Monday,
July 2 – Back at home
Our final days of the trip left us
little time for writing, so while its still fresh in my memory today
I want to finish the log of the trip.
Wednesday, June 27
After having the most amazing hotel
breakfast of our trip (at the cheapest hotel!) we drove up to the
mountain Republic of San Marino (24 square miles). We walked around
the narrow streets up to the castle turrets, enjoying the view along
the way. They were offering samples of the local wine at the top of
one of the turrets!
After this we drove toward the mountain
village of Bedia Tedalda. In the summer of 1980 Laura had taken part
in a Teen Missions team that came to this area, and she had memories
of visiting this village. We stopped here, hoping to eat lunch. The
village consists of a few streets, and what looked like two or three
small bars. We walked in one that had “pizzeria” on the sign and
tried to ask if they served lunch.
(NOTE: Laura and I had tried to learn
some French before leaving, but Jonathan had focused on Italian. We
depended on him here and numerous other times to make some attempt at
interpreting for us.)
Jonathan asked about lunch, but the
lady said they didn't serve until dinner, and she tried to direct us
to another town 20 miles away. We got in the car and drove around the
corner to one other place we had seen, and we were welcomed in by a
college-age girl who spoke very good English. We figured the first
restaurant lady must have some kind of grudge against this other
restaurant, since she claimed no other place in town served food! We
had some delicious pasta dishes, then took off for Camp Maranatha.
Camp Maranatha is the place where
Laura's Teen Missions team served in the summer of 1980. The camp is
a small evangelical camp and retreat center up in the mountains.
There had been a terrible earthquake and much of their main building
had collapsed. Laura's team spent the summer clearing rubble there,
staying in tents on the camp grounds. Laura had gotten to know the
missionaries who run the camp, Jim and Fran Lines, so she wanted to
go back and visit them and see the place again.
With the help of the GPS and directions
from Jim we found the camp easily. Jim and Fran welcomed us and spent
time telling us about the history of the camp and their work, and
they gave us a thorough tour.
We needed to reach Venice by evening,
so it was a short visit. At this point, a very memorable event
occurred. We took off from the camp, confident our GPS would guide us
out of the mountains to the highway leading to Venice. However,
after about 20 or 30 minutes of driving it was clear that the tall
mountains were causing havoc with the GPS, and it was not showing the
roads correctly. We continued to follow the VERY narrow winding road
through the mountains, but occasionally we passed a fork where we
weren't quite sure where to turn. Being a man I hate to stop for
directions – especially when I don't speak the same language as the
people in the area – but finally Laura convinced me to stop and ask
some farmers on the side of the road for directions to the highway.
Actually, it was Jonathan who did the asking, since he could speak a
few words of Italian. With Jonathan's words and some pointing at maps
we managed to get across to this nice lady that we were trying to
find the highway. She gave us very detailed instructions in Italian,
but she couldn't speak a word of English. She actually walked us over
to a fork in the road and pointed which way to go, then drew a little
map. After about 20 more minutes on the windy roads we made it out to
the highway, much to everyone's relief!
We had one more issue that evening. We
were returning our rental car, and I had been told that the rental
car return office at the Venice airport closed at 10:00 PM. By the
time we got out of the mountains we could tell we would be cutting it
close. We made it to Venice at around 9:15, where I dropped off the
family, then drove toward the airport (supposed to be about 20
minutes away). After the GPS misdirected me twice and I drove through
some suburban neighborhood near Venice, I got back onto the right
road and made it to the rental car return lot at about 9:50 PM.
However, the booth there was closed. The sign said to go into the
Arrivals part of the terminal. With just a few minutes left I had to
take all of my luggage (carrying several extra bags for souvenirs,
family, etc.) and walk/run about ¼ mile across the Venice airport
parking lot. I got to the Hertz desk at 10:02, and saw a sign saying
they were open until midnight! Then caught a taxi back to Venice and
collapsed in our beautiful hotel room overlooking the Grand Canal.
Thursday, June 28
Our one day in Venice. If only it could
be more! We really loved this city. It is surprisingly small, so it
was easy to walk around all day – a much shorter walk than many of
our other touring days. After some initial walking we took a long
gondola ride that gave us a good overview of the heart of the city.
We spent most of the day walking around the narrow streets, stopping
at any shop or cafe that looked interesting.
Around lunch time we saw a small pizza
shop where the pizza on display looked VERY inviting, so we stopped
to try it. It was by far the best pizza we have ever eaten! After a
little observation and conversation we discovered that it was a
husband/wife team – he makes the pizzas and she works the counter.
We discovered it is a very popular stop and they've won many awards –
not surprising with the quality of the pizza. They were very friendly
and she spoke good English, so we explained to them that I make pizza
every Saturday night at home, and we were interested to know how they
made theirs so delicious. They actually walked us through every step
of how the dough is made, what flour and cheese they use, and so on.
It was so cool!
We did the other usual Venice things
(San Marco Basilica and square, climbed the bell tower, etc.) and
finished with a delicious dinner overlooking a canal.
Friday, June 29
We thought today was going to be a
pleasant 7-hour train ride from Venice to Zurich. The adventure
started with us trying to figure out how to get from the island of
Venice to the train station on the mainland with all our luggage. A
VERY nice guy from the hotel was just getting off his shift, and he
volunteered to not only help us get a local train (across from our
hotel), but he went with us all the way to our main train, helped us
get tickets, carried luggage, etc. He further confirmed the
impression we had by this time – the Italian people were
consistently the nicest and friendliest we met anywhere!
We took our first train and had to
switch at Milan. That was no big deal. However, after about a
half-hour on the next train, it suddenly stopped and everyone started
getting off. No announcements were made in English, but we learned
from another passenger that there had been an avalanche farther up
the line, so the train could not continue. The entire trainload of
people got quickly off and piled onto a number of large commercial
buses. We were rushed through and just barely got on the last bus.
They dropped us at a commuter train
station where we all got on – with no instruction whatsoever on how
to get to our final destination. We had to switch trains several more
times, and on the next to the last train a lady who spoke good
English explained to us how to get on the right train to finally make
it to our original destination (the main train station in downtown
Zurich). We arrived several hours later than originally planned,
exhausted, and after grabbing some food we crashed in our hotel room
for the night.
Saturday, June 30
Our day to see the Alps! We started
with a stop at Starbucks, where we were stunned by the prices ($8.00
for a small latte!). We booked a guided tour to take us up a
mountain. We boarded a large commercial tour bus in the morning and
proceeded on a drive of two or three hours to the south, with our
tour guide giving us an introduction to Switzerland along the way.
Our destination was Mt. Titlis. When we arrived there Laura and
Starla stayed in the village at the bottom of the mountain and
enjoyed shopping and eating, while Jonathan, Benjamin, Summer and I
took a series of gondolas to the top of the mountain (about 10,000
ft.). Thanks to unusually warm weather in Switzerland it was still
about 55 degrees at the top of the mountain, even though there was
plenty of snow. (We had brought lots of warm clothes in preparation
but didn't need them.) We got to do a few runs of snow tubing and
ride over the glacier at the top before heading back down.
That evening we walked a little in the
main streets of downtown Zurich and finished up with a final
delicious meal at a great French restaurant (we like the French food
best of all countries we visited).
Sunday, July 1
We woke very early to take taxis to the
Zurich airport. We discovered our first flight from Zurich to London
had been delayed by several hours, so it turns out we didn't really
have to wake up that early. Our flight home from London was a
completely separate ticket on a different airline, so we knew we
would have to get our luggage and cross through Heathrow airport, but
our original schedule had a long layover in London, so it looked like
we would have plenty of time.
Unfortunately, with the delay in the
first flight we had much less time after arriving at London Heathrow
airport. Then we discovered that we arrived at Terminal 5, but needed
to depart from Terminal 1. This airport is basically a small city, so
after collecting our luggage, going through immigration and customs,
and taking a train to the other side of the airport, now we had less
than an hour until our next flight departed.
We checked in at the Icelandair desk,
but after we were done checking in we had just over 35 minutes until
our plane took off, and we had yet to go through security. After
security we RAN to our gate, only to discover that the gate printed
on our boarding passes was incorrect. We had to cross to the other
side of the terminal, and as we were running again we heard an
announcement on the PA saying, “Passengers Rajavuori, your gate is
closing.” We ran up to our gate, and as we boarded the already-full
plane they closed the door behind us!
The rest of the flight was uneventful,
but when we arrived at baggage claim our luggage was not there with
us! We checked with the lost luggage office, and they confirmed what
we had figured out – because we had checked in so late for our
flight the luggage area had already been closed, so our bags didn't
get on. As I write this they still haven't showed up, so we are
hoping we will see them today!
Closing Thoughts
Anyone who talked to us over these past
six months knows that we spent many, many, many hours (including
quite a few entire weekends) planning for this trip. It may have
seemed a little overboard at times, but after living through it now
we can tell you it was worth it! Thanks to my lovely wife's
organizational skills, we had two notebooks full of daily itineraries
– schedules, maps, tickets, etc. – so each night we could look
ahead and see what we would do the next day. We were able to skip
waiting in hours-long lines and move smoothly from place to place
because we had it all planned out ahead of time. It was great!
Also, I have to mention that we
experienced answers to prayer almost every day as well. The whole
trip was a great blessing from the Lord, but with six of us traveling
over 24 days we had no sickness (even from food), no danger, no
getting lost, had parking spaces provided, had people help us in
unexpected ways, and so on. Every time we encountered a problem we
prayed and saw answers quickly. Thank you, Lord, for being with us in
such a great way!
We'll be posting lots of pictures on
Facebook soon – probably more than anyone (but us) will want to
see!
