This summer really had two very distinct parts for me. The dichotomy of work and play couldn't have been more discrete. I spent the first 8 weeks of my summer at American Express building a statistical model and saving my money. I spent the following 2 weeks spending it in the best way that I have found yet. A wonderful vacation in Italy and France with my wonderful girlfriend is definitely the way I wanted to relax. Here are the details of my trip in a more or less chronological order. By the way, this will probably be somewhat overly detailed and verbose, at least in parts, so I won't be offended if you just ask me for the brief version in person. ;)

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July 20th, 2001. After 8 weeks of expensive phone calls on the company phone (definitely a fringe benefit I hadn't expected) and anticipation my journey began. I flew Virgin Atlantic into Heathrow, London and connected to Rome about 6 hours later. Did you know that you can take a shower in Heathrow airport? I didn't until then. If you have a long layover there, I highly recommend it. It was a very pleasant experience costing only 3 pounds. Anyway, after traveling for something like 15 hours I finally arrived in Rome and had a very happy reunion with Dori. She was wearing a cute red dress and it was one of those moments like when I first met her that I can replay in my mind over and over. In some ways it was very subtle, but the movements were very vivid and for some reason they are very strong in my mind. Probably because I was so happy to see her again. ;)

Rome is definitely a cool city. One word to describe it: fountains. Lots of them. Big and small. Everywhere. We saw a whole bunch of historic touristy sites - the Pantheon, the Coliseum, the Vatican, the Spanish Steps, and some really big monument with horses and angels and guards in the front. The city is very pretty and architecturally rich - even our hotel had a view of a big dome on the top of a random church. Speaking of our hotel - they have a cat which we played with. Since we were in one of the rare air conditioned rooms, we had access to the terrace at the top so we sat for a bit one night after dinner and the cat came by. We spent 3 nights in Rome before travelling down south.

Rome pics

Positano. Definitely the most beautiful place I've ever been to in my life. The city is built on a cliff and it overlooks the water. It is south of Rome, somewhat near Naples, on the Amalfi Coast of the Italian Riviera. Postcards don't look this beautiful. Dori and I only had two nights in Positano (we couldn't get another at the hotel we were at) but they were fantastic and they felt like they were longer because we did so much! We arrived around 3:30 or 4pm on July 24th so we had time to relax before dinner. We got settled into our lovely hotel room at the Hotel Pasitea, a Best Western (they're nicer in Europe than in the US) and found that our patio had an *amazing* view. See the pictures below ;). We had a lovely dinner at Constantino's, a place Dori had been to on her previous visit to Positano (a month prior). The service was perfect, the wine excellent, and the lemoncello right on the mark! ;)

The next day we got up for the breakfast at our hotel and were delighted to find yogurt, fresh juice, cereal, a croissont like thing with jelly, and proscutto (ok just I was delighted with that one). Onward to the beach! The sun is quite strong in the Mediterranean and the water really helped to cool off. We had a fun afternoon in the sun and neither of us got burned. One cute lunch by the water later we were on our way back in search of art. We found a couple of cute pictures of the town that we bought (one contains the restaurant we ate lunch at ;) and I liked some other summery, pastel-colored paintings that will be gifts for my sisters. If they're lucky. We ate dinner at another place recommended by our concierge - it was very high up the cliff and unfortunately we couldn't see the town.

Of all the places we went to, Positano was the most beautiful and the most fun for me. I hope to go back there someday - and now I know how to make the travel part of it more pleasant. Anyway, here are the pictures from Positano.

Nice was the next destination on our itinerary. Little did we know of the train pain coming our way. Oy gevalt was it bad. 9:45 am we left our hotel by taxi to go to Naples (an expensive ride, but a world more comfortable than the Circumvesuviana) and boarded our first crappy train at noon. About 20 minutes in we noticed that it was quite warm and indeed the air conditioning was broken in our car. Lovely, so we did our best and spent most of our time in the bar car where it was cooler. Pretty uncomfortable though. Once arriving in Genova (Northern Italy) we ran to our transfer which would actually take us to Nice. It was what one might call "a piece of shit euro train". There was no air conditioning at all, so the windows were open which helped a little, but made it so noisy that sleep was out of the question for me. Oh, the train had no lights in our car until we got to one particular station and they changed the batteries or something and they came on. And it was 45 minutes late. So we finally arrived in Nice, took a cab to our hotel, and crashed after travelling nearly 15 hours.

Nice was also beautiful, but it wasn't as perfect as Positano I think. I would have prefered if our hotel had been in a different area. Actually, at first I was really disappointed with the hotel but it grew on me slowly. It was really pretty nice and had a great restaurant attached to it, but the location wasn't ideal. See, there's two main parts of Nice - the Port and the Prominade. The Port is great if you have a boat (duh); it turned out to be very good for us because we took a boat tour of the area and also found a Scuba shop there. We did go diving, and that was a lot of fun, but we were happy when it was over because we were both too heavily weighted (for the diver's reading this I was only slightly positively bouyant at the surface with my BCD fully inflated... it was less than pleasant b/c I got dunked everytime there was a small wave). The (topless) beaches were just off the Prominade and probably a 30 minute walk for us, so we only went once. It was fun, but a little annoying afterwards b/c we were both very ready to go back and relax and we had to walk quite a ways. I went topless but Dori didn't. ;) I suppose one interesting thing was that women of all ages were topless there. Some in their 20s and some in their 50s, and of course many kept their tops on.

We found a flier for a tour to Monaco down at reception of our hotel and booked it quickly enough. Our goofy guide Fred drove us to Monaco, stopping a few times on the way at scenic sites and taking our picture, and told us some fun stories about famous people who lived in the area, about the Monacan Royal Family, and about their lack of income tax. We saw the palace and some of the old town. Very cute and very scenic. The country takes up only 2 square kilometers (granted to them by Napolean) so there are lots of tall buildings. If I ever have a ridiculous income, now I know which country to get dual citizenship with. We had a lovely dinner and then rushed off to the Casinos in Monte Carlo.

We went to the Old Casino which I believe is the first one in the country dating back some long time. There the change guy informed us that they only had "European games" - slots and roulette. I always thought baccarat was European and that slots were decidedly not - but what the hell do I know anyway? So we left there quickly enough... but not before Dori won a few francs on the slot machines! On to the New Casino (about 100 years old heh) where we could play BlackJack! We found our way to the tables and watched some other players for a while to get the hang of it. We both sat down at one table and promptly lost 3 hands in a row, exhausting our 800 francs (about $110), and got up to go play slots with the rest of our money. ;) What was I supposed to do with the dealer getting an 18 and then a 20?

Nice pics

Paris was next, and the TGV (a fast train) was to be our mode of transport. This was a nicer train, definitely, and capable of speeds around 180 mph. Everything was going smoothly till some idiot decided to go walking on the tracks of the high speed run and some train ahead of us probably smeared them pretty badly. So we were delayed. Next there was a medical emergency on board. Next the A/C almost broke again. 2.5 hours late, we arrived in Paris and got a cab to the Hotel Vernet. The service and accomodations there were absolutely wonderful. The concierge flew to our cab to open our doors, take our luggage, and welcome us to the hotel.

Our room was beautiful. It had antique furniture, a very soft king bed, a jacuzzi in the bathroom (as ordered), powerful A/C, a couch, a desk, a huge bar, and fresh apricots. It was definitely upscale. The hotel itself was located literally a block from the Arc De Triomph and the Champs De Elysses so the location was great, the scenery was great, and the service was too. Very high marks to the Hotel Vernet, and if you're going to be in Paris and want a fancy hotel then I definitely recommend this one.

Paris Paris Paris. I think this was the second best spot on our trip - but truly a close second. We saw some of the beautiful sites - the Arc De Triomph, the Champs De Elysses, the Eiffel Tower (the top level was closed so we didn't go up), and otherwise just enjoyed the atmosphere of the city. And good atmosphere it was. The weather was warm, the trees lining the roads were beautiful, and there were many pretty buildings to examine as we walked around. While we didn't do everything we wanted in Paris, we got a decent feel for the atmosphere of the place, and just had fun being there together.

On our last night in the city, we asked our concierge to make us a reservation at a fancy restaurant. Pre Catalon was the name of the place he booked, and it was indeed fancy. The classic stereotype of an expensive french restaurant that I have seen in a few movies held true that night. We were greeted warmly and seated promptly. We started the meal with some champagne (quite good... not the $4 kind I had in California), and moved quickly to the rest of the meal. Our waiter was very gracious; he translated the menu for us since we were having trouble with it. Surprisingly I didn't see escargo or beef tartar, so sea bass was my order, but not before Dori and I traded appetizers so she could escape the sardines. These weren't the canned variety. We would have asked for our picture to be taken in that restaurant, but it would have been too tacky. It was too nice, in that sense. But the atmosphere, chandelier, food, and service were all top notch.

Paris pics

One TGV and a hot-train ride later we were in hot, sweaty Venice. Don't go there in the summer. Ever. We arrived at about 10:30 at night and discovered that the hotel I booked was really far and many lire away. So we got a place more conveniently located and we cooled off and calmed down. It was another hectic day of travelling. Those days are the part of this trip that I won't miss. Our arrival made me feel like I didn't like Venice so much, and in truth I thought it was my least favorite city, but we still had a nice time there.

Our one full day there was to be a busy one. We started early enough, walking down to the beautiful St. Marcos Square. Along the way Dori bought all sorts of Venitian Glass bracelets and a necklace, mostly as gifts for her friends. Next we learned how to get to Burano, a nearby island famous for its lace work tableclothes, doilies and stuff. Slightly over an hour after embarking on our 3 hour tour we arrived and made headway into the gift department. Dori and I got our respective parents tableclothes and I bought a circular centerpiece thingy. Burano seems like a pretty chill little island just generally mellow. They have a nice little park on the water where we relaxed while waiting for the water-subway.

Venice pics

Our last stop was to be a brief one as we returned to Rome to make our flight out. Then the worst news of the trip got to us. Dori had stored two bags at our Rome hotel. When we returned there, only one was present. Her backpack with all of her photos from 7 weeks of travelling, her journal from that time, and photo albums she had brought with her were gone. She was very, very upset and the hotel staff did not handle the situation with grace. The entire situation was very upsetting and I did my best to deal with the staff to work it out and of course to help comfort Dori.

With the the best and the worst behind us, we set off on our return flight, back to reality and school and planning the rest of our lives. This was the most amazing trip I've ever taken and I couldn't have picked someone more fun to travel with.

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