Tag Archives: Travel Blog

Knee Defender

The Device that Changes Flying

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So how do you really feel about being stuck in the middle seat of an economy section on a full flight with nowhere to go? Exactly – it isn’t fun.

Now there is an “anti-seat-downer” device called the Knee Defender that is being sold online and in retailers. By having the Knee Defender, you can walk onto a plane and know that the person in front of you cannot put their seat back to disrupt you. Just a few weeks ago, a flight was diverted to an alternate airport because of an argument that ensued between the person with the device and the person in front who wanted to recline their seat back.

knee defender

So where do you stand? For me, I must confess that I have become a less pleasant person when somebody on a three hour or less flight decides to throw back their seat, choking off my space. This either causes me to create an inconvenience to the person behind me or have a horrible experience for the next three hours.

I have tried, I must confess, the knee trick. With my knees, I would give a nudge here, a knee kick there, and a nasty stare as I go to the bathroom. But all I really wanted was the person in front to turn around and say, “Hey, is it cool to put my seat back?” On some budget airlines, they have solved this issue by locking the seats. It’s all about reasonableness.

It is that strange thing that happens when people get on airplanes in overcrowded situations. Normal, rational people begin to inconvenience other people by grabbing any piece of real estate they can with their elbows and sometimes even sticking their bags over in your foot position. My two cents is that this is not a luxury experience. We are all in this together and if we work as a team, everybody’s life will be made less unpleasant over the two or three hours that we have to endure bad food, bad service, an overheated cabin, and a journey that, if we could take a high speed train, we most certainly would.

Am I thinking of getting a device? No. Do I have some sympathy for the people who try to defend their position? Absolutely. And the jury is out on this, incidentally. Even my brother’s girlfriend seems to think that it’s okay to throw your seat all the way back on a short flight. Not to offer a knee jerk reaction necessarily, but breathe, do yoga, or anything. Just please do not put your seat back.

Flight Congestions

Tough Connections

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Ever wondered how your life could get worse in an airport as you connect between planes? Well guess what, it just did.

American Airlines is deliberately spacing flights closer together. The reason being economics. They are loading more and more flights into their schedule. Making tough connections more common among travelers. The peaks and valleys that airlines shunned are now being embraced. Bottom line, if you fill more seats, have more flights, make more money, and create more margins, you can succeed in an industry that is plagued by non-profitability and loss.

For the poor traveler facing inevitable delays as planes are bunched up in the air, and terminal hubs become choked, it just means that you need to put your skates on to connect between flights and terminals. Will that mean that the minimal connection time will go down? You bet.

The airlines are gambling that they can fill their planes to optimal levels, and if one or two of us are left behind, no worries, there will probably be a plane six hours later! On the other hand, the airports, if all goes well, will sell less paraphernalia to us. You can bet your life that you are going to have to abandon the Starbucks coffee and the inevitable twenty minute line. So the shops will lose what the airlines might gain and passengers will just sweat a little bit more than they used to!

Logan’s Terminal E

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It is getting ridiculous over at Terminal E at Boston’s Logan Airport. I truly love the fact that more and more international flights are using Boston as a main hub. As a Boston resident, it means that I can fly non-stop to a lot more international cities.

But has anybody looked at the load factors in Logan’s Terminal E on any incoming busy afternoon and wondered why there is a two and a half hour line to get through passport control? It’s crazy!

This is “Welcome to the USA” time – the moment when we are supposed to, as a country, make a good impression and provide a friendly welcome, and in a place that is supposed to be an icon of efficiency. However, we are looking like a third world hub with a grubby terminal, overworked immigration staff, and no place to sit down as you wait for two hours for one of the five or six planes to clear through.

The other day I saw an elderly couple, who had not had the foresight to ask for wheelchair assistance, look like they were about to pass out in the non-air-conditioned cube en route to one of the first waiting stages before you even got a glimpse at your final immigration destination.

Unfortunately, for non-US citizens, there is no way out as Terminal E has simply maxed out. For US citizens, my only advice is to sign up for Global Entry. The entry scoots you through the process in minutes rather than hours.

Global entry

For more information on Global Entry go to www.globalentry.com and for any overseas citizens, good luck!

The Traffic Cop’s Symphony

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I could not resist stopping the car and asking the guy standing in the middle of the traffic circle a question.

I wasn’t really lost but honestly it was like I had rediscovered an old friend.

There he was with his gloves on, conducting traffic, no traffic lights to bother him, and the cars, even in this chaotic country, obeyed his every move. There was a guy, whom I recall with fond memories, that stood on a podium at the end of the Via del Corso and the start of the Piazza Venezia in Rome. He wore white gloves, a very white uniform, and conducted the traffic as if it were a symphony.

The Vespa’s and motorbikes would stop at his every whim. Then a glance and a finger pointed and in one fell swoop he would start the traffic flow from one street and stop the flow from another. I always imagined that the cars and scooters were parts of his orchestra. Everybody would obey. A tilt of the head, a look away, a hand to halt an ongoing flow of traffic, and all in constant movement, exhausting, artistic, and beautiful. The Traffic Cop’s Symphony.

I do not see him anymore but in Turin that day, I saw a glimmer of hope.

Does Size Matter?

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Does size matter? according to Emirates airlines, it sure does. They have staked their airline on the A380 Airbus. A larger than life plane with a seating capacity of 460. Its wing span is 54% larger than a Boeing 747 and yet it is super efficient. With 320 miles of wiring inside the plane, it is also super state of the art technology. Add to that a comfort cabin that boasts in first class a shower and discreet sleeping and you get the picture.

So, why are BA and most other airlines not buying the Airbus and why is the A380 not realizing its early potential? Because BA sees the future in the Dreamliner 787. A smaller and more cost effective plane with 214 seating capacity and the ability to travel long distances and land in smaller hub cities. Add to that a fleet of 777 and you can see that nobody at BA is craving the move for a monster plane.

Emirates is dreaming that Dubai will become the new world hub of all routes to Australia and the far East. But from the USA, nobody is going that way, and from Europe, the traffic to Dubai may not be able to sustain a full plane of business travelers on such a grandiose scale. Did Emirates gamble wrong? Maybe. But as Emirates is wholly owned by the government of Dubai, I am sure that at least for the time being, the money is not going to run out. And at least they haven’t been so foolish and made a bid to bail out Alitalia which is still shopping itself around. Etihad didn’t take the bait. Oh well.

The Redentore Festival

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I had never been to Venice during the sildenafil citrate 100mg viagra generika Festa del Redentore. It is quite a spectacle. Historically, the Redentore Festival is a celebration of the end of the 16th century plague when 50,000 Venetians died. The Santissimo Redentore Church, on the Giudecca Island, was designed by Andrea Palladio as a mark of thanks by the survivors of the plague. It is a remarkable sight from across the bay. The celebration takes place on the third Sunday in July. As with all ceremonies in Italy, it has taken on a festive air in spite of its melancholy origins. It is basically a party. Venice Redentore collage 2 080714 On the day that I was there, the weather was beautiful and warm and Venice already was bustling with its fair share of tourists. Add all of the locals to this mix as well, along with colored garlands, balloons, and makeshift restaurants around the waterfront, and you have a fun atmosphere. There literally are hundreds and hundreds of boats that come into the water that separates Santa Maria della Salute from the Redentore Church. A pontoon bridge is created to connect one island to another as it has been the way for hundreds of pharmacy online viagra years. At the magic hour of 7:00 pm on the Saturday evening, the bridge is opened. The bridge remains open until the fireworks at 11:00 pm which incidentally last a full hour and are shot into the night air from a string of pontoon boats which sit equidistant from San Marco and the Giudecca. It is semi-casual. People probably get too close to the firework pontoons and goodness knows where the rockets end up landing but no one gets hurt and everyone has fun. Venice Redentore fireworks 1 080714 There is an absolute festival atmosphere both on sildenafil 20 mg tablet the water and in the restaurants and bars that dot the perimeter of the Giudecca and the boardwalk beyond San Marco and down towards the Arsenal. At the end of the fireworks, a siren blows, the boats all free cialis coupon head back to their homes (probably at the Lido or beyond), and the bridge is open again until sunset of the following day. The Lido becomes party-central and restaurants and bars stay open until the sildenafil 100mg chile dawn. The magical 24 hour bridge that connects the Giudecca for a single day in the year is taken down and on Monday the steady stream of traffic flows along the canal once more. It is ironic that the Santa Maria della Salute, a beautiful Baroque church that sits facing Piazza San Marco, was also built to celebrate the end of another plague in nearby Mantova. A ceremony celebrating this church takes place in November and is also symbolized by the joining of the Campo Santa Maria del Giglio to La Salute by a pontoon bridge. Sometimes there is nothing like a plague to inspire great architecture and a fantastic party.

The Secret Life of Bees

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I paid a visit to Rick and Nancy’s farm, Bear Meadow Apiary, in Ashfield, MA the other day. They keep chickens, grow vegetables, and also have a bunch of bee hives. Rick spends most Saturday’s educating me about bees at the farmers market, pointing out the difference between bumblebees and honeybees, and explaining his current housing arrangement for the bees. On a weekly basis, he gives me updates on what is going on in the hives.

On this day in particular, I was specifically heading there to get a look inside the kingdom of the honeybees.

As it turns out, each of Rick’s hives has between 30,000 and 50,000 bees living inside. The bees in the hive are devoted entirely to providing for the queen whose job it is to keep producing bees and sustain a stable population.

Peter in bee suit filming v2 071714

The players inside of the hive all have a role.

Firstly, meet the drones – the male bees. These guys do nothing at all except impregnate the queen bee. It is a one off job and once they perform, they die. This is not from exhaustion incidentally; I will leave the rest to you. There are about 200 of these guys hanging around. Once their queen bee is impregnated, the rest of them sit around the hive drinking beer and watching TV. Once a day, they go to “a drone congregation center” (I am not kidding) looking for suitable brides to mate with. They mate in the air incidentally…a bit like the “mile-high club”. If they happen to get lucky, then they do not come back but if not then they return to the hive to eat more potato chips and just hangout.

Meanwhile, there are sentries on duty to stop intruders from other hives from stealing their honey. This stuff does actually happen. It goes something like, “Halt! Who goes there and who is your queen?” The wrong answer means you cannot come into the hive.

Then there are the bee-bread makers who make a bread-like substance from the pollen and the nectar which will serve to sustain the entire population of the hive. In addition, there are a large amount of worker bees who create the honeycombs.

Only a super elite core of bees are allowed to fly everyday across the countryside while caressing the flowers, scraping the pollen, smelling the roses (as it were), gliding through lavender fields, and making our flowers more beautiful and faster-growing.

Rick splits the honey with the bees. He has a deal with the queen. They produce about 70 pounds of honey per hive each year. This gives him enough honey to sell and the bees enough honey to feed on and the queen enough honey to stay happy; believe me you need to keep the queen happy.

The queen has a lifespan of over three years while the other guys in the hive only get to see around three months of life. Rick had actually brought in some Russian queens which cost him a sizable chunk because of a disease infiltration with his home bread queens. The Russian queens came “pre-loaded”; even less work for the drones to do.

Peter and bee hive 071714

Today, I climbed into a bee suit and walked into this holy empire to visit each hive while looking for the queen. In addition, Rick was trying to make a new queen from some of his good bees. Would I be able to see a new queen? Would I survive my first incursion into the Red Zone?

Although slightly concerned that a bee would penetrate my outer layer, I was reassured that it would not happen. Rick told me that bees essentially do not sting. They give you warning signals.

They first turn on their buzz and start buzzing around you if they do not want you to be near. If that does not work then they start hitting you by flying straight into you as a second warning. If that does not work, then frankly it is a lose-lose situation because they now have to assume that you did not get the message and they are going to have to sting you. That means that they die and you have to seek medical attention. Chances are that that will not happen but…better to not take chances.

Anyhow, today I got to see a queen bee made. It was an incredible moment inside of the bee hive. The queen bee came out from her overly-large pod. The deal was he had six female bees he was trying to make a queen from. The first one out of the pod would kill the others because there can only be one queen. It is a tough world in the hive and it’s not easy unless you happen to be one of the short-lived males.

Beehives are filled with life. There is a police force, there are workers, there are artists, and there is a boss. If everyone plays by the rules, there is lots of honey for everyone, our flowers get pollinated, our gardens look beautiful, and all is well (i.e. a Bull Market). However, as in life, every now and again someone will screw it up. Bears like honey too (i.e. a Bear Market)! Such is life.

The Ups and Downs of Spending Miles

I have more airline miles than I need. Nearly 2 million. But I have a suspicion that my miles are going to be ripped away from me or I will throw them away on a ticket that is better paid for with cash. How could that be? You can always use miles to book hotels, upgrade your flight tickets, and even cash them in to get rewards.

Take the other day when I was trying to book a round trip flight from Boston to Rome for my wife using my miles. There is great flexibility with leaving from Boston because British Airways has four flights daily to London, however there was limited availability. To buy the ticket with points, the cost was 330,000 miles. In dollar terms, that means it would cost me $330,000 worth of purchases to get this ticket. I ended up buying the ticket instead for $1,800. My dilemma was that I could not bear the thought of losing a huge portion of my miles or $330,000 worth of purchases to buy a ticket that would actually only cost me $1,800 and give me no miles because the ticket was not mine.

I have an Irish friend who lives two doors down from me and he is an absolute expert on miles. He buys everything with miles but travels tactically off-peak and uses miles only to upgrade. Therefore, he picks up the miles for his current itinerary and uses very little miles to upgrade to a different class of service. He seems to never run out of miles as he constantly replenishes his miles with his paid ticket and offsets the upgradeable miles used with the new miles coming in.

He has explained this to me many times, and maybe it is just my bad luck, but every time I try to follow his procedure, I find that I have the wrong date or availability is blocked. In other words, if you have flexibility, you can absolutely play the miles game. Incidentally, miles now are increasingly based around price not distance. Maybe these are just the ups and downs of spending miles. If you are traveling on a cheap fare to a transatlantic destination, consider that the mileage benefit will be negligible. His main advice was that if you need to top your miles off quickly, go to California for the weekend! If you invest $1000 in a round trip ticket, then you will have created a jump into another tier and a business class upgrade to most places in the world.

If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions on using miles, I would love to hear them!

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Andalucía

Not to flog a dead horse, but the sheer delight of travelling by train in Europe never grows old. I jumped into a taxi and headed to the Atocha train station to catch the AVE to Seville. Atocha is quite a delight. Nestled between the museums in a busy intersection, it has a lush tropical garden with hundreds of tiny turtles paddling about their day. The AVE takes around two hours and fifteen minutes and stops at the beautiful city of Cordoba en route. Cordoba is famous for its Mezquita; the mosque within a church.

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AVE Train 042814

On the way down to Andalucía, there are orchards upon orchards of oak trees. These are not the oak trees of northern Europe, but rather Spanish oak trees which are smaller and provide the fruit of the acorn that is fed to the pigs that gives us the veritable jamon pata negra. There are also no shortage of almond and olive trees that populate the landscape as the train speeds towards its destination.

My final destination was Seville. Here in the Santa Cruz area you feel the power of Andalucía which to my mind is one of the most important regions in Spain. Spanish traditions are bred here. Flamenco was born here. The colors of Andalucía, the ornate tiles, the whitewashed villages, the evidence of a once great and powerful Islamic influence, all hang in the air as does the scent of jasmine and orange blossoms that float around the Alcazar.

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We had arrived during the Semana Santa, the Holy Week. The city had this electric atmosphere as various neighborhoods participated in their own homage to Christ through the processions that took place every day, almost every hour, and throughout the night. This truly provided a colorful and yet bizarre backdrop to this already colorful city. The procession of pasos, floats of lifelike wooden sculptures of individual scenes of the Passion, or images of the Virgin Mary showing grief for her son, are masterpieces of art and sculpture. The penitential robes and hoods and the brass bands all add to this spectacle. It is like something that you have never seen before. On this beautiful spring day the crowds surrounding the procession were particularly vibrant. Even the taxi driver had the processions on the radio as if he was listening to a soccer game.

Seville Semana processions 1 042814

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We drifted over to the river (avoided more churros) and headed to a restaurant that was tucked behind the Macarena Hotel. Tomorrow morning I would return to Madrid wishing that I could have stayed longer.

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Chocolate con Churros

It wasn’t that I had had enough of Madrid. I had spent my first night doing a tapas route while bumping into a bunch of teachers that I knew. As is the way, I ended up at the Chocolateria San Ginés, a café on Pasadizo de San Ginés in Central Madrid and is close to the Puerta del Sol. This is the stuff that dreams are made of. All of that work in the gym, the yogurt for breakfast, and the carrot smoothies with kale for your midday fare are undone in a matter of moments.

The churros here, essentially just deep fried batter, sort of like a donut but linear in shape, are always served piping hot. You just have to dip them into your own personal mini vat of hot, thick, chocolate. This place is open 24 hours per day so if you have one of those :Chocolate con Churros” cravings, no worries, just pop on over. They are always there for you.

After the various savory tapas that preceded this extravagance, you can safely say that there was no longing for something extra at the end of the evening. Happily I went on my way through Madrid’s ever busy streets late at night while imagining how many miles I would have to run in order to pull back the decadent gains made at San Ginés. Tomorrow I had decided to get out of town and head to Seville. Churros can do that for you.

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Geneva to the alps

Every year I get to spend a ski week with some old friends of mine from Italy and England. We have skied lots of places including the Dolomites, Vail and St Moritz but we always keep coming back to Zermatt. The link from Geneva airport to Zermatt is always a pleasure. At the airport the train is literally by the arrivals hall. A quick walk and you are on the way. The train wanders around Lake Leman passing the magnificent Montreux, famous for its jazz festival, and Lausanne, home to FIFA, the centre of soccer decision making worldwide.

On the other side of the lake is Evian(water and a famous spa town) while the alps literally wrap around the lake. At Visp you have to change trains to connect with the cog railway that takes you to Zermatt. If you drive you have to park your car at Tasch in a huge underground car park. Either way you board the pretty red cog railway and begin the ascent to Zermatt. On this particular week, the snow was amazing. 3 metres either side of the track. Zermatt is at the end of the valley. At 1800 metres it is already high enough to invite fabulous snow. At the Alex hotel, where we have stayed for years, the total package is always half board. A huge breakfast and a fabulous dinner. Swimming pool and the usual sauna, steam stuff and you are in heaven.

The town has lots of glitzy hotels but the Alex is family run, utterly charming and the rooms are perfect. The price is good too. Once in the town, you buy your ski pass for both Zermatt and Cervinia. Why restrict yourself to just the swiss side? This is a huge mountain range and it boasts the highest elevation skiable in the alps at over 4000 metres and the longest run in europe at 16 kilometres from high on the Klein Matterhorn to the Italian town of Valtournenche. In other words the snow is reliable and the trails are endless. But thats another day.

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Arma Dei Carabinieri

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I confess to not having much to do with the Arma Dei Carabinieri but I have always been slightly curious what role they play versus the polizia in Italy.

Recently, I read an article that helped explain it. As it turns out, the carabinieri are celebrating their 200th birthday this year. In other words, they are older than the Republic of Italy itself which was unified in 1861.

They were founded by Victor Emmanuel I who was the Duke of Savoy and the King of Sardinia. In those days, Italy was a series of regional dynasties each with its own language/dialect and each with its own police force. The name carabinieri actually comes from the rifles they carried — the carabina. When Italy was unified, the royal court became the nationwide military presence and functioned as a duplicate police force in part because of the need to have some unified police presence in a country that was still much divided with towns and regions that saw themselves as more powerful than this entity called Italia.

Not much has changed today. If you are desperate for help, it is not always clear who will show up at your door. In Italy you dial either 112 or 113 whereas in the USA we dial 911. One thing for sure is that two men or women will show up. In Italy, the cops always ride in pairs. This is a change from several years ago when the cops rode in threes and that was in a two-door car!

What is fascinating about the carabinieri is that they are set up a little bit like a military operation. To apply to be a carabinieri, you have to commit to eight years working outside of the province that you live in. Hence the number of southerners that end up working in the north in those carabinieri staziones. Seventy-percent of the entire force comes from four regions in particular – Sicily, Campania, Calabria, and Puglia. These are the same four regions that are the mafia strongholds.

The carabinieri are everywhere. I remember bumping into two of them on a recent ski trip at the top of a station in Cervinia. They were all decked out looking like a couple of Armani models in state-of-the-art ski gear with the words “Carabinieri” plastered all over them. They were keeping an eye on the vigilantes in the mountains no doubt!

They are the butt of many jokes in Italy but the fact is that they represent more than anything the difficulties of integrating all of these diverse regions with different accents, different languages, and different codes of honor under one umbrella. They are not frightening and seem free of corruption. If you ask me who I would rather bump into on the highway, a state cop or a carabinieri, I think that I would choose the carabinieri. Let’s face it – I am less likely to get a speeding ticket that way. It is Italy after all!

That Time My Passports Were Stolen

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So it happened to me at last.

After 40+ uneventful years and fairly casual security on my part, my two passports were stolen. It happened in, you guessed it, Italy. A friend of mine rented out a villa in Umbria for a week. A few days there blew out my history of never having lost a single thing on my travels.

It was a simple break-in; the crowbar type. We were out for the day thinking how peaceful the country side looked, how charming Lake Trasimeno had seemed, and how wonderful the people were. In the meantime, someone had figured out that there was nobody in the villa. They broke through the wooden door, ransacked the place, stole some cash, a wallet, my USA and British passports, and also…a block of parmesan cheese! To tell you the truth, that was the thing that really hurt. But at least they had good taste.

All of those years of telling people how to get a new passport, how to report it as lost or stolen, but never having to really do it, came to roost. The carabinieri came over after a frantic phone call, with a decided lack of urgency, in between an Italian World Cup game. In great disinterested detail, they itemized the stolen goods, reassuring me that it was almost certainly immigrants and that there was absolutely nothing to be done!

The next day I had to go down to get my police report from the carabinieri station in Castiglione del Lago, and low and behold they had no knowledge about the police report that had been filed the day before. Not only that but when I first arrived at the station it was closed. On the door hung an ominous sign that said “Orario per Publico” (Hours for Public) with a very limited time slot of public hours. I thought to myself, “Who else do they serve except the public?” Oh well.

Inside there was a decided lack of enthusiasm. On the shelves were files dating back to 1960. A photocopier machine that was so slow it reminded me of my days working as a clerical assistant in London in 1970. However, the police report was sorted (honestly I could have written anything on there), three copies were filed away for someone somewhere in a department of no use to anyone, and now I had to get my passport.

I called the British Embassy and they informed me that they could issue me a travel document specifically for my travel itinerary but that I would have to reapply for a proper passport which could take up to 12 weeks. The USA Embassy routine was a lot smoother. With the police report in hand, I simply arrived at the embassy in Rome at 8:15 AM without any formal appointment. I grabbed a number, took two photos at the photo machine located inside, and I had a new passport within 45 minutes. The passport is even valid for one year. By the time I had exited the embassy, the queue had already become quite substantial. The deal with an emergency passport is that you cannot make an appointment so you have to show up early and you must pay with a credit card.

This summer we have dealt with tons of lost and stolen passports. Therefore, I am grateful to have had a shared experience with so many other travelers. After all of these years, it was worth the wait! It will always be the summer that I remember as “That Time My Passports Were Stolen”.

Trains in Italy

Venice Italy is a strange and wonderful country. It is at once hopelessly inefficient, exasperating and unfathomable. Its regions are fiercely independent and culturally alien to each other. I had lunch with a Venetian recently who suggested a canal that would dissect Italy from West to East just cutting through the center of Florence. A neutral zone! The Medici maginot line! He would fill it with all sorts of aquatic creatures that were not friendly. Sharks, piranhas, crocodiles, water moccasins, you name it. He simply felt that Italy would be much happier if it were called Italia Nord and Italia Sud!

Nord would have the Armani , Ferrari, Lamborghini, Parmigiano, Prosciutto, Byzantium piece, you get the picture….and the lot south of the canal now known as “SOCA” would get …..strikes, mozzarella(a good concession)unemployment, Roman ruins, mafia and pizza. Fighting words from a Venetian who thrives on his close ties to his Germanic neighbors. But hang on . I thought Italy was unified in 1870. That great big monument “Mussolini’s typewriter” or the “Wedding Cake”, as its called, stuck in the middle of the Piazza Venezia, is the symbol of Italian unification, surely? Well, sort of, but in reality the real symbol of Italian unification is its Train network. Tim parks wrote an amazing book about this called Italian Ways. . Recently on a trip from Rome to Venice, I took the high speed Frecciabianca. The white arrow!

I recall not too long ago that flying between Rome and Venice was a far better way to connect, but the train system has so dramatically changed the landscape of travel in Italy. It took 3 hours and 19 minutes. You can now connect between Milan and Rome in less than three hours aboard the fastest train of all, the Freccciarossa. The red arrow. Hurtling across my Venetian friends imaginary border as if in the blink of an eye! Trains were seen as a means to unify the country. Indeed Garibaldi, the liberator of Italy transported his army on a train. Imagine taking the 11.25 from Turin to Bologna to conduct a revolution! I Only in Italy! Even when it became clear that Italy had no natural resources to fuel its engines, nor steel to build its locomotives, the trains were to be subsidized as a matter of national urgency and pride.

Mussolini saw train efficiency as a demonstration of the power and superiority of the new Italy under his Caesar like rule. And they have been running on time pretty much for a hundred years and they have been losing money for just as long. So, pulling into Santa Lucia station in Venice at exactly 225 pm , on time, was a matter of right, not a surprise. Emerging through the station to be greeted by a city awash with vaporetti, gondolieri and palaces that would make any city in the world envious….well, That’s just Italy!Italy is a strange and wonderful country. It is at once hopelessly inefficient, exasperating and unfathomable. Its regions are fiercely independent and culturally alien to each other. I had lunch with a Venetian recently who suggested a canal that would dissect Italy from West to East just cutting through the center of Florence.

A neutral zone! The Medici maginot line! He would fill it with all sorts of aquatic creatures that were not friendly. Sharks, piranhas, crocodiles, water moccasins, you name it. He simply felt that Italy would be much happier if it were called Italia Nord and Italia Sud! Nord would have the Armani , Ferrari, Lamborghini, Parmigiano, Prosciutto, Byzantium piece, you get the picture….and the lot south of the canal now known as “SOCA” would get …..strikes, mozzerela(a good concession)unemployment, Roman ruins, mafia and pizza. Fighting words from a Venetian who thrives on his close ties to his Germanic neighbors. But hang on . I thought Italy was unified in 1870. That great big monument “Mussolini’s typewriter” or the “Wedding Cake”, as its called, stuck in the middle of the Piazza Venezia, is the symbol of Italian unification, surely? Well, sort of, but in reality the real symbol of Italian unification is its Train network. Tim parks wrote an amazing book about this called Italian Ways. .

Recently on a trip from Rome to Venice, I took the high speed Frecciabianca. The white arrow! I recall not too long ago that flying between Rome and Venice was a far better way to connect, but the train system has so dramatically changed the landscape of travel in Italy. It took 3 hours and 19 minutes. You can now connect between Milan and Rome in less than three hours aboard the fastest train of all, the Freccciarossa. The red arrow. Hurtling across my Venetian friends imaginary border as if in the blink of an eye! Trains were seen as a means to unify the country. Indeed Garibaldi, the liberator of Italy transported his army on a train. Imagine taking the 11.25 from Turin to Bologna to conduct a revolution! I Only in Italy!

Even when it became clear that Italy had no natural resources to fuel its engines, nor steel to build its locomotives, the trains were to be subsidized as a matter of national urgency and pride. Mussolini saw train efficiency as a demonstration of the power and superiority of the new Italy under his Caesar like rule. And they have been running on time pretty much for a hundred years and they have been losing money for just as long. So, pulling into Santa Lucia station in Venice at exactly 225 pm , on time, was a matter of right, not a surprise. Emerging through the station to be greeted by a city awash with vaporetti, gondolieri and palaces that would make any city in the world envious….well, That’s just Italy!

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Hotel Pet Peeves

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Traveling as much as I do, I am always frustrated at the little things that drive me mad in hotels, otherwise known as my Hotel Pet Peeves.

Recently, in the Flyertalk.com 2014 Pet Peeves Survey, people ranked the stuff that really bothered them. I have only one word to say, “Hallelujah”.

Wireless internet is always a rip-off and hotels have tricks to get you to sign up for their most expensive package. The least expensive package is so horribly slow that you are almost forced to opt for the other one. Honestly, what excuse is there for charging for wireless in this day and age? The irony is that if you’re staying at a low-budget hotel such as the Red Roof Inn, it’s free, but if you are staying at the five-star Minerva Hotel in the center of Rome, it costs you 30 Euros a day. So, if I pay $30 for my room, I get wireless for free, but if I want to pay $600 a night for a room, I have to pay for wireless. Go figure.

The other complaint that ranked up there was the accessibility of electrical outlets. Hotels simply have not caught on to the fact that we all need to charge our phones at night. Sometimes it can take 10 minutes to find the outlet you need and most of the time I end up unplugging a lamp so that I can put my phone charger in. No problem at the Red Roof Inn incidentally.

A personal pet peeve of mine is the system of lighting which is very specifically a challenge in places like Spain and Italy. You press a switch and a light goes on that you had no idea would turn on but the light that you do want on is on a mystery switch somewhere that is hard to find. One time, a mate of mine staying at a hotel in Spain got so tired of looking for the light switch to turn off the lights that he simply pulled the card out that controlled the main circuit for the room. Incidentally, that is another pet peeve of mine. Why don’t American hotels have an energy saver switch? In other words, your room card controls a main circuit that turns the lights on and off. It should be standard fare.

In addition, what is the story of the hair dryer? They pop up in the most mysterious places but never in the place that you want. Sometimes they are in the closet with the ironing board and sometimes they are in some drawer that you would never guess. Also, what about the coat hangers? Do they really think I am going to steal them? Do they really not trust me? The answer is no which is why we have to deal most of the time with the permanently attached coat hangers. Red Roof Inn does not have those. Why do hotels still have alarm clocks by the bed? I have never figured out how to work them and if you ever try then there is a good chance you will miss your flight because you screwed up or you will be awakened by 4 AM by a music station you have never heard of. Now we have phones for that…after all we do not use them to make phone calls anymore.

Lastly, a piece of advice. The lines at the front desk for checkout are always too long. So I just discreetly leave and wait for my credit card bill to show up. How do I let the cleaning lady know that I am gone? I leave the door open. It always works. If somebody needs to use my room for a while before the drop-dead checkout time…good for them.