Sunday, June 6—There's No Place Like Home!!

Today, Sunday, after breakfast, we said our goodbyes to the Ho-Ho-Holters and headed out for our last day of our road trip back home. The weather was perfect for driving—sunny but cool, as we headed East on I-70 toward Kansas City, then up through Iowa and on to Sioux Falls. We got home right at 7:00 p.m., in plenty of time to see our home and yard before the sun went down. Things looked so good, considering we'd been away from home since February 19! Jess did such a great job of house-sitting! He'll continue to stay at our house until mid-July, when my sabbatical ends. But on those few nights, like tonight and tomorrow night, when we're home, Jess stays at his parents' house. He obviously knows how much dirty laundry and “stuff” we will have to deal with while we're home. We plan to take care of some things the next couple of day, run some errands, etc., before we leave for the condo at Okoboji. We'll be basing out of there until I start back to work in July.

Because our sabbatical travels are now complete, we won't be blogging what we hope are lazy days ahead of us. We will be putting together some closing thoughts and musings about the incredible last five months, and will share those with you. Meanwhile, thanks to those who have kept in touch with us and expressed their interest and enjoyment in our blogs of this amazing once-in-a-lifetime experience we've had, thanks to the generosity of my partners at Lynn, Jackson, Shultz & Lebrun! Our blog has always been intended to keep any of our friends and family up to speed on what we've seen and done, as well as to memorialize this fabulous voyage for posterity. We plan to ultimately have our blog printed and bound into a book so that we can always look back on this uniquely wonderful time in our lives! So, until our next blog, Ciao!

Friday evening & Saturday, June 4-5—Fun Times in St. Louie!

We got into St. Louis about 6:15 last after an easy 5-hour drive from Memphis. Let me just say that after driving about 10 days in Ireland on the left side of the road, and 15 days in Italy amongst very impatient drivers, it is so easy driving here in the U.S. I almost feel like it's cheating!

When we got here, we were greeted by Denny and Cynthia, as well as 21-year-old son, Max, and their 11-year-old son, Dawson. It was so fun to see them again, after several years. The boys have both really grown since we've seen them, and it was fun to see them so “grown up.” How old does that make us sound?! Denny treated us to a fantastic rib eye dinner from the grill, and we had a great time catching up. During dinner we were told that some of Max's friends were coming over to the house later that evening to watch a recorded version of the National Spelling Bee, and they were going to try to “compete” with the TV contestants.

Sure enough, after dinner Max's friends started showing up for the spelling bee, and Denny, Dawson and I went down to get in on the fun. And did we have fun! It was a riot seeing these guys, and to a lesser extent ourselves, trying to correctly spell words we had never heard of. Max and his friends are a crème de la crème group of great college kids, and Denny and I both have advanced degrees. I can honestly say that the TV contestants, none of which was over 14, left us in the dust! We had a lot of laughs!

Saturday, Denny, Dawson and his friend, Connor and I went to a Cardinals game while Cynthia took Bev on a shopping spree. Everyone was happy, including the Cardinals fans, after the Cards beat Milwaukee in 11 innings! Then the four “adults” (read, old folks) went to dinner at a nice restaurant in the neighborhood.

Again, it was so great to get to spend some precious time with our dear friends. As I told Denny, for all that we've seen and done since I started my sabbatical the middle of January, including road-tripping around the United States and spending two months abroad, nothing has been better than being able to see family and friends, getting caught up, and just spending time with them all!

Thursday & Friday, June 3-4: Road-tripping toward home

On Thursday morning, after a little walk to get some much-needed exercise, we left Atlanta for Memphis, passing through Mississippi before arriving in Memphis mid-afternoon. We had thought we'd reserved a room at a DoubleTree in downtown Memphis, but as we got close to Memphis, it became clear that our Garmin was taking us to somewhere other than downtown. Alas, we were at a suburban DoubleTree instead. Our whole reason for wanting to be downtown was to be close to the action of the infamous Beale Street and to the iconic Rendezvous rib place recommended highly by brother-in-law, Steve. So we went to the front desk and explained that we weren't where we thought we were going to be, and we were able to switch our reservation to the DoubleTree Downtown. Without any trouble, we found our downtown hotel and got settled in. We were hungry thinking about the dry-rub ribs Steve had told us about, so we went across the street to the Rendezvous and the ribs were as good as advertised. Bev stuck with her new pattern of having a beer, having converted to drinking beer while in Europe. After dinner we went for a walk to Beale Street, only about 3-4 blocks away. It was early Thursday evening, and though Beale was blocked off, the crowds were just starting to arrive. A number of blues bands had already started up, but we were both tired and Bev was suffering the effects of sinus congestion, so we didn't stick around, but instead went back to our hotel and I watched the NBA Playoffs between the Celics and the Lakers.

Friday morning, we got up, had breakfast and went to see the National Civil Rights Museum, which is located at the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. The museum was extremely well done, and very interesting. It was amazingly sobering to actually see, through glass, the room that MLK stayed in, and the very spot on the balcony where he was assassinated. The museum also includes the building across the street, where James Earl Ray stayed and from where he shot Reverend King. Of course, we remember so well that tragic day, and the aftermath. It was almost surreal to actually see this scene in person!

After about 2 ½ hours at the museum, we grabbed a fast-food lunch and headed out to spend the next couple of nights with our good friends, Denny and Cynthia Holter, in St. Louis. We are really looking forward to seeing them again!

Tuesday & Wednesday, June 1--2

Tuesday, June 1--It was so great to wake up on American soil today, and especially in the comfort of Kathy and Steve's lovely home in Winter Park! We enjoyed big mugs of American coffee this morning, took a walk in the neighborhood, then spent the day hanging out with Kathy and Steve in the Florida sun! Oh, and they were nice enough to take us to a burger place for cheeseburgers and fries! Bev also washed some clothes for our road trip back to South Dakota, and we gathered our stuff that we'd left there while we were abroad. Tonight Steve made a great grouper dinner and Kathy and Steve's kids, Kevin, Rich and Meredith and husband Nathan, and grand kids, Cameron, Ben, Jack, James and Kaitlyn, came over. It was so fun seeing everyone one more time before we leave tomorrow!

Wednesday, June 2--With the car all packed up, we left Kathy and Steve's pretty much on schedule, at about 9:30, and drove to Atlanta. We had talked to my USD (and O'Gorman) classmate, Tim Johnson, last night and arranged to meet Tim and his wife, Ann, for dinner in Atlanta. The trip was uneventful, and it seemed so good, although strange, to be driving on such wide roads, with such polite, good drivers! And not a single motorcycle wove in an out of traffic the whole way to Atlanta! We got to our hotel late afternoon. We'd worried about the horrible traffic that we've experienced before in Atlanta, but the traffic flowed well. Just as we were getting close to the Hampton Inn hotel, a heavy thunderstorm hit, and it made getting to the hotel more complicated. When we got there to check in, their phone and computer systems were down because of a lightning strike! So even though check-in was complicated by that, it was really nice to check into an American hotel with all the usual amenities! We especially like Hampton Inns--they're great. They even had complimentary beer, wine and soda when we checked in! Ahhh! Gotta love the USA!

Tim picked us up at our hotel, and took us to their lovely home in Northwest Atlanta. We met Ann and had a glass of wine before going to dinner. We really had a pleasant dinner in the historic restaurant, Vinings Inn, for some great Southern cuisine, and got caught up on Tim and Ann's family. Tomorrow it's on to Memphis, then looking forward to getting to our friends the Holters on Friday night in St. Louis!

Thursday, May 27th-Arrvederci Roma

We had purposely made reservations for a late-afternoon train to Naples so that Dick and I could squeeze out one last day of touring in Rome. We walked to the Spanish Steps and soaked up a little sun. Then just in case we hadn't seen enough churches, we did two more--Santa Maria Maggiore and St. John Laterine-where supposedly, the heads of Sts. Peter and Paul are in gold cases above the altar.

We met Vikens for lunch, said our good-byes and taxied to the train station. We used our Euro Pass to travel first class to Naples. Then we had to buy inexpensive tickets for a local "milk run" train to Sorrento, which took about an hour. From Naples south to Sorrento, the signs of poverty were evident to an extent that we have not seen in other parts of Italy. We had a reservation in Sorrento so we did't have to spend anytime wandering around town looking for lodging. Our hotel was billed as a "deluxe hostel", having private rooms as well as the dormitory style hostel rooms. The price was great, so we were expecting something pretty basic. When we arrived, we couldn't believe how beautiful and big our room was! The only problem is that unless there is a cancellation, they could only book us for one night. We found a great little roof-top restaurant called "The Garden" and had a light supper since it was pretty late. Walking around Sorrento before returning to our hotel, we felt very comfortable with the small, pedestrian-friendly feel of Sorrento and look forward to basing out of here for the next couple days.

May 28-29--Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast

Friday-May 28
Good news and bad news. The bad news is that there are no rooms available the next two nights, so we have to leave the “hostel”. The good news is that the hotel has set us up in an even nicer "sister hotel" which will be even closer to the train station when we leave on Sunday. So, we moved to the Hotel Antiche Mura, which means “The Old Wall” because the hotel is built right along one of the ancient city walls. Our room has a patio looking out on a swimming pool with a courtyard filled with flowers and lemon trees. The weather continues to be wonderful. Now this is what I had in mind when I dreamed of traveling to Italy!

After checking into our new room, Dick and I hopped on a local bus to see the Amalfi Coast. Past Sorrento, several smaller coastal cities cling to the cliffs along the Mediterranean. Buses take locals and tourists and forth between the towns on windy, narrow roads barely wide enough for two-way traffic which leads to some interesting negotiating when the bus meets up with oncoming cars, or even worse—-another bus!!! We took the bus to Positano, had more mussels than we could possibly eat for lunch and spent some time on the beach. Then we headed further up the coast to the town of Amalfi. Though picturesque, Amalfi was not much different than Positano or Sorrento and there didn't seem to be much going on. So after a brief walk, we got back on a bus for another thrilling ride back to Sorrento. At one stop, some American women got on the bus and we had a “Dakotativity” moment. In visiting with one of them, we found out that she was originally from Watertown, SD and her brother is an attorney still living in SD!

After dinner on the harbor, we returned to our room to sit on the patio and share a bottle of wine. The moon is full, but blocked from our view by the lemon trees!



Saturday-
We were really beat today, and Dick was coming down with a cold, so we decided to just relax in Sorrento and enjoy our beautiful room and the town. We did a little souvenir shopping but were limited by the lack of room in our backpacks. We enjoyed a little R & R around the pool. We had made reservations to return to "The Garden" Restaurant for another wonderful meal. We tried to get pretty well packed up, which is a lot like trying put toothpaste back into the tube, because tomorrow we need to get an early start on our last day of our two-month European trek.

Sunday, May 30.

People are often asking us, "What's been your favorite part of Italy?" This is very hard to answer as there have been so many favorite parts. But today, we found our least favorite part--Naples.

Leaving Sorrento was a little sad because we had such a nice, relaxing time there and people were so friendly. Our plan was to take the train to Pompeii and tour the ruins there. Then we planned to go on to Naples, tour the museum where all the artifacts from Pompeii are, and then take the train back to Rome. We want to end up at a hotel close to the airport, making it easy for our late morning flight on Monday.

The first part of the plan was great. The ruins of Pompeii are amazing. It's hard to describe the thoughts and feelings you experience walking around in what's left of this ancient city, thinking about what happened here so long ago, when Mt. Vesuvius erupted, burying Pompeii in lava. The plan got complicated in Naples. We arrived at Naples, checked our baggage at the train station and took the Metro to the Museum where we planned to grab lunch at the "delightful, little cafe" we read about in Rick Steves' book. After we paid our admission, (which was a couple of euros higher than the book said), we found out that they were doing renovations and there was no cafe at this time. So we decided to do the museum (What was it Mom always said? "Offer it up for the poor souls") and then go find some lunch. The museum didn't take as long as we thought because many of the exhibits weren't open due to the renovations. Other things didn't seem to be where they were supposed to be--I'm supposing because of the renovations again. So long story short, we were starving and a little crabby as we left the museum and followed the self-guided walk through Naples back to the train station thinking we'd find a little lunch along the way. Just suffice it to say, we definitely saw a side of Italy that you don't see in the resort towns and the big, popular tourist destinations--a good reality check. Naples is very poor and dirty. We did not find any places that looked appetizing (i.e. clean) enough to eat at. We arrived back at the train station slightly delusional from hunger and what do we see? The Golden Arches!! Hunger makes you do strange things. So our last dinner in Italy was--Big Macs and fries! Sadly, they tasted really good to us. It must be time to get back to the USA!

But the fun wasn't over. After a nice relaxing train ride, we were thrown into the abyss of chaos of the Rome airport on a Sunday evening. Half of Italy was coming or going in this airport, and it was by no small task to decipher signs and find our way to the taxi stand to get to our hotel. But once again, we did prevail and finally arrived at our hotel (which was adequate, but definitely not in the ranking for top ten). About
midnight, the baby next door finally quit crying and all in all we did get a decent night of sleep. Guess it's good to have a bad day at the end of our trip, because that makes us all the more anxious to be home.

Monday, May 31-Home Sweet Home

Excited to be going home to the USA after being abroad for 61 days, we were up and at 'em, and on the hotel shuttle to the airport by 8:20 this morning. Our departure from Rome this morning was much smoother than our arrival last night. And before we knew it, we were through all the security checks and boarding our plane. We set our clocks to EDT and hoped this would help our bodies reset to Eastern time too. We lucked out and got two seats on the right hand side of the plane and didn't have to sit in the claustrophobic middle section and on-board movies and multiples snacks helped the 9 hour flight go by pretty quickly. We landed in Philadelphia complete with applause from the other American passengers. Apparently, we weren't the only ones glad to be back home. Our 3-hour layover was just about the right amount of time to go through customs, get our luggage, go through security again and have a quick beer and light snack before taking off about 7:15 (1:15 am, Rome time)for the final leg to Orlando where Dick's sister, Kathy picked us up. As the photo of Dick reading a "Sports Illustrated" indicates, it is so great to be able to read magazines again--and to get caught up on American news and sports!

The sign of a good trip is when you have a wonderful time, but you're glad to be home! (At this point, Orlando is close enough to home to qualify!) To quote our grandson Gabe, singing "I Love the USA" at his preschool graduation, "The rain falls down, I love this lane!" Translation-"There ain't no doubt, I love this land!"

May 24-27—Roaming Around Roma

We painlessly traveled by train from Florence to Rome without a hitch... until we came up out of the subway. Then we spent a good 30 minutes finding our hotel which was supposed to be 400 meters “straight ahead.” We are blaming faulty directions from the hotel website. While it was only 400 meters from the subway, it was to the left, not “straight ahead.”

When we finally did arrive at our hotel, we were delighted to find Ryan, Sam and the Vikens waiting for us in the lobby. We quickly got our room, freshened up a bit and then we all took off on a walk-about with Jeff as our tour guide. Jeff loves Rome, has been here many times and probably knows more about the history, the architecture and the lore of the city than many locals. There is something magical about actually seeing something that you have seen pictures of your entire life and the “pinch-me” moments came fast and furious that day! We walked along the Tiber River, past the Castle of San Angelo, to St. Peters Square and on. Mid-afternoon, we stopped for lunch at the Piazza Navona, which has the Four Rivers Fountain that was one of the sites in the movie “Angels and Demons.” Then we continued on to the Pantheon. Since all the outer marble has been stripped away over the years, the outside of the Pantheon gives no clue to the beauty inside and it literally took my breath away when we entered. I continue to be amazed by the architectural achievements of the Romans so long ago. We went on to the Church of St. Ignatius, and the Piazza Colonna where there is a huge column with carvings showing Roman victories spiraling around from bottom to top. We also saw several huge Egyptian obelisks which were brought from Egypt--can you imagine moving one of those things all the way from Egypt? Jeff gave us detailed information about the design and style of the buildings and the churches, matching that of any professional tour guide. His depth of knowledge of these sites is truly amazing. At the Trevi Fountain, we threw coins in to insure a return trip some day, because we can already tell, one visit to Rome will not be enough. As Dick often says when we are at a really good restaurant, “We'll have to come back here!”

Tuesday morning our touring continued. We headed out to the Coliseum. Jeff found a tour that he thought would give us good information at a fair price. We are so lucky that he is here in Rome when we are, because we wouldn't even know what questions to ask to get a good guide. We continue to be amazed at the knowledge and skill of the Romans with regard to building skills. The Coliseum had an elevator system to bring gladiators and animals up from the corridors below the ground to the main level in the center. They used gravity to pressurize water for their magnificent fountains. Buildings and structures, built two thousand years ago are still still standing. After the Coliseum, we walk to the Palatine Hill where Nero had a palace that covered acres. It even had a race track inside! Guess you need one if you're having the guys over and want to take the chariots for a spin. Then it was on to the Forum—though nothing funny happened on the way. The Forum was the center of early Rome as far as government, religious and city life were concerned. With a little imagination, you can almost see Roman citizens hustling about taking care of daily affairs.

We were feeling pretty spent,(at least those of us over 35) so Ryan and Sam took off on their own and the rest of us went back to the hotel to rest up a bit and get a second wind for that night. Early that evening, we were back at St. Peter's to meet up with our friend, Father Mike Wensing, who is director of the continuing education program at American College Seminary at the Vatican. It was really good to see him again. We also got to see Andy Young, a Mitchell native and former USNA grad who is currently in his 2nd year at the American College Seminary at the Vatican. Fr. Mike took us on a tour of the Seminary which included a trip to the roof top for what he called the second best view of Rome. (First place goes to the view from the top of the dome of St. Peter's). Then we all went to dinner at a little trattoria down the hill from the Seminary and had a great visit with Fr. Mike. After dinner, Fr. Mike excused himself and went home, Sam and Ryan went off to do their thing and the rest of us took a moonlight stroll along the Tiber River back to our hotel.

Wednesday was Vatican tour day! We were all up bright and early--even Ryan--because we had tickets for a guided tour of the amazing rooms in the Vatican Museum, which ended in the Sistine Chapel. In the Sistine Chapel, signs saying, “Silencio” and “No Photos” are all over. They are also totally disregarded by most of the people. Security guards wander through the crowd, shushing and saying, “Silencio!” and “NO PHOTO!” to no avail. What a frustrating job to have. It reminded me of having lunchroom duty from my teaching days. From the Sistine Chapel, we were able to go right into St. Peter's Basilica. Not only did we see incredible paintings, sculptures, and rooms, and we got a lot of really good information from our guide, but we also managed to side step the miles of lines of people waiting to get into the Museum and the Basilica! We felt like we beat the system! When we finally left St. Peter's, we barely had enough time to grab a piece of pizza before getting to our 3:15 Scavi tour, which takes you to the original level of Rome which is underneath St. Peter's Basilica. The Basilica was built on top of an ancient Roman necropolis, or cemetery, including St. Peter's own grave. The tour goes through the crypts and though we all had trouble understanding our Italian guide, it was very interesting. I thought what we saw was very similar to the current Italian cemeteries we have seen with crypts and remains buried in little spaces the walls. The highlight was when we were shown some excavated bones believed to be of St. Peter himself!

Tonight we went to Trastevere, the medieval-village of Rome, across the Tiber River, for dinner at a nice restaurant with outdoor seating, and another relaxing stroll back to the hotel. "La Dolce Vita"--the Good Life! Tomorrow we bid Rome "Ciao" and head to the Amalfi coast. Our days here in Rome went by entirely too quickly.