Our trip started in the Dallas airport where a nice guy with a drawl expressed his condolences for our having to go to France at a time like this. I was flabbergasted. The flights were long and boring, and we got to Paris really early in the morning. It was a beautiful day and we had to resist the urge to nap so we took off for our first day in France.

On the first Sunday of every month, every museum in France is free. We got to the Louvre early to avoid the long line. The museums are cheap anyway – just one of the many cultural differences. We did see the Mona Lisa and a bunch of other STUFF. It was art sensory overload as you get more and more tired just wandering past amazing work of art after amazing work of art. After 3 and a half hours, we had seen about 20% of the museum and were ready for lunch. It took 30 minutes to get out of the museum.

We then learned that panini is also a French word. I was amazed at how nice people were, even in Paris, despite having to deal with my crappy French. There weren’t many Americans at all in France – which was kind of nice. Seems that there’s a foolish fear among Americans that the French would be as stupidly anti-American as we seem to be anti-French. We made friends with our crepe guy at the end of the street who was giving us free stuff by our third day. Amie dropped her wallet once and a guy across the street yelled out to us, in French of course, that she dropped her wallet.

If you don’t eat before 2pm, you are screwed. Everybody closes, markets, restaurants, etc. At least in Paris you can grab a panini, but outside of the city you better have something in the fridge.

Probably my favorite experience was going out to eat. I really enjoy European style waiting. Too many restaurant experiences in the US are ruined by the curse of TGI Friday’s. In Europe they "waited" on us and didn’t impose their personality on our dining experience. One bizarre thing is how expensive water or Coke is. Might as well have a glass of house red for €2 instead of Coke for €3.50. It was also nice how service and tax are included in menu prices. The price on the menu is what you pay. Finally, no where did we see 9.99 style pricing. They would just price it at 10. Another nice thing is the ability to order a half bottle of wine with a meal…a good size for two ;-)

Paris is beautiful. The suburbs are hideous and there is graffiti in places. The city itself though is gorgeous. The architecture makes walking around feel like being in a movie.. Our time in Paris was a whirlwind. We didn’t have much time and there is so much to see. We just ran around the city trying to see everything and not nap too much.

Audrey Hepburn said the first thing you have to find in Paris is a good rain. We found that on the second day. It was romantic at first…and then wet. We have a nice cloudy quicktime vr.The next day it just threatened to rain, but it was still sweater weather.

We saw my friend Rachel a couple of times. She has been studying in Paris for the past year – poor thing. It had been so long since I had seen her that I had forgotten how much I enjoy her company.

The French love their dogs, they are everywhere from restaurants to work to the airport. We had to avoid dog poop in the airport. For the most part they are very well behaved. We met the most chill 2-year-old boxer ever. They get to go everywhere so they are like pigeons in the city – unperturbed by anything.

Traffic was horrendous. The cars are hilarious too. I was surprised by how few Japanese cars we saw. They are everywhere here, but that niche seems to be filled just fine by Renault, Citroen, and Fiat over there. The best car though is the SMART. It is designed by Mercedes and isn’t the cheapest thing. It is absolutely tiny.

Antibes was much more relaxing than Paris. We hit the beach and chilled pretty much the whole time. I was the scrabble master as well. We stayed in a hotel right around the corner from Carol’s in a tiny room (size was something all our accommodations had in common) with a cute little porch.

There is a bar in Antibes call La Tour Internationale. The owners are a couple, she from Texas, he from France. The crowd the bar attracts is multinational and very interesting…all kinds of characters. My tendency to mimic accents also came out. We had fun there one night so we went back a couple of nights later.

That Saturday night we went back to La Tour and stayed very late. The bar closed at 12:30. What that means is that they close the shutters and then when you are ready to leave, they let you out. We stayed, had fun, met more interesting people: yacht people, Aussies, former American mafia, and even an anti-semite Norwegian who was convinced that Bush and Cheney are stooges for the Jews. Everyone had a story and I'm sure at least 10% was true.

Rachele and Stefano are so Italian it kills me….always looking good, always tan, always talking with their hands, always fun. Being around them made me think of the Italian skit from “Everything you always wanted to know about sex but were afraid to ask” – so much style.

They are so hip that Rachele's sink is made of dolomite - the tough black mineral that won't cop out when there's heat all about. Righteous. It was a lot of fun spending time with them.

Our most trying day was the Sunday we traveled from Antibes to Monterosso. Amie woke up with a rash. Everything is closed on Sunday so we went to the French ER. It wasn’t a bad experience at all…10 minute wait and free of charge. Of course, there was only one pharmacy open, the “pharmacie de garde”. Carol was going to come with us for a day in Monterosso. Now we could finally get on the road – well car trouble prevented that. Okay, we’ll take the train…changing twice and getting in at midnight instead of 5pm.

Carol ended up staying in Antibes while we bummed a ride off Rachele and Stefano to Genoa. Like a good Italian, Stefano drove like he was Mario Andretti. Winding through the French and Italian Riviera in a 1.4 liter VW Polo did make Amie a little queasy, but I loved it.

After crossing the border into Italy I noticed a lot of rainbow flags. I commented to Amie that there were a lot of gay people in Italy. She corrected me that they are, in fact, peace flags. They are as omnipresent there as American flags have become here. Just like the Chris Rock quip about Germans not wanting to go to war and French accusing Americans of arrogance, it's a funny world when Americans are more nationalistic than Italians.

In Italy we started in Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre is 75 km down the coast from Genoa. It consists of five fishing villages that were untouched until the railroad came through in 1975. It is now a national park so it cannot be overdeveloped like the Riviera.

The villages seem like something out of a fairy tale. The best pictures from the trip are from our time in Cinque Terre. We stayed in a cottage up the hill from the biggest village, Monterosso. It was fantastic. Monterosso was the only village with a beach, so that worked out well. We rented the cottage, cheaper than any hotel we stayed in, from this happy guy named Federico. Laura had stayed with Federico a couple of years before and she got me the hook-up.

Federico did not speak the English too well, and since we didn't speak the Italian at all, Clara was wonderful and made reservations for us. Rachele and Stefano were able to explain to him that we were arriving late on Sunday. He met us in Monterosso, sweater draped over his shoulders like a good Italian ;-).

The cottage had a kitchen and a 10 minute walk down the hill to town. The walk was this beautiful stone lined path past vineyards, lemon orchards, and olive trees. It would be a real bummer to have to walk this every day.

There is a walking path through the five villages. One day, we took the ferry down to the fifth village, Riomaggiore and started walking back. The water was beautiful blue and clear, the weather was perfect, and the Germans were in full bloom. I mean, there would probably be fewer Germans in Italy had they won the war. They all had their walking poles too. I really don't know the difference between these walking poles and ski poles, but they all had them and were clogging up the paths. I taught Amie the word "entschuldigung".

When we first got to Riomaggiore, we didn't know where the walking path started. I knew it was called "sentieri" so I proceeded to use the three Italian words I knew to ask for directions. A nice woman explained to us, entirely in Italian (which as we know includes hand-waving), how to get to the path. Amie and I heard exactly the same thing, but for some reason I understood the directions while Amie had no clue.

The walk was beautiful, but long and clogged with Germans. The towns get further apart the closer you get to Monterosso. One of the trails turns into Lombard Street style switchbacks before going into a town.

In Vernazza, the second town, we experienced the true meaning of tourism. It was only €1 to go to the top of the turret. Who am I to not go to the top of the turret? I mean when's the next time we'll be in Vernazza? We did get a pretty picture.

The longest part of the hike is from Vernazza back to Monterosso, so we skipped that and took the ferry back in order to enjoy sunset from our cottage.

When we left Monterosso for Florence, we met Phil and Dyana. They are wine reps from Boulder who also happened to be going to Florence. They had been given the royal treatment at a winery before going heading to Florence and Cinque Terre. Phil and Dyana will return to the story later.

After checking into our hotel in Florence, we headed straight to see David. It's a good thing we got to see him when we did because he would soon be under wraps for restoration. There was the neat 3D model of David that the Stanford people had done. The odd thing was that this 3D model would be much cooler if it weren't RIGHT NEXT to David. I mean, which would you rather look at? He was very impressive and they had a neat hall full of unfinished and discarded sculptures leading up to him. There was a silly game of "no pictures" being played. One museum guard would walk around telling people to put there cameras away and every time his back was turned, CLICK CLICK CLICK went the shutters. This is why our picture is blurred.

Of course, being the old country, everything is old. Florence was founded in 59 B.C. The Ponte Vecchio was built in 1345. The Baptistery was built in the 6th or 7th century. Being so old required much restoration. So much so that I think Firenze is Italian for scaffolding. It was everywhere.

Apart from the constant vendors hawking their wares, "you like my jacket", Florence was quite nice. We walked around quite a bit and ran into Phil and Dyana three separate times. The last time was across the river on some side street so we decided that fate had brought us together at this moment to drink a beer. After some good football trash-talk we ended up having dinner at a nice restaurant with a view of the Ponte Vecchio.

It was great having wine reps order the wine for us. It was inexpensive and excellent. Being the uncouth Americans that we are, we didn't require new glasses when switching varieties of wine -- I mean they're both red. Well our adorable waitress got into trouble for not giving us new glasses even though we told her not too. We hopefully got through to her boss that she did a great job and we are just sloths.

A fun night on the town brought us into contact with several nationalities and taught me the lesson that Austrians can really handle their beer. I did alright, but Amie was hurting the next day. The Prednizone for her rash made her retain water. Unfortunately, that water was full of alcohol. She didn't feel so hot for pretty much the rest of the trip.

She made it halfway up the Duomo in Florence -- fourth largest in Europe. The wonderfully claustrophobic climb had its effect on her. I did go to the top and the weather and view were glorious. The 15th century dome is amazing.

From Florence we went to Milan to stay with Rachele. She lives in this wonderfully bizarre planned community called Milano 3. She'd lived there as a child and it was the brain-child of a mayor who decided to build some housing with actual green spaces. The flats were large and the architecture made me feel like I was in a Stanley Kubrick film. Rachele even pulled up a four-leaf clover for Amie after 30 seconds of searching on one of our walks.

She and Stefano had just been to the Red Sea. On their way back they bought a hookah in Cairo. We got to christen it. The different flavored tobacco smells like something that would go in a pipe. The smoke was a very interesting consistency. It was almost thick and steam-like. While trying this, I kept thinking of the line from Passage to India, "hookah is so jolly now."

The Duomo in Milan is the third largest cathedral in Europe. It might have been the most amazing thing we saw during the entire trip. Apparently Mark Twain loved it and Oscar Wilde hated it. Happily, I'm in Twain's camp. The exterior has 2,245 statues, 135 spires, 96 gargoyles, and they let you climb all over the roof.

There is a shopping arcade right by the Duomo. In this arcade there is a bull mosaic. Apparently you are supposed to stomp your heel on the bull's balls and spin around three times for luck.

After a week of Italian food, albeit excellent, I had to have a change of pace. We went to Rachele's favorite chinese restaurant. It was very good, but a little sad too. Apparently this place used to be popular and had been around for quite a bit. But while we were there for three hours on a Saturday night -- dining Euro-style -- only one other person came in, and that was to pick up some take-out. Apparently the Italians are worse about their SARS fears than we are. The restaurant liked us being there so much that they kept giving us free sake.

The flight home was punctuated by the worst child I have ever seen on a plane. After the Italian cops, I think they were carabinieri, tried to flirt with Amie, we proceeded to the check-in line. Funny, "prego" not only means "you're welcome" it also means "next in line". While in line we saw this demon-child Sara, pronounced "SAR-uh", and all I was hoping is that she would not be sitting behind us. Thankfully she sat in front of us. She kicked the seats in front of her, hit her father, ran up and down the aisle, and was basically horrid for the entire eight and a half hour flight to Newark. Sadly her parents did not speak any English.

Returning was a little shocking, I found myself saying "I'm sorry" and "excuse me" in Italian at the airport. The transition from France to Italy was easier. Then we went out to eat, and it was this great big loud place full of people and hustle and bustle. I wanted to go back.

We did get addicted to bread, wine, and cheese. It is slowly fading, but I am more convinced than ever that I want to live in France for a couple years. Amazingly, Amie liked France as a place to live better than Italy. She didn't expect that. I'm sure this was colored by the fact that Italy was more full of tourists. Over the years, I have built up my expectations of France so highly that it is a bit surprising that I wasn't disappointed. Even my ridiculous expectations were exceeded by the lifestyle that I saw there. It was a great match to my personality.