We took in the sights and still had hours to relax in a biergarten

Ever since I worked with my former colleague Heinz from Munich, I had wanted to see the city. He spent so many hours during our team lunches telling us how lovely the city was and how much fun the biergartens were. After his assignment in Los Angeles ended, he pleaded with all of us to come visit him during Oktoberfest. As a relatively young professional, international travel on a two-week vacation leash was not that easy to accomplish. So, time marched on, but occasionally I would hear Heinz’s voice in my head calling me to visit the city he was so proud of.

Finally, more than thirty years later, I made it to Munich during a European visit with my husband. Sadly, it was for only one overnight. I knew it was folly to try to see such an iconic city in such a short time, but I trusted my ability to navigate the visit somehow. I have developed an ability to get a good sense of a city in a very short period of time. Such was the case on my recent visit to Munich this summer.

My mother’s German cousins from Essen couldn’t quite figure out why we would do such a crazy thing as doing a “stopover” in Munich. They had a list of recommended cultural institutions, museums, churches, etc. that spanned at least a three-day visit. Admittedly, they were completely correct. The city is deserving of a much longer visit. But, our fate was already sealed. We had only that one warm, summer Friday afternoon and evening.

My cousins were also amused that we were so stuck on going to a biergarten when Munich had such fine restaurants. They finally relented and told us the names of the more famous biergartens in the city. To be fair, they have very charming places in their own region that certainly compare in terms of quality of beer and ambience to those in Munich. As a foreigner, it is hard to explain why there is a special allure to the Munich biergarten experience. I think it is due to all of the stories that have been written by tourists who have thrust themselves into that local scene.

My husband and I had stayed at my cousin’s home for several days and had return flights already booked, so that squeezed the timeframe very significantly. A more rational choice from a geographical perspective would have been to see the sights in the area near the noble Rhine River. Because my mother also had cousins that live in Cologne, we had also visited them prior to going to Essen. We had a wonderful visit to that city with it’s dominant bridge spanning the river and providing sweeping views of the area. We had even gotten into the majestic Gothic cathedral during a church service. We just slipped in at the back behind the pews and listened to the ethereal chorus of voices singing hymns for about half an hour. It was unforgettable.

Perhaps we felt sated by the wonderful experiences in Cologne or we were lured by the comparatively short time to move between cities in Germany by train. Anyhow, we decided to go to Munich (in this case about five hours from Essen). Ideally, we would have gone during Oktoberfest, to participate in one of the oldest traditions of that celebration. However, I had harbored the desire to see that city for far too long to pass it up yet again on a European trip.

Embarrassingly, I knew comparatively little about the history of the modern capital of Bavaria despite my desire to visit. I learned that it had remained an important cultural reference point since the twelfth century, holding a significant place in the evolution of central Europe. For example, it was the capital of the Kingdom of Bavaria prior to the establishment of the modern republic.

I had researched the main tourist attractions on our train trip and had some notes of things “not to miss” from my cousins. In a very short time, I had learned there was much more to the city than the famous Bavarian food and drink.

I love to visit churches and cathedrals as they often exemplify the architecure of the time period when they were built. I am particularly drawn to Gothic architecture, so I wanted to be sure not to miss the Frauenkirche. My husband is a soccer fan, so it was fun for him to witness the presence of FC Bayern Munich, even though there wasn’t time to catch a game.

Based on all of the recommendations, I had gleaned that we could simply focus on the sights in the center of town. Fortunately, the city is quite compact and very walkable. So, we were easily able to see our top choices in a just a couple of hours and still have plenty of time to go to the biergarten that evening.

These delighful squares were packed with life and historical buildings: Marienplatz (New Town Hall, Rathaus-Glockenspiel (mechanical clock), Old Town Hall, and Gothic council hall), Karlsplatz, and Königsplatz.

We took the time to go into both of these significant churches: Church of the Holy Spirit, and Frauenkirche cathedral.

We were so incredibly fortunate. Without planning it that way, we had a hotel room that was only a few blocks from the Augstiner-Keller biergarten on Arnulfstraße 52. The Augustiner-Bräu is the oldest brewery in Munich and has a couple of venues in town. The chance to sit outside on a warm evening in a shady area and the five-minute walk made that biergarten the clear choice for our visit. It still seems incredible that we arrived there at the perfect moment, just as the crowd was gathering, seemingly after work at around 6 PM on a Friday.

I have relatively little experience of long summers in Northern Europe, because I have generally tried to avoid travel in the summer. While there were larger crowds to navigate in the city center, the ability to sit for hours in the biergarten during the evening was really worth it. Even by 9pm, the sun had still not set.”

The biergarten etiquette is that you are there to mix and get to know people, so you are randomly seated at a table with people you haven’t met. When we first sat down, there were two young people already seated with us who spoke in a Slavic language (not Russian because I speak and understand that language). They politely smiled at us and continued on in rapt conversation, so we did the same, chatting casually about our whirlwind tour of the center of Munich. I was feeling very accomplished and felt my former colleague Heinz was somehow looking on and saying, “What did I tell you? Great biergarten, right?”

As the young men left, a young couple was seated at our table. Within minutes, we had realized that we were all American and had all lived in Los Angeles and San Diego at some point. It sounds trite, but we really did get along quite well. As a group, we were well-traveled. My husband and the woman we met both had cultural ties outside of the US. Even the discussion of politics flowed easily and comfortably. It could have been a fraught discussion had we not been so like-minded.

After a few minutes, the other couple decided to order some food with their beer (not every table ordered food; some had snacks, others just beer), and at that moment we realized that we were quite hungry after such a long day. We both had finished a one-liter glass of beer, and my husband proposed we split a second liter glass (they have only that one size) to accompany our food. That turned out to be a good idea. Then came a problem I encounter often while traveling, there is nothing on the menu that is vegetarian/vegan, which is my dietary preference. I had anticipated that situation, so I adapted to what was available. Often there are French fries, but I am usually afraid to ask if they are fried in animal fat. I decided that I would make an exception and have fish since I don’t eat red meat. I was so hungry by the time the food finally came that the fried fish really hit the spot.

As we left, we exchanged contact information with the nice couple that we had spent a few pleasant hours chatting with. On our way back to the hotel, I experienced fatigue mixed with the effects of beer and heavy food. I think I was asleep almost before my head hit the pillow that night.

But, I kept my promise to Heinz to visit his wonderful city someday.

One Splendid Afternoon in Munich was originally published in Travel Memoirs on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Exploring a wildlife wonderland on a three-day safari in the Pantanal

The boats are small, eight-seater at most, all lined up along the edge of the water.

And it’s dark, just a glimpse of sunlight edges its way into the day.

It’s bedlam on the dock as people crowd around boats, looking for their guides. Boat drivers load boxes, yelling out to one another. But there’s excitement too.

Anticipation of what’s to come, of what we might see. An eagerness to get out on the water, to see our first jaguar.

One by one, the boats move out as drivers edge their way into the river to begin their safaris.

Mist rises out of the water. It’s calm, despite the moving boats, despite the eagerness to get into the solitude of the jungle where the wildlife is most likely to be. Everyone wants to be the first to see a jaguar.

And so begins our adventure on the Cuiaba River in the Pantanal in Brazil. I’m travelling with my husband as part of a three-year around-the-world adventure. And this moment is his pick; he wants to see a jaguar, to add it to his photographic collection of big cat sightings across the globe.

As we glide through the water, we see three otters and stop to watch them eating fish for breakfast on the river’s edge.

To our right, a family of capybaras swims along the riverbank and a kingfisher sits on the end of a branch poking up out of the river. It too is looking for fish for its breakfast.

I take in the setting, the scenery, look for any signs of wildlife. I assume it’s too early to see a jaguar, plus, all the boats have overtaken us — wouldn’t they have stopped if there were any nearby?

Our guide, Lorenzo, gives me a 100 per cent guarantee we will see a jaguar during our two days in the Pantanal. He shows me a video of a young girl who had travelled on one of his tours recently: “We saw 13 jaguars!” she says with excitement.

I look at Lorenzo sceptically.

This is wildlife, rare wildlife, how can he possibly guarantee a sighting?

But then, at 6.57am, we see our first jaguar lying on a small open beach area on the bank of the river.

This is what we are here to see.

The jaguar.

An animal so elusive that my husband, Adrian, saw a guide almost jump out of the boat when they saw one in the Amazon in Peru. An animal that, despite two trips to the Amazon, I have never seen.

The jaguar is the third largest cat in the world, behind the lion and the tiger. We’ve seen lions and tigers in the wild, even a serval cat, but never a jaguar and so it is that we find ourselves in the middle of the jungle in Brazil in search of swimming jaguars. The best place to see a jaguar, apparently, is in the Pantanal, which borders Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay.

The national park is the largest tropical wetland in the world and is home to the highest concentration of wildlife in South America, including the largest number of jaguars.

According to the Jaguar ID project, there are believed to be somewhere between 4000 and 7000 jaguars in the Pantanal.

And here we are with a clear view of one of those jaguars. We stop to observe, to take in every detail of this amazing cat.

Every other boat we saw when we boarded has sped past this jaguar. Every other boat expects the magic to start closer to the national park. But sometimes, like this morning, wildlife sightings — magic — happens on the edges.

Lorenzo tells us it normally takes about three or four hours before the first sighting.

We see ours within 20 minutes.

When the jaguar retreats into the bushes, we move on.

We continue our search for jaguars, more confident now and determined to see how many more we can find.

But the wildlife is so abundant here in the Pantanal that we are constantly distracted. A flock of yellow-billed terns fishes in the shallow waters while a troupe of Capuchin monkeys plays hide and seek with us from the tops of the trees.

“They are eating,” says Lorenzo. “Picking fruits and food off the branches.”

We glide into Inquentro da las Aguas National Park at a confluence of two rivers and turn right into Three Brothers River.

“There are toucans here,” Lorenzo tells us. “Please be on the lookout.”

But suddenly our driver takes off; two boats speed past us.

There must be a jaguar somewhere.

We look for movement in the trees, all hoping to be the first to see it. And then, there it is, on the riverbank, looking out into the water. A sea of boats in front. He turns, walks into the bushes and hides.

We wait, watching, peering into the trees. All jostling for a good position, cameras at the ready.

A face peers out.

Fingers point, cameras are raised, poised. Beside me, Adrian snaps repeatedly.

The jaguar looks into the water.

Anticipation builds; will he jump? I search the water, looking for the caiman he might be hunting.

A look, a movement and suddenly he jumps into a swamp of water lilies lining the river. But the caiman is too quick, this time.

The jaguar climbs out of the water and returns to the shrub.

We lose him in the bush, once again, and move on to a capybara swimming along the river’s edge.

But within minutes we see another jaguar, or is it the same one we’ve just seen? This one is relaxing on a thick tree branch.

As we debate the speed in which a jaguar could move along the river, climb a tree, lie down and look so chilled, our guide assures us it is a different jaguar, our third.

We sit and watch, along with 20 other boats. Suddenly she stands, stretches and saunters along the branch back to ground level and into the trees.

But there is so much more to see.

The abundance of wildlife is evident everywhere we look.

We stop to photograph a capybara eating on the side of the river and a black-collared hawk that lands on a branch close to our boat in a tree that already houses a kingfisher and an egret.

The bright red body of a Vermilion flycatcher sitting on the branch of a leafless tree catches our eye, while around us dozens of caimans (similar to a crocodile or an alligator) rest in the water. One of them lies with its head up, a fish in its mouth.

There are so many caimans here that at one point I try to count all the bodies resting along the edge of the river; I give up at 400.

We pass a capped heron, three species of cormorants in a single tree and a tiger heron.

And with every animal or bird sighting we stop, take yet more photos, soak in the atmosphere of the Pantanal and marvel at the sheer volume of wildlife.

Midmorning we see a Jaguar swimming along the edge of the river. We watch as she gets out of the water and walks along the riverbank.

We hold our breath; will she jump?

We follow her along the water’s edge. Where just minutes earlier we had seen rows of caimans, suddenly there are none.

That’s four jaguars.

And it’s not yet midday.

By now we’ve travelled upstream north of Puerta Joffre. Far north.

Lorenzo tells us few boats come here; it’s too far and there is so much wildlife to see further south without travelling the extra distance.

But the serenity here is calming.

Black and brown Howler monkeys play in the trees and a red Cardinal bird sits on the edge of our boat while we stop for lunch.

After lunch, we’ve barely left the shore when we see three iguanas and three caimans on the riverbank.

On a sandbank we see another 25 or so caimans all lined up, so still they look like a museum display.

We move on and within half an hour see a jaguar resting in a gully at the water’s edge.

We have her all to ourselves.

She moves out of the gully, up higher on the bank and lies in the shrubbery.

Two more capybaras pass by our boat.

We stop for the coffee that our guide has thoughtfully packed for us, and just as we’re discussing where the best coffee comes from — Colombia or Brazil — Erica, our trainee guide, yells ‘jaguar’, four boats are lined up watching the jaguar hiding in the shrubs.

Jaguar number 6.

On our way back to the lodge, we’re cruising through the water, content with our successful day of jaguar and wildlife viewing. Content that we’ve had our fill for the day, when we see three boats in a row. Jaguar number seven is relaxing behind a tree. Only her rear end is visible. But it’s unmistakably a Jaguar.

We sit and watch; two more boats arrive. The Jaguar barely flinches.

But then up comes her head. A scratch of the back, a look at the boats, a lick of a paw.

A yawn.

The sun starts to set, camera cards are full and batteries are low, so we head back to land for the night.

On Day two we see our first Jaguar at 7.30am.

It starts with a word on the radio; the boat speeds up.

We pass capybaras but don’t stop. And then a row of boats. As many as 15.

Our first Jaguar for the day is hidden in the grass. We stand in the boat, peer over the blades, trying to see an ear, a head, a tail. Evidence of the Jaguar we know is there.

It’s always the same on safari. You feel like you’re the only vehicle in the park. Until the driver gets word of a rare animal sighting — a leopard in Kenya, a tiger in India, a jaguar in Brazil, a lion anywhere — suddenly it’s peak hour as vehicles come from all directions.

We can’t complain; we’re in the middle of that scrum jostling for the best position, angling ourselves for the best view, the best photos.

It sounds distressing, and it can be, but the rise in tourism also means it’s harder for poachers to take valuable wildlife. Local communities know they can usually get a good income from tourists, but to do so they need to help protect the surrounding wildlife.

Global interest helps protect these beautiful creatures.

And sometimes, you’re lucky enough to have those sightings to yourself. Adrian and I have been surrounded by lions in Kenya, sat alone with cheetahs in Tanzania and been the first to see a leopard in Botswana.

We move on and see a Cardinal flycatcher and a Green kingfisher.

At 9am, we see our second jaguar for the day, resting on the edge of the river.

He is wearing a black collar and is surrounded by boats jostling to get the best view. Lorenzo tells us this jaguar is a legend here in the Pantanal.

“He is very famous,” he says. “His name is Ousado (which means fierce or bold in Portuguese).”

Ousado hunts by going underwater. He’s the only jaguar in the Pantanal that hunts this way.

In 2020, Ousado’s paws were severely burned in a bushfire. He was taken to the Federal University of Mato Grosso vet hospital, where they cared for his wounds and put the collar on so they could keep track of him.

He survived and continues to thrive.

We watch Ousado glide through the water, searching for caiman. We join dozens of boats, all trying to get the best look at this legend of the jungle.

In the end we don’t get to see his famous dive, and we move on.

Our third Jaguar for the day shows up just before 11am.

We are looking for a mum and her two cubs, but find a solitary Jaguar hidden by shrubbery instead.

Just as we arrive and settle into position, he gets up and moves through the trees.

Every now and then we see a tail flicking, a movement in the jungle. But he’s seeking solitude so we move on.

Jaguar number 10 comes soon after.

We’ve just finished photographing a giant caiman when we see another boat. They’ve seen a Jaguar around the corner.

We stop for a photograph or two, but the jaguar is relaxing on the bank, barely moving.

Jaguar number 11 is lying on the riverbank, enjoying the sunshine.

We are the only boat.

She moves behind some small bushes but comes out the other side into a clearing.

She moves along the river’s edge, first this way, then that. She jumps into the bushes, playing or hunting- we’re not sure which- and eventually lies in a clearing overlooking the river.

Eleven jaguars in two days.

Far more than we had ever imagined we would see. And countless caiman, capybaras, otters and birds.

But the wildlife viewing isn’t quite over.

On our way out of the Pantanal, as we drive back toward Cuiaba, we see roseate spoonbills sitting on a lake and two hyacinth macaws flying overhead.

And then, just as we think we’ve had our fill, we see four more hyacinth macaws sitting in a tree, guarding a nest in a hole in the tree trunk.

The macaws flit in and out and move between branches.

It is a colourful end to an amazing wildlife adventure.

Watching Jaguars Swim In Brazil was originally published in Travel Memoirs on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Stunning trip through the Stockholm Archipelago in the Baltic Sea on a warm, cloudy summer day

My brother told me about his visit to a charming little island town nestled in a secluded harbor in Sweden. When I envisioned arriving by ferry to this idyllic spot, I conjured up an idealized image in my mind ahead of our trip. The small island of Vaxön near Stockholm lived up to all of my expectations.

My brother worked for an international company with a major office in Stockholm for several years. During his tenure at the firm, he often went to Sweden in the summer months and really got to enjoy the city and surrounding area. One of those times that he was in Stockholm, a colleague who was also a friend took my brother to Vaxön for lunch for a classic pickled herring feast. It made a big impression.

To Americans raised in Southern California, the idea that you could go to an island for lunch is truly exotic. There is really no corollary to the island-hopping for lunch experience that I know of. The closest thing to the day trip we took in the Stockholm Archipelago might be a trip to the island of Catalina about 30 miles from Los Angeles. In practice, however, I never met anyone who had the same type of experience there. The Swedes have such a rich set of options available to them on islands like Vaxön that are close to Stockholm. It is truly amazing.

When my husband and I started planning a trip to meet up with my brother and his wife in Sweden, one of the very first things my brother told us about was his lunch trip to the island. Although we had only four days in the Stockholm area, we prioritized a jaunt to Vaxön, relishing an experience that was off the beaten track for international tourism.

My brother and I have Swedish heritage, and my grandfather loved Sweden so much that he opened Smorgasbord restaurants with Swedish partners in Los Angeles back in the 1960’s. As children, we went to his restaurant every Sunday for a family meal, and the waitresses would affectionately call me svensk flicka (Swedish girl) and my brother svensk bojken (Swedish boy). My brother and I both felt some kind of kinship with the Swedes during this adventure we had on the island.

It was Sunday late morning, and the cafés were just beginning to fill up as we walked from our hotel in Norrmalm to the ferry terminal in downtown Stockholm. The ferry that awaited us resembled the Staten Island ferry in New York City, but much smaller. The indoor seating was organized into large seating areas similar to a waiting lounge with a few places set up to sit near windows, much like a train. We chose a 4-person seating area near a window and decided to go out onto the observation deck a couple of times to check out the surrounding areas as the ferry navigated mostly narrow, little channels in the Baltic Sea, close by the Stockholm area. The views were lovely!

As we traversed the coastline on our way to Vaxön, we stopped at just a few tiny, inhabited islands where the local residents are mostly commuters to Stockholm. There were very few people at each stop either boarding or disembarking or both. One island on the ferry route had no passengers interested in landing there, so the ferry pulled up close enough to the dock to make a visual confirmation that no one was waiting and quickly continued, much like a bus does on dry land.

We got curious as to what happens when there is inclement weather, high seas, or some other hurdle that needs to be crossed to get to work in Stockholm by boat. We inquired with one of the locals and were told that most people just adjust and work from home. But it also turned out that there is a land bridge to the island, and while the commute time is far slower by car and via a more circuitous route, one can arrive to Stockholm from Vaxön by vehicle. That option is obviously not available for all the islands in the Stockholm Archipelago. Gotland, for example, is the largest island in the archipelago and is part of a separate province. However, there is no land route, as there are no bridges and the distance as the crow flies between the island and the mainland is about 119 miles.

That Sunday the weather was warm, yet cloudy, which meant good traveling weather. It was also a pleasant atmosphere for a short walk and for sitting comfortably on an outdoor patio at a local restaurant.

As we strolled through the delightful town, we got a feel for the lifestyle on the island during the summer. There were several little cafes that we spotted as we walked by. The restaurant where my brother had enjoyed the large variety of types of pickled herring was closed that day, but there was no shortage of enticing little places to eat.

We continued around the island and found small landings, lanes to stroll through the town, small shops, and inviting little houses.

We chose an informal and friendly-looking cafe with an outdoor terrace and the lunch was excellent. I chose to have a salad rather than pickled herring (still an acquired taste from my perspective). The time flew by as my husband and I chatted with my brother and his wife about our trip so far that day. The place was so idyllic that it felt a little surreal to be sitting there enjoying a simple yet delicious meal in such relative seclusion, yet so close to Stockholm.

The time just flew by, and we almost lost complete track of time until one of us looked at our clock and realized the ferry was due in about five minutes. Fortunately, the restaurant was very close by. But we had to jog a bit to get to the dock in time for the afternoon ferry.

The ferry boat that we boarded to come back after lunch was quite different than the one that we had taken in the morning to get out to the island. That return boat had a lot of character, and it appeared to us that there were some island-hopping locals using the boat as their floating social hall. There was tremendous camaraderie amongst a group of about ten men who sat and enjoyed their beers in the lounge on the boat as we passed a few of the stopovers.

We all came away with the feeling that we had visited a magical place and had been very lucky to spend time there.

I am hoping to go back to Sweden next year to visit some newly found Swedish friends as well as a friend that we missed seeing on this trip. I definitely want to include a visit to Vaxön Island on my next trip.

Although I am not yet a big fan of pickled herring, I am just a bit tempted to go to the restaurant that my brother told me about that features a curated selection of the popular local fish for lunch.

Vaxön Island Charm Near Stockholm was originally published in Travel Memoirs on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The ruins of Rome are where I belong

Rome. There is no other city where past and present blend so seamlessly. For thousands of years, each era has painted its own image on the city’s canvas. Over time, these layers have faded and blended, one with another, into a gorgeous, richly layered pentimento of life along the Tiber. For me, the amateur historian, living in this city is a dream come true.

I marvel at the relationship that Rome and I have developed since my husband Richard and I moved here five years ago. A wonderful new relationship and a couple of brushes with death — a near-fatal case of sepsis and Covid in March 2020 — provided the catalysts for our big transition to Europe.

For Richard, the seeds of this move were planted when his older sister Stephanie, fresh from a year as a foreign-exchange student in Italy, came back to Minnesota in 1971 with tales of a wondrous land across the sea. As a boy of eleven, he was smitten by a place he could only dream about.

For me it was a night in 1993, on my second Roman holiday, when my handsome friend Cesare took me on a magical nighttime motorino ride through the deserted streets of the city. As I held onto him, just like Audrey Hepburn clasped Gregory Peck in the classic film, he showed me Rome’s highlights all aglow in the dark. In those years before cars were banished, you could drive in circles right around the Colosseum. Likewise, you could traverse the grand empty Piazza San Pietro and drive right up to the door of Saint Peter’s Basilica. I was transfixed by the glamorous glorious sites Cesare showed me.

Richard and I came to Rome in the depths of the first awful Covid year, in search of a pied-à-terre where we could work remotely during the lockdown. After looking for a month in the center of the city, we widened our search and took the lease on an apartment just beyond the northern boundary of Rome’s historic center. We signed a five-year lease on an airy two-bedroom with breathtaking views over the lush leafy gardens of the eighteenth-century Villa Albani, across the rooftops of the city, and on to the mountains of Tivoli to the east. Our apartment in the quiet, lesser-known Salario district landed us in an unfamiliar neighborhood, in an elegant 1920s apartment building where we knew none of the inhabitants. At that point, Rome was largely a clean slate for a new life starting over at age 70 (me) and 60 (him).

Six months after signing the lease, the pull of Rome grew even stronger. We got married in New York, sold our house there, retired, and moved to Rome full time. With that, the pied-a-terre became our full-time home.

Richard and I each had a series of Roman postcards in our heads, the inevitable landmarks, images of places we remembered, thoughts of memorable meals, visits to bars, walks in vibrant neighborhoods, but beyond that, most of the city was uncharted territory. As for the people we knew, Richard had his sister, who moved to Italy not long after her exchange year, and her extended Roman family. I had a couple of friends and acquaintances, but it wasn’t a very big group.

It was as though we had before us a map of the city, but only the familiar parts were visible. The rest was unknown territory. To us, Rome was like the Forma Urbis, the famed ancient marble map of Rome that now exists only in fragments. Our work in the coming years would be to unearth those missing pieces, fill in the gaps, and expand our understanding of the known Roman world.

Where do you begin when you move to a new city, in a new country, on a new continent? At the market, of course. One needs to eat, and Italy is a land of beautiful fresh ingredients. Among our first new friends in Rome were the fruit and vegetable sellers, the butcher, and the fresh pasta guy. Before too long, they started to recognize us and we greeted each other affectionately when we came to the bustling market. Regular stops at the nearby bar-bakery-pastry shop garnered a few more friends. Slowly the neighbourhood roster expanded to include the local picture framer, the tailor around the corner, and the owner of the pizzeria where we ate at least once a week.

Bit by bit, we also started meeting the people in our building; some of them became friends as well. Further afield, the friends and family who we already knew when we arrived in Rome expanded our network with dinner invitations and events where we met more people. Over time we had a growing circle of friends — our Roman family was taking shape. In the process, the city became less lonely, more familiar, a bit more like home.

We live on Via Salaria, a street lined with handsome early twentieth-century apartment blocks, just outside the third-century Aurelian Wall that still encircles Rome’s city center. Our street is the modern incarnation of one of the great roads that connected the Romans to the far-flung parts of their vast empire. Via Salaria, whose name derives from sale, the Latin word for salt, was a trade route used by the ancients to transport salt from the valuable marshes on both the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic coasts of Italy. Because it was such a valuable commodity, Romans were sometimes paid in salt, thus the origin of the word “salary,” that perk from my working days that I occasionally crave when I find that my monthly expenses have edged past my fixed income now that I am retired.

Even after living in this fascinating city for five years, I am still astonished when, going about my daily life, I encounter the remains of the Romans who came before me. Since April 21, 753 BCE, when the mythic Romulus is said to have founded the city, Romans have told and retold their story. The result is a palimpsest written on the temples and tombs, on the palaces and plinths of this urban diorama.

Several blocks from our apartment, up Via Salaria, on the way to the nail salon, are a pair of haunting memorials to two Romans who preceded me in the city.

On the left is a grassy mound covering the subterranean tomb built in the first century for a Roman worthy. These days this beautiful little park sits locked, empty, unvisited, one of thousands of such places in Rome, where historic monuments are ten-a-penny.

Across the street on that centuries-old wall of the Villa Albani is an inscription plaque honoring a jurist and university professor who was brutally gunned down by left-wing guerrillas in 1999, just a few steps from his home.

Imperial Rome was home to perhaps a million people and has been continually inhabited, with varying degrees of success, since then. After centuries of sackings, earthquakes, and urban decay, many of the remains of the ancient city crumbled, collapsed, and were buried. Over the centuries, pagan temples were repurposed as Christian churches, surviving wall fragments were incorporated into building sites in helter-skelter medieval Rome, and buildings rose on the foundations of earlier structures whose original purpose was lost. For those of us who live in twenty-first century Rome, we can see all of this as we go about our daily lives.

When visitors come to Rome, one of the places we like to take them is a balcony on the Capitoline Hill. This rarely busy spot offers incomparable views over the Roman Forum, a panorama of the Rome of Caesar with the largely intact Roman Senate building, the mysterious Temple of the famed Vestal Virgins, the remains of the enormous Basilica of Maxentius, and the via Sacra, Republican Rome’s main drag running all the way to the Colosseum.

Just last month, with visitors in tow, we climbed the imposing staircase leading to the great oval Piazza del Campidoglio. This extraordinary ensemble of civic buildings is the handiwork of Michelangelo, Italy’s Renaissance genius. This remarkable place has been the center of Roman life for over two thousand years. As we crossed the piazza, our eyes were drawn to the imposing centrepiece building, the Palazzo Senatorio, which is now Rome’s city hall, the beating heart of Rome in 2026.

This iconic place symbolises one of my Roman dilemmas. I can speak at length about the genius of Michelangelo’s beautiful Campidoglio design, but I’d be hard pressed to rub two sentences together about Rome’s current city government. I follow Rome’s energetic peripatetic mayor on Instagram as he cuts ribbons, plants trees, and opens subway stations, but I know very little of his politics, his agenda, his accomplishments. I know even less about the city council, how they are organised, who they are, and what they do or don’t do.

I suppose the fault is mine. I speak Italian quite well, but I haven’t taken the time to learn to read Italian properly. For that reason, Italy’s copious newspapers and magazines blur together on the city’s ubiquitous news stands, untouched by me. Back in New York, I had daily delivery of the print edition of the New York Times. My twenty-minute scan of the paper gave me an overview of what was making New York tick that day. In Rome, I have no such portal to the pulse of the city. With that missing, I feel left out, as though I’m looking through a window at the city’s goings on, I’m an observer not a full participant.

I pride myself on my ability to fairly quickly comprehend new places, find the hidden logic of a city’s structure, figure out how to get around, grasp the landmarks. This comes from my background in architecture and my work as a wayfinding designer. Really understanding a city’s inhabitants is a much different process that can take a lifetime. I’m a social animal and I can fairly easily meet people and make new friends; understanding the general populace of Rome is a much harder task. But sometimes it’s easier to form a dialogue with the stones of the city than with the people.

The other day while waiting for a taxi, I glanced up at a plaque honoring someone who used to live in our building. Ciril Kotnik was a Slovenian diplomat posted to Rome during World War II. By 1943, as the Yugoslav ambassador to the Vatican, Kotnik was in a position to help anti-fascists and Jews escape German persecution. His care of Rome’s most vulnerable ended on October 28 of that year when the Gestapo came to our building and arrested him in his apartment. He was taken to the infamous German prison where he was brutally tortured.

My taxi arrived and took me down to my friends’ place. I arrived a few minutes early so I had time to sit in the small park in front of their building. As I glanced around, I realized that the surroundings were a perfect place to experience the richness of Rome’s extraordinary urban landscape.

To the left, down the hill, was via Tasso, the very street where Ciril Kotnik was imprisoned and tortured. Just beyond that was Villa Wolkonsky, the residence of a Russian emigre princess who had a splendid nineteenth-century Roman literary salon. By World War II, the villa had become the German Embassy and ambassador’s residence, close to the Gestapo prison. After the war, it came into the hands of the British, and now, the villa and its beautiful park are one of the most elegant of Rome’s ambassadorial residences in a city full of extraordinary homes.

In front of me was one of Rome’s key Christian monuments, the building housing the Scala Santa, or Holy Staircase, said to be the actual stairs in Jerusalem that Christ climbed to his trial before Pontius Pilate. It was brought to Rome in the fourth century by the mother of Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome who engineered Rome’s transition from center of pagan worship to Christian capital.

To my right was Rome’s tallest ancient Egyptian obelisk. Originally from Karnak, it was brought to Rome and placed in the central spine of the Circus Maximus where ancient chariot races were held for thousands of spectators — think Ben Hur. Over time, the obelisk collapsed, broke, and was buried. In the sixteenth century it was rediscovered, reassembled and installed by the pope in the square to guide the faithful on their pilgrimage to the great basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano.

As I stood to cross the street to my friends’ apartment, I looked up. There were several gigantic arches, fragments of Nero’s Aqueduct, constructed around 60 CE to bring water to the imperial palaces on the Palatine Hill. The massive structure reminded me of the incredible skill and bravado of Rome’s ancient builders who created a brilliant system of aqueducts to supply Rome with fresh water to nurture a thirsty populace, run the city’s numerous fountains, and bring life to the vast public bathhouses that dotted the imperial city.

This collection of structures spanning two millennia is a microcosm of Rome’s history. I never tire of this extraordinary panorama that forms the backdrop for my Roman life. For me, all of the history that Rome offers up on a daily basis is a gift, an illustrated reminder of the beauty and complexity that has defined life in this city for several millennia.

Because the Rome of 2026 is a fluid, evolving place, in contrast to the images set in stone all over the city, I sometimes think it’s easier to understand the Egyptian obelisk than the family sitting next to me and my friends at dinner. I can read as much as I need or want to about that ancient monument to glean all of the essential details fairly easily. Understanding who these Romans are, where they come from, what they do, is a much harder task.

Two years ago, on our last trip to the United States, we had breakfast in the dining room of a fairly ordinary airport hotel. As I scanned the restaurant, I realized that I could read the room, and, with some confidence, create profiles of the customers and the staff. After a lifetime in the US, I knew the clothes, the hairstyles, the body types, the personalities of the characters in the room: the overworked, hard-boiled, working-class, single mom waitress, or the modest, comfortably dressed, well-coiffed, retired couple from the Midwest about to embark on their road trip of the New England coastline. These powers of observation fail me in a similar Roman setting. I want to know what I can’t yet understand about the people around me; it frustrates me.

I am awed by the grandeur of Roman remains, how they conjure up the pomp and pageantry of events like Caesar’s triumphal return to Rome after his conquest of Gaul. But then I’m also bewitched by the visible signs of everyday life in Rome as it was lived over the centuries: the ancient paving stones that centuries of Romans have walked upon; the surviving classical columns embeded in the facade of a later building; the splashing Renaissance fountain incorporated into the structure of Cesar Ritz’s 1894 Grand Hotel de Rome; the brass stumbling stones that mark the residences of Rome’s Jews deported to the concentration camps and murdered there. These are all the tangible reminders of those who came before me.

The modern people of Rome are equally compelling. Italy must have one of the best-looking populations in the world. In some cases, the men have extraordinary profiles with great protruding noses like a Renaissance prince. Others have the square, solid face of the gladiator or a Roman consul. On the subway, a group of school girls can look like a cluster of young women in a Piero della Francesca fresco. Once these Romans get talking, the expressive hand gestures flying back and forth become a delicious pantomime. It’s a treat to see the older retired couples in our neighborhood, out for a stroll or a trip to the supermarket. The women’s hair is perfectly done, and their elegant dresses and smart shoes are the essence of la bella figura, the Italian notion of presenting yourself beautifully in public. The men are equally well turned out with perfectly coordinated blazer, slacks, and shoes. It’s a sight to behold on a Tuesday morning at 11:00 am. I feel privileged to live amongst these people, and I now think twice about what I’m wearing when I head out the door.

The longer I live here, I will more and more, feel a part of the daily life of this twenty-first-century world capital. As I add more layers to the pentimento of my long life, I will be able to claim fuller, more robust Roman citizenship and get to know these wonderful people better and better. Until then, you’ll find me looking through open doorways to cool leafy courtyards and up at the sculptural building cornices, peeking over walls into wild and wonderful gardens, or climbing over stones in an ancient ruin.

Finding Home Amidst the Layers of History was originally published in Travel Memoirs on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

At least not for long

A few weeks ago, I boarded my first plane in years and got off in Porto — my first time ever in Portugal.

I had departed on my own, with no intention of meeting anyone. With a heavy pack on my back, I was ready for two weeks of solo hiking, self-discovery, potential loneliness, and almost 300 kilometers to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, on the coastal route of the “Camino Portugués.”

However, I quickly realized that to find myself, it’s okay to find other people on the way. It was never about forcing myself to be alone in the first place.

Settling in

I started my Camino in a popular pilgrims’ hostel (albergue) in Porto, since everyone walking the Camino is called a “pilgrim.” I was expecting to stay alone for the day. Instead, a hostel employee introduced me to a German woman who would be sleeping in my room — like me, a solo pilgrim on a vacation from work.

We threw our clothes into the communal washing machine and wandered to a nearby supermarket. It gave us a chance to learn more about each other, and we soon met a Canadian woman, our age and with her mother, who joined us for a flavorful dinner at a South Indian restaurant. It was a wonderful evening, though we went our separate ways the next day. Before bed, my compatriot and I sat on the stairs in the hostel’s backyard, below the only source of light, documenting the day in our journals.

I thought I’d been particularly lucky to start off my Camino with enriching conversations, but would soon understand that making Camino friends was just like this while walking next to someone or sharing a room in an albergue. Perhaps we started talking about the view, the distance covered or somebody’s visible injury, and spent anywhere from a few minutes to a few days together.

Whenever the other person or I felt like continuing alone, we’d simply say so and wish the other person a “Buen Camino” (good way) in Spanish, or “Bom Caminho” in Portuguese. There was always a chance of running into each other again the next day, or a week later.

My first day in Portugal, Italian style

Still, I never anticipated spending my first day of walking in lovely company. I followed a recommendation to take the subway to Porto’s northern suburb of Matosinhos because I didn’t want my first day of walking to exceed thirty kilometers. The German woman I had met the previous day wanted to start from the center of Porto, so we parted ways with the words “Buen Camino” (and would meet by coincidence one week later on the street).

I heard my next “Buen Camino” in Matosinhos, from two friendly Italian women I ran into. I asked if I could walk with them for a little while to understand where to find the yellow Camino arrows along the way, and they agreed. When they understood that I could have a conversation in Italian, they volunteered to be my Italian practice partners and companions for the day.

We walked together along the Portuguese coast with the wild Atlantic Ocean on our left. They told me about their beautiful tradition of vacationing together every ten years for the last three decades.

When they occasionally drifted into their private conversations in Italian that exceeded my level, I walked nearby in blissful silence, enjoying the views and knowing we would wait for each other at any bathroom break. We agreed to have lunch in a beautiful bar overlooking the beach, taking off our shoes and gaining new energy. In the afternoon, we said goodbye, as we arrived in our shared destination for the day, Vila do Conde.

Meeting my “Camino sister”

The day’s encounters were not over yet. As I settled into my room in a youth hostel, one of my five roommates for the night entered. She was a kind-looking woman with long brown hair like mine, and introduced herself as Marie. As I smilingly noted, she’d filled her backpack with some of the same things I had: A foldable lunch box, walking poles and camping cutlery, along with sandals to wear in the evenings. When I learned that she was French Canadian (from Québec), I suggested switching to French.

Marie said I could get a key for individual lockers downstairs, so I went to sort it out. When I returned to the room, I suggested she join me at the beach for a swim in the ocean. To my surprise, she said yes and got changed.

We didn’t know it yet, but that was the beginning of a great friendship. Marie and I wouldn’t part ways until over two weeks later, when I brought her to the subway in Porto so she could fly back to her home country.

It started with the realization that we would walk the same distance the next day, so we teamed up. We had lots to talk about and a similar walking pace. Marie had never been to Europe; I had never been to North America. When I said, “rien” (French for “nothing”), like I had been taught in France, my mouth moved downwards, while hers opened into a wide smile typical of the pronunciation in Québec.

We walked together most of the time, shared hummus or guacamole for lunch, crossed the border to Spain by boat and suddenly lost an hour due to the time difference. I told our roommates in albergues to please keep their voices down so Marie could sleep, and she provided me with wound cream when I injured myself and Canadian candies when I was exhausted.

Sometimes, we took separate breaks and walked alone for a few kilometers. Other times, we had another person join us, like a kind woman from Czech Republic studying medicine. Like many people we met on the Camino, we balanced independence and company. Although no day was the same, we got into a rhythm, and our respective parents started receiving updates about the two of us.

The “Camino family”, a cliché?

On some days, I was only accompanied by my Camino sister Marie. Other days, it was more like a family of pilgrims, like the dinner we had at a restaurant in Spain when we pushed together several tables to seat all of us.

One loyal addition to the duo was Julien, a Swiss German who started talking to Marie and me in a beach café on the fourth day. At first, I thought he might remain a friendly acquaintance who preferred to walk faster, and alone. We bumped into him the following day, so he joined us for coffee and then continued solo. The following day, I crossed paths with him while walking through another town with a “peregrina” (female pilgrim) I had met the previous day and invited him to join us. We sat down in the outdoor seating of a café next to palm trees, and had so much in common we ended up having one of the longest and deepest Camino talks of my journey. When Julien asked if he could walk with Marie and me the next day, we agreed without hesitation.

We also spent the following day with him, hiking and assessing life. By coincidence, we left the hostel at the same time as another group of people in their twenties and thirties, and we ended up spending the day together. Other encounters were rare, since this latter part of the Camino was called the Spiritual Variant and attracted fewer pilgrims. I thus had slightly different Camino families in the first and second week of my pilgrimage.

When Marie and I arrived in Santiago de Compostela after thirteen days, Julien was there in front of the Cathedral, waiting to welcome us and film our emotional arrival. We also met up with other members of the “Camino family” we had built in the previous days. Some of them had already completed a whole Camino before, or had walked for one or two weeks longer. We were all overjoyed, and a little sad that this would mean returning to our normal lives. Although most of us would try to stay in touch through social media, our adventure had come to an end.

Final words, or Camino lessons

Along the Camino, I learned about myself through the encounters with others — pilgrims, old Spanish passersby eager to hear about my experience, caring pharmacists in Portugal and Spain, helpful hostel staff.

I renewed my love of foreign languages when I spent the first day walking with the two Italian women. I regained confidence in my dormant Spanish when I asked for a coffee with plant milk in cafés and told Spanish pharmacists which sunscreen or shampoo bar I wanted. Sure, I wasn’t fluent in these languages, but I was conversational.

My identity as a language lover was reinforced when other pilgrims jokingly referred to me as “the polyglot.” At dinner with pilgrims from around the world, I switched between five languages. At breakfast in a Portuguese hostel, I was the only one who could converse with a Portuguese lady who spoke no English, and was touring the country for a particular style of social dance.

Whenever I warned Portuguese people of my nonexistent Portuguese (“eu não falo Português”), they assumed I could manage a conversation, so I blended my knowledge of Romance languages with the few words I knew in their tongue.

I realized that my guilty pleasure of imitating different accents in English is shared by others, including Julien, who taught me how to pronounce words like a Swiss German would. In Porto after the Camino, I spent hours switching between French, British, American and German accents with a Hungarian Camino friend.

As I ventured into the world with no make-up day after day, I took mental note that I can feel comfortable and confident despite my rosy cheeks caused by slight rosacea, eye bags and occasional pimples. I saw other grown-up women wearing braids that I associated with young girls, and realized it is a good hairstyle to combine with a hat and avoid sweat around my neck.

The Camino extracted me from my everyday life and implanted me somewhere unfamiliar. I didn’t come back a new person, but was reminded of who I was by interacting with complete strangers, and walking unknown paths in a foreign country.

[Marie and Julien agreed to have their first names used in this blog post.]

© Annika Wappelhorst 2026

The Camino Taught Me Solo Hiking Isn’t About Being Alone was originally published in Travel Memoirs on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Tutus meet volcanoes in the Pacific Northwest

The look on her face was clearly a mix of disbelief and revulsion. “They let you do that here?” she asked.

I started to explain, pointing up the mountain, while rambling on about snowfields and park rules. But she had already turned and walked away, keeping her distance, as if we had Ebola. Hers would not be the only question we would field that busy Saturday on Mount Rainier.

My good friend, Bryan, and I had just skied down the Muir snowfield from Camp Muir. In September. At the thin end of a long summer. We swapped our ski boots back to hiking shoes, strapped the skis to our packs, and were making our way back down the very popular Skyline trail to the Paradise visitor center. A young, twenty-something guy with a huge smile asked if he could take a selfie with us. We obliged. I have no doubt that we ended up on that guy’s Instagram feed.

This is summer skiing in the Pacific Northwest.

The idea of “Turns All Year” is simple: Ski at least one day each month, for all twelve months. I have no idea how many of us are out there, but based on the glaring looks I often get on a summer outing, I assumed not many. When I carry skis across a ski area parking lot in February, I go unnoticed among the hordes of other skiers. When I carry the same skis across the same parking lot in July, I might as well be wearing an Elvis costume.

But the Turns All Year (or “TAY”) crowd is certainly larger than my limited experience would suggest. The private TAY Facebook group has over 8,000 members, which should be some indication of its modest popularity. That’s certainly a much smaller membership than, say, the Flat Earth Society Facebook group, or even the Midwest Asparagus Growers Facebook group. But it’s not nothing. And when I showed up at Mount Hood’s Timberline Lodge on Labor Day last year, I was surprised to see dozens of other TAY skiers heading up the Palmer Snowfield. Some wore tutus.

The Pacific Northwest lends itself to summer skiing. The Cascades are full of tall volcanoes, from Mount Baker in the north to Mount Lassen in the south. These volcanic peaks face the full brunt of Pacific winter storms, and they keep some of that snow well into September. Even as the effects of climate change on the Cascades have been evident during my own lifetime, there remain enough glaciers and permanent snowfields to draw in TAY-ers. Among the many options, there are the classics: The Southwest Chutes on Mount Adams, the Coleman-Deming route on Mount Baker, South Sister, the Hotlum-Wintun route on Mount Shasta. But in the waning days of summer, the easy access to the Palmer Snowfield on Mount Hood is tough to beat.

Last September, just as I was completing a descent from Mount Hood, a woman packing skis was climbing up the steep gully below me. As we approached each other, she blurted out, “How many months?”

She didn’t open with a “Hello,” or a “Beautiful day, eh?” Just a request for the number. She was measuring my faith. She was sizing up my commitment.

“I think I’m at twenty-four,” I replied.

“This is eighty for me,” she gloated as she barreled past.

I was originally inspired to summer ski by my friend Bryan, who got as far as fifty-seven consecutive months. I was listening to the sermon. I wanted in. Unfortunately, due to some upcoming travel, my own tally will soon end at thirty-five. I’ll just have to start over. I feel like an underachiever.

Then there is Brian Wiens, a TAY legend. Based in Colorado, another summer skiing mecca, this guy has skied monthly for thirty years straight. As of 2025, Mr. Wiens had an unbroken streak of over 360 consecutive months. Three decades of Turns All Year. According to his Instagram bio, he’s now at over 371 months.

Skiing in the summer does present some unique aspects that would be incomprehensible to a winter-only skier. For example, following an August outing, I often find myself in the backyard with the garden hose pointed full-blast at my skis and bindings. That volcanic grit is brutal on equipment. And at some inevitable point during the summer, I take the skis into my local shop to have the touring bindings serviced. The shop techs always look at me as if I had brought in a dead cat. They have to move piles of summer bike stuff out of the way in order to find that box of ski tools placed in storage back in May.

Then there are suncups. These are bowl-shaped depressions, often filled with volcanic grit, that form on the snow surface during the prolonged baking of summer. They can get very large. Man-eating large. To put it mildly, they are challenging to ski. TAY-ers must make peace with suncups.

Some summer skiers try to avoid the climbing part and are simply content with any lift access they can find. Timberline Lodge in Oregon and Beartooth Basin in Wyoming both offer some limited lift-served summer skiing. Some TAY diehards even resort to jumping on a flight to Chile or Argentina to get in their summer skiing. Or would that just be winter skiing?

For me, I prefer the “earn-your-turns” approach. I love nothing more than getting an early summer morning start, strapping skis to my pack, scrambling up some mountain slope of loose volcanic scree, on some sun-drenched volcanic peak, while wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

At the top of the climb, I can often see the long majestic chain of Cascades, stretching from north to south, floating in blue above a curved horizon. Then I’ll step into my skis and descend, carving big corn-snow arcs for a couple thousand feet of ski nirvana, ending with a beer on the tailgate of the truck. Even a winter skier could relate to that.

I often think back to that perplexed woman at Mount Rainier, questioning our motives and our sanity. Maybe I am strange. Maybe I am in a cult.

I don’t really have time to think about it—I have to go hose off my skis.

Originally published at https://nickspresso.substack.com.

Turns All Year—The Strange Cult of Summer Skiing was originally published in Travel Memoirs on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

But people stepped in to fix it

I’m on a boat in the Mediterranean, heading to Nice after a splendid week touring the French island of Corsica. It’s a small ship, and I’m cruising with a dozen other retirees, friends and friends of friends who occasionally rendezvous to travel together. Because our arrangements were complex, a travel agent helped organize our trip. And saved the day, as it turned out.

We’re spending our last night at sea. When we arrive at Nice early in the morning, I’ll take a car directly to the airport for a noon flight to Newark. But tonight, around dinner time, I realize I haven’t seen the email that United Airlines sends 24 hours before a flight, inviting passengers to check in. I check spam; it’s not there, either. So I open the United app and find there’s no sign of my return trip.

I retrace my steps, try likely and unlikely strategies, but get the same results. Panic feels perfectly reasonable.

As the boat draws farther from Corsica, connectivity becomes erratic. Before long, I call the travel agent. Voice tremulous, I explain the problem. She’s navigated any number of flight emergencies and unnerved travelers, so she’s calm and reassuring. “Let me pull up your itinerary.” There’s a pause, a longer pause. Then she’s back on the line. “Hmm. Let me look into it. I’ll call you back.”

That doesn’t sound good. At least I have an expert on the case, though, which is better than me trying to figure it out and fix it, on dodgy communications mid-Med.

It’s an hour — or, as I recall it, twenty years — before she calls back. She’s chuckling, half in disbelief at how broken modern travel has become, and half in satisfaction that she’s sorted it out. But I have a seat now — a different seat, but a seat — on the noon flight to Newark, with a continuing flight home. Here’s what it took.

She called United on the special, secret, back-channel line that mere mortals can’t access. The first customer service rep found no trip in my name, not for the following day, not ever. My agent wouldn’t take that for an answer; she made the reservation herself and had the records to prove it. No one had been notified of any cancellation or change. Over the phone, the customer rep might as well have shrugged.

But she put my agent on hold and transferred her to a new rep. This one had an answer. He told her there was no reservation because the flight had been cancelled. My agent, however, was looking at the super-special, super-secret database. She could see the flight was still on, and seats were still booked. This rep had also perfected the over-the-phone indifference, but he passed her along to somebody new.

Here, finally, was someone who could see everything my agent was looking at. Together they reconstructed what happened.

Some glitch had mistakenly caused United’s AI overlord to believe the flight I was booked on didn’t exist. Since it saw no flight, there could be no reservation, so AI simply canceled the whole thing. There was no reason to notify the passenger or the agent, because none of this had ever happened. No human hand was involved at all.

Still, AI notwithstanding, the flight had never been canceled.

It wasn’t as simple as restoring the reservation; all trace of it had vanished. So the two of them made a new reservation — perhaps, just perhaps, this was not the first time such a thing had happened — and shook their heads in mutual wonderment at how a system they once knew inside out had so thoroughly, and quickly, changed.

My agent tells me the tale, and we laugh. All’s well that ends well.

Except that’s not the end.

It’s late, but I sleep soundly, confident that all’s right with the world and pleased with myself for involving the travel agent instead of banging my head against an intractable problem. In the morning, the car gets me to the airport in plenty of time. But when I check in at United, things start to go wobbly again.

I greet the agent at the counter in good French, a nice gesture to people when you’re visiting their country. I hand her my passport, and we chat as she looks up my reservation. Then her smile grows strained, and she excuses herself. She approaches another agent; they lower their heads as they speak for a while.

The two of them walk back to me. He flashes that professional smile — you know, the one that says nothing good is coming — and he greets me, in English. “I’m afraid we don’t show a reservation for you today.”

It takes a moment to gather myself, then I offer my own forced smile. I recount — calmly, I think — the events of the previous evening. He takes it in and dives back into the computer. Miracle of miracles, he emerges with my reservation. With smiles of relief all around, they hand me two boarding passes, and I’m on my way.

I breeze through security and immigration, then settle in at the gate. Only then, as I tuck away the boarding pass for my second flight, do I notice what a short lay-over I have in Newark. How could I do that to myself? I wonder, so I check the original itinerary I’d printed.

Sure enough, it’s a different connecting flight. In the hasty shuffle to undo AI’s mischief, United couldn’t restore my reservation, so they created a new one. Apparently no seats were available on the flight with a reasonable transfer. So my new itinerary gives me an hour and twenty minutes to change planes at Newark.

In Nice, the plane is about to board, so there’s not much I can do. After an uneventful flight, we arrive in Newark, and I brace myself. In one of America’s busiest airports, one that’s battling daily headlines detailing the nightmares its passengers are experiencing, I have eighty minutes to make an international connection:
 — get off the plane
 — pass through Immigration
 — pick up my suitcase
 — drop off my suitcase
 — get to my new flight in a different terminal via bus and tram
 — pass through TSA
 — hike to the gate

Well, at least I’ve done my part. I have Global Entry, which gets me through Immigration shockingly fast. I have TSA Pre-Check, which puts me in line behind only a couple dozen people, not the masses jammed into the queue alongside mine.

It shouldn’t be enough. By the time I get to the gate, the plane should have taken off. But, ironically, the endless hiccups defining air travel this summer, especially through Newark, work in my favor. The plane is late.

Take-off is delayed, so I sink onto the floor — no seat to be had — and catch my breath. There’s no earthly reason I should get home tonight, but I do. Once I walk in the door, bags in hand and most of my sanity intact, I melt into post-vacation afterglow. The trip goes down as a great one. And all the fuss getting home is just a good story to tell.

AI Got Hold of My Flight Reservation and It Wasn’t Pretty was originally published in Travel Memoirs on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Reflections from the Tour du Mont Blanc

There is something soulful about moving through the mountains on foot. Perhaps there is some deep part of our collective human memory that impels us to walk long distances. Maybe some holdover from our ancestral past that finds purpose in moving through a mountain landscape, day after day, traveling between villages, crossing alpine meadows and high rocky passes, pointed towards some destination. I’m not really sure. What I do know is that there are few things as human, as fulfilling, as living in the moment, as a long mountain trek.

When my wife, Lorelie, and I had the opportunity to hike the Tour du Mont Blanc last year, we had a rough idea of what we were in for. The TMB is considered one of the world’s classic treks, a fact underscored by its popularity. Popularity is not always deserved in this world of ours, but rest assured that the TMB earns it. The 170km trail encircles the Mont Blanc massif, crossing through Alpine sections of France, Italy and Switzerland. While well-marked and well-traveled, make no mistake about it: the TMB is a rugged hike. Depending on the variation, the classic route is broken up into eleven stages, and crosses some six or seven high mountain passes, climbing (and descending) over 10,000 meters along the way. But this being the Alps, that ruggedness is well balanced by the numerous mountain refuges along the route, seducing me with their promise of a cappuccino or tarte aux myrtilles.

We chose to complete the TMB sticking mostly to the classic eleven stages, across eleven days, counter-clockwise, starting and ending in Chamonix, France. Our plan included a “rest day”, at roughly the halfway point, in the drop-dead gorgeous town of Courmayeur, Italy. The pace of this itinerary just felt right to me, although there were days where we were inclined to keep going further and faster. My inner Kilian Jornet often urged me on to run long sections, while my 60-ish body kept pointing out the refuges serving cold beer and warm polenta. Some trekkers do choose a more ambitious eight days. Some even run the route in four days. And for those that want to pin on a race bib, they could try to keep up with the podium finishers at UTMB (Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc), who complete the circuit in less than twenty hours.

Reflecting on our trip, if we were to do it again, perhaps we would choose a more challenging itinerary. Easy to say that in hindsight.

Lorelie and I wanted to hike the TMB for the same reasons we do lots of things in our lives: the opportunity for challenge, for adventure, for togetherness. We found those things in abundance. But we also found community, which might sound strange for what is mostly a remote mountain hike. Along the way, we got to know fellow trekkers, local villagers, refuge guardians, a lonely-looking shepherd, some cheesemakers, and numerous cows and marmots.

But we also deeply felt the long and rich human history of the Alps. That history is a constant presence: from a Roman bridge near the 13th-century Notre-Dame de la Gorge, to the World War II fortifications at the Col de la Seigne, to the trail network itself: used for centuries to move livestock from high alpine meadows in summer to valley villages in the winter.

But the real stars of the show are the Alps themselves. The Mont Blanc Massif is full of jaw-dropping big peaks, each with a mood of its own. Mont Blanc looms large over the Chamonix valley. From the trail on the Grand Balcon Sud (La Flégère to Le Brévant) it looks like a giant dome of gelato, spilling cascading icefalls and fractured glaciers into the dramatic rocky valley below. From the Italian side, descending the TMB from the Col de la Seigne, Mont Blanc has a completely different feel: brooding, with rugged granite faces and pillars.

Then there is that other towering titan: the Grandes Jorasses, with its famed north face. From the trail, climbing from Rifugio Elena towards the Grand Col Ferrett, the Grandes Jorasses looks like a maze of wild walls of rock and ice. It’s a beautiful and chaotic jumble of massive rock buttresses, steep and scary couloirs, and hanging glaciers.

I felt no regrets. On the contrary, I blessed the providence which had vouchsafed me to experience this marvelous adventure. In my wildest dreams I have never imagined so much beauty and grandeur. — Lionel Terray, legendary French climber.

Friends often ask what my favorite part of the TMB was. That is such a difficult question for a place that seems to generate superlatives. Was it the morning we hiked from Lac Combal up the steep forested ridge to a high balcony trail, with a sweeping panoramic view across the whole of the Val Veny? We had the trail to ourselves that morning, save for a lone shepherd in a classic felt hat, moving his large flock across the trail. (Did we just step into the 1800s?) Or maybe it was that rocky traverse of the Col du Bonhomme in a light rain, descending into the remote village of Les Chapieux for a coffee. Then there was that evening when we shared a glass of Swiss wine at a classic hotel in Champex-Lac, looking out the window across the Great Saint-Bernard valley towards the Grand Combine. I also loved that steep cloudy descent from the Aiguillette des Posettes, desperately hoping to spot an ibex or chamois (not this time).

But if I had to decide on one favorite part, maybe it was just this whole simple act of traveling a beautiful trail with a beautiful girl.

On our final day, I ended up hiking solo, as Lorelie had picked up a stomach bug somewhere between Trient and Argentière. The final stage includes the infamous steel ladders heading up a series of cliffs to La Tête aux Ventes, a spectacular alpine plateau in the Aiguilles Rouges. The ladders are not nearly as scary as they sound. But that didn’t stop me from filming them for Lorelie’s benefit. From there I climbed onward to Lac Blanc, then down the steep, rocky path to the ski station at Le Flégère.

This is the point at which most trekkers decide to take the ski lift back down to the Chamonix Valley. However, the day was still early, and I had watched way too many video finishes of UTMB to not try to run the long descent back to town.

My final destination was never in doubt. The church of Saint Michel in Chamonix is iconic. It’s the official starting and ending point for many mountain events, including the UTMB and any record speed attempt on Mont Blanc or the Haute Route. It was also where Lorelie and I had started the TMB, twelve days before. I really enjoyed that final stretch through the busy pedestrian streets of Chamonix, jogging past the many posh boutiques and high-end gear shops.

When I finally touched the steps of the historic church, I immediately felt a rush of melancholy. Every traveler knows this feeling. The daily rhythm of the trail, the daily destination, the daily fruit tarte… it was all over. The Tour du Mont Blanc had at some points seemed endless, but here I was at the end.

When Lorelie and I met back up for lunch near Place du Triangle, she was feeling much better (though sad about missing out on the final stage). As we reflected on our journey, as travelers often do following a great adventure, we couldn’t stop repeating the phrase stuck in my mind all day long: “Let’s do another lap.”

Originally published at https://nickspresso.substack.com.

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