More Tuscana, before heading to Roma

We just spent 2 nights in a very nice apartment in a little medieval fortified town, Lucignano. It had a large terrace overlooking the Tuscany countryside. We spent the time driving around to see other similar towns. They are amazing, with their tiny, cobbled "streets", huge cathedrals, panoramic views, and walls, walls and more walls. All built high on steep hillsides. We also had the best pizza yet, in a restaurant called "Nice People."

Manfred's new contribution

Ok, here I go, (Manfred). . . . this region of Italy, where the "boot" is the widest, on an Italian map, is called Umbria, as part of Toscani, generally the area between Florence and Rome. Yesterday, Sunday, we drove thru the area called Chianti, for the famous wine and the vines were just loaded with dark blue ready to pop grapes. The sky was blue, not too hot, the road was very curvey but not much traffic. Most all small villages sit atop hills surrounded by acres of vineyards and olive groves, and have fantastic views. Driving is a lot of fun with 'six on the floor' in this Fiat diesel of ours, but after an hour or two it get's tireing and I'm glad to stop and have a beer or a bed or dinner or all of it.
Having a car is very good for the countryside, seeing small towns on small roads; it totally sucks in cities and on Autostradas especially you want to get somewhere fast. We by-passed Florence (we both seen it some time ago) and went south for the country. Yesterday we saw Siena, an amazing town, spent some hours, had a picnic lunch, then continued on east toward Arezzo where we found an absolutely charming place called Lucignano. At about 6 pm the town was just finishing a weekend festival where all were dressed in old time clothing showing off old time ways. We found our bed there by asking a gas station guy who turned out to be the husband of an english wife and spoke pretty good english. He said 'I have a place for you' and he showed us an apartment on the ground floor with large living/sitting room with kitchen, bedroom and fully equipped bathroom with the ever present bidet, 50.€!! ($75) The terrance has a wonderful view of the valley and surrounding hills, each with it's hilltop village. We are considering staying another night.
I am amazed at the variety of not only car models of most european car brands but also of the shapes, configurations and sizes they have here. Lots and lots of motor bikes, from the 50cc put-put to the big racing bikes. And the way they, the latter pass on curves up and down hills is nothing, absolutely nothing, short of amazing!!! They all come out on weekends to scare the crap out of tourist drivers.
As far as transportation goes, trains are great for long distances and from city to city and no good in the countryside and cars are just the opposite. It is now about 8:30 am and we are sitting outside in a nice cafe on a beautiful Monday morning with fantastic weather, sipping our caffe late. Products available here that are somewhat familiar to us are Coke (have not seen any Pepsi), Fanta (pop), Heineken , Corona and Becks beers as well as all the local beers. Buying cigarettes is like going back in time... they have Chesterfield, Lucky Strike, Pall Mall, Camels, and Marlboro, all are about 4€ ($6) /pack. The olive trees are full and the grapes are being harvested now.
We have not seen or heard anything on TV or newspaper. During our limited online time, we are too busy uploading photos and answering email to look at the news. We have no idea what's going on in the world and that's OK 'cause we are in our own beautiful world right now. Money machines are everywhere and getting cash on debit cards is easy. Most businesses here in Italy accept credit cards, but not so many in rural Austria & Germany. Europe is generally expensive. Prices look good until you add that horrendous 50% for the exchange rate.

Radda in Chianti

We spent the night in a medieval fortress/town, in a tiny hotel that is part of the castle, complete with long crooked passageways, and lots of stairs up then down. It was a nice enough room and bath, but it was the first bad bed we have encountered since leaving the U.S. All the beds, even in the youth hostels, are better than what we have in US & Canada. We went to eat at a place we were told was a pizzaria, but they gave us the regular pasta dinner menu, so we thought they had no pizza. Then a lot of other people came in and they were all getting pizza! We have checked out and I am enjoying the Italian espresso in an internet cafe, while Manfred is enjoying cafe latte and doughnuts. Gotta go and hit the road.

9/26 San Casciano V.P. - Tuscany

We found a nice little hotel (€58) here in this hilltop town just south of Firenze, and ate dinner at a great restaurant where we met a very nice, interesting couple from San Diego. We hope to visit them when we get to CA. I am sitting on a terrace overlooking an idyllic Tuscany valley (click on photo), drinking espresso and typing. Manfred can't take the coffee, so he's having a Fanta, and he was even asked if he wanted ice!! Tuscany is not nearly as beautiful as the Munich/Saltzburg area, but it has a better year-round climate. We have found that having a car is a huge handicap in an unfamiliar city, so we are not going to return to Firenze (sorry, David). We'll go on to smaller towns instead. Heading south to spend 4 more days and end up in Rome (which is actually only a 2-hr drive from here via the autostrada). .

On the road again -- in Italy

We took the overnight train (not a good experience) to Venice and spent a few hours and a lot of money there. Rip-off city. We finally got our car and got out of it to go to Padova. We found a nice b&b just before Padova. I got a cold, so we stayed there 2 days. Now we have just driven to Florence on the autostrada, which was pretty boring, but we are in a tiny town just south of Florence, where we are starting to look for a bed.

St Gilgen/Saltzburg, then Munich to Venice

We spent an absolutely wonderful week in St. Gilgen, near Saltzburg in Austria. There, we visited with our friend Runi, her son, Falco, and her friend, Heinz. The weather was ideal, our accommodation was a large, 2-room apartment with 2 baths and a big balconly overlooking the lake, Wolfgangsee. We went all around the countryside, which is incredibly beautiful, had lunch at a farm, visited luxurious hotels, took a boat ride on another lake, and had a lot of great food and wine with best friends. A highlight was a visit to Hallstadt, which Rick Steves has shown on one of his TV shows. There we toured what's probably the oldest salt mine in the world. People were getting salt there thousands of years B.C. The views from the mountain top were unforgettable. I hope there will be photos here. The last day we went on a great tour of Saltzburg, conducted by Runi. We enjoyed the Mirabell Gardens, strolling the streets -- see the photo of the fountain where people could let their horses swim (in the good old days). I started writing this in the train station in Munich and am continuing it on the overnight train to Venice. Earlier today, we drove from St. Gilgen to Munich, taking a longer, non-autobahn route to see some of the countryside. It is all as picture-postcard beautiful as it is in Austria, but flatter. The grass here is the most incredible green -- it gives a whole new meaning to "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence" or, in this case, the other side of the world. All the time that we were in St. Gilgen, except for a few brief periods, we were not able to get on the internet with the iBook. We used Runi's computer to take care of some emails, but I wasn't able to do this blog, because I can't type on a German keyboard. Nobody knew how to change it to a different layout (it's a Windows computer).

Finally -- online again

We are in St. Gilgen, a small village on a beautiful lake, Wolfgangsee, in the hills of Austria. From Rothenburg we took a train to Munich (via Nirenberg) where we picked up our car (Ford Fiesta) and drove right past Saltzburg into the Saltzkammergut -- the scenic lake district near Saltzburg. We are staying in a 2-room 2 bath apartment in a nice inn with a fabulous view of the lake from the balcony. That's where we have breakfast. Manfred's longtime friend lives here, so we find out about all the best places to go for sights and food. And we get to meet lots of really nice people.

Still in Rothenburg

Today we got to see some of this amazing town. Did a lot of walking, quite a bit of eating, even bought some souvenirs. It is like going back in history. The streets are mostly 8 ft. wide, the sidewalks, when they exist, are 10 inches wide. Everything is so cute, so clean, so quaint, so lovely.

We had to move to a different place because the inn where we stayed yesterday was all booked up for today. But every building here in the old part of town, whether residence or shop or restaurant, rents rooms. All that we saw are large, very clean, with excellent beds and low prices. The only drawback is: no elevators and the rooms are always on the 3rd or 4th floor.

Tomorrow, we will have to leave very early to get to Munich, hopefully by noon, to pick up our car to drive to Saltzberg and St. Gilgen, in Austria. Trains leave every hour, but we have to change trains at least twice, which is always dicey.

In Rothenburg

This is a medieval, walled town. We are staying in an inn that looks pretty 18th century. It's really fun, and nice, and good to get away from Youth Hostels for a change.
Today we are going on an afternoon walking tour, and a night time walking tour. We had another wonderful dinner last night. Still haven't got photos on computer. This is the first place we have had unlimited free internet access, and both the computer and the iPod were on their last (battery) legs, so I didn't get much done, on or offline.
The photos show our room, the inn entrance, and one of the towers on the city wall.

In Heidelberg - heading to Rothenburg

It's been a hassle, getting online time. We did our Rhine cruise yesterday, Koblenz to Bingen, past all the castles, including our favorite at Bacharach where we stayed 3 days at the beginning of the trip. The weather was beautiful and it was very relaxing, sitting in the restaurant watching all the beautiful scenery slide by. There was a messup then, getting a train to Heidelberg - Bingen is such a small town that most of the trains did not run on Saturday. But we finally got to the Youth Hostel in Heidelberg. Don't know if we are going to spend any time here, or go on to Rothenburg right away. We were too late for dinner in the Youth Hostel, so we went to a Pizzaria, which was a delightful Italian restaurant, and had a great dinner. The wines here are all so nice, too. We didn't get any photos downloaded, so nothing new here yet. We've been taking videos, too, but I haven't yet figured out how to put them here.

Manfred's contribution

Hi everyone, this is Manfred, we have just boarded an ICE (fast) train in Berlin, going to Koblenz via Cologne, about 5hrs. I just looked at an electronic sign in the train and it said that we are travelling at 250km/hr. WOW! I just ordered a Becks draft beer, 1/2L, about $6. (food on trains is expensive) I'm just going to ramble on about things that I either remember or are happening now. The sky is blue, lots of cumulous clouds, cool nights and quite warm days, up to 20c. The fall colours are just starting to show. The Youth Hostel in Berlin Wannsee was very good, nice 2 bed room w/ toilet and shower (Dusche). We have just stopped at Wolfsburg, where the main Volkswagen factory is located. If anybody thinks that Canada (or US for that matter) has a lot of cell phones, think again! Germany has nothing on them. I can count on my 10 fingers how many people did not have a cell phone in action. And there are so many different styles and types as well as brands, everybody is represented here. And so many different gagets. I saw a group of youg Italiens watching a live soccer game with full sound, while they were sitting on steps waiting to vitit the German Bundestag Building, on a device about the size of a cell ph. but all screen, amazing!! The next place we will be sleeping is a small hotel in Koblenz, just one night and then on to a Rhine River boat called "Goethe" to Bingen, 6 hrs. ----- We just rolled into Hannover. It's 1:30 local time, here called 13:30 hr. The ICE train has blug-ins for our laptop, with an adapter, no problem. The newspapers are full of the up-and-comming German elections, September 27, the showdown between Angela Merkel and her opponent, I forgot his name. Also the German national ladies soccer team just won the European soccer title, front page!! Also the purchase of Opel, the German GM car devision, was bought by an Austrian/Russian consotium thus saving Opel. (lots of Opel vehicles hedre in Germany)!

Berlin - the Parliment Building

Now we are in Berlin. The most amazing place. The Grand Central Station is bigger and fancier than most airports. We went to see the new dome on the Bundestag. Here are some photos, including the Brandenberg Gate, and a view of the lake from the lobby of the Youth Hostel. Tomorrow we are off to Koblenz and the next day we take a boat on the Rhine and end up in Heidelberg.

Hamburg - Miniature Wonderland

We went to Hamburg, to see the miniature wonderland -- click here to see what it's like. Photos can't do it justice. We spent many hours on our feet, looking at all the various "countries" and levels. The photos show a castle garden, a rock concert and the Hamburg stadium, each full of hundreds of individual miniature people.

Finish Bacharach -- off to Hamburg

We spent 2 full days in the Burg Stahleck castle-hostel at Bacharach. At first we had a room with 5 bunkbeds, only 1 other person was sleeping there, and he happened to be from Victoria (Sidney)! Then we moved to a room with 1 bunkbed and private bath.
The first day was just lounging around, enjoying the ambiance and the views of the vinyards, forrested hills, and the Rhine River with all its boat traffic. The second day, we took the long, very steep hike down to the small village of Bacharach and spent the day walking in the park by the river, sampling various foods & wines, window-shopping, and taking pictures--up to a point.
Our camcorder was DOA -- dead when we got there. So we were snapping photos all over the place until the still camera quit on us, too. We learned a valuable lesson -- get everything fully charged the night before any excursion.
After having a nice dinner, we took a taxi back to the castle. There was no way I was going to walk back up that steep trail. That's an added expense of staying at the castle. The 10-minute taxie trip costs €8 = $12. You have to use it for arriving & leaving (you have to be very young, with backpacks only, to take your baggage up or down the trail).
Food here is very good, but like most of the world, it's overpriced at airports and on trains. We are now on the 5-hr train from Koblenz to Hamburg. There is a Hi-speed train that does it in 3 hours, but it costs extra. A Chinese guy just came by selling coffee and we took some-- $4 each for plain coffee in paper cups. We probably could have saved $$ by paying the surcharge for the fast train and not buying food.
Now we are going through farmland. Lots of cows and corn. Quite a few big windmills are dotted here and there -- not a lot together, like the wind farms in the US. We're in a 1st-class 6-seat compartment, by ourselves. OOOps -- we just passed a real wind farm! Just to make me a liar. There's no wi-fi on the train, so I won't be able to post this until I get to some hot spot.
Photos haven't been downloaded yet, will add them later.

Arrived in Germany

Here we are, at last, in our first Youth Hostel in Germany. It's the Burg Stahleck, pictured below (previous post). The plane trip from Seattle to Frankfurt was pretty awful, and we were traveling for 28 hours. We were just in the airport/train station in Frankfurt -- big but not nice.

Here are our first photos: view of the castle from the train station (it was raining), views from the windows of our room, views from the courtyard, and breakfast in the youth hostel.

...and they're off..

....like a herd of turtles. Well, we are, finally, underway, after our techie friend Chas saved the (computer) day, once again. So we have Manfred's "new" iBook G4, which he bought to replace his iBook G3 which went for video board repair 6 months ago and hasn't been heard from since.

But did it ever return?
No it never returned!
And its fate is still unlearned...
It may lie forever on the shelves in Tucson
It's the iBook that never returned....

So, we got on the 3 p.m. ferry from Victoria to Port Angeles (1.5 hrs) -- and that's as far as we got. We are staying in a hotel. Name: Downtown Hotel. It is very minimalist, with shared baths, but it's spotlessly clean and no bath looks as if it has ever been used by anyone.

Tomorrow we get up at 5 am to catch the 6 a.m. bus to SeaTac (Seattle-Tacoma) airport. It will take 4 hours to get there, but we'll arrive in time for the 2-hr check-in for the 12:30 flight to Frankfurt. It will stop in Chicago for a hour, flying time is over 11 hrs. "Getting there" stopped being fun and started becoming torture quite a long time ago.
When we arrive in Frankfurt, we will immediately hop a train to Bacharach, the village on the Rhine where we will stay in the castle, Burg Stahleg. that overlooks the town and the river. We will have 3 days to rest up and relax there. (See the photo in the post below.)

I am typing this on a PC! You know, like, with Windoze!!! XP, to be exact. It looks so strange, like going back in time. I'm using Firefox, on my same blogger page, but it looks so different, it feels like it's my old Mac SE I had in the 70s, or whenever it was. Even stranger is that people actually seem to like it like this.
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