Vagabond sunbirds

We in New England, like folks in many parts of the US, are having a rough winter. Snow that won't quit and brutal, sub-zero temps. ("These are good days to teach kids about negative numbers," said Joan, a yoga-mate and retired math teacher.) Meteorologists tell us we're looking down the barrel of our fourth major snowstorm in as many weeks.

Ever since we began traveling Mike and I have made mental notes of cities, towns or villages that would make nice havens in winter, knowing that at some point we'll want to flee Boston's cold for somewhere else's relative warmth. Every once in a while -- including recently, with cheap foreclosures flooding the market -- we've been tempted to buy a place in Florida. But we'd be tied to it, and that's not what we want.

Our plan is to spend the coldest months of our retirement years in various places, renting our way around the world. No mortgage, no furniture to buy, no taxes, no maintenance, no feelings of obligation to go or guilt if you don't. We'd rather find a beachfront cottage or apartment in some pretty place, pay a few months rent, and settle in for an extended stay, immersing ourselves in our temporary neighborhoods and living like the locals. Then, the next year, put down seasonal stakes in a new place.

The Mediterranean and Aegean will no doubt figure in our future sunbird plans. We've scouted beautiful, quiet places like Albufeira, Portugal; Menton, France; Italy's Ligurian coastline; Chania on the island of Crete; Nafplion in Greece's Peloponnese; history-rich Antalya, Turkey; and fishing villages like Spain's Calella de Palafrugell, pictured above.

It's February in Calella in these photos, yet warm and sunny enough for a stroll on the beach or a relaxing rest on a bench overlooking the harbor. It may not be sunbathing weather, but it sure beats shoveling.

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Flotsam, jetsam, seaglass and shards

There's a mosaic in my future.

All around my house, in glass vases, copper boxes and bowls that once belonged to Bedouins and Buddhist monks, are bits and pieces of flotsam and jetsam from bodies of water, sidewalks and trash piles around the world, and I value these as highly as any travel souvenirs I've collected.

Someday, when I have nothing to do, I'll gather in one place these intriguing chunks of detritus, along with my scores of stones and seashells spirited from dozens of beaches, and I'll design a mosaic that gives each nugget a special spot in some big, bold picture.

Each piece brings me back to the place where I acquired it: water-worn teacup handles and porcelain dinnerware shards washed up on Lake Como's rocky shore; a hunk of marble paving stone from an old Lisbon sidewalk; pieces of painted wall tile from a junk heap beside an 18th-century Porto home undergoing renovation; black rocks with white circles in their middles -- eyeball rocks, I call them -- found on the French shore of Lake Geneva; charms that once hung from strands of Mardi Gras beads thrown from floats navigating the streets of New Orleans; shells and coral from the Red Sea; shells and salty stones from the Dead Sea; fragments of pottery and pavement from Petra and ancient Argos; cooled lava from an ancient eruption of Chile's Mount Osorno; and green, white, blue, amber and yellow seaglass from oceans and lakes around the globe.

I'm thinking my mosaic will be a map of the world.

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Christian Science water

When I put the viewfinder to my eye the other night to frame this photo of Boston's First Church of Christ, Scientist (Mother Church), throwing its magnificent stone glory into the great, oblong reflecting pool that runs the length of Christian Science Plaza, I thought of Venice. I remember taking a photo of Santa Maria della Salute, a night shot, the basilica bouncing its reflection into the Grand Canal.

As if on cue, a boat shot by in the reflecting pool, looking like one of the speedboats that ply the Venice lagoon. A middle-aged man sitting cross-legged on the pavement that rims the reflecting pool was playing with his motorized model boat in the dark.

The Venice flashback dimmed when I turned to see the lights of Boston's tallest buildings glowing in the background. And the Venice image truly disappeared when I saw the plaza's fountain. Its jets are positioned so the sprays of water cross over each other, a feat engineered by my father-in-law, a blue collar Boston plumber, long retired.

My father-in-law was on the job installing the waterworks when the Christian Science Center was being built in the early '70s. (I wonder if he ever ran into I.M.Pei.) He and his crew were installing the fountain, its sprays designed to shoot straight. One morning a bigwig from the Christian Science Church went to inspect the fountain-in-progress and asked that the sprays be made to cross each other.

My father-in-law got some plywood blocks and jury rigged the nozzles. He crossed his fingers that his MacGyvering would make the sprays cross. They did, and they still do, all these years later.

Whenever we walk or drive by the fountain we tell the kids, "Your grandfather did that."

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Superlative Italy

A recent issue of Travel and Leisure magazine listed this winter's 10 "most searched" destinations on TravelandLeisure.com . They are, in descending order of popularity: Italy, Costa Rica, Paris, New Orleans, Puerto Rico, Maui, Las Vegas, Morocco, Palm Springs and Turks and Caicos. I've been to eight of the 10 (Maui and Turks, in case you're wondering) and agree that Italy belongs at the top of any traveler or potential traveler's list.

In my decades of travel I've often been asked, "What's your favorite place?" and for a long time I answered with, "I can't really pick a favorite. Every place has something unique and special about it, so it's impossible to choose one favorite."

Well, now that I'm older and have been around the block, er, world, a few times, I don't give that wishy-washy answer anymore. I know which places I'd return to -- and do -- time and again, given the opportunity, so those must be my favorites. And they are:

Favorite city: New York City
Favorite country: Italy
Favorite region: the European Mediterranean, from Portugal to Malta

Here, a photo gallery of some of my favorite places in my favorite country. The images, from left to right in each row, are of Burano; Venice, Lucca; Deiva Marina; Portofino, Varenna; Bellagio; Milan, Riomaggiore; Sirmione, Cadenabbia.












Italy is so extraordinarily beautiful, and the lifestyle so relaxed and accessible, that I'd wager Italy nabs the "most searched" destination on TravelandLeisure.com in spring, summer and fall, as well. It's a place for all seasons.



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Cure for the 14-minute shower

The current issue of The Atlantic is the magazine's annual "State of the Union Issue," and in it, along with a sobering piece by James Fallows titled "After the Crash: How America Can Rise Again," is a graphic, "The Nation in Numbers," that offers statistics quantifying America and Americans across a number of categories: Thrifty; Overextended; Admired: Suspicious; Twitchy; Fragmenting; Filthy; Clean. You can find an interactive version of the graphic, with additional categories, at www.theatlantic.com/2010map.

The stats are interesting -- some as sobering on a certain level as Fallows's article: in the Twitchy category, for example, we read that 50% of Americans check e-mail while driving and 11 is the number of minutes the average office worker works without interruption.

In the Clean category we read that an American woman's average shower lasts 14 minutes. (The American man's average ablution lasts for 12.)

I have a cure for these water-wasting indulgences: install token-operated shower timers in American bathrooms. Everybody will be in and out, scrubbed and squeaky, in three minutes. I know these gizmos work because I took all my showers during a 10-day stay in a Florence, Italy youth hostel under their strict control.

This was a long time ago, in my youthful shoestring days, but that Big Brotherized shower looms almost as large in my memories of Florence as the sublime view of the Duomo from the Piazzale Michelangelo (photo) and the magnificent glasses of hot, whipped milk -- latte caldo -- that I sipped each morning standing at the wooden bar of the caffe down the street from the hostel. I ordered latte caldo because it was cheaper than cappuccino, Italians' morning beverage of choice. As cappuccino is coffee infused with frothy, steamed milk, I was basically drinking cappuccino minus the coffee.

In the hostel, we were about 12 to a room, beds bunked, zero privacy. My friend Carol and I, on vacation from studies in Paris, lived there for more than a week, but most travelers stayed only a night or two. Thus we enjoyed and/or endured an eclectic mix of roomies from all over the world. I remember the Dutch best -- they dressed, men and women alike, in orange and scarlet and were partial to scarves.

We were all young, broke and dirty. Our clothes smelled like overnight trains. Hot showers and the opportunity to wash one's hair for real -- versus leaning into some sink, splashing the head and scratching soap into the scalp -- were few.

So the metered shower was a big deal. Each day before the front desk closed for the night we all made sure we had a shower token -- "jeton" was the lingua franca word: "You have your jeton?" Our jetons were treasure, and we kept them in our money belts.

Some showered in the morning, some at night, but all showers were three minutes. Each jeton granted three minutes of warm spray. You got in, furiously soaped and shampooed up, then hoped to be rinsed before the 10-second warning buzzer.

You can do a lot of self-cleaning in three minutes. In the time it takes one American woman to bliss out in the shower a full third of the residents of a dozen-man bunkroom in a European hostel are shined up and ready to go.

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The Ultimate Bird Lover

My story, "The Universal Language of Pigeon," has just been published in a new anthology by HCI Books. The Ultimate Bird Lover hits bookshelves, real and virtual, on February 1st.

My bird story is, of course, a travel story:

Arming your kids with corn and sending them into a flock of pigeons is a surefire way to connect with locals when you travel. Pigeons swoop, crowds gather, international relations ensue. You may not speak the locals’ language, but if they’ve got pigeons and you’ve got kids, you’ve got a lingua franca. Some of my family’s favorite travel memories involve pigeons. In cities all over the world we’ve used the birds to make connections with people.

Like the bevy of Italian models who interrupted a photo shoot in Venice’s Piazza San Marco to marvel at my then nine-year-old son, Adam, who, by throwing the corn straight up but not out, made the top of his head the site of multiple pigeon landings. The models called him “PEE-jin boy” and took pictures before giving him corn-throwing advice. Italians speak with their hands, and it was interesting to watch a half-dozen drop-dead gorgeous women mime effective grain-tossing techniques to a little boy. Nearby, our daughter, Dana, then six and already a skilled animal whisperer, had attracted her own fans. She laid a trail of corn and, by repeatedly cooing, “Yo, whitey, my man,” coaxed San Marco’s sole albino pigeon to walk a straight line, pecking each piece as he went, right into her hands.

The summer before he started school I took Adam to Bolivia. He liked the boat ride across Lake Titicaca and thought “Andy’s mountains” were cool. But what he most enjoyed was just hanging out in the capital, La Paz. He liked having his shoes shined by teenage boys who nodded earnestly while he explained the powers of the action figures he carried in his pockets, and he liked eating cotton candy in Plaza Murillo, a popular public space and heart of the city.

One sunny Sunday in the plaza, anchored by grand government buildings and a neo-classical cathedral, Adam spied a boy about his age sitting on a bench with his parents watching the pigeons gathered in the center of the square. We knew what to do.

I bought seven bags of corn from a vendor, gave Adam one, and sent him into the flock. He threw a handful into the air and the pigeons went loco, whirling to get the grain. As they swarmed around Adam’s feet, the little boy stood up and clapped. I called Adam over and gave him two bags of corn. He went to the boy and offered him one. Then they ventured, the little American in a Pokemon windbreaker and the little Bolivian in a sweatsuit of red, yellow and green, the colors of the Bolivian flag, into the middle of the plaza, where they threw corn, dodged dive-bombing pigeons and laughed together from the bottom of their bellies.

After four more bags of corn had been happily tossed and consumed, the boy ran to his parents’ bench and returned to Adam with a soccer ball. The parents motioned to me to join them and asked if Adam could play for a while.

While the new friends kicked the ball for an hour, the parents and I, mixing simple Spanish and English, talked about life in our respective countries and about the joys and challenges of raising a family. There was little difference between their experiences and hopes and my own.

And, looking at our sons, running and grinning and enjoying the day and each other, we knew there wasn’t much difference between them, either.



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Kids'-eye view of Europe

Dana and her friends enjoy camaraderie and a view of Venice.

Click here to read a story I wrote for the local paper about some of the high points of the kids' recent European adventure: cute gondoliers; rest areas with fresh fruit and pastry; never giving up on using Spanish with Austrians and Italians; and listening to "sick" chamber music in Mozart's hometown.



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Ecstasy in Vienna

Dana's been borrowing friends' cell phones to check in from Europe. (Generous friends. Their parents will probably kill them.) The day she landed, I got this email: "Hey its me on Marcis BlackBerry venice is amazing I'm good. Love you guys. Dana"

Well, she just called from Vienna: "Hey mom, guess what I just did? I went to the Spanish Riding School and saw the Lippizaners."

Seeing the world's most famous dressage horses in the world's most famous riding school was the primary goal of her European trip, so I'm delighted she pulled it off. She and a friend toured the barn, then got to hang out in the performance area for a bit. She was ecstatic.

We couldn't talk long, the conversation being conducted as it was on telephony that someone else was paying for, but as she was about to hang up, she said, "Wait! I have to tell you a funny story! We went to this amusement park (that would be the Prater...), and we all went on this ride called Ecstasy, and when we got off, we found out it's illegal in the United States! It was horrible! Everybody was throwing up all over the place!"

It's late in their trip, but I hope the kids still had some clean clothes left...

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Kids on the loose on the Lido

Dana left today for her school's April vacation trip to Italy, Austria and the Czech Republic. Sixty-five kids, 10 adult chaperones. First stop, Venice.
Dana's been to Venice before, but most of the kids have never been to Italy. Indeed, for many this is their first trip out of the country. I envy them their first ride down the glorious Grand Canal. It's an experience that stays with you forever.

The group is staying at the Hotel Riviera on the Venice Lido, across the lagoon from the city's ancient historic core. The hotel looks like a wonderful value for the money, and some of the rooms have views of the sea.

While Venice proper is where the guidebook and postcard sights are, Lido is, essentially, a beach resort. A playground.

Hmmm.... A beach resort playground for 65 American teenagers in Europe without their parents.
I'll be writing a story about the trip for the local newspaper. This headline idea springs to mind: "Lido: The Chaperones' Challenge."

(These photos? Non-Lido Venice.)
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Ten Commandments of Travel

In April Dana's heading to Europe with a group from her high school. About 40 kids (who, according to Dana, are all "getting wicked excited") and a half-dozen adult chaperones will take in Venice, Vienna, Prague and points in between.

I was talking to a few girls who are going on the trip and I said, "What an itinerary -- Italy, Austria and the Czech Republic."

One of them squinted her eyes at me and asked, "Czech Republic? Who's going to the Czech Republic?"

"You are, Sharone, you are! You're going to Prague, where some of the buildings wear funny hats. Prague's the capital of the Czech Republic."

"Wow! I'm going to the Czech Republic..."

The teacher who organizes these annual spring trips -- and who teaches advanced placement history -- will no doubt be glad that Sharone knows the name of the country she's in when she's in Prague. The trip, which requires that the kids do research on their destinations before they travel, is actually a mini-course that nets the travelers two credits on their high school transcripts.

In addition to learning geography, history and culture, the teacher hopes the students will learn something about and from the travel itself, and at a recent trip planning meeting she offered these "Ten Commandments of Travel:"

1. Thou shalt not expect to find things as thou hast them at home for thou hast left home to find things different.

2. Thou shalt not take anything too seriously, for a carefree mind is the beginning of fine traveling.

3. Thou shalt not let others get on thy nerves, for thou art paying good money to enjoy thyself. (I think this commandment should be amended to read, "... for thine parents art paying good money -- which they now have a lot less of than they did when thou signed up for this trip -- to let thee enjoy thyself.")

4. Remember to take only half the clothes thou thinks thou needs, and twice the money.

5. Know at all times where thy passport is, for a person without a passport is a person without a country.

6. Remember that if we had been expected to stay in one place we would have been created with roots.

7. Thou shalt not worry, for he that worrieth hath no pleasure, and few things are truly fatal.

8. When in Rome, be prepared to do somewhat as the Romans do -- same goes for Venice, Vienna and Prague.

9. Thou shalt not judge the people of a country by the one person who hast given thou trouble.

10. Remember thou art a guest in other lands, and he that treateth his host with respect will be honored.

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Milan: Lucky bull

If you caught my January 8 post, "Good luck charms: Washington's nose and llama fetuses," you know about my quest for lucky coins as I run my way through marathon training. I haven't brought home any heads-up currency since that post, but, as I've already nailed 25 of the needed 26 cents and still have two months of training left, I'm feeling pretty good.

The other day while on a run, I did stumble on a heads-up dime. Fantastic, I thought, as I reached down to pluck it up. It didn't pluck, stuck permanently as it was in the road tar. A paving worker must have dropped it during pothole repairs, or maybe a kid on a bike dropped it into softened tar on a really hot day. Now it's a permament piece of the street.

But it's 10 whole cents, and it's heads up, too lucky an omen not to take advantage of, so whenever I run the route that takes me over that dime I stop for a second and rub my sneaker into FDR's tiny, spectacle-free face. A little twist, and I'm off again.

A similar ritual is repeated hundreds of times daily in Milan's mid-19th-century Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, a soaring glass and wrought iron arcade that's arguably the world's most elegant shopping mall.

Under the galleria's great glass dome is a mosaic of a bull, the symbol of Turin. Legend has it that spinning a few times on the bull's nether regions brings good luck. You feel a bit ridiculous standing there if the bull is occupied, trying to act nonchalant and not at all interested in jumping on the bull's jewels as soon as the current luck-seeker has vacated, but everybody does it, milling around waiting for their turn.

And it's not just tourists who twirl on toro's testicles.

Milanese, like everybody else I guess, take good fortune wherever they can find it, and, as they dash through the Galleria on their way to work or appointments or La Scala opera house adjacent to the arcade, many of them make a beeline right over the mosaic and perform an almost imperceptible heel or toe twist atop the bull's privates as they're walking. And they don't even look down -- they know exactly where those lucky bollocks are.

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A Cheesy Bailout

These days, there are bailouts everywhere, Italy included. While we're bailing out banks and insurers and, maybe, companies that make cars nobody wants to buy, Italy is bailing out northern Italian cheesemakers.

Thank goodness. The world would be a far less tasty place without the cheeses made in the Parma region.

Small cheesemakers in the region are struggling financially, so the Italian government is spending $65 million to buy up 200,000 wheels of Parmigiano-Reggiano -- the real stuff; you can't call it Parmesan if it doesn't come from Parma. The cheese will be donated to charity. Said Italy's agriculture minister, "There was a need for market intervention."Parma is a feast, for the eyes and the palate. When we were done gorging on the city's Renaissance architecture, which includes an 11th-century cathedral with a dome and frescoes by Correggio and an eye-popping octagonal baptistry of polished pink marble, we ambled down the Via Cavour in the heart of old Parma and settled in at the Al Corsaro restaurant.

The kids wolfed down the Corsaro's signature pizza, and Mike and I had pasta dishes. We took our first forkfuls and looked at each other across the table. Our mouths could not believe what our taste buds were telling us. The food was sublime. It was perfection. It was all about the cheese.

This is one bailout I fully support.

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Castles

Castles are magical; far more powerful and intriguing than palaces. I've seen hundreds, in North Africa, the Middle East and, of course, Europe. Some countries, like Scotland and Wales, are so full of castles that a several-hour road trip between two points can easily yield a half-dozen or more. Often, you have the whole castle to yourself -- there's no ticket window, no caretaker, no visitors. You park your car, walk up to the ruin, find an opening and go inside. It's just you, the stones and the ghosts.

Here, castles in Bellinzona, Switzerland; Caernarvon, Wales; Sion, Switzerland; the view from my hotel room in Sirmione, Italy:

The Five Lands: Italy's Cinque Terre

On a wild and rocky stretch of the Italian Riviera sit the Cinque Terre, or Five Lands, a chain of stunning, ancient towns. Collectively a UNESCO World Heritage site, the Cinque Terre region is a truly special destination.

It takes some time and effort to reach the towns of the Cinque Terre -- Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore -- which heightens their magic and mystique. If you find yourself anywhere between Genoa and Rome, make the detour.

You can reach the lands by boat, train, car or foot. We drove a high coastal road (ignore the guidebooks that tell you the road is an impassable bad idea) between the lands and ventured down to visit Vernazza and Riomaggiore (photo), both stunners.

For the ultimate Cinque Terre experience, hike the high footpath that links the lands. It's a five-hour walk, but figure on doubling that so you can enjoy at least an hour in each town. Better yet, book a hotel in one of them and watch a Cinque Terre sunset and sunrise, with a lemony Riviera moon sandwiched in between.

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Losing your marbles: The Parthenon and beyond

Warning: Reading this post may make your brain explode. (If it doesn't, I guarantee you'll enjoy this post from 2005: "Has Charles Veley Been to the State of Chuuk?")

Athens' new Acropolis Museum, scheduled to fully open in September, has a rectangular, glass-walled gallery with a view of the nearby Parthenon. The old Acropolis museum, a narrow, cramped affair that managed, despite itself, to stun visitors with its rich collection of Greek antiquities, may, it's rumored, be turned into a coffee shop. The old museum's holdings, along with breathtaking artifacts from the Acropolis and other Greek sites, have been moved into the new venue.

Key among the new museum's exhibits will be the frieze that once adorned the Parthenon. A room was built to hold it. The rub, of course, is that Greece only owns a few pieces of the frieze.

Most of the pieces -- the marbles -- live in London in the British Museum, which bought them from the British government, which bought them from Thomas Bruce, the 7th earl of Elgin, who took them from the Acropolis in 1801 and shipped them off to England. Lord Elgin, serving as ambassador to Constantinople, had the sultan's permission to slice the frieze into pieces and remove it from then Ottoman-controlled Greece.

Greece would like the Elgin Marbles, which it calls the Parthenon Marbles, back, and the frieze gallery at the new museum is designed to be more than an artistic display; it's a plea for repatriation of priceless pieces of patrimony. The reconstructed frieze will consist of the few original pieces still in Greece's possession interspersed with reproductions of the pieces Elgin took. These lost marbles will be covered in netting, yielding, it's hoped, a powerful visual statement about the cultural crime Greece feels has been committed.

Should the British Museum give the Marbles back?

Loaded question leading to a web of loaded questions. Museums large and small, of all types, all over the world, have stuff that came from somewhere else. So...

If the British Museum gives the Marbles back, should other museums give stuff back, too?

Which museums should give stuff back? Some museums? All museums? Big museums? Small museums?

Which stuff should they give back? Big stuff? Small stuff? Some stuff? All stuff?

To whom should they give it back? To other museums? To countries? What if the countries aren't countries anymore? (Think Mesopotamia and Babylon.)

Should method of acquisition matter in the give-it-back-or-not determination? Museums acquire through purchase or donation, but how did whoever sold or donated get the piece in the first place? And what about absolute provenance -- how an object came to be removed from its true source? Removing outright theft, tomb-raiding, smuggling and other overtly illegal and illicit activity from the equation -- pieces thus acquired should clearly be returned -- what in a piece's bloodline -- from war, conquest and colonialism, to commerce and trade, to excavation and archaeology, both accidental and intentional, whether by amateur hacks or skilled scientists --should or might mark a piece for repatriation?

Should there be an international marble quid pro quo, a supervised global game of marble trading wherein museums -- or countries, universities, foundations, families...-- that get marbles back have to then return marbles they've held, sometimes for centuries, that came from somewhere else?

Imagine trucks and trains and ships and planes loaded with statues and stelae, paintings and pottery, sculpture and sarcophogi, crisscrossing the globe, the transported objects taking each others' places in cases and galleries and on shelves and pedestals. Eventually, if you imagine an endgame in which every item ever removed by any means from its original in situ state finds its way through this great marble trade back to where it was created, every museum in the world would end up being a homogeneous warehouse of stuff from just its own little corner of the world. To see gold and lapis Egyptian death masks, you'd have to go to Egypt. A peek at sublime Tang Dynasty terra cotta figurines would require a ticket to China. To ogle Aztec headdresses, you'd need to book a flight to Mexico. After returning pieces to the places they were born, institutions like the Louvre and the Met could consolidate their remaining holdings into a few rooms and rent out the rest of their space for other uses. Gaze at a Goya then head down the hall for a few strings at the Prado Bowladrome?

Who's got other people's marbles? Nearly everybody. (But not, it seems, the Egyptians or Greeks. Their marbles fit pretty justifiably into some aspect, phase, layer, race or period in their long, complex histories. They've got so many marbles of their own that they've never needed to take anyone else's.)

You can find other people's marbles all over the world.

One day a few years ago, Adam and I followed our guide to the summit of ancient Pergamum (Pergamom, Pergamon), a glorious citadel-ruin that rises above the modern city of Bergama, Turkey. We came to a large, pedestal-like structure shaded by a few hearty trees that grew in its empty center. "There's not much here now," said our guide of the stripped platform. "The great Altar of Zeus was here, but the Germans took it to Berlin." Indeed, the star attraction and raison d'etre of Berlin's Pergamom Museum is the massive Zeus Altar excavated by engineer Carl Humann during the building of a rail line and sent, in pieces, to Berlin, where it was reassembled.

If Germany gave the Zeus Altar back to Turkey, would Turkey consider giving some of the goodies it's been holding back to Egypt and other places? Istanbul's Archaeological Museum houses artifacts "discovered" in Cyprus, Palestine, the Arab world and ancient Mesopotamia. It has a collection of sarcophogi found at Sidon, in ancient Syria, and owns mosaic panels from Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar's Ishtar Gate. And, piercing the sky near the minarets of Istanbul's sublime Blue Mosque is a 16th-century BC Egyptian obelisk from the temple of Luxor that was appropriated and replanted by Byzantine emperor Theodosius in 390 AD. There are only 28 Egyptian obelisks left in the world -- only a few in Egypt. (New York has one, Italy has about a dozen...)

If the give-me-back-my-marbles game really took hold, Italy would be mighty busy. It would be on the receiving end of countless Roman, Etruscan and other treasures from museums and venues worldwide. And, it would have some items it might consider shipping back to their places of origin.

Even the Vatican has marbles. (I know, Vatican City is not politically Italy, but if you've ever stood in line in the hot sun to see the Sistine Chapel then, after contemplating the masterwork, sought relief at the gelato shop next door, which sits in Italy, the Vatican is in Rome.) The Vatican's Egyptian Museum holds items won by conquest: the Roman Empire was one heck of a far-reaching enterprise. But if conquest-gotten gains count in the you-should-really-return-this column, the Vatican might have to part with seals from Mesopotamia (we'd better shore up and secure the Baghdad Museum) and bas-reliefs from Assyria, which spans today's Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq.

And Venice has marbles. Those four bronze horses over the portal of the Basilica of San Marco? They once adorned an arch that the Romans built in Constantinople (today's Istanbul). And the Romans allegedly nabbed the equine arch decorations from Greece...

Should Greece get its frieze back from England?

I've lost more than a few marbles just thinking about it.

LoriHein.com

A villa rental for every budget

Every so often I post a story that sparks more than the usual number of emails. Italian Idyll was one of those.

Some wrote to say they enjoyed the story or photograph, but others wrote to ask the name and location of the rental apartment in Moneglia, Italy, where the story took place.

Here’s my response to one reader:

"Our apartment in Moneglia was at the complex called "Le Residence Marine." We rented through Interhome, an outfit we've dealt with a few times, with great success. (It's fun just to cruise their website and dream...). Be advised that it's a steep drive up a small road to get to the complex, and it's a steep walk down a cliff path to get to the sea, where there's no sand, but you can lounge around on rocks. The sandy beach is in the town proper -- a healthy downhill walk, or a car ride.

I searched for the property and found the complex listed, but not the exact apartment we rented. The current Interhome listing has photos of the building, but describes a smaller apartment than the one we had. (Ours was two floors, and was the front-most apartment on the right side of the right-most building, if you were standing behind the complex and facing toward the sea. We had a huge terrace.) I don't know whether that particular apartment is still rentable or not, but again, Interhome does list Le Residence Marine, but not the unit we rented.

I also found the complex -- again, with smaller apartments than the one we rented -- through the Danish villa rental site, Sol og strand (Sologstrand).

Other gorgeous areas to check out for villa rentals on the Italian coast in or near Liguria (the region Moneglia is in) are in the Cinque Terre region, Santa Margherita de Ligure, Rapallo, Portofino. The coast from the French border at Ventimiglia all the way down to, say, La Spezia, brims with gorgeous seaside towns.

I can highly recommend Interhome. Their prices are fair, and all our rentals have come off without a hitch.

You can also cruise Vacation Rentals By Owner (VRBO) at www.vrbo.com . My sister just rented a place in France through them, and it works well. You deal directly with the property owner. Other reputable villa rental outfits I know of include www.RentVillas.com , www.RentaVilla.com , and www.Cuendet.com . "

A vacation rental is within most travelers’ reach, but I think the pricey-sounding word "villa" prevents many from considering the option.

Let’s banish the word "villa" to the precious pages of Conde Nast and similar publications. Instead, think apartment, cottage, flat, bungalow, rowhouse, townhouse, loft, cabin...

Renting and living for a week or so in a neighborhood lets you move to the rhythm of real life in that community. More than a tourist, you become a resident, albeit a temporary one. You see, feel, hear and experience things that hotel-stayers miss, and your journey takes place at a deeper, richer level. The place you live in for that while and the people you share it with become a forever part of you. Very few hotel stays have that kind of impact.

Cruise the websites and catalogs of vacation rental brokers. Perhaps you’ll find a studio apartment on a side canal in Venice where, for a few hundred dollars a week in the misty off-season, you can live and move to the ebb and flow of that special place.

Here are a few tips for getting a bigger bang for your vacation rental buck (I’m assuming Europe is your destination):

– Avoid July and August, the height of high season. If you must have warm weather, consider May, June, September and October. (Pull the kids out of school to do it? Heck, yeah!)

– Travel off-season. Places are still beautiful and interesting when it’s cool, cold, snowy or rainy. And they’re cheap – to get to and to stay in. Some of my most memorable trips have been in the height of low season: Scotland and Iceland in February; Ireland in the wet month of April, Germany in cold December, southern Portugal and Barcelona in January. Wondrous trips, all.

– Rent city apartments in neighborhoods that require a walk or bus or subway ride to the action of center city.

– If you’re in a sea or beach resort area, rent waterview instead of waterfront. Cheaper still, forego the view entirely and walk to the water to get your fix.

– Rent with others. We rented a three-bedroom, waterview apartment in Nerja, Spain with my parents. The October weekly rent was $1,000. As there were four of us and two of them, we took 2/3 of the bedrooms and paid 2/3 of the price – $675 for seven nights for two bedrooms, a kitchen, living room, dining room and magnificent patio. My parents paid $325 for their week in paradise. We spent the week drinking wine and laughing at and toasting our good fortune.

– Rent in the outskirts. Rome is great, but you can get to Rome by public transportation from countless nearby towns and villages whose rentals don’t carry Rome’s prices. Immerse yourself in the simple, quiet life of a place that’s near a big draw destination and make day trips to the big draw. You’ll save big bucks.

– Rent from the Brits. They’ve been the world’s most intrepid and indefatigable travelers for centuries, and they’re at home, literally, on foreign soil. Britons own and rent real estate all over Europe, and if you rent directly from them, you cut out the middleman fee. Typing words like "holiday flats," "holiday rentals," "vacation cottages," "vacation apartments to let," and the like into a search engine will likely yield a few UK sites where you deal directly with the property owners.

Happy hunting. There’s a house key out there with your name on it.

www.LoriHein.com

Roman holiday: The ides of March

To mark the ides of March (and to give me a holiday from having to writing a whole travel story), here's a small gallery of images from the Caesars' and Emperors' Rome: The Colosseum , Arch of Constantine, the Forum , and the sublime Pantheon with its spectacular oculus. (Beware the oculus in a rainstorm. It's open to the heavens, and you'll get wet.)

Happiness guarantee