Back to that long strange trip part 4

 

I was thinking about writing a quick recap on the Dallas sports scene yet the only real item to talk about is the NBA draft and that horse has been beat to death for the moment. Honestly I don’t know anything about how the Cowboys will do; I am a casual fan of the Rangers and the Stars-, keep wanting to follow FC Dallas, but don’t so not much else to discuss for the moment so let’s get back into that drivers seat and discuss driving in Europe some more.

 

I have not been following the direct timeline and will try and get back onto some path here now. Mainly because the next part of the trip once we drove through France and northern Italy was Rome or more specifically Vatican City.

We wanted to see Rome more, yet due to some missed and rescheduled tours we definitely wanted to take we lost about a full day of other sight seeing. I regret and don’t regret not seeing Rome because in some ways we did see a good chunk of what Rome may be like on a daily basis just didn’t see the important tourist attractions.

Like I mentioned in a previous post we booked a hotel within walking distance of the Vatican because that was important to us. And we just couldn’t get our acts together to enjoy what we booked in advance for tours, yet we did see everything we scheduled, not just at the originally scheduled time.

First we were tour the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel and were late. Actually we were not late, we were walking up the street to get to the meeting point and my wife got a call from the tour guide. We told her we were walking yet she acted like she couldn’t hear us and by the time we climbed the steps that tour was gone. I called and they said they weren’t going to give us a refund, but I am still going to fight it. Like I said we were walking up the street so with a few minutes to spare, yet apparently the tours have to start on time. We would have made it if she had given us directions to the starting point, but she “couldn’t hear us” and hung up.

We arrived at the meeting spot and there were about ten or more tour guides waiting on their groups, so you truly have to be there a few minutes early yet she should have guided us. And once we realized none of the groups waiting were ours we were late.

So I threw a fit with someone on the phone and they were adamant about us having to pay again to reschedule and it would be a few days. No refunds, seriously though that is a racket, maybe a rebooking fee or something, but when you pay $300 plus they should help you out.

Anyway apparently this must happen quite often since there were tour companies that could book a similar tour right there on the spot. I spent a couple hundred more and took the tour about two hours later. In the interim the better half and I sat down and had our first Rome meal. We ate at a restaurant about two blocks away from the tour entrance area, well had snacks and a glass of wine. We were able to calm down and gather ourselves which was good since it helped us to better enjoy the tour we did take. It was a 2 and a half hour tour so no where near enough time to really enjoy the museum, however we took enormous amounts of pictures and did spend some time in the Sistine Chapel which is as impressive as you have heard if you have not seen.

Our tour guide had shown us some of the info about the Sistine Chapel at the beginning of the tour so we were able to really breakdown what we were looking at while we were there.

And that was the end of that tour. The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering around the Vatican area or basically St Peter’s Basilica and St. Peter’s square. The Square is just what you see on TV basically. The Basilica, well just like the museum and the Sistine Chapel, you need to go to believe.

We spent three hours in the Basilica, first touring the entire breadth of the building, going from one chapel to the other, looking at the paintings and the sculptures, just marveling at everything we saw. It was one of the main reasons we went to Rome and no disappoint.

Occasionally I touch on the fact I am Catholic and here I am going to say I am a practicing Catholic and nowadays you have to make that distinction sometimes. And the reason I say that is because I have confession stories, which on the surface may not sound good.

Anyway confession is offered in the Basilica so my wife and I decided we would go. We had missed Mass in our travels, (Salamanca was early on Saturday so daily Mass) and what ever indiscretions we needed to get off our chests we decided to take the opportunity and go to confession. They offer confession in multiple languages so it is easy for many to go while there.

We wait for our turn and I go into the confessional. I am speaking to the Priest as I confess and he asks about my daily prayer life so I touch on it a bit and mentioned my wife and I try to say a rosary most nights before going to bed. He gets excited and says come with me. So here I am coming out of the confessional with a Priest and I have to be honest if he was five feet tall I would have to check it. I am just over 6 feet. So the Priest is marching me across the Basilica floor and cuts me through some staunches so I can get to where they are about to pray the rosary for the day. And then there is Mass. This happens every day yet I do not think you see to many times Priests perp walking someone from the Confessional. I let the Priest know I needed to get my wife since she was in confession also. So we walked back together and he goes back to the confessional. And yes there was a line all staring at us when we left and when we came back. I found my wife and we wandered over to where the Rosary and the Mass were to be held. For some reason the Rosary didn’t happen, yet we did get to attend Mass. And yes as a Catholic I feel special for it. And I know pride is a sin you need to go to confession.

After Mass we had been at the Vatican for close to ten hours so we were ready to go back. We stopped on the way back to the hotel for dinner. And felt like we were in Rome, walking along the streets, looking at menus on the sidewalk, looking in the shops, and finally picked a place and had an enjoyable meal. Got back to the hotel and needed to get to bed since the next day was going to be busy.

So now it is Wednesday. We have tickets to the Papal Audience. And we are very excited. It is already hot and there is a long line to enter. We finally get to the entrance, have our bags checked, we had to give up a water bottle since it was metal which my wife misses. They said we could come back at the end of the day to pick up, yet by the time we got back it was 7 in the evening and all the items that were being put aside while we entered were long gone.

We enter the Square and try to find seats hopefully along the route Popes take through the crowd before the audience begins. My wife starts looking around and saying we should move up closer. I am loath to start changing seats because it is crowded and the crowd is growing by the minute. I finally give in and walk up to the front of our section and try to get a guard’s attention. He ignores me. I am a bit frustrated as helps woman after woman. Finally I get him to come to me and I ask if my tickets can get us in the section in front of us. He demeanor changed some when he saw our tickets. He pointed over to the front yet to one specific side. I do not speak Italian (I played like I spoke four languages on our trip lol) so I wasn’t sure exactly what he was trying to tell me to do. So I go to another guard and this time it was a Swiss Guard and there is a difference in who is who at the Vatican and the Swiss Guard have more authority than pretty much everyone else. And what is amazing is they are the nicest in general with dealing with the public that I saw. Very polite and helpful compared to just about every other guard, police,  employee etc… but they are also the ones you don’t get into with it either.

The Swiss Guard at the section entrance I spoke to was immediately telling me to go to the front so I could be on time. I told him I needed to get my wife . I got her we went back to him and at this point, he opened the rope and let us through pointing down the way to the other side. We got there and were immediately ushered to the front so we thought we were going to the front section, another guard then another Swiss guard lets us through each section. We were starting to feel somewhat taken aback. As soon as I showed my ticket they let us go by their gate or rope and pointed to go further up. Before we could catch our bearings we were walking up the steps to the I guess you call it the stage area or basically the level the Pope sits on and we were just off to his side. Needless to say my wife and I sat there for a few minutes just trying to figure out how we got from more than half way back in the square to a stone’s throw to the Pope. We weren’t right next to him those seats were reserved, yet we were close enough where you could make out the details on his face pretty much.

It was hot, it was a bit humid maybe, yet it was wonderful to be able to sit up close and watch and listen to the Pope on this Wednesday morning. We were there for a few hours, and the last one was waiting and hoping he would walk by. He spent most of his time after the audience blessing a whole of host of recently married couples that were on the other side, so by the time he was done and spoken to a few others he walked by our section and waived. Many of the remaining people like us were trying to get him to stop by, yet he had been out there for hours now so he waved at everyone while walking to the vehicle and left. Still it was exhilarating and we felt very blessed to be seated so close.

The stories continue yet this post is going a bit long again. I will pick up in Wednesday afternoon and it was frustrating and we missed another tour because we could never find the meeting spot at all. Finally though and the Swiss Guards are involved again and this story just reinforces they are spectacular in their interactions when you work with them.  We managed to find where we needed to be and by some miracle we get this tour rescheduled which apparently is no easy feat. We toured the area around the Square, shopped, ate ice cream, stood in a long line for the Jubilee information at the office there and wasted some time trying to figure out where we messed up in finding the tour info. Also another great dinner on the streets of Rome walking back to the hotel.

Next up Thursday morning, more lateness, more weirdness, more helpful Swiss Guards, and a strange meeting.

Cheers

Quick break from the Europe trip discussion to resolve the AI issues

If it was easy to solve the AI issues, yet I have an idea and am curious as to what others think, or is this something already proposed or out there or do I just watch too much “Last Week Tonight”

Actually there are a few AI issues yet this one only may solve some.  The main problem is can people tell it is AI. There are even tests people take for fun or whatever. And with AI getting better this will only become harder. And this is all common knowledge.

So what if we required AI to be built only on one platform, one system, or one technology that cannot be copied into other software people use.

I will make a quick example and this is somewhat like having basic PDF and you cannot change anything on it. It is read only.

And this is not keeping anyone from creating on AI. Only making it harder to hide that it is AI. And I know this sounds simple and there will probably major technological hurdles to overcome, yet with the world that way it is, something needs to be done so people know they are viewing a fake reality. You can apply the truth in advertising principle to this idea.

So if AI is on something like basic PDF (and I know that is overly simplistic) where people can only view it and it cannot be copied onto anything else then that might help people realize what they are seeing. Now I say it cannot be copied on anything else, yet it can be incorporated into other platforms, but even then it would be tagged as AI with a technical marker or something.

I am tech adverse so I do not know all the terms I mean need to use to make my point well, yet I think there is a picture here. For example a person could create a story on AI and people could read the story, but if it was developed only on an AI platform then people would know it was an AI story. And there is nothing wrong with that. The key is it could not be copied onto a word document and a person tries to sell it as their own work to publishers or other media. It helps to prevent people from cheating people who still write stories or screenplays etc.

And if AI was on one platform then publishers or even professors could run a few pages through the AI system to see if it was developed there and avoid having to worry about authenticity or be able to grade a paper correctly. Of course if done correctly that one person would have to hand copy the AI story or paper onto another software, yet they still shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.

And again I do not know if platform is the correct technical verbiage to use to identify one system for AI to be located. There could be a range of technical outlets used. I do not know, my goal though is to put out an idea to be discussed or played around with or updated with the correct verbiage to move us out of this AI fake world.

I do not have a problem with AI if used correctly. For example I said AI could be incorporated into other works. If I try to self publish a short story, I would want people to know it is my work, yet to publish I may need some dazzling artwork for the cover. I could write and publish the story, yet request an AI drawing for the cover. My work would show I did it, but acknowledge I used AI for the cover.

Or I could still use an artist and acknowledge the artist’s work. Either way the general public when browsing the internet would know for sure that I wrote the piece and the cover art is verifiable also as to where it came from.

This protects artists, media companies, publishers, and probably a whole host of other industries or related work while still allowing the development of AI to use as desired or necessary.

What scares me is this may take an act of Congress to get it done. As a conservative I do not want too much government intrusion in our lives, but sometimes it is government’s job to protect people. This may be somewhat of a scenario where the government is protecting people and business’ rights to their own work.

I could go on about how I feel the government should get involved since I want as minimum intrusion as possible so if people are interested in the concept when can discuss details later.

Finally this may also help the development of AI. There would be businesses built to house all the AI content and even allow current businesses to have their work acknowledged correctly. This might create greater investment in the hardware to build AI, expand it, have it’s work sold, and so much more. In some ways this would be like the FCC controlling the airwaves, but hopefully we could do a better job of creating these laws so creativity still thrives, businesses make money and more importantly the work of individuals is protected and they receive their proper due (and money).

And if I am not clear enough let me know. I would love to get this discussion into the main stream so we can find answers and solutions.

“What a long strange trip it’s been”…. and amazing, wonderful, frustrating, maddening, beautiful, too short, tiring, fantastic, surreal, and so much more…. More….more

 

(Thanks to the Grateful Dead for the title of this post and this is part three of ?)

 

I seem to be all over the map with any order of this trip (bad pun intended), yet I do not care. I do want to talk about hotels. Before we left I booked some hotels and left some to be booked as we drove. One of the main reasons for this trip (actually there were a few reasons or goals) was to see Europe, not just the large cities, but the small ones too. I hoped to meet a few people and talk to them. Unfortunately the time rush made the meeting of locals not as plentiful as I liked, however we did stop at places along the way based on how things went.

I booked hotels in Lisbon, Rome, the last night in Lisbon and the Algarve region in Portugal which was a last minute before we left decision because I wanted to make sure we spent at least one day on the beach. I thought we were going to spend a few days  on beaches throughout the trip, but that didn’t happen so I am glad I booked one for a couple of nights in south Portugal. Overall we stayed 21 nights in Europe with 11 being prebooked. This still left us quite a few random stop opportunities.

And we used a booking site as we went and yes deciding where to stay 200 or 300 kilometers up the road at some random service area can be a bit frustrating, yet overall we did well.

Only one hotel we regretted, one was forgettable, one was almost forgettable, yet it was in Salamanca and we had such a great time there that even the hotel was okay. There is an internal family joke about why the better half choose that one while driving. It was nice, not rememberable yet again since it was close to the Cathedral and the night life near the University it worked out fine.

Of the prebooked hotels the one in Lisbon was good and suited our purposes well. It had parking so I could leave the car and located near a metro stop. The hotel in Rome had two of my requirements, parking and was within walking distance, just barely, of the Vatican. It wasn’t fancy at all, had good breakfasts which most came close to having good breakfasts, and as I had mentioned in another post all very similar. We weren’t staying in resorts or high dollar hotels since we are on a budget in our daily lives so our vacations have that need also. So yes we knew hotels were going to be a crap shoot. Yet as I said above only a couple didn’t make the grade. We stopped in Montpellier France and we didn’t choose well there. We couldn’t find the entrance even with GPS, parking was a nightmare, shared with a mall, and old and dirty. Unfortunately while trying to find our hotel we ran across a really nice one nearby, but who knew. We had prepaid while driving since we needed a place to stay for the night.

We got up and left the next morning, didn’t even try the breakfast there if I remember correctly.

Again overall the hotels turned out well considering everything. As regular readers know I keep talking about writing fiction. I send in stories and get rejected all the time. And one of the reasons why I am learning is because I do not enhance my stories. I do not want to say embellish because as a writer you shouldn’t embellish, you need to enhance or dive deep into what you are writing so a reader can relate. One area is I do not engage readers with the various senses we have as humans. I am learning and rewriting some stories to try and work on adding more in depth descriptions of what a person encounters or needs to encounter in the story to really put them where I want them to be. I love telling stories, yet writing has a couple of those four letter words that needs to be accomplished, work and effort (yes 6 letters, but you get the drift).

The reason I bring this up is because some of the hotels need some enhancements. The first is the one we stayed in Assisi Italy. This one is where we got stranded and that story will come later, but we were stranded and because of that it made some of the stay very frustrating, yet the early mornings and evenings when we could just stop and smell the roses so to speak were beyond my ability to describe well. And when I say smell the roses, you could smell the flowers in the morning. The hotel was not exactly in the town, just a short drive away. It was so peaceful in the morning, just sitting at a table near their pool, the smell of the flowers, the quiet, the bee that made you change tables, even the sound of the workers somewhere in the building either cleaning or picking up plates didn’t interfere with the peace you felt. One morning we sat at a table under neath an overhang or extension of a roof, so it was in the shade looking over the front walkway, that had other scattered tables in the sun. The pool was to our right with some pool loungers around it, yet very still. And it was green all around the hotel, shrubs, other vegetation along with the flowers encircled quite a bit of the hotel. This was somewhat of a small property, just a few floors and one building, but not a rectangle so it avoided the standard hotel vibe.

And then in the evenings, forget it. We could sit on a somewhat large balcony, had three or four tables just to sit. One evening we opened a bottle of wine we had bought in Portugal, and just watched the moon rise. The sun was setting behind the building so we really didn’t see a sunset, but we could look out over a large valley with a small town in the center, the moon rising in front of us, nice large hills all green surrounding the valley. Our anger and frustration melting away as we sat there trying to make sense of what was happening all in this strangely peaceful paradise. We really needed this place at this time.

Finally after two full days we got our situation partially resolved, (still waiting on the rest) and on the third day we took off again. Yet first we went and visited the Cathedral in Assisi and the town. We probably spent five or six hours there overall. As always we enjoyed the peace and the art that fill Cathedrals in Europe (another one of our goals was to just stop and see various Cathedrals throughout our journey and we saw a few). Assisi was great, there were quite a few tourists for such a small town, yet we enjoyed it immensely. The better half picked up some presents for the family there and then we headed into the town. We did some more shopping and had lunch. All in all it was late (as always) when we left and now we had to make some decisions on what we wanted to do next. We had to choose between Tuscany or moving on. We decided to go to Pisa since I had always wanted to see the tower since I first heard about it as a elementary age child. Wine or tourism, sometimes the choices are hard.

So we headed to Pisa and for some strange reason we picked a hotel to stay outside of Pisa and when a person says it is off the beaten path this one was off the beaten path, yet it was a great choice. No it wasn’t super fancy, nice, but not a resort, maybe close to being one. It wasn’t a large property, but not small. There were two aspects well three when you consider it’s local is beautiful. One was the smell. I have been to the Arboretum here in Dallas and other similar type environments, yet the smell of flowers at this hotel was I don’t want to say overpowering because it wasn’t, but it was very pervasive throughout the property and it was wonderful. My wife said they were gardenias. I don’t know, but it was wonderful. Like many out side of town hotels in Europe you can open the windows and breath in the atmosphere and here the smell of the flowers was intoxicating for whatever that means, yet it was.

We use to live in a apartment right next to downtown Dallas and they had a honeysuckle type plant that ran up the railings as you climbed the steps to your floor. In the spring, the smell of the flowers reverberated throughout the stair area and up and down the hallways. We use to love it. Here at this hotel it was the same, yet it was everywhere you walked.

And that was the other reason this hotel unknown to us was popular. It had the most eclectic walkway and grounds. It had a real nice pool area, somewhat large, the usual loungers and tables around it. Yet just on the other side was a large lawn area with quite a few tables and lighting where you could hold an outdoor reception, and beyond that or next to it that wandered away and back to the hotel was this wide variety of pop sculptures. I say pop sculptures for lack of a better word. This wasn’t Italian art like in the Cathedrals, but it was some locally made (?) or they had someone put together various pieces made of wood, not really stone, but something of course they were painted. There is no theme here. Some were animals, one was I think a statue of Andy Warhol, some other items, sorry, can’t remember off the top of my head at the moment.

We got there early enough for a change to enjoy dinner and it was great. I eventually looked up what the name of the meal in English was that we ate. It was great. It was Italian and the whole environment was as I mentioned one of the reasons for the trip. We were deep in the Italian country side seeing Italy.

Okay this is getting long so more about the other hotels and the rest of the trip to come. And I am going to make a separate post with a few pictures. I don’t think I am going to go into descriptions, just post, maybe a couple of posts as I write.

Cheers

“What a long strange trip it’s been”…. and amazing, wonderful, frustrating, maddening, beautiful, too short, tiring, fantastic, surreal, and so much more…. more

 

(Thanks to the Grateful Dead for the title of this post and this is part two of ?)

 

So yesterday I started this recap of our wild three week journey through part of Europe, specifically Portugal, Spain France, Italy and then back. So let’s back up a bit and go back to the beginning.

Lisbon is great. We arrived and got settled in jet lag and all. We asked the desk clerk at the hotel for some local restaurants nearby. She pointed out three within a couple of blocks. I do not want to say recommended, but just pointed out some places nearby.

We choose one and it was somewhat of a disappointment. I ordered the tuna steak and it seemed like it was old and not cooked well. Other than that everything we did in Lisbon was great. After dinner we went back to the hotel and sat at the bar. Turns out the hotel had a dessert of the day and we decided to try it. It was some type of cheesecake, yet apparently a local take. We enjoyed it immensely yet at this point it has been almost a month and I cannot remember exactly what it was, but that we enjoyed it.

The next day we started our journey exploring the city. We took the Metro and just made some random stops based on what was available at that stop. The first one there was a huge statue, and again I didn’t journal so I don’t remember who, but someone from a few centuries back that had a major impact on the city. There was a QR code to listen and you can even choose your language. It was fun. Also this was a very major roundabout intersection so navigating it was interesting. We ended up in a park named after a King. Eventually we wound our way around the park and found a small café and this is where we tried the national treat, Pastel de Nata for the first time. Worth it. Yes, it may be somewhat simple, but sprinkled with some cinnamon and with a cup of coffee, and I do not mean the American restaurant type of cup of coffee it is worth enjoying.

Coffee is another endeavor all together in Europe. And most of Europe or at least the areas we travelled treat it about the same. You can have an expresso, cappuccino, café Americano, or café with milk, ordered in whatever language of the country you are visiting. Obviously café Americano is the closest to what we usually order here, but it many cases a bit stronger.

So much more to go in Lisbon and will get back to it.

Another point in general I am going to talk about quickly is driving. We drove well over 5000 kilometers on highways and in cities and towns. GPS is very helpful, but you still have to pay very close attention especially in the towns and cities. The GPS will say make the next left and as you turn you will realize there are two choices staring at you and sometimes the choices run side by side as far as you can see. So all of a sudden you are driving in heavy traffic, watching out for bikes, motor scooters, other cars and you have one tenth of a second to choose which path to take. If you look close at the GPS you can sort of pick out which one is the left you are to follow, but you just don’t have the time to double check. If you make the right one on you go. If you make the wrong one, you may spend ten minutes or more being rerouted all over the place. The towns are old and were never designed for modern traffic. It can be a nightmare.

It is good to have the passenger paying attention to the little screen on your car or phone while the driver pays attention to what is going on around you. Believe me scooters are all over the place and will cut you off in a heartbeat. Yet surprisingly with all our travels we only saw one wreck involving a motor scooter that was hit.

The other fun is when the passenger says that one and you go the other one. Yes you spend the next ten minutes being re routed and told you need to listen. Other times it is a crap shoot and you thank God you were right at that moment.

Before I end for the day, in Lisbon there is a museum dedicated to their history of exploration of the world.  We spent one of our afternoons in that museum on a random choice of where to go. Well worth the visit. Four hundred years of seafaring exploration unfolds before you. As with any large European city there are so many museums to choose from it is hard to pick. We were glad we picked that one, maybe not over others, but as one to have seen.

There is so much more to Lisbon, yet like I said we will move on. One fact though that I found interesting is how well English is spoken in Portugal. Some spoke very well, yet most had a working grasp of the language. We asked a few how they learned English. Some said just through their work and others from school. One young lady said she started learning it in first grade. I think more people knew English than Spanish and Spain is right next door. It is the tourists from England though that have created the need for so much English. Honestly it made being there so much easier than when we were off the beaten paths of the other countries. I pulled into one stop for gas somewhere in another country and as soon as I started speaking the clerk held up her finger and pulled out three charts. One for the pump I wanted, one for the type of gas and one for the amount. They still make do for the tourists one way or another.

Cheers

“What a long strange trip it’s been”…. and amazing, wonderful, frustrating, maddening, beautiful, too short, tiring, fantastic, surreal, and so much more

 

(Thanks to the Grateful Dead for the title of this post and this is part one of ?)

If you read this blog regularly you know I do not post personal info or talk about my life very much, yet this time I guess I need to share.

The better half and I just got back from the wildest and probably overly ambitious trip we have ever taken.

Originally and if we could have stuck to the original dream we should have, but life doesn’t always work out the way you want. And yes going back to originally I wanted to drive from Lisbon Portugal to Rome (one way) and take a month or two. That would have been an ambitious trip, but compared to what we did time wise would have been much better. Due to all the constraints of life we went from Lisbon to Rome and back in three weeks. Just not enough time to even begin to do all we wanted.

So where do I start. Well first a piece of advice, because as you all know us old people need to give advice all the time.

If you do drive around Europe, park your car at the hotel when staying in major cities and use the public transportation system. Just do it. We did and except for thirty minutes worked out well for us. Yes it takes some getting use to the system in each town, but trying to drive in cities that are hundreds if not thousands of years old, their roads are just not up to American drivers.

Just getting out of one hotel in one city was impossible the way the GPS system we were using asked us to do. Literally I got to one turn and the car couldn’t make the turn. It was just too narrow. The system kept saying take the turn and go so many meters to the next turn. And no, we even had a smaller car and still it was not happening. I had to back up hundreds of meters to get back to an intersection I could turn. Of course the GPS system we were using was having a heart attack until it figured out how to re route us.

So if you drive plan ahead and make sure your hotel has parking and leave the car. Do the rest on foot and Metros.  I promise you will be better off. And if us “old people” can walk 20,000 plus steps some days so can you.

So what happened, well everything. We had great tours. We were late for tours and lost the money. We got lucky and rescheduled tours. And we just walked around the cities or the small towns we visited. One of the reasons I wanted to drive was to see small towns along the way. And we did, but not as much as I would have liked.

Lisbon is wonderful, the people are nice and there is way too much to do for staying three days. Especially since we took a day trip to Fatima from Lisbon. Our driver was outstanding. He took us to the places you are supposed to go, plus a few other out of the way or not the main area sights. We spent the entire day and could go back. We attended a Mass and almost a second one, but it was time to go back to Lisbon since it was getting late. On the way back our tour guide was so great he even stopped off at a grocery store for us so we could get some items for our travels to come.

And then the first hiccup happened which caused all the rest. We left something at the hotel in Lisbon and didn’t realize it until we were a couple of hours down the road. So by the time we got back to the hotel in Lisbon and then back on the road we were 3-4 hours behind our schedule.

This caused us to have to stop earlier than planned. Which hurt our timing, but also turned out to be one of the best let’s stop here and see what is going on moments of the trip. We got to Salamanca Spain around 8 or 9 at night. And by the time we settled in it was dark, yet we decided to at least go get a drink of wine or something. We found out we were near the University there. We walked and ate snacks at a local restaurant. We had a great time and went to bed real late. In the morning we went to a daily Mass at the Cathedral and it was a joy. We explored the Cathedral for hours after Mass and while we were doing that a Wedding Mass was taking place. It was wonderful to walk through and look at all the art work while hearing, even though in Spanish, someone getting married. We toured the city some more afterwards, bought three boxes of cookies from the Nuns nearby that lasted us the whole trip. (each box was a different variety and also very good)

And here we were leaving Salamanca at five so now we are really behind, but enjoyed every minute while there.

Stayed somewhere on the road, can’t even remember the town, but were still in Spain and needed to get going since we needed to be in Rome in two days.

So we get to France and then I hadn’t realized it but the route to get to Rome had us passing near Lourdes. So yes we made the stop and spend two or so hours there. Which of course is not enough, people are mad at me because I didn’t get Holy Water from there, but it was already late and we were way behind schedule now. So we left after lunch there at around 4-5pm. We barely made Montpellier which we only saw the hotel since we know had to drive 1000 kilometers in one day.

We got to Rome at four in the morning due to extensive construction delays in France and Italy. Wasn’t good look because the lobby lights looked turned off and there was a homeless person hanging out front. The better half was a bit worried. We called from our car and luckily they answered right away and got us squared away.

Okay I need to stop for a minute. First driving through the various countries and landscapes cannot be described by a few words, but it must be said we covered driving through some dry areas, hills with extensive amounts of greenery, even the Pyrenees and more. We touch vistas off and on of the Mediterranean Sea as we got close to Italy and through the northern part of Italy. The roads were crazy and unfortunately this was where the traffic was the worse.

Yet at times we could glance outward and look down the valleys and hillsides and see the deep blue of the water and on the other side were the tops of the hills covered with deep green vegetation. All dotted with houses, villages, towns and cities up and down the hills to the sea.

Surprisingly I do not journal and probably should to enhance my writing. I could have used this to give you a better picture of the drive all throughout our journey. The views were breathtaking almost everywhere we went, but going from South France to Italy was definitely amazing. The hills just raced down to the Sea and buildings etc were magnificently placed in some quite precarious looking situations in some areas. Of course there was agriculture in some of this, but mainly it was the hills and the drop offs to the Sea that caught your attention.

And I haven’t even begun to talk about the food yet. I need to take a break at this point  so I am going to make this part one of a few posts about our trip. I know reading blogs aren’t meant for long diatribes on anything without losing your audience.

I will say this and I do not know why, but there are an inordinate amount of pizzerias in Portugal than I would have imagined beforehand. I do not if it is because of tourism or the Portuguese just love pizza and Italian food, either way I was surprised at how many I saw. This includes Pizzerias in Lisbon, some in Fatima and in the Algarve region. We ate at a few since we were in Portugal twice and all were good. One of them and apparently a chain or something was off the main plaza in Lisbon that overlooks the river there and was wonderful. I cannot remember anything right now, but if you are by the Plaza look to the left side when facing the river, you should find it. And yes we also ate Portuguese food. We tried very hard to eat local, always asking the hotel people or store clerks etc what were good local spots. Some turned out well, some left us thinking twice about what we ate. And one more point about the food that I will get back to is we ate breakfast pretty much at all the hotels we stayed. Yes they all had some type of breakfast buffet that was very similar in all four countries. Some minor differences due to region, but very minor. More to come.

Okay, will continue to work on this. I still have my normal madness I want to blog about, yet being away from the Trump administration for a few weeks was wonderful. We are too mad in this country right now and to go somewhere where people are living normal lives for awhile was a wonderful break. Also a day at the beach didn’t hurt either, but that is for later.

Cheers

The duopoly is old, let it die a natural death.

 

As a true pro life believer which means I believe in the sanctity and respect of life from conception to natural death, I feel it is time for the duopoly to pass.

And I know it is hard to determine if I am consistent and probably takes reading ten thousand posts to see any consistencies. I have never said I am against the two party system. I am not. I say the Democrats and Republicans are no longer useful. Their partisanship finger pointing, hate speak towards each other, ineffective public policy that is only good for their partisan echo chambers yet not effective for our country represent some of the examples of why I say both parties are dying and them as the two party system is a failure.

If we create two new parties, that would be great. If we create more, then we create more. I know historically I said we need new parties and probably led people to believe that I wanted more than two. If we create more than two fine, but I am not married to it. I write we need new parties as if addition of two parties is the solution. It might be, but it is not a complete repudiation of a two party system.

The Democrats and Republicans are no longer useful as they stand now. They have overstayed their welcome and their usefulness. They rely on the system they have built to stay in power. Yet it is this same system that is destroying the country. When I originally started thinking about this topic I thought they are a cancer eating at our innards. Unfortunately Joe Biden announced his real cancer this past weekend so I had to sit on my analogy for a moment. And of course we pray for a recovery for the previous President. I really do think cancer is not a natural death because it appears to be caused by agents we create that infect or contaminate our cells.

Yet the Democrats and Republicans are a cancer that eats away at our values, our morals, our ability to thrive as a people in our country. The noise coming out of their mouths is just unholy noise now. It is not productive for anyone.

There are real solutions to our problems. We need to implement them yesterday. Time is running out, but with work we can turn the hourglass over and buy a bit more time or we can rebuild it and allow new sand to enter to increase our lifespan as humans on this planet.

It is up to us. And real change begins with us realizing that certain mechanisms get old, become useless and must be put out to pasture to die and become fertilizer for the new.

The duopoly is old, really old. It is time to move on.

New Podcast live

 My Representative from the House held a phone-in Townhall. This is a clipped and edited version from me. 

Please also read the show notes on Youtube and thanks for listening.

https://youtu.be/9LV5vFQJEG8