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Off to Europe for Three Weeks

Started by AE_Collector, May 09, 2011, 09:58:39 PM

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teka-bb


Hello Terry,

I'm sorry to hear about your loss. I hope you will have a nice trip to Europe. Maybe you will come again and pay me a visit?

=============================================
Regards,

Remco, JKL Museum of Telephony Curator

JKL Museum of Telephony: http://jklmuseum.com/
=============================================
TCI Library: http://www.telephonecollectors.info/
=============================================

AE_Collector

#16
Thanks DSK, Tom and Remco.

Remco: After I retire I hope to travel a lot more and will get directions to your place and the museums from Gary G!

At the airport now about to start the big trip.

Terry

Phonesrfun

-Bill G

bingster

Terry, if you run into any interesting telephone installations in Europe, be sure to post a photo or two or thirty. ;)
= DARRIN =



AE_Collector

12 hours later it is now 3AM and I'm sitting in the Amsterdam airport waiting for a flight to Stuttgart Germany. Odd thing is....THE SUN IS OUT (It's noon here but 3AM "my time").  So far so good!

Got a suit case of phones already! No wait a minute, I was just dreaming that part.....

Terry

Wallphone

Terry, While you are in Amsterdam can you pick up a little something for me?  ;D
Doug Pav

teka-bb


I don't think they allowed him to leave the airport  ;)
=============================================
Regards,

Remco, JKL Museum of Telephony Curator

JKL Museum of Telephony: http://jklmuseum.com/
=============================================
TCI Library: http://www.telephonecollectors.info/
=============================================

AE_Collector

Hi Everyone:

Yes they let me out of Amsterdam. Doug I'll meet you behind the phone booth in the town square tonight...

I've not been able to get onto the forum since Amsterdam until today. I'm on the crusie ship now and using their computers as my laptop has me "Banned from the Forum"! Must be my wife's doings to keep me off of the computer.

I'll post a better update soon but life is good here now!

Terry

HarrySmith

Hey Terry ;D Good to hear from you, have fun :D
Harry Smith
ATCA 4434
TCI

"There is no try,
there is only
do or do not"

AE_Collector

Hi Everyone:

Okay, looks like I'm back. I blew away most of the cookies in my laptop and all is well again. I had been "Banned from the Forum" for the last week and wasn't able to log on OR even read posts. Something to do with IP addresses initially but it must have then left a cookie in my computer that continued to leave me "Banned" even when I moved on and was assigned different IP addresses.

Here's the trip newsletter to date:

We flew to Amsterdam from Vancouver on Tuesday May 10th and then got a connection to Stuttgart Germany. We had a hotel in Stuttgart booked and we picked up a rental car as well. The next day we moved on to Rottweil on Thursday afternoon. The drive was about 80 km. I am not sure what the speed limit was but several times I had to check to see if I inadvertently had it in reverse.

Rottweil is where my Son in Law Daniel was born and lived until he moved to Canada with his family when he was 10. Rottweil is a very nice town in a very picturesque area.

Friday was my birthday and we were off to a restaurant / pub with many of Daniels relatives where we each had a huge snitzel for dinner and lots of beer. It was a fun evening and a birthday that I will remember (most of) for a long time. Thanks for all the birthday wishes after Doug Pav spilled the beans that it was my birthday. Due to "technical difficulties" I was unable to log onto the forum for awhile to see what was up.

Saturday evening was the second wedding reception and all was very nice. Like at the actual wedding reception in Vancouver the week before, this reception was up on a mountain with nice views of the area. I didn't have to do my speech over again but in German this time so that was a relief!

Sunday morning we drove the car back to Stuttgart and attempted to catch our first train from Stuttgart to Zurich. It wasn't running as it was a Sunday so we had to take two separate trains to get there. This made us miss our connecting train to Milan. That train trip had required a reservation so we had to just go to Zurich and try to get onto the next train and way we could. In the end we made it to Milan for two nights and did a bunch of exploring during the day.

The train trip from Milan to Rome was uneventful other than getting out of bed in time to get a train at 6:45 AM. The train station was virtually right across the street so that helped. We were only at the Rome station for about 45 minutes when we got on a train to Civitavecchia which is the ocean port close to Rome. It was a 59 minute trip that was like a commuter train to the suburbs of Rome. One more night in a hotel and the next day (Wednesday May 18) we boarded the Star Princess Cruise Ship for a 12 day Mediterranean cruise. More about the cruise in my next report!

Terry

Dennis Markham

Terry, good to see you're back in business with your lap-top.  It sounds like you're having a great time and having an experience of a life-time.  We look forward to seeing a photo or two.  Have fun!

AE_Collector

Hi Everyone:

Here's the next installment of my European trip newsletter:

Boarding the Star Princess at Civitavecchia we were greeted with a nice surprise. We had booked an obstructed ocean view cabin which is usually just a little more expensive than an inside cabin and is on the outside with a window although the view is usually through the lifeboats thus the "obstructed ocean view" designation. The ship doesn't appear to be fully booked so we were upgraded to a room with a balcony.

Our first two days were at sea before we got to Alexandria Egypt where we stayed tied up for two days to see all of the sites. I stopped at Cairo 26 years ago on my way back home from working on phone systems in Saudi Arabia and have never heard the end of seeing the Pyramids without my wife Kim so I'm hoping this will put and end to that!

On our first day at Alexandria Egypt (Saturday) we went on a 12 hour tour by bus to Cairo. The bus trip from Alexandria to Cairo was a good 3 hours each way which wasn't quite as bad as it sounds since they are real nice Mercedes Coaches.

The first stop was the group of three pyramids at the edge of Cairo which is also where the Sphinx is located. Years ago they weren't right at the edge of Cairo as they are now but I guess they have slowly moved them closer to the city for convenience sake. The population of Cairo is 17 million, the largest metropolitan population in all of Africa. These are probably the most visited Pyramids although there are 138 Pyramids in Egypt.

The most impressive thing when going to see the Pyramids both 26 years ago and again now is that long before you ever get to them, you see them looming above even the tallest buildings in the city even though the Pyramids are still on the other side of the city. 

After going inside one of the pyramids, taking pictures of the Sphinx from all sides, getting on a camel and having almost every sales tactic used on us to buy postcards, miniature pyramids, stuffed camels etc, we headed to lunch on a boat on the Nile. The food and entertainment were on par with that on the cruise ship and we had over two hours on the Nile.

On Sunday we did bus trip, this time of Alexandria so it was only about 6 hours. Kim wasn't feeling well at all so stayed on the ship while I went on the tour. By the time the tour was nearing completion I was not feeling well either. I guess it was some sort of 24 hour flu because Kim was feeling a fair bit better the next day (Monday) but I spent most of the day in bed.

Monday was a day at sea heading for Kios Greece. We arrived at Kios this morning and while not yet as good as new we are both almost there. We tendered into Kios from the ship and then just wandered the streets looking for the usual things; Payphone booths, Telephone buildings and crazy wiring! Oh and went through some of the shops and took some pictures as well. I always want to find out what it would cost to rent a place for several months when visiting places like this.

Tomorrow we arrive in Istanbul Turkey for the day and then the next day we are at Kusadasi Turkey for the day. So far the weather has been pretty good but not as hot as we would have expected it to be. Cairo was probably the hottest so far. I'd guess that it was 30C by noon but then clouded over and cooled down in the afternoon to around 25C. It is probably around 25 today in Greece as well.

That's it for now.

Terry

HarrySmith

Cool! Sounds like a blast!
I remeber 30 years ago while in the Navy we were the first US ship to visit Alexandria in many years. The main street leading away from the pier was all brand new. Paved asphalt and shiny glass & chrome buildings. One block from the main road were ramshackle huts proppedp by 2 X 4's. Does it still look like that? Still a cool place, wandering around the markets and stuff. I did the tourist thing with the pyramids also, visiting the Spynx and riding a camel. I still have pictures somewhere, including the back of the Sphynx. Our next stop was Greece also but we never got ashore, ended up in a blockade off the coast and spent time at GQ anchored with the Russian fleet!
Harry Smith
ATCA 4434
TCI

"There is no try,
there is only
do or do not"

Tom B

Hi Terry
Glad you're having a great  time. Very accommodating of the Egyptian Government to move the pyramids closer to the city, don't you think? ;D
Tom

AE_Collector

Quote from: Tom B on May 24, 2011, 01:00:36 PM
Hi Terry
Very accommodating of the Egyptian Government to move the pyramids closer to the city, don't you think? ;D

Yes I thought it a very good thing to do for Tourism!

Harry: Yeah I'm not sure what happened to the chrome buildings, maybe I missed them. Once back I'll post some pictures into this thread but I'm pretty suspicious about the building code there. Everything is very drab, no color unlike Greece where we are now. Streets have lots of garbage and surprisingly, old building materials everywhere? Small buildings or homes just get abandoned and eventually just fall down.

They really need to clean up the streets, plant some more gardens and trees and clean up the buildings. It would go along way to make the city much more attaractive.

But I''ll tell you this, for anyone who thinks that foreign countries don't like people from N America, are they ever happy to see us. Everyone waving at us on the streets and in buses. Genuinely happy to see the tourists back after no tourism since earlier in the year.

Terry