European Sampler 2011: Bella Roma

The past couple of days have been a bit of a blur. We awoke Saturday morning in Cesky Krumlov to blue skies and warm temperatures. Since our shuttle to the Linz, Austria train station was not until 3pm we decided to have a picnic on a cool grassy area overlooking the castle while watching group after group of Japanese tourists file through to take pictures of themselves with their respective Czech guide....

Our shuttle transfer was uneventful and took about 90 minutes, passing through rural areas and small villages complete with various monasteries, churches, and other places of significance.... The road between Cesky Krumlov and Austria was a typical double lane country highway/road. Crossing the border to Austria was a snap; they've closed the checkpoint so you just drive by.... imagine that! Don't have to worry about how much alcohol you might be bringing in or whether or not your car will be unnecessarily unloaded and your trip delayed for who knows how long..... hmmm, in fact so far in our trip we haven't had anything stamped except for when we got off the plane in Frankfurt.

As luck would have it our arrival at the train station was seconds too late to avoid the fire alarm that shut down all the elevators to the train platforms. Our leisurely stroll to the platform instead became a mad dash with a security guard to the business center next door, in to the underground parking, and around and up to the platform. We literally rolled onto the train and we left.

The first leg of the journey took us from Linz to Innsbruck, Austria and through beautiful countryside marked by rolling hills, green pastures, small villages, and the backdrop of The Alps in the distance.

We had our train compartment to ourselves for the most part and enjoyed a nice dinner provided by the Bistro on board. We arrived in Innsbruck 3 hours later and took a short stroll to the historical district to enjoy dessert.

Back to the train station to board the 11pm train to Rome. We found our two berth compartment large enough for the wheelchair, etc. The girls were sharing a 6 berth lady only compartment complete with 80ish Anna who just had some sort of surgery on her ankle and needed to use the bottom berth so Em took her top berth, Hana her assigned bottom one. Anna's sister was also there, perhaps 78, as well as another lady in her 60s and a 30 something. The trip was a bit of a clang, clang, bang, bang, with one noisy group of 20ish guys from Australia getting on at around 2am who didn't know the berths were reserved and ended up sleeping on the floor in the corridor. We apparently had to wait in Bolonga for a part for our train coming from Zurich and thus were an hour late getting into Rome. The well spoken German conductor had a sense of humour about it all and asked questions about Stephen Harper and made jokes about litigious North Americans...

We got off the train and wandered to our hotel where the staff was gracious enough to provide us with a snack in lieu of our missed breakfast. We cleaned up and headed off to the historical Coliseum Area, where we saw the Coliseum and the Forum. While the Coliseum is impressive in its size and design, the Forum area is remarkable with the remains of many very impressive buildings, the foundations of which are hard to imagine constructing even with today's technology and knowhow. Much of the area has been roped off with new preservation projects in progress. As for the weather, while sunny and nice, it was quite a change in temp from the Czech republic, easily 30 - 35 with mild humidity and so you became drenched very quickly. We exited the area late in the day and had a typical dinner outside under the shade of the trees and buildings; the simple pizza, salad, and juice, very affordable and delicious. While Edward was out doing laundry tonight, the hotel delivered a bottle of bubbly wine on ice and four glasses courtesy of the owner/manager of the hotel who assisted us with all our arrangements at the hotel.

For those of you who remember our Barcelona trip when the wheelchair battery charger died and I spent three days pushing the electric wheelchair plus a double stroller around the town..... well, at least I didn't have a stroller this time; we didn't blow the charger, just didn't get a good charge on the train as the power to our berth kept cutting out... thus winthin minutes of arriving at Colliseum, we discovered Laurel has No Power.... so my diet is looking up with another 10 pounds lost today <grin>.... we are getting a good charge tonight.

We are off to embark on the cruise tomorrow! The last week has been a wonderful experience so far and we are looking forward to the pampering and downtime on the Cruise. Our Posts will likely be more sporadic or very short as the Internet on the ship will be very expensive but we will try to keep you informed...