MALTA: DAY 2, PART 2 - MDINA AND RABAT, ST. JOSEPH'S DAY, RABAT'S BASILICA OF ST. PAUL, AND MORE

 March 19, 2024

Our next stop was Mdina, a walled city that at one time was the island's capital. It is next to Rabat. There is a city named Medina in Saudi Arabia and Rabat is the capital of Morocco, so that should give you a hint that at one time settlers of this area were Arabs.

These days, no cars are allowed in Mdina, and it has the nickname "The Silent City." 

You would think there would be little open space in a country that is only 17 miles long and 9 miles wide, but we actually traversed some beautiful green spaces where we could see animals grazing in the fields. After some "cross-country" driving, we soon had a a good view of the walls of Mdina (population 250) and the adjacent city of Rabat (population 11,000).

We stopped to admire the view of the two cities and the flower-blanketed hillsides leading up to them.

As we approached Mdina and Rabat, we could tell right away that there was a party going on, and we felt right at home as soon as we saw the "Mr. America Meals" food truck in the parking lot.

FRANCE 2000: PARIS - THE CATACOMBS, THE ORSAY MUSEUM, THE EIFFEL TOWER, AND SACRE-COEUR BASILICA

 December 26-27, 2000

Starting in 1786, wagons loaded with the remains of more than six million human bodies made their way through the streets of Paris at night, depositing their loads in a mine shaft that led to what used to be the city's underground stone quarries. Many of the remains came from overcrowded cemeteries in the city. At first the underground cemetery was a disorganized mess, but in 1810 the director of the Paris Mine Inspection Service oversaw the process of creating order out of chaos, stacking the bones and skulls in the patterns visitors see today and adding other interesting elements. It became a novelty gathering spot for private events in the early 19th century, and in 1874 it was opened for visitors.

And just 126 years later, the Cannon family from California walked down the spiral staircase into the depths of the Paris Catacombs.

It appears that the "organizers" tried to keep bones from different cemeteries separated. The sign on the left reads, "Bones from the old Magdeleine Cemetery deposited in 1844 in the west ossuary and transferred to the catacombs in September 1859."

The sign over our heads (left) says, "Stop! This is the empire of death."  The sign behind our son (right) notes that these bones were taken from the St. Etienne Cemetery and re-interred here in 1787.

Since this experience with an ossuary (a room filled with human bones), we have been to several others, including one in Kutna Hora (Czech Republic) and one in Evora (Portugal), but there's nothing like the shock of the first time.

Back out in the cold but fresh air, our youngest son took this photo of a lion guarding the catacombs. 

Our next stop was the Musée d'Orsay (Orsay Museum), a museum specializing in art from 1848 to 1914 and best known for its Impressionist and post-Impressionist collection, including Manet's Olympia and Monet's paintings of Rouen Cathedral and his gardens at Giverny. Of course, I wasn't into taking pictures of pictures back then. I did, however, buy this postcard of Whistler's Mother by the American artist James McNeill Whistler . . .

. . . and this postcard of Renoir's La danse a la ville (Dancing in the City):

Of course, number one on MY list for What To See In Paris was the Eiffel Tower, and I devoted a couple of pages in our scrapbook to images of it I had clipped from tourist materials.

Who took this picture of the five of us at the top of the Eiffel Tower on a dark and stormy night, and why do we look so happy?  

It's actually a fun story.  The tower was encased in a blanket of fog, and we were feeling a little disappointed that the view wasn't going to be very good.  We noticed another American family with a gaggle of young children also on the viewing platform, and we struck up a conversation.  I can't remember where they were living, but they were expats living somewhere in Europe for the father's work. When they found out we were from Redlands, they asked if we knew the Richey family. Indeed we did! They were some of our closest friends! It turns out the father of the family was a first cousin to the Richeys. Small world.

And here we are in the Paris Metro on our way back to our hotel after a very long day.

The next morning our first stop was the Sacré-Coeur (Sacred Heart) Basilica The interior dome is stunning, as you can see in the postcard below.

Sacré-Coeur, built between 1875 and 1914, is the second most visited spot in Paris behind the Eiffel Tower. The unusual elongated dome on top of the church is 273 feet tall! To me, those domes give the basilica a Turkish flavor. 

Our older son was the only one of us who wanted to climb to the top of the tower. He took these wonderful pictures.

NEXT: FINISHING UP IN PARIS AND GOING HOME

PORTUGAL: SANCTUARY OF OUR LADY OF FATIMA

 July 1, 2022

Our final destination of the day was our third pilgrimage site of the trip (the first two being Santiago de Compostela and Bom Jesus Cathedral), The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fátima.

The story is that in 1917, Mary the Mother of Jesus appeared to three shepherd children--Francisco and Jacinta Marto and their cousin Lúcia--in a field in Fátima, Portugal. Over a period of five months, the children experienced six visitations. They told others that they were asked by the Virgin to say the rosary and were told three "secrets" regarding events that were to occur. In 1930, the Catholic Church recognized the visions as "worthy of belief" and granted a papal indulgence to pilgrims to the site. The site quickly became an important pilgrimage destination, and it now receives as many as six million pilgrims a year. 

The huge open courtyard of the shrine is twice as large as St. Peter's in Rome, and it reminded us a lot of the Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City that we visited in 2018. The Shrine of Fátima, built near the place where the children saw Mary, is one of the largest Marian shrines in the world.

There are two minor basilicas on the property, and we began our visit in the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary, which has a 213-foot-tall tower topped with a 15,000-pound bronze crown and a cross.

PORTUGAL: BOM JESUS DO MONTE BASILICA

 June 30, 2022

We got on the road around noon for our two-hour drive back to Portugal and our next destination outside Braga, another pilgrimage site, Bom Jesus do Monte, or "Good Jesus of the Mountain." (We kept irreverently calling the place "Bomb Jesus" and giggling.)

We had eaten an extensive and delicious breakfast buffet in our hotel, so we weren't ready for lunch, but we did pick up some nutritious snacks for the drive. I didn't know Magnum made anything but ice cream bars! What a wonderful surprise! And the Sumol Laranja drink on the right tastes just like one of my favorites: Orangina.

We had zero interference crossing the border into Portugal. Everything we had read online about tight Covid restrictions in Portugal were either out-of-date or overblown.

Bom Jesus do Monte turned out to be one of my favorite churches in Portugal, in spite of the fact that the road to the church is a series of hairpin turns up a very steep mountain.

Declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2019, the extensive property (64 acres) is stunning. The UNESCO document notes that "the landscape evokes Christian Jerusalem, recreating a sacred mount crowned with a church. . . . [It] illustrates a European tradition of creating Sacri Monti (sacred mountains), promoted by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent in the 16th century." The rest of the UNESCO description is one of the most lavish documents of praise I have read on their site, and I wonder what took them so long to name Bom Jesus a World Heritage Site. 

Many churches have existed here, beginning in the 14th century, but the current  one was started in 1784 and consecrated in 1834. A zig-zagging series of 577 steps leading from the town of Braga up the mountain to the basilica were built between 1723 and 1837, and it is these stairs and accompanying artwork and landscaping that make the basilica such a special and unique place, which is why over 1.2 million people visit it every year.

PORTUGAL: MAFRA

 June 26, 2022

We hadn't had a car in Lisbon, and we were very glad about that. Parking would have been impossible, not to mention navigating the tangle of streets. However, we DID want a car for the rest of our trip, which would include a lot of driving between cities, and we chose hotels partly for their parking accommodations.

We had arranged a car through Eurocar with pick-up at the airport at 8:00 AM.  The guy behind the counter ran the most aggressive upgrade pressure we have ever experienced.  He told us our economy-level car was too small for our luggage (which was all carry-on, nothing checked at the airport). Then he said it had a small tank for such large distances we would be driving. (Portugal is the size of the state of Indiana.) Then he said we really need a car that took diesel fuel because it was much cheaper than regular fuel in Portugal. He offered us a Jeep for "just a little more money." Bob just kept saying no, and eventually we drove away in our [small] Renault.

Our first destination of several we had planned for the day was Mafra, which is home to one of Portugal's 17 World Heritage Sites. It is located about 22 miles north-northwest of Lisbon.

So what makes Mafra, a city of less than 80,000 people, so special? And what is the tourist-drawing UNESCO site?

The answer to both questions is hard to miss.

ECUADOR: QUITO-IN-A-DAY

 March 21, 2022

Quito is the capital and largest city in Ecuador. Situated in a valley in the Andean foothills at 9,350 feet, it is the second-highest capital city in the world (La Paz, Bolivia, sits at 11,942 feet) and the capital city closest to the equator. It is the only capital city next to an active volcano, Pichinca, which stands at 15,728 feet. Its last major eruption was in 1660, but it did puff a fair amount of ash onto Quito in 1999. Quito has, however, had a significant number of large-magnitude earthquakes in the last 100 or so years, including two that were stronger than 8.0 in magnitude: 8.8 in 1906, 8.2 in 1979, and nine stronger than 7.0 since 1942. Yikes.

Founded by the Spanish in 1534 on the ruins of an Inca city, Quito proper covers 143 square miles and has a population of 2.8 million, and we had about ten hours to see it all.

In the morning we met up with Terry and Geneil and enjoyed an upgraded breakfast on the "club floor" with them, (Remember, Terry had been upgraded because it was his birthday.)

Beautiful flowers--of course--and passion fruit.

Afterwards we gathered in the lobby with the other two couples who were joining our group, Brian and Renee Bascom and Ward and Norma Robinson, who had arrived in Quito in the last day or so.

A guide and driver picked up the eight of us and we were on the road by 9:00 AM. Our first stop was the Itanim Middle of the World Museum.

Here we all are!

SOUTHERN TEXAS, BEAUMONT: ST. ANTHONY'S CATHEDRAL BASILICA

November 22, 2021

For the first time, the college where I work gave us the entire week of Thanksgiving off. Bob and I just couldn't pass up that opportunity. We started planning a trip to Nashville, but then Covid numbers in that area started looking bad, and most of the places we wanted to go were inside. Where could we go that was less crowded and had more outdoor attractions? 

Why, Texas, of course! After all, we had never been to the Texas Gulf Coast!!

To say I wasn't very excited about our new plan was an understatement. Bob booking a flight that left at 6:05 AM from Palm Springs didn't do much to increase my excitement. I got up at 2:30 AM and we left for the airport at 3:30.

Our flight was uneventful and we arrived in Houston around 11:00 Central Time, picked up a Mitsubishi rental car at Budget, and got on our way.

We headed for the lovely town of Beaumont, Texas, which turned out to be full of surprises. But then, just about every place we have ever traveled to has been full of surprises of some kind.

The first surprise was so wonderful that I'm going to give it its own post. St. Anthony's Cathedral Basilica has to be one of the most beautiful churches we've seen in Texas, and maybe even in the United States.

The exterior was being spray-washed when we visited.

LOUISIANA: NEW ORLEANS, Part I - Bourbon Street, Two Churches, and Four Books

 November 6-10, 2019

As part of my job as the coordinator of a community college honors program, I have the option of attending a national conference every year. In 2019, that conference was in New Orleans.

Heck yes, I'll go!

The conference was great, and I LOVED the location. It was my second visit to New Orleans, but my first visit had been brief and about fifteen or sixteen years earlier.

The conference was held in the Sheraton Hotel on Canal Street, just blocks from the French Quarter, and so that is also where I stayed.

Even the hotel décor screams "NEW ORLEANS!"

Here is the view of Canal Street--the Champs d'Elysee of New Orleans--from my room. One interesting fact about this street is that with three lanes going each direction, it is supposed to be the widest thoroughfare in the United States called a "street" instead of an "avenue" or "boulevard."

Same view at night:

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Of course, being close to the French Quarter can be, um, shall we say "enlightening"?