I'm back -- now with more science!!!

I'm back from my trip to Italy -- with so many stories and pictures!!!

First stop was the science museum! Yes, even if we didn't bring our kids this time, and yes even with one of the most famous art museums in the world right next store, our first stop in Florence was the Galileo Museum, showcasing the most advanced science and technology of the renaissance! The high point: they have some of the earliest machines that were invented to study electricity and magnetism -- and they're so simple that you can understand them even if you know very little about electromagnetism! The low point? They have Galileo's finger in a jar. No, I am not kidding. You can even buy a book about Galileo's finger, oddly enough.

Unfortunately, we couldn't take any pictures in that museum, but we got a few pictures in the Leonardo da Vinci science & tech museum in Milan, where they have the history of early telecommunications technology. (To the left, that's me with an ancient, pendulum-based fax machine.)

I wrote an overview of my various science museum adventures at Science-Based Parenting here. (Note that Rational Moms merged with Science-Based Parenting, so I'm over there now.)

At least we got a picture of Galileo's tomb. It turns out he's buried in a Catholic church (which surprised me a bit, considering the trouble he got into with the Catholic Church...). (He's mostly buried in a Catholic church, that is -- not his finger.)

Before we set off on our trip, my husband's mildly-Catholic mom asked him to be sure to light a candle in one of the churches. So, naturally, we lit one for Galileo's monument. We wanted to light one for Machiavelli too (he's buried in the very same church! So's Michelangelo!), but Machiavelli's tomb didn't have one of those little candle-stands set up by it.

Yep, we foreign tourists have Italy all to ourselves!!

I guess that's what happens when you don't really plan your vacation -- or, rather, leave an unfortunate hole in your plans...

See, we were supposed to be spending this vacation in China. My husband was invited to speak at a conference, and we'd been planning this for more than a year. I even organized the most elaborate system you can imagine so that my parents would come visit us in Switzerland (and pick up the kids and take them to the US), and I'd fly to the US to visit (and pick up the kids) after the China trip. Then, we we foolish enough to put off getting our visas for China until the last minute -- and China unexpectedly changed the rules for French people to get visas! There were a bunch of new rules and bureaucratic hoops to jump through, and we didn't have time to get the visas!

It must have changed all of the sudden because other French friends going to the conference didn't have this problem. Every French person I've talked to has guessed the Sarkozy must have said something to offend the Chinese.

So what to do on short notice???

The obvious choice was a trip to Italy. It has the advantage that, from Zurich, you can have the idea to go one morning, and then go hop on a train and be there that afternoon. Plus, we loved our trip to Lago Maggiore last year, but if you look at a map, you'll see that we hardly left Switzerland. And I've always wanted to see Rome.

The disadvantage -- from not planning ahead! -- is that this is the middle of the tourist season, so everything is overrun with tourists. And everything that's not touristy is closed for the month because everyone who lives in the popular-to-visit cities is currently on vacation somewhere else (except those who happen to be directly employed by the tourism industry).

One fun part is that it's like a second honeymoon. Or even like a first honeymoon since, technically, we never did go on a honeymoon. (Though being in Florence may not be quite as suited to that as, say, JulieAnn's choice of SLC since here you're rather strongly tempted to get out of the room to see all of the amazing art and architecture.) I'll post some pics when I can. (Of the art and architecture.)

Another fun thing is that my sweetie and I studied Italian together when we were first married, so practicing it brings back some fun memories. I've brought the book we read together so long ago: 40 Leçons pour Parler Italien.

One of the silly sentences from the book became kind of a running gag for us. There's a part where the turist orders spaghetti, and specifies that she wants it "al dente." The Italian waiter explains that in Italy the spaghetti is always served al dente: Gli spaghetti Italiani sono sempre al dente. So when we couldn't think of a relevant, coherent sentence in Italian, we'd just have fun claiming that all sorts of things are always al dente. The latest one we've come up with is the foreign tourists (like us). Whenever we see any of our fellow foreign tourists doing something particularly silly or touristy, we just sigh and remark I turisti stranieri sono sempre al dente.

It doesn't really mean anything, but somehow it fits. ;)

Bodensee vs. Lago Maggiore: Which boat ride is better?

Southern Germany, Switzerland, and Northern Italy are surprisingly similar. OK, actually, it's not surprising if you think about it for two seconds. But if I say "Picture Italy! Now picture Germany! Now picture Switzerland!" you come up with three totally different mental pictures, don't you? But if I say "Picture a big lake surrounded by mountains, with lots of pretty greenery and old cities and villages along the coast," well, that could be any and all of the above.

All of these lakes have public passenger boats to ferry you from one side to the other. Recall that last year we tested out the boats of Lago Maggiore. This year we decided to visit the Bodensee (a.k.a. Lake Constance) -- mostly because it's only an hour-and-a-half from Zürich by train, and the kids had never been to Germany before.

As you might expect, the boat rides are very similar but a little bit different. As a control, we also tested out the boat ride on the Zürichsee -- from Zürich to Rapperswil.

Since we didn't bring along my husband (who normally takes the photos), I have to settle for illustrating this post with photos taken by Nico. For example, it may not be obvious from the picture, but here we're on the boat on the Bodensee:


Leo, just a couple days before losing one of those teeth you see in this picture...

(Having an eight-year-old photo-document a trip definitely gives you a different perspective on what's interesting. For example, here's a photo he took of the doughnuts at the Zürich train station:


The exotic doughnuts of the American Bakery of Zürich)

In all three cases, we decided to have lunch on the boat. Here's how they stack up:

The Swiss boat had quite a nice restaurant. The German boat claimed to have a restaurant, but I'm not totally convinced that they had a real kitchen (as opposed to just heating up pre-prepared stuff, like on the train). And, in proper Goldilocks style, the Italian boat was between the two -- not super fancy, but economical, pleasant, and a good value.

Of course the restaurant quality probably had more to do with the size of the lake than with the surrounding culture. The Zürichsee is really small. You have to travel the lake the long way in order to have a two-hour boat ride. The only reason to take the boat is if you want to go on a pleasure cruise. If you just want to go to Rapperswil, you take the train -- it's more frequent, it's only a half-hour, and it costs the same as the boat. On the Bodensee, it took an hour-and-a-half to cross it the short way, so naturally the boat is full of people who are as interested in getting to the other side as they are in the joy of riding on a boat. Naturally, Lago Maggiore is between the two.

The big disadvantage of the Zürich boat was that they separated off the top level for first class. Already, it was a small boat with only two levels (unlike a proper lake boat, which should have at least three levels). That was a bit of a disappointment because part of the fun of a lake cruise is to wander around and explore the whole boat. And the second-class section was fancy enough that it kind of made me curious to get a first-class ticket sometime, just to see what's up there...

The big surprise, though, was that -- contrary to all popular stereotypes -- the Italian boat schedule was more logical (made more sense) than the German one. The various boat lines on Lago Maggiore were very well-integrated with one another, and they fit together in a clear, easy-to-understand timetable. Then (and this is such a simple thing that I can't imagine why they don't do it in Germany), they post the destinations of the next boat on the pier where the boat will land.

The thing is that each port has as many as six or seven numbered slots where boats can dock (for passengers to get on and off). I suspect that the mapping of which boat goes to which slot doesn't change much, but, still, they don't print it on the boat schedule, and (in Konstanz) they don't post it on the dock where the boat lands either. You have to go read the boat-to-pier mapping off a central monitor or chart (which you have to go find, and it can be rather far from the pier in question).

Now, you may be thinking that I just found the Italian timetables clearer because I still read Italian (a little) better than I read German. But seriously, it's just a table of numbers -- the language is irrelevant.

The language, however, is another fun aspect of the trip! All of these lake cruises are (obviously) quite touristic, but they're almost all designed for local tourists. The Bodensee, in particular, is geared almost entirely for German tourists. It's basically the warm-and-sunny Summer seaside holiday destination for Germans. So in Konstanz (unlike Zürich) -- even if my German is obviously really limited -- as long as actual communication is taking place, they won't spontaneously switch to English.

Similarly, around Lago Maggiore, the tourists are mostly from Switzerland, Germany, and France, so all of the tourist-relevant signage is in Italian, German, and French (but not necessarily in English). If you have trouble communicating in Italian, it's not totally obvious which other language they should switch to. So they just stick with Italian until the tourist switches to some other language.

Anyway, sorry this is a bit of a ramble -- but I hope it's useful to any of you who are planning to visit the lakes of the Alpine region! :D