We're Back From Italia (Pompeii & Herculaneum) and Rome

 

Florence, Italy

My daughter, Lelia, and I are home from our two week visit to Italy. It was her first visit to the country (and only her second trip to Europe) and I really enjoyed seeing her reaction to all of the sights for the first time.

First stop: Naples

Lelia was keen to see Pompeii and so we made Naples our first stop and stay on the trip. The Pompeii and Herculaneum sites are within an hour's drive of Naples. We had a driver and guide for our visits to both cities, which made the trip much easier.

The central train station in Naples

Pizza was allegedly invented in Naples, Italy so we had to try some of the local fare.

Narrow street in the old part of the city

Our visit to Pompeii

We spent the whole morning of our first day of sight seeing in Pompeii. I had been there back in 1963 on a family vacation and a significantly larger portion of the city has been unearthed in the intervening years.

Plaster casts of some of the victims - very poignant to see

The main arena in Pompeii

The main central street the runs the length of the city. Lelia and our guide are mugging for the camera.

A restaurant in Pompeii, evidenced by the countertop with holes for clay pots that kept the food warm.

I was quite taken with the bright colors of the frescoes that have been preserved.

That afternoon we visited a local winery on the slope of Mount Vesuvius and had a wine tasting.

Our visit to Herculaneum

Our second day found us traveling to the site of Herculaneum, one of the other cities that was wiped out by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The town had once been on the sea coast but the volcanic flows had pushed the coastline further away from the city.

The boat houses had been at the waters' edge at the time of the eruption.

The skeletal remains of the people who attempted to escape by boat.

Colorful frescoes on the walls of buildings.

One of the main streets in Herculaneum

An amazing amount of the structures are still standing.

One of the temples in the city

A view overlooking the city ruins of Herculaneum.

We later visited the National Archeological Museum in Naples. Since it was on a Sunday, there was no admission charge. The museum has an extensive collection of artifacts from Pompeii and Herculaneum.

This scale model of one of the temples in Pompeii is giving me some ideas 
for making my own buildings for war games.

Visiting some of the emperors.

Here's an experiment with embedding a GIF into my blog. One of my favorite scenes from the movie Casablanca.

Lunch in Rome with Coke Zero. Diet Coke is not available in Italy 
so we grew used to Coke Zero during the trip.

Lelia and our tour guide at the Roman Forum.

The Roman Forum

The Basilica of Maxentius. I'm always gobsmacked by the size of this structure.

Another view of the Roman Forum

Dad and Lelia at the Colosseum 

Easter Piglet accompanied us on our trip to Italy

The basement of the Colosseum , where everything was prepared for the next act in the arena.

Outside view of the Colosseum .

St. Peter's and the Vatican

The Pantheon

The old Roman city walls

I like some of the tiny automobiles that one sees in Rome. When you see some of 
the tight parking spaces you realize why a small car is better than a large one.

The ruins of a Roman apartment building.

Lelia (bless her heart) made the climb up these stairs leading to the Capitoline Hill and Museum.
We could not find the handicapped entrance so we had to climb from the street level.

One of the views from the Capitoline Hill. Roman ruins have become part of an apartment building.

I try to visit the Capitoline Museum every time I visit Rome
just because I like viewing the statue of the emperor Constantine I.

The view from the Capitoline Hill. St Peter's is in the middle of the three churches 
seen in the distance.

Inside the Pantheon

Proof that the Romans also invented the cell phone.

Inside the Borghesi Palace in Rome

I could see setting up some wargaming tables in this room.

The ceiling in one of the rooms at the Borghesi Palace.

My Road Trip to the UK

We will catch those rascally rabbits yet!

Later this evening I will board a plane in Chicago and wing my way to London so that I can attend a weekend gathering of gamers in Warwickshire, as we did last year at this time. I will spend a couple of days in London before taking a train to Coventry on friday and meeting up with Graham Cummings, the major domo of Crann Tara Miniatures. Along the way we shall stop in at Griffin Moulds to catch up with our friends there and then make our way to Kenilworth where our group, The Wild Geese, is gathering.

There is nice variety of games offered: GNW, Zulu War, SYW Imaginations, and the Franco-Dutch wars of the 1690s. The four games run for the full day on Saturday and then we get another chance to play in another of the games on Sunday. In between there will undoubtedly be a meeting in the local pub where we will solve all of the world's problems.

The trip has already had some excitement, and I haven't even left my house yet. Yesterday, I was informed by British Airways that my flight from Chicago had been cancelled (no reason given for the cancellation). I was to click on a link that would lead me to a new itinerary. My eyes nearly popped out of my head when I read the schedule change. They proposed having me catch a flight from Chicago to Boston (arriving at 1AM) and then having a six hour layover in Boston and catching a BA flight from Boston to London arriving around 7PM local time, on Thursday instead of the planned Wednesday arrival.

So I got on the horn and had to do quite a bit of sparring with the airline in order to get a better replacement flight. The first idea was to have me fly from Chicago to Manchester, then have one hour to catch a flight to London. I would imagine that just getting my luggage and processed through customs would take an hour, so that wasn't the optimal flight schedule.

Then finally, BA found that there was a flight from Chicago to London that left about an hour later in the evening than my originally scheduled flight (the one that was cancelled). This would get me into London around noon local time rather than 9AM, but that was OK because my hotel generally doesn't have the rooms available until after the noon hour. So it looked like an acceptable flight plan was available...

... but wait, the BA agent decided that I had only paid for the flight to London, but had not done so for the return leg. Of course this was not the case, so at one point I had two telephones operating with the BA agent on one phone and my travel agent on the other phone.

In any event, we finally got things sorted out and it looks like I will make it to London without too much disruption in the schedule. But still, my stress level was fairly high after all these shennanigans and not having immediate access to some good single malt scotch, I visited the local ice cream shop and ordered a chocolate milkshake for comfort food.

Everything should be all tickety-boo now.

I will try to post some pictures on my blog during my travels. However, the Blogger mobile ap is a piece of junk that makes it nearly impossible to post anything at all whilst on the road. Blogger is owned by Google, which is only one of the largest tech companies in the world, and they can't fix their mobil ap for Blogger (which used to work just fine, thank you very much). Come on Google, get your stuff together and fix this!

We shall see.

While in London, I want to make a point of visiting the Guards Museum this time. Last year, I arrived there around 3PM and found that the museum had just closed. Doh! I'd also like to pay a visit to the National Army Museum, which was closed for renovations last year. A visit to Hatchards' bookstore is always a must on any visit to London, so hopefully I can add some new ballast to my suitcase with the inclusion of a few heavy books.

Hopefully all of the stress and out of left field changes are behind me and I can relax and enjoy the actual travels this week. I'm looking forward to seeing the Wild Geese at Kenilworth this coming weekend.

cheers,

Der Alte Fritz

Day Three: On the Road to Coventry and Points In Between

I boarded the train at Euston Station in London and made the one hour journey north to Coventry, where Phil O. met me to give me a tour of the area, a visit to Griffin Moulds, and a visit to a proper English pub.

I was very impressed with my journey on British Rail and only wish that we had a transportation system like this in the USA. The coaches were clean, had wifi connections, decent food, a smooth ride and none of the "airport hassle" that we all know and loathe.

A view of the first class coach that I travelled in.

Still figuring out how to do a decent selfie.

The ride was over in about an hour and I was sort of wishing that it would not end. I enjoyed zipping across the countryside and watching the scenery go by, while sitting in a comfy chair and noshing on some breakfast.

Phil O. met me at the Coventry station and it was really great to meet someone who I've known for about five years, via the Internet, but had never met face to face. I look forward to meeting more friends at Partizan on Saturday and Sunday. 

We dropped off my luggage at Phil's house and I had an opportunity to view his beautiful collection of SYW and TYW figures, before heading off to Birmingham and Griffin Moulds. The visit at Griffin was really interesting because I was able to learn a little more about how the Minden and Fife & Drum moulds and figures are made, and to meet some of the people who make it all happen.

Lisa, DAF and Jane (left to right)

Jane, who was Stewart's partner, gave Phil and I a tour of the new factory that they recently moved into. She is building up the production staff in order to reduce the backlog that built up during Stewart's passing and it looks like things are getting well organized on the administrative side of the business. Here is a picture of the new mould racking system that holds all of the master and production moulds:

Here are some other photos of the factory. I was actually able to watch some of my Minden orders being cast by Rob and had a nice chat with Martin, the head mould maker.

We spend several hours at Griffin this morning and it was time well spent and was one of the highlights of the trip for me.

Afterwords, we drove back to Coventry and visited the site of the ruin of the Coventry Cathedral, which was destroyed during WW2. The site has been turned into a public park of sorts where one can meet friends or sit quietly and contemplate the ruins, which are very haunting and moving.

Next stop, the pub, where Phil introduced me to a proper pint, over which we solved a lot of the world's problems. Apparently I was enjoying the experience:

We went back to Phil's house and his gracious wife Diane joined us for a wonderful dinner in the town of Kenilworth, the restaurant located across the road from Kenilworth Castle, which is still imposing even in ruin.

Returning home, we spent the rest of the evening quaffing a Macallan and giving Phil's collection a closer inspection, and dare I say, solving even more of the world's problems. I want to thank Phil and Diane for being such gracious hosts and welcoming me into their home.

Tomorrow will be a more leisurely day as we wend our way over to Grantham where we will meet up with more of the "A Military Gentleman" forum members and make preparations for our demo game on Saturday.