After yesterday’s long walk, Kris and I slept late. We ate a quick breakfast of croissant and coffee (or hot chocolate, in my case) on Rue Cler, then tried to buy tickets to Versailles. Tried to buy tickets.

Before we could get to Versailles, we had to buy tickets on the RER, the commuter line that runs to the outskirts of the city. This oughtn’t to have been too tough, but we made it so.

Our ticket-buying adventure
First, we tried the self-service ticket machine. No dice. When it came time to pay, my credit card wouldn’t work. Unlike the rest of the world (including France), the U.S. hasn’t adopted the chip and PIN system, so the machine couldn’t accept my card for payment. (You can use U.S. cards at most places in Europe — but not all of them.)

Because our cards wouldn’t work, we tried to scrounge for enough cash to buy the tickets — but the machine only accepted coins. The balance due was €6.20, but we only had €5.20 in change. No problem!

There was a ticket office right next to us, so we went inside to buy tickets from a human being. (Or to get change.) But the ticket office was closed, so we were out of luck. No problem!

Nearby stood one of the ubiquitous Parisian newsstands. Kris went over to get some coins — but the vendor wouldn’t break her bills. In fact, he wouldn’t even let her buy anything to get change for the machine. He refused to sell to us!

Flummoxed, we tromped across the Seine to another newsstand (one standing almost directly above the point in the tunnel where Princess Diana lost her life). I bought a copy of the International Herald Tribune (an abridged English-language international version of the New York Times). Or three. “Troi, monsieur?” asked the puzzled vendor. “Mi dispiace,” I said, substituting Italian for French. Oops.

In any event, we got the €2 coin we needed, which gave us enough to buy tickets for the train. We tromped back across the bridge to find that the ticket office was now open! We conserved our coins (they’re very useful in Paris) and bought tickets with cash from the man in the office — which gave us even more coins in change.

That trauma over, we finally boarded the train to Versailles. For twenty minutes, we sat across from a young man who was hacking and wheezing and looked pale as death. This came back to haunt us in a few days… (Foreshadowing!)

The palace of Versailles
In the village of Versailles, we ate a small lunch before heading to the palace. We bought a fresh, warm baguette at a bakery in town, which we combined with some goat cheese Kris had brought. I also ate my new favorite: pain au raisin (or raisin bread, which I wish I could eat for every breakfast). We dined in a lovely little park, watching the locals and the birds.

After lunch, we toured the palace and gardens of Versailles. For one hundred years, this was the capital of the kingdom of France. It was also a symbol of royal decadence. When the French Revolution came, the palace was seized by the people, before eventually becoming home to Napoleon. Though large (well, enormous is a better word), beautiful, and opulent, the palace seemed somehow hollow, as if it were all glitter and no gold.

Part of the palace’s exterior

The Hall of Mirrors in the palace of Versailles

The gardens, on the other hand, were spectacular. We spent hours wandering the property. At one point, we ate yet another mediocre French meal. That was forgotten, however, as we resumed our stroll of the grounds. It was impossible to see everything — there are over 800 hectares (2000 acres or three square miles) of gardens.

Looking down the park at Versailles toward the Grand Canal

Kris strikes a classical pose

The highlight of the day came when the 300+ fountains put on their show between 1530 and 1730. We had two hours in the warm sun to watch the displays. Often, they were literally like fireworks with water. I did my best to capture them, but neither video nor photos did them justice. And two hours wasn’t enough to see all of the fountains we wanted.

It was amazing.

One of over 300 fountains in the gardens at Versailles

The mirror fountain at Versailles was just like fireworks with water

If you go to Versailles, go when the fountains are on. They’re on for festival days and summer weekends. It’s well worth checking in advance to be sure you get to see the display. I’m not kidding.

Here’s a two-minute video that features highlights from our day at Versailles:

Back in Paris, we spent our evening at the laundromat. We had to decipher the instructions, which were oblique even when translated to English. With the help of a young French man (who didn’t speak English but could tell we were lost), we finally figured out how to buy soap and get the machines started.

Clean clothes in hand, we packed for the next day’s transfer to our river cruise!

Strickly speaking, this isn’t good English. The laundry video has another funny misspelling.

I had ambitious plans for today — too ambitious, as it turns out. In retrospect, I tried to do too much, and in the end, Kris and I both paid for it!

We got an early start, stopping at a nearby patisserie to pick up a breakfast of pastries:

The little patisserie near our hotel. We ate here often!

Like Italy, France is packed with single-purpose shops. One shop specialized in poultry.

Then we hopped on the metro and zipped down to the world-famous Notre Dame cathedral. We were fortunate to arrive early; the place was uncrowded, but by the time we’d left, it was packed!

The cathedral of Notre Dame, resting serenely on Île de la Cité

Notre Dame is a gothic cathedral built on the Île de la Cité, the ancient birthplace of the city of Paris. Construction on the church began in 1160 and took nearly 200 years to complete. In 1831, Victor Hugo published his novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and the church has remained prominent in popular culture ever since.

Though Kris found Notre Dame unimpressive compared to the cathedrals we’d seen in Italy, I liked it. It’s simple but beautiful. I liked the rose windows, the vaulted ceiling, and the ambulatory. I also liked the choral music that was being piped over hidden speakers; it added an air that had been missing in other churches. Most of all, I enjoyed the climb to the bell tower!

The new hunchback of Notre Dame

Kris was more impressed with nearby Sainte-Chapelle, a gothic chapel built sometime before 1248. She especially liked the intricate tile flooring and the many stained-glass windows (most of which are original!).

The ceiling and windows in the upper chapel of Sainte-Chapelle

After our time on Île de la Cité, we crossed to the Left Bank and wandered through the Latin Quarter, which seemed all too touristy. We stopped at Shakespeare and Company, a famous English-language bookstore. Were it not located in the heart of France, the shop would be unremarkable. (Well, at least here in Portland, where there are many others just like it.)

A highlight for me, however, was finding a store that specialized in French comic books (known as bande dessinée). These comics are sold in hardbound “albums”, the best known of which are Tintin and Asterix. But there are hundreds (or thousands) of other series that have never been imported to the U.S., and this shop had tons of them. I picked up a handful of English-language translations.

We ate lunch at a little family place in the heart of the Latin Quarter, where I ate a Parisian hot dog:

In the afternoon, we used the second day of our two-day hop-on/hop-off bus pass. We boarded a bus for Montmartre, but it was a disaster. As with the previous day, traffic was terrible. Worse, the tour was completely uninteresting. This bus tour was definitely a low-light of this trip to Europe. After an hour of suffering, we bailed and took the metro back to the hotel.

In the evening, I got bold. I suggested we walk from the Hotel Muguet to the Louvre Museum. Which we did. That was about three kilometers. Then I urged Kris to walk up Paris’ grand boulevard, the Champs-Élysées. Which we did. (The Tuileries Garden had just closed, so we had to go around.) We made it another three kilometers before we stopped for dinner.

For dinner, we had lousy steaks. We had expected French food to be equal to (or better than) Italian food, but that didn’t hold true for us. Sometimes it was good, but generally it couldn’t hold a candle to the meals we ate in Venice, Florence, and Rome.

After dinner, we tromped another 1.5 kilometers to reach the Arc de Triomphe.

We climbed to the top of the arch and waited for the Eiffel Tower’s hourly light show to commence at 22:00. The view of Paris was beautiful. I recommend this to anyone who visits the city.

The Arc de Triomphe at night

The reward for all of our walking was a spectacular view of Paris at night.

I’d hoped we could finish the evening by walking the rest of the way to the Eiffel Tower (2.5 kilometers) and then back to the hotel (1.5 kilometers), but Kris had a melt-down — her worst of the trip. (My worst melt-downs all came in Italy, you’ll remember.) She was cold and tired and ready to return to the hotel. So, when my super-power (direction sense) failed, causing me to lead us away from the Eiffel Tower, she’d had enough. We found a metro station and headed home.

In fairness to Kris, my pedometer told the story at the end of the day: We’d walked more than fourteen miles (22.5 kilometers), most of it at the end of the day. Just last week, I walked from home into downtown Portland. That walk (combined with my other walking throughout the day) gave me almost exactly the same step count as we had that day in Paris — and I was exhausted. So, once again, Kris Gates was right. I pushed us too hard!

Though Kris slept soundly on the train from Rome to Paris, I did not. I woke at 21:00 in Florence, around midnight in another Italian city, at 06:00 in Lausanne, Switzerland, and again permanently at 07:30 on the outskirts of France. None of my sleep was restful.

A foggy morning outside Paris as our train stands idle on the tracks

For unknown reasons — though possibly because of strikes, which we had to contend with during our entire stay in France — our train was two hours late arriving in Paris. Today was my turn to be tense. I was tired, hungry, and disoriented, and there were too many people around.

When we left the train station at Gare de Lyon, we quickly found the nearby subway stop, but we were puzzled for a bit by the process for buying tickets. This was made worse by the crowds, our luggage, the lack of a chip-and-PIN credit card — and the drunk man trying to sell us discount metro tickets. (Turns out his tickets were legit and a good deal, but I wasn’t willing to take the risk.)

Map of the Paris train system — the Metro (subway) and RER (commuter line). Click to enlarge.

Without too much hassle, we found our way to the Hotel Muguet near Rue Cler. (Our Metro stop was École Militaire on the 8 train.) Rue Cler is a quiet, traditional Parisian street that’s been popularized by Rick Steves through his television show and guidebooks. It made a good “home base” during our stay in Paris.

Kris, next to a column of macaroons

We ate lunch at Tribeca, an Italian place on Rue Cler, then dove into France. We bought two-day tickets for the red double-decker hop-on/hop-off tour buses, which we took through the heart of the city. (Well, the heart of the tourist portions, anyhow.)

The Eiffel Tower as seen during our bus tour

These bookstalls are common on both banks of the Seine, and have been since the 1500s

While interesting, this bus ride took forever, in part because we went during rush hour, and in part because Paris has some of the worst traffic I’ve ever seen.

After the tour, it was already getting late. We took a brief walk through Rue Cler and the surrounding neighborhood before choosing to eat dinner at a small bistro. We both had the delicious boeuf bourguignon.

At breakfast, we said good-bye to the other members of the Rick Steves tour group that we’d been traveling with for the past ten days and set out on our own. We left our bags at the hotel while we headed out for a day trip — with no guide!

We took the Metro A train to the Termini Station, then made the long walk to transfer to the B train, which took us to the Piramide stop. From there, we took a 30-minute ride on the commuter train to Ostia Antica. (The Rick Steves guidebook says that it’s a sixty-minute trip from downtown Rome to Ostia Antica, but it took us ninety.)

For much of the trip, Kris was tense. After ten days having a guide directing most of our moves, suddenly we were on our own again, having to figure out train schedules and transfers. She didn’t like that we didn’t have definite answers to our questions as we made our way. But you know what? It all worked out just fine!

Ancient sign near the entrance to the city

In the graveyard at Ostia Antica

All trip, Kris and I craved cats. This cat at Ostia was very friendly.

Ostia was the harbor city of the ancient Roman empire. (Antica just means “ancient”.) For over a thousand years, Ostia was a thriving city. But in time, it fell into decay. Eventually, they city was abandoned, and slowly covered by sediment from the River Tiber. The ruins have been recovered now, and this little-known site is now considered a better example of an ancient Roman city than Pompeii.

There were few Americans at Ostia Antica, but there were tons of German tourists in the ruins. (I actually found them more annoying than Americans!) We did meet one woman from Houston, though. She told us she tries to come to Europe once every year, and has been doing so for 25 years. I got the impression she was fairly well-off, but she also talked about how she makes sacrifices in other areas of her life so that she can travel. (This was a common refrain from fellow travelers, by the way.)

Roman latrine at Ostia Antica. Note the lower hole, which is space for a “sponge on a stick”.

I could do a whole post on the hilarious English we saw in Europe, especially in museums

After touring the ruins, we took the train back to Rome, where we ate a large lunch (cheese plate, steak with salt and rosemary, and a liter of wine), then collected our bags and returned to the Termini Station. There, we spent a few hours on the platform, waiting for our train to Paris. I wandered the station, reveling in the feel of it all.

Our train trip was mostly uneventful — it grew dark soon after we left Rome, which saddened me. I wanted to watch the countryside go by.

Again, Kris was tense. She was unsettled by the unfamiliar situation, and full of uncertainty. It made her crazy! (“I think they forgot to turn our beds down!” “How will we know where to get off?” Etc.)

During the night, I woke as we passed through Florence, and then again in the early morning as we stopped at the platform in Lausanne, Switzerland. But when I woke for good, we were in France…

This morning, our group took the subway to the Ottaviano station before walking the rest of the way to the Vatican museum. I have to admit, I wasn’t looking forward to seeing more religious art, but the Vatican was actually pretty neat — the Catholic church has stolen a lot of great art in its time.

The glowing ceiling of the Vatican’s map room (photo by Kris)

Not all of the art here was confiscated from conquered peoples, though. There are also some great works commissioned from Great Masters. There are rooms upon rooms (two miles of rooms, I think our tour guide Sarah told us) filled with sculptures, paintings, frescoes, maps, tapestries, and more. Kris was especially enamored with the tile floors.

Kris was obsessed with the Vatican’s tile floors. This is my favorite of the many shots she took.

Touring the Vatican — and fighting the crowds — made me realize just how rich and powerful the Catholic church has been throughout history. Catholicism has played almost zero role in my life, so sometimes I forget how big it actually is. (I’m convinced they could eliminate world poverty if they’d just liquidate a portion of their art collection.)

At the end of our tour, we reached the Sistine Chapel, which was both more and less impressive than I expected. It’s amazing to see Michelangelo’s masterpiece in person, but it was also a bit garish (as apparently most Renaissance art was) and over-the-top.

While in the Sistine Chapel, neither photos nor talking were allowed. Everyone was doing both anyhow. The docents tried in vain to keep order. Most folks snuck a picture or two, and the whispers were like the hum of bees. That was fine. One member of our group (Wes) got kicked out, though, because he was blatantly taking photos even after being asked to stop.

After the Sistine Chapel, Kris and I joined Phil and Joy for a tour of St. Peter’s Basilica, the largest church in the world. We saw two mummified popes (not kidding!) and Michelangelo’s beautiful Pieta. The latter was difficult to photograph because of the crowds and because it lives behind bullet-proof glass. This photo was taken by holding my camera overhead and trying to stay steady:

Michelangelo’s Pieta, which lives behind bullet-proof glass

Next, we paid €7 each — and dodged a group of Japanese tourists who were trying to barge to the head of the line — to climb to the top of the dome above St. Peter’s Basilica and get snapshots of Rome. We climbed about 320 steps, and by the end, my left knee (which isn’t even my bum knee) was killing me.

Inside the dome of St. Peter’s, looking down (photo by Kris)

Joy and Phil, climbing the steps to the top of St. Peter’s

Phil and Joy, atop St. Peter’s Basilica (with Rome in the distance)

Joy and Kris attempt to keep St. Peter’s from falling over. Phil and I take photos.

The four of us then looked for a place to eat north of the Vatican. The first place we tried was gouging tourists. They wanted €14 for a half liter of the house wine (most places charged €8 to €12 for a liter of the stuff!), and their food prices were outrageous too. We got up and left, walking a few blocks until we found a pizza rustica place. The owner was a bit surly, but Kris and I managed to get two slices of pizza and a bottle of wine for just €17.

After taking the subway back to the Repubblica stop, we joined the Gussmans to visit two churches near our hotel:

• Santa Maria della Vittoria, which contains what Joy calls “church porn” — a statue called the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa.
• Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri, which contains an amazing sundial/meridian devised by a guy named Francesco Bianchini in 1702. It also contains an enormous pipe organ. Though Rick Steves only gives this place one star, we liked it. It was a science-y church!

Church porn: The Ecstasy of St. Teresa at Santa Maria della Vittoria

Before dinner, we joined Phil and Joy in their room to finish their bottle of grappa, which I’d always thought was Greek but is actually Italian.

The tour group then met for a farewell dinner, eating at a place called Ristorante del Giglio. The food was okay, but the conversation was better. It was a fitting conclusion to a fine trip.

After dinner, some of us hung around at the Snack Bar (that’s the name of the place!) across the street from our hotel. Kim, Joy, Phil, Kris, and I munched on snacks (I had a final gelato) while talking with Sarah about life as a tour guide.

After a standard breakfast, our tour group caught the Metro, riding from the Repubblica station (near our hotel) to the Cavour station. Some folks — including me — were a little on edge because the U.S. State Department had issued a travel alert warning of possible terrorist attacks on mass transit in major European cities. It was big news this morning. But, fortunately, nothing happened.

At the Cavour stop, we met Francesca, our local tour guide (and something of a celebrity to Rick Steves die-hards). Francesca’s English was outstanding (her father was Italian, but her mother American), and she didn’t drone on and on like our local guide in Florence. She was sharp and witty, and had a real depth of knowledge and passion for her subject: ancient Rome.

First, Francesca took us to the Basilica di San Clemente. The current church of San Clemente is interesting by itself in that the frescoes on its walls depict the (mythical) life and death of Pope Saint Clement I.

What was really exciting about San Clemente, however, was that the current building is constructed atop not one, but two previous iterations of the same church. You can see all three levels, descending into the damp and dark, almost literally stepping back in time. It’s awesome to find yourself on actual streets of ancient Rome, forty feet below the surface. This was a highlight of our trip.

We took a quick break after viewing San Clemente, during which some of us bought produce from a local vendor. My mid-morning snack? A gigantic carrot — and a Coca-Cola Light. (Coke Light is the European equivalent of Diet Coke.)

Next, we got a whirlwind tour of the Colosseum, which Francesca says is not what the ancient Romans called it. (She says they simply called it the Amphitheater.) Our tour of this colossal structure seemed too brief. The scale of the thing was amazing, and I wanted to linger longer.

Kris and J.D., in front of the Colosseum (photo by Phil)

I liked looking down the tunnels into the Colosseum

We finished our tour of ancient Rome by strolling through the Roman Forum, the former city center. After Francesca left us, Kris and I climbed the Palatine Hill and walked among the ruins.

A ruin at the Roman Forum (I’ve forgotten what this is…)

It was already mid-afternoon, and the sky — which had been spitting at us all morning — threatened to open wide at any moment, so we dodged our way through Roman traffic toward the Pantheon. We stopped first, however, for a l-o-n-g and delicious lunch (during which we shared a liter of wine — which I mostly drank myself). Our meal was served by a young waiter who spoke seven languages. (His goal is to become a tour guide.)

We finished lunch at 16:00, then walked to the nearby Pantheon. The Pantheon was once a temple to the gods of ancient Rome, but as with many things in Italy, it was taken over by the Catholic church. I found it vastly disappointing. Though the concept is cool — a dome-shaped building built 2000 years ago to enshrine the gods of the day — its current form as a Catholic church is not nearly as awe-inspiring as I imagine the original must have been. Still, the inside is beautiful:

Kris and I spent the evening in our room. Though neither of us was really hungry, I picked up McDonald’s just for kicks. It was a mistake. The food is just as awful in Rome as it is back home.

The big event of the evening, though, was that Kevin Kelly (co-founder of Wired magazine and uber-geek) published a glowing review of my book, a review that was cross-posted to mega-blog Boing Boing. As a result, Your Money: The Missing Manual briefly vaulted into the Amazon top 100 list! Very, very exciting for me.

We woke a bit early to catch our bus from Florence to Rome. The bus climbed out of Florence into Umbria, the region south of Tuscany (which contains Florence) and north of Lazio (which contains Rome). I was eager to reach Rome because I wanted to attend a calcio (soccer) match at 15:00 between Lazio and Brescia at the Olympic Stadium. Alas, this was not to be.

Instead, we exited the autostrade (freeway) near Orvieto and climbed the hills into the Umbrian countryside. After half an hour of twisting and turning, we reached Poggio della Volara, an agriturismo set on a grape and olive orchard. An agriturismo is a farm that, with a subsidy from the Italian government, has converted part of its operations into what we might call a bed and breakfast. This program gives tourists a relaxed, slow-paced place to escape, while also providing a way for farms to stay in business.

Poggio della Volara is owned by Marco, who took some time to tell us about his farm:

The day was lovely. It was hazy and warm, with just a tinge of autumn in the air. Marco served us four wines produced by local vineyards, as well as a light lunch of bread, cheese, and meat. It was lovely, and well worth missing a calcio match.

Joy and Kris, tasting wine and sun

Though most of us would have rather stayed with Marco, the bus continued on. We reached Rome at 15:30, spent 90 minutes getting settled, then grouped for an evening stroll. We boarded the subway at the Repubblica stop (near our hotel) and ventured to the Spagna stop nar the Spanish Steps.

Sarah (our tour guide), demonstrating how the Roman fountains work

Sarah then led us to the Trevi Fountain and the Pantheon.

Wes, who always has his camera ready, trying to get a shot of the Trevi Fountain

Because it was Sunday, the Pantheon was closed. Our tour guide, Sarah, spent some time describing the construction of this amazing building. The ancient Romans built the Pantheon as a shrine to all of their gods. The current building was re-built by the Emperor Hadrian in about 126 A.D., and was eventually taken over by the Catholic Church, which ousted the Roman gods for the god of Christianity. The building is a near sphere (except that it doesn’t extend below the ground), and includes an occulus (or hole) in the ceiling that looks out to the sky.

Finally, we walked to our restaurant, the name of which escapes me. The food was good, but not great. That’s okay, though, because we enjoyed our dinner conversation. We sat with Joy and Phil again, but also with Cindy and Deno, who happen to live just a few miles from us here in Portland. (They live in Wilsonville.) Cindy and Deno both recently lost a lot of weight, and both have backgrounds in public education. They were interesting to talk with.

After dinner, we crossed the Tiber River to see the Castel Sant’Angelo. Most of the group then caught a bus back to the hotel. I wanted to walk &mash; I needed to stretch my legs. Plus, the weather was perfect, and I thought this would be a fun way to see the city.

Sarah seemed a little taken aback and initially tried to talk me out of it. “Do you know how far it is?” she asked. “It’ll take you two hours!” She warned me that Rome is huge and the streets confusing. She said I might get lost. But I was confident in my map, my sense of direction (it’s one of my super powers, remember?), and my sense of scale. I knew I could find my way back, and that I might even beat the bus if I hustled. The walk was lovely and liberating. And it only took 35 minutes. I arrived at the hotel just a few minutes after the rest of the group.

Looking down from the Spanish Steps at night

That night walk through Rome was one of the highlights of my trip. (Other highlights: the morning run in Venice, my solo walk through Paris, and the church of San Clemente, which I’ll talk about tomorrow.)

Our final full day in Florence was fun.

After breakfast, we marched down past the Uffizi Gallery to Piazza della Repubblica, where we met our local guide Luka again. He started the day by taking us to a typical Florentine palazzo (or palace), where he told us about some of the city’s history and described how the wealthy merchant class used to live. Because I was in a much better mood than the day before, I enjoyed his presentation.

The Palazzo Davanzati is the former home of a wealthy family of wool merchants. The house was built in 1516, and has managed to survive until today. It now serves as a museum demonstrating what a typical palazzo might have been like. I found the tour of this home much more interesting than that of Ca’ Rezzonico in Venice, mostly because the Palazzo Davanzati was decorated with real furnishings and art instead of having been turned into an art museum.

I was particularly fascinated by the art on the wall of one bedroom, which told the story of the Châtelaine de Vergy, an old French story of romance and courtly love. I think this is ripe for potential re-working for modern audiences.

The Ponte Vecchio (or “old bridge”) was built in 1345

We then crossed the River Arno along Via Maggio to Piazza San Spirito and the church there. The group stopped to eat, but Kris and I struck out on our own. We spent 30 minutes searching for the entrance to a large walled garden nearby, but failed, so we headed back downtown to find lunch.

We eventually settled on a hole-in-the-wall place that turned out to have fine food. We were entertained by the three men at the next table, who conversed effortlessly in four languages (Italian, Spanish, English, and German), often switching tongues in the middle of a sentence! They each ordered a gigantic bistecca alla Fiorentina (Florentine steak, which is essentially a T-bone or Porterhouse). Together, the three of them finished two liters of the house red wine. Plus they ate salads and bread. All of this for lunch.

After lunch, we toured the Bargello, which is a former prison now turned into an art museum that primarily houses sculptures. Kris and I both learned that we find great sculptures much more compelling than great paintings. They seem much more difficult to create.

Also during the day, we paused to look at a variety of markets. As I’ve mentioned already, Italian cities are filled with markets, much like the farmers markets we have here in the U.S. These are held every day, though. (Or nearly every day.)

Flowers for sale at a craft market in Florence, Italy

You can buy all sorts of leather goods in Florence — Kris and I bought belts!

Plus, there are tiny little shops scattered throughout Italian (and French) cities. These single-purpose shops aren’t like those in the U.S. Here we have “one-stop shopping” supermarkets. And while supermarkets are slowly gaining ground in France and Italy, most shops are still focused on one thing: bread, pastries, gelato, produce, wine, whatever. Here’s a tiny little store that sells only produce and wine, for example:

This tiny market (which only sold wine and produce) was typical of those we saw in Italy

This is very typical of the shops we saw on this trip to Europe.

Gelato shops are also very common in Italy. These are like tiny neighborhood ice cream stands, except they sell gelato. What is gelato? It’s essentially ice cream, but with a few key differences.

• Gelato has less butterfat than ice cream, which means the flavors (strawberry, chocolate, whatever) are more prominent.
• Gelato is denser (or thicker) than ice cream because it doesn’t have any air added to it.
• Gelato is served warmer than ice cream, which means it melts more quickly.

In many ways, gelato seems like home-made ice cream. I actually prefer gelato to commercial ice cream (and I think Kris does too). Really, though, I’m a sucker for both, and they’re both bad for my diet!

Kris ordering gelato, something we did once a day in Italy.

After a quick pitstop back at Hotel Silla, Kris and I strolled along the River, watching the crowds of locals and tourists.

Life is good in Florence — that’s the Ponte Vecchio in the background

We made our way to the Piazza della Signoria, where we met our tour group for dinner. As we waited, we listened to a street musician playing the guitar.

The street musicians were very organized. This fellow was a little late leaving this spot, and the woman who came after him was unhappy. He apologized and packed up as quickly as possible, but I think she felt deprived of a few minutes of prime real estate during rush hour.

We ate at Trattoria Nella, where we had creamy gnocchi, penne pasta, veal, and spinach. Though the rest of the group raved about the meal, I actually preferred our other dinner in Florence at Giglio Rosso.

Breakfast in Florence was much like breakfast in Venice: hard rolls, yogurt, cheese, and coffee. Well, no coffee for me of course. I had daily cups of hot chocolate. At least in Florence, we had fruit to choose from!

After breakfast, our Rick Steves tour group marched down to Chiesa di Santa Croce (the church of the Holy Cross). Our early reservation at the Uffizi Gallery was postponed because of a morning strike. (“Italians are always striking over something,” our tour guide Sarah told us.)

On our way to Santa Croce, we passed through what Sarah described as a “German Oktoberfest”. She was corrected by a nearby vendor, however, who told us (in his thick accent), “Austrian Oktoberfest!”

We toured Santa Croce with our local guide Luka. It’s a beautiful building filled with frescoes by Giotto and his pupils. And, much to Kris’ delight, it contains many tombs. (Kris loves tombs, remember.) However, I’m not sure how many of these tombs were actually tombs — I think many of them were simply monuments. Whatever the case, we saw monuments or tombs for Dante, Machiavelli, Rossini, and three scientists: Galileo, Marconi, and Enrico Fermi.

The courtyard inside Santa Croce

Stained glass high on a wall inside Santa Croce

Kris in front of Galileo’s tomb. Or monument. Or whatever.

The strike at the Uffizi Gallery ended mid-morning, so we headed over to take in one of the biggest art collections in the world. We saw Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus (which was wonderful), some Michelangelos, and more.

Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus — not my photo

But I was tired and hungry and my feet hurt. I was tired of standing in museums and walking with the group at a snail’s pace. Plus, our tour guide Luka — while knowledgeable and nice — rambled on and on with little personality. I felt more and more on edge. To cope, I spent the last 60 to 90 minutes in my own little world, following the group from room to room but listening to classical music on my iPod while pacing the edges of the galleries.

By the time the tour ended at two, Kris and I were tired, hungry, and snippy. We quickly found a place to eat pizza, wine, and chocolate. We felt much better after lunch. Italian food had a way of improving my mood in a hurry!

In the afternoon, we toured Museo Galileo, Florence’s science museum. Were I not tired, this would surely have been a trip highlight — especially the globes and the maps of the heavens. Even exhausted, it was fun to see.

Galileo’s fingers! (In theory, anyhow…)

Kris and I walked back to the hotel, where we had a supper of food from the nearby grocery store. We each picked out little snacks to eat. Kris bought what she thought were little blocks of cheese, but they actually turned out to be blocks of yeast. We were asleep by 8 p.m.

No room to park? No problem! With a Smart Car, you can park sideways…