​Sherrill and I visited more than 60 countries and most of the United States during our 52 year marriage.  This is number 76 of a series about our lives and travels, true stories of two people discovering the world, each other, and themselves through five decades of traveling together.  If you scroll down, you'll come to earlier posts in this series.  To start at the beginning of our marriage and travels look at the Archives list in the sidebar and start with May, 2017.  Older posts are a previous series. 

​              "We don't always have to go far away," Sherrill told me.  "There's plenty to see in this country.  We don't need to save it for our 'old age.'"
              Although we'd talked about saving places relatively close to home for when we were 'old,' we'd already taken mini-trips to see fall foliage in New England and to explore various cities, including Las Vegas, Chicago, Portland, and Seattle, but she was thinking of something more ambitious.  As usual, she had a specific adventure in mind.  

​              Salt Lake City, poised between the Rockies and the great Southwest, had changed since we'd last been there.  The downtown area was circled by a ring of office towers that hid the Victorian granite spires of the Mormon Temple (for generations, the tallest building in town), the dome of the tabernacle, and the old LDS church headquarters.  A new streamlined light-rail system also cut through the city, now.  We'd flown to this pioneer metropolis of wide spotless avenues embraced by the forested Wasatch mountains—the western edge of the Rockies—to start our exploration of the Canyonlands area of Utah and neighboring states.   Once again, we were traveling with Cathy and Larry, two good friends we'd hit the road with several times before.
              The next morning, we set off with a local guide and her group to the old Mormon town of Moab, gateway to the red rock world of Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, a land of deep canyons, tall mesas and buttes, and landscapes eroded into fabulous, unexpected shapes.  It even was possible that we'd stumble over petrified dinosaur tracks.  In a Moab pub I bought a bottle of Polygamy Porter, which on its label asked "Why have just one?"  Clearly, Utah now was less strict about alcohol than we remembered.   

​              Part Grand Canyon, part Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands was awesome, terrifying, and beautiful all at once, a vast wilderness of rock with views of the twisting Colorado River and thousand foot drops down variegated cliffs, past orange and red spires, into canyons that opened out farther than we could see or probably imagine.  As the light moved during the day, the rock formations shifted and changed shape and color, from rusty red to glowing orange and yellow to salmon with streaks of bloody purple and combinations of all of them.  A detour took us to Dead Horse Point, atop a 2,000 foot peninsula.
              "Herds of wild horses once roamed here," our guide told us.  "Close your eyes and you'll hear their hooves."
              That evening, overwhelmed by this endless grandeur, we were treated to a "cowboy" barbeque dinner cooked in Dutch ovens and then a boat ride on the Colorado River through an illuminated red rock canyon.  We agreed that it was hokey, but fun, and when the artificial lights were turned off the black sky above the canyon walls exploded with stars. 

​              Another day, another national park: miles of red rock arches sculpted by millions of years of erosion.  Set off by a vast blue sky, the red-orange arches—some long and slender, others thick and sturdy—opened up to picture-frame views of rocks, mesas, pinnacles, other arches, and distant mountains.  They looked as if they had been there forever and always would be, but we knew that weather and erosion still were, slowly but relentlessly, working on them.  Most animals probably were waiting until the cooler night to come out, but we did spy several lizards, a couple of them sporting beautifully mottled jackets. 

​              A picnic lunch by the Colorado introduced us to a delicacy called "Navajo Tacos" -- a kind of tortilla/puff pastry covered with chili.  Sherrill and I almost choked with a fit of giggles, but ate our share.  And I had more Polygamy Porter to wash it down.  Sherrill soaked off a label for us to save. 
              "Nobody will believe it, otherwise."
              Our appreciation of the absurd had helped bring us together decades before and it still was alive and kicking.  
              During lunch, we started talking with some of the other members of the group, including a middle-aged couple originally from Bangalore, where Sherrill and I once had quite a different kind of adventure.  

​              We might not have felt so light-hearted at lunch if we'd known that we were near the remains of a uranium mill that closed only in 1960.  We passed a small mountain of the dregs from the uranium mined and processed around there and saw it being loaded into barrels and put on trucks to take to a train that would carry it to bury someplace else.  We weren't surprised to learn that most of the men who had worked there in the past had died of cancer. 
              Decades earlier, the U.S. military conducted secret above-ground atom bomb tests in a remote area of southern Nevada at the Utah border.  Fallout from the tests blew across the rocky desert and several towns, causing dramatic increases of different types of cancer in the population, especially in children.  In 1956, a John Wayne/ Susan Hayward epic was filmed in the desert there.  By the end of 1980, 91 of the cast and crew had developed cancer and 46, including Hayward and director Dick Powell, had died of it.  The red rocks and desert were beautiful, but were they still deadly?

​              Nearby, a panorama of petroglyph designs stretched along a canyon wall, the elegant figures chipped from the age-darkened sandstone canvas revealing a lighter orange color underneath: bighorn sheep, writhing snakes, deer, lizards, arrows, hunters, and large-eyed, wide-shouldered spirit creatures marching in militaristic rows.  From time to time, we discovered other petroglyph pictures, but not as many on one stone wall.   
              Back in Moab, we visited a museum of local history that took us from the dinosaurs up to the John Ford western movies made there, then we dropped in on a few art galleries.  After our long day of hiking over rocky trails and Moab pavement, we relaxed in a local dive, "Eddie McStiff's," with drinks and then dinner.  Of course, I had another bottle of Polygamy Porter.
              "Don't get addicted to that," Sherrill warned me.
              "Too late!" 

​              Much ado about very little was what the four of us decided the next day about the Four Corners National Monument—even if we could stand in the four states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah at the same time.  Mostly, it seemed an opportunity for somebody in the middle of nowhere to make money selling souvenirs.  We were fascinated that so many tourists made a point of going there and taking their photographs standing at the spot where the states met.
              "Well, we're here!" Sherrill pointed out.
              There was no denying that we were there. 
              The lady from Bangalore (now from San Diego), short and somewhat plump, but very charming, had learned that I was a writer and approached me across one of the state lines with questions, her dark eyes bright with polite curiosity.  She belonged to a book club, she said, and loved to read and made me give her the names of my books.  Months later, I got a note from her that she had read one.

​               We escaped from the Four Corners, driving on a steep, twisting road up the mountain toward Mesa Verde National Park—into a sudden, if brief, rainstorm followed by intense fog.  The driver was skillful enough to get us through both storm and fog to the historic site at the top.  Then, while we ate lunch, the skies suddenly cleared so that we visited the cliff dwellings under a blue sky.  A surprisingly perfect afternoon was reinforced by the guide who took us around the site.  A small trim man with white hair and moustache in the khaki uniform of the park guides, at least seventy-five years old, he launched into a fascinating account of the ups and downs of Mesa Verde.
              The site, he said, had been left to crumble until the Civilian Conservation Corps that President Roosevelt established during the Depression set to work on it. 
              "They saved Mesa Verde," he stated, looking around at all of us.  "And now President Obama's stimulation package is saving it again.  Over the years, it had been ignored and allowed to fall into disrepair, but now it will last for future generations to discover and enjoy."

         ​              I remembered the stories my father told about when he worked in the CCC during the Depression, doing forestry work in Utah.  Not only did the CCC save natural resources and historic sites, it also saved thousands of young men who couldn't find work because there were no jobs for them. 
              Then, as we followed the white-haired guide up the steep sandstone steps to "Spruce Tree House," he segued into the story of the native Americans who lived and flourished there for more than seven hundred years.  "Archaeologists called them the Anasazi, but today we call them Ancestral Puebloans."  When the house was discovered in 1888, a large Douglas spruce was growing in front of it.  Although the tree is long gone, he explained, the name stuck to it.
                                                    *          *          *

​              Sherrill and I had been looking forward to riding on the historic Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad.  Pulled by the original coal-fired, steam-powered locomotive on the same tracks that miners and settlers took west more than a century before, the train carried us through spectacular tree-studded canyons into the wilderness of the two-million acre San Juan National Forest.  The tracks were originally laid in 1870 to move the silver from mines in the Rockies and were narrow gauge (three feet between the rails instead of the standard gauge of four feet and eight inches) so the trains could make tighter turns while climbing the mountains.
              "Don't look," Sherrill told me, as the train shook and rattled, swerving around sharp cliff-top curves above a rushing river. I started to protest, but she added, "And don't fuss, Wart."  Her abbreviated nickname for her "Worry Wart." 

​              Yes, I was terrified, but had to look, anyway.  I didn't want to miss anything.  And, of course, we survived.  The boom town of Silverton died long ago, after the silver market collapsed, but tourism had revived it, somewhat.  It reminded the four of us of an Alaskan mining town we'd once visited, with its wide dirt streets and nineteenth century wood buildings surrounded by snow-topped mountains.  

              We didn't enjoy leaving the hotel at 6:00 am the next morning, but we had to do it to  experience another historic narrow gauge steam train: a ride on the original Rio Grande Line into the Rocky Mountains aboard the Cumbres and Toltec Railroad—only fifty miles, but a long trip through some rugged territory from Chama, New Mexico to Antonito, Colorado, the same route that gold and silver miners and loggers took in the nineteenth century.  That steam locomotive did seem to be working hard as it pulled us up steep grades, over terrifyingly high trestles, through tunnels, and along narrow shelves balanced above wide-open gorges. 
              "I can't imagine anyone building these tracks," I told Sherrill, gazing out at the tops of trees.
              "Be glad that you didn't have to."
              "I am!"

​              Sherrill and I had been to Santa Fe several times before, but the little town still charmed us—even though it had grown over the years and acquired a self-consciously "picturesque" veneer.  We happily remembered when we visited there in 1995 with Simone and Paul and baby Leo.  We took turns watching him, while the others explored.  This time, we saw some of the more famous sites of the city, ranging from the town's east side with its "million dollar mud houses" to the Cristo Rey church, the largest adobe structure in North America, and a walk along the Old Santa Fe Trail to the San Miguel Mission and famous Loreto Chapel.  However, we had someplace else in mind that we didn't want to miss: 109 East Palace Street. 
              This was the address of, as a plaque now read, "The Santa Fe office of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory."  The little storefront office was the place from which the people who worked on the atom bomb at Los Alamos left on their way to the project—the place from which they disappeared.  They went in the front door and left by a secret back door to an alley and waiting vehicles. 
              The plaque continued: "All the men and women who made the first atomic bomb passed through this portal to their secret mission at Los Alamos.  Their creation in 27 months of the weapons that ended World War II was one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time." 

              The Southwest was one of those areas that always seemed to hold back some of its secrets, a world that both dazzled and taunted you.  It seemed inevitable that we were here again, just as it seemed inevitable that we'd come back someday, at least one more time. 
​
To be continued....
 
 If you find these posts interesting, why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including a bio, information about my four novels, along with excerpts from them, and several complete short stories. 
              Please pass the posts on to anybody else you think might enjoy them.  
 

​Sherrill and I visited more than 60 countries and most of the United States during our 52 year marriage.  This is number 75 of a series about our lives and travels, true stories of two people discovering the world, each other, and themselves through five decades of traveling together.  If you scroll down, you'll come to earlier posts in this series.  To start at the beginning of our marriage and travels look at the Archives list in the sidebar and start with May, 2017.  Older posts are a previous series.
​
          Our doorway to Europe, and other destinations, from time to time, was London.  Often, either before or after continuing on, Sherrill and I explored the big city and went to a play and a museum or two, depending on how much time we'd allowed ourselves.  After our mop-up trip to southern Europe, we indulged in a couple of days in the great gray city.  Wonderfully imperfect as it was, we never got enough of it.

​              We'd been reading in the newspapers and seeing on CNN and the BBC News while we were traveling about the Wall Street/Big Corporation protests in New York and other cities across the globe, including London—in front of St. Paul's Cathedral in the heart of the City, the financial center of London and Great Britain.  According to the news, the area at Paternoster Square in front of the Bank of England and the Royal Stock Exchange was too small for the protestors to set up their camp and had been blocked by police, so the Occupy protesters had asked for permission to use the larger square in front of the cathedral.  Surprisingly, the Dean of St. Paul's gave them permission—with the understanding that all protests would be strictly nonviolent.  So, on our last evening in London I decided to go see for myself.  

​              "Okay," Sherrill told me, turning down the volume of the television in our hotel room.  "If you have to do this, go ahead, but be careful.  Don't get mugged.  Don't get killed."
              "I'm always careful.  I haven't got mugged or killed yet."
              "Well, see that you don't.  And don't lose your passport or anything else."
              "It's all under my clothes."
              "Don't lose those, either."
              I kissed her goodbye and left, walking from our hotel down the hill to Paddington Station a block and a half away, where I boarded an Underground train (very crowded, because it was the weekend) to Charing Cross at Trafalgar Square, planning to walk from there.  Busy gazing into store windows, admiring the old buildings, watching double-decker red buses and tall black cabs pass by, sometimes I forgot to walk on the British side of the sidewalk, weaving carelessly among the rushing bodies.  Suddenly, two or three crashed right into me, almost shoving me into a red post box.  They were young, I saw, stumbling ahead laughing along the busy sidewalk, apparently not caring who they bumped into.
              Or was it on purpose, I wondered?  Discreetly, I felt for the shape of my valuables under my clothes.  Still there—not that I expected them to be gone, but you never knew.  Pickpockets could be very clever and skilled, as I'd learned in Italy. 

​              Earlier on Sunday, when we went to the National Gallery, we saw that a circle of tents had been set up along the perimeter of Trafalgar Square in front of the gallery and a stage erected opposite the museum, but this had nothing to do with any protests.  It was going to be a celebration of Indian Festival of Diwali.  Several years earlier, Sherrill and I had been in northern India during the Diwali festival, which was celebrated widely in both villages and cities.  Huge quantities of marigold blossoms lined the city streets so people could buy them to take home.  In one village that we visited, families had decorated the paths in front of their homes with elaborate flower designs made from colored rice powder.  Our guide and friend had opened his home in Agra to us so that we could experience the celebration authentically with him and his family, even indulging in homemade sweets.  
              I was pleased to see that London had decided to recognize its large Indian population in this way.  A large flower-bedecked figure of Ganesh, the elephant god, sat serenely at the base of Admiral Nelson's column, his trunk resting with self-satisfaction on his big belly.  A few hours later, when Sherrill and I passed by again, a security guard told us that sweets, food, and drink would be on offer later—plus live entertainment.
              "Come back," she grinned, a gap between her two front teeth.  "Check it out."

​                That evening, when I reached the square, festivities were in full swing.  A great crowd was gathered, eating Indian snacks and watching a Bollywood-style show on the stage—ten young women in colorful costumes dancing, swaying, gesturing, their elaborate routines simultaneously projected onto a large screen.  Indian families, tourists, curious passersby, all were getting into the spirit of whatever was going on. 
              From Trafalgar Square, I set out to walk along The Strand to St. Paul's Cathedral.  The sky was darkening as I passed the shiny silver marquee of the Savoy Hotel and Theatre, then other theatres, a Boots drug store and other stores, restaurants, and fast food cafes.  Gradually, the avenue grew less crowded as I reached Fleet Street and the ornate buildings of the old newspaper offices and the massive Victorian blocks of the courts and legal buildings.  Down one alley, in the midst of all this, I remembered, was the little house where Samuel Johnson worked on his famous dictionary.  Most of the big newspapers had moved to other parts of London and no longer were produced here.  

​              I also remembered hiking along here with our three year-old daughter on our first trip to London while Sherrill was across town at the Chelsea Flower Show.  We passed one of Christopher Wren's beautiful little churches erected after the great fire of 1666.  It had suffered during the bombings of World War II, but still stood, a blackened shell, waiting to be restored, even as late as 1968.  Now, the elegance and fine architectural details of Wren's churches glowed almost like new. 
              Finally, I reached the old financial district.  Although even in 2011 many of the great banks and financial institutions were busy building new headquarters out in the fast growing East End/Canary Wharf area of London, the general public still thought of this district as the financial center of England and the empire.  Eight mounted police clopped past in the Day-Glo greenish-yellow vests that they all seemed to wear then.  I was sure, odd as it seemed, that I heard a lone trumpet playing in the distance, maybe one of protesters. 

​              At last, I saw the bulk of Wren's masterpiece, St. Paul's Cathedral, the great dome silhouetted against the darkening sky.  It had survived the Blitz and would survive these protestors.  As I came closer, I discovered the hundreds of protesters gathered on the square directly in front of it.  There must have been nearly 200 tents of different sizes, shapes, and colors.  It almost looked festive.  Dozens of police in their familiar Day-Glo vests stood around in clusters of two or three, looking more bored than concerned or amused.   
              Around the Queen Anne monument directly in front of the cathedral flapped handmade signs, posters, and banners protesting the corruption of big business and the financial industry.  On a large black and white drawing of the earth was neatly printed in scarlet capital letters: CAPITALISM & RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM = POVERTY, CUTS, WAR, TYRANNY, FAT CATS, ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER.
              CAPITALISM IS CRISIS proclaimed the largest banner, red letters on black.
RESPECT EXISTENCE insisted another sign, OR EXPECT RESISTANCE.  

​              People were taking photographs and videos, using cameras and cell phones.  The Occupation, because it was peaceful, was becoming a tourist attraction.  Some of the protestors, themselves, were taking photographs and shooting video clips, commemorating this historic event and their role in it.  Parents even had brought their young children.  One nicely dressed mother with two preschoolers sitting on the bottom step of the cathedral told her boy and girl to look up at the man in front of them with the big video camera on the tripod and smile for him.  The atmosphere was beginning to seem like a carnival—what the British called a fete—although the serious purpose of the gathering and demonstration remained clear, so far.  No one seemed afraid or nervous that anything violent would happen.  Except for an occasional cheer in the half-dark, all seemed quiet but for the melody of the one trumpet circling like a lament above the tents and banners. 
              I walked around the area, watching and listening, and took a few photographs, myself.  An idealism that I hadn't seen for years hovered over the steps and square.  I remembered Berkeley in the late nineteen-sixties and early seventies.  The innocence of those young people soon collided with an establishment that refused to hear their pleas.  I saw it happen on the University of California campus and on Telegraph Avenue and in People's Park.  My daughter and I had even been sprayed with tear gas as we crossed the campus.  Protestors were injured, one blinded by a gunshot.  However, I felt optimistic that violence could be avoided here.  This was, after all, civilized London, where people simply didn't behave like that.  

​              I chatted a bit with some of the protesters.  
              "How long will we stay?" replied one young man.  "That's the million pound question, isn't it?  It'll be hard in the winter, but hopefully we'll stay 'til we get our message across."  His gravelly voice sounded both sincere and sentimental.  He was very young.  "All this and the other occupations in the UK were inspired by the protests in America." 
              "The bankers gambled with the economy," interrupted a friend with him.
              "The financial system is unjust," added a young woman.  "I have a student debt of 20,000 pounds.  But the police here are great.  Some of them are showing a real interest." 
              One man in a suit, maybe fortyish, said he had "quite a lot of sympathy for their message."  
              Eventually, I walked back out Fleet Street to the Strand, now much quieter than it had been just an hour earlier.  On the way, I passed a dark van parked at the curb, from the back of which three people were handing out cups of hot soup to several dozen street people and unemployed who had gathered for what apparently was a nightly ritual.  Silently, as if in a scene from a nineteen-thirties Depression movie, they shuffled up to get their steaming cups of soup.  
              Sweating a little by now, I continued on, past Trafalgar Square, now quiet except for a few people dismantling the remains of the Diwali festival, and walked up the Haymarket, past the Theatre Royal, where a somber poster of Ralph Fiennes as Prospero stared out at the street, and on to Piccadilly Circus, now almost as busy and loud as it had been on Saturday night, when Sherrill and I ate there before going to a play.  This was a world quite different from around St. Paul's Cathedral.  Here, everyone still seemed intent on having a good time.  

                From there, I braved the crowded Underground station and found the train to Paddington, near our hotel.  Sherrill and I had been surprised by the huge numbers of young people with Eastern European accents that we encountered on this trip.  London's population definitely was evolving in new and interesting directions.  On our first trips here, we'd mostly heard the musical accents of newcomers from the British West Indies. 
              Finally, back at Paddington, I decided after my long evening and walk to stop at a pub.  The Dickens Tavern near our little hotel was like stepping back in time—not to the nineteenth century, despite the black and white Victorian prints on the walls, but to the nineteen-fifties or sixties.  The big-bellied pub keeper moved with pleasantly jovial efficiency behind the long bar, taking orders and dispensing beer and other drinks.  Football (soccer, of course) played on the television (now flat screen).   
              "You didn't get mugged!" Sherrill exclaimed from the bed, as I walked into our tiny third-floor hotel room a little later. 
              "Or killed."
              "Okay, tell me all about it."  
              The next morning, Sherrill and I rode the Heathrow Express from Paddington Station to the airport.  The occupying camps and protests continued in London, New York, San Francisco, Berkeley, and other cities.  The protesters all seemed to really believe that they'd have such an impact that right would defeat might and the power of the banks and corporations would suffer and the world would change forever.  
 
To be continued....  

​              If you find these posts interesting, why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including a bio, information about my four novels, along with excerpts from them, and several complete short stories.    
              Please pass the posts on to anybody else you think might enjoy them.  
 

​Sherrill and I visited more than 60 countries and most of the United States during our 52 year marriage.  This is number 74 of a series about our lives and travels, true stories of two people discovering the world, each other, and themselves through five decades of traveling together.  If you scroll down, you'll come to earlier posts in this series.  To start at the beginning of our marriage and travels look at the Archives list in the sidebar and start with May, 2017.  Older posts are a previous series. 

​           "It's about time," Sherrill told me, "for our mop-up trip—it's overdue."
            We'd talked about this in the past.  We had traveled in Italy and France many times, but never got to either Genoa or Marseille.  And although we'd been to Spain three times, we'd missed the northeast corner with Barcelona.  A mop-up trip along the Mediterranean coast from Genoa to Barcelona, by way of Marseille and a stop in Montpellier in France would take care of it.  We'd allow time in each city to wander and explore. And, I promised Sherrill, no driving.  It would be easy and fun.  Well, that prediction was mostly correct.
       After a one night stopover in London, we flew to Cristoforo Colombo airport in Genoa.  (Heathrow was as chaotic as ever, but once again we survived it.  There was no point traveling, if we needed everything to be easy.)

           "Unusually hot," people in Genoa told us as we dripped sweat walking up and down the city's hills, heat reflecting off the cobblestones and walls around us.  The historic center of the city had been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which seemed to mean that nobody touched the broken cobblestones or the cracks and potholes in the pavement.  

​           Inside a couple of thick-walled palaces converted into museums, the temperature was much lower, plus we got all that art.  Our favorite painting was a Rubens king astride a remarkably alive horse charging out of the canvas.  We also kept cool for while making faces at specimens in the waterfront aquarium.  We weren't doing it on purpose.  It was an automatic reaction.  We knew those bug-eyed fish were staring at us.  Then, on a harbor cruise, the breeze off the water helped us survive the heat while we gazed up at the hillside apartment blocks, domes, and towers, the palm trees and the waterfalls of scarlet bougainvillea, the busy port, the ferries, fishing boats, and yachts, and even a replica galleon, the Neptune.  
          "This is the kind of day I like," Sherrill told me that evening, as we sat at an outdoor table at a small osteria hidden on a narrow hillside alley around the corner from our little hotel.  "No schedule, no place we had to be."  
           No menu, either, but a young girl brought us delicious dishes and carafes of cheap but good red wine.  Debris drifted on the cobblestone alley behind us and over nearby steps, but a little grunginess didn't kill the magic of the place.  Music floated out of an open door next to the osteria: a jazz club called Count Basie.  Later, four musicians wandered out and sat at the next table—one American, three Italians.  We talked with the American, a saxophonist who looked like a middle-aged Matt Damon in need of a shave.  As we left, Sherrill whispered that she was sure he was high on something. 
          "But he was good," she conceded.  "Very good."
          I trusted her judgment since she used to play both the clarinet and sax when she was younger and knew much more about music than I did.  

​               A ride up an "elevator" the next morning took us to the top of one of Genoa's hills, where we hiked along a little road to a bizarre nineteenth century castle that tried to combine several different styles and eras, now a "cultural museum" with stupendous views of the city and bay.  A woman guard from Chile took us to the roof so we could look across the city.  Sometimes, I wondered why people were so nice to us.  Often, they refused a tip—didn't even seem to expect one.  Genoa was full of surprises: a funicular used by locals to commute up the side of a mountain took us to the remains of a fortress where, below street level, we discovered four men playing tennis on courts framed by the fort's broken walls.
           Maybe what we liked best about Genoa were the people who came out every evening, strolling along the streets, dropping in at cafes, socializing.  We enjoyed the city, but decided to go further afield, at least for a day, so we rode a bus to a tiny train station in the hills, where we caught a narrow-gauge two-car train that took us over steep, winding tracks into the Apennine range to the north.  It was a treat to ride into the mountains, covered with green under the blue sky.  As much as we enjoyed Genoa, we could breathe better up there, in the light pure air.  At a village tucked into the hills at the end of the line, we got off and found a workmen's cafe, where we talked with a British couple from Wimbledon whom we'd noticed on the little train.

​              "Norman had to ride this old train," his wife told us.   She was the taller of the two, with a wide friendly face.  "Something about the 45 degree angle of the climb, I think it was."
              "It's a treasure," he interrupted, blinking his pleasure. 
          "Steam trains are his real passion," she persisted.  "He's always dragging me to ride on a train, someplace."
              Norman soon was telling us about the steam trains of England and Scotland. 
              We liked trains, too—especially when we could gaze out at the sea and distant mountains, which was what we did a couple of days later on our way to Marseille.  We'd heard that Marseille was a rough and rowdy seaport.  It still was a working port, but didn't seem dangerous to us, even though our cut-rate hotel was in an area of narrow, twisting, rather seedy streets on the hills below the railway station.  Sometimes, Sherrill found the hills hard for walking, but we still managed to explore the city, stopping along the way for some good meals.  

​          Dozens of cafes and restaurants lined the waterfront, so we indulged in the best bouillabaisse of our lives at a restaurant across from the Vieux Port, starting with a bowl of delicious soup with saffron that the seafood was cooked in, followed by a bowl of the seafood with more soup and toast spread with rouille mayonnaise.  Almost as much fun as eating the fish was watching the fishing boats unload their catches one morning.  Fishermen in long rubber boots carried in the fish (and several small octopuses) and women wearing heavy aprons spread them on tables.  It could have been a scene out of an old black and white French movie.
             To get a closer look at the seagoing world that had made Marseille great, Sherrill and I took a long cruise through the bay and beyond, passing between the two old fortresses flanking the port entrance, then sailing among several jagged limestone islands.  People once lived on at least a couple of them, since we saw several empty houses.  On one island the remains of the prison of the Chateau d'If, made famous by Alexander Dumas in The Count of Monte Cristo, still stood.  Then we sailed, among yachts, fishing boats, and small ships, along the rugged French coastline, broken up with small fjord-like inlets.  

       When finally we had to leave Marseille, we discovered that SNCF, the French train system, had collapsed into chaos.  No trains were running anywhere.  It looked as if we'd never get to Montpellier and Barcelona—at least, not by train.  Every time I went to the station, to find out what was happening, the system was still down.  Every now and then, an announcement crossed the board above the ticket windows or an official came out and said something to the crowd.  Since I couldn't understand any of it, I had to find someone in the crowd who spoke English to tell me what was happening.
          Eventually, I learned that a crazy guy had attacked and injured a train controller on the track between Lyon and Strasbourg, prompting all the SNCF train controllers to go on strike.  By late that night, oddly enough, a few trains had started up again, but not going our direction.  In the morning, however, our train was one of the few moving.  We never did understand the logic of what was happening, but it looked as if we'd get to Montpellier and even had hope that in a couple of days we'd reach Barcelona.  The SNCF people, of course, wouldn't guarantee anything, but we knew after all these years that the only thing we could be sure of when traveling was that anything could happen.  

​              "A pretty little city," Sherrill and I agreed, once we finally were in Montpellier. 
              It wasn't spectacular, like Genoa and Marseille, but was loaded with charm.  From its handsome Belle Epoch squares to the narrow winding streets of its medieval old town, the city quietly seduced us.  For such an old city, it had a surprisingly youthful vibe.  Then we learned that a third of its population was students attending its three universities.  Without even trying, we found our way to the beautiful Place de la Comedie, named after an old theatre on the square, and filled with sidewalk cafes. 
              "It must be time for lunch," Sherrill announced. 
              As a matter of fact, it was, so we sat at one of the tables and, while being entertained by some youthful street performers, ate a fine lunch. 
              "I could sit here all day," Sherrill told me.  "But I don't suppose you'll let me."
              "The restaurant might not let us."
              Around the corner, we discovered the headquarters for the French publisher Gallimard, which was celebrating its one hundredth anniversary with an indoor-outdoor exhibition of its history and the authors it had published, from Gide and Malraux to Sartre and Beauvoir, to Hemingway and Faulkner to Ionesco and the author of the Curious George picture books about a mischievous monkey. 

​              Almost next door, we found the city's art museum, which had a special show of more than two hundred works by the artist Odilon Redon, with dreamlike drawings and paintings from his entire career.  Just up the street, we came to a beautiful Beaux-Arts theatre that turned out to be the oldest movie house in France, built in 1909 and still in use.  For such a small city, a lot had happened there—and still was
              Despite the train controllers' on-again, off again strike, two days later we were in Barcelona.  We were lucky, our trains went through, although many did not.  When we arrived in Figueres, where we had to transfer, the Barcelona train even was waiting on the same platform.  

​              Our hotel was right on the Ramblas, the long avenue that runs up from the bay—pretty wild on Saturday night, we discovered. We found a good restaurant at the back of the big Mercat de la Boqueria, the market half way up the Ramblas.  Before long, we got to talking with a couple sitting at the next table who, we learned, were born in Tehran, although they left as children.  They were surprised and excited when we told them that we had traveled all over Iran.  He had lived for a while in Italy and now sold Italian pasta there in the market.  They both knew at least five languages, Farsi, of course, perfect English, and German, Italian, Spanish, and Catalan.  We promised to see each other again, when we parted. 
          "You never know who you'll meet," I said, as Sherrill and I walked down the Ramblas to the waterfront.
     "It wouldn't be a surprise, if we did."  
       We saw no tourists in Montpelier and surprisingly few in Marseille, but Barcelona was clogged with them, including a team there for some event—lanky young men in white suits who popped up everywhere.  Although Barcelona looked nothing like Venice, in one way it felt similar: magnificent and beautiful, but as if we'd arrived late at the party.  Despite that, we enjoyed the city.  Its weirdness appealed to us.  

            Barcelona's three creative geniuses, Gaudi, Dali, and Picasso, all excited us, but we started with Gaudi.  Even decades after he created his buildings they were attracting and challenging crowds of visitors.  People smiled with amusement and pleasure when they hiked across the rooftop of the Casa Mila apartment building among its chimneys like aliens just landed from outer space, but they were moved by the underlying beauty and by the grace and charm of the sample apartment open to the public. 

​          Other examples of the Catalan Art Nouveau movement known as Modernisme were appealing, too, but it was Gaudi's work that grabbed our imaginations.  Map in hand, we trekked to other houses that he designed and to the multi-towered Sagrada Familia, the massive church in the center of Barcelona that still wasn't completed long after he was crushed by a city bus, despite decades of work by his disciples.  We saved for the last the wonderful (and crowded) Parque  Guell, with its terraces, gardens, meandering foot paths, and serpentine benches and arcades studded with mosaics, broken ceramics, and bric-a-brac, all of it suggesting a quirky Alice in Wonderland world that we didn't even try to resist. 


Gaudi's Casa Batllo,
​Barcelona 

​              A stroll along the waterfront, walking among the festive crowds, lunch at a sidewalk cafe, and an afternoon cruise in one of the small boats we found there made a low-key change from hurling ourselves from one monument to another.  Barcelona, however, like Venice, was starting to be invaded by giant cruise ships, including the most hideous monster we'd ever seen, a top-heavy, graceless vessel that might have been a Communist-era apartment building turned onto its side and shoved into the water. 
              A splendid day wandering among the dark, narrow streets of the Gothic Quarter and in the Picasso Museum reminded us that although many people are talented very few are geniuses.  The astonishingly skillful and sophisticated work that Picasso produced even as a young boy, we saw, was the foundation for his later experiments.  Later, while Sherrill rested, I wandered through the Dali museum deep in the Gothic Quarter—two floors of paintings, drawings, and sculptures—tantalized by his ability to paint absolutely realistic objects and scenes that unexpectedly slid into the absurd.  His work gave the impression that he could do anything—if he chose.  Sherrill joined me for dinner at the 4 Gats restaurant in the Gothic quarter, the same place once frequented by the young Picasso, Gaudi, and other artists.  Walking through the curved arch of the entrance did feel like stepping into a lost, enchanted time.
              We'd been told that we couldn't visit Barcelona without going to the basilica and monastery atop the saw-tooth ridge of Montserrat.  The darkened wood statuette of the Virgin and the complex around it didn't particularly interest us, but we rode the train and cable car to the top. We conceded afterwards that the whole experience, including the all-boy choir and the crowds of pilgrims, was fascinating, in its way.  We watched and listened, hopefully respectful observers, but definitely on the outside.  Human beings were complex creatures, we saw once again, but that didn't mean that we had to share either their beliefs or experiences.  

​            Up the coast from Barcelona, a bus deposited us in a small town where we found a large castle-like red building studded with gold croissants and topped with giant eggs—Figueres, where Salvador Dali was born and, eighty-five years later, was buried in that building, the Dali museum, designed by the artist, himself.  We spent the good part of a day on a surreal journey through the world he created with his astonishing talent, flamboyant imagination, and gleefully perverse sense of humor. 
            The museum/theatre (as he called it) was, itself, a vast work of art, as well as filled with the world's largest collection of his art.  At least half of the time, if we looked closely at a work we discovered that it wasn't what we thought it was at first.  Either it had changed or our perception of it had changed.  To keep us off guard, he even had slipped in genuine paintings by masters ranging from El Greco to Marcel Duchamp.  The jokester artist never quit, never backed down. 

                                                                         To be continued....

​              If you find these posts interesting, why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including a bio, information about my four novels, along with excerpts from them, and several complete short stories. 
              Please pass the posts on to anybody else you think might enjoy them.  

​Sherrill and I visited more than 60 countries and most of the United States during our 52 year marriage.  This is number 73 of a series about our lives and travels, true stories of two people discovering the world, each other, and themselves through five decades of traveling together.  If you scroll down, you'll come to earlier posts in this series.  To start at the beginning of our marriage and travels look at the Archives list in the sidebar and start with May, 2017.  Older posts are a previous series. 

              We landed in Beirut from Paris a day before our friends from the states arrived, so we began exploring on our own—discovering both the crazy traffic and the pollution it created, despite the winds from the sea.  Rebuilding was still in progress after the two wars: the civil war and the war with Israel.  We would get to know this constantly changing city because Lebanon was such a small country—wedged between the Mediterranean and Syria and Israel—that we'd start out staying in Beirut and seeing much of the country on day trips. 
              "It must have beautiful," I sighed, as we walked through the historic downtown area that, although recently devastated by war, still descended over gently folding hills to the sea.
              "Must have been," Sherrill agreed. 

​              Little was left from the days of the French colony, when Beirut was called the Paris of the Middle East.  New buildings of similar style in the same golden stone were rising, but they looked uncomfortably new and lacked the elegant details of the original buildings.  At least, now, some of the narrow streets were pedestrian only and made room for sidewalk cafes.  Many of the shops and restaurants, though, looked high end and expensive.  Was all of this intended for tourists, we wondered, or were there Lebanese who could afford such prices?  

​              Ah, but the food!  We'd learned to love Middle Eastern dishes when we visited Syria in 1994 and had enjoyed them since in other countries from Iran to Morocco.  Our first meal in Beirut was every bit as good as anything we'd had in Syria, especially the mezze: babaganoush, hummus, pita bread, tabouli, savory pastries, and more.  The Lebanese wine was superb, too. 
              "We're going to eat well on this trip," I told Sherrill, waving a piece of pita bread dripping with hummus over my plate.
              "Unfortunately."   
              We thought we knew what we were doing when we left the restaurant to walk back to our hotel, but became more and more confused.  The street signs were in Arabic and French and we couldn't find any of the names on our map.  We asked some people for help, showing them the map.  They were very nice, but didn't have any idea where our hotel might be.  The sidewalks and streets weren't easy to walk on, either, and traffic fumes were making us woozy.  Finally, a battered taxi stopped next to us, so we got in and hoped for the best.  The young driver and his pal with him in the front seat eventually managed to figure out where to take us.  Maybe the route was longer than it needed to be, but at that point we would've paid anything.  

​              The next day, we joined our old friend Hala and some other friends we'd traveled with over the years.  Together, we embarked on a more methodical exploration of Beirut and its environs, including some beautifully restored mosques and churches.  One imposing building that had not been restored was the old Holiday Inn, a gray concrete tower of 26 floors, once crowned with a revolving nightclub, built in 1974, just a year before the Lebanese civil war.  Foreign journalists hung out there as long as they could, although it was said that a thousand people died during what became known as the Battle of the Hotels.  It became a battleground again during the 1982 Israeli invasion.  Now, it remained, a rocket-pierced, shot-out, burned shell, a reminder of those bloody days.  

​              We couldn't get near the Holiday Inn, but did visit the square next to the classic 1920s St. George hotel down on the bay, a survivor of the Battle of the Hotels that was being restored when in 2005 a suicide bombing destroyed much of it and killed Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Harari, who had been responsible for rebuilding the ruined city center, along with his body guards and five hotel staff.  An elaborate shrine to Harari and the other dead had been set up on the square next to the hotel.  It was still there nearly five years later, when we were there, but someday, we were told, the hotel would be restored and then reopen.  We saw photographs of Harari all over Lebanon, rather like Kennedy after his murder.  

             Wherever we went, we were reminded of the never-ending conflicts afflicting this corner of the world. When we visited the National Archaeological Museum, which was in the middle of the war zone, we were shown a film about the efforts to save its treasures.  Moveable objects and artifacts were taken away or moved to the basement, but the huge ancient statues that couldn't be moved were encased in reinforced concrete.  Even so, shellfire destroyed the artifacts still in storage rooms.  Then the badly damaged museum had to be repaired and its collection inventoried and restored before it finally reopened.  

​              History may happen in chronological order, but often that's not the way we discover it, especially in these ancient cities.  The new and the incredibly old mingle incongruously, as if deliberately trying to confuse us.  We encountered plenty of this in Lebanon, even in the center of Beirut: the scaffolding and concrete forms of a modern apartment building rose next to a row of ancient Corinthian columns, while over on the coast a crusader castle jutted up from ancient ruins, surrounded by blocky 20th century buildings.

​              Several times, Sherrill pointed out to me (discreetly) young soldiers carrying machine guns.  If they noticed us looking at them, they aimed friendly smiles at us.  We couldn't escape this constant military presence—in the city and throughout the country.  On the outskirts of the city and on the roads beyond we saw billboards welcoming the president of Iran, who was coming soon on an official visit.  Were these armed soldiers because of this, we wondered, or were they always lurking nearby?

​              As we drove south to visit the ancient cities of Sidon and Tyre, we saw, behind a large fenced enclosure, a Palestinian refugee camp.  More than 400,000 Palestinian refugees still were living in Lebanon.  Questions being hotly debated at that time were whether or not they would be allowed to become naturalized Lebanese citizens or would have to return to the Palestinian territories—and what would be the impact of either option on them, on Lebanon, and on the Middle East?  

            An astonishing number of civilizations had existed on top of each other here: Phoenician, Greek, Roman, and Arabic cultures, and certainly more.  Some of the enormous archeological sites we explored impressed us with their beauty as well as their antiquity, rising out of the red cliffs and pomegranate bush-decorated hills next to the Mediterranean Sea.  Ancient monasteries, terraced vineyards, forests and canyons, seemed to whirl around us, a carousel of colors and history.  Although neighboring Syria, which is mostly desert, Lebanon's landscape seemed much more varied—but, we discovered, it could be dangerous.  We were told not to wander off on our own, especially in the south, because thousands of landmines, cluster bombs, and rockets remained scattered there.  In fact, more than 200 civilians had been killed or injured by them. 
              "Just like Cambodia and Laos," Sherrill commented.
              "And Croatia."
              Sometimes, it was hard not to become discouraged about human beings.  

​              People told us that women in Lebanon were equal to men in terms of education and career opportunities, however, they admitted, there still was no civil marriage in Lebanon—only religious.  It didn't matter what religion.  Most women now worked, they said, but mostly in low paying jobs, although a few did manage to become successful in business, medicine, higher education, law, and other professions.  

             Our last full day in Beirut, just the two of us again, Sherrill and I visited the American University of Beirut, where a friend had spent a year nearly fifty years before.  A student guide took us around the campus, which now seemed to have as many young women students as young men.  Some buildings, our guide told us, including the original one from 1873, were damaged or destroyed during the recent wars, but now the campus seemed like a green paradise overlooking the sea.

​              We both had the feeling that we were doing so much walking on this trip that we must be developing new leg muscles.  At least, Sherrill told me, her calves no longer hurt the way they had at the beginning.  North of Beirut, we visited the coastal village of Batroun, originally Greco-Roman, but—as in so much of the country—other cultures had crept in over the centuries.  Byblos, one of the world's oldest continually inhabited towns, dazzled us with its kaleidoscope of centuries: Roman remains, a crusader castle, a restored souk, Ottoman-era stone houses, and the dramatic terraced harbor crowded with new fishing boats and yachts—and those cruel cobblestones everywhere.  It was no wonder that our legs were stronger, although we still worried about breaking an ankle.  

                 As we often did when traveling, we encountered several weddings in Lebanon, including one in our Beirut hotel, where the wedding party posed for photos in the lobby.  Some of the women wore evening gowns and a couple of young women were in miniskirts and very high heels, but others managed to be elegant in outfits that completely covered them, even over the head.  The men ranged from formal outfits to Mafia-mod—and most of them needed a shave.
              "I told you," Sherrill reminded me, "wherever we go, we run into weddings."
              "I don't think it's our fault."

      Then there was Baalbek.  Trying to describe Baalbek is like trying to wrap the Grand Canyon in words.   It has been called the most important Roman site in the Middle East.  Its temples were built on a scale that surpassed anything in Rome.  The more Sherrill and I had learned about Baalbek, the more eager we had been to see it.  In 36 BC, Marc Antony gave Baalbek to Cleopatra.  What could be more romantic than that?  Emperor after emperor, including Nero and Caracalla, devoted massive resources to the city.  As fascinated as we were by the rest of Lebanon, Baalbek was the magnet that originally drew us there.
              Once again, the Roman city and temples had been built on top of Neolithic, Phoenician, Greek, and other ancient settlements, and was surrounded by later Byzantine and Moslem buildings, as well as a few pathetic modern structures. 
              "This puts us in our place," one of our friends on the trip commented.  "Hardly a blip in history."

         Whoever was already living in that area when the Romans came had to have been impressed by this great show of Roman civilization and power.  Our feet and legs were given a good work out with Baalbek's monumental staircases, immense courtyards, and gigantic temples.  We spent hours hiking over, on, and among the ancient stonework, the hot sun reflecting into our faces.  The only comparisons we could think of were Manhattan and the Grand Canyon, but it was foolish to compare Baalbek to anything else.  It was its own magnificent thing and it was remarkable that so much of it had survived so well for more than two thousand years.  



                                              Temple of Jupiter, Baalbek.
                                                 The tallest columns in the
                                                 world and once the biggest
                                                Roman temple in the world.

              Getting home from Beirut turned out to be more of an adventure than we expected.  Air France and other French workers were on strike, protesting changes to their pension plans.  We didn't know even that morning if our plane would leave on time.  Then it turned out that the arrival of the Iranian president on the same day was causing record traffic jams.  We left early enough to get to the airport before the worst of the traffic, but the plane was delayed anyway because the flight crew couldn't get through the traffic.  The flight, itself, was okay.  The French cabin crew kept passing out wine.
              The next morning, after a night at Charles de Gaulle, as our British Air plane for London was taxiing to the runway a man across the cabin from us had a heart attack.  The crew sprang into action, bringing out all kinds of equipment, but the plane returned to the gate and medics came on.  They worked on the man for about an hour.  Eventually, they took him and his companion off the plane—and their luggage, too.  The plane left an hour and a half late.  Passengers with connections were upset, but fortunately we were staying overnight in London before flying to San Francisco.   Besides, this trip had given time a new perspective for us.  In the great scheme of things, what did a few hours or days matter?
To be continued....  
​

​              If you find these posts interesting, why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including a bio, information about my four novels, along with excerpts from them, and several complete short stories.    
              Please pass the posts on to anybody else you think might enjoy them.