CPUnk I write right. Right? Aye.

Sardinia: 75% Fail

As I sit here in the lobby of the “spa and resort” we’re stay­ing in, gnaw­ing away at the key­board of my iPhone to make this post because there’s no wifi in our room, I’m star­tled and amazed at what Ital­ians will do to cheat.

Does this place have wifi? Yes, in the lobby. Does this place have room ser­vice? Yes, dur­ing din­ner. Does this place have break­fast included? Yes, cold cereal and auto­matic cof­fee from a machine. Does this place have access to the water? Yes, from stone plat­forms, no beach. Does this place have a restau­rant? Yes, but only one price fixe menu, no choices. $40 per person.

Does this place have staff? Yes, behind the counter, some­times. Does this place have spec­tac­u­lar views? Yes, please pay us $500 per night now. Grazie.

Does this place claim to be a four star resort, that was an anchor of our trip, a break in the mid­dle? A place to rest before trav­el­ing to yet another coun­try? Sure does. Viva Italia, we cut cor­ners at your expense.

Well, we headed to a beach that ended up being a bit of a crowded dump (sug­gested by our hosts). At least the kids liked it. Spe­cial occa­sion for them, we don’t get to the beach much, we’d been look­ing for­ward to that. So we’re not shar­ing with then that ply­wood on the beach isn’t cool. Nate thinks it’s fun to throw it in the water and try to sink it.

Com­pletely dis­ap­pointed in this liars hotel. But, at least the kids will have fun until we have to get up at 4am to catch the only boat out of here.

Rant off. At least it’s pretty and Kathy’s great.

Bye bye Florence, Hello Pisa and Livorno

Flo­rence
Flo­rence, our beau­ti­ful new friend — we love you, Ciao bella! We will try to return! Thank you for a beau­ti­ful time!

We had a per­sonal tour of the city, went to see the David (which is just awe­some, really) — and vis­ited a lot of build­ings and stuff about the city. Hav­ing a guide makes all the dif­fer­ence — our guide, “Ludi”, was so knowl­edge­able, shared all sorts of inter­est­ing his­tory with us — and gen­er­ally was just a great per­son to show us around.

After our tour, we hung around the hotel, rested — did a lit­tle more shop­ping, then on Mon­day we headed out of town towards Pisa and even­tu­ally Livorno (where the ferry to Sar­dinia leaves).

Insert more Ital­ian high­way here — noth­ing to report — basi­cally sim­plis­tic, just fast — no big whoop.

Pisa Sucks
Yeah — that’s about it. It’s a one-trick town — and it’s just encrusted with tacky tourism, creepy African guys sell­ing fake watches right by the park­ing lots (gee, I feel safe leav­ing all our lug­gage, thanks) — and crowds of peo­ple stand­ing around with their hands up to take the char­ac­ter­is­tic pic­ture hold­ing the tower up (like these):

[INSERT PICS of PISA]

Kinda missed this first one — I’ll fix it in Photoshop

I’m very, very tall.

Angie is very, very tall.

This is a very good one — the giant Angie holds up the tower while all the lit­tle peo­ple line up to walk into her pocket.

Nate was of two minds about the whole thing — but will likely enjoy this picture

Here, he is lined up quite well.

Finally, I was fed up with the whole thing, so I pulled it down… there seems to be a small Faye Wrey type per­son to my left try­ing to calm me as I do so… (rrraaaarghhh!)

So once we saw that — we left. The whole place was crowded and yucky — there’s a McDonald’s about 100 yards from us. Blech.

Livorno
Ok. So you’re a city that has a pri­mary port for going to points beyond (kinda like Seat­tle) — here’s a good idea … close off the cen­ter of town to auto traf­fic — oh wait — put all the hotels in the cen­ter of town… hmmm… what else can we do? Oh — I know … let’s take down all the street signs… oh, if only there were some­thing else we could fig­ure out to do … hmmm… oh, make half the streets one way. Wel­come to Livorno — we don’t want you here.

Kathy got a Google Maps set of instruc­tions from the free­way to our hotel. Since the streets have no names — the direc­tions lasted all of “Step 1 — at the round­about, take the sec­ond turn onto Via Aquadutto 300m” … what Via? What round­about? Where are we? Hello?

That was majorly frus­trat­ing — but finally we found a place to stop … Kathy got out and asked direc­tions from a lady (well, I sort of said, “YOU get out and fig­ure out what’s hap­pen­ing…”) … and they chat­ted for a while while the lady told her how to get to the hotel using her hands (I guess she did speak English).

So Kathy came back with hand-written notes that were about 10 steps long.

We headed off … took a turn at the third traf­fic light — took our sec­ond right (did she mean after the two do-not-enter streets?), took another turn, did a thing here, then a thing there — hey look … we’re back where Kathy got out. Let’s try again.

Mean­while — every once in a while, we’d see signs for “Max Hotel ****” … after a few of those — we decided we’d give the good ol’ Max a try.

We fol­lowed those signs, and found the Max — which looked pretty nice — were we look­ing down the bar­rel of another lost fee to a hotel we’d never see? Well, this time, I got out — chat­ted with the lady at the desk — and she ended up giv­ing me a map with direc­tions on how to get to our hotel (the “Tour­ing Hotel” (insert geek joke here about this entire sit­u­a­tion mak­ing even a machine laugh (shout out to Pat))).

SOooo we headed off with our new map (the orig­i­nal Google direc­tions included no map, strangely) … and off we went, into the brink of the restricted zone, pre­pared to bab­ble in Eng­lish and beg forgiveness.

Well — thank­fully … the city didn’t match the map. So we drove around between the well-marked streets and the unmarked streets and the one-way streets and the Ital­ian traf­fic, and the yelling (oh, that’s me) … and the gen­eral ten­sion … and then we found … more unmarked streets … and weren’t we here before??? and shut up and stop honk­ing at me, you jerk … oh, here’s a gypsy who wants to clean our wind­shield … no thank you … what?!! … no — *@#&&#@ to you too, jerk! Sure I’ll get out of the — oh, the light’s green … ok … let’s keep going … where are we? Does the map have this street? Can’t stop here … wait, there’s a sign for OUR HOTEL! Fol­low it … there’s another sign! Yay … wait… there are no more signs … we’re lost again … drive around … back here — where are we going, stop turn­ing the map upside down — ok … wait … I think we’re here… yes, we’re here — there’s the hotel.

Wel­come to Livorno.

On review, the hotel itself is nice. It’s a three-star, which makes it your stan­dard Res­i­dence Inn or some­thing — not too fancy, not too ugly … just right. Trav­el­ing in 3s is fine … 2s, not so much … 1s … well… yick. But I digress.

So, we got all the bags out of the car — Kathy and the kids hoofed them up the tiny tiny ele­va­tor (yes, it’s another tiny tiny ele­va­tor, but oth­er­wise nice hotel) … and we headed to din­ner. We stopped at the Trat­to­ria sug­gested by the desk guy … and then all of the sud­den … it was the hippest place in all Italy. I kid you not … we were stand­ing there, big tired Amer­i­cans — Nate was in his Indi­ana Jones t-shirt, Angie was in shorts, we’re all dressed down for dri­ving, I’m wear­ing sneak­ers … and the square filled with all the beau­ti­ful peo­ple in Livorno:

[INSERT LIVORNO PICS]

So, we slinked out of the Trat­to­ria, headed for a pizze­ria, and had a decent meal as a fam­ily watch­ing Brasil kick Chile around the field.

Next stop — early morn­ing ferry trip — 6am … the day begins with the boat, and (by God’s Grace) ends with the spa/resort on Sardinia.

[I’m cur­rently writ­ing this in Livorno — there’s no wifi, so I’ll post later]

The Colosseum in Rome: Bruce, Chuck, Nate, and Me

This is a recap of a trip a few days ago — vis­it­ing the (most very awe­some) Colos­seum in Rome. It was dou­bly awe­some because they had a spe­cial dis­play going on about Glad­i­a­tors — awesome!

On our way from our hotel, we stopped off at some ruins just sit­ting there in the mid­dle of town. No mark­ings, noth­ing — just fenced off and set apart for pro­tec­tion — but oth­er­wise, pretty unboth­ered. We looked around for a sign, and finally found one that explained that is was orig­i­nally the most famous Glad­i­a­to­r­ial train­ing school in Rome, Mag­nus Ludus or some such name — and it was so well posi­tioned that it had it’s own spe­cial under­ground con­nec­tor to the Colos­seum a few hun­dred yards away. Nate thought that was pretty awe­some (espe­cially when I started talk­ing about imag­in­ing Glad­i­a­tors in each of the rooms, some­times bleed­ing, some­times get­ting ready for great bat­tle — all of them train­ing in a big way). He though that was pretty intense — onward to the Colosseum.

On our approach, we decided to sign up for one of the tours — which was a good idea. We learned a lot about the build­ing (Flavian’s Amphithe­ater, to be exact), and while inter­est­ing — it’d just be blather to fill this blog with fac­toids from the tour (like, did you know that most Glad­i­a­tors actu­ally didn’t fight to the death until the mid­dle ages of the Empire? They were pro­fes­sional enter­tain­ers, never crim­i­nals, never against their will — they were incred­i­bly highly paid per­form­ers — like pro­fes­sional athletes).

We walked around, took a bunch of cool pic­tures — but the high­light was that we all wanted to set up a shot to do homage to one of the most impor­tant moments in mod­ern Colos­seum Glad­i­a­to­r­ial con­tests … the face-off between Chuck Nor­ris and Bruce Lee. So we went look­ing for places to take the shot — and finally found some­thing some­what close (if you watch the actual movie, you’ll real­ize it’s all set — there doesn’t seem to be any­thing actu­ally filmed on site … maybe one shot — but that seems a stretch, to go all the way to Rome for one shot).

So, here is the orig­i­nal face-off picture:

…which is actu­ally not any­where real in the Colos­seum — but with the magic of (very rough) Pho­to­shop — we were able to take this orig­i­nal photo (shot at the actual Colos­seum with two incred­i­bly fierce warriors):

…and make it a bit more of an homage by doing this:

…and finally — for a bit more of the action

…per­son­ally, I think the san­dals add a cer­tain glad­i­a­to­r­ial je ne sais quoi — wouldn’t you say?

…and yes … there IS a pic­ture of me with my shirt off in the Colos­seum, but you’ll never see it (Kathy made me do it to match Chuck)

Crazy times on the way to Florence

So, it finally hap­pened — we got the car and I drove in Italy. The car was a lease of a new car (strange but true) — a sort of weird deal that allows us to take a car and then hand it back and then they sell it as a used car or some­thing — I don’t know … but it’s cheaper than rent­ing a car — so we did it.

Dri­ving in Italy
Every­body needs to calm down. Yes — the Ital­ians drive fast, they drive in small cars on small roads with small lanes — but gen­er­ally speak­ing they’re pretty sane. I had much more trou­ble han­dling the road curves at 130kph than I did with the other drivers.

Most of the high­ways are two lanes each way — so the one on the left is the fast lane, the one on the right is the slow lane, pri­mar­ily occu­pied by trucks. Kathy wasn’t a big fan of the prox­im­ity of the trucks as we whizzed by — but over­all she was ok with my dri­ving (com­pli­mented me when we arrived safely even). The biggest thing is, every once in a while, some­one comes up behind you going a jil­lion kabil­lion miles an hour and demands that you get out of his (always his) way. Well, that’s the cor­rect thing to do in that sit­u­a­tion — and don’t sig­nal while you’re chang­ing lanes either — that’s just not done. Once the crazy per­son flies by — you’re back to dri­ving like a nor­mal per­son at about 75mph (130kph).

Inter­est­ingly — peo­ple will come up behind you on the fast lane, flash at you, honk even, TAILGATE like there’s no tomor­row (a lit­tle tap on the brakes is fun to do — they hate that ) … but they won’t, just won’t, pass you on the right. Never ever ever. So you gotta get out of their way or they just try to scare you more.

I saw one (count it one) Fer­rari on the high­way. Meh.

Assisi
So — after a long drive, with a long detour because I missed a turn — we got to Assisi — where St. Fran­cis is from (founder of the Fran­cis­can order (think Friar Tuck)).

We got to the Basil­ica San Francesco (St. Fran­cis Church) and were get­ting ready to love the art­work, when we saw that a mass was com­plet­ing in one of the tran­scepts. We jumped in, and had a chance to take part in the Holy Com­mu­nion at Assisi (!) … for Chris­tians, that’s pretty cool. Kinda like show­ing up in Mem­phis just as U2 is record­ing a con­cert and being allowed to sit and lis­ten. Just cool is all.

After the Mass, Nate and I vis­ited St. Fran­cis’ tomb, which was cool — and then we all wan­dered around for a bit and then headed to Florence.

Firenze
In Italy, Flo­rence is called Firenze. We drove (and drove and drove) and got to Firenze around 6pm — at which point we started look­ing for our hotel. Dri­ving in Flo­rence is freaky deeky … the roads go in crazy direc­tions — the major­ity of them are semi-pedestrian only — it’s all a mess.

Well — we found our hotel after some crazy dri­ving … and I headed in. First I climbed the 20 steps to get to the first floor, at which point (with the fam­ily wait­ing in the car), I entered the tiny ele­va­tor (tiny, like 4 square feet — like I could only take one suit­case in with me if I tried — like suck in your gut — tiny) — and rode THAT up two more sto­ries — and then got out of the tiny tiny ele­va­tor into the tiny tiny hall­way to talk to the tiny tiny old lady behind the tiny tiny desk next to the sign with the TWO tiny tiny stars on it.

Time to leave. Smile, back away from the lit­tle old lady — there is no way we’re going through this mad­ness to get the lug­gage to the rooms — 20 STEEP steps, to the ele­va­tor, to the next floor, etc etc? No … no no no. G’bye. Mistake.

So, I head back down the tiny ele­va­tor, and see Angie com­ing up the steep stairs — and she’s got that look on her face like things are bad and get­ting worse. I turn the cor­ner on the steep stairs (did I men­tion they were curved?) and down at the door, Kathy is try­ing politely to explain to all the angry Ital­ians behind her that are being blocked by our car that her hus­band has just gone into the hotel and will (shout shout shout) he’s going to be right back (shout, honk, shout) … and there’s a line of taxis behind the parked car on this tiny tiny street — and it even looks like maybe some peo­ple are get­ting out of their cars and com­ing towards my wife.

I’d like to pause here for a sec­ond and ask you to envi­sion the scene. I’ve come to the door of this tiny tiny hotel, and my wife is being yelled at by a bunch of angry men in a dif­fer­ent lan­guage who seem to be begin­ning to pos­ture towards her — and she’s com­pletely fraz­zled … and well… got the scene in your head? Ok. Please imag­ine for your­selves what the proper response would be. Ok. Read on.

Being that I don’t speak any Ital­ian, I had to go to the uni­ver­sal lan­guage of “back the hell off or I’m gonna rip your freakin’ Ital­ian head off and shove it into this guy’s ear.” I didn’t direct that sen­ti­ment at any par­tic­u­lar person’s direc­tion … nor was I seek­ing any direct con­fronta­tion — but almost instantly, my brain-stem needed to com­mu­ni­cate to this crowd of for­eign­ers (this seems to hap­pen to me a lot in for­eign coun­tries (shout out to Brett)) … well … I needed to com­mu­ni­cate, ani­mal to ani­mal, that my wife was not only not alone — but she was mar­ried to THIS guy, so get back in your car and shutu­pay­ouface. So, well … I did — and I regret that it also involved a lit­tle “color” as well. Ask any­body there (includ­ing Kathy) — I acted cor­rectly (though she did just tell me that I swore more than I should have — which I agree to completely).

Soooo … any­way… she got in the car, I got in the car and I was just about to start the car and drive away — when some cop comes to the door of the car and starts yelling at me in Ital­ian (prob­a­bly say­ing some­thing sim­i­lar to what I was say­ing to every­one else). So I showed him the proper respect (after telling him that I didn’t under­stand him at all) — and he waved me away, I drove off, and well … we needed to find a bet­ter hotel.

We drove around a lit­tle crazy for a minute or two — and all of the sud­den … my old friends Prada, Gucci, Cartier and the lot started show­ing up … we were in the right dis­trict sud­denly. Well — we just had to find a dif­fer­ent hotel around here and we’d be fine. After a lit­tle cool­ing off all around — we pulled over in front of Cartier just as it was clos­ing. I got out, and as a woman was com­ing out, I asked her if she could help me.

“Sure.”, she said.
“Well, we had a mis­take hap­pen, and we ended up at the wrong hotel and we need to know where a good hotel is.”
“Oh, this one right here is great. You could also try the Savoy in the square over there, but this one is much bet­ter.”
“Wow — super — thanks. We’ll try to come by Cartier tomor­row and shop.”
“Great, my name is Cyn­thia, look me up, ok?”
“You bet. Thanks.”

So… now we’re stay­ing at a Five Star — L hotel … I’m not sure what the “dash L” means — but it’s nice here. The kids have their own room, we have ours — all is well … we’re get­ting our rest.

Crazy Chances
Once we’d set­tled a bit — Tatiana, our new best friend at the front desk (she’s the one who saved the day and found the rooms for us) sent us to a restau­rant she really likes about 5 min­utes away. We went there — the food was nice, the ambiance was quaint — the folks next to us were Amer­i­can (as were most of the patrons, actu­ally), and we chat­ted them up for a minute or two. Kinda fun.

After din­ner — we were walk­ing back to the hotel — when we stopped because a fam­ily was tak­ing pic­tures of each other on the street and we didn’t want to walk through the photo. They smiled and waved us on — and we headed on our way. As we were walk­ing by them, I said out loud, “these peo­ple look really famil­iar to me — seri­ously” — and we all laughed, just a pass­ing thing, I guess.

Kathy, the kids and I kept walk­ing and I stopped, then headed back to them … hav­ing a vague idea…

They were kind of scratch­ing their heads and say­ing, “You know…” … and I asked them, “Are you Stow­ells?” … and they burst out with “YES! We are!”

It ends up that we just had a chance meet­ing with my sister’s husband’s sis­ter — a woman I haven’t seen since the wed­ding over 15 years ago. I may have seen them at a Chris­ten­ing or some­thing — but wow. We just bumped into each other in … Flo­rence. How fun is that?!!!

What a weird day.

Paris Roundup and Euro Disneybland

So, all in all, Paris was a blast. We had a great time shop­ping — On Sun­day, Angie and I vis­ited the local Museum of Mod­ern Art (saw the largest pigeon in the world), and then the whole fam­ily con­verged and had a great time vis­it­ing the Amer­i­can Church in Paris (cute con­tem­po­rary ser­vice in the after­noon on Sun­day (woot):

While we were headed to the church, Angie and I got on the train and this guy jumped on after us to share his music:

I have to admit, this is prob­a­bly the coolest look­ing French dude I’ve ever seen.

Inspired by the museum, Angie and I made a com­men­tary piece on Abbey Road for her first album:

So … mov­ing right along — we got to Monday:

First I had an AMAZING run for 6.05 miles … I ran from the hotel at 6:30am, through the city, which was empty:

…at which point i got lost … but finally found the river Seine…

…and headed for the dis­tant point of my run…

…lis­tened to alter­na­tive music the entire time…

then ran back to the hotel for a total of 6.05 miles. Sadly, I was unaware of how long a 10k run is (6.2 miles) … had I known, I would have clocked the extra thou­sand feet … but I missed the turn on that one and well — I ran a 9.6k in Paris (there’s always Rome, Barcelona, Madrid and Sar­dinia to make it up).

Soo… once I got back, stretched down, got ready — it was time to go to Disneyland!!!!

The kids and I headed out on the train through the very col­or­ful and beau­ti­ful Metro:

and then got on the R. E. R. — which is a sub­ur­ban train that heads directly to Disneyland.

Whilst on the train, we met a bunch of very excited and funny Irish girls (we’re from Lim­er­ick, have ye been there? It’s much bet­ter than Dublin. You should come and visit!). They too were headed to Dis­ney­land — ready for the rides and stuff, here’s a pic­ture of them:

Dis­ney­b­land

So, what did we think of the place?

…it was ok…

…but we still fig­ured out how to have fun on our own…

I’d say the biggest hangup with Dis­ney­b­land is that it’s run by Euro­peans, mainly French. That’s not actu­ally a hit on them — I think there’s some­thing about the “over the top happy” thing that is uniquely Amer­i­can — and they just don’t get it. It’d be like get­ting the nuance of singing an ancient national bal­lad in French … only the French could sing it with the depth and total affect that is needed — an Amer­i­can might do a decent cover — but could not get the absolute impact.

So it goes with Dis­ney­b­land — they all could care less that you’re there … that’s obvi­ous — that’s France. “Wel­come to Dis­ney, what do you want?” But more impor­tant — they just don’t get the joke, ya know? Dis­ney­b­land — the sul­len­est place in the world (what do you mean by that?).

Aside from one guy on the tower of death drop, who was slightly col­or­ful, there was not a sin­gle giant smile in the place — they couldn’t be both­ered with such effort — for the sake of what? Don’t you know that life is empty and mean­ing­less — have you not read Sartre? Are you not aware that Exis­ten­tial being deems us all to be await­ing our own demise with no hope for the future — like empty bub­bles of point­less hope in a river of heart­less objec­tiv­ity? — would you like grand frites with that? Please, keep your hands and feet in the ride at all times — not that it really mat­ters — noth­ing really mat­ters, does it?

We went on a bunch of decent enough rides — since rides don’t need to really be trans­lated (well, the Star Wars “expe­ri­ence” was a lit­tle less fun because it was all in French) — but oth­er­wise — they are all just roller coast­ers after all. We went on a tower drop like the one in Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios. We went on Space Moun­tain: Mis­sion 2 (twice!). We went on an Aero­smith roller coaster, which was pretty ran­dom … I mean — let’s also go on a NY Mets roller coaster, or per­haps a Don­key Kong roller coaster … Aero­smith? Just sort of out there, imho (it was in the Dis­ney Stu­dios park — which is their pass­ing homage to Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios park in Cal­i­for­nia). The rides them­selves were pretty fun, once you slogged through the emo­tional despair that is French service.

But we did actu­ally have a good time — Nate started to melt down at the end because we were all a bit tired (did I men­tion my run in the morn­ing?) … but over­all — we had a decent time strolling around the grounds, and in a bizarre way, sort of enjoy­ing the true magic of Dis­ney by wit­ness­ing its absence in this faux place.

(Final obser­va­tion — not a decent char­ac­ter to be found in Dis­ney­b­land. All the sad sec­onds and sup­port­ing char­ac­ters live there. Their rock­star is Rata­touille — pri­mar­ily because he’s French, after all … but yeah, folks like THIS GUY:)

But the ULTIMATE exam­ple of how much the French miss the beat — it would have to be the “parade” through main street. Here’s the video. Mind you, you’ll have to live through the jostling video — but note a few things:

1 — most of the food shacks are closed (we can­not be both­ered with serv­ing you food, we are French, we sit, we smoke — move along)
2 — the expres­sions and demeanor of the peo­ple in the red jack­ets (who I believe used to work for the Secret Police prior to work­ing at Dis­ney­b­land)
3 — the music … the shrill, des­per­ate sounds of the French try­ing to sound happy
4 — the clear and unadul­ter­ated lack of vis­ceral response in my oth­er­wise happy Amer­i­can kids
5 — the length of the parade as com­pared to the ones in Dis­ney­land USA, which are vast
6 — as a ref­er­ence, I give an exam­ple at the end of how it SHOULD be going — because I’m Amer­i­can, I’m wired for it

[Note: this is a large video, so it may need to stream, click it — poke at it — it’ll even­tu­ally work]

and finally … I posted an album of Euro Dis­ney­b­land pic­tures on Face­book — it’s a pub­lic album, you don’t need Face­book to see it (calm down Pat (shout out to Pat)).

MUSIC!!!!
We got back to the hotel at about 8:30, and Nate was flip­ping out because we orig­i­nally had planned to get up at 5am for an early flight to Rome (Kathy resched­uled the flight — we’re leav­ing at 2pm now) … and he was really miss­ing his bud­dies at home, and his Legos.

I wan­dered out to get some food — found a street crepe the size of my head, but threw it away after the first bite because the “freshly cooked” chicken was actu­ally cold (scary).

At some pass­able sashimi (they don’t know how to do sushi, really — they just have salmon and tuna and serve it in the same plas­tic con­tain­ers that we get sushi in the supermarket)

…and then the music started…

*boom*boom*boom*boom — frenchyfrenchyfrenchy­BOOM — bom­pi­ty­boom­pi­tyscratch­scratch *boom*boom*boom (repeat)

Ya see — it’s “Music Fes­ti­val” time! (Joy).

What this con­sists of is a lot of ran­dom places around Paris just play music very loud — the French all come out in their “rock and roll cloth­ing” and stand around being cool to music. That’s cool … except that some Bistro around the cor­ner from our hotel decided they needed to be the loud­est place in the entire world — all night long.

Well… I could go into how that sat — but basi­cally, we waited until who knows when and the music ended. We got some sleep, and here we are — it’s the AM … we’re headed to Rome — things are going well … the kids are sleep­ing in … and we’re pretty happy.

Next stop — ROMA!

More clothing, and a mixed blessings bank experience

Yes­ter­day, we all went shop­ping again — this time Kathy and Angie got their own per­sonal shop­pers, and Nate and I headed off to the men’s sec­tion for me (Nate couldn’t care less about clothes for him­self for the most part).

So, we had a great time shop­ping in our sep­a­rate camps — Kathy and Angie bought a lot of great stuff, as did I (I bought a lot MORE great stuff than they did — but that’s ok, beats a watch ). So, towards the end of the day, Olga and I are close friends, we’re chat­ting away the whole day in French, talk­ing about what we like and don’t like — meet­ing all the dif­fer­ent peo­ple in the store (she’s a real celebrity in the store, she’s been there for 30 years, every­body loves her, all the peo­ple work­ing there were grab­bing at her for atten­tion at dif­fer­ent times). It was really fun to walk around with her — because we sort of had “run of the place.” All the “you may stand here and wait for your turn to talk about this pair of pants” stuff that goes on nor­mally in a depart­ment store — that was gone … we’d walk up to a spe­cific depart­ment or brand area and the peo­ple would turn, see her, see me, SMILE broadly and imme­di­ately want to help. Mul­ti­ply that by the fact that every­one was French, and you can see how it was fun to have this “back door into the sys­tem” kind of access.

We spent a major­ity of our time at Zadig & Voltaire which is a new favorite brand for me … the clothes are pretty cool. That was our first stop, so Nate was still into it — while he played his DS, he’d look up every once in a while and say “no, Dad, I don’t like that col­lar — it’s too dull”, then go back to his DS. But that wore off soon, and he was ready to do some­thing else.

Well, Olga threw her weight around and we went to the cham­pagne bar run by Moet. Behind them, there was a pri­vate porch salon that was cur­rently closed, but had an enclosed fancy schmancy trans­par­ent tent with sofas and pil­lows inside. She strolled up and asked/told them that Nate was going to use that tent for the day, so he got to hang out in lux­u­ri­ous secu­rity while we rolled around the store buy­ing things.

Towards lunchtime, Olga ran off and got me a foie gras sand­wich — which was pretty awe­some. She came back with the sand­wich and said she had also given one to Nate (uh oh).

“Oh, that’s won­der­ful,”, said I, “let’s go visit him for a lit­tle while?”

“D’accord.”, she said. (happy agreement).

So, we roll up on the trans­par­ent tent, and there’s my brave boy, gamely gnaw­ing politely on this thing that’s been handed to him. She had enthu­si­as­ti­cally handed him a foie gras sand­wich, he has COMPLETELY politely taken it, said thank you, and bit­ten into the thing with­out com­plaint. By the time we’d arrived, she was enthu­si­as­ti­cally ask­ing him if he was enjoy­ing the sand­wich and he was say­ing yes … then she said she was going to head off for a few min­utes as well (per­haps to eat) and would be back in 15 min­utes. “D’accord.”, said I.

As soon as she was out of the tent…

“Daaad?…”, says Nate.
“Yeah, son.”, say I, sup­press­ing a grin.
“I really don’t like this sand­wich AT ALL.”
“Oh, I fig­ured that — I’m really proud of you, buddy, for how you han­dled your­self — really, really proud.”

So I threw myself on the grenade for him and ate his sand­wich too. So now, my finicky boy has not only eaten goat face in Africa, he’s eaten duck liver (this was foie gras du canard, I’m pretty sure) in France. I’m a proud papa

Bank­ing Gone Bad
Ok, fast for­ward to the end of the day — Olga and I are chat­ting away — we don’t got to Eng­lish much, but I’m start­ing to get a lit­tle tired. I called Kathy (using Olga’s spe­cial in-store mobile phone to call the other per­sonal shop­per, because we’re so cool), and Kathy says she’s wrap­ping up. Olga and I are look­ing for a new wal­let (which we didn’t get, even though the folks at Gucci, Ver­sace and Prada were think­ing we should ), when Kathy calls to start talk­ing about how to coor­di­nate her return to my build­ing. Acti­vate moment of exhaustion.

So, I’m stand­ing there, with the phone to my ear, in the Ver­sace depart­ment, Kathy’s talk­ing into my ear in Eng­lish about how she’ll get all her stuff over to our build­ing — and Olga is talk­ing in my other ear in French about how she can han­dle the whole thing for us — and Kathy is talk­ing about how we might want to leave it all here while we go to Notre Dame, and would that be pos­si­ble — and Olga is say­ing that she will com­bien tout l’ensemble ici and Kathy is say­ing that if we could, it would be nice to pick it up tomor­row and Olga is say­ing nous sommes ferme demain and Kathy’s say­ing we really don’t want to take all this stuff with us to Notre Dame and I’m start­ing to spin and *poof*

… hello, this is your brain’s inter­nal French trans­la­tion depart­ment — we have shut down for the evening, you can now only say “chat” and “chien” (cat and dog) — have a good day.

Ok. Un moment. Je ne pense pas qu’il est pos­si­ble for me to make sense out of this sit­u­a­tion quand je parle avec both of you at once.

So — I strug­gle to the sur­face for air — and ask Olga if we can leave every­thing until Mon­day. I’m strug­gling to under­stand her but she says basi­cally that she can gar­ble blark mark Mon­day floop mongo Hotel. I take that to mean that she’ll have the entire group of stuff dropped off on Mon­day at the hotel. Superb!

The sit­u­a­tion is resolved — but please note, I’ve gone from flu­ent French to back of the class­room from that tense experience.

Then Kathy calls back a few min­utes later — “Honey, my card was declined.”

I’m not going to go into too much detail — but these are cards that don’t get declined.

Under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, when a snafu like this hap­pens — I’d just call my banker/broker at Schwab, Matt Pick­ett — and he’d flip a switch and all would be well. But Matt’s self­ishly decided to leave because his wife is hav­ing a baby. The nerve — doesn’t he know I’m buy­ing CLOTHES in PARIS?!!!

Well, as a backup, we’d usu­ally call his asso­ciate, Bran­don Siler, who han­dles our “fast and dirty” spe­cial needs (wire trans­fers, etc.). Bran­don is also COMPLETELY self-centered and has left on his hon­ey­moon. I mean, who do these peo­ple think they ARE? I’m buy­ing pants AND shirts. I’ve eaten foie gras!

Well, it’s time to break glass in case of emer­gency. I took the iPhone out of air­plane mode. It shud­dered with antic­i­pa­tion as some­where an AT&T billing com­puter turned its sleepy eye our way, licked its lips and started my inter­na­tional meter.

I called Schwab’s inter­na­tional phone sup­port line. You’d think that the inter­na­tional sup­port line would come in through some voice­mail tree that is faster, since well — it’s inter­na­tional, right? Nope. “Howdy, wel­come to Schwab — press one if you’d like to take a really long time — oth­er­wise please wait just a nor­mal long time for the next avail­able associate.”

While wait­ing, I lis­tened to the play­ful sound of my pock­ets emp­ty­ing into AT&T’s bank accounts.

“Hi, this is Schwab, how can I help you?”
“I’m call­ing from Paris, this is $1/min, my card has been declined.”
“Oh! Let me ver­ify you and then I’ll trans­fer you to the appro­pri­ate depart­ment!” … arg.
…verify…verify…
back to the hold music of my money dis­ap­pear­ing
“Hi, this is Schwab bank sup­port, I under­stand you are call­ing from Paris — do you have a num­ber we can call back?”

Olga, Olga! Chat! Chien! Com­ment t’alez vous?!!! … oh damn … how do you say “I need the phone num­ber for your spe­cial phone so I can get an inter­na­tional inbound call returned from my bank to deblock my wife’s credit card?”

“Je desit un numer pour tele­phone pour ma banque me rap­peller?” (I need a num­ber for phone for my bank me to callback).

insert grap­pling with phone num­bers — coun­try codes (the iPhone bill is still run­ning, mind you) — and then hang up.

Now we wait.

Poor, poor Shelly the Schwab oper­a­tor. It took her about 10 min­utes — but she fought her way back through the snooty depart­ment store switch­board using her high­school French and found us again. I con­grat­u­lated her profusely.

She told me she’d make a note of the costs for the call and see to it that we were reim­bursed for our iPhone charges, and worked to remove the block on Kathy’s card. She said that the block was because Kathy’s card doesn’t usu­ally have this sort of behav­ior — my card would work fine — but hers needed to be cleared (after all, I had no prob­lems yesterday).

Shelly advised wait­ing 15 min­utes, then Kathy could try it again. All very nice — so we do that. Mean­while, Notre Dame is slip­ping through our fin­gers (which ended up work­ing out for the best).

Mean­while — since Olga is just stand­ing around — all the young man­agers from the var­i­ous depart­ments are reach­ing out to her and beg­ging her to help them with things — what, I don’t know … but she’s really peeved by it, keeps telling them she’s with a client … and that’s adding to the tension.

Kathy tries her card again — no love. AAAAaaaarrrghhh…

Ok — we’ll head over there and use my card.

We grab Nate, head out of the build­ing, cross the street to the other build­ing, find Kathy, Angie and Olivia (their shop­per) and every­one is stand­ing in line for a major pur­chase at the teller. It’s a huge line because the guy in front of us (who also has a “lesser” shop­per, it would seem) is try­ing to pay on mul­ti­ple cards. Stand around, stand around.

I sug­gest that Kathy take the kids some­where to eat — which she does. So now I have the room to get my Mal­colm on. I ask if there’s any way we can get around this ridicu­lous line — so one of Kathy’s shop­pers (Olivia had an assis­tant, it would seem) asks if we can cut in for 2 min­utes to run my card. Every­one agrees. We shoul­der our way in — and presto! Card declined.

Rokey dokey smokey — I’ll just be tak­ing off my charm hat now. Here, Olga, hold my smile — I’m call­ing Schwab.

The gang of per­sonal shop­pers scurry me off to the ladies pri­vate shop­per salon — they can tell I’m less than enthused — and I think from my body lan­guage, it’s pretty clear that some poor banker is about to die, and that this isn’t about lim­its or anything.

They sit me down in a chic-chic room for ladies, throw some orange juice at me and run away. Well, most do — Olga blithely sits with me, fully aware that beneath this ter­ri­fy­ing exte­rior beats the heart of a very nice person.

Acti­vate iPhone…

tra la la — Schwab voice­mail prompts –

“Hello, wel­come to –“
“Call­ing from Paris, every­one must die, fix now.”
“Ter­ri­bly sorry, work­ing quickly, please ver­ify.”
“Ver­ify.”
“Trans­fer­ring now.”
“Amber here, ter­ri­fied, wel­come to bank, please let me live.”
“Sorry you are unhappy, fix prob­lem.”
“Fix­ing prob­lem now sir, please do not eat me. Will involve man­ager, please may I call back?”
“Cell­phone num­ber.”
“Ten minutes.”

Chat with Olga — who seems to sug­gest some­thing like “oh, it’s just a secu­rity thing (which it was), let us stay happy.” So we did.

iPhone rings
“Amber here — all is well — may I stay on the line while we con­firm?”
“Thanks, Amber, let’s see how that works out, you’re a really nice per­son.” — oh look, my human­ity — I found it again.

So we all head back out to the teller, I’m chat­ting with Amber, who’s telling me that she was really afraid of hav­ing to call in through the store, because her French is ter­ri­ble — ergo the iPhone call­back. We laugh, we cry, we’re hav­ing a great time.

The French peo­ple all start talk­ing really fast to each other. Olivia is reach­ing around for receipts, tick­ets, all sorts of stuff.
I turn to Olga, who explains that the “work­ing receipt” for all of Kathy’s pur­chases has expired, because they’re only valid for an hour after they are sub­mit­ted and fail. Zut Alors!

So, the hero(ine) of the day is the lady behind the glass at the reg­is­ter. She was fir­ing away at the key­pad, enter­ing the ENTIRE day’s orders by hand at a speed that made me think of Heather on the cal­cu­la­tor (shout out to Heather and her lick­ety split fin­gers!) … the woman types and types — they scan and check and con­firm that every­thing is right. They ALSO apply 10% dis­count on a major­ity of stuff because Kathy had some sort of super duper dis­count card (because she rocks). They ALSO set up the parts we need for VAT (I think?) — so we’ll get another 12% back from taxes. Woot, this is like Christmas!

Mean­while, Amber and I are still con­nected and run­ning up my iPhone bill.

The time had come. I hand over the card.

In a tech­no­log­i­cally inter­est­ing moment — Amber tells me that the pur­chase has been approved … and THEN the lit­tle ticker tape on the desk starts spit­ting out it’s con­fir­ma­tion. Cheers and clap­ping all around. Laugh­ter and relief. Ain’t life grand?

I thank Amber, get her name and con­tact info so I can tell other peo­ple how great she is, and hang up.

“Mon Dieu!”, I exclaim … Olga vir­tu­ally slaps me on the back and com­pli­ments me on my proper use of French. Seems it’s all come back to me now.

After­math
So, we ended up skip­ping Notre Dame, got our clothes back to the hotel our­selves — poor Olga stayed an hour later than her check­out time — she’s a won­der­ful, won­der­ful per­son. Ends up she’s a Chris­t­ian too (we find each other), we chat­ted about that a bit — then wished her well, and she us as well.

Nate and I went off to the local toy store and bought a Lego kit for him as a cel­e­bra­tion of his impec­ca­ble behav­ior the entire day (Olga kept com­pli­ment­ing him on how gen­tile he is (polite)). So, Legos in hand, he was all set for the night in the hotel. Angie, mean­while, had had a great time buy­ing clothes (as any young girl should in Paris, imho), but was tired — so she was all set for the night. So Kathy and I decided to dress up in fancy clothes and go to din­ner alone (the kids were full from their foray in the store while I fought with Schwab).

We headed off to one of the places we’d vis­ited last night. This was a pretty nice place, quite busy — called Les Grands Capucins … which means “The Big Capuchins” (look it up). Big place, lots of activ­ity — a wee bit too much atti­tude… but we were bound to give it another try.

The food ended up being ridicu­lous… there’s an entire story there about me tak­ing on a pompous French waiter and win­ning in his own court — but this post is too long … so suf­fice to say … we had din­ner in spite of the poor service.

We ordered some food, enjoyed each other’s com­pany — and lo and behold… my card was declined.

I decided that the com­pany needed me happy — so I used the com­pany card. I’ll reim­burse the com­pany for din­ner when I get home (shout out to Heather (dou­ble shout out, Heather, woot!)).

I got back to the hotel — called Schwab (again) — talked with Tony — insert dia­log here — he con­nected us directly to Visa Fraud pre­ven­tion … they in turn had a full stop on our account because of the weird pur­chase pat­tern. All is fixed — for now.

Kinda can’t wait to find out what hap­pens next with my card that can’t be beat.

Sacre Bleu!

A day of being American in Paris: running, buying clothes, and eating nasty food

So, yes­ter­day was a pretty awe­some day. I started out the day with a run in Paris … which sure beats the tread­mill in my bed­room (and for those more fit­ness ori­ented friends, yes I did stretch a lot before­hand, made all the dif­fer­ence in the world). My super Nike+ shoes with the magic tech­nol­ogy that talks to my iPhone didn’t work in Air­plane mode — which makes sense. But when I first got out of the hotel — I started up the magic Nike+ app on my phone and was heart­bro­ken to see that the shoe wasn’t respond­ing (yes, I couldn’t all my shoe effec­tively). I didn’t fig­ure out it was the air­plane mode and though maybe the shoe had got­ten busted in travel.

So, given that — I opted to just run any­way (arg — sim­ply run­ning, with­out magic tech­nol­ogy to tell me every­thing as I run? How prim­i­tive) … and headed out into the streets of Paris. It was cool being “that early morn­ing run­ning Amer­i­can guy” while all the pretty Parisians were stand­ing around in their cool clothes smok­ing cig­a­rettes and watch­ing me with casual con­tempt (or per­haps inter­est on a few corners).

I had my tunes going, lis­ten­ing to some old 80/90s pro­gres­sive stuff — so it was sud­denly a very Euro expe­ri­ence (I mean, c’mon, Depeche Mode while run­ning in Paris, your head just explodes with the atti­tude that engenders).

Since the streets of Paris was laid out by a bunch of cows, drunks and peo­ple wear­ing lead-based make-up, the streets criss-cross in the most psy­chotic ways pos­si­ble — so it’s more than easy to get com­pletely lost, and then pull out your handy dandy map and still be com­pletely lost. After try­ing that a few times, I decided to just run and “use the force” to find some­thing I could recognize.

Using that logic, I decided my best bet was to turn towards large gath­er­ings of trees and big avenues. That got me more lost — but even­tu­ally, after about an hour of run­ning and stop­ping and run­ning (mostly run­ning, with a lit­tle walk­ing), I found the river. Thank­fully, I was near a weird spot where the river splits, so I could find it on the map — iron­i­cally, I had been under the impres­sion that I was to the West of the hotel, but I’d got­ten com­pletely turned around and was on the East­ern side.

So, once I had my bear­ings, I fig­ured out that I was about 2 miles from the hotel, which was cool. I was all warmed up, my legs were feel­ing pretty good, and I was stand­ing next to the Seine with the Eif­fel tower off in the dis­tance as a ref­er­ence point, and Notre Dame across the river nearby. That was pretty cool.

Dur­ing my wan­der­ings, I tried my GPS app on the iPhone, which involves tak­ing the phone out of air­plane mode. Of course, in that process, I dis­cov­ered that my magic shoes could talk again — so I acti­vated that and had a fun run back to the hotel. I ran along the Seine, down to the Lou­vre, through their gar­dens, turned at the Lou­vre arch (not to be con­fused with L’Arc de Tri­om­phe”) — ran through that for good mea­sure, then cut back into the 2eme Quar­ter and headed for the Opera house. Our hotel is near the Opera house, so I found my way home, felt great and loved that it was all that and a bag of chips too.

Dur­ing the run, I took a few pho­tos, like this:

because life is a com­pe­ti­tion, right?

So — after a got back to the hotel, I set up the TRX sys­tem and worked out some more — which was fun, dif­fi­cult, and more fun.

Then we decided to split the day up into boys and girls — so Angie and Kathy went shop­ping for a purse for Angie, and Nate and I went to L’Ecole Mil­i­taire (the mil­i­tary school), which has a pretty cool because they have a museum filled with guns and junk.

Nate espe­cially enjoyed him­self with all the can­nons and stuff:

…as well as vis­it­ing the creepy tomb of Napoleon (which is huge, btw — that guy REALLY had a com­plex, even in death):

(the scale is odd in this pic­ture, but that brown box, that’s actu­ally about 20 feet long and 25 feet high — we’re over an atrium, see the tiny peo­ple at about 12 o’clock one flight down?) Napoleon hated being small.

Sooo… after that, we headed back to the mar­ket, bought a cool purse for Angie — and I had a chance to buy some cheese and pate in French… loads of fun.

Buy­ing Clothes
After a break — Kathy decided we should go buy some clothes — so we went to Grand Lafayette — which is a fancy depart­ment store in the heart of Paris. When we got there, I asked where the men’s sec­tion was and after a lit­tle point­ing — it was explained that it was in the other build­ing across the street, the men’s building.

So we headed over to the store ded­i­cated only for men and began look­ing at Prada, D&G, Burberry, and stuff like that and my head started to explode. So we asked for a per­sonal shop­per, and they sent over Olga, a very, very nice lady who’s been doing this for 30 years. She walked me around, spent my money — chat­ted with me in French and a lit­tle Eng­lish — and we bought some clothes. I’m just gonna leave it there — it’s kind of appalling, actually.

Suf­fice to say, my foray into fancy clothes has begun — we’re lov­ing that I have a physique to jus­tify these clothes — and I now am the embar­rassed owner of a pair of D&G jeans (shout out to Hillary and Heather). We’re going back tomor­row for some more shirts, pos­si­bly some shoes, and a jacket. One thing that makes it a lit­tle bit safer is that they don’t have a lot of the expen­sive stuff in my size — so we avoid a feed­ing frenzy. All the shirts are slim fit — which rocks.

Nasty Food
While I was going through the cloth­ing expe­di­tion with Olga, Kathy took the kids back to the hotel, because they were tired. Once she returned, we got to leave the depart­ment store after hours (you see, we had a per­sonal shop­per), and headed out car­ry­ing my D&G bag, but still wear­ing my nasty shirt (the store will be clean­ing and press­ing the shirts we’ve pur­chased thus far so I can pick them up tomor­row). You’d think the bag would get us a moment’s peace with the wait­ers at the Cafes, but nope — no love there.

They were rude, ignored us, all the stan­dard stuff. We tried a sushi joint for a sec­ond — but that was a non-starter — Paris has not com­pletely embraced the fine sushi expe­ri­ence — so it was about as appe­tiz­ing as super­mar­ket take-out … so we left.

Our third try was a nicer place that promised to have lob­ster and crab and all sorts of other cool stuff — but on fur­ther inspec­tion — we found that thye were out of the good stuff and would we like this other thing instead? Oh, by the way, at this point my dogs were tired — I’d been walk­ing around in my Chucks all day (and yes, that prob­a­bly added to the atti­tude — my bright green Chuck Tay­lor shoes in Paris) … so when the ser­vice was slow, and the options were lim­ited … we left there too.

Finally — we gave up, and in a moment of exhausted frus­tra­tion — we went to McDonald’s. Yes, that’s right. We bought fine Prada cloth­ing and fin­ished off the day eath­ing Mickey D’s. Ahhh… the life of a Cosmopolitan.

Well — we’re back in the hotel — have rested for a while — I woke up at 3am — am post­ing this stuff … and that’s about it for now.

More later.

I am a giant

In Europe, every­thing is smaller — it’s just the nature of the crea­ture because it’s so cramped. The cars are smaller, the hotel rooms are smaller (even Kathy com­mented on how small the bath­room is — it’s the size of a closet) … we have a “quad” in our hotel (which, for the record is very nice), but it’s made up of two rooms joined through the “adjoin­ing doors” — –and I kid you not, the com­bined space is smaller than our liv­ing room.

But the best part is that I tower (tower, I tell you) over just about every­body in France. I am a giant — I can reach out and crush small build­ings, I eat vil­lages, I am a giant Amer­i­can giant man.

I went into a store to see if they had clothes in my size, just for fun — and the guy asked me if I was XXL or XXXL. I was so huge he’d lost ref­er­ence sizes in his mind.

I can’t tell — but the food por­tions may be get­ting big­ger around here — that’s a lit­tle scary, because Euro­peans can’t afford to be fat — there’s no room. But maybe it’s just that, since every­thing is so tiny — we’re feel­ing more full on smaller por­tions, because well — they look big­ger (if a plate of peas fills the room, it looks big, no?

Well — in any event … I’m enjoy­ing tow­er­ing over this entire con­ti­nent (when we walked through the Ams­ter­dam air­port, I hap­pily reported to the kids (in a large open space filled with thou­sands of peo­ple) “I am the tallest per­son in this air­port” … they looked around and smiled.

So far, I haven’t smacked my head on any­thing — even though the doors ARE shorter (and likely often older than our country).

I will not climb over that moun­tain range over there and say too­dledo for now!

Eiffel Tower visit

We went to the Eif­fel tower — it was tall.

When we got there, they said that the top floor was closed. We decided to go to the sec­ond floor — but when we got there — there was an Easter Egg (it’s a video game ref­er­ence) and we found a place to buy tick­ets to go to the top! So … ummm… we bought the tick­ets from the machine, imme­di­ately got on the ele­va­tors (which were run­ning and manned with oper­a­tors?) … and went up to the top, which was closed.

There were all sorts of other peo­ple going there too, mind you … but it was weird — it was like some­one had the very French idea to put up a sign that said “go away” — and then when you ignored that sign, you got every­thing on the menu.

Well — suf­fice to say, we got good pic­tures, had a good time — and then went home. Strangely, the World Cup is so pop­u­lar that they lit­er­ally had a giant TV set up in front of the Eif­fel Tower so peo­ple could watch the games (we went by while Argentina was beat­ing South Korea). It’s REALLY big here, the World Cup — you’d almost think we were in Europe or something.

On a related note — I’ve been watch­ing the World Cup stuff a lit­tle more — and well … it looks like Greece beat Nige­ria (the TV is in French) … that’s all I know about that. I think (aside from the US, of course) that the Ger­mans are “the show” currently.

So … we’re back to the hotel, we’re try­ing to stay awake again until 8-9pm … and after that … we do some­thing else … no idea what.

Just wanted to tell you that we got to the tower — mis­sion com­plete on that front.