25 June: How to Get a Parking Ticket In Salisbury & the Wonders of Stonehenge

It was raining again this morning, so we weren’t in much of a hurry to get going. We experienced our first “full English breakfast” – all the fruit, cereal, and yogurt you could eat, followed by a huge plate of eggs made to order, with roasted tomatoes, sautéed mushrooms, bacon, sausage, and toast on the side – and realized that if we got this sort of breakfast at every hotel, we weren’t going to have to spend a lot of money on lunches. We checked out around 10:00 and followed our host’s directions into town, parking in a pay lot near the cathedral, which we wanted to see before heading to Stonehenge. We put several pound coins in the parking meter, giving us about two hours, which we assumed would be plenty of time to tour the cathedral.

I should note that I became interested in visiting Salisbury after reading Edward Rutherford’s lengthy but fascinating novel Sarum, which is a fictionalized history of the settlement of the Salisbury area from pre-historic to modern times. The construction of the cathedral is a major theme of the novel.

We crossed a stone bridge over a slow-moving canal and glimpsed the quaint shopping district lined with medieval houses (photo, right) before passing through the High Street Gate and entering the famous Cathedral Close. This is a series of regal homes and church outbuildings – some designed by the famed architect Christopher Wren – flanking smooth green lawns, where the church canons were given allocations of land upon which to build their homes. Before us loomed the single 404-foot Gothic spire – the tallest in England and the highest pre-1400 spire in the world – of Salisbury Cathedral. We forgot all about the parking meter when we walked through the main entrance and decided to sign up for the 90-minute Tower Tour (£11 for the two of us). We had some time before the tour started to wander the long nave of the cathedral and its double transepts, admiring the simple, unadorned grandeur of the interior. The nave is lined with the tombs of famous crusaders, bishops, and war heroes, the intricately carved choir stalls are quite impressive, and in the north aisle you can see what is believed to be the oldest clock in the world, dating from 1386. We also visited the lovely cloisters and the octagonal Chapter House, which is home to one of four surviving original copies of the Magna Carta (penned in 1215), one of the most important documents in the history of democracy, serving as the basis for the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

We assembled for our tour near a model of the cathedral at the rear of the building and were introduced to our friendly volunteer guide, an older woman who instructed us (wisely, it turned out) to leave our bags in lockers in preparation for the long ascent to the heights of the spire. We stopped at various points along the way while our guide provided a colorful narrative of the cathedral’s construction. Salisbury is unique in that the cathedral was built – the mastermind of Bishop Richard Poore and the architect Elias de Derham – to replace the old Norman cathedral at nearby Old Sarum, and the new town of Salisbury grew up around it. This is why the cathedral’s setting is so spectacular; the area around it was purposefully left open for the expansive Greens and the buildings of the Close. In contrast, most medieval cathedrals were built on the sites of previous churches, crowded between existing buildings.

Salisbury is unique in other ways as well. Whereas most cathedrals were constructed over a period of centuries, and so represent a hodgepodge of architectural styles, Salisbury Cathedral was completed (save for the spire) in the relatively short span of 38 years (1220-58) and thus has a consistent Gothic style. The construction of the spire in 1320 – not to mention the fact that it is still standing, albeit 2½ feet off vertical, over 680 years later – represents a marvel of medieval engineering. The cathedral’s foundations are only four feet deep due to the high water table, and by logic alone could not have supported the weight of the unplanned spire, but thankfully the entire structure sits on a thick, supportive bed of gravel. Over the centuries the building has shifted and settled, and we got an excellent view of the subtly bending columns from the elevated arcade at the rear of the church (photo, above). This is no trick of the eye – the columns really are leaning outwards (on the order of 18 inches if I recall) under the weight of the spire!

As we proceeded up into the tower, we got an up-close look at the amazing timber framing under the roof, some of which has been repaired over the centuries. One whole side of the roof was replaced in the last decade; the funding required for the constant repair and maintenance of this structure must be mind-boggling. We arrived at the top of the bell tower just in time to hear the bells ring out the noon hour – the famous four-pitch tune of the Westminster Chime followed by twelve reverberating bongs of the great bronze bell. We proceeded up a slightly rickety wooden spiral staircase (not recommended for those with a fear of heights) and got a good look at the intricate wooden scaffolding that supports the spire itself (photo, right). You can’t actually ascend the spire (this would involve climbing a series of scary-looking ladders), but we did go out onto the balcony circling the top of the bell tower and got some great views of Salisbury and the surrounding countryside. Fortunately the rain had let up, although it was rather windy up there! We looked down at the red-brick buildings of the Cathedral Close and out across the plain to the water meadows dotted with white sheep, the winding River Avon and, way off in the distance, the distinct rounded form of the ancient Norman hill fort of Old Sarum (photo, below).

After descending back to ground level and receiving our “I’ve Reached the Heights” pins from our guide, John and I wandered out across the front lawn, circled the cathedral (photo, below), peeked around the Close, and headed back into town. We walked up and down the main shopping street, looking into a few stores to see if we could find a good umbrella, because we were starting to realize that the two travel models that we had brought along might not be sufficient for England’s turbulent weather. Surprisingly we didn’t find a lot of umbrellas – certainly no sturdy wind-resistant ones – so we gave up for the time being and ambled back to the parking lot.

As we approached the car, I got a sinking feeling in my stomach as I remembered the parking meter. Sure enough, our time had expired more than an hour previously and there was a white envelope on our windshield with a £30 ticket inside (£60 pounds if we waited longer than 14 days to pay it). I think I said a bad word at that point, which was overheard by a friendly guy walking by. He smiled, instantly identifying the source of my angst, and advised us not to pay it if we had come from overseas. I wasn’t sure if he realized that we weren’t driving a rental car, and I didn’t have the presence of mind to ask him if his advice applied to private cars from the continent. Eventually we decided to take our chances and didn’t pay the ticket – after all, the city of Salisbury would have to track the car to Germany, then to Mercedes, and finally to John, a process that would certainly cost some city employee more than a measly £30 pounds. I am normally a law-abiding citizen but I felt pretty unsympathetic in this particular instance. I am used to German pay lots where you pay for your time when you leave, which makes pretty good sense to me. (Postscript: It’s now two months later and we haven’t gotten any nasty letters postmarked from Salisbury, so hopefully we are home free!)

As we headed out of Salisbury, we passed very close to the hill fort of Old Sarum. If we had more time I might have liked to stop there, but at least we got a good view from a distance. We continued onwards to Stonehenge, which is about eight miles north of Salisbury. I had debated whether we should visit this king of all tourist traps, particularly after I found out that the special after-hours access to the site (available by prior reservation through the English Heritage organization and various tour companies) was not being offered at the time of our visit. Nevertheless, I couldn’t imagine passing so close to one of England’s most legendary sites without giving it at least a quick look.

We were not disappointed. Even though we arrived in the middle of the afternoon, the crowds were not bad, perhaps kept away by the inclement weather. It had actually stopped raining and the sky was blanketed with billowing clouds in a thousand shades of gray, making for a spectacular backdrop as we approached the stone circle across a gently undulating plain of emerald grass. We took the audio tour (£13 with the general entrance fee for two people) which was excellent – informative without being cheesy. The narrator speculates on the ancient origins of the site, dating to about 3000 B.C., including the great distances over which the great stones were mysteriously transported and the site’s purported uses as a religious shrine and astronomical calendar.

We circled the stones on a grassy path, which is marked occasionally by numbers corresponding to points on the audio tour. While I had read many complaints that the path keeps you disappointingly far from the stones, preventing you from viewing the ancient carvings, there are no ugly barriers as I had imagined. I personally didn’t want to see the stones swarming with people, and I actually got some good pictures despite the fact that we were in the company of several hundred other visitors. Most everyone was quiet and well-behaved, and standing on that wind-swept plain with the clouds billowing overhead, I was certainly awed by the mystery and mysticism of the place.

Before returning to the car we decided to invest in the English Heritage Overseas Visitor Pass, which would get us into other English Heritage-operated sites and partner sites in Wales and Scotland for free or at a reduced rate. We didn’t start our journey west to Cornwall until after 4 p.m. and ran into more rain along the way. As we left the Stonehenge area we encountered a long traffic jam on the two-lane highway, the cause of which was a terrible accident involving a tour bus. The entire left front corner of the bus was smashed in and we just hoped that no one was sitting up front at the time.

After passing into Cornwall, we left the main highway and set off across a windswept landscape of hedges and open fields. Finally the ocean came into view, a plate of blue-green metal on the horizon. We took some crazy narrow winding roads to Boscastle (Susie has some pretty weird ideas about how to get around in England), and literally stumbled across our hotel, the charming white-washed Bottreaux (photo, right), as we came down the hill into the village. It was 7:30 and the front door was locked, so I rang the bell four or five times, to no avail. There was a phone by the door as well, so I finally picked up the receiver and called the number indicated, which finally succeeded in rousing someone to let us in.

Our room was tiny and spartan, starkly outfitted with all-white walls, a white bedspread, one small ultramarine-blue oil painting of the ocean, and a massive wooden cupboard, but we had a very nice modern bathroom with white-and-green tile, a stand-up shower, and a very swanky green glass bowl sink (albeit with a serious drainage problem). We’d been advised by our host to get to the pub next door before 8:30 if we wanted a meal, so we headed over as quickly as we could.

The Napoleon is an awesome 16^th-century pub with loads of atmosphere – low ceilings, dark wood, and a local clientele. Right after we ordered, the lights flickered and went out: a power outage caused by a localized storm. We nursed our Cornish ales (Tinner’s and Tribute) for a while until finally our waitress came around and said they didn’t expect the power to come back on until 10:00. The only things they could make without power were smoked salmon and crab salad. We ordered the smoked salmon and were busy digging in when the lights came on again. We were hungry so we decided to go ahead with our original main course orders. John had a Cornish rump steak piled with mushrooms, tomatoes, onion rings, and chips. I had the crab cakes, which looked and tasted like something out of the freezer aisle, with a side salad to which I grudgringly applied a foil packet of "salad sauce" (a.k.a. mayonnaise). Despite the less-than-stellar food, the place had good entertainment value – we watched the locals celebrating a birthday and a couple of young German guys (most definitely gay) puffed away on their cigarettes in the corner (a ban on smoking in restaurants goes into effect in England on July 1^st).

24 June: The Goodwood Festival of Mud

We got up at a painfully early 6 a.m. (aren’t we on vacation?) so we could leave for Goodwood promptly at 7 a.m. We had requested a boxed breakfast to take with us and the woman at the front desk said it would be brought to our room, but it didn’t show up, so we went down to the front desk and managed to flag someone down – the same man who had suggested our little stroll last night. There must have been a miscommunication because he came back from the kitchen a moment later with a bulging sack stuffed with two ham sandwiches, two cheese-and-tomato sandwiches, a plastic carton of cherries, two apples, two oranges, and two tomatoes. Enough for a small army! We ate a couple of the sandwiches (OK, they were just dry rolls and ham, but still tasty) and saved the rest for future meals on the road.

We headed west to Goodwood in a steady rain. Covering a sprawling 12,000 acres of rolling Sussex countryside, the Goodwood Estate has been the home of the Dukes of Richmond for over three hundred years. In addition to a long tradition of horse racing, golf, and shooting sports, Goodwood is steeped in motor racing history and, since 1993, has been the home of the Goodwood Festival of Speed, purportedly the “world’s biggest celebration of the motor car.”

We hit a long line of traffic waiting to enter the parking lot (I use the term “lot” loosely) but we finally made our way to a space in the huge, already water-logged field. We were dressed as well as we could be for the weather – I was wearing just about every layer I had brought with me, including a t-shirt, light sweatshirt, fleece, and waterproof rainjacket, along with zip-off nylon hiking pants and heavy hiking boots – but our spirits were definitely a bit deflated by the prospect of a long wet day ahead. Fortunately we fell on the high end of the scale in terms of preparedness in comparison to many of our fellow Goodwood spectators. I couldn’t believe how many women I saw dressed in white summer suits and dresses, high heels, sandals, or ballet flats…what were they thinking??

For £10 we bought a program and miniature radio (which allows you to listen to the continual broadcast from the famous “Hill Climb” no matter where you are on the grounds) and started the long trek to the show grounds. As we approached the entrance we passed the assembly area at the base of the Hill Climb, which was crammed with specimens of just about every supercar known to man…Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Maseratis, a Bugatti Veyron, the new Skyline GTR in disguise, a Tesla electric sportscar, the new Audi R8…it was a veritable sea of automotive testosterone (photo, right). We arrived at the main entrance around 8:30 and headed for the Hill Climb track, a 1.16-mile paved course that starts near Goodwood House and ends somewhere in the woods above. We found a good spot along the hay bales lining the course with a view of about 200 yards of the track…and stood there for nearly four hours. In the rain. Well, it did stop for about ten minutes around mid-morning.

The Hill Climb runs throughout the day and the cars are divided into various classes by year and type. After the parade of supercars, we watched almost all of the classes come through...hundreds of cars (and motorcycles too) from every epoch of racing history: Grand Prix, Le Mans, CanAm, Indy, rally, touring, F1...they all made a good show, revving engines and sending up great plumes of spray as they whizzed by. We saw one of six "Blitzen Benz", which achieved 140 mph at Daytona in 1911, becoming the fastest car in the world...the one-of-a-kind 1923 Thomas Special "Babs", recovered and rebuilt after being buried at Pendine Sands along with the remains of Land Speed Record breaker Parry Thomas after his tragic 171-mph crash in 1927 (photo, above)...a 1956 Jaguar D-Type "Long-Nose" Le Mans car driven by British F1 driver David Coulthard...the 1985 Audi Quattro S1 driven to victory in the Pike's Peak Hill Climb by Michele Mouton, the first woman and foreigner to do so and the only woman to ever win a World Rallye Championship event. Louis Hamilton, native son and current Formula 1 darling, ran the course twice in the 2006 McLaren Mercedes F1 car, stopping right in front of us to wave to the crowd. Some American stock cars even made an appearance, including the "High-Risk" custom-built Corvette (photo, right) and "Hurst Hemi Under Glass" Plymouth Barracuda, both "wheelie cars" capable of prolonged forward motion on their rear wheels.

Around noon the Red Arrows (the Royal Air Force stunt team) performed a show, which was quite spectacular, given that they had to fly below the clouds (photo, right). Unfortunately it was difficult to watch the planes and the cars at the same time. I must have taken 500 pictures over the course of those four hours, half of which were out of focus due to the rain. At some point the index finger of my left hand went completely numb, which would have been funny except that I lost all feeling in my finger for about fifteen minutes and it turned a rather odd shade of yellow. I’ve always had bad circulation in my fingers, but this was really bizarre. To make matters worse, John refused to take my agony seriously. Finally, after much anxious rubbing and flexing and freaking out on my part, my frozen finger returned to a near-normal state. (Postscript: John insisted that I share the story of my “dead” finger with friends while we were having dinner at the Weindorf in Stuttgart. Granted, I had a little wine in me. That night I dreamed that I was at a hospital and they were going to amputate my finger as a preventative measure. I held my finger up and flexed it frantically, saying, “I don’t want you to cut it off! See? It’s working fine now!”)

We eventually decided to check out the sprawling paddock area (BMW paddock, right), where you can get up close and personal with the cars and drivers. This is one of the features for which Goodwood is famous; in a typical race setting most of the fans never get anywhere near the paddock. We bought cups of hot chocolate to warm up and wandered around, listening to the revving engines and checking out the many rare pieces of machinery on display. We noticed quite a few cars did not go out on the track today, perhaps due to the rain, including what looked to be one of this year’s winning Audi Le Mans cars.

We stopped further up the Hill Climb to watch some more historic cars pass, then made our way up a long muddy slog of a hill (photo, right) to the Forest Rally track. Along the way we passed an off-road course where people were paying £30 to go for a ride in Bowler Wildcat racing SUVs. Mud was flying everywhere and I’m sure they were having a rollicking good time, but £30 seemed like a major rip-off for one lap. We were passed by tractors pulling trailers full of spectators, but we toughed it out in the mud. They added a new jump to the rally course this year, so we followed the signs along a muddy trail through the woods, leaving the crowds far behind. We eventually found the jump and camped out under our umbrellas to watch for a while. The cars (both modern and historic rally cars) weren’t getting as much speed due to the muddy conditions, but a few got some pretty good air. There were several WRC drivers in attendance, familiar to us from last year’s Rallye Deutschland, including British Ford Stobart driver Matthew Wilson and Australian Subaru driver Chris Atkinson (photo, right). The announcer reported that the times were much slower than usual due to the “particularly slippery” and “fluid” conditions (understatement of the year). On our way back we saw several rally cars spinning and sliding through the mud. I managed to get a few good shots, but it meant running up to the fence and snatching a picture, then running away again to avoid the roostertail of muddy spray.

On our way back down to the main showground, we bought a couple of cheeseburgers for a whopping £12 (That’s $24! For two burgers!) and made the mistake of adding a dollop of mustard to our buns. I don’t know where the English get their ideas about mustard, but this stuff was like eating fire! I saw one guy put a hearty portion on his burger, take a bite, and nearly choke before smearing it all off onto his plate, so apparently we weren’t the only ones to be taken by surprise.

There was more to see of the show, including lots of exhibits and shops near the paddock area, but our pants were starting to soak through and, let’s face it, we were pretty cold and miserable by this point. Plus we had a bit of a drive ahead of us to get to Salisbury, our destination for the night. Getting ourselves into the car without smearing mud everywhere took quite some doing; we didn’t really want to make a mess of the car only a day into our trip. We both managed to get our boots off and change into dry pants. My boots had completely soaked through so I turned the heat on full blast and put my frigid toes over the vents. We later heard that today's was the worst weather they had experienced in the 14-year history of the show.

It took us about ninety minutes to drive to the Cricketfield House Hotel on the outskirts of Salisbury. We stopped for gas a short ways down the road and found the hotel without too much trouble, although this time we had to rely more on Susie than on the directions I had printed off the hotel website, which didn’t make any sense at all. A cheerful older gentleman checked us in and helped us to our room – a “cottage style” place on the second floor, done in pretty floral prints with a springy bed, nice clean bathroom with tiny stand-up shower, and a view into the back garden. We decided to crash in our room and snacked on the leftovers from our breakfast rather than going into town for dinner. We unpacked everything we had brought with us today, washed out our mud-soaked pants in the shower and hung everything up to dry. Before turning in for the night, we watched a really interesting BBC program about the southern coast of Wales – which, naturally, was one of the places we would not be hitting on this trip.

23 June: Whatever You Do, Don't Go to Hastings

Happy Birthday to me! Yup, I turned 32 at precisely 1:06 this afternoon. I think it rather fitting that I celebrate my birthday by stepping onto British soil for the first time in my life – something I have looked forward to for at least a couple of decades…ever since I read the epic Arthurian tale The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley and instantly fell in love with all things Medieval.

We were up at 6:30 a.m. and enjoyed the nice breakfast buffet (7 Euro each, but not a bad deal, with croissants, ham, cheese, yogurt, juice, and coffee). We packed up and checked out at 7:45 a.m., wading through a huge tour group of Americans and Brits who were waiting to board their bus. It was pouring rain again, but we made good time to Calais, arriving in almost exactly four hours, just as I had estimated. We stopped for gas about 100 km from Calais, then had to follow a crazy detour for the entrance to the EuroTunnel which required going way past the off-ramp, which was closed, and doubling back on the autoroute for several kilometers.

We finally approached the imposing line of gates but had to wait forever in what is supposed to be the efficient self-check-in line (for passengers with pre-purchased tickets) because someone in front of us was having trouble with the machine. When we finally got our turn, it was a breeze – just put in your credit card to identify your reservation, confirm your info, grab the paper hanger to put on your rearview mirror, and off you go! We were scheduled for the 13:50 train but we were early and were able to get on the 13:20 train for no extra charge. We followed the signs, expecting to see what they call the “terminal building” where we could stop and use the restroom, but instead found ourselves winding through a maze of lanes that ended at the passport control booth. Apparently there is now officially a little chunk of English land in France and vice versa, so they can handle border security before you actually get on the train. We drove up to a window on the passenger side and I handed our passports to the British immigration officer. He asked me how long we would be in the U.K. and I said two weeks. Then he asked where we live, and I said, “Well, right now we live in Stuttgart.” He didn’t bat an eye but said, in that quintessentially British way, “And why is that?” as if he couldn’t imagine why a couple of Americans would possibly want to live in Germany. I almost laughed but managed to say with a straight face, “My husband here works for DaimlerChrysler.” Apparently that was an acceptable explanation, as he waved us through.

We found ourselves heading through another maze of lanes, and before we knew it we were in the line to get onto the train. So much for our potty break! We drove down a long ramp towards the train (photo, right), which looked a bit like a long silver double-decker bus, except with smaller windows, being pulled by a high-speed train locomotive. The platform is exactly even with the bottom level of the train, so you literally drive right on board. We didn’t see how you drive onto the upper level, as they weren’t loading cars on top; apparently the EuroTunnel has not been as popular as anticipated (probably because it’s so darn expensive!) and the trains are rarely, if ever, full. We drove forward through several compartments before coming to a stop. Each compartment holds three or four cars front to back. You are instructed to put on your parking brake, and standing between cars while the train is underway is forbidden, in the unlikely event that a car rolls or the train comes to a screeching halt. A woman came through and shut a set of metal doors that roll down between the carriages. I wanted to get some stuff out of the trunk for our lunch but we started moving before I had the chance, so we just sat back to enjoy the ride.

The 30-minute trip went by in a flash and, aside from being much bumpier than I expected, was quite uneventful. You can’t see a thing out the windows and you never even get a glimpse of the Channel because the stations on either end are quite a ways inland. (We met some Americans in Edinburgh who were talking about going from London to Calais just to say they had been on the EuroTunnel. John told them they would be better off saving their money, driving their car into their garage, closing the door, having a couple of people shake the car from side to side for half an hour, then driving out.)

John had volunteered to be the first guinea pig to drive on the wrong side of the road. (Honestly he just didn’t want to navigate, because he gets carsick when he has to read maps.) As we set out onto the motorway we passed a little sign that reminded us to drive on the left, fahren links in German. It was still quite early in the afternoon so we decided to take the scenic route along the southern coast of England rather than heading towards London on the motorway and then cutting south as our directions told us to do. It was a terribly odd feeling for everything to be backwards – on and off ramps switched, the left lane being the fast lane, etc. We headed through lush farmland and pastures filled with fluffy white sheep. (Oh the sheep! Little did we know how many sheep we were going to see on this trip.) The road was narrow and twisty, sometimes flanked on either side by high hedge rows, occasionally making ninety-degree turns as we skirted a field or pasture. John was happy. We drove through the picturesque towns of Rye and Wichelsea, full of quaint stone cottages and tiny gardens overflowing with early summer blooms.

We decided to stop at William the Conqueror’s castle at Hastings. We found the town to be much as it is described in Fodor’s – a “run-down resort town” with a rather depressing stretch of gravelly beach and a long row of tacky souvenir shops and greasy restaurants along the waterfront. We had a little trouble figuring out where to park and wound our way through the old town for ten minutes before making it back to the shore and a big public carpark. Unfortunately the parking machine only took change and all we had were paper pound notes that I had gotten at Commerzbank in Stuttgart, so I ran across the street to break a bill by buying a crappy $3 ice cream cone. I came back and put £3 ($6) in the machine for three hours of parking. (I would grow to despise the pre-paid parking lots in England, as you have to guess beforehand how long you think you will be gone.) We ate our lunch of crackers and cheese at a picnic table on the beach, but it was incredibly windy so it was hard to enjoy the sunny weather. Then we headed out in search of a route up to the castle, which looked to be no more than a smattering of ruined walls perched on a rocky cliff overlooking the town (photo, right).

We found “Castle Hill Road,” which sounded promising, but there were no signs to speak of for the castle until we were almost at the top of the hill. Then we found the narrow dirt track to the castle completely blocked by service vehicles, so we went around the long way and came out on an open field on top of the cliff with a view out over Hastings (photo, right) and the castle ruins. Getting into the castle itself (or what little remains of it) would have cost us $15 so we turned back and just looked at the ruins from afar. We couldn't believe how run-down the entire site was - this was William the Conqueror's fortress for goodness' sake! I hardly expected a reconstructed castle, but the whole place was dingy and littered with trash. From our vantage point we could see a large amusement complex along the shore, complete with go-kart track, trampolines, mini-golf course, and carnival rides. We followed a sign leading back down the hill to the old town, only to find ourselves walking down a narrow concrete staircase that stank of urine and rotting garbage. We saw the word “poopie” graffitied in green letters on the wall, which pretty much described our impression of Hastings. At the bottom we came across a guy stumbling up the stairs who insisted that he had not had too much to drink, then we walked through a dark, unpleasant passageway that emptied us out on a street lined with video game parlors and a casino. It was all so gross; we just wanted to get out of there.

We made our way back to the car park and went out to sit on the pebbly beach for a little while. It was so windy that we could feel the sea spray on our faces even from fifty feet away. Around 3:45, having used less than two hours of our parking allotment, we got back in the car and set the navi for Lancing, a small college town near Chichester. Our hotel, the Sussex Pad (which I had found with great difficulty because all of the hotels in the vicinity of the Goodwood Festival of Speed were apparently booked months ago) was the only hotel listed in the navi for Lancing. We plugged in the address and happily left Hastings behind.

Take it from us: if you are ever in southeastern England, you can give Hastings a pass.

It was about an hour’s drive through more rolling green countryside, skirting Brighton, to Lancing. I spotted the Sussex Pad Hotel just off to the right side of the A27 and we had no trouble getting there. John had done really well so far – he only started drifting over to the curb once! The Sussex Pad is a perfectly acceptable two-star hotel; We checked in and found our room, the “Moet Chandon” (all the rooms are named after Champagnes) to be traditionally and comfortably furnished, with an aging but serviceable bathroom. We hung out for a while, watching episodes of “The Weakest Link” and England’s very popular “Quiz Show” on the telly.

We went down to dinner at about 7:45 and were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the hotel's dining room and its menu. It was my birthday, after all, so we decided to celebrate. For starters, John had Scottish smoked salmon and I had a crab salad with crème frâiche, cucumber, and walnut dressing. Then we both had langoustine ravioli with steamed spinach and a pepper sauce. For dessert, John had chocolate bread pudding with molten banana filling and malt ice cream and I had a trio of crème brulées (ginger, orange, and pistachio). Everything was uniformly tasty. After dinner we settled our hotel bill, since we would be leaving early in the morning, then headed out the door intending to take a short walk. A guy who had been sitting at the bar saw us leaving and asked if we needed anything. We told him we thought we would walk to the nearby Lancing College chapel but he said the path was closed at night. He pointed out a mown trail that we could take behind the hotel to get a nice view of the chapel. The path took us past the hotel’s helicopter landing pad (there was even a helicopter parked there, probably some rich car aficionado attending tomorrow’s show) and, at the top of a grassy hill, the promised view of the elegant Gothic chapel, all lit up against the night sky, was quite stunning.

We have a big day tomorrow: the much-anticipated Race Day at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, one of the most famous car shows in the world.

22 June: Off on Our Grand Tour of Britain

Aack! Where did the week go? I drove Mom to Frankfurt on Monday morning; it was a rather rushed goodbye since we had just gotten back from Rome the night before. Other than a Wednesday afternoon German lesson with Stefanie, I spent the last four days running around the house like a banshee trying to get everything in order for our two-week jaunt through t Britian. All I can say is, we’re lucky to be traveling in our E-Class, which has the largest trunk I’ve ever seen (I swear you could fit several full-sized adults in there), because when I pack in a hurry I tend to over-pack. Nevertheless, I still had a huge list of things to do when our departure date finally arrived.

I drove John to work this morning because his office is going on an outing today to visit the Technik Museum in Speyer. He found out about this trip a few weeks ago, which put a wrench in our departure plans since he was originally going to come home early so we could drive to Metz this evening, giving us a jump-start on the long trek to England. We agreed that it was important for him to go on the office field trip because it’s supposed to be one of those “morale-boosting” outings, so we decided that I would drive to Speyer (about 90 minutes north of Stuttgart) and pick him up in the later afternoon, then we would continue on our way to Metz. All he would miss would be the final group dinner at the end of the day. Of course this meant that John had to be completely packed last night and it was up to me to get everything loaded in the car and get myself out of the house on time to pick him up. Knowing my track record on leaving for anything on time, all I can do is chuckle.

After taking John to work I came home, walked the dog, vacuumed, did my Kehr Woche sweeping duties, drove Cody out to the Tierhotel, drove home, got on the computer to write a few emails and send our itinerary to our parents, then took Scotty to the Katzenpension. I got there at about 12:15 (only fifteen minutes late!), just as another couple was arriving. I think they were just there to check out the place because they didn’t have a cat with them and didn’t pick one up. Frau Stäbler invited me in and we went upstairs, where I filled out a registration form (I only had to look up a couple of words – including the one for “gender”!), while a very friendly black-and-white kitty hopped up on the table and kept walking all over my paperwork and butting himself up against my arm, begging to be petted. Then Frau Stäbler ushered me into one of the smaller rooms and left me there for a couple of minutes while she showed the other people out. She came back and seemed surprised that I hadn’t let Scotty out of his carrier yet. I let him out while she extricated a cat from one of the holes in the cat tree and put him in the other room. Scotty had been growling in his carrier and continued to do so as he wandered around checking out his new territory. He jumped into one of the holes in the cat tree and sat in there and growled some more. We left him and I just had to hope for the best. Frau Stäbler gave him some of the food I had brought, assured me that Scotty would be fine, and showed me out the door.

I got back to the house at 1:00 and still had a long list of stuff to do…empty the dishwasher, empty the fridge, update our finances, write a thank you note to Micato (they recently sent me a gorgeous book about Africa in gratitude for my Elephant Express blog), pack the cooler, take the trash out, fold the laundry hanging in the basement, and of course finish packing my own suitcase! John called at 2:15 to say they had arrived at the Technik Museum. I told him that I thought I would be ready to leave in twenty minutes, but I didn’t actually start up the car until nearly an hour later.

If you had told me two years ago that I would willingly hop in a car and drive alone to a strange city in a foreign country to pick up my husband at a museum that I had never been to before, I probably would have laughed in your face. But frankly, armed with our trusty navi Susie, a printout of the directions from the museum website, and my cell phone, I felt pretty confident. Unfortunately I ran into bad traffic from the start, even though I avoided the construction on the A8 by taking the A81-to-A6 route via Heilbronn. I drove in heavy traffic all the way to Speyer, so I kept in touch with John to keep him updated on my progress. It was raining off and on the whole way, and just as I arrived at the museum it started to sprinkle. I found John (who was very happy to see me before he got soaked) at the museum entrance without any trouble. On the way out of town we drove right past the famous Speyer Dom, so at least I can say I’ve seen it from the outside.

We headed on towards Metz, making one brief detour to find a Shell station before leaving Germany (so we could charge 80 Euro of gas to Mercedes and head into France with a full tank). It took us about two hours to get to our hotel in Metz. There were some serious rain squalls en route and incredibly dramatic clouds. We accidentally followed Susie’s instructions instead of paying attention to my directions from the hotel website, so we took the “scenic” route right through the middle of Metz. Let’s just say Susie will usually get you where you want to go, but she isn’t the brightest bulb in the pack when it comes to deciding which is better: busy surface streets at rush hour or the autoroute that circles ‘round the city.

We checked in at the Hotel Ibis Metz Nord with a nice lady who made my day by complimenting me on my French. Our room was very spartan and a bit lacking in the towel department, but for 51 Euro, you can hardly expect luxury and it was exactly what we needed for a quick overnight. We had dinner in the nearly empty hotel restaurant. I had a perfectly decent entrecôte et frites (steak and fries) and a glass of Bordeaux and John had a Salade Nicoise and a glass of Chardonnay. We turned in early, planning to get off to an early start for Calais and the EuroTunnel.

17 June: Arrivederci, Bella Roma!

We rolled out of bed around 8:15, had breakfast, and went out to get some cash at the ATM to pay our hotel bill. I wanted to take a final look at the art vendors in Piazza Navona but didn’t see anything that called to me. Paolo was there again so we went over to say hi; Mom got his card because she wanted to remember his name. We went back to the hotel to check out and had a nice chat with one of the men who works at the front desk. We suggested that our room could use a mirror over the dressing table; this would have made it easier for us both to get ready to go out. We also mentioned that Mom could have used some help with her suitcase when we arrived. We were very friendly and polite about both issues and the man was really nice about it, apologizing for the suitcase oversight and telling us that he would pass the mirror suggestion on to the owners. I told him that I would give them a glowing review on Trip Advisor.

We left our luggage at the hotel and decided to spend our morning back at the bookstore near Largo di Torre Argentina, looking for books about Roman history, but finally decided to do some more research before buying anything. Mom bought a couple of books for the flight home, including one about expats living in Rome.

We walked over to Giolitti, which Elizabeth had told us was the best gelateria in Rome, and splurged on four flavors each. (Actually we bought medium-sized cups only to discover that they were pathetically small; we went back to the cashier and upgraded to the large size!) Mom had green melon, pink grapefruit, raspberry, and lemon and I had pink grapefruit, cantaloupe, peach, and limoncello. It was refreshing and delicious; pink grapefruit wins the prize!

I bought my requisite tacky Rome magnet near the Pantheon. For the last time, we passed the huge, bowl-shaped fountain that had been our guiding landmark every night on our way back to our hotel. We retrieved our luggage from the reception and rearranged our things while waiting for our driver to arrive. He came promptly at 2 p.m. and drove us to the airport in style in a silver Mercedes E-Class. We took a different route out of the city than before, passing right in front of St. Peter’s. We grabbed a quick snack at the airport and bought some pasta, porcini, salami, and parmesan as a treat for John before boarding our flight home to Stuttgart.

I feel so incredibly lucky to have seen Rome twice in one year. My previous two visits have been in December, so I was thrilled to see Rome in the summertime as I have often imagined it: warm-hued stucco baking in the hot sun under brilliant blue skies, ancient stone walls overflowing with brilliant fuschia bouganvilla vines, grand piazzas crammed with artists and performers, long warm nights spent basking in the golden glow of dancing fountains…it was everything I had imagined, and more. I am not a lover of big cities, but I find Rome’s vivid mix of ancient history and modern vibrancy totally, completely intoxicating. I am in love with this city, and I will be back!

16 June: Underground Rome

We were up at 7:30 and out the door by 9:30 to make sure we arrived on time at our Context: Rome tour meeting point near the Spanish Steps. (We never actually got to the Spanish Steps on this trip, but since the frenetic Piazza di Spagna area with its high-end designer boutiques and throngs of tourists is perhaps my least-favorite area of Rome, we were not overly disappointed.) Before leaving the hotel I made arrangements for our transportation back to the airport tomorrow afternoon. I think this was the sixth staff member I had spoken to at Residenza Canali and her English was not as strong as the rest, so I was a little nervous about whether we had communicated our departure time adequately. We decided to confirm again when we returned in the evening, just to be on the safe side.

I had surprised Mom with tickets for Context: Rome’s “Underground Rome: The Hidden City” tour for her birthday. I have never booked a tour for anything in my life, so I did this with some trepidation, but I read great reviews of Context: Rome and I was really hoping that we would get to see some unusual places that the ordinary tourist wouldn’t normally happen upon. Originally I was planning to book the "Layers of Rome" tour that included the Domus Aurea, Nero’s palace, but unfortunately this site has been closed to the public once again and the tour was taken off of Context’s schedule a couple of months ago. Thus I booked “The Hidden City” instead, which sounded interesting – including a visit to an ancient Roman apartment building.

We arrived at the meeting point in front of the church of San Lorenzo in Lucina about ten minutes early. Our guide, Elizabeth, an Austrian expert in Classical history married to an Italian man, arrived a few minutes later. We found her to be friendly and well-informed, and she spoke the most wonderful Austrian-and-Italian-accented English. We were joined by another mother-daughter duo and a mother and her teenage son, Jake (whom I liked immediately because he used his keychain flashlight to look into every nook and cranny). One of the things I like about Context is that they limit their groups to six people, so you don’t feel like you are part of some obnoxious horde following a guide yelling at the top of their lungs (or worse, using a loudspeaker) just to be heard.

With our group assembled, we entered San Lorenzo in Lucina, walked to the back of the church, down a corridor to a room displaying pottery and glass artifacts found at the site, and paid a 2 Euro donation to gain entry to the extensive ruins beneath the church. We entered via a short flight of stairs leading through a stone archway and found ourselves in a veritable maze of rooms. First we looked down into a dug-out pit where we could see the painted wall tiles from a 2^nd-century building. Nearby, two rooms had been excavated to reveal extensive black-and-white mosaic tile floors (see photo). Several long corridors connected a series of rooms that had once constituted a 4^th-century apartment building. We also visited a large domed room that was the site of the original 5^th-century basilica, complete with a stone foundation where the ceremonial bath had stood. Elizabeth pointed out where columns and chunks of stone had been reused to make the foundation of the modern church. Jake used his flashlight to peer through a chink in the wall into an unexcavated room full of rubble (we joked that it looked to contain “ancient Roman trash”). There were signs of ongoing archaeological work everywhere – tags hanging off stones in the walls, crates crammed with ceramic shards – but Elizabeth told us that many Roman excavation projects are plagued by lack of funds, so the work usually happens in fits and starts, with long gaps in between.

Back outside, Elizabeth used a map to show us that we were standing on what used to be the broad plain of the Campus Martius, where the ancient Romans grazed cattle and carried out military drills. Elizabeth pointed out the original location of the Ara Pacis, the Arch of Peace, built by Augustus to commemorate his victories in Gaul and Hispania (John and I visited the reconstructed, intricately carved marble arch in its new, modern museum back in December) and, nearby, the spot where a towering Egyptian obelisk once stood. August had the obelisk erected as the focal point of a massive sundial; each year on his birthday, September 23^rd (the fall equinox), the shadow of the obelisk would cut directly through the Ara Pacis, demonstrating that Augustus was clearly destined to be the bringer of peace to Rome. The obelisk was rediscovered after many centuries and now stands in front of the Palazzo Montecitorio, the seat of the Italian Chamber of Deputies.

Near the Pantheon we stopped to look at the crumbling remains of an immense, curved brick wall that was once part of the Baths of Agrippa. Over the centuries, houses have been built over, around, and literally through this ancient structure. I assume the interior rooms of those houses have curious curving walls, following the lines of the original building, although the brick has probably long since been plastered over.

Our next stop was the Crypta Balbi museum, which opened in 2000 as the newest addition to the National Museum of Rome. The site was discovered during construction work in 1981 and the new museum houses the remains of a crypta, an enclosed portico and large rectangular courtyard, which stood behind the stage of the Theater of Lucius Cornelius Balbus (one of Augustus’ generals). It was the smallest of three theaters in the vicinity, the others being the Theater of Pompey and the Theater of Marcellus. In Augustus’ time, the crypta was a place to relax and socialize during intermissions and between theater productions. Over the centuries, the theater and adjoining crypta fell into ruin, to be replaced by markets, warehouses, churches, homes, shops, and factories. Today it is very difficult to visualize the scale of the ancient Roman structures, but the museum does an excellent job of bringing the past to life through a series of schematics that show the theater in its heyday, and then how the site likely decayed and evolved over the ensuing centuries.

We had an 11:45 appointment to descend underground into the vast ruins beneath the modern museum. Elizabeth first showed us a section of exposed wall in which you can see fragments of the orginal marble-faced portico topped by centuries of medieval construction, including bits of Renaissance-era clay drain pipes – in all, more than twenty centuries of Roman history written in the stones. As we continued deeper underground, we passed through various chambers cluttered with chunks of columns and even the cobbles of an ancient Roman road.

At noon we had the unique opportunity to visit an active archaeological site hidden behind the museum. Elizabeth explained that we were lucky to be in the right place at the right time, as this was not part of the normal tour. We exited the museum via a back door and stepped out into an open area surrounded on all sides by a jumble of houses and the curious cantilevered tower of Santa Caterina dei Funari. We traversed the site on a covered metal walkway, peering down into various excavation pits, and descended a flight of stairs to enter the exedra, a large half-moon shaped, domed structure that stood at the opposite end of the portico from the theater (see photo, right). This particular structure was later turned into a public bathhouse, and a few sections of the curved bank of toilets have been reconstructed. We descended further into the rooms of an ancient villa, complete with marble and mosaic tile floors and a few surviving columns. At the end of a stone passage we found a temple to Mithras, an early-Christian era religious cult. The experience was spell-binding and, while the whole tour was worthwhile, this “behind the scenes” visit was the icing on the cake!

We left the Crypta Balbi and walked across the street to Largo di Torre Argentina, where Elizabeth explained the context of the four Republican-era temples and pointed out the area where Julius Caesar is believed to have been assassinated (outside the Theater of Pompey, the ruins of which are under buildings across the street). Mussolini had the Argentina ruins preserved, the story goes, because he wanted to emulate Augustus as the new “bringer of peace” to Rome.

At this point our tour came to an end. We thanked Elizabeth profusely, then Mom and I went across the street to a large bookstore that Elizabeth had recommended, where we each bought a copy of a book on ancient Roman monuments with reconstruction overlays (bigger and better than the small one I had purchased at the Colosseum).

It was now about 1:00 and we decided to wander back through the Jewish Ghetto (photo, right), where we had lunch at Da Giggetto, right next to the Porto d’Ottavia. We ate outside under an umbrella and had a fabulous meal despite the fact that it was oppressively hot and breezeless. We shared a half-liter of white wine and a simple caprese salad – a huge ball of mozzarella and juicy slices of tomato, just about perfect with a drizzle of olive oil and a dusting of black pepper. I had the house special cannelloni (spicy pork filling, delicious tomato sauce and rich béchamel) and Mom had the classic spaghetti alla carbonara (raw egg, pancetta, and parmesan); both were excellent. Our waiter was very friendly and funny – he seemed to know exactly what we were going to order before we ordered it, and when I asked him to take a picture of us with Mom’s camera, he turned it around and snapped a picture of himself first!

After lunch we crossed the Ponte Fabricio for the second time (beautifully framed by green leaves in the afternoon sun) back to Tiber Island, where we stopped for a few minutes to watch a group of Italians arriving for a wedding at the church of San Bartolomeo all’Isola. It was a scene straight out of a movie – the women dressed to the nines in chic black or navy with strappy stiletto-heeled sandals, the men in black suits driving expensive Italian and German sedans, and the children in frilly white dresses and patent-leather shoes.

We meandered our way back to Trastevere, which was tranquil and quiet, apparently enjoying an afternoon siesta. We stopped to take pictures of a particularly lovely tangerine-colored villa (right), whereupon not one but two older gentlemen stopped to smile and jabber at us in Italian. We had no idea what they were saying but they seemed to be pleased that we were taking a picture of this particular building. We smiled back and I took a picture of the plaque mounted on the building to try to translate later, assuming it meant something important happened there. (Postscript: Well, the plaque just seems to prohibit the throwing of something – rubbish? – in the street, so this little mystery remains unsolved!)

A little further down the street, two young men came around the corner carrying those huge super-soaker squirt guns that kids like to play with on hot summer days. We immediately held our arms out and I shouted, “Prego!” whereupon the men grinned and cheerfully obliged by spraying us with water.

We found the bead shop that we had visited on Friday; Mom had told the proprietor that we would come back but I’m sure he didn’t believe us. Mom bought some flower beads that she was coveting and I found some things I needed to finish my necklaces. The nice man gave me some crimp beads for free (carefully laying them on a bit of tape so I wouldn't lose them) and asked me about my photography (since I had my Canon digital SLR around my neck). On our way back we stopped for gelato in Piazza di Santa Maria in Trastevere because we realized that we had been in Rome for three sweltering days without a single gelato! I had coffee and dark chocolate and Mom had lemon and sour cherry. We sat at a table inside (the outside tables were full and it was refreshingly cool inside) and watched as yet another wedding party came tumbling out of the church across the square; half of the guests then seemed to descend on our gelateria! Best of all, we were served real ice water with our gelato and got to use the restroom.

We retraced our steps back to Tiber Island and the Ghetto and arrived back at our hotel with an entire hour to clean up before our dinner reservation at Il Bacaro. I dressed up for the occasion in my recently purchased black-and-white cotton sundress (all the rage in Rome). We were the first guests to be seated outside under the lovely vine-covered arbor. We perused the refreshingly innovative menu and ordered an excellent Pinot Grigio riserva. Mom had smoked goose carpaccio with paper-thin slices of white peach drizzled with olive oil, followed by veal cutlets with an incredible pink grapefruit sauce, and pistachio ice cream with strawberry sauce for dessert. We decided hers was the prize-winning meal of the whole trip – everything was perfectly fresh, gorgeous, and delicious. My meal started out on a bright note with a warm calamari salad with delicate lemon-mint pesto. I thought I would be healthy and ordered the swordfish roulades with shrimp, zucchini and radicchio in a soy-balsamic glaze, but the fish was downright fishy and too salty. I came very close to complaining, but for whatever reason decided to grin and bear it. My dessert redeemed my entrée (what was that about being healthy?) – rich chocolate mousse with even richer chocolate sauce, which was absolutely heavenly! Our three-course meal, including a 25 Euro bottle of wine, came to a very reasonable 100 Euro. Despite my disappointing entrée, I would highly recommend this place.

We thought we might actually get back to our hotel a little early for once (it was about 9:30) but we ended up delving into a lengthy conversation with the couple sitting next to us – an Irish woman and French man. We traded stories about Rome and our other travel experiences for a good half-hour before finally tearing ourselves away. I dragged Mom to the Trevi Fountain, which was of course totally mobbed with tourists from across the globe. We took some pictures and tossed a 1 Euro coin into the fountain together (assuring our return to the Eternal City) and then walked slowly back to the hotel, savoring every moment of our last night in Rome.

15 June: Two Girls Loose in Ancient Rome

We got off to a slow start after our late night out on the town, but hey, this is our vacation and we get to decide when to get going in the morning! Ancient Rome was on the day’s agenda, but once again we got a little sidetracked not five minutes from our hotel – this time by the artists in Piazza Navona. We were particularly attracted to a display of large-scale landscape paintings, the work of a charismatic beret-wearing gentleman by the name of Paolo who immediately engaged us in conversation and, well, to be honest, charmed the living daylights out of us. He asked where we were from, and once he heard I was living in Stuttgart, he told me his father and his wife were both German, and that he had some of his paintings on exhibit in a gallery in Speyer. We joked about last year’s famous Italy-Germany World Cup football game and, since I told him we were in Germany for John’s job, discussed the pros and cons of German and Italian automobiles. Meanwhile we were continuing to peruse Paolo’s lovely paintings of the Italian countryside. I would have bought one but John and I like to purchase our artwork together. Mom became enamoured with a Tuscan vineyard scene and eventually decided to buy it (Paolo knocked the price down from 250 to 150 Euro, which, for a large oil painting, seemed like a reasonable deal). We walked to a nearby ATM to withdraw the necessary cash, at which point Mom admitted that she thought Paolo might be fooling us with the whole German story, but I heard him mutter in German when he was flipping through his paintings and I found it hard to believe that he had made the whole thing up on the spot.

After completing our purchase and taking pictures with Paolo, we returned to our hotel to deposit the painting (thanking our lucky stars once again for the convenience of our location), then continued on our slow journey towards the Roman Forum. We stopped at Piazza della Rotonda again so Mom could visit the Pantheon. Half of it was closed off at Christmastime, but it was now all opened up inside, so I was able to get some better photographs of the interior. We stopped at the tomb of Raphael and marveled at the sheer massiveness of the dome and original bronze doors.

We continued on down Via del Corso to Piazza Venezia and the great “wedding cake” monument to Victor Emmanuel, which was now mostly covered up with unsightly scaffolding. We wanted to tour Trajan’s Markets but discovered that they had closed at 1:00, a mere ten minutes before we arrived. We had to make do with the view of the ancient markets from the street above, then walked slowly down Via dei Fori Imperiali past the Forum of Augustus to the entrance to the Roman Forum itself. I had printed off a lengthy walking tour from the Fodor’s internet forum and we used it and my DK Eyewitness guidebook as we joined the throngs of tourists moving slowly through the ruins. I won’t go into detail here about the history of the many structures in the Forum, since I covered all of that in my journal back in December, but suffice it to say that it was as captivating as ever, despite the unrelenting heat. We enjoyed seeing the poppies and other wildflowers blooming amidst the ruins (a new experience for me since my two previous visits were in wintertime). A team of archaeologists was working on a dig in the heart of the Forum – the first time I have ever seen active work going on there – and we felt sorry for them having to slave away in the miserable heat.

Mom took a rest on a chunk of marble column near the Arch of Titus while I went to buy our tickets to the Palatine Hill and Colosseum, then we decided we had better grab lunch somewhere before continuing our tour. The place near the Forum recommended in Mom’s cookbook was closed, so out of desperation we ended up spending a small fortune at a place right across from the Forum (two unexciting salads of mixed greens, tomatoes, ham, mozzarella, and canned black olives, two Diet Cokes and a bottle of water set us back 43 Euro).

Next we took a quick tour of the Colosseum, bypassing the long line with our pre-purchased tickets. I actually find this amazing structure most impressive from the outside, but I knew Mom would want to see the interior. I bought a small book at the bookshop that depicts all of the major ancient Roman monuments with clear plastic overlays showing what they looked like in their heyday. We then had exactly one hour to tour Palatine Hill before closing time; once again it was wonderful to wander amidst the ruins after most of the crowds had left for the day.

I am always surprised by how few people make the short hike up to the Palatine – not only do you get the most spectacular view of the Roman Forum from the heights, but the ruins of the palaces of Augustus and Septimius Severus are absolutely mind-boggling. We asked a group of young Italians to take our picture looking out over the Forum and then made our way to the other side of the hill to see the palace ruins and look down on the green lawn of the great Circo Massimo. We were still admiring the sunken stadium next to Domus Augustana when we first spotted the guards shooing people towards the exit. (This was total déjà vu for me because when I first visited Rome with my brother Erik nearly 15 years ago, we also got chased down by the guards!) Mom and I were quite annoyed because it was a full fifteen minutes before closing time, but the guards were watching us like hawks and started yelling at us when all we wanted was to take a few pictures of the stadium. A group of guards literally escorted us all the way to the exit while we gave them nasty looks; it was quite amusing! Sadly I didn’t get a chance to show Mom the very cool Cryptoporticus, the long tunnel built by Nero to connect his Domus Aurea with the Palatine palaces, but we managed to see most of the other major Palatine sites.

After exiting the Forum, we walked the full length of Circo Massimo (this has become a sort of ritual for me on my trips to Rome). Mom rested on a bench while I ran across to the opposite side to get an overview shot of Palatine Hill. Lots of people were out for an evening jog, following in the footsteps of countless ancient athletes. A photo shoot was taking place in the middle of the stadium; a guy dressed as a chef was balancing an enormous stack of plates in one hand and we watched for a while to see if he would drop them (he didn’t). We continued down the quiet streets of the Aventine district, drinking from yet another public fountain, passing the four-sided Arch of Janus and the once-bombed church of San Giorgio in Velabro, then heading towards Capitoline Hill. We stopped briefly to admire the view down into the Forum – now closed for the night and completely empty and silent. At some point along the way my camera battery died and I discovered that the spare battery I had brought with me was not charged either, but fortunately we had Mom’s camera as backup.

The eye-catching geometric paving of Michelangelo’s Piazza del Campidoglio on Capitoline Hill was also nearly devoid of visitors; we were lucky enough to arrive just as the sun was peeking through the clouds to the west, lighting up the sky and the façades of the Capitoline palaces in shades of peach and tangerine. The sun gleamed off of the bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius as we drank in the whole scene. We strolled down the Cordonata, the great staircase leading from the Capitoline back to Piazza Venezia, whereupon I decided to run (literally) up the Aracoeli Staircase to see if I could get a view of the sunset. My efforts were not wasted; I joined one other lone photographer in front of the simple brick façade of the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli to capture some incredible images looking out across the great domes of Rome. In the meantime Mom waited at the base of the staircase, befriending a young British couple who were hopelessly lost (they thought they were at the Spanish Steps). I showed them where they were on their map and what they should see in their limited time in Rome before we parted ways.

We stopped again at the base of the Victor Emmanuel monument to look at the ruins of some Roman apartment buildings before making our way back towards Piazza Navona. We decided to have dinner at Vecchia Locando, one of my favorite restaurants from our December trip. This time we ate outside (although their cellar dining room is awesome) beneath the atmospheric glow of red-bulbed lamps – a gorgeous setting on a narrow alley with a stone archway in the distance and blooming bouganvilla dripping down the wall above us. Amazingly, the same friendly waiter served us as in December and he thought it was quite funny that I recognized him. Sadly, Mom’s meal did not live up to expectations: she had a rather bland shrimp and artichoke pasta followed by steak with a radicchio and gorgonzola sauce. I talked her into the steak dish because I remembered an amazing sauce of the same description had topped my gnocchi back in December, but this time it was very bitter and almost tasted like they had forgotten to add the gorgonzola. We almost complained about it but decided not to. Fortunately Mom’s tiramisu was awesome. My meal, on the other hand, was fantastic – radicchio ravioli with gorgonzola followed by carpaccio with arugula, mushrooms, and parmesan (I think I could eat this meal every day for the rest of my life). For dessert I had the “chocolate pyramid” – a delectable concotion of chocolate mint with a hidden “treasure” of crunchy candied paste inside, all smothered in dark chocolate mint sauce. (This dessert was on the menu in December but they had run out; I was really happy to have another opportunity to sample it!) We finally made it back to our hotel after another stroll through Piazza Navona and turned in, thoroughly exhausted, at midnight. We had been on the streets of Rome for nearly fourteen hours!