Surprising Bari, Italy

Last month on the way to Greece we changed trains in Lyon from where we could have taken a plane and been in Athens about 3 hours later. Instead we chose the “slow travel” option via Milan that included travel onboard the Italian Frecciarossa train in Executive class. The car had 10 extra-wide leather reclining armchairs (photo in this paragraph) so we had lots of legroom with at-seat dining choices of 3, four-course meals. We were onboard long enough to enjoy both breakfast and lunch and below I’ll include a pdf of the menu. (Tip: don’t be shy about asking for what you want to eat and drink.) While all of this comfort on the train was a pleasant surprise, an unexpected bonus awaited us at our ferry port destination.

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Now, that’s strange

Every morning, Bill and I look at a variety of news and information sources online from both sides of the Atlantic. Often I’m simply scanning the headlines but whenever the words Les Américains pop up in a French story then that requires more investigation. Such was the case with the website StarsInsider that generally highlights topics including health, food, and travel. What in the world could be the “30 strange things in Europe according to Americans”? This was going to be a fun article to read.

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Mistaken identity

When Bill and I speak French it’s clear that we’re not native speakers and it will probably always be like that. Even when we get to the point that the words flow as easily as they do in English there will still be slight nuances that will give us away. We’ve been mistaken for German, Italian, English, Irish, Canadian, and Romanian but never American. I was thrilled with the latest guess, Moroccan, because the people we know who moved from Morocco to Carcassonne sound to us as if they’ve always lived here. That made me wonder where most of the immigrants to France come from and the government’s Office of Statistics had the answer.

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To your health

France 3 is technically one television channel yet it’s really made up of stations from each of the country’s 13 mainland regions and even those might be split into two or three parts. It’s kind of like PBS in the US with one nationwide channel that’s enhanced by local stories originating from state or city affiliates. Their mission statement includes, “France 3 reflects the diversity of economic, social and cultural life in the regions and through regional offshoots, including prime time, whose programs can be picked up nationally.” It’s thanks to that “national” reference that we found out about a newly-opened business in the north of France. The program carried the subtitle “A bar in a retirement home to make the residents smile again.”

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The island of Milos

Soon after we knew that we’d be going to Athens to meet up with my brother and sister-in-law, Bill asked me where else in Greece I wanted to go. With the stunning landscapes from the movie “Mamma Mia” playing in my head, where every quaint village is filled with whitewashed stone houses topped by domed blue roofs, I said, “the islands”. Although Greece has thousands of islands, only about 200 of them are inhabited including names I knew such as Mykonos, Santorini, Crete, and Rhodes but we chose one that’s not been so popular and it was less than 3 hours by ferry from Athens.

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Athens in 4 days

Every year my brother and sister-in-law go sailing and always invite us along for the ride. It’s definitely not a rowboat on a pond; these are cruising class yachts with a crew in destinations including the Caribbean, Fiji, and this year Greece. Since they were going to fly into Athens, we all agreed that meeting up for several days in the capital would give us the time to catch up with each other and to explore a new city. With our travel agent hats firmly in place, Bill and I began the planning of how we were going to get to the Hellenic Republic, where we would stay, and what we would see. A future blog post will highlight the journey there while today I wanted to describe our visit and provide some tips to anyone who might want to vacation there as well.

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Don’t do that

When I tried to find out how many YouTube channels there are, the only agreement between websites seemed to be on the word “million” following numbers such as 37, 51, 113, or even 373, all of which translates to “a lot”. I (half) joked with Bill that you could learn anything, including brain surgery, from these videos. Spoiler alert: don’t search for that unless you have a strong stomach. We do use this extremely popular online platform for less serious matters that include improving our French and discovering more about the society in which we now live. A topic that I’ve seen at least once on almost every channel I follow has to do with mistakes to avoid as a visitor or new resident in France. The faux pas listed below are the ones that appear most often with our own experiences noted beside each one. 

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