You can see pictures from this day here.

We slept well in the Rome apartment. We got our act together and hit the road with a free map that the hotel had on display. Rome is full of stuff to see, and we wanted to do as much as we could, even though we had nearly a full day the next day to look around.

We saw the Panthenon, and then made our way through the Roman forum ruins to reach the Colloseum. I’ve wanted to see that since I was a little kid, and I got a little thrill when we saw it in the distance.

Unfortunately, the tourists were already there and the line to get in was really long. It looked like a couple of hours, at least. The good news was that I had an insider tip from my guidebook. We walked to another less popular attraction just down the road, waited in line behind two other people, and then bought a combination pass for that site and also the Colloseum, and then came back.

Kuniko wasn’t quite sure what I was doing, and although I tried to explain, her instinct was to just get in line instead of mucking around with this perhaps futile trick. We got back to the Colloseum and instead of joining the back of the line, we walked to the front and observed that there was actually another entrance for groups and ticket holders. We hesitantly put our tickets in the machine and walked right in. We saved hours of waiting and I was glad that the guidebook tip worked out. I know I would have gotten in big trouble with Kuniko if I didn’t work out.

The Colloseum was even more interesting inside – we walked around taking pictures and tried to imagine what it was like way back when. It really sunk in then that you were walking in the footsteps of so many people who lived so long ago – seeing the lion cages and catacombs underneath the Colloseum really brought it home.

From the Colloseum we headed across town and saw the Trevi fountain, which reminded me of Las Vegas quite a bit. We took in a lot of minor fountains and famous sites, and we stopped for drinks every once in a while to keep ourselves hydrated. We had lunch outside a caf̩ on top of the Spanish Steps near Piazza Spagnio. We ate prosciutto sandwiches, a big mozzarella salad and sipped fruit juices Рrefreshing.

We also did some shopping at some grocery stores for some pastas and fun things that are hard to find in Japan. Kuniko wanted to get some things for her co-workers, so we spent quite a bit of time exploring the supermarket shelves for fun things. Kuniko found an interesting Nutella product – it had some Nutella in one compartment, some bread sticks to dip into the Nutella, and it had a drink compartment built in as well. She was dying to try it out, so we picked one up for later.

For dinner we ate near the hotel at a restaurant that the hotel guy recommended. It was pretty good and it was cheap, a welcome change for us. We ate pizza and pasta and I had roast pork, and we washed it all down with lots of house wine. While we were there a busload of Japanese tourists came in as part of a tour. The tour guide gave the owner of the restaurant a secret handshake, and all the tourists went inside. I hate to think how much they paid for their dinner.

It was our last evening in Rome, so we kept drinking and ended up back at the hotel a little tipsy with a container of Nutella. I did a little photo documentary of Kuniko trying it for the first time. It was good, actually, although the room temperature tea kind of weirded me out.

You can see pictures from this day here.

We got ourselves out of bed and headed out early to get a good shot at seeing the statue of David. It was one of the things I wanted to see in Florence, and my guidebook said that the museum wasn’t far from where our hotel was. We checked out of our hotel but left our bags there, and then walked to the museum.

We got there early enough – there were only five or six other people waiting for it to open. It opened up at 8:15, and we went in, paid for our ticket and then left for the exhibit area. This museum also had a little gift shop in the lobby, and I thought it was strange that they didn’t have postcards and T-shirts and everything else with the famous image of David on it. Maybe they weren’t into capitalizing on art like that.

We looked through the museum – it was quite a good one. The artwork was not only sculptures, but artifacts from history – king’s scepters made of ivory, ancient Roman mirrors and cosmetics kits – they had a little bit of everything.

Upstairs, among sculptures of the Virgin Mary by Michelangelo I finally found David. It was a bronze sculpture about 1 meter tall. I had found Donatello’s David – but not the David I was looking for. Kuniko and I had a long laugh about that, and left the museum soon after to try to find the one I had been thinking about.

The museum that housed the marble David wasn’t too far away, and we got there and got in a long line of people waiting to get in. While we were in line a guy behind us started to speak with a family in front of us in Spanish – maybe he overheard them speaking Spanish and so he calmly moved in front of us and started taking animatedly with the family members. It became apparent that he was planning on staying in front of us, and Kuniko restrained me from saying something rude to him.

Karma worked out well, though. The family that he was talking to soon figured out that the guy really liked to talk, and as he became more animated and agitated there was nowhere for them to run. I decided that I didn’t mind him being in front of us at all – and it made the wait that much more interesting to watch them squirm.

Finally we got into the museum, and it was quite beautiful. The David was the one I (and all the other tourists) wanted to see. We spent a fair amount of time there, and tried to take in as much as we could. The captions of the art pieces were in both Italian and English, so we got a bit more out of this museum than the others.

Next stop was the Duomo – but it was closed for cleaning and refurbishment, so we were left with just the exterior to remember it by. For our last meal in Florence, we went to a Middle Eastern kebab restaurant. We saw them a lot in Italy, and every time we walked by a restaurant it smelled great and looked delicious, but we always skipped them because they weren’t “authentic Italian”. We had a free lunch spot, so we went there and it was just as good as it smelled. So good, in fact, it rivaled some of the best Italian food that we had while we were there.

We had an early afternoon train trip to Rome, so we headed to the station a little early and caught the train southwest to Rome. Instead of the friendly couple we sat next to on the way to Florence we had a quiet, unfriendly couple that grudgingly got up to allow us to sit down. They spoke only a few words to each other during the three hour trip, so while Kuniko slept I concentrated on enjoying the scenery.

The countryside of Italy was beautiful. It reminded me a lot of Sonoma, but it wasn’t just grapes. There were fields of vegetables, sunflowers, and farm animals. There was a castle or a church spread around here and there, and it seemed like a really quiet pace out there on the farms. I think next time we visit Europe we’ll have to arrange to spend some time out in the countryside. This trip was just the highlights, but that means lots of tourists, and they can make your vacation a little less like a vacation and a little more like work.

We arrived in Roma Termini station – the station that the guidebooks warn you about for pickpockets and nefarious behavior. There was a weird vibe when we arrived, and lots of people tried to get us to use their taxi or join their free tour or arrange a hotel for us. We avoided all that and found a taxi line outside. The people in front of us were being badgered by some young guy trying to get something out of them, and another couple in front of us negotiated a fare of 20 euros with a taxi driver that had no taxi sign on his car.

We waited around for a legitimate looking taxi to arrive, and then got to our hotel in about 15 minutes. It was only about 10 euros, so not so bad, and no stress.

Our hotel was near the Vatican in a quiet upscale neighborhood. We went up to the hotel via one of those old fashioned open-air elevators, and checked into a nice, simple, no-frills room. The windows opened to a nice view of the street, and we unpacked and settled in. The clerk told us that it was a public holiday in Italy today, which I didn’t know about. It didn’t seem to affect us much. Everything was pretty quiet because it was summertime anyway – it didn’t seem any more quiet that day.

It was late in the afternoon, but too early for dinner, so we decided to walk over to the Vatican and check it out. It was about a 10 minute walk, and soon we arrived in a huge square in front of the Vatican cathedral. This was where the Pope holds audiences, and the sheer size of the square was impressive. We joined a short line to get into the cathedral. Once again they were checking the clothes to make sure no bare shoulders got into the cathedral.

The inside of the cathedral was beyond description. Something that big, something that beautiful – I’m not religious at all, but I was amazed that something like that could be made with human hands. It was nothing short of astonishing – we walked around inside with me trying to snap pictures to capture it all and Kuniko guiding me around to the most interesting-looking sites.

We left Vatican City after that. The Sistine Chapel was closed that day and the next day, so we would have to wait a few days to come back and see it. We walked the long way around to our hotel, and from there had to walk almost all the way back to the Vatican until we found a restaurant that was open. We ordered pizza and salad and pasta and beer. The beer really hit the spot – all the walking was starting to take its toll.

After dinner we walked around until we found a gelato place that was open. Like most places they didn’t have prices posted anywhere that we could see – you could either ask up front, or order and just pay whatever the cashier tells you. We decided to just order, so one person scooped them onto our cone, and then when we took them to the cashier, he charged us nine euros for them. That’s 4.50 euros each! That’s a six dollar ice cream!

We came on back to the hotel to rest up – the next day we planned to see the rest of Rome, so we’d have to be ready to run all over the place.

You can see pictures from this day here.

We woke up in the morning to sun streaming through the windows and a much less scary environment. The bed was easy to sleep in, and in the daylight everything looked airy and comfortable.

We headed out the door to get started with our sightseeing. First we caught a train out of town to Pisa – of leaning tower fame. The train ride was just over an hour, and we arrived quickly and headed out into the town. I was surprised with Pisa itself. It was a nice quiet town, and all the touristy tower things were far enough away that the town remained independent of them.

We got out to the tower and looked around the area. It was a beautiful clear day, and although it was pretty windy, we had a good time taking lots of pictures and looking at all the cheesy souvenirs. The leaning tower was pretty big, but not as tall as I had imagined. There were tons of people around, and lots of them were taking pictures with them holding up the tower by standing in the foreground. I declined to take a picture like that – it was more fun to take pictures of people taking pictures like that.

We had some pasta and cheese at a local restaurant for lunch. I ordered a big Moretti beer to drink with lunch, and Kuniko ordered a Bellini – a peach flavored alcoholic drink that was pretty good. After lunch, we headed back to Florence. There we did even more sightseeing – statues, fountains, plazas, squares, you name it. There are many famous museums in Florence, but I was really trying to avoid all but the major ones. I’m the kind of person that breezes through a museum without reading al the captions – I just want to see the artwork and move on.

For dinner I wanted to eat the local specialty, Bistecca Il Fiorentino. It’s a huge T-bone steak, and I love meat so it was a happy coincidence that it was Florence’s signature dish. We found a restaurant right next to the Duomo, and sat down for an early dinner. The waiter spoke English, which was nice. He was a little annoying and pushy, though. Maybe he was trying to be friendly, but he ended up sounding like a jerk. To make matters worse the CD that was playing would play about 45 seconds, then skip back 45 seconds and repeat itself.

To make up for the crappy service and repetitive music the steak was delicious. We had it with a Naples-style pizza with buffalo-milk mozzarella and Kuniko had ordered some pasta, too. Everything was awesome – we have yet to be disappointed with a meal here.

In the evening we took a few more pictures, then went out for some gelato and went back to our hotel. It wasn’t nearly as scary as it seemed the first night, and we tucked into bed early with our stomachs full.

You can see pictures from this day here.

We woke refreshed in Venice to a nice summer day. The sky was blue, and it wasn’t very hot at all. We plunged into the heart of the city to do some serious sightseeing, and I was snapping away with my camera at just about every canal we crossed.

We had seen most of the major sights except for the southern part of town, and when we finally figured out how to get there, we came into an open square and we were stunned. It was a huge open space for such a small cramped city. Dominating the square was St. Mark’s Cathedral, and the open space was surrounded by some very Roman architecture. The square was full of tourists and pigeons, in roughly the same numbers.

We waited in a short line to get into St. Mark’s, and were interested to see that they were turning people away that were wearing short shorts or sleeveless tops. Respect for God, apparently. We climbed to the top of the cathedral, but weren’t allowed to take pictures. We could go out on the balcony and take some pictures, though. The place was vast. The ceiling was painted gold, and there was some pretty amazing artwork everywhere you looked. They had religious artwork made entirely from small colored tiles, and the style was very vibrant – not your typical religious artwork. To get to the artifacts and to look around you had to pay six euros and walk through a souvenir store. Respect for God, apparently.

After looking through the square we caught a boat ride up the canal through the entire city. Up to this point, we had seen Venice from the streets and bridges overlooking the canals, but this was a chance to see the city from the water, which turned out to be an entirely new experience. We didn’t want to pay a hundred dollars an hour to ride a gondola, so the five euros each price of the water transit was much more our speed.

As we lined up to get on the boat, I noticed that there were lots of people trying to jockey around to the front of the line. Some people even walked around to the exit and tried to play stupid until the boat arrived so that they could jump on as people were getting off. Some people in the line caught them and told them to go back, but this was the first time I really noticed what became a trend among tourists during the trip – if you can sneak ahead, go for it.

Luckily we were near the front of the line, and with the experience of riding trains all her life Kuniko grabbed two great seats at the back of the boat for us – the best place to take pictures. The boat was off, and we started enjoying the entirely different scenery along the Grand Canal.

Venice is a sinking city. Sinking gradually, but it really is getting lower. You could see the water lapping at the top of staircases, and even some enormous pumps outside of some buildings as we went along. Some of the houses along the canal were only accessible by water, and there were even a few restaurants that had “parking” for boats right outside.

I took tons of pictures on the ride up the canal. It was a great trip, and I recommend it to anyone traveling to Venice.

We had a late lunch at a restaurant along one of the more touristy areas of town, and although the price and the food were good, the waiters were a little pushy and rude, and they even tried to pressure Kuniko into tipping. We decided to screw them for the tip and get out of there. That’ll probably only make them more pushy and rude next time, but still – come on. Be nice, and things will go your way.

We gathered up our gear, and headed to the train station to move on to the next destination – Florence. The whole trip we had been buying sodas whenever we were thirsty, and we stocked up again before the trip. We also bought some sandwiches for dinner to eat on the train. My soda turned out to be a weird one – I don’t know what flavor it was, but I couldn’t drink it.

Sodas were expensive in Europe. Everywhere you went you could buy sodas, but the prices varied wildly. If you were lucky enough to find them cold in a supermarket (usually they only had room temperature ones) they sold for about 1 Euro (about $1.30). If you bought it off a street vendor the price went to anywhere from 2 Euros to 4 Euros – that’s more than five dollars for a soda! We burned a lot of cash buying drinks and gelatos on the trip – if I was doing it all over again I would bring my own water along. It wouldn’t be cold, but it would be cheaper.

On the train to Florence we sat with a nice couple from America. Most of the Americans we bumped into on this trip were the loud, obnoxious kind, but these two were really cool people. They were in their early 50’s, and they were spending a month in Europe traveling around. We talked and talked and compared experiences. It was nice to have a positive experience with some Americans – and it made the time fly by much quicker.

We got into Florence after 9 p.m., and made our way to the hotel using our guidebook’s map. The way seemed simple enough, because the hotel was near a large cathedral. We walked along the busy streets, looking for a large cathedral, but the buildings were so tall and close together that we ended up having to consult the map quite a bit. Also the streets were full of vendors and party-goers – it was a wild night. There was trash everywhere from what looked like a parade, and we couldn’t understand very much of what was being said around us. It was a very “lost in a foreign country” feel that we both had, and so we were glad when we finally found a large cathedral.

Unfortunately, its position didn’t match up with the map, and after we walked a little more we turned a corner and stopped in our tracks. Now that’s a big cathedral. We had found the Duomo, and words can’t describe the size of this thing. It was hidden behind all the buildings, and so closely surrounded that you couldn’t back up and take a picture. As Kuniko said, it was so big that it was scary.

We walked around the frighteningly large cathedral and soon found the door to our hotel. It was a giant wooden door, with just a speaker and an array of buttons. We pushed the button for our hotel, but the revelry outside was too loud to hear any response. We finally got them to open the gate electronically, and then we stepped inside.

Inside the gate was a dark courtyard, so dark that we didn’t know if we were walking into a warehouse or a storage room. It was spooky. We used my mini-flashlight and found a staircase, and then we walked up the dark stairs until we found another door with the name of the hotel. We knocked there, and a nice young man opened the door and introduced himself. We led us up one more flight of stairs, and opened the door to show us to our room.

The next room was like a living room/waiting room. It was huge, with tall ceilings. Probably four times bigger than our apartment back in Japan. And this was just the waiting room. He led us down a hallway into another room that had a small staircase leading to a door halfway up the wall. We went inside and there was our room. It was big, too. The bedroom was about the size of our entire apartment back home. There were three beds, a double and two singles. It was nice, but uncomfortably large. The bathroom was clean and nice, so we unloaded our stuff and then slept with the lights on that night. On a whim I left open the shutters to our windows, and then we went to sleep. Another big day.

You can see pictures from this day here.

Kuniko and I were both up early – we really didn’t sleep much on the trip. We looked at the train ticket and found that our stop was coming up in about 20 minutes, so we grabbed our stuff and got ready to leave. The conductor came by and gave us our passports back, and then we went over to the exit to try to get off as soon as the train stopped.

The twenty minutes came and went and finally, the train slowed to a stop. Unfortunately, it wasn’t where we wanted to be – it was a tiny stop outside Florence. We waited again, and it was almost another 20 minutes before we arrived at the station in Florence – Firenze di Campo.

We got off the train, and started looking for the next train to take us to Venice. Bad news – it wasn’t there. In fact, we weren’t even at the right station. Sure we had arrived in Florence, but it wasn’t the right station in Florence. We had to figure out the situation, stress over tickets, get on a slow train to go two stops, and then we were in the correct station.

As I figured out later, the long distance overnight train stops just outside the major terminals to clean up and restock, and then it pulls into the big terminal empty and ready to go. They don’t want to have to try to clean it at the main station with people getting on early and all the hassle that goes along with that. It makes sense, but at the time we were completely lost. After having a rough night on the overnight train, we weren’t in great moods and again there was nothing to be done but curse the Eurail company for not telling us about making these connections.

Luckily, the next train was a fast, clean train and we had first class tickets. Unfortunately for the people sitting next to us, we didn’t look too good, and we didn’t smell great, either. No showers on the overnight trains, and I probably wouldn’t have wanted to use it if there was one.

It was about three hours to Venice from Florence, and so Kuniko and I got caught up on sleep, enjoyed free coffee and snacks delivered by a steward, and took in the scenery. The time passed quickly. On this trip we were surrounded by an American family doing a family vacation. The boy and his father traded insults as they played cards, and the mother and daughter discussed the things they wanted to buy once they arrived. It was nice to be able to chat with Kuniko in private right in front of them – language, it’s a beautiful thing.

We arrived in Venice and it was amazing. You take a railroad bridge over a large body of water, and then show up in a modern train station. After you leave the train station, the Grand Canal is right there in front of you – it’s a dramatic entrance. Everywhere I looked I wanted to take a picture. The canals, the old buildings, the boats, the people – it was completely different from everything we had seen so far in France.

One thing we discovered right away, it’s easy to get lost in Venice. The streets can get very narrow, and if it weren’t for some well placed signs we would still be there looking for the way out. Everywhere you went you passed tourists consulting maps and trying to figure out how to get somewhere. Kuniko worked out how to get to our hotel, and it wasn’t too long before we were walking towards it.

I had done a lot of research on the hotel and picked out a room via the website – so I was eager to see if it met my expectations. Kuniko looked at the one star rating on the sign and was a little worried, but once we saw the room we were happy.

The room was right on the canal – you just open the door/window and there was a boat and water right outside. That made for some nice moments when gondolas would pass by with the gondola man singing or playing music – it sounded like they might come inside our room. The floor was tile and the bathroom was nice and spacious. It was a really nice room.

We were kind of worn out so we did just a little bit of sightseeing that day. We ate calzones for lunch, and ended up having dinner in our room – some pizza, a panini sandwich, a rolled sandwich, and a bottle of Cote D’Or chardonnay that we smuggled out of Dijon and drank right from the bottle. We went out just one more time to take some evening pictures, but the skies started to threaten so we came back to our room just in time to avoid a late night rain shower. It was nice to fall asleep with the rain hitting the water of the canal right outside our window. All in all a much more pleasant evening than the night before.

You can see pictures from this day here.

Dijon turned out to be a really cool town. I originally picked it because it was near a famous wine region, it was along the main train route to Italy, and because I wanted to check out a French town that wasn’t as big as Paris but still with plenty to do.

Dijon worked out nicely. We started off with showers in the morning, and we had some really strange old towels to use. I think they were just old, but I couldn’t quite explain the texture – call it a weird experience. They were clean, though, and that’s what mattered.

After checking out of our hotel and leaving our backpacks with the main desk we set out to explore Dijon. The town was bustling with tourism, but not quite like Paris was. There were plenty of shops to look at. We started by going into a small bakery and buying an assortment of breads. We didn’t know how to pronounce the breads that we wanted, so Kuniko came up with an ingenious idea – she wrote down the names of the breads from the price tags in the case, and then we just handed over the paper with a smile. The clerk laughed and laughed – she thought it was the funniest thing ever. But, we got the bread that we wanted, and then we went to a small square to eat them and do some sightseeing.

Dijon had a morning farmer’s market going, and so we walked around looking at merchandise. There was a big emphasis on fruits and vegetables, but there was also plenty of mustard, meat, cheese, wine, and chocolate.

It was a good day – we shopped without really buying much. We skipped lunch because we were full of bread and instead drank espressos and later wine at cafes and bars. I found a shoe store that had a nice pair of hiking boots in my size, so I picked those up, and left my old shoes in the garbage can in a park – hopefully a homeless guy can get some use out of them.

In the early evening it started sprinkling, and we discovered that the cheap-o umbrella (dubbed Troy Jr. by Kuniko) that we had bought for five Euros was defective. We opened it and it fell right off the stem. We were forced to buy another umbrella (Troy the Third) and that kept us dry until we could sneak into a restaurant for dinner at seven p.m.

The dinner that night was our last in France, so we had searched the guidebook until we found one that looked suitable for a farewell meal. It turned out to be a great restaurant – it was underground under a vaulted ceiling, and we had a waitress that spoke English who could explain things to us. We had two set meals that had five courses each. That combined with a bottle of local Pinot Noir and we were in heaven. The dinner was the nicest one I think we had the whole trip. Kuniko got to eat Foie Gras, I had duck, and there was enough cheese to tide us over until we come back to France or shop at Carrefour back home.

After dinner we hauled our stuffed bellies to the train station, and waited there for an overnight train to take us to Venice by way of Florence. The train was due in around 9:30, so we made it there with about 20 minutes to spare. They had a nice diagram on the wall to show us where to stand to get on the correct coach – a touch that was very Japanese. We sat there waiting for the train, not knowing what to expect. This was our first time sleeping on a train overnight.

When the train arrived none of the numbers matched with the diagram. Maybe not so Japanese after all. We were standing far from where we were supposed to be. We didn’t know how long they were stopping, so it was a frantic run to the correct car. We jumped on board and found the right room. We were the last of six people to arrive in the tiny car, and our bunks were on the very top. We were sharing the room with a couple of French college students, and a husband and wife that looked Indian or Pakistani.

Where do I begin? It was awful. First, here we are on our honeymoon and we’re trapped in a room the size of our bedroom back home with four strangers. A long time ago I booked a private room, but due to some kind of error with Eurail’s website I had no choice left but to switch to this set-up. I remember the Eurail person on the phone telling me reassuringly, “It’s like a hostel on a train!” It was exactly like that, and I don’t mean that in a good way.

We threw our luggage up onto the top rack, climbed a ladder to get to our separate bunks, and then were given a blanket and a pillow by the French lady sleeping below. Then, the conductor came by to check our tickets. He asked to see our passports, and then left with them. Kuniko and I looked at each other and panicked – first rule of travel, don’t give up your passport. How did we even know that guy was really the conductor? Kuniko went down the hall and the guy assured her that he’d give it back before we arrived. I did some research in the Eurail handbook, and found a small paragraph in the back that said that occasionally this situation might occur, and it was perfectly normal. In short, it was not the romantic night I was hoping for when I booked the trip months ago, and we sat isolated from each other surrounded by strangers while the train rocked and rolled through the night.

It was tough to sleep at first. Everyone in the other cabins seemed to be loud and wanting to party. There was at least one poker game going, and people kept telling stories of their travels over and over again. The bathroom was a mess already, and so finally I just decided to try to sleep. It was tough to sleep, though. It was hard to get used to the noise of the train, and being on the top bunk was a little scary, too. It was a long way down. The French couple whispered to each other in French below us, the Pakistani couple whispered to each other in Pakistani, and Kuniko and I spoke in Japanese – everybody was having a private conversation at least.

Finally, the lights went out, we were bathed in a blue glow from the night light, and we had nothing left to do but try to sleep through it. For me it was the worst night of the trip, by far. I could only curse the Eurail website and remember that no matter how slow it was going, there was a finite amount of time until we arrived in Venice.

You can see pictures from this day here.

We had a chance to sleep in just a bit in the morning, and then we checked out of the hotel and hoofed it around Paris all day. The weather in Paris was beautiful. It was much cooler than I was led to believe – a great vacation from the heat and humidity of a Japanese summer.

Since the weather was so great we had no problem wandering all over the place. We saw Notre Dame – a huge old cathedral on an island on the Seine river in the middle of Paris. We went to St. Chappelle, another cathedral, this one heavy on the stained glass. We also visited the Concierge, a converted prison that housed people considered dangerous to the government in the time of the French Revolution.

We covered Paris pretty well in two days. We ate and ate – did I mention the food was incredible? For lunch I had a chili shrimp risotto, and Kuniko had a steak with a bleu cheese sauce, and combined with wine and French bread we were completely satisfied. I was starting to wonder if we should be spending more time in France and less in Italy, just based on the food.

In the evening we headed to the train station to make our next journey, this time to Dijon in the Cote D’Or region. We arrived at the train station a little early, so we killed time drinking at a café, and then headed over to catch an early dinner at a small restaurant nearby. We had salads this time, and switched to white wine for a change. The early dinner was nice since we’d be on the train during the traditional dinner time.

The train system in Europe was touted as being modern, efficient, and easy to use. I’ll give them modern, but barely. Compared to Japan, Europe has a long way to go. Still, compared to America, I’d say they are pretty nice. We worked out the system, but combined with all the rules on how to use the rail pass that I had bought, it was a little complicated. Luckily our first trip was a short one, under three hours, and the train was fast and comfortable.

This might be a good point to tell you about language, specifically ours. Kuniko and I are lucky enough to be able to speak two languages reasonably well, and that made the honeymoon trip much more fun. Mainly we spoke in Japanese this trip because it gave us privacy most of the time. If we were around Japanese people we would switch to English. It made communication really easy for the duration of the trip, and the privacy came in handy sometimes.

On the train we had mostly French people around us, so it didn’t matter which language we used. Later on we were stuck on trains with people that spoke English, and it was nice to be able to speak together without being understood.

Our train arrived in Dijon in the evening around 9 p.m., that is, in the middle of dinnertime for most people. We were able to find our hotel, this time a place that was a restaurant that had converted the upstairs into hotel rooms. The room was clean and comfortable, and we went right to sleep – again lots of walking around had us tired out pretty early.

You can see pictures from this day here.

The first day we left for the airport wearing only our backpacks, and we used the time to get used to the packs. We didn’t have much break-in time, but mine was really comfortable and carried the 10 kilos inside without a problem. Kuniko’s pack was bothering her shoulder a little bit, but by the end of the trip there was no problem at all. We returned a library book at Akashi library on the way to the airport, and then got to the airport and took off for Bangkok.

We had quite a bit of time to kill in Bangkok airport. The flight to Bangkok was 5 hours, but we had almost 8 hours to kill once we arrived. The airport seemed almost set up for that situation, though. They had a huge building full of shopping, food, and amenities. We ate some airport-authentic Thai food and it was great – cheap, spicy, delicious. We didn’t want to buy anything since we would have to pack it the whole trip – so we made a list of things we wanted to buy for the return flight.

Eight hours is a long time to kill, but we managed to do it. The airport was full of interesting people. The people were from many different countries – there were shieks and woman dressed in black head-to-toe robes. With all the different cultures walking around it made it fun to observe what people were doing. Bangkok has a lot of native fruits that were selling really cheaply, so we drank fruit juices from fruits that we had never heard of, and finally in the evening we were ready to go.

The next flight was a 10 hour flight to Paris. That went really easily, since we were both so tired from staying up eating and drinking and shopping at the Bangkok airport. We both went right to sleep – I slept through take-off which was a first for me. I vaguely remember somebody waking me up to ask me what I wanted to eat, and I think I looked around stupidly wondering where the hell I was. Later we managed to get some food, though, and we slept for most of the flight.

We arrived in Paris around 8 in the morning, and by the time we caught the shuttle bus into the city it was around 9. They dropped us off right next to the Arc de Triomphe, and we were on the ground and sightseeing from then until the end of the day.

Paris was an interesting city. Right away you could tell that it was old, but a different kind of old than Japan. The layout of the city and the buildings were really different than American cities, and I found myself interested in the simplest things, like the amount of cafes per block and how buildings jutted out into the street occasionally.

Our next stop was the Eiffel Tower, and our timing couldn’t have been better. We were in line to go to the top just a few minutes before they opened, and we got up to the top in just a few minutes. The view from the top was excellent, and I took lots of pictures from up there, as well as plenty around the base. I went kind of crazy with pictures – I came home with just under one thousand pictures taken on the trip.

After the Eiffel Tower we stopped in at a café for some sandwiches. It was our first experience trying to speak with French people, and luckily we had a nice waitress who was patient and smiled with us as we tried to order. I kept smiling for the whole trip, and that ended up being my most effective communication tool.

It was amazing how much nicer people where if you greeted them in their language, and then asked them if they spoke English in their language. Combined with a big smile, we hardly ever met anyone who wouldn’t smile back and try to help us.

We did lots of sightseeing in Paris the rest of the day. We went to the Louvre museum and saw, among many other famous paintings, the Mona Lisa. The museum was huge, and I think we really only scratched the surface.

In the afternoon we found our hotel and got set up there, dropped off our backpacks, and then had a mind-blowing delicious meal for dinner at a small restaurant that we found. Throughout France and Italy we noticed that people had dinner much later than what we were used to. Most places opened for dinner between 7-8 p.m., and we were used to eating around 5-6 p.m. The place on the first night opened up a little early for us, and we had a feast. We had an avocado salad for an appetizer, and Kuniko had a four cheese fondue while I had a steak. Everything was great – the cheese fondue was off the scale for cheesiness, and we drank a half liter of wine and had all the free French bread that we could eat.

Ordering wine in Paris was fun. Of course you could order by bottle or glass, but they had a cool system where you chose the wine region you wanted to drink, and then they delivered a little pitcher of the wine that you could pour yourself.

On the way back to the hotel we ate some gelato, stopped at a grocery store to marvel at the low low prices of cheese and wine, and then retired with sore feet from walking all over the city. It was a big first day.