Thanks to Chris (the Supreme Travel Planner) and Mike (The Problem Solver) we are coming off possibly the best vacation we ever had - certainly, in terms of the day-to-day richness and dynamics of the two weeks.
Be sure to read Chris's Travel Blog, for her fine storytelling of this same adventure.
We flew over on British Airways . . . . a really excellent flight . . . 6 nice hours . . . they actually feed you too much, if you can imagine that.
Took "the tube" (the London underground shown in that picture there) from the airport to within 2 streets of our hotel. This ride was a piece of cake, and dirt cheap. We were to learn that the London train system is absolutely fabulous in how it runs, connections between lines, cleanliness and how great the posted train maps are in the stations and in every train car. Very impressive system.
My first impression, walking to the hotel at night was "Boy is this city jumping!". Cars, cabs, buses all over the place. Crowds and waves of young people (it was Friday night) rushing here and there to shows, clubs and whatever. Theater signs everywhere you look - the station walls and escalators are filled with theater ads.
We ate at 10:30PM at (believe it) an Italian place (I had Sicilian trout that was excellent).
Next day we bought tickets for a hop-on-hop-off tour bus. It was very nice, but once we hopped off, we never got around to hopping back on! We walked the rest of the day, and by the time we wanted the hotel again, the bus had stopped running, so we tubed back, when night came.
That day we passed along Buckingham Palace (couldn't get tickets, and the line of people with tickets was a few hundred meters 
long), Queen Elisabeth's Castle, Trafalgar Square, Parliament, Big Ben and Westminster Abby (we actually attended church service there, God help me).
I wore my British / Irish cap around town (I am actually wearing it now as I type) , but turns out very few guys were wearing caps, and absolutely no one wore a "baseball" cap.
At night, we window-shopped at Harrod's which is a huge huge (and expensive) store . . . $750 for a pair of loafers?
Next day we split up. Deb and I went to Madam Tussaud's wax museum (was more fun than I expected), while Chris and Mike um ? - I forgot what they did. We met up later and, being that it was cold, raining and very windy, we ducked into a clothes store and bought store jackets, scarves, and I bought the first of 3 umbrellas I was to buy during this trip. Then we trained to Kensington Palace, very nice place; the rain and wind were brutal that day. We ducked inside for "afternoon tea", and it was most enjoyable, even though we dripped puddles onto their nice tile floor.
When we left , it had gotten (is that English - "gotten"?) rainier and windier and my first umbrella was torn apart by the time we got to the Tower of London (which was just after seeing the London Tower Bridge). The Tower was closed, but I did manage to buy a new, larger, stronger umbrella at the gift shop.
Aside: the real, original London Bridge is now a tourist site in . . . Arizona !
We got soaked anyway because of the wind. Taxi'd back to the hotel, after a bicyclist bitch ran into Debbie and spit venom about it.
Had dinner at a pub around the corner from our room. Dinner for me was "bangers and mash" and 2 or 3 or 4 drafts of various British brews. Bangers are what pork sausages should be over here - wonderful things be them bangers !
Then we went to the hotel, dried our shoes with hair dryers, and packed for the morning train to Paris.
The 150mph Eurostar train out of London to Paris (through the "chunnel") is a wonderful experience. Much much nicer than flying airplanes. Very much nicer!
The trip was probably 2 ½ hours (?), we had facing seats with a tray table between us; plenty of storage room for all our luggage. Wicked smooth ride.
The train stations at both ends are enormous. At the Paris station, the line for taxi service was about a 30 minute wait; the local gypsies and con artists entertained people with scams and schemes. At that point in time, Paris was not living up to my expectation (but that was to change). The cab ride to our hotel was not expensive (28€); the rooms were nice but very small (and within walking distance to the Eiffel Tower !).
Well . . . it was before noon when we dropped our bags at the front desk and trekked out to see Paris. A little windy, chilly, and clouds turning on and off, but a very nice day for us.
The Paris train system has quirks; the ticketing system really sucks (it's a long story) and the maps are nowhere near as clear as London's. But we didn't get too lost, and our first stop was the Louvre, and my ambition there was to spend a few quiet moments staring at daVinci's Mona Lisa . . . that's pretty much what was on everyone else's mind too . . . .
I can say, however, that, even behind greenish bullet proof glass, security cameras and surrounded by a mob of fans, she is most beautiful . . . a small, surpisingly intimate portrait when you see it in "real life".
The rest of the Louvre experience was not so great. Very crowded; the mass of people flowed along and the place is overwhelming in size and beauty. Just overwhelming.
From there, we walked to The Orangerie, which is now an art gallery, but a few hundred years ago it was a greenhouse for growing orange trees for the French King and Queen, until the people had enough and cut their heads off .
The Orangerie had a fascinating exhibit of Monet's series called "Waterlilies". Beautiful work in a peaceful gallery. Very enjoyable.
Then out for a walk to the Arch d'Triumphant and over to (and part way up) the Eiffel Tower. It was night by then and started to rain hard. We got soaked on the way back, found a cafe to eat, and went to bed exhausted about midnight.
Next morning, I bought another umbrella, and let Mike take the one from London. Ten minutes later, the rain stopped and never started up again. Ce la vie.
Slept 'til 10AM and still had a hard time getting out. Trained to Versailles on a chilly windy cloudy day. In the minds of the kings who ruled, Versaiiles was France and France was Versailles. It is incredibly opulent, even though the people destroyed most of it's contents after the French Revolution.
But again, the crowd of visitors was overwhelming and flowed through the place almost without stopping. Nonetheless, the art, the decor, the furniture was amazing. Very formal place; not cozy to live in. There was only one room that looked intimate, and it's in that picture over there.
We toured the grounds and ate lunch there. That night, Mike noted that we had spent $400 that day for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We were all stunned and on our guard about spending for the rest of the vacation.
At the time we were there, Paris had the most wonderful light I've ever seen. The clouds covered the sky, but they were patchy with light, medium and dark spots and the light that came through them was diffused differently over the landscape. There were literally no harsh shadows but the light was still very very interesting as it played over everything below.
Photos looked great, right out of the camera . . . very painterly looking . . . I can understand why painters love the place.
Speaking of painters, let me talk about Manet's painting of Olympia, which was very exciting for me to see at the Musee D'Orsay, the next day.
Note: No cameras were allowed.
I did not make this photo, I swiped it off the internet.
First off, this museum gallery is nice and subdued and not too many people (nothing remotely resembling a crowd), and you can walk righ up and touch the paintings (no bulletproof glass).
Olympia has always been a favorite of mine, mostly because it was such a rebellious picture at the time. It's a long story, but this painting (along with Manet's Luncheon on the Grass) shocked the very stodgy French art world because of it's cold, not-pretty sexuality with not even a hint of sentimentality or romanticism.
In real life, it has a very harsh realistic look. She's a prostitute . . . that's it.
In fact the paint on her body has cracked over the years (Chris said that people actually hit the painting, so that may have done some of the cracks). From a few feet away, the cracked paint looks like hair - not at all sweetly feminine effect.
I was very happy to see this picture in real life. All by itself, this made Paris worth going to.
The museum curators also had a sense of humor, because Olympia is in a room with only one other painting . . . The Birth of Venus, which is it's exact opposite - sweet, romantic, glowing softness. I got a big laugh out of the joke.
Manet's Luncheon in the Grass was also at this gallery and is equally harsh in its "look" and upset the establishment as much as Olympia. Manet was a very young rebelious kind of guy, you know?
Aside from being wild about these two paintings, I loved many of the other Impressionist paintings at this gallery. Much nicer experience for me than was The Louvre.
Next time, I walk. This 12 hour train ride utterly sucked. Let me leave it at that and move along to my talk of Venice.
Coming out of the train station in Venice, our emotions were all pretty much burned to a crisp, and we were exhausted from the train ride. After some coffee and pastry at a cafe, we walked to the hotel, and life suddenly became wonderful. Our room was right along the canal and it was huge, and opulent and the bathroom was the size of a basketball court.
Showered, walked a little, shopped, ate and went to sleep.
Next day, we took the water taxi to St. Mark's Square. What a great ride - I loved it - made some movies ! but the files are too large to post here. We sped back to the hotel, grabbed our bags and boarded the train to Montepulciano.
We must get back to Venice and spend more time in that area.
Theoretically, this is a 3 ½ to 4 hour trip. The train is very cozy, with our own little table to share. But . . . for reasons unkown, it stopped several times along the way, and people even got off and walked about the platforms waiting for it to get going again. I never got an explanation why.
The big problem for us was the rental car waiting for us at the last stop; the office ended up closing while we were still 100 miles away, and that was a big issue because we had no way to get from Chiusi (the train stop) to Montepulciano.
Mike and Chris made some calls from the train and got our hotel manager on the line. He called his friends at Hertz and they estimated when we would get there and they sent a guy back to the office to open it and give us our car. This was about 3 hours after they closed ! Love those Italians !
So, about 9:30 PM, we stuffed ourselves and baggage into an audi A3 hatchback, turned on Chris's GPS gizmo and Mike drove to Montepulciano.
We ate dinner at 10:30PM.
Truth be told, we are here because Debbie is a maniac Twilight (the movie series) fan, and they shot some movie footage here. When we picked Tuscany to drop anchor for a week, Debbie pleaded for Montepulciano. So there we were, eating a late dinner in the same hotel that some of the Twilight cast and crew stayed at. Got to talking to Francesco, the manager, and . . . holy sh#t . . . he brought to Debbie the script book (complete with storyboards, rewrites, sketches) they used to shoot the movie scenes. She of course about died of excitement. Chris managed to capture the precious moment on her i-phone.
I started to miss this town the minute we got in the car to leave it for Rome. I miss it even more now. It is a beautiful, wonderful place and I felt at home there, even though I had never been to a place like it before. Maybe I should say that I wished it was my home.
Our apartment was at the very highest point in town (an ancient stone town built on a mountain top, like Sienna and Assisi and Montalcino and many others, from the time when Italy was a patchwork of family domains with no central government). When I got up that first morning (about 5:30) and opened the shutters, I was speechless. I still cannot describe it in words.
Misty sunrise, looking west from our parlor window. . .
But aside from the scenic views from the apartment patios and public terraces, the place has a "small", time-stops-here feeling about it. Buildings are stone, many hundred years old, showing the various patches and repairs over the centuries, using whatever stones and bricks the mason of the day knew how to use. We were in a wine cellar that may have been 100 feet underground that looked like ancient catacombs filled with huge wine barrels. We shipped a case home (shipping cost more than the bottles ! ) . . . I do ramble, I know. I really want to go back there, right now.
In the 6 days we were there, I got the habit of going out at sunrise and sitting in the piazza, on the church steps, and watch the place wake up. The pigeons sat high on the ledges and missing stone spaces to catch the sun, a few dogs trotted by and got nervous with the shutter click from my camera, people showed up to catch the bus down to the shops they worked in, and people got off the bus to open the shops they worked in. A girl asked me (in Polish, I think) where something was and I shrugged and winced and she smiled and walked off. The tourists came out just about the time the sunlight reached the doortops, and that's when I went back upstairs. Damn touristas spoiling my ambiance, huh.
Then we'd shower and have breakfast downstairs on the terrace overlooking the farmlands.
Debbie learned to say "Capucino decafenatta" and I once uttered my longest sentence (roughly re-translated back into English) . . . "I speak little Italian. How do you say? Take away. Decaffinated capucino. Wife. Room". . . . the waitress gave me a big smile, a "Va bene" and 2 thumbs up.
(My favorite Italian phrase is "Tutto va bene" and my favorite word to pronounce is "carabinieri" - carrr-ah-been-yay'-rrrreeee.)
One day, while Mike and Chris went off to a spa, Deb and I took a guided walking tour of Montepulciano; our guide was Diana, and the we two were the only people along with her. She was great, personable; the tour was very nice and included all the stuff anyone ever wanted to know about shooting the Twilight movie.
Over the next few days, we took day trips out to these three towns ( 1 -2 hours' drive).
These are also very old hilltop towns with churches and buildings made of various stonework, showing countless repairs through the centuries. The views of the Tucany landscape on these drives were incredible; rolling farmlands with all shades of greens and yellows under dispersed clouds.
Walking through town is always hard because the narrow streets are very steep, so you are always going up steeply or down steeply. Sienna actually had a very long escalator ("people mover") that ran from the lower parking area to almost the top ot the town.
Which reminds me . . . In Sienna, I bought a cane for my collection . . . nice Italian look to it. In Assisi, I bought a neat Italian cap that makes me look ever so cool.
We walked, shopped, ate, drank, saw the piazzas and made pictures of everyone else making pictures of these places. (What made us think we'd be alone ? )
Assisi was the very prettiest of these 3 towns, in my opinion. It was much larger than I expected also, because I was thinking that St. Francis came from a humble town. Then I remembered that he rebelled against riches and extravagant living because it was overpowering the church and society of his day. So, in retrospect, It kind of fit in that the town was large and beautiful.
It is peculiar that, on the drive to Assisi, as we got closer, the nearby city looked just like Staten Island ! !
Leaving Montepulciano was sad, even traumatic for me. I loved it there. But . . . all good times must end, and we boarded the train for Rome . . . a 2 hour trip. Very nice; we had "2nd class" seats and they were nicer that "1st class" in airplane travel.
We then took the Rome city bus to our apartment. Won't do that again . . . luggage was a big problem on the bus . . . take a cab . . . but then again, I ain't goin' back to Rome so it doesn't matter!
Rome is a great city to leave behind. I said this on my last trip there - take NYC and double the population, put them all on espresso and motorscooters and take away all the rules of common sense and courtesy - that's Rome.
But we had to show Debbie; how could we visit Italy without doing that?
Our apartment was ½ mile from the Vatican; we visited the Vatican Museum, the Sistine Chapel, the Colosseum, the Forum, Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps. Walking along the Tiber River, criss-crossing the bridges was very nice. Weather was perfect, but at this point we were all very very tired.
(Footnote: the experience of the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel was as unfullfiling and nerve-wracking as was the Lourve in Paris. The mob of tourists was incredible; you could hardly breathe in the crowd, and you certainly could not pause and enjoy the marvelous artwork.)
A high point was going back to Tre Scalline (restorante) in Piazza Navona at night for dinner. The waiter wasn't so cool this time, but we enjoyed the piazza ambiance.
A finishing touch: Pictures of Narrow Streets and Alleys
This was the most wonderful vacation, due to Chris and Mike who planned everything and carted us around and solved every problem that popped up. Thank you two for the rest of my life.
And . . Ms. World Traveler . . . . Debbie was marvelous ! We were all worried (her included) how she would react to being in a foreign place. She loved it and it showed. Wonderful globe trekker, that Debbie !