We're currently thawing out in this basement Turkish carpet shop that has an internet-access computer in one corner while it's snowing outside. Boy do we miss Africa! Italy and Greece are beautiful and amazing places, but they're not down and dirty, exotically new and intriguing, and most importantly: they're not the CHEAP places to travel to when you're on a shoestring budget. Instead of being able to relax and soak into the local Italian/Greek cultures and enjoy everything they have to offer the traveller, we have found ourselves getting uptight and frustrated with the exorbitant cost of EVERYthing. We realize this is our own problem, and beer does seem to help. Italy doesn't really fit into this scenario because we had the amazing luxury of being able to stay at Paige's parents' (Ross and Shirlee) rented house in Torre del Lago - thereby obviously cutting some serious ingrained costs that we normally would be incurring. But Greece was frustrating; we wanted so badly to "indulge" ourselves, but as the days and budget went by, we began to realize that these indulgences were stupid, simple things like bus rides, museums and eating. We have already begun to anxiously look forward to India, and you can assume that our future travel timelines will be altered to allow us to stay in India for the longest possible time...

Now that you somewhat understand the difficulty of travelling from 3rd world Africa directly into first world Italy and Greece, let's just move onto the fun stuff. Ross and Shirlee's house was the perfect island of sanity and familiarity that we desperately needed right then. We sopped up their love and hospitality like the amazing Thanksgiving gravy that Shirlee prepared for us in early November, since we weren't going to have the opportunity to celebrate otherwise. We went from peanut butter sandwiches, cold cans of baked beans and dissentry in Africa directly into three amazing meals a day, snacks, beer, wine and dessert in Italy. We went from riding 12 hour chicken buses, stifling Indian Ocean summer heat and humidity and clouds of dust and pollution in Africa to lounging around, reading, playing pinocle, sightseeing, enjoying the phenominal Tuscany countryside, and beer, wine and dessert in Italy.

Yes, we became really soft.

Another special note upon our arrival was picking up an amazing care package from our friends Erik and Robin. Wow! Chips and Safeway Select Garlic Salsa! Chocolate! Gorn Nuts! Condoms! Tampons! Paige was screaming with delight when she pulled out the Ziplock baggies and rubber bands, but I'll take condoms and tampons any ole day. I really don't know what that means. Anyway, we were touched and it really made us feel wonderful.

Our first day in Torre del Lago, Ross and Shirlee took us out to Cinque Terra - an absolutely ridiculously beautiful combination of five small Tuscany towns bordering the steep cliffs of the Italian coastline. We were in awe of the scenery, really to the point of some severe culture shock. We also had the opportunity to go to Lucca - an amazing walled-in city - and slowly began to shed Africa as we walked around the cobblestone streets window shopping and not getting hassled by aggressive touts. Where were the Coke signs? Why wasn't everyone waving to us and yelling, "HELLOHELLOHELLO!!!"? We definitely noticed the omissions rather than the additions... Afterwards Ross pulled off alongside the twisting road overlooking the Pisa valley, and we had a great picnic within an old Olive grove with wine and amazing leftover Turkey and Stuffing sandwiches.

There's a little story here that I will attempt to tell very quickly, although it will probably not get its due justice. We celebrated my 30th birthday in Torre del Lago in mid November - Paige, in anticipation of the blessed event, began writing emails to our friend Robert about getting a Martin Backpackers Acoustic Guitar purchased and sent in time for my birthday. This began a couple months prior, when I began having my first serious pangs of not being able to play guitar and started having some bad withdrawls. Robert, being the amazing big-hearted redneck Texan that he is (you know I say that with love, Robert), haggled, bought, packaged and shipped the small thin guitar 5-day mail to Italy on October 20th. God Bless those Italian Customs officials, because by the time we left Italy around November 20th, it still hadn't arrived, and we were never able to receive it. This is the epitome of "it's the thought that counts!"

I did have a fantastic birthday though - we spent the rainy day in a cozy-warm car driving through the breathtaking mountains above Tuscany where they have been quarrying marble for centuries. The scenery was outstanding, the company was perfect, and when we stopped for lunch...the beer was the absolute best I've had on the trip so far (a Belgian beer called "Leffe" - on tap!). To be able to cap off the day with bbq ribs and German Chocolate cake was just too much. Like I said, we were getting really soft...

I think that undoubtedly our favorite experience in Italy was when the four of us went to a professional soccer game between Lucca (home) and Lecce. A stadium that sat maybe 10-15,000 people was perhaps almost half full for the Sunday afternoon match, and the athletic abilities on the field were almost as fascinating as the Italian quirks and oddities that we were watching unfold in the stands around us. We got there early, and watched as the almost entirely male crowd slowly sauntered in, found there seat, and unfolded a piece of newspaper or napkin to place on their seat before they sat down. OK, what's going on here? I suddenly felt dirty for sitting in my seat without running to the bathroom beforehand to get a seat-cover protector, since I had no newspaper. And don't these guys realize that that seat is probably 100 times cleaner than that wet black ink that will soon be smeared all over their pants? Really though, the more expensive seats should have a little dispenser of paper toilet-seat protectors right there under the lip of their chair for ultimate in Italian Futbol convenience.

The game was an absolute blast. Lucca had to score in the final minute to tie it up at 2-2, and the crowd was going wild. Earlier, the refs (the most unloved job in the world, I'm now convinced) had made a questionable non-hands call that went against the home team, and the crowd in the cheap non-seat-cover-protector-dispenser seats went crazy, throwing endless Cokes on his head from the stands and pelting him with garbage and coins as hard as they could throw. It was both disturbing and hilarious. My favorite combination. The crowd around us was screaming, "SCANDALOSO!" and cursing in Italian. It just doesn't get much better than this!

After two weeks in Torre del Lago, we tore ourselves away from Ross and Shirlee's amazing hospitality like uncooperative velcro, and suddenly found ourselves on the road again. It was a strange but wonderful feeling. We were heading by train to Rome for a couple days before heading west to Brindisi to catch the ferry to Patras, Greece, and had a wonderful opportunity to stay with my Dad's Dad's Daughter's Daughter's Daughter. Paige says that I should just say "my cousin," but it's more fun to say it the other way. Paige had picked up a horrible mould infection (that's MY diagnosis, if you couldn't guess) from the 100+ year old house in Torre del Lago, and it turned into this weird Bronchitis/asthma/pnemonia thing that knocked her on her butt for a few days, and ended up hanging on for more than three uncomfortable weeks. It was really nice to get another couple days in Rome in luxury before heading out again.

And what luxury it was! My cousin, Cathy, is the Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Program - working in Rome during her second Presidential appointment. Her husband was unfortunately gone during our visit, but I have a feeling he was having a great time doing photography work in the Sudan... We absolutely sank into her wonderful hospitality: warm cozy apartment, hot showers, kitchen priveleges, TV, VCR, HUGE American movie collection, and their collection of acoustic guitars...oh, YEAH! Two days later, it was REALLY hard to leave, and we had had the best time getting to know my cousin and Rome. Cathy actually laid out an amazingly nice assortment of travel necessities for us to take with us before we left: travel tissues, gum, Halls, snacks, lotion...and nearly a dozen airplane-sized bottles of hard liquor. The Farrell blood runs deep. In Rome, we did the usual tourist stuff including getting really lost and endlessly walking around for hours, but by far the highlight was the Sistine Chapel. Ross and Shirlee had given us "The Agony and the Ecstasy" before we left (mandatory reading for ANYONE travelling to Italy) and Paige and I were intrigued by Michaelangelo. We had went to see the David in Florence, and were literally stunned. We had stood there motionless for a long time trying to comprehend... The vein in the right forearm, the dimple above the bellybutton, the perfect expression on his face... It sits in a museum with a bunch of other stuff, but after seeing that, nothing else was even in the same ballpark and we ended up just leaving. We couldn't wait to see the Sistine Chapel.

We got to Vatican City early per Cathy's excellent and necessary recommendation, although we still encountered torturous amounts of tour groups and had to battle lines and the generally clueless. All we wanted to see was the chapel, and to get there you have to wind through endless hallways, showrooms and Vatican wings for almost 20 minutes. We kept encountering tour group after tour group in those little hallways, and felt like we were the blood trying to get through clogged arteries, ultimately just pushing our way throuh in our own form of angioplasty. Just workin' the turkey through. Suddenly, after an especially fatty-deposit clog, we burst into the chapel, and were surrounded by a hundred silent people with the faces raised in awe at the ceiling. Like the pyramids, I won't possibly try to describe how utterly amazing this experience is - it is. After 30 minutes of awe, we both looked at each other across the room and just got out of there before our brains were over-stimulated attempting to compute everything we were seeing.

Our Vatican experience was topped off by a brief visit to St. Peter's Cathedral - awe inspiring in itself in its grandiose size, beauty and hypocritical decadence. We had to laugh when right after we entered the cathedral, walking up the huge endless aisle, when a guy passing us going the other way accidentally hit his foot on a pew, scrunched up his face, and unable to restrain his evil self yelled out the one word that God doesn't want to hear in all of Vatican City. As it echoed in the wings, we watched the mixed reactions of horror, disgust and severe amusement. People are always more exciting than the places you go to see.

Our ferry to Greece conveniently passed through a six hour lightning and thunder storm, rocking the crap out of the boat, and sending every single person in our area puking over the side of the boat except for yours truly. This unfortunately included our beloved Paige, who spent at least 3 of those hours in agonizing pain - first leaning over the side puking, and then resorting to puking right there on the deck itself after a convenient gust of wind had blown her vomit right back in her own face. I hope she doesn't erase this.

The storm finally passed and we made it to Greece about 24 hours later. We had no itenerary - the BEST way to do this thing - so we sketched out a general path that found us spending most of our time in the Pelopponese. Since it's winter here now, all the tourists are gone, and we've sometimes found ourselves being the ONLY person in our hotel, restaurant, or even the town itself! This was the case in Olympia - the birthplace of the original Greek Olympics. We half expected a grassy field with a plaque saying that this is where the foot races were held at the original Greek Olympics...and were stunned to find an entire ancient Olympic Village that covered a huge area of land and included amazing ruins. Being the only people there, we romped freely on the ruins, ran up and back in the powerful Colliseum, and mocked lighting the original Olympic flame for a photo...of course it was right at that point in my dorky photo-pose that another group of tourists came upon us. It was small consolation that as I walked away with my tail between my legs, we turned around and saw them copying the same stupid pose. Frogs. This is a great place to visit.

Athens gets a bad rap, but we liked it. Granted, after 4 days your eyes and lungs are burning from the disgusting pollution, but it still has a lot of charm, ammenities and a ton of Christmas decorations. This last addition both comforted us and made us painfully homesick. We still don't know where we'll be for Christmas, but we're betting on a steamy Turkish bathhouse...I mean, if "steamy Turkish bathhouse" doesn't scream "CHRISTMAS," I just don't know what does.

In Athens, we did some of the normal touristy stuff: Acropolis...well, that's actually the only touristy thing we did. We had fun just walking around the city, having cappucinos in an outside cafe in the Plaka next to the ruins, and endlessly walking around the huge and intricate outdoor market. Our favorite shop, besides the obvious spice markets, were the hanging-tubed-meat shops. No further explanation is necessary or appropriate.

We spent time in Athens hoping against hope to see a Greek Basketball game. Those of you who know me know how much a masochist I am in my innate love for the lowly Sacramento Kings. Seeing as how they made a Greek Basketball player first-round pick 2 years ago, I've ever since been intrigued with their league out here. We were told in Athens that the teams were playing out of the country now, but would be playing in Thessanoliki on the weekend. We took the train to Thessanoliki on Saturday, arriving just in time to find an English speaking newspaper salesman who informed us that the team was in fact playing in ATHENS, and a lower division game was playing in Thessanoliki tonight. Joy. What time did it start? 5pm. We looked at our watch - 5:05pm. We quickly hopped in a taxi and got to our seats midway through the first half.

What a great experience this was - Paige aptly described the quality of play as "jungle ball," and it was like 40 minutes of bad scrub basketball. It was clear that the three dominating players were imported tall Black Americans - and they were dunking and joking around like no one else had any business being there. I would too if I were them! Again, like the soccer game, the best part about it was the audience. People in the stands were constantly throwing paper airplanes and garbage down on the floor and on the people below them. Apparantly this is normal and the police don't care. A constant rain of this stuff was pelting people left and right - people would get beaned in the head and not even react because it was so normal. Awesome. One kid endlessly continued to throw airplane after airplane with intentions of seeing that baby fly down onto the court, but every single one ended up pelting the bald guy in front of him. Finally the dad grabs the kid in mid throw and we were sure that that kid was in for a beating. Instead, the dad instructs the kid on the proper technique for throwing paper airplanes, and the kid proceeds to toss it right into the scalp of the guy in front of him. And he didn't even react. It was great. We were wondering why the police asked us if we had any coins when we walked in, but not for long. The benches have these curved plastic shields above them for just this reason - the crowd could put more than an eye out with a properly hurled drachma...

This will obviously be our final email of 1998, and we both would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a great holiday season and a happy new year. We miss you a ton and get homesick often, but still feel like kids in a candy store on a daily basis.

By the way, please feel free to check out our website for any past email journals. We realize that many of you have gotten involved with our trip at different points, and all of the old entries can be found by going to http://www.tarantism.com and clicking on the sunrise/sunset. We have also just put our complete packing list on the website for those of you travellers who want to see what we've been lugging around for four months. As always, we love and need to hear from you, and you can always reach us at chrisandpaige@hotmail.com

Please note that our guidebooks say that this is the last cyber cafe in the Middle East until Israel, so you may not be hearing from us for awhile unless we find a new one in Damascus or Amman. Maybe this would be a good time to send us snail mail if you are so inclined. We do visit each and every one of the offices we listed in our first email which is now posted on the web site, and remember to give it AT LEAST 4-6 weeks lead time.

Love,

Grizd and Fajita