The end.

Or possibly the beginning if this is the first time you have been to this site. We are safely back home in the US now and glad to be back. It was a long and wonderful journey, thanks for following along with us.

Cathedral of Orvieto

    We stayed in a little town now called Orvieto in Italy. The town is situated on a hilltop surrounded by cliff walls or man-made walls. One of the main structures in town is a huge church known as the Cathedral of Orvieto (Duomo). It is said to be one of the finest examples of Italian Gothic architecture. The cornerstone was laid in 1290. I’m not sure how long it took to build it but I’m sure it was a long time. 

The facade of the building is truly a fantastic piece of work. It is huge and beautiful yet has the finest of details all throughout. It is an intricate collection of sculptures within sculptures and paintings and tile work. It’s just hard to describe and of course my pictures do not do it justice. I could not get far enough away from the front to include the whole facade in one photo (my camera is pretty limited) because the surrounding piazza is not big enough to get very far away.

We were restricted from taking photos inside the cathedral. It was absolutely beautiful inside. The small chapel off the side of the main cathedral was covered with fresco paintings done primarily by Luca Signorelli. The paintings were what I would call “gripping”. They stayed with you long after leaving the cathedral. 

Pizza pizza pizza!

The Europeans love the pizza. There are pizza places in every port we have visited. It’s what you get when you want cheap food. Nearly every little place we went had a pizza section on the menu. The varieties of toppings and combinations are very broad. Sometimes the house specialty pizza is really something special. I’ve had pizzas of the weirdest combinations of ingredients I have ever tried. Some of them have been fantastic and others, not so much.

There is a quattro stagioni (four seasons) pizza on nearly every menu in all countries that is four different kinds of pizza on the quarters of the pie. My favorite one of these was served in a little dockside pizza place in Tivat, Montenegro. My least favorite pizza I have tried was in Santa Maria di Lucia. It was not the fault of the pizzeria at all, it was the pizza I ordered.  The menu said worsts and patatas so I was thinking it was some kind of little sausages and potatoes. It was actually a hot dog and french fry pizza. Not so good.

After the hot dog pizza event, I decided it would be fun to start documenting some of the pizzas I ate along the way. Something I found interesting with the pizzas served in Europe was they never cut them for you. I’m not sure if the pizza cutter has not been invented in Europe yet or what the deal is with that. You get used to just doing it yourself.

I included a picture of a plate of fried olives in this collection. They were not really that good but when we saw them on the menu we had to give it a try. The waiter laughed at us for ordering them. I also threw in one more non-pizza picture of a “hamburger”. After more than a month without a cheeseburger I got a craving for a big juicy burger. I finally found one listed on a menu at a little cafe. I asked the waiter, “Is this a good, American-style burger”? Yes yes! “Is it made from beef”? Oh Yes, Yes! The proper question I guess should have been “Is this made from the beef of a cow”? I think it actually ended up being beef of the pigeon mixed with a little beef of the horse. Again, not so good…

Yes, It's beautiful even without the Internet

We have finally landed at our villa in Cortona. It is beautiful and remote. No Internet that we can locate so far. Not such a bad thing. I'll be back when I can.

Milestones and record days

In the last few days we have passed a couple of new milestones in this journey. When we were in Leipzig, Germany, we were at the Northernmost point we will travel on this trip. Leipzig is at N 51 degrees. For reference, Jacksonville is at about N 30 degrees. If you were to draw a line around the globe at 51 degrees to a city that you might recognize it would be Calgary, Canada. Yes, I was surprised too.

Leipzig was the first place in a long time that I zipped the legs back onto my shorts. It actually got a little cool at night and was very pleasant during the day. Given that we came from Budapest, Hungary, staying in an apartment with no air conditioning that never, ever cooled off, Leipzig was indeed a breath of fresh air. I personally love cold weather and it felt great sleeping at night with the windows opened up and snuggled under a nice German feather bed. 

The second milestone we recently passed was not as much a milestone as it was a travel record for me. In the 24 hours of travel to arrive at Florence we passed through 5 countries. We started early in the morning in Dachau, Germany and drove South on the autobahn. Yes, the autobahn was fun and I liked the little VW rental we had. It performed quite well. 

It took us a bit of time to figure out the whole speed limit/no speed limit thing but after a while it got much easier to know what to do, as far as we know. I never actually saw anything that said we were on the autobahn but I’m pretty sure we were. They had electronic signs that came on when there was a speed limit in effect. If the signs were not lit then the speed limit was as fast as your car could go, safely. We think. Don’t quote me to the German highway patrol please, I doubt if it would do any good. We figured if we were not the fastest nor the slowest on the road we would be just fine.

Sorry for the digression down the autobahn. Back to the record books. Next we passed the border into Austria (country 2). We were moving along now with a fairly tight time-frame so we did not mess around much. We did make sure to put boots on the ground in every country. Driving through the Alps was very nice and I would love to go back and spend some time in Austria. The countryside was beautiful and there were many ski resorts just off the highway. 

I only have a very small sample set (1) and found the food in Austria was quite a bit like it is in the States. I had the Cheeseburger Royal at the McDonalds in a rest area. The movie “Pulp Fiction” came to mind for some reason when I was ordering. I think if we had time to expand the sample set to more than one establishment we would find the Austrian food to be as delicious as we found the German food to be. 

I digress again: Every country that we drove through in Europe has different rules and regulations about tolls and road use stickers. We thought to research this as we were first driving on the highway in Croatia and hit a toll booth. We found that some countries want to charge often (and in the local currency) for travel on the highways. Other countries require the purchase of a vignette, or sticker on the window to indicate you have paid your dues. This we did not find until we arrived in Budapest and there may still be some Hungarian traffic enforcement polizi after us for not having a sticker. I’m sure they are still after us for the parking ticket in Budapest but I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. 

Most countries requiring the vignette sticker had some serious high-tech sticker detection devices at frequent intervals along the highways. I still cannot figure out exactly how they worked to validate our stickers. When we bought the stickers, they punched holes in the edges indicating the number of days it was valid. The whole sticker was kind of holographic and reflective. The only way I can figure these readers would work is that they are detecting the relative location of the holes in the stickers as we are driving past at 120 KPH. Pretty impressive technology I think. Either that or it was all a ruse with fake cameras. 

Speaking of fakes. I think it was Austria, we got the stickers and paid about 12 euro or so for them. We are feeling good about being legal and all. We are driving along, pointing to our sticker whenever we passed a camera inspection point… Then we came upon a big old toll plaza that wanted 10 euros. We are thinking, “ Hey, we already paid, we can zip right through”. We asked the guy at the booth - why did we get this sticker if we have to pay tolls again? He tells us that the sticker is to use the road and this toll is to use the tunnel.  That seemed a little weird to us. 

On to the next country, Slovenia! (country 3) We zoomed right through the border with no problem. The people coming the other direction had a huge problem. The traffic was backed up for miles and miles going the other way and a very thorough check of each vehicle was happening.  I think leaving the EU countries is easier than getting into the EU. 

The next border we hit was Croatia (country 4). We came to a large checkpoint area with a lot of official looking buildings and people around. We got to the first guy and he took the passports, looked at them for a while and let us drive on. The second guy got the passports, looked at them for a while and let us drive on. The third guy got the passports, looked at them for a while and let us drive on. I felt very safe after all that stopping and looking. 

We made it to Zagreb just in time to drop the car off at the rental location near the train station which saved us a trip from the airport where we would have had to go if downtown was closed. We waited around the train station until a little after midnight to catch our train to Florence. The train had to go back through Slovenia and when we hit the border many border patrol agents came on board the train and went down the aisles checking everyone’s passports. It was at least a 30 minute process. Everyone (else) was pretty tired and grumpy in our packed, hot, stinky train. 

Our final country for this little record-setting jaunt was Italy (country 5). I’m not even sure when we crossed the border, there was no stop or inspection. I knew we were in Italy because my phone texts me with the roaming conditions for each country as we enter.  

So that’s a summary of our whirlwind tour from Germany to our current location in Florence, Italy. It was a fun but exhausting day. We have now napped and fed ourselves and are ready to check out this new city. 

I don't know why I continue to take pictures out of moving cars. They rarely ever turn out decent but I continue to waste bits on them. I included them here because that's all I've got. There were not a lot of places to pull off for photography plus we were on a time schedule and had to keep moving. These are from the car in Germany, Austria, Slovenia and in the train station at Zagreb. Most of the local train cars were covered in graffiti.  

Blog slowdown

We have been zooming around Europe the last couple of weeks in a car. I’ve found that driving around in Europe and being in big cities does not allow the time for writing that traveling on a sailboat seems to. We have now settled into an apartment in Florence, Italy that we will be in for 10 days or so. I hope to have some time to catch up on the blog and pictures soon.

The town of Čáslav, Czech Republic

We stopped for the night in a small town in the Czech Republic called Čáslav. It is pronounced Chas-lav by the locals. Čáslav is the ancestral homeland of my wifes’ family (Semrad) and that was the motivation for making the stop there. It is a quite little town of about 10,000 people but still seems to be thriving. The town is centered around an old square. I like to call it Semrad Square. Our waitress confirmed this before she thought about it too much. There are statues and a nice park with an old church situated on one side. Shops and restaurants circle the square. One of the restaurants is owned by someone with the family name Semrad according to our sources. They were closed for holiday while we were there. I included a picture of it. There is an old stone wall that surrounds the center part of the city that is a remnant of the original wall of the city. The square is made of tightly placed stones in a nice pattern. Other walkways have stones locked into place on their sides with a cinder-like material holding them together. 

I included many shots from just walking around town, various buildings and houses that caught my eye were thrown in just to give a sense of the town, not so much for photographic merit.  I found a little weather station installed on a stone pillar in the square. There was some new construction around and a new traffic circle was being constructed and almost done. A body of water (Semrad river) flows through town and has a dam at one end with a drainage canal off the downside of a waterfall. The fish in the lake are plentiful. I ran across a nearby fishing supply store which reminded me of Jack.

I found an Exotik Hobby store and thought it was interesting. I stopped by later to see what it was - a pet store. Early in the morning that we were leaving there was a market in the square. People set up tables full of local produce, flowers, herbs, breads and there was even a mobile meat market truck. The vegetables looked especially good, lots of potatoes, onions, garlic, peppers and carrots. Everyone seemed to come out for the market. There were even a couple of rides for the kids set up. I do not know how often the market happens as we were only there for one morning. 

Čáslav is situated in country that looks a lot like the Midwest United States. As we were driving across Czech Republic towards Čáslav it seemed like we could have easily been in Missouri, Kansas or Oklahoma. It was just good farmland, most of was actively being farmed. The main crops were corn and sunflowers. If it were not for the signs that we could not read and the weird stuff coming out of the radio I would have thought we were home. I can understand why the Semrads’ ended up settling where they did, I’m sure it felt very familiar to them. 

I never met anyone that I thought may have been a relative. Our waitress at dinner was the only english speaker we met and she told us about the family Semrad owning the restaurant on the square. I tried to talk with the proprietor of the Penzion we stayed to ask about the Semrad family.  Hannah did not speak a lick of English so I had some pre-translated phrases on my devices ready to go. When she realized what I was asking about she got quite excited and talkative and that’s where the conversation broke down. I didn’t understand a word of it. I tried to get her to type into my translator so I could understand her but the keys on the keyboard did not have the letters she was looking for so it was pretty much a dead-end, information-wise. However, I am sure there are still Semrads in the area but I did get to meet any of them. It sure was nice to meet Hannah and stay at her place. If you ever happened to read this Hannah - “Tthank moc!”