the local Crystal Clear Pools mascot. (They had a picture of him floating on a raft in our pool which they have repaired and maintained over the years.) Other than getting hot after walks, Ollie was remarkably indifferent to weather. Rain, shine, hot, cold, he was happy to be outside. I don’t know that this description will mean anything to readers, but he was the “doggiest” dog we’ve had. He loved his people, but he was just kind of motivated by food and walks and other dogs. (Random detail – before walks, he’d go up to the door and stand close to it, but when he had to move because of some excited energy, he’d turn in a quick circle.)

The decline came fast. We anticipated that he wouldn’t be the type to grow old gracefully, but even so, this was unexpected. At 10 years old, which is somewhat old for a large dog, he was still energetic and fairly spry. On March 15, Amy and the kids had left for Spring Break. I got a text at work from a neighbor who’d found Ollie and let him back into our house. I came back home because I suspected the back gate had blown open in the windy weather from the previous night. Sure enough, when I got home, he’d made his way (with Milo, his partner in crime) out the dog door into the back yard, out the gate, and into the front yard. I was in a rush, so I’m not sure if he was limping then, but when I got home from work, he was limping very badly. I took him to the vet the next day, and he had what amounts to an ACL tear in dogs. I don’t know for sure that it was related to his adventure, but it seems likely. On April 1, he got surgery for the tear. It’s a fairly long recovery, but he seemed to be progressing fairly well for the first few weeks. Initially, he had to be helped down the deck stairs to the back yard and we had to keep him on a leash back there so he didn’t run too fast and undo the surgical repair. But after 4 or 5 weeks, he was navigating the stairs easily, and we were giving him some unleashed time to lay around in the back yard on nice days. On one of those afternoons, he went tearing after a squirrel and, sure enough, started favoring that leg again. His progress was definitely set back. But, it felt like he was mending again after that.

Earlier this week, he was lethargic, not eating, and at one point seemed to have a dizzy/drunk spell. We had a dog with diabetes, and it looked a little like how she’d get when her blood sugar was off. We took him into the vet, and they kept him overnight and much of the next day. He had a fever and they thought it was an infection but they weren’t sure where. They had him on IV antibiotics and he perked up. He wouldn’t eat at the vets, but they thought that might be environmental, so they sent him home on Wednesday night. He ate well that night and on Thursday and seemed much better. Friday morning, he was positively perky – demanding his morning treats, pulling on the leash in the back yard when I took him out. He was still limping from the leg surgery, but other than that, all seemed well again. He was a little lethargic when Amy took him out around noon, but that could be attributable to the pain medication he was on for the leg. When I came home in the afternoon, he was in his crate. He didn’t come out to greet me which was a little unusual, but I didn’t push him to get up.

However, when it was medicine time, he wouldn’t even sniff the roast beef that it was wrapped in. We forced him out of his crate, and tried supporting him with a towel under his belly as a sling. Not only couldn’t he walk, his legs were criss crossing underneath him. We put him in a comforter as a make-shift stretcher and got him to the Purdue veterinary ER. The results were not at all the things we had been concerned about. He had blood in his stomach and a mass on his spleen. Invasive surgery was the only real option, but the vet gave us about a 30% chance we’d find anything operable and, even with that, there’d be a tough recovery on top of the potential neurological issues with his legs and his knee recovery. We made the tough call, which was made worse by how rapidly the situation had developed. He went peacefully with his family all around him.

I’ve been a dog owner for a long time and have been through a number of these decisions now. It’s never easy. But, what was especially challenging was watching my kids say goodbye to their dog. They have not been through so many of these, and they feel the pain much more keenly. Ollie came into their lives when they were 7 and 5 years old. All their lives, in a sense. That part was especially heart-wrenching. I’m confident we made the right decision, but – not to put too fine a point on it – this part sucks.

Good boy Ollie. We love you.

 

 

Not that the world particularly needs to know, but with this blog post maybe I’ll remind you of a simpler time – when the Internet was full of posts about cats and what people had for lunch. Sure, self-indulgent and vacuous, but still better than the rage-addiction delivery system it’s become.

While it sucked in a lot of ways, 2020 was a good time to exercise and read. In terms of exercise, I started making more time for it when we were in lockdown. I was working out of my storage room. Turns out it was pretty easy for me to keep up with my workload if I stumbled down to the storage room in my jammies at 7:30 or 8, worked for a couple of hours, then went for a run or put on a workout video before taking a quick shower, grabbing some lunch, and getting back to work. Not driving to and from work or messing with professional attire really saves time. Anyway, setting aside time turned into a streak, and at the moment, I’ve done at least a half hour of exercise – usually more – every day since March 27. Included in that was a round of P90x, a half marathon, and quite a bit of cycling.

I also managed to keep a list of the books I read in 2020:

1. Jan. 29th – SPQR – Mary Beard.
2. Feb. 6th – Queenslayer (Spellslinger 5) – Sebastien de Castell
3. Feb. 11th – Humans: A Brief History of How We F*cked It All Up – Tom Phillips
4. Feb. 15th – Crownbreaker (Spellslinger 6) – Sebastien de Castell
5. Feb. 25th – Running with Sherman – Christopher McDougall
6. Mar. 14th – The South versus the South – William Freehling
7. Apr. 24th – The Stand – Stephen King
8. May 6th – Lawrence in Arabia – Scott Anderson
9. May 10th – Only Human – Sylvain Neuvel
10. June 7th – At Home – Bill Bryson
11. June 26th – Upheaval – Jared Diamond
12. July 5th – Seveneves – Neal Stephenson
13. Aug. 2nd – How to Hide an Empire – Daniel Immerwahr
14. Aug. 8th – The Guardians – John Grisham
15. Aug. 15th – Longitude – Dava Sobel
16. Aug. 30th – Runes of the Earth – Stephen R. Donaldson
17. Sept. 29th – Fatal Revenant – Stephen R. Donaldson
18. Oct. 24th – Against All Things Ending – Stephen R. Donaldson
19. Nov. 14th – The Final Dark – Stephen R. Donaldson
20. Nov. 29th – Indiana: An Interpretation – John Bartlow Martin
21. Dec. 5th – Traitor’s Blade (Greatcoats #1) – Sebastien de Castell
22. Dec. 25th – Knight’s Shadow (Greatcoats #2) – Sebastien de Castell
23. Dec. 29th – Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid – Bill Bryson

So, the year wasn’t totally wasted. Though, I have to say, the Stephen R. Donaldson series (The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant) from August through November was a bit of a slog. There was some good stuff here and there in the series, but mainly I was reading it because the First Chronicles meant so much to me when I read it as a kid.

So, I had a complicated family life growing up. My folks divorced when I was two, my father married the woman who had lived across the street — my old neighbors became my step family. They lived for a time in rural Wayne County (near Richmond where I lived) before moving out to Colorado. I guess I was probably about six years old when they moved to Colorado. I guess my sisters and I went out to what we called “the farm” every other weekend, but I don’t really know because it was so long ago. After the Colorado move, we saw them for several weeks during the summer and I recall going out there one Christmas. I believe the last summer, Colorado visit would have been in 1980 when I was eight. Then there were some child support issues, and we didn’t go out there anymore. Then my father and step-mother got divorced, so I never saw that set of step-siblings again.

I’m prompted to write this for a few reasons, chief among them is that I learned that my step-brother (or ex-step-brother, I suppose), Mike Masson, died. I have to specify a last name because due to my mother getting remarried once and my father getting remarried three times, I have three step-brothers named Rick and, up until yesterday, two step-brothers named Mike. All told, I have eight brothers and eight sisters. I couldn’t tell you all of their names on a bet. Despite having met them all at one time or another, some of the names from my father’s third and fourth marriages escape me. I was friends with Mike and one of my ex-step-sisters on Facebook which is how I learned of his death. I’m not close enough with her to feel comfortable asking about the details of his death, so I’m stalking the comment thread to find out the details.

[Fun side story about Facebook and this slice of my family: It was the period between signing the purchase agreement and closing on my house in West Lafayette. My step-sister also happened to be moving and posted something about moving. I chimed in on that thread saying, “I’m moving too.” Then, oddly, the woman I was buying from jumps into the thread and says, “I think you’re buying the house from me.” I responded, “I think that’s right. How do you know [step-sister]?” Turns out it was my step-sister’s cousin. I had actually met her in 1980 on the drive to Colorado when they lived in St. Louis and we stopped there to visit on the way. We went up in the St. Louis Arch together!]

The other, less pressing, reasons for writing this blog post are: a) Despite having made a few aborted efforts at keeping a diary or journal, I never keep up with them and never know where to find the book or whatever I was using when it occurs to me to record personal thoughts. This blog is the closest thing I have. So occasionally I write one of these things that the public doesn’t necessarily need to know about or have any particular reason to care about. I thank you for letting me indulge myself; and b) Mike’s death has me dredging up some long-forgotten memories of that time in my life. As I get older, those memories get more distant, and I’m afraid that if I don’t write them down, they’ll be lost entirely.  I know it’s bad form to turn someone else’s death into commentary about yourself, but I didn’t really know him that well, so here we are.

My memories from “the Farm” are really just disjointed scenes:

• The other kids were carrying me as a “patient” on a stretcher that was really just a blanket. They dropped me and I smashed my knee into the stair rail bannister which gave me a scar on my knee which has faded but which I can still find if I really look.
• There was a boulder that we just called “the Big Rock” that we went and climbed and jumped off of. 
• There was a creek with a shady spot that widened out into a sand bar. 
• There seemed to be a lot of daddy longlegs spiders. 
• The house had a big porch and there was an afternoon where we jumped from the rail out into the yard, yelling “naked ladies!” for some reason. 
• This may not have been the Farm and could have been later, but I remember spending the night outside with Mike, and we’d get all excited when we saw a satellite. They were so rare back in those days. We’d shine a flashlight up into the sky and talk about how the light wouldn’t stop until it hit a star.

From a little later on when they moved to a town in western Colorado (Austin, CO, not that far from Delta):

• Mike was born on July 7, 1970. The bank in town gave him seven silver dollars on account of him turning seven on 7/7/77.
• You could sometimes hear sonic booms as jets broke the sound barrier.
• As the youngest family members, we were put in the far back of the station wagon on a drive from Indiana to Colorado. We figured out that cards would fit under the door as we drove — so we entertained ourselves by watching Uno cards fluttering off into the Kansas countryside. However, we got busted when one of the adults opened the door at a McDonald’s stop and the cards that hadn’t escaped were piled up under the back car door.
• Mike got a radio that only seemed to get two radio stations out in that part of the country. That summer, Billy Joel’s “My Life” and “Le Freak” by Chic seemed to be getting a lot of airplay. Must’ve been 1978.
• I got the flu one summer and felt horrible. I can think of only one other time when I may have been sicker. They gave me Sprite or Seven-Up to settle my stomach.
• To get to the house, you had to go up what seemed like the time to be a gigantic hill. It got really hot and it was really dry out there. So, as I was sitting down resting on my journey up the hill, I had my very first encounter with red ants. They hurt.
• There was a general store at the bottom of the hill. The daughter of the owner was a girl named Michelle who was about my age. She was my first crush. I want to say I kissed her, but maybe I only wanted to.
• I helped Mike raise pigs for 4H or some such. It may have been unrelated, but we ended up going to a rodeo for what seems like a couple of days. I don’t know where Mike was — maybe participating in an event? — but I hung out with some other kid who taught me that, even if you had no money, you could get mustard packets for free. So, me and a random kid in western Colorado hung out at a rodeo sucking down a bunch of mustard packets.
• In the car going to the airport for my sisters and I to go back to Indiana, Mike and I were stuck in the back as per usual and were having a great time repeatedly and loudly singing the theme song to the “Godzilla” cartoon. We took great delight belting out the high notes when the song got to the words “. . . and Godzuki.” I’m not positive if this would have been the summer of 1980 (Wikipedia says the cartoon had two seasons, released in the fall of 1978 and of 1979), but if it was, it’s entirely possible that this was the last time I saw Mike.
• My step-mother told me she was going to buy me some winter gloves. I was really looking forward to them, and we’d picked out a pair. She was giving me a lecture on how I had to take care of them, and I was agreeing to do so. Then, for some reason, she changed her mind and decided not to get them. I never got any gloves.
• In the summer of 1980, my father and step-mother were moving from a house in Austin to a house in Crawford. There was work to be done, bailing hay out at the new property, I believe. Mike and I weren’t much help with that and, instead, spent the afternoon intertubing down the creek that was on or near the property.
• There were a couple of Korean kids who lived down the road. They taught us the proper way to throw a karate punch which we thought was pretty cool. In retrospect, I’m pretty sure it had nothing to do with karate and was a horrible way to throw a punch.
• We had a Japanese exchange student named Chizaru visiting one year. On the way to pick her up, Mike told me not to mention Iwo Jima or Hiroshima. I had no idea what those were at the time, so no problem keeping mum.
• We had some pretty sweet Battlestar Galactica toys. He had the Cylon, and I had the Colonial Warrior.
• Maybe the first time I was in Colorado, there was a drought. I could have misunderstood, but my sense was that the adults were mad about water restrictions because some of the water was diverted to Denver. (It was, I now realize, the aggrieved tone rural folks often take about city dwellers.) At some point, I flushed the toilet and said, “there goes the water to Denver!” That got big laughs.
• Mike had a toy shotgun that you could stuff dirt into the barrel and, when you fired it, it looked like smoke coming out. Later on, he had a pellet gun we liked to shoot and a bow and arrow that we shot into a target on some hay stacks. The trouble was that we’d often miss and the arrows would get lost in the hay pile.

Just as a general matter, I remember being a sensitive kid and feeling somewhat intimidated by and lesser than Mike. He was bigger and louder than me. Beyond that, the family seemed to have an outdoorsy, active orientation and activities along those lines didn’t come naturally. I was more of a smart, studious rule follower — those qualities were not well-regarded in any demonstrable kind of way. I wasn’t athletically horrible or opposed to the outdoors, but that generally wasn’t my wheelhouse. It wasn’t until I learned to be funny that I got much in the way of positive reinforcement.

At the time, everything seemed normal. I was little and didn’t know any better. In retrospect, things seem a bit chaotic, and there is a distinct lack of parental involvement in most of my memories of those days. I think the lack of structure contributed to my overall anxiousness. Anyway, that’s my trip down memory lane. I might add more if anything else occurs to me. R.I.P. Mike.

Day 7: Back to Rome, Pantheon, and Capitoline Museum

After three nights in Florence, it was time to return to Rome where we would spend another night before catching a plane out of Italy. We started the day with breakfast at the same cafe on the Duomo plaza. I’m a big fan of a simple breakfast of croissants and coffee, so that’s what I ordered once again. Then we packed our stuff, hauled our luggage down four flights of stairs, and through the streets of Florence back to the train station. By this time, such trips were becoming fairly routine. The train ride was easy. From my very limited experience on this trip, Europe just seems to do train and plane travel a lot better than we do in the U.S.  Back in Rome, we stayed in the Hotel Torino whose main asset is being close to the train station. It was perfectly serviceable, but it was billed as a four star hotel — so I guess I don’t know what that rating entails. Certainly nothing to do with quality WiFi! But, we weren’t spending much time in the hotel anyway, so it didn’t much matter.

Once we got our stuff up to the fourth floor rooms (elevator this time!) the first order of business was lunch. We ate at Er Buchetto. This place was fantastic for what we wanted. Just a quick, inexpensive sandwich to tide us over. The sandwiches were incredible — pretty much just pork on bread which we ate standing up at tables, which sounds awful, but when the pork is a delicious porchetta and the bread is great and the table you’re standing at is on a sidewalk in Rome, it’s the opposite of awful. I also had a Peroni because, why not?

From there, we walked to the Pantheon. We had seen the outside on the first night in Rome but had arrived too late to go in. When we went in, I was a little surprised — but really shouldn’t have been: the many gods one expects with a word like “Pantheon” have been replaced by the one Christian god. I know the popes haven’t controlled Rome for the full 2,000 years of Christianity, but they have at least done so for a long time. It makes sense that the Pantheon wouldn’t remain dedicated to pagan Gods. Wikipedia tells me it was dedicated to St. Mary and the Martyrs in the 7th century.

From there, we had yet more gelato, enjoyed some fountains, and made our way to the Capitoline Museums. This museum had been recommended by our tour guide for the Colosseum, and (in my opinion) it delivers. It sits atop the Capitoline Hill, has great exhibits, and was very uncrowded. In particular, the huge statues of Marcus Aurelius and Constantine are impressive. And the length of time there have been people settled on Capitoline Hill is staggering. They had evidence of Bronze Age settlements there. It’s a good, defensible location on the Tiber connecting the Mediterranean to the interior of Italy, so settlement there makes a certain amount of sense. We cut this visit a little short — our Museum Tyrant was a little gassed (as was the family generally) and not insisting on seeing every room. 

So, we made the long walk back to the hotel and had a little rest before dinner. Our last dinner in Italy was at the Alessio — a nice restaurant down the street from the Hotel Torino with tables in the basement. Seemed to be a popular place for Americans. I had a mushroom and sausage pizza. But, Harper’s meal was probably the most interesting — it was a seafood pasta with things like oysters, clams, and shrimp on top of the pasta. She had to do a fair amount of work peeling and whatnot with her meal, but it looked delicious!

I think I mentioned that traffic in Rome is like a perpetual game of chicken. At the crosswalks without lights, you have to kind of walk out into the middle of traffic and trust that cars will stop for you. And, they do stop. But for an American not used to this kind of thing, the level of trust it takes to walk in front of a fairly fast moving car is unnerving. Indecision will get you hurt. We were taking a stroll after dinner when we came upon one of these crosswalks. Harper kind of lost her nerve and her body was trying to go forward and backward at the same time, causing her to fall in the middle of the street! The rest of us were there and, so, the traffic was coming to a stop; so, nothing was hurt but her pride.

Day 8: Rome to Berlin

Our last day in Italy began with breakfast on the roof of the Hotel Torino. I was moderately excited to see a self-serve coffee dispenser, since I had not had a large cup of coffee since our trip began. But, unfortunately, the coffee was not that great. After making ourselves some plates, we went out onto the roof. This was clearly the pigeons’ roof. We were mere visitors. The wait staff had to be quick to remove the plates and the tablecloth when a patron finished eating because those pigeons were going to be on the table quickly. I think at this point, Harper started rethinking her view of pigeons as cute and interesting and began gravitating more toward the “rats-with-wings” consensus.

We took the Leonardo Train from Termini Station to the airport. There was a bit of trouble with the conductor as we had inadvertently not paid the fare for Cole. When buying the tickets we must have marked both kids down as “children” when 13 year old kids were required to pay full fare. Fortunately, the conductor chalked it up to a misunderstanding and we were able to simply pay the fare without paying the associated fine. Other than that, the train ride, checking bags, security, and the flight from Rome to Berlin were easy. I don’t know if we were lucky or if the Europeans are just better at this sort of thing than we are, but travel on trains and airplanes seemed to be much less of a hassle than I’m used to here in the U.S.

Once we got to Berlin, we were happy to see trees again. When I heard birds chirping again, I realized I hadn’t heard birds chirping while I was in Italy. The driving also seemed more civilized with cars giving each other more space and rules of the road being observed. We stayed at the Hotel 103 which was an interesting place. We initially had some trouble with the buzzer to get into the hotel. We rang the bell, the hotel staff buzzed to unlock the door, but we kept pulling instead of pushing. The guy came out and let us in, then observed that the door didn’t have a “push” sign on it and figured that was something he ought to take care of. The place almost has a feel of a cross between a hotel and a dorm or hostel. The lobby is more hotel like whereas the bedrooms are definitely more dorm-like. Our four bed bedroom was just a long, narrow room with four single beds lined up in a row along the wall with a small table separating each one. There was a table in the corner with a 12” TV. The table was situated such that the bathroom door didn’t open up all the way.

Making matters even more interesting, the lights wouldn’t turn on. After our inability to get in the front door, I was hesitant to ask the guy at the desk. But, we have to have light. Turns out there is a receptacle on the wall inside the room where you put your key card. This activates the lights. It’s an energy saving strategy. The front desk guy said it’s on his list of things he tries to remember to tell Americans because we’re apparently very often unfamiliar with the concept. We also asked for restaurant recommendations. He offered us a variety of cuisine types, but — much as we like, for example, Thai food — we felt we should get some German food. So, he recommended Zum Bayernmichel which was a block or two away and fit the bill perfectly. He said his wife — who grew up in Germany — described it as the sort of comfort food her grandma might make. The owner was so friendly. He was so enthusiastic whenever I’d order, I felt like I’d done something really good! I honestly can’t remember what I ordered. It was big, heavy, tasty, and made of some part of a pig. I mostly remember the cole slaw which was all kinds of delicious. And, I had some German beer. Again, I don’t remember what it was – but it was listed as the house beer. A pilsner of some sort.

While we were in the restaurant, the only rain of the vacation began. It came down heavy, but was finished by the time we finished eating. So, we took a walk to the Mauerpark where we saw some of the graffiti painted on remnants of the Berlin Wall. Max Schmeling Hall was also in the area, mainly of interest to me simply because I’ve heard the stories about the Max Schmeling – Joe Louis fights in 1936 and 1938 and his later friendship with Louis.  

At the end of the evening, we returned to the Hotel 103 where we had a delightful conversation with the hotel manager and his wife. Afterward, we thought we saw on the name tag that his name was Ben. But,  that could have been part of his surname. But, for purposes of our story, we’ll call him Ben. He kind of ran the check in desk and the bar immediately adjacent to the check in desk. So, he was mixing drinks for us while chatting us up. I just had a beer, but he made the kids some kind of fruity, pineapple, nonalcoholic drink. I think Amy had a Berliner Weiss mit Schuss — like a wheat beer with raspberry syrup.  Ben was originally from Israel but had moved to Germany and become a citizen. His wife told us about the time she’d been to the U.S. She told a story about going to New Jersey and getting hit on by Bruce Springsteen. Ben told us about the ongoing Berlin airport boondoggle. He asked us about health insurance in the U.S. We could have talked to him for hours. But, for me, that would have inevitably have led to drinking at the bar for hours, and we had a flight to catch in the morning. So, we made our way up to the room and called it a night. As we were waiting for the elevator, the kids and I were marveling at the vending machine that had beer as an option. A fellow patron confided in us that the beers were horribly overpriced. (Which was o.k. If I wanted another beer, I would have had it at the bar, talking to Ben.)

Day 9: Headed Home

The day started early because the sun rose at about 4:45 a.m. in Berlin. The trip home was smooth. We got a cab, took it about 7 miles to the airport, checked our bags, cleared customs, and ate breakfast in about an hour. Again, Europe seems to be a lot better at moving people than we are. Air Berlin, once again, seemed eager to feed us, giving us a couple of meals and a snack. I was seated behind an aggressive recliner. But, all in all, the flight wasn’t too bad. The entertainment systems on board are pretty remarkable when you compare the situation 10 or 20 years ago. A few dozen movies to choose from, plus TV shows, music, and games with a console at each seat. Our biggest challenge on the return was that the review mirror had become detached from the window. I think it was an add-on mirror (with fancy pants temperature gauge and compass) and the adhesive that held it up had given way. The parking facility where we had our car helped us out with some duct tape to keep it from dangling from its wires. Other than that, there were no problems getting home.

The jet lag was definitely easier to deal with, returning east to west, when compared to the return from our Hawaii trip, coming the other way. As it turned out, with the early sun rise in Berlin and the late sunset in Indiana, we had about 22 hours of sunlight. Sad to have our trip end, but happy to be home.