Current Journal My Page Home Page

 

 

Danny's Past Journal Entries

 

 

September 12, 2002

 

So far on our trip we’ve been to many places, but I won’t bother typing them all. I will, however fill you in on some of the more interesting places.

 

To start our trip we were in Cap Ferrat for about a week to get our boat completely ready for our trip.

 

We drove to a few places from Cap Ferrat, one of which was Monaco. Monaco is a tiny country with a lot of money.  About the size of Menlo Park or Redwood City, Monaco is home to the Monty Carlo Casino, the most famous in the world, and to an amazing display of personal yachts down in the harbor.  We walked down to the harbor and took minutes upon minutes admiring 300+ foot Motor yachts.  These are the biggest boats in the world with a crew of hundreds. The gadgets on these boats were incredible.

 

Our first sale of the trip was a fifteen hour overnight sail from Cap Ferrat to Santa Maria, a town in Corsica.

 

From there we went to Calvi, a fairly big city with a huge beach with twice as many people as square inches.  Calvi also is home to the best paninis (French sandwiches that are my new favorite lunch) and ice cream I’ve ever tasted.  Part of Calvi is an old town high up on a hill with a 7th century citadel.  Calvi is also home to Christopher Columbus and Napoleon.

 

After leaving Calvi we went down the west side of Corsica about 4 hours.  We were kicked out of the place we anchored at 9:00 PM and had to sail back to Calvi, where we started.

 

Our next interesting stop was in Cannigione where we found the first grass field.  We were in this harbor for a while and eventually came back a second time for fireworks on a national holiday. On the first visit we made a trip to Olbia and went Jet Skiing, and  on the second we went water skiing and windsurfing.

 

Between the visits to Cannigione we went to Porte Cervo and got a ride from our captain’s friend to a roastee, a traditional Sardinian dinner. At a roastee a full pig or goat is roasted on a spit and serves it cut up after the bacon is made and burnt over the pig and drips down to make the pig tastier. I will also mention that on the way up the five of us (my family) were all praying to make it to the roastee alive, the driver was the craziest I’ve ever seen, and the streets in Sardinia are extremely narrow and curvy… The next day she got in a freak automobile accident and her car was totaled.

 

From Porte Cervo we went to a bay nearby for the day, part of Aga Khans Costa Smeralda.  Here we found a display of boats similar to that of Monty Carlo, but at anchor.  Among these yachts was the Lady Moura itself, Aga Khans yacht. See the Pictures section for more info. ( believe me, you want to see the pictures!!!!)

 

The next big stop was Bonifaccio( back on Corsica) but on the way we stopped at a beach called pink beach, famous for its pink sand. The beach was the nicest I’ve seen yet, but the sand wasn’t close to pink.  It was also completely empty, for good reason. The beach is a national park and you are not aloud to even swim in the water.

 

Bonifaccio is a city at the tip of Corsica high up on a hill inside another old citadel. We also got a new dingy here. To anchor in the port you have to go stern-to a wall of stone and hook mooring lines onto rocks while another person drops the anchor in the bow.

 

Next was Lavezzi, a Corsican island jampacked with boats.  Here we went spearfishing and I caught  a foot long fish of some sort, we decided not to eat it. The second night in Lavezzi we were up all night making sure we (the boat) were OK in a huge storm.

 

Onto Porte Vecchio with yet another citadel, possibly the coolest citadel of them all.

 

October 15, 2002 posting

 

The trip, as everyone said it would, is turning out to be great. I get to lay down in school on beds and couches and  we stop school around lunch. My parents are having a hard time teaching all three of us, but in the end they'll manage. Recently I went wakeboarding; it's my new favorite water sport. We've been to some really cool and interesting cities some of which are of historical importance. Speaking of historical importance, anyone who like movies like Dude Where's My Car  should rent and watch Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure,  a movie about two teens going back through history. I am really getting into and better at soccer. Who knows, maybe I'll play when I get back. We are going to spend the winter in Gaeta. There's an American Army Base so there will be kids to make friends with and such. We came to San Tropez for the last race of a big series and saw some of the biggest and nicest sailboats in the world. We also went to Florence and saw all the things there: The Duomo, the David, Piazza della Signioria, and all the other stuff. If you're interested in a good book you should read  Agony and the Ecstasy.

    So far we have gone back and forth many times between France and Italy. Though they share a border, I will show you that they are different in many ways. We started in Cap Ferrat, part of France and we liked it there even though we were all in such a hurry to get moving. They had, like all of France, good pastries and bread. The only problem is the beaches are all pebbles, not sand. Corsica was a great place, with fresh, tasty bread and long sandy beaches. A definite plus for France. Sardinia was more crowded, so it wasn't quite as much fun, and we moved around a lot near the top. Corsica was definitely better than Italy's island of Sardinia. From there we went to Elba, where the beaches were great but the water was terrible and dirty. A plus for Italy. To mainland Italy. Italy has great Ice Cream, amazing Pizza, and even better Pasta. Italy's coast was my favorite place yet. The beaches were all long and flat. The only problem, is what we still don't understand.  How can their neighbors, the French, have such good bread, and all the Italians have is stale baguettes? These features put Italy in the lead, and because I like Italian so much more than French (because it's so close to Spanish) It's going to be touch for France to catch up. From there we went back to France by way of Monaco. The classiness of the place, the casino, and the great cars, gain a little ground for France, but wait, Monaco's its own country. France gains no ground. From there we went to VilleFranche. Here is where the Giants started winning in the post-season, so the French gain some ground out of pure dumb luck. San Tropez, where we are now, has almost brought French back to even. We'll be here almost a week and we have seen some cool things. We saw hundreds of beautiful classic sailboats that were here for the last race of an ongoing tournament. Everything here is cool, the beaches, good food, good weather, and the best ice cream yet. So a slight advantage to Italy, but not enough to say they win. Oh, wait a sec. I forgot to tell you about the citadels all over France. They are huge forts built high up on hills in the middle ages. Game, Set, Match. Italy wins. You have to walk up hundreds of stairs to get to the citadel.

 

Here are some things I've written in my journal over the last month. 

September 5, 2002

We are in San Cipriano and I just got back from a great time water skiing.  Its my first time out that I really got it (water skiing).  I got up every time, but I couldn’t quite get out of the wake.  Besides jet skiing, this is probably the most fun I’ve had yet.  The trip is turning out to be fun (though I’d still rather be at home). Europe is so much different than America.  In August everyone in Europe is out of school, work, and on vacation. From August 10th to August 31st everywhere is packed (except for the 15th, a national holiday). It’s weird, on September 1st, not a day before of later, every beach and harbor is completely empty. On the 31st everywhere is packed, and on the 1st of September everywhere is empty.  In Porto Vecchio, where we were a few days ago, my dad and I spent hours setting up our internet website, nowornot.com, with Hollis (Call). We think we know where we are going to spend the winter. Rather than Veregio, where we originally thought we would, we are going to winter in Gaeta, a city south of Rome.  There is an American army base there so there is also a school for American kids(children of the army parents).  Though we can’t get into the school (we wouldn’t want to anyway) we can participate in the after school sports, where we can make friends with American/English speaking kids.

September 6, 2002

Today, we also found out that the waterski group we’ve been waterskiing with for the past 3 days has snowboard and ski lessons at a mountain we’ll be near in the alps, so (because they were so nice) we are likely going to go see them and ski with them. One of them holds the world record for speed by a Junior skier, another was on the French Junior Olympic team.

September 9, 2002

We are still in Marina di Campo. Yesterday we rented a real jeep(the ones really low to the ground with no doors) to tour inner-Elba. Originally we were going to rent small motorcycles, I would have ridden my own with my siblings on the back of my parents bike.  We then realized how steep and narrow the streets were, so instead we got the jeep. We collected little balls that were growing on a plant to throw at cars and such from inside the jeep.  I threw one off a sign and it bounced back and hit my mom in the shoulder. She then said she’d give me a euro(dollar) if I could hit her on a rebound again. On the last ball I had I threw it off a sign and it hit my dad this time in the face.  My mom gave me the dollar.

September 10, 2002

We are in Porto Azuro. Yesterday we played soccer on the beach in Marina di Campo with some Italian kids.  My dad, brother and I beat the kids 4-2(they had 5 players) and I scored 4 goals, one of which was on a header.  Europeans are good!!!  But not as good as me!!! I wonder wuts going on in the US for sep. 11 tomorrow.  Today we went to another beach here in porto azzurro. It was rocky, hard, and was small and crowded. The only thing we could play was bocce ball.  The water in elba is very dirty(garbage) and muddy/mucky. There was a huge storm here a week ago where everything flooded; hotels, houses, yards, tennis courts, shops, ect. The rivers all flow through these areas and pick up all sorts of garbage and wood, some of which is potentially dangerous to boats. 

September 13, 2002

We’re still in Portoferraio. Yesterday we (me my bro and mom) rented two bicycles and a motorcycle that I got to ride on the streets going really fast. We went up and down a bunch of hills where my mom and brother had to pedal the bikes and I just turned the throttle. I can see why people like riding motorcycling, I do, but they are really heavy. I can hardly pick one up when it’s lying sideways on the ground.

September 22, 2002

We are in Santa Marguerite Liguria. Last night my siblings and I went with my grandmother to a European soccer match between Genoa and some other team. It was amazing. No goals were scored, but all 4 of us walked out of the stadium temporarily stunned and deaf. The fans had their own cheers and jeers at players and refs. The teams were amazing and we saw multiple bicycle kicks. There were also thousands of police officers fully armed with shields and rifles ready break any disagreement or riot with a shot of their gun. The four of us stayed in a hotel to get away from the boat for a day. We also went to an aquarium and got our names done in Chinese. My new favorite movie is Oceans 11.

September 30, 2002

I just got back from Florence with my mom and brother and grandmother. My grandmother saved me and took me on a little excursion to get off the boat and away from my sister and family for a while. The David was amazingly realistic and and the Duomo facade was awsome. Santa Croce hides the bodies of Galileo and Donatello. Ponte Vechio is the richest road for jewelry in the world, while Piazza della Signioria is more famous than any other piazza in the world. Oh, yeah, and Giotto's Campanili, and the Medici Chapels, and the Baptistry, the Pieta, the Ghiberti doors. Florence was truly amazing, especially Vivolis, the world famous ice cream parlor.

 

 

Goodbye and have a nice day,

Danny Zuckerman

Owner of San Francisco Giants

Former 12 time MVP second basemen for the San Francisco Giants

By courtesy Head of Stanford University

(I wish!!!)

 

December 15, 2002 Update

 

 

 Here is a small essay I wrote for my parents about Gaeta, our home port.

  One week ago yesterday my family landed at a port by the name of Base Nautica Flavio Giaoa.   This marina is the main marina in the Gulf of Gaeta, which is the home to a very important U.S.  Navy base.   Ever since our “Touchdown” to the birth on the 3rd pontoon our lives have changed dramatically.   Besides the being done cruising for the year, and not having to get “sailready” every day, we now can settle down and really get to know the town and community.   We found some Dutch kids and a Norwegian family in the marina to play with, although their baseball (wiffle ball) skills haven’t improved much so far.   We found a great beach with a soccer field, and a set of tennis courts to play on.   Best of all, we found a baseball field! 

          Our arrival in Gaeta came with a change of life style.    We now are not always so anxious about the weather, about making sure we were ready to go if we get a window, or fixing problems on the boat.   We can now slow down and relax some, and learn how to cook and do a little more school each day.    We started taking Italian lessons and now that we’ve stopped moving around we can find out some of the local secrets on where to go and what to buy.    We have time to go to the local open air markets and to go to the beach in the afternoon.    Soon we’ll be playing basketball and flag football (along with practicing Baseball) with the American school.   Now that we’ve settled down and are in a smooth rhythm there is less stress and yelling around the boat, though fights every once and a while are inevitable. 

          The Norwegian family here has a 15 year old son, who I am slowly becoming friends with, and yesterday we met one of the kids from the American School; he seems really nice too.   My brother and I have been teaching the kids in the Marina how to play wiffle ball.   They may not be very good, but at least they are getting to know the game better.   I am also learning that here in Gaeta I’m going to have 5 separate lives, very separate from each other.   I am going to have a life of traveling with my family, which will take much of the winter.   I will have two lives with kids and friends, one with foreign kids at the marina, and another completely separate one with the kids at the American school who I will be playing basketball with.  I will be practicing baseball everyday, so that will be another full life, and the last life will be within the walls of my boat, the life with my family doing school and cleaning, which will be the craziest life of all. 

         

A while ago my family took a trip to Rome for reasons you won’t believe. My family is from San Francisco, the home of the Giants baseball team, and I am a huge fan!  In the year 2002 the Giants made it to the World Series, and low and behold, we were away. The adventures start in the port of Cannes, meeting place for rock stars all over the world. It was a Thursday evening and my sister had just been set off on a train with my grandparents and Aunt to go to Venice. We were planning to sail east along the coast of France and then down Italy to meet them the next Tuesday in Rome (which meant we had to get to Ostia). My brother, dad and I were playing soccer on a lawn above the port when my dad looked out into the sea and said

          “Look how beautiful that (the sea with a setting sun) is. This is the kind of night we should be sailing.”

          Now I had a motive to go, to get to Rome as fast as possible. “Why don’t we,” I said.

          And so we did. In fact, the weather was so nice that instead of stopping in Olbia at the top of Corsica, we went all the way to Porto Ferraio on Elba. It’s a good thing too. The next day the winds were blowing and the seas were rough, and we never would have been able to sail from Corsica. So we sailed a short sail from Elba across to the mainland and down a little ways. The next sail was an adventure in itself. My parents started the sail themselves and left my brother and me to sleep.  Well, the waves were rough the day before, but nothing compared to this. My brother and I woke up just in time to see ourselves fly off our beds into the bow on one particularly large drop. We had fun for a little while jumping up and seeing where we would land because of the boat rocking or dropping. Then we went upstairs and the adventure begins.  Multiple times the wind gusted to over 50 knots (a knot is a little more than a mile per hour) and multiple times the portside railing went well into the water. This made for a lot of sickness and even more puke. My brother and I filled multiple bowls worth, in case you wanted to know, and then the dry hurling came. Eventually we stopped at a port about halfway to Porto di Roma (Ostia). The next sail was calm and we landed in Porto di Roma. From here we took a train to Rome and, don’t ask me why, rented a hotel. My “motive” to go to Rome was to watch the Giants play the World Series. We eventually found a high speed internet café that hosted about 300 computers and extremely hard, wood, chairs. At 1:00 in the morning I got up and dragged my dad and brother to this internet café to log on and watch the Giants game over the internet. We repeated this practice through all seven games and finally watched my beloved Giants give away the title in game six and seven of the series. Oh, yeah. We also visited the Coliseum and St. Peters square (though we didn’t go in the actual cathedral).   

        Recently we also went to Florence, and that was pretty good.  It wasn't as good as last time (see October 15 update), but we still saw the David and more importantly Foot Locker. In about three weeks we are going to go skiing in the Alps, meeting my grandmother and Paris, and going to Lausanne. Before that, starting this weekend, I am going to be playing in a Flag football mini camp. This coming Monday (the 8th of December) I am going to start playing baseball and basketball everyday (basketball in two different leagues). 

                    I guess that's all for now,

                    Log in again soon,

                    Over and Out,

                    Standing by,

                    On the Side,

                    Danny Zuckerman.

 

 

March 5 update

               

                       

            It’s been a while since I’ve updated this page so I’ll just pick up where I left off: the second week in December.

 

            That week we played both flag football and basketball with the Navy base, so we weren’t short on things to do. We went to Pompeii earlier in the week and it was pretty cool. I have to admit, I expected to find more buildings and a larger part of the city preserved a little better. Rather than individual preservations the most amazing thing about Pompeii was the size and magnitude (although I was extremely impressed with the Bakery of Modesto where 160 carbonized, fully intact though slightly stale, loaves of bread were found in a stone oven). It’s hard to believe a city as big as Pompeii could actually be covered in ten feet of ashes and be dug up 2000 years later.  I will admit, though, it was hard to get a sense of what Pompeii might have looked like before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius (that covered Pompeii in AD 79) because just about all of the buildings have been almost completely destroyed (even if you can see where they stood). Though most of the buildings were destroyed, the Coliseum was exceptionally remarkable. According to the books we read the Coliseum in Pompeii is the best preserved in all of Europe. The underground passageways, the stairs, the seats, and the field were all completely intact with the only difference from 79 AD being an amount of grass and moss covering some sections of the seats.

            On December 12th or 13th, I can’t remember which; we got our boat hauled at a boatyard down the road. It was a ten minute motor to get there, but it was multiple hours before the yard actually pulled it out (they’re Italians, what should we have expected). To haul the boat they have you pull into a large slot with cement piers on either side. They take this big, four wheeled crane and drive it with two wheels on each of the piers and the crane part of it is over the boat. The crane drops two big rubber band type things that are slid under your boat. Then the driver, if you can call him that, pushes a button that lifts the lines that are attached to each side of the rubber band things. This gradually lifts the boat until the crane can drive off the piers back onto land. On land they used a high-powered hose to clean the bottom of the boat. At this point I left, but all they did now was put our boat down in a spot to be held for a while. During the time we were gone they repaired some things and gave the boat a new coat of paint.

After getting our boat hauled we stayed in a hotel for one non-eventful week before leaving for France. On December 19th we took off for the Alps, Paris and Lausanne. The first place we went was Courchevel, Mirabel Val Thorens – the ski areas making up the famous 3 Valle. It was amazing. We didn’t have the greatest weather so the skiing wasn’t fantastic, but the mountains themselves… Gargantuan. Colossal. I usually ski at Squaw Valley, big mountain with tons to ski, but this area was, by my estimate, fifteen times the size of squaw. Just reading it doesn’t give you much of a sense though.  To me it seemed as if every other lift on the mountain had as many runs to go down as any entire ski area in the U.S. I would glance around and say to my dad, “Look at that peak covered with snow way over there. What ski area is that?” With so many famous ski areas around I expected the answer to be “Chamonix,” “Val d'Isere,” or something like that. Instead my dad would answer “That one. Oh, that’s still part of this one.” We skied for three days with some people who knew the mountain and one of them told me that it was impossible to ski every run on the mountain in a week -- Even if all you did was try to ski all of the runs, and even if you had it planned out so you knew the quickest way – It’s impossible. The peaks seemed to rise forever. There wasn’t a single day that we didn’t peer downwards to see the clouds. There wasn’t a single day that we didn’t go up through a cloud, get to the top and look down to see it, and then ski back down through it with our faces unprotected. Every day we would go above clouds and look strait down sheer cliffs or beautiful mountains and see clouds below us and ask ourselves “Is it raining or snowing down there? Did I leave anything outside?” Amazing.

 

 

From 3 Valle we went to Paris and met my grandmother. We walked around a lot, even though the temperature was at record lows. It was kind of unfortunate because my grandmother, who loves walking around and window shopping, hates the cold – and Paris is famous for offering the best walking around and stuff. All the buildings are old and classy and the streets are fun and lively. There is one part of town consisting of only restaurants (mostly Greek) and the owners are all outside their restaurant trying to coax people to eat there. We walked by them and one person was telling us they had good chicken by balking like one. Another lady spoke 7 languages and she said that she had food from each country of those languages. Another gave my sister a postcard and another told us we could shatter our plates after dinner. We walked around the Latin Quarter (where we found an Easy Internet Café, the place I watched the World Series in Rome) and Marais District. We have a little bit of a story with the Eiffel Tower.  One of the first days we got to Paris we set out an itinerary for the week. The day we went to the Eiffel Tower it was closed – due to weather. It’s the first time in a decade the Eiffel Tower has been closed because it was unsafe in over a decade. Luckily when we went back a few days later it was open. We went at dusk so things were a little hard to see, and we were in a bit of a rush so we couldn’t stay long. Unfortunately we couldn’t see all the way to the Sacre Couer (which is supposed to be a beautiful site), but we did get to see the lights of Notre Dame. We also got to see Notre Dame during an evening service, and though I’m not Christian (and don’t plan on becoming one) it was extremely moving. The chanting and singing echoed of the stone walls and there were these double walkways on the side with interwoven vault-ceilings which was my favorite part. We didn’t get to climb the spires of Notre Dame because of the weather, but instead we went to a rooftop café at a Department store that had a 360 degree view of Paris, including the gargoyles on Notre Dame. On one of the coldest days of our trip, Paris or Alps, we took a tour of the village of Montmartre. Due to a combination of boredom and frozen body parts, we decided to leave after the first half for a hot chocolate and later venture on to Sacre Couer on our own. Sacre Couer was bigger and nice than I expected. How can a small village like Montmartre have a cathedral like Sacre Couer. The interior was rich with gold and arches and curves; it reminded me of the mosques and architectural designs in India.  On New Years Eve we walked down the Champs Elysee to the Napoleon’s famous Arch de Triomphe. The Champs Elysee is lined with large sidewalks and small trees all the way down, and for New Years Eve the trees were covered in lights; it was pretty spectacular. There were at least half a dozen movie theaters and three tourist offices. You could see, all the way from the beginning of the road, the Arch de Triomphe lit up. It was the type of place where you could see movie stars and other famous people without being surprised. The one bad part of it was that the Arch de Triomphe was closed for security reasons.  Earlier I said that Paris was extremely cold for the time we were there; in truth it was fair temperature for the first few days. On the first day of the cold weather we went with one of our very good friends out to the Loire Valley to see a couple Chateaus. The adventure begins just outside of Paris. After dropping off another friend of ours we started out for Chambord – about an hour and a half outside of Paris. You’ll remember that during our stay in the Alps it didn’t snow once; well in Paris – and just outside of Paris – it did. We got to this Chateaux in what must have been temperature in the negatives. We looked around this huge, castle-like chateau and noticed two different things inside. First was the fire. Second was the double helix staircase. It was pretty cool. The mansion was six or seven stories high and so it could make good use of Leonardo da Vinci’s design. There was two spiral staircases starting ten feet from each other. In between them was a circle that was surrounded by stone and went all the way up to a sky light at the top. The two staircases – very wide and circling the circular stone wall – never came together even though they both went around the same thing. In addition to that, they were holes in the stone wall so you could look from one staircase to the other. It doesn’t make much sense writing it or reading it, but it was very cool. From here I’ll make the story short. We tried to go to a second chateau but didn’t get there until 7:00 when it was closed. We started to drive home but because of the snow there were a lot of accidents so traffic was bad. After a while of no moving in a traffic jam we got off at an exit and took back roads for four hours to get back to Paris. The next morning we found out that traffic had been completely stopped and people stayed in there cars overnight a very short distance from the exit we got off at. On our only other trip from Paris we went to the palace of Versailles. I won’t talk much about it given I didn’t like it that much. I will, however, say that this was so big it had a room for the royal dogs. Unfortunately we didn’t get to see much of the opera house since there was a rehearsal while we were there. We also saw the tomb of Napoleon. It was in a huge, domed building. His tomb itself wasn’t small. It was made of shiny and beautiful wood and marble and was big and grand enough to hold the coffins of 15 kings. Knowing that Napoleon was very short, I speculate that the building and his coffin were to compensate for that. The Pompidou center was, well, out of place – and that’s all I’ll say about it.

            Now for the museums of Paris. We paid a quick visit to the discovery museum which was very similar to many discovery and tech museums in the U.S. with a lot of hands on stuff. We also went to the Picasso museum which housed all of the Picassos in Paris. It didn’t have his most famous stuff, but it was Picasso. The Marmiton was a museum consisting of mainly Monet’s works. It had about fifteen of his water lily pictures, many of the paintings he did of his bridge, and his Impression of a Sunrise. I gave my sister a lesson in impressionist art. The Muse d’Orsay was well worth the long wait we had to sustain. We spent many hours enjoying the Monet’s, Van Gogh’s (probably my favorite artist), Gaugin's, Renoir’s, Seurat’s and many more. My grandmother is very knowledgeable and passionate about these impressionist artists so it was particularly fun and interesting going through these museums with her. Last of all, but definitely not least, is the Louvre Museum. This museum consists of thousands of paintings, sculptures, pieces of history and other artifacts. It is stored inside the biggest palace I have ever seen – and the scary thing is that the works of art fill the building completely. We saw works by da Vinci, Michelangelo, Boticelli; we saw Hammurabi’s code, the Venus di Milo, and the 140 carat diamond used by Napoleon and other kings and emperors. With all these things the most impressive was the building itself. The first part of this was the architecture. The rooms are all decorated with colors and gold, and the three small pyramids provide areas that appear to be outside. Also, when it was remodeled for Napoleon it was designed so that you can still see the medieval moat. The next part of this was the size. There were multiple courtyards as large as football fields and literally hundreds of single rooms bigger than my entire house. I estimate that the entire building is 1000 times the size of my house.

            After Paris we changed our minds about going to Lausanne and instead we went back to the Alps.  For this trip we went to Val D'Isere, Chamonix, and Zermatt. This second trip was fantastic. The mountains were not quite as intimidating in these places but they were just as large. Val D'Isere and Tignes, the first resort on this trip, were a lot like I pictured the alps: High, rolling, open mountains with sun and powder; chairlifts going way up and giving you long, beautiful runs. There were no hard runs at Val D'Isere, only Tignes. We went snowboarding one day and I was pretty good; I can carve turns, but I couldn’t manage to jump. Adam was really good; he was more comfortable going fast and he could jump too. The chairlifts here are awesome. Some have plexiglass covers that come down with the safety bar and footrest, some have conveyer belts that take you to the loading point, some load two chairs at once, and there are poma lifts. Pomas are surface lifts made up of metal bars with discs at the end that hang down from a line. You put the disc between your legs and it pulls you. It’s really fun to try to stop and wedge, it puts pressure on the line, and then you jump up and get tons of air. Then we went to Chamonix. Chamonix is divided up into five or six resorts; the most famous of which is mostly a glacier. We got a guide to take us on the glacier (you can’t do it without a guide because of crevasses) and it was pretty amazing. There were these big, blue ice falls and you could almost see where the ice was moving. After this we went to Zermatt. They had really good chocolate and it was my favorite mountain. One of the runs was a skiers cross course and had beginner grinding polls. We went up really high and twice we did runs that took more than an hour and a half to get down. One of the runs was probably six miles long. In addition to showing me great skiing Zermatt introduced me to Swiss chocolate. In Zermatt they don’t allow cars, only electric taxis and busses, and you could really tell the difference between the fresh, clean air and the polluted air in the town below. Then we went to Montreaux to stay for the night before taking a train from Geneva back to Rome.

 

After that we had a long day getting our boat in the water and getting it completely fixed, for the workers were Italian so naturally it wasn’t all done. Because it took so long to get our boat into the water we had to stay the night in that little slip between the cement piers. It was mayhem. All night we rocked and twice our bow line broke so we found our boat banging up against one of the piers.

 

So finally, after a couple days, we got used to life in Gaeta… and then we took off again. This time for Venice. The city was very neat. It’s built on tons of islands that aren’t very stable so the ground is wavy and uneven. There are tons of canals instead of streets so people use vaperetos (waterbuses) to get around. There are hundreds of bridges in Venice and an equal number of canals. On the last day we got to watch glass blowing. They can make detailed art with melted glass and stuff and some iron rods. One day we got to ride on a gondola. A gondola is a large canoe that people of the city use to give tours. They take you around for an hour or so and show you the sites.  The famous piazza, St. Marcs square, is filled with pigeons that always land on people who feed them. My sister had ten pigeons on her at once. I mentioned the wavy ground earlier; well it was easily visible in the church. The tide in Venice is something like a meter so all the buildings are deserted because the water ruins them. The buildings are a lot of times right on the canals so the front door can get buried in water. At least once a month St. Marcs square and the rest of Venice are covered in water so you have to walk on special raised platforms; otherwise you’d sink down to your knees.

            Soon after we got back from Venice my grandparents and aunt came over to visit. When they came they rented a large minivan so we could go on trips around the area. The first place we went was Montecassino, the home of one of the most famous abbeys in the world. On the way up the mountain that the monastery is perched on top of it started snowing. Fearing the steep, curvy roads would get slick we turned around and went down. Upon reaching the bottom we looked up and saw that the cloud had moved on. So, we turned around again and went back up to the abbey. Once we finally got in the gates the sky cleared completely. The part of the abbey that we saw was mostly outside and the blue sky made for some beautiful pictures. The most amazing part was the cathedral, which was laden with gold and marble, covered in colorful mosaics, covered by elegant domes and vaults, and supported by perfectly carved pillars.

            Soon after Montecassino we journeyed on to the crazy world of Naples. We traveled to Naples with the goal of going into the Archeological Museum and finding some good street markets; we did a lot more than that.  It took us about an hour to get to Naples and then we started our adventure. We drove in a roundabout way for half an hour, and with the Naples streets and drivers that’s not fun. You see, in Naples the drivers pay no attention to lights, stop signs, police, the width of roads, or crashing. In one place I saw a one way street with two narrow lanes; there were three lanes going one way and four going another. Motorcycles will weave in and out of traffic going the opposite way and even large cars will drive on the sidewalks. You also have to be very careful of crime in Naples, it is the home base for a large mafia. This mafia steals cars and wallets from all parts of Naples to the extent that no car rental company will sell insurance for Naples. Fortunately we were not victimized by the mafia, but unfortunately we were by the drivers of Naples. We were hit the first time by a motorcycle who tried to pass us by going on the side walk. The lady on the cycle had her ten-year-old daughter onboard and neither of them had helmets. We had to wait around for three hours while the police took care of things (the lady got hurt in the fall). Next we were hit by a car backing into a parking spot above ours and later a car hit our side on the freeway. We also had a number of close calls with pedestrians and bikes, and once a motorcycle came millimeters from hitting an open door.

            The last trip I took with our visitors was a trip down the Amalfi Coast. We went from our harbor above Naples on a famous and breathtaking drive down the coast. We stopped briefly in Positano for lunch and a look at an amazing hotel there; we bought ceramics in a town called Rapollo; and stayed overnight in Amalfi. The next day we drove through Sorrento and took a freeway back up to Gaeta.

            Two days later I left on a plane for California!!!!! I met my class in California for a day before taking off with them for Washington D.C. It was great. Right when I got back I went to school where I was greeted by all my friends. From there I went to the Hillsdale mall with a couple of them and later went to a Stanford Basketball game. The next day I visited a couple High schools I might go to, before heading to school for the remainder of the day. After school I stayed with all my friends to participate in their basketball practice before going with them to pizza.  

          The next morning our entire grade left at 5:30 AM for the airport. When we landed in Washington we had a 4 hour bus ride to Williamsburg. There was record snow in the area and after the first day in Williamsburg, which wasn’t that great, the hotel started leaking and one of the room’s ceilings caved in. The next day we saw the Jamestown museum but didn’t get to see any of the glassblowing or colonial stuff. Then we went to Monticello which was very impressive. Among the gadgets Thomas Jefferson equipped the house with are perfect exterior symmetry, many dumb waiters such as a swivel door with shelves for food to be passed through, something that brings wine up from cellar,  and a cart to put food on. He created a door that swings open automatically (mechanic not electric) and a mechanism that copy’s letters; two pens are attached to something that makes the second pen do exactly as the first. Then, in D.C. we saw the capitol, which had some interesting rooms in terms of architecture. We saw the white house which was very unimpressive to me. We drove up to Mount Vernon which was colorful, big, but paled in comparison to Monticello. We also went to the Arlington cemetery where we saw the tomb of the unknown soldier, watched the changing of the guard, and stopped at the Kenned grave. Unfortunately we didn’t get to stop at the most important grave of all: Abner Doubleday. We saw the Lincoln, Jefferson, Vietnam, and Roosevelt memorials. We also had a few outings at night such as a dinner cruise, a play, and colonial dinners.

            Unfortunately when I got back from Washington I was sick for a week, and a few days later one of the boats in the marina left. It was the boat I was most dependent on for playing. They were Norwegian and had a very athletic 10 year old and a 15 year old who spoke very good English. With them I/we went to the beach to play soccer, set off explosives, and play wiffle ball. We’d play tag or team handball with them almost everyday. Now that they’re gone I have a lot less to do. I still have the Dutch boat, but there’s no one my age; and basketball is no longer going at the Navy base. I still have the new friend I made at the base, but that’s only one person and we don’t see him that much. I’m starting to do more with my brother, like boxing and playing baseball and other stuff like that. My parents want me to continue to interact with Italians so they signed me up for tennis. It’s pretty fun, but there’s an American kid there who’s nice so (he speaks Italian) he translates for me and we play together.

            In addition to the one friend I have made there’s also another family with kids younger than me that is being amazingly helpful and welcoming. When we first got to the base we saw and observed that families in the military are welcoming. They have to move every two years, so they know what it’s like to be new. They make it incredibly easy to join in, but it seems like they don't let themselves make great friends in order to protect themselves from having to part with great buddies.

            Two days ago was March 4th, the Italian holiday of Carnivale. For Carnivale everybody dresses up for the day with masks and goes wild. There was a parade and everybody bought a bunch of silly string and shaving cream. We sprayed each other and the all the cars that passed got completely covered by the people on the streets. A couple of motorcycles got sprayed and some cars had a window open.  Everyone sprayed inside the window and I completely covered one kids head with silly string.

             I talked earlier about being able to reflect while I was on the Washington trip. One of the main things I realized was that I was really lucky to have the flexibility we have this year. For instance, in school my friends all have to do a whole slew of homework whether they understand something or not. For me; if I understand something then I don’t do a lot of practice (I don’t have any homework, only school time practice) and if I don’t I practice till I get it. We also have the ability this year to shift our schedule according to the weather and other factors. I have learned a great deal from the places I have visited, whereas in school I may learn the same things but they would be nowhere near as fun. For instance I went to Florence and visited the art museums and the Medici Chapels; but when you learn the same things I learned about the Medici’s in regular school you don’t get to see all the things you’re learning about.

 

        

Well, the last six months have gone by quickly so I expect the next six to do the same. But in the meantime I'm having a great time and am learning a lot; I'm starting to see why this is such an experience of a lifetime.

 

-- Danny --

 

 

March 23 Update 

 

Before I update this page again I want to say sorry that last posting took so long and the text was so long. Congratulations if you read the whole thing -- I never did.

 

    You heard we were leaving for Austria, and so we did. There were three highlights of skiing in San Anton am Arlberg so I'll go through them in order. Number one was the ski area's terrain and size. The Arlberg ski area was bigger than 3 Valle (see Past Journal Entries) but it was much harder to ski all the valleys as one. When I went to Austria I didn't know it was part of a huge ski area called Arlberg and not one area by itself. In truth the ski area is Arlberg and it consists of five or six different valleys -- the most famous of which is San Anton. It's not as connected as 3 Valle so we had to drive to get to other parts of the area (we stayed in San Anton), one of which was a mountain called Stuben. From the top of Stuben you could see the entire area and it surprised me to see that the mountains started to twist in different directions on each side -- almost forming an S shape. Highlight number two was presented by my sister Sarah. We were riding up a T-bar together and I couldn't get her to keep her skis strait in front of her. Finally, on about the tenth time her ski slid onto mine, she made both of us fall off. I fell off to the side, landed fine, and got up. I looked up to make sure Sarah was OK and saw that instead of moving out of the way off to the side she was moving up. When she fell off her jacket got caught on the T-bar and she was being dragged up the hill. It was quite a sight; no matter how much my dad yelled to her not to panic she wouldn't stop flailing and screaming. After she had been dragged about thirty yards the attendant realized what was happening and stopped the lift.. She was ok and was brave enough to take a T-bar again. Highlight number three came from the heavens. On the last night at Arlberg it started snowing!!! When we woke up in the morning we all went in a mad rush to get packed up and ready to ski as quickly as possible. By 9:30 we were out on the slopes skiing eight to twelve inches of fresh powder. A few days earlier I had found a spot that was pretty well hidden and had good snow underneath. When we went to look we found that only two or three people were skiing there and it was the best snow on the mountain. We were all perfectly happy with the powder we had, but we also knew that there was still something to look forward to. The snow was very light (which is usually a good thing) but in this case there wasn't really enough to give us the feeling of bottomless powder. That, for my dad and I, came at the end. For the last run of the day we skied a pitch that was completely skied out. The snow, because it had already been skied, was heavier than when it was fresh powder, but still soft. This run capped off a great week in the Austrian Alps.

    From the alps we traveled for a few more days of skiing in Italy's Dolomites before heading home.

    After a couple non-eventful days in Gaeta I took off with my dad and brother, along with the father and son from the other family boat here, for Rome. We were going to see a playoff soccer game between Rome and the other families favorite team Ajax (pronounced Aiyax). I won't go into detail about the match, but I will say that there is nothing like being part of a crowd at a European soccer match. The fans roar and cheer and scream louder than anything you've ever heard and they care so much about their team that if their team loses they start riots and stuff. Each team in Europe has a group of fans called fanatics that travel with the team and care even more than the regular fans. The father of the other family (who are from the Netherlands) told us that a few years ago an Ajax fanatic was killed when the Ajax fanatics got in a gang fight on a highway with another team's fanatics.

    The next morning my brother, dad and I went to the Vatican museums. There were many works of art in the museum that I liked but there were a few I liked more than any others. Leonardo da Vinci's St. Jerome was amazing as was Giotto's Stefaneschi triptych and of course the Sistine Chapel (ceiling and wall) was breathtaking, but Raphael's School of Athens was my overall favorite. It amazed me how Raphael used paintings and art to give such important messages. Twice in the painting he shows a balance of all things is needed. Equally impressive to me was how he connected the amazing figures from Greece in the golden age to the amazing figures in his own time, which could also be considered a golden age by giving the philosophers and thinkers the features of Leonardo da Vinci, Bramante, Michelangelo and Raphael.

   

    I hope everyone is safe and the world becomes a little more peaceful soon, but for now so long until next time.

 

    -- Danny--

 

 

 

April 14th Update

 

  In the past couple of weeks since our last update there has been only one event of significance. Two weeks ago my family left on our boat for a week long cruise with the Dutch family I have mentioned many times in other updates. I won't talk about where we went and what we did, both because it's not that interesting and it will be talked about in other pages in this site. The last week the Dutch family has a ten year-old son who loves to play with Adam and I.  I had fun playing soccer with him every once in a while, but because of the age difference and hobby difference, it wasn't like having a good friend. I think I would have had more fun in Gaeta, but I saw that I was really the only one who felt this way. My sister and their nine year-old daughter are now best friends and played together endlessly, and my parents really enjoyed spending time with the other adults. Fortunately I have a lot to read, so I spent my time in my room (which had reduced considerably due to the increase in people) each day to pass the time. Also, it was a way to get away from my dad who seemed to be getting mad at me (perhaps rightfully so) quite often. He was upset with me because of my lack of alertness and help, it was much later when I realized that I was semi-unconsciously doing so on purpose. I did not want to start sailing again so to show that I simply decided (that's not really the right word) not to put much effort into helping.

    Four days ago I broke a toe on my left foot. I can't run or play catch for six weeks, and walking will be very limited for the next two. I was hoping I would be able to play basketball these next few days since I probably won't get to play any for the next five months, but that's not going to happen. O well, I'll just have to make the best of it.

 

    -- Danny --

 

 

April 20th update

 

Since the last time I updated this page there have been a few events worthy of mention. First, was that we left Gaeta. I had expected this departure to be sad, a lot like leaving home, but because I had a broken toe the knowledge that I wouldn't have much fun in Gaeta anyway it wasn't very hard to leave. Our friends from the base came to see us off, as did much of the marina. The Dutch family had left a week earlier with some teary goodbyes said between the daughters. We are now in a small marina very close to a town called Vibo Valentia. I am starting to move around much more easily, so hopefully I'll be okay by the time we head off to London in a week or so. The trip to London is to meet my cousins, aunt, uncle, and grandmother for her 70th birthday. It will be fun to see all of them and visit London -- and to hear everyone speaking English again. We're heading down to Palermo in Sicily before then, and after to Greece and some Turkish islands.

Well, that's all for now,

-- Danny --

 

     

 

Current Journal My Page Home Page