feldmanlarry

I stayed in the airport hotel so I could walk to and from the airport. I had a great view of Boston but there was no time to go to the city.

The flight came in 20 minutes early to Pittsburgh but I only had to wait about 5 minutes for Alan Enterline to pick me up. It really works well to have him take me to and from the airport so that Margaret doesn’t have to. She hates driving and is in the busiest time of the school year.

It’s now three days after April 27 and I’m still not adjusted to the time change. However, not being adjusted means that I’m sleeping “normal” times. By 10 PM or so I’m done instead of my usual sleeping time of 2-3 AM. However 10 PM is 4 AM Paris time. Instead of getting up at 11-12 as I did before the trip, I’m getting up at 8-9 AM.

When I was in elementary school, I remember one day getting up before 8 AM and being shocked and disturbed for the whole day. This morning (April 30), I was ready to get out of bed at 7:50 but I remembered that feeling from elementary school and read from my iPad until 8 am before getting out of bed.

I highly recommend the app “Moves”. I kept it running on my iPhone at all times and it shows on a map exactly where I went and how long each segment took. It also shows how many steps, distance travelled, and how many calories were consumed.

During this trip, I walked 272,182 steps or over a quarter of a million steps. This averaged to about 8,000 steps a day. In terms of distance, I walked a total of 139 miles or about 4 miles a day. The total time walking was about 60 hours or 2 hours a day. In the past 2 days since getting back, I’ve averaged about 900 steps, not 8,000. I’ve averaged about 0.7 miles a day, not 4 miles.

So what did I get out of this trip? One thing was a lot of stuff to do such as go through the massive pile of mail. Three weddings were coming up, two out of town and I had to immediately make arrangements, which was not a relaxing task for me at this point.

Here are other things I got out of it.

• A lot of money was spent. I didn’t really concern myself with trying to take the cheapest option. I went for the maximum experiences I could get without throwing money away. My parents left me with some money that I don’t need for retirement. This trip plus my trip last fall with Keith to Peru and Brazil, our trip next fall to Vietnam, laos, and Cambodia, and other trips are coming out of this money. My parents were world travelers and would have appreciated me spending the money this way.
• My French has greatly improved. At the beginning of the trip I was stumbling. I would start talking and hope correct French words would come out. At the end of the trip, I felt confident that the words would come. It felt better for me to be speaking French than English since that was a goal of the trip. I met French people in all the countries I visited outside of France also. The highlight of the language experience was when I visited the tiny village in France for 3 nights. No one spoke English there.
• I finished the 7 man-made wonders of the world properly by seeing the Coliseum.
• Even though I haven’t made a bucket list, if I had one it would have included Rome, Florence, Venice, Dubrovnik, Amsterdam, and Iceland in addition to France.
• I made some new friends, such as Neta in Israel, the people I hung out with in Florence, Abraham and Celeste in Dubrovnik and so on.
• Amazingly, I had only one bad experience. I didn’t get robbed or cheated. I didn’t lose anything which is astounding for me. I did have a very strict routine of where to put things. I never carried any bag except my backpack only when I was on a plane or train. Everything went in my pockets or wallet. The bad experience was not that bad. I tripped in my first Paris hotel and cut my chin and bumped my knee. Both the knee and the chin took a couple of weeks to recover.
• I exercised in those 34 days probably than I did in the year before. My weight stayed exactly the same, which isn’t bad considering that I ate more during the trip. At home I normally have a meal at 11 or so when I get up, dinner at 5-6 with Margaret, and a little snack around 8. I only have two meals but it was hard not to have a third meal while traveling.
• I got out of Margaret’s way while she’s working. That’s mostly a joke since we missed each other. She doesn’t like to travel more than two weeks or so and would prefer not to take a plane. To get from city to city, I took 12 airplanes and 5 trains. She would have liked the trains but not the planes. It was not that bad for me to get my traveling done while she’s working. The joke I told people was that she and I have an arrangement — she earns the money and I spend it. I’m a kept man, a gigolo. Margaret was really good about all this. She  was very supportive. I owe her a big thanks.
• I failed at getting Paris out of my head. Since the time spent there ended up being 11 days, not a month, I still want to go back and spend time not going anywhere else. Maybe in a couple of years.
• I’m now perfectly OK going to events, to dinner, and traveling by myself. At first it seems creepy to go into a restaurant and ask for a table for one. I either sit at the bar and talk to people or sometimes I was put so close to other people in a table that I had good conversations with them. If I had a table by myself, my iPhone and talking to the server provided enough entertainment. I’m planning to see an opera in Pittsburgh next week by myself (unless anyone reading this wants to come along).
• Life is good.

I dedicate this trip and this blog to my parents, Dr. Harold Feldman and Dr. Margaret Feldman, who will always be my main inspirations and role models I can never match.

Thanks for reading this! It will be a relief in some ways not to have a blog to write but I’m really glad to have done it.

I’d really love to get comments, either here or email me at larry.feldman@iup.edu

I did something today that I have not done in decades. I woke up earlier than I needed to just for fun. I never, ever, get up before I have to. If I need to get up early to make a plane or to do something with a friend, I’ll do it and not complain. But when I’m by myself, I never get up earlier than necessary for fun. Until today.

I woke up at 7 AM after getting back around 1230 AM from my late dinner last night. My goal was to walk around the wonderful area of my apartments, Le Marais. If I had any thought of ever buying an apartment here, they were killed by this. !.5 million euros ($1,620,000) for a 90 square meter (970 sq. feet) apartment. It was in Ile St. Louis, on the 6th floor with an elevator. To be fair there was also a 36 sq meter (390 Sq. feet) apartment on the 5th floor without an elevator for 435,000 euros ($470,000).

Here are a couple of the many beautiful buildings in Le Marais. The second one says at the top “Foundry of gold and silver, treatment of wood ashes, trials and analysis.”

This plaque says “From 1942 to 1944 more than 11,000 children were deported from France by the Nazis with the active participation of the French government of Vichy and assassinated in the death camps because they were born Jewish. More than 500 of these children lived in the 3rd arrondissement. Many of them went  to the girls school on Debelleyme Street, which is today the Francois Truffaut High School.” It’s disturbing to think that where I was standing is a site where 500 girls were taken from their school to death camps.

A much less disturbing plaque was this one — “Witness of friendship between France and Canada. This piece of rock from St. Helen’s Island in Montreal was put in this square on April 27, 1967, the first day of the Montreal International Exposition.” I went to the 1967 World’s Fair in Montreal and had a season ticket in 1968 when I went to a French Summer School run by Mc Gill University. This was one day off from the anniversary.

I got back around 8:15 AM and realized I had maybe enough time to get to the tip of Ile de la Cité that I really wanted to see. I grabbed a taxi but he had no change for my 50 euro note and he had no credit card reader, which was a first for me. He took me to a cafe where I bought a coffee and pain au chocolat to get change. I spilled my coffee all over the taxi but he was happy that I could pay him and leave.

When I got to the tip of the island, there was only one person there and he was fishing. I’m not sure I would eat a fish out of the water here. I hate taking selfies but asking the fisherman to take a picture would have taken more guts than I have.

On my way back, I realized I was right at the place where I attached the locket to the Pont Neuf on April 5, three weeks ago. I was amazed to be able to find it.

My last view of the beautiful City Hall (Hotel de Ville), which I passed every time I took the metro back to the apartment.

Three things happened that indicated I was becoming Francified (is that a word?).

• I was able to help people who needed directions on the metro.
• I thought of a French word for something (“monnaie’) and had a little trouble remembering the English word (“coins”).
• When I went to the patisserie that was just 5 steps from my front door, the waiter asked me if I wanted the usual. (I didn’t since I had already had my pain au chololat)

I took the 45 minute metro to Charles de Gaulle Airport, with probably a dozen stairs, tunnels, passageways, and trams / metro lines. I was flying business class on Icelandic Airlines. It was more expensive than coach but maybe 1/3 what business class would have cost on another airline. The flight was about 3.5 hours to Iceland, 1.5 hours in Iceland, then 7.5 hours to Boston (actually 8 since it had to circle the airport for a half hour). Long time but it was comfortable.

You can see the meal below. With Icelandic food, I had to choose the cod. No one has ever heard of Icelandic Duck.

It felt weird to be back in the US. I had gotten used to hearing French everywhere along with other languages. Customs was really long. they had so many people waiting to go through the automated photo stations that we had to wait in a corridor for a while. By 8:30 or so when I was in my Boston hotel room, I was tired. 8:30 is 2:30 AM Paris time. Really fast data on my phone was something I hadn’t experienced in a while. Being able to make a regular phone call, not FaceTime was another perk of being home. I had been excited about getting home since I hit the wall in Venice. It was hard to get really excited though when I was so tired. Two more legs of the journey to go.

My original plan for this trip was to spend a month in Paris and nowhere else. As time went on, I started adding places I really wanted to see. First was Rome to see the Coliseum since it was part of the new list of the seven man-made wonders (http://hawkstryker.hubpages.com/hub/The-Current-7-Man-Made-Wonders-of-The-World). I have been to all seven but I had seen the Coliseum when I was a teenager and didn’t really remember anything about it. Once I was in Rome, it made sense to go to Venice and Florence. Then I decided to fly on Icelandic Airlines and they had free stopovers in Iceland which I couldn’t pass up. There was also no extra charge to land in Amsterdam and return from Paris. Then I had 3 days that were totally free so I decided to go to Dubrovnik. My month is Paris turned into 11 days in Paris and 3 days in the French countryside. I’m not complaining at all.

If I had spent a month in Paris, hopefully I would have gotten all the big sites out of my system and become more integrated into a district of Paris. With 11 days, I had to see some of the really important sites like the Eiffel Tower and it was hard to get rooted in a district but I do feel as though Le Marais is my home area.

Today I was determined to go to a “small” attraction, not one of the iconic Paris locations. I found exactly what I was looking for. I messed up by going to one place then realizing I needed to go somewhere else but the tickets were sold out there so I had to go to another location near my apartment (Place de la Bastille).

In any case, I got on the Canalrama boat ride through canals and locks. These canals join the Seine but I started just north of the Seine and went up several miles north. Here are two views from a bridge before the boat left.

Here’s a boat just like the one I took.

I jumped on to the first row on the top which had a great view. Here we are just getting ready to go into a 2 km (over 1 mile) tunnel and also a view from inside the tunnel. These canals, locks, and tunnels were built under Napoleon in the early 1800’s.

There were many beautiful bridges that we passed under.

Here’s one of the many locks. The first picture is when we just arrived and then in the next picture you can see the water gushing in.

We passed by the Hôtel du Nord, which was made famous by a classic 1938 movie about suicides, prostitutes, complicated love triangles and so on. Here’s part of a review. “Hôtel du Nord is generally regarded as essential viewing for fans of classic film, an undeniable piece of pre-WWII art from French cinema’s master-director Marcel Carné”. I just bought a Korean made version of it that’s in French with English subtitles. People on the boat told me that even though my French was really good that I would need subtitles. The regional accents and slang make it very hard for even them to understand well.

Most of the time I spent talking to these two women who were delightful. I also talked some to the people next to me. I got the impression that the people on this tour were French tourists, with very few international tourists like me. This was a local tourist attraction, which is what I was looking for. The people next to me came from the center of France and were visiting their daughters who moved to Paris. These two lovely women were from a suburb of Paris and had a dinner / cruise package. I didn’t get their names but I did give them a link to my blog. I hope they see this and send me a message.

I was very surprised that where I got off was in the same large park as where I saw Paul Simon and Sting three weeks ago. I liked the park because it struck me as very working class, not like the fancy areas like Place des Vosges in Le Marias that is very upper crust. A flea market was going on with stuff that I would like to get rid of if I owned.

The owner of the apartments I stayed at showed me this excellent iPhone app by the metro company. Here are its directions to my next location. I had a 3 minute walk to the metro station and I could click on it to find how to get to the station. Then there were 8 stops on line 5, then a 2 minute walk to line 9. 11 stops on line 9 and a 6 minute walk finished the trip. Pretty much everywhere I went involved taking two metro lines. The lines curve and intersect each other frequently. 10 tickets cost 14.40 euros or about $15.60. $1.56 for a ride on two metro lines was a really good deal. I used probably 25 tickets, which in addition to a lot of walking meant I was able to see a lot in 11 days.

My next trip was on the Bateau Mouches, the famous boats that go up and down the Seine. It was a cloudy day but with no rain unlike when I went on boats in the Seine earlier in the trip. I believe this is the Pont Neuf, where I put the locket of Margaret and me.

Here’s the Museé d’Orsay, a converted train station, that has one of the largest collection of impressionist paintings.

Here are some lockets that people have put on a bridge with their names and the names of their lovers.

When I saw the point of the Ile de la Cité, I felt regret that I wouldn’t be able to sit at this spot (Spoiler alert: I went there the next day). This reminded me of the beautiful Point in Pittsburgh.

We passed by the entrance to the Canal St. Martin, which is what my previous boat trip was on (but further north).

It’s hard not to show a picture of the Eiffel Tower.

There had recently been demonstrations around the world including in Paris about the hundredth anniversary of the genocide in Armenia.

I think this is a memorial to the location where Princess Diana died.

I made a dinner reservation for a place mentioned in Patricia Wells’ Food Lover’s Guide to Paris (thanks to Francisco for showing it to me). My thought was to get a place near where the boat left me off. The only time they had was 10 PM, which I took. This gave me time to go back to the apartment and several more metro rides. I hadn’t eaten since the morning so dinner sounded really good.

The restaurant was a Basque bistro called Pottoka, which held maybe 30 people. They put me at the bar, which worked well for me since I could talk to the bartender. Here’s part of the review. “Clean, direct, earthy fare from France’s Basque country .. The long, narrow dining room is uncluttered, with warm wooden tables, serious wine glasses, crisp linen napkins, comfortable chairs. And the varied, seasonal fare is not only beautiful but prepared with professional care and attention.”

I ordered the A La Carte menu, which was 35 euros ($38) and included an appetizer, main course, and a desert. The appetizer is French was “Tartare de saumon royal, coulis piquillos et mousse au balsamique blanc”, which Google translated to “King salmon tartare, piquillo sauce and white balsamic foam”. You can see the raw salmon mixed in the red, slightly spicy piquillo sauce with the white foam on the top.

The main course was Conflit veal, button mushrooms, artichokes, and spring onions in a blanquette sauce. These are not meals I cook at home. The portion size was not large but the sauces were very complicated. I was in heaven, especially with the artichokes.

The desert was the Basque cake and vanilla ice cream.

They had a problem with my bill so they gave me some of this basque liquor while they were straightening it out. I had a couple of basque beers with dinner. Even though I was drinking beer, they still asked if I wanted wine and seemed surprised that I didn’t. While I love French culture, I’m just not into wine.

The trip back to the apartment after midnight was fun with several drinks in my head. Here’s a view of the courtyard inside the apartment building.

Much of today was spent on boats and metros with a lot of walking. This was my last full day in Paris and it’s clear that I have not had my fill. When do I go back?

Back in Paris. I decided to squeeze as much as I could in these two last full days of my trip. Walking around an area had to be my first task. I chose Montmartre as one of the more interesting areas of Paris. My first experience in the area was to jump over the turnstile to get in the funicular that takes you up to Sacre Coeur since it wasn’t working.

I had a bad memory of Sacre Coeur from when Margaret, Keith, and I were there in 2003. I had a panic attack when we climbed up the narrow windy stairs. I had to hold on to my mind for the last steps then try to handle it slowly going down. This time I enjoyed looking at the church with no intention of going up the stairs.

Inside I remembered that Margaret had lit a candle for her parents when we were in cathedrals like this. I texted her to find out if she wanted me to do it here and she responded yes. Even though neither she nor I believe in this, her parents certainly did. Lighting a candle for me was a sign of respect for their beliefs. I don’t feel as bad giving money to the Catholic Church with the new Pope. My problem before was supporting an institution that enabled and protected employees who raped children.

The view from Sacre Coeur, being on top of a hill, was great but I don’t have a picture that shows it. The area that Sacre Coeur is in, Montmartre, is known for artists, windy streets, but unfortunately for tourists.

There was a large area of booths selling wine, cheese, and other tempting local products. I got a cheese tasting and hard sell from this guy. The cheese was really good. I tried about 10 types. He wanted me to vacuum pack some cheese and send it home. I’m not sure it would pass through inspection and whether it would smell bad by the time I got home. I listened to my brake, Margaret, and fortunately said no.

The instrument that I heard played beautifully in Florence called the handspan or hang drum reappeared. Here are the police telling a British guy to stop playing. I bought his CD, knowing he could use the money since he lost his income that day.

One of the very best street musicians I have ever heard was this group, called Presteej. The members are from Haiti, Côte d’Ivoire, and Senegal. Each of them could sing well, the guy on the right was the main singer but the drummer had a really high plaintive voice that I especially liked. At one point, they had the crowd on the street singing along with them and the main singer came up right next to me and we were sort of doing a duet. They have a song you can hear for free called “Voulez-vous danser” (Do you want to dance) at http://www.presteej.myelefant.com I’m hesitant to have you hear this song because it’s a pretty pop song and the music I heard was edgy and plaintive. They wrote most of their songs but they did sing “Message in a Bottle”, which I had heard Sting play in Paris three weeks ago when he was performing with Paul Simon. I love things like that that complete a circle.

The Dali Museum was just around the corner and I’ve always appreciated his view of the world. What a great line — “I’m in a permanent state of intellectual erection.”

Here’s a sculpture called “The Snail and the Angel”. According to the sign, “The snail is one of Dali’s favorite symbols, expressing his own duality; soft on the inside — suffering and hard on the outside — not allowing anything to show.”

This painting comes from Dali’s fascination with Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. He met and was influenced by many figures of his time, such as Freud, the Pope, and Picasso.

Another great quote from Dali is on the wall here — “My most beautiful memories are those from the future.”

I made sure to take this picture for my friend Ken Wilkinson who has created beautifully absurd clocks at outoftheboxclocks.com. Check them out.

They had a photography machine that inserted your face into Dali’s hair and body. I couldn’t resist. This is truly scary.

I had walked by so many pastry shops that I couldn’t go by one more without stopping. I sat to eat my pastry in this square next to a Senegalese guy who had a leg brace. He told me his life story about making sure to let his daughter know that she should not fall into the use of drugs like he had. When he heard that I had traveled around Africa, I felt we got kind of close. I was sad to move on but also relieved that our relationship ended there. This was one of the few times I felt uncomfortable asking for a picture.

On the way to the Metro, I passed by the Erotica Museum and had to go in. Much of what was in there is not good to put on a G rated blog but here’s one piece. It shows the characters seen in a bordello, The Women, The Madame, The “Under-Mistress” (whatever that is), and of course the Patrons.

I had to hurry to make my 2:45 tour of the Eiffel Tower. On the way, I went through a dilemma that my parents would have gone through. I had to change metros at the Arc de Triomphe. I really wanted to stop but I just barely had time. I know what Margaret would have said and I hate being last minute.

I think I know why I decided to stop anyway. In 6th grade, I did a project on the Arc de Triomphe, which formed part of my love of Paris which I have had since I was even younger than 6th grade. I rushed out of the metro, ran up to the closest spot I could find and asked someone to take my picture. Then I ran back to the metro and got to the tour right on time and of course, had to wait 15 minutes before the tour really started. I loved seeing the Arc de Triomphe but I hated the last minute arrival and the bad memories. Overall though it was definitely worth it.

I bought a tour of the Eiffel Tower a few days ago just for the ability to skip the line, which was about 2 hours. The guide was a 28 year old American who was also teaching English in Paris as long as he could afford to live here. He was quite good and I learned some things in addition to skipping the line.

The man Eiffel lived in an apartment on top of the Eiffel Tower. At one point they wanted to tear it down and he fought it, using Paris’ laws that protect people’s housing. Here are sculptures of Thomas Edison (first picture) visiting Eiffel on top of the tower.

Sure, it cost $13 for a glass of champagne on top of the Eiffel Tower but it wasn’t a tough decision.

On the way to the metro, the Africans selling trinkets at the base of the Eiffel Tower all started running. They arrested one of them and here are a bunch of others looking to see what was going to happen.

This was a long day. I went back to my apartment only for a few minutes because I was off to see Mozart’s Magic Flute performed by the Paris Opera at the Bastille Opera house.

Before I left I thought this would be by far my musical highlight of the trip. However, I also saw Paul Simon / Sting; Rossini’s The Barber of Seville in a palace in Venice; Presteej on the streets of Montmartre; Exsultate, Jubilate and Mozart’s Requiem in Paris that brought me to tears; and a few other classical concerts. I liked many of these more than this performance of the Magic Flute, which has been my favorite single musical piece. The singing was perfect but it was missing the power of the drama of the opera. The women were dressed in Paris high fashion, I guess to appeal to the Parisian audience but to me seemed out of place. They just plodded through the opera without knocking us out with powerful effects. The Magic Flute gets an 8 out of 10 just for being the Magic Flute. Julie Traymor’s Magic Flute that was on PBS gets a 10 out of 10. This version got an 8 out of 10. By the way, Julie Traymor did the movie “Across the Universe” in which the whole story is told through Beatles songs. See it if you haven’t already.

Here’s a small part of a large mural about the storming of he Bastille in the Bastille metro station on my way back.

One block away from my apartment there were always many people standing outside this bar drinking and talking. I had gone by them several times. It occurred to me tonight that all of them were male. I had heard that the Marais district where I stayed both times was home to Jews, immigrants, bohemians, and gays. Now it made sense.

My obsession for my three last nights in Paris is to be able to say that I got as much in as I could. This day was a success by that measure.

I couldn’t get enough of walking around the streets of Dubrovnik during the short time I was there. It was sad to leave “Kings Landing”. Igor picked me up and I felt like we were old friends after an intense day yesterday in Bosnia. Here’s a view of a Croatian village from the airplane. 

On the plane to Munich, I got an obsession about eating a disgusting German Sausage. Surprisingly, the food in the Munich airport was upscale, health food, Asian, Italian, but it took a while to find a place that sold bratwurst. It was as disgusting as it looked.

My apartment was close to the one I spent a week in earlier, with the same owner. It was a little more modern but again filled with personality. I don’t really need all the space but I feel like I’m living in Paris rather than visiting in a hotel.

I went for a long walk past the Louvre and into the Tuileries Gardens.

I thought the Tuileries would be very formal gardens with people sitting on benches, not on the grass. Surprisingly, it had a very popular feel, not formal at all.

I drank some water out of this pump. You had to spin a wheel to get the water.

Great sculpture, called “La Foule 1963-1965” (the Crowd).

I experienced something on this walk I hadn’t experienced the whole trip. I had no interest in talking to anyone. Usually I will sit close to people but not creepily close, then when they have a break in their conversation, I’ll start talking to them. 99% of the time the people really seem to enjoy talking with me and it’s one of the best parts of the trip for me. Today, I sat far away from people. I wasn’t interested in where they were from or how they like to travel or what their occupation is. That’s a strong sign that I’m tired.

I felt a little guilty leaving Dubrovnik all day but the trip to Bosnia was unforgettable. It was good to be in a forgotten part of the world rather than just the world famous tourist locations. The Mostar Bridge is a well know attraction but obviously not like the Roman Coliseum or Dubrovnik.

This is a good view of one side of the Dubrovnik walls with all the turrets. Even when walking the top of the walls, you don’t get a feel for how many turrets there are.

I had not done one item on the bullet list that Keith gave me about Dubrovnik, which was to get to the beach. It was really relaxing just to sit there and look at the island I had been to the previous day and the walls on another side. Of course, I had to keep my tradition of touching the water. I lucked out and got a French couple to take my picture. I’ve talked with several French people here.

The highlight of my evening was dinner with my heroes Abraham and Celeste. I met them at the T-Mobile store (not the most pleasant place to meet people). They have been traveling for over a year. They had planned to spend two weeks in Vietnam but loved it so much they spent several months there. They both have jobs designing apps for sports networks and therefore can work from anywhere in the world that has good internet.

Igor, the guide, suggested two places that have very fresh fish. One was in the Old Town and had very little on the menu, mostly all fish. Abraham is allergic to fish so that was out. Igor also recommended Postat, a restaurant at the Pile Gate. We met at 8 and walked over to the restaurant.

They brought out a large tray of fish that had been caught that day and asked us to choose. Abraham chose lamb but Celeste and I picked a fish to share that was about $90. It tasted like it had just been caught.

The reason why I call Abraham and Celeste my heroes is that they have taken traveling to a much higher level than anyone else I’ve ever met. They seem to get along so well and have the job on common. It’s a dream come true to be able to travel wherever you want and keep the money coming in. We talked until the servers started giving us looks like they wished we would move on, maybe 10:30 or so.

One topic we talked about was the generations. The formulation I’m going with is: Baby Boomers were born from 1946-1964; Gen X from 1965-1981; Millennials (used to be called Gen Y) 1982-?. Abraham and Celeste are definitely Gen Xers, which seems to be the forgotten generation. No one has come up with a better name than Gen X. The biggest personality in the USA for this group is unfortunately Ronald Regan. Society seems to be very concerned with what the Millenials want and what the Baby Boomers want but not so much Gen X. Abraham was regretting being in that generation but I know my niece Jennifer defends Gen X music. Of course, you can make anything of of any situation and Abraham and Celeste have made an amazing life for themselves. They have travelled to so many out of the way and also mainstream places.

You should check out their website at flight303.com.

Dubrovnik continues to blow me away. Here’s the main street, a church near the main gate, and one of many statues that are all over the place.

I hope Abraham and Celeste realize how special they are. I certainly do. I also realize how special Dubrovnik is. Off to Paris tomorrow.

I met my guide Igor at 8:30 to go to see the famous bridge at Mostar, Bosnia. Bosnia is not totally off the beaten track although it is an obscure part of the world. We had a different view of Dubrovnik on the way out, then of the area just out side the city.

When we reached the border between Croatia and Bosnia / Herzegovina, Igor said to say that we’re friends visiting Mostar. I’m not sure why we couldn’t say he was a paid guide. Fortunately, they didn’t ask me anything on the Croatian or Bosnia side.

We stopped for coffee at a very deserted little store on the side of the road. The woman used the traditional old method for making coffee, without a machine of any kind. Igor explained the process as follows. First you boil the water in a pot, then take the pot off the fire and add coffee and sugar. Then put the pot back on the fire and let it boil and brew. Then put the coffee in a cup and add milk. This was how they made coffee before coffee makers existed.

There were two recurring themes today that are unfortunately closely related. One is the effects of the terrible civil war which took place after Tito died in 1989. Tito was a ruthless dictator but he kept all the ethnic groups of the former Yugoslavia together. He was a hero of WW2, fighting for Yugoslav independence. He was a socialist but kept Yugoslavia non-aligned and out of the Soviet Union’s domination. As soon as Tito died Yugoslavia fell apart. Millions died in fighting and Yugoslavia has now turned into 6 separate countries: Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia / Herzegovina, Slovenia (not the same as Slovakia), Montenegro, and Macedonia. Igor told me sometimes it takes a strong leader with a lot of power to keep everybody in line. Other Croatians I met agreed that the days of the strongman Tito were the best. Igor recognized that the problem with a dictator is making sure you have a good one who isn’t in it for himself.

Igor had the full lunch while I had a small subset of this. They’re proud of their sausages in Bosnia and pork cutlets, which were very tasty.

One t-shirt in this store on the right said “I am Muslim, Don’t Panic”. Right below it was an homage to Tito.

The big attraction in Mostar is the beautiful bridge. “Mostar” means bridge city. Here are pictures of the bridge and me eating what else, pistachio ice cream, and touching the water as is my tradition.

The bridge was built in the 16th century and stood for 427 years until it was destroyed in 1993. It was rebuilt with some of the original stones. You can read more about it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stari_Most

The best experience of Mostar was running into these art students. Their class assignment for the day was to sit on the rock and think about how to paint their feelings about the bridge. One guy made this sketch of me and Igor. These three young women were quite interested in the United States but were happy living in Mostar.

The other big theme of the day was the division of Bosnia / Hersogovenia into areas for: Croatian Catholics, Bosnian Muslims, and Serbian Orthodox Christians. Each village was divided into areas for one of the groups or a village might be for only one of the three groups. In Mostar, the bridge was the dividing line between the Bosnian Muslims and the Croatian Catholics.

The road signs were in Bosnian, which uses our alphabet, and also in Serbian, which uses the Cyrillic alphabet. Someone had defaced this sign by erasing the Serbian part of the sign.

The holes in this building are from shells during the war. There were a lot of buildings like this.

I asked Igor if we could go in a mosque of which there were many on this side of the bridge but it turned out they wouldn’t let non-Muslims in.

Dubrovnik is separated from the rest of Croatia by a strip of Bosnia. You can’t drive to Dubrovnik from the rest of Croatia except by going through Bosnia. So from Mostar we went through a border crossing to Croatia, then back into Bosnia for a few minutes then back into Croatia. Strangely, when we entered Bosnia, a Croatian guard took a long time with our documents but no Bosnian guards checked us. Then when we returned to Croatia, another Croatian guard checked us but again no Bosnian check point. Igor thought it was because Croatia loved to have bureaucrats while Bosnia was too poor to waste money with excessive border guards.

A beautiful fruit stand.

The black buoys in the water here are part of oyster and mussel traps. We went to a roadside oyster / mussel stand twice but it was closed both times. Igor eats oysters with just a little lemon, no Tabasco sauce. He felt Tabasco is for wimps. I’m a wimp.

This is the famous wall of Ston, which is 5 kilometers long (over 3 miles) and according to Wikipedia is “a notable feat of medieval architecture.”

Keith lived near this beautiful bridge just outside Dubrovnik. I’m not sure where exactly where.

It was bizarre to be in Bosnia, a place without a lot of tourists and still recovering from the horrible wars of the 1990’s. Apparently, the three groups got along fairly well until Tito died and the wars started.

Mostar represents the end of the road for my trip. From this point on I’m returning slowly to Indiana, PA. Here’s my itinerary.

• Drive from Mostar to Dubrovnik, overnight in Dubrovnik
• Fly from Dubrovnik to Munich
• Change planes to Paris, three nights in Paris
• Paris to Iceland
• Change planes to Boston, one night in Boston
• Fly to Pittsburgh
• Drive to Indiana

This looks long but getting to Mostar was a much longer and tortuous (and fun) route. It took 28 nights to get here and will take 5 to get back.

Already this day I had fought T-Mobile, taken the cable car to the top of the mountain around the city, been to two museums, and walked the city walls. The dilemma I’ve been feeling these last two weeks since I hit the physical and emotional wall in Venice is between the need to rest and recover on the one hand and the desire to see everything possible. The desire to see everything has been winning and it won at this moment. I had to decide very quickly whether to go to Mostar, Bosnia the next day and rush through my list or take it easy tomorrow in Dubrovnik and skip Mostar.

I actually ran through the Strodun to take the last boat to the island, Lokrum. It reminded me how much I don’t like running. The ferry left at 4:00 and took 15 minutes with the last ferry coming back left at 5:00. I was the only one on the ferry, since other people realized that 45 minutes wasn’t enough time to fully enjoy the island. Here’s a view of the ferry on its way to the island.

I can never get enough of Kings Landing (the Old Town), this time from the boat.

I didn’t have time to walk all the way to the fort on top of the island. My favorite part was the peacocks running wild.

I’m embarrassed to tell you that I got lost around 4:45 with only 15 minutes until the last ferry. If I hadn’t found my way back on time I might have had to spend the night on the island or ask to be rescued. It was easy to find my way to water since it’s a small island but it turned out to be on the opposite side from the port. I used my 3G service (thank you T-Mobile even though I hate you) to see where I was on Apple Maps and get back with a few minutes to spare.

This left two items on my list to do and I was going to be gone most of the next day. So I went immediately to find the Rochester Institute of Technology branch campus in Dubrovnik that Keith attended in 2013. I got a picture of it when I was walking on top of the walls.

I spoke with two Computer Science students who were doing something similar to what Keith did. Keith was there for a quarter of 11 weeks while these students had a full semester. Keith lived a ways away in view of the big bridge that I saw the next day. He took two classes from an RIT CS professor and two classes with the local students. It’s hard for me to imagine how nice that must have been to be in a place as beautiful as this. There are bars after bars after bars in the Old Town and walking around here is a joy. I talked with a different RIT professor for a while. He was on his way to climb 400 steps to get to his apartment.

I got invited to have dinner with the Foreign Language club but I wasn’t feeling it. Instead I went for some exotic seafood. This dish had rare truffles, scallops in a crab sauce, and pasta dipped in oyster ink. The picture has a red hue to it because of the heat lamp outside.

I had to walk around a lot after dinner. This is one of may favorite places and there’s a picture of a big battle from Game of Thrones taking place here. This is the stairs going from the most important gate, the Pile Gate, down to the Old Town.

I started to question whether I had made the right decision to go to Bosnia the next day instead of just relaxing and seeing more sights in Dubrovnik. The part of me that wants to see everything won out over the part of me that wants to take it easy but the part that wanted to take it easy was complaining after this long day.

With some help from Keith, I had a list of the minimum activities I had to do over the two full days in Dubrovnik. I did the first one on the list below over and over, whenever I had a few minutes. I showed some pictures on yesterday’s blog (April 20). It’s stunning, maybe the single most beautiful location I’ve been to during this entire month.

• Walk around the Old Town’s shimmering pavement filled with bars and restaurants
• Take the cable car to the overlook at the top of the mountain
• Walk all the way around the city walls (Kings Landing from the Game of Thrones)
• Take the ferry to Lokrum Island
• Walk to the RIT branch where Keith went
• Walk to the Beach

There is so much to show about the city walls that I’m going to break this day into two parts. Notice that the word “walk” appeared many times in the above list. I have an app called “Moves” that is always recording where I go, by what means of movement, and the number of steps. This day broke my all time record at 12,737 steps, which according to the app is 5.9 miles (9.5 KM), 2 hours and 48 minutes, and 583 calories. The app works really well and is free but you have to remember to keep it on in the background all the time and carry your phone with you at all times, which I do anyway.

The walled Old Town of Dubrovnik is where they filmed Kings Landing in the TV series Game of Thrones. You feel that you are in the middle ages. It’s beyond words how perfect the place is. Probably twenty times this day, I was shocked to see something totally unexpected, particulary on the walk on top of the castle walls.

My day started in an ugly way. I have had a great deal of trouble getting 3G data on my cell phone throughout this trip. I have bought SIMM cards in Amsterdam, Venice, and Dubrovnik and its been a hassle each time. A guide I had here got so angry when I just mentioned the word T-Mobile. I won’t talk about it more here, maybe later.

Here are views of King’s Landing from the cable car and from the top of the mountain.

There was a museum on the top about the terrible attacks on Dubrovnik during the crazy breakup of Yugoslavia. They actually shelled the walls of the old town. The first two paragraphs below are fascinating. Keith had walked up here rather than taking the cable car and was told not to deviate from the trail since there may be some shells remaining.

There were many steep steps down to the entrance to Old Town and many more steep steps down to the main street.

On the way there was a Jewish museum. Here’s a sign ordering the confiscation of Jewish property and a list of Jews who died here during the Holocaust.

Here’s the bell tower, which is just a few feet from my apartment and goes off 4 times an hour all night. It’s beautiful but I’m glad I’m a sound sleeper.

By far the highlight of the day was the walk around the walls of the city. This were a total of 4,343 steps according to a web site, with towers every so often to climb. I stopped every couple of minutes to marvel the quirkiness and beauty.

I appreciated the contrast in this picture between the ancient walls going off on the right and the definitely not medieval basketball court.

This is the tower that’s the highest point.

Here’s a view out a turret.

Steep stairs.

Halfway around the walls is the Pile Gate, the main entrance to the Old Town and the amazing main street called the Stradun. My apartment is near the bell tower, which is at the end of the street.

These two pictures are looking out the wall on the Adriatic Sea side.

I got caught going the wrong way on the walls and had to do a time out.

This experience reminded me of when I was at the Christ statue way up high in Rio de Janeiro. It just can’t be shown well with my camera and my limited photographic abilities. Even if you’re not a Game of Thrones fan, if you ever get a chance, you really should go to Dubrovnik.