clearing out the house




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When in Rome...

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Gauss and I had been through Rome only once before following our ill-fated flight from Sri Lanka to Italy in 1982. My memories are hazy and few. Back then we landed at Da Vinci airport and had to get to Milano. Nerves jangled, we were not about to board another plane just then, so we took a bus to the train station. I recall rolling past the coliseum and being a little surprised that it was right there , although I was unable to muster anything resembling enthusiasm. This time we vowed to pay attention. I planned only one thing in Rome—a visit to the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican Museum. I made an online reservation a month in advance so that we would not miss it, printed the entrance voucher (NOT TRANSFERABLE printed across it in bold letters) labeled it with a Post-It, and added it to the folder of important travel documents. We had another aim for the day as well: to get Italian SIM cards for the cell phones we'd purchased in anticipation of the trip. Despite the seve...
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Readers, note that I am skipping posts about Sydney for now. I've been in Istanbul for three days and have been so busy that I'm running out of time at the end of the day to blog. I arrived in Istanbul after sunset on October 31, with barely enough light to make out the red tile roofs of the city's buildings clustered at the west edge of the Sea of Marmara. It took a long time to exit the loaded 777; I was in row 42. But the visa process was quick and exactly as stated: hand over passport and $20 U.S., the unsmiling clerk affixes the stamp, and you're in. Customs and immigration were fast, too, and not too long after landing, I caught sight of Sue's red hair just beyond the exit from the secured area. We greeted each other with a big hug and then headed out to the curb. She phoned Umit, the driver, and we dodged a couple lanes of traffic, arriving at the pickup point just as he pulled up in the giant BMW Sue had warned me about. Sue's husband, Sa...
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