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Padua for 3 days

When we left Munich, we took the train to Padova (Padua). Padua is a nice small university city (210,000) only about 40 km (28 miles) to Venice. University students are everywhere from the University of Padua, founded in 1222. Galileo taught there at some point. It’s like being in Fort Collins except on small, arcaded, narrow sidewalks and streets.

Padua gate

We had our first lesson on how to make coffee in the Moka Coffee pot. Pretty easy but not very efficient if you want to drink lots of coffee.

The moka coffee pot – fill with coffee and water and let it boil.

We stayed at a little apartment just up the street from the Basilica of St. Anthony where we followed an Indian tour group around in the church and eavesdropped on their Italian tour guide. St. Anthony’s body is in the church as well as a few relics.

View from our window of Basilica of St. Anthony

Basilica of St. Anthony – no pictures allowed inside

Basilica of Saint Anthony at night

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A day trip to Pisa – the tower still leans

It was a Pisa sort of day and only 25 minutes from Lucca by the regional train. After walking to the Lucca train station, we needed to buy a ticket. Thank heavens, these ticket machines will actually print out a ticket! A whole bunch of us got on the train we thought we needed and a nice female train driver came to tell us that they had to switch the train to a different track and we have to get off while they do it. She kept apologizing but it was no big deal and shortly the train switched tracks and showed up again!

Lots of small villages dot the train tracks along with patches of tomatoes and beehives. Towers and big houses, old and new, could be seen in the distance. After arriving in Pisa and NOT buying a return ticket when there were no lines (more later), we walked to the Piazza de Miracoli following Google Maps and the Lonely Planet printed directions. We would have lost a bet because no signs were posted at the train station or at a big plaza giving any indication which of many streets we should choose to walk down. The first pedestrian sign pointing to the Tower wasn’t until we crossed the Arno River.

This is the first directional sign we saw and we were pretty close to the Tower.

Our route took us across the river and past the U. of Pisa Law School and more churches than we could count. We stopped in one church for the obligatory visit. (No idea which church it was.) We knew the Leaning Tower was close when the number of tourists increased dramatically as well as the number of gift shops and restaurants.

River Arno in Pisa

A street scene as we got closer to Piazza di Miracoli and the Leaning Tower

The Duomo, Tower, and Baptistry are beautiful especially in the sun. They all were bright white and, miraculously, only the Duomo still has some scaffolding on it. Mark decided we should check out the W/C. It cost .80 E and the line for the Women’s room was really long – Surprise! – but Mark just whipped in and out of the Men’s. Lots of tour groups and individual tourists, like us, so I can’t imagine what it’s like in the summer.

Pisa Duomo.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Duomo.

The Baptistry described as a big cupcake.

Leaning Tower of Pisa. We didn’t do any of the pics holding up the tower.

Susan in front of the Duomo and Leaning Tower

We took pictures and picked up a walking map of Pisa from Tourist Information before we wandered our way through the city and the Piazzas. We didn’t visit the insides of any buildings nor climb the tower.

This building was in one of the piazzas on the walk back to the train station.

The next challenge was getting a ticket to go back to Lucca. All of the ticket machines in the Pisa station will only issue paperless tickets so even many of the Italians had to get out of the machine line and go use the ticket office line. Of course, the non-Italians were all out of luck! We queued up in the LONG ticket line, starting out with 4 ticket sellers; reduced to 3 when one of them served a guy and hung his “Closed” sign. The line actually went pretty fast but Mark and I just commented “Full employment”. We think Lucca machines sell tickets because the ticket counter closes at 8:05 PM.

Pisa summary – Ok for one visit but not someplace I’d go back to. Pisa is a pretty busy city and didn’t impress us enough to want to return for another visit.

A visit to western Maryland

We’re finished with the family visits after 5 days in Cumberland, MD with Susan’s Mom. We went exploring and found the Great Allegheny Passage and used it for 2 days of walks. It’s a biking/walking trail that runs from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, following a rail line. Walking in 2 different directions, we found the Brush Rail Tunnel and the Cumberland Bone Caves where prehistoric bones were found about 100 years ago.

Western Maryland is full of eastern mountains – highest point is about 1600 feet. It’s very green and full of trees.

Some wild mushrooms we found along the Great Allegheny Passage

Mark at the start of our walk on the Great Allegheny Passage. We didn’t walk all the way to Frostburg!

On 9/10 we drove over to Shanksville, PA to visit the Flight 93 9/11 Memorial. It’s a very quiet, peaceful place and very moving. I needed a few tissues as we toured the Visitor Center and walked down to the Memorial Plaza where there’s a huge panel for each of the 40 victims.

Looking down on the Flight 93 Memorial Plaza from the Visitor Center.

Visitor Center of the Flight 93 Memorial

Country-specific Travel Advice

We like to keep up on events that might impact our travels around the world and we use a number of different sources. The most well-known one in the U.S. is the U.S. State Department. They publish information about travel in many counties. The topics include information on passports, Alerts and Warnings issued for each country, visas needed to enter the country, crime, driving conditions, etc. I think the State Department tends to be very conservative relative to the U.K. and Australia but it’s a good place to start.

The State Department also runs a program for Americans called Smart Travel Enrollment Program (STEP) to enroll your international trips. After enrollment, you are connected with each Embassy and they will send alerts, if necessary.

If you want another take on security around the world, you can sign up with the U.K. Foreign Office to get alerts as they are issued. Go to www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice and enroll in “Get Updates” via email. You can choose the countries you need alerts for. I really like that the U.K. even gives information on possible travel problems due to soccer matches and other events like this. You can tell where football/soccer ranks in importance there!

One of my favorite information sources is run by United Health Care Global. Sign up for “Daily Security Alerts” and every day the alerts will show up in your email box. In addition to the “normal” crime, terrorism, and political activities, this groups publishes information about a wide variety of strikes also that can definitely have an impact on your travel – taxi strikes in Italy, rail strikes in the U.K., airline and airport strikes, etc. – as well as a list of holidays around the world. Can anyone say “Closed Museums”??

Hope this helps!

996,607 down, 3,393 to go – updated May 2017

I’m on the hunt for 1 million miles on United Airlines after joining their Frequent Flyer Club when it first started in about 1981. Mark already has 1 million miles so I can be his designated Premier Gold partner but it’s the principle of the matter. I want my own Million Mile designation!

I made up a spreadsheet with Excel and with only 47,00 miles to go as of January 25, I’ve searched high and low for flights with the most miles/dollar. Since I don’t really want to spend my life on planes, I’m searching for long flights. Last year I went to Hong Kong from Denver but routed myself through Newark to get about 1500 extra miles for the same price. So far this year, I’ve found Denver to Tokyo to Bangkok to accrue miles and I did that trip in January. (The miles have to be “butt in seat” on a United plane so only the DEN-SFO-NRT miles count.)