Tag Archives: European Travel

Observations: How Arriving in Rome Leads to Magic

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Let me just say, I miss Italy – the walks, the food, the friends, the light, and the myriad of personalities represented by each tiny kingdom that makes up this crazy country. Whenever I travel to Italy, I find myself in a reoccurring predicament sort of like Groundhog Day…the arrival day. There is a reassuring madness and transition that takes place every time.

In Rome, if you made the mistake of checking your bag, you are often resigned to a long wait by the carousel where I am convinced the baggage handlers gather underneath and watch us poor checkers of bags wait and wilt, teasing us with an early movement of the carousel, encouraging us to jostle to claim the best spot for a smooth departure. Mistake number one. You checked your bag! Rome’s airport is so convinced that it will be a long and possibly fruitless wait, that they have installed a children’s playground and coffee/wine bar to ease the pressure of the moment as the baggage handlers do whatever they need to do to maintain their part in this commedia dell’arte.

And then at some point, if you’re lucky, the bags show up. There is a frantic grab as everyone, except the unlucky ones, retrieve their bags and head to the uscita. And then the next round of fun begins.


Taxi? No grazie.
Metro? Dove? Bus al centro, mi dispiace! Nothing comes easy.

The signs at airports in Italy are always confusing and there are often a couple of exit points so that somebody waiting for you may be in the wrong place. It only adds to the story. By nature, Italians are overly detailed and under sourced in terms of organization. So there are rules that make no sense and rules that are deliberately confusing. And everyone in Italy think they make perfect sense – which they do if you’re Italian.

Confusion, chaos, where is the metro, how do I get a ticket, where is the motolaunch in Venice, which way do I go?! Italians almost revel in that power of perfect and complete orderly chaos. It’s their word after all – caos.

At some point, you survive the airport arrival and end up in your hotel. A little frustrated, but how bad can it be as we are talking about Italy!

Then the arrival moment…the passegiata.

Through the busy piazzas and the bits of Bernini, past the fountains and the Baroque and Roman stone, you stop and take an espresso, or a gelato, or a beer, or a Campari. And you look out onto the movie set walking by and you know something beautiful has happened without your knowledge. You have passed to the other side. You have disappeared into Italy, and have become an observer of all those things that you found frustrating and they have turned into beautiful moments. The transformation is complete.

No need to toss coins in the fountain. The spell is cast and without even a thought, but with a skip in your step, you go about your day secure in the knowledge that you will return.

Observations: How Cameras Capture Our Travel Memories

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We just moved our offices and my new office has become a bit messy as I untangle some 20 years of old office life and reorganize it in our new and cool space. In between sorting out my artwork, I also find myself looking back at the photos I have collected over the years. They resonate with me more than ever during these strange times. I discovered a box of slides with a scrawl of countries written on the outside of the box – Africa, Egypt, Italy, Anguilla, The Soviet Union, Morocco – all stacked in dated boxes alongside an old projector and a few carousels. All of those memories stacked into these boxes. Strange. I promise myself every year that I will get these slides developed into a collection that I can store digitally. My kids bought me something one Christmas so that I could do that but it seemed so time consuming that I never got around to it.

Those were the days of my Nikon Nikkormat, my first foray into real photography. I pretty much stayed with Nikon over the course of my SLR career. Lugging the camera wherever I went and loading in ektachrome, kodachrome, or tri-x for black and white. In those days, you couldn’t see what you just shot and you didn’t want to waste too much of your 36 exposures so you became incredibly disciplined when taking photographs.

It’s difficult to recall when the camera got left behind (metaphorically I mean). Although I can still remember losing my Nikon in Morocco in a marketplace. At least I only lost 36 exposures and the camera itself. Then one day, I moved to a tiny, point-and-shoot camera that stored photos digitally. I never really liked it, and I remember it was so slow when you needed it to be fast, but it was easier to travel with. Then in between my Blackberry and the IOS revolution we have today, I got my first iPhone. And that changed my world.

How peculiar to think we no longer travel with a giant camera and a couple of huge lenses. Somehow I miss those days. The precision of changing the ASA or the aperture, loading in a new roll of film, and storing the old. The excitement of developing the images. Some good, some to be tossed, some become framed and hang on the wall in the house. Memories of a holiday and a place in time. A sphinx, a camel, a faraway place captured forever and hanging on the wall by the kitchen.

I was thinking about this because in my office, amidst the rubble and confusion, I have a collection of photos by Robert Doisneau – a French photographer who took more than 325,000 negatives over a career that spanned 60 years. He was based in Paris and most of his photos were of Paris life and its personalities which he often observed as a result of spending hours on a street corner.

His photography hung around a phrase in French: “un pêcheur d’images.” A fisherman of images. He felt this best described what he did. In order to get what he needed, he had to immerse himself in the life of that moment. As he said, “Il fallait que je me mouille.” He had to get wet to feel the moment. It’s the essence of “being there” versus not. If it’s raining, walk out and feel it. It’s the power of travel. Getting wet when it rains.

In these days, it is what I miss the most…Ironically for a Brit, getting wet when it rains! The curiosity that takes me on mysterious journeys, leads me to observations, and like a fly on a wall, enables me to see things differently without getting in the way of the moment. Looking through Doisneau’s collection, I felt like I was almost there. Sort of traveling and sort of time traveling. All from my office in the Fort Point area of Boston.

Reflections on the Pandemic: The Beginning

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Strangely enough, this whole challenging saga began after my second trip to Japan in January 2020. After visiting only a few months prior, I had returned to the country again to see Tokyo and Kyoto, and this time I even got to visit Hiroshima. As I love Japanese food, I ate up a storm on this trip, and I dove deeper into Japanese culture. Even knowing that this was my second time there, it was still mind-blowing and spectacular. But there was this thing in the background that I was aware of. I had picked it up on the BBC News and knew it was out there. But I thought it would be resolved.

There was a cruise ship in Tokyo Bay that had been stranded while they tried to figure out what to do with people who had been infected by isolated cases of this novel virus, Covid-19. I think we all thought that it would be sorted out quite quickly as Japan is highly organized and efficient and that they would help to isolate whatever this was, and life would go on. For me, I continued to travel.

Fast forward a few weeks to coming through the Marco Polo Airport in Venice on February 20th. It wasn’t a big deal but I had my temperature checked before immigration. Immigration in nearly every European airport is electronic. So, it was strange to see somebody jumping out of nowhere with a machine that detected your temperature. I didn’t think too much of it and headed into town on a boat across the glorious lagoon. Had I known what was about to follow, I think I would have asked the motoscafi guy to go super slow so that I could taste every single aspect of that journey from the airport into Venice. It is probably the greatest single airport transfer in the world.

I checked into the hotel and went for lunch at a cool place as I waited for a friend of mine to come in that evening. I even met up with an ACIS group. I hung out with Anna Costes, our fantastic and fabulous Tour Manager, and we made some silly poses with masks on. We didn’t think much of it except how lucky we were to be in a town like this, in a setting like this, as everyone walked around in wonderful Venetian Carnival costumes and masks. It was a theater set in the center of one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

The next day, I walked around the city and people were flooding in from everywhere since it was Saturday. At Carnival, the city usually enjoys three million visitors. I had a bite to eat, left Venice, and drove with my friend to Switzerland. Every year I go skiing there – the same hotel, same mountains, and same friends. We have been doing it for 20 years. I know exactly what is around every corner of the mountain. Believe me, at my age I’m not looking for surprises. I’m more of a sightseeing skier and I like to coast and cruise while I take in the scenery. I even know what the hotel room looks like and I know the people in the hotel. Had I known what was about to unravel, I would probably have savored that week a little more. But same hotel, same mountain, same bartender, same friends. It seemed just like any other week in the mountains. Except it wasn’t.

This was the last week that Europe would be open. That week was when the cruise ship in Japan became a deteriorating situation, and Japan had shutdown. Italy, one of the first European countries to experience this outbreak, started to shut down too. The Carnival was cancelled. Borders were closed. Literally the lights went out during the course of that week slowly but surely. By the end of the week, Europe was shutting down.

By the time I got back to Boston, I wasn’t even sure what kind of entry issues immigration would give me. I boarded the busy British Airways plane from London to Boston, and upon arrival, I had to ask somebody if there was any special immigration protocol for Covid-19, or new entry requirements, or new concerns. An immigration official said that nothing unusual was required. Welcome home. There were no temperature checks or masks being worn then and they let me through as normal.

The first 10 days of March was confusing. Italy had essentially shut down right after I left, some countries remained fairly open, and we still had groups traveling. The last two groups out there were Jim Minor from Sarasota on an amended European itinerary, and Lucy Bartholomee from Dallas was in Australia. Everyone else had cut their journey short or rethought their plans. By mid-March, everyone stopped traveling. In four weeks, this virus, which started in China, became global.

I was thinking of all the traveling I had done since the start of the year. When I was in Barcelona in January to celebrate our Global Teacher Conference (with more teachers than ever before), I wish I had stayed a little longer to taste this wonderful city by the Mediterranean. It always energizes me. When I went to Bruges, I was so charmed by the place, and a beautiful evening hanging out in a gorgeous converted monastery, that I nearly took it for granted because I knew I would be back since that’s what I do. I travel, I wonder, I learn, I travel, and it changes me. And then the world stopped.

Notre Dame de Paris

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Early in the day on Monday, April 15th, I had been visiting groups and snapping pictures around Notre Dame. It was a lovely day and the cathedral was as beautiful as ever. The crowds were out in full force and the line to the cathedral entrance was as usual snaking its way across the square. Everyone was in good spirits. The air was cool but the sun was shining. It felt like spring.


Before that, I had walked down from the Luxembourg Gardens. People were playing tennis and the spring plantings of colorful flowers was breathtaking against the backdrop of the Palace. After lunch I had grabbed an electric scooter from Lime. One of the students I was chatting with had told me what to do and I easily loaded the app onto my Phone. I sailed across town and had one of the greatest rides around Paris. I left the scooter by our office and locked it through the app. It was so cool. Paris never looked better.

That evening I was with a lovely school group who were interested in fashion. I marched them through Bon Marche to scope out all the top designer names. I’ve never taken a group through there before…and probably never will again, but it was a trip! The faces on the chic and wealthy clientele was to die for. But then we came out of the store and saw the smoke in the sky.

We were over in the left bank near St Germain which is when I got a notification on my phone. Notre Dame was on fire. At first, I thought they were speaking about the Indiana school, Notre Dame University. And then another beep on my iPhone, then the kids got them too, and suddenly social media took over and we all realized that “the” Notre Dame was really on fire and that smoke in the sky was coming from the cathedral. It was serious.

We walked to a crepe place in Montparnasse and in every bar the TVs were turned on to the news. The smoke was pouring into the evening sky. The fire was out of control. The noise of the fire trucks was everywhere. The city literally froze and was transfixed. We went up to the Montparnasse tower to get a look. It was heart wrenching. In the near distance a huge fire with flames soaring into the night sky in the center of the city. It was tragic. But with just a turn of the head, Paris was glittering and was stunning (as it always is) as I looked west towards the beautiful Eiffel Tower.

Later I grabbed a Lime scooter and headed down to the end of the Boulevard St. Michel where a huge crowd had gathered. The police had cordoned off the access point to the cathedral, but you could see the north and south towers clearly. Still the glow of a fire was evident. It was after midnight by this time as the crowd began singing a beautiful prayer. A fire truck came rolling out, the crew exhausted, and the crowd cheered. Les pompiers. They saved the north tower and risked their lives. And in all of this I realized that Paris had experienced a beautiful moment wrapped in tragedy. They had come together very humbly and sang together and were respectful. You saw the power of this old lady of Paris; 900 years and not going away.

 

I hung out for a while to watch. The towers were in the distance but the spire and most of the beautiful interior that I had walked around earlier was long gone. Thankfully, nobody had died, and all of our groups were safe. Soon the reconstruction will begin. The foundations and the shell of the cathedral had been preserved. The towers are still there – not sparkling white as they were in the morning sun but strong and resolute. The bateaux will pass by along the Seine as they do every day and night and we will all remember it as it was.  Notre Dame de Paris.

In the meantime, Paris will have its fair share of monuments to see. Travelers will keep on traveling and slowly we will be witness to a rebirth of this great lady of Paris.  Travel changes lives.