Bill-on-the-Hill

OK, so here begins the much-delayed blogging of a 25th-wedding-anniversary trip to Italy, participants in which were my wife, our two college-student sons, the World's Greatest Mother-In-Law (hereinafter WGMIL), and of course, myself.

First, some background. A couple of years ago, WGMIL and her equally fabulous spouse had taken the four of us on ten days of incredible touring in Costa Rica, with a group from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, to celebrate their 50th anniversary. This was just a wonderful thing to do; Costa Rica is one of the world's great spots for "ecotourism," and since we're all not only environmentally inclined but also scientists of one form or another (at least if you consider computer science a "science"), the combination of scientific tour group and fascinating locations (from many, many points of view) produced a wonderful experience. However, it also demonstrated that Don, my FIL, is getting to the point where physical fragility doesn't allow him to do some of the more rugged outdoors stuff that the rest of us cherish, or in fact, to travel long distances by plane at all.

With all of this in mind, when we started looking around for something to celebrate our own 25th anniversary as well as the inpending financial(!) independence of our sons in college, we cast our eyes on the volcanoes of Italy, and turned to a tour outfit that would allow us to do some things there that the garden-variety tourist may not be able to do: Volcano Discovery Tours ( http://www.volcanodiscovery.com ). (To get ahead of the game a bit, our experience with Volcano Discovery was absolutely superb, and we recommend them highly, for reasons that will become apparent as the story unfolds.) It turns out that they offered a tour of the volcanoes of Italy that fit our timeline and budget (which, let me be clear, was pretty high -- we're not going to do as expensive a trip every year, but had saved our pennies for this special occasion), as well as our skills in the Great Outdoors, which are considerable, if I do say so myself. And thus, with the expenditure of some big bucks and the cashing of some frequent-flyer miles, as well as an add-on of time in Naples (including Pompeii and Vesuvius) and Rome by ourselves, it was so. WGMIL, every bit as proficient in the outdoors as we are and wanting to see more of Italy, joined us; Don, for reasons already alluded to, did not, but had a good time of his own schmoozing with his other grandkids -- but that's a different blog.

So, on May 16th, we found ourselves boarding a flight from Albuquerque to Atlanta and thence to Rome to get things started. Not much to say about the plane travel except that it, well, happened, which isn't a foregone conclusion. A problem is that the TSA's no-fly lists not infrequently reach out and touch us, the usual touchee being my son Pete, whose name apparently matches up with that of someone suspected of terrorism or drug running or insulting flight crews or halitosis or who knows what. Prior experiences with certain airlines that were more willing to explain stuff to us than others had allowed us to discover that this other guy was somewhere in his forties, which should allow any reasonably discerning observer to figure out that that Pete isn't our Pete, who's 20 but looks about 15. But we've still had to go through gyrations too many times to get this kid onto an airplane. Well, not this time; either the no-fly lists have finally been brought to some degree of rationality, or Delta, unlike certain other airlines I could mention, figured out that they weren't going to confuse our kid with this unknown suspected bad guy. Anyway, we got on the planes and flew through the night, arriving in Rome with the normal amount of jet lag that accompanies flying steerage across the Lake.

A word here about the Rome airport, Fiumicino (or L. da Vinci). The Volcano Discovery folks warned us that Fiumicino is one of the slowest airports in Europe when it comes to handling baggage. This was a matter of no small import to us, because our intention was to land, hazily get our bags, somehow make it to a train to Naples, and finally crash in Naples for the night before getting on to the good stuff the next day. In the event, things at baggage claim and Customs (almost nonexistent) ran quite normally, so that we had a ridiculous amount of time to kill before getting on the Trenitalia express to Naples. (Things on the return trip did not go so smoothly, as will be seen.) Thus it was that our first meal in Italy, at the main train station in Rome, consisted of ... hamburgers and french fries. Not so Italian, this food? Well, there's a reason, namely that we were so jet lagged that to kill time before the train finally went, we simply stumbled into the first eatery at the train station that we could find, and they specialized in "American" food for some odd reason. We were so wiped that we didn't really care. Eventually we did catch the train, depositing us in downtown Naples a short block from our hotel, where we collapsed for the night -- and from which the story will resume tomorrow.

No photos, etc., for this leg of the trip, but that'll pick up shortly. For Web Site du Jour, go check out that Volcano Discovery site; even if you have no interest in ever doing volcano tourism, some of the photography on the thing is in-friggin'-credible.