During August 1999 I visited:
1. Venice for a few days;
2. Paris, Strasbourg, Stuttgart, Tubingen and Mannheim (and environs) for ten days;
3. Pisa, Sienna, San Gimignano and Volterra (all in Tuscany, Italy) for a week.
Highlights included witnessing the full totality of the solar eclipse in northern France; standing in awe before German abstract expressionist paintings in Mannheim; visiting the modern art gallery in Stuttgart, the Picasso gallery and the Monet exhibition in Paris, and the Peggy Guggenheim gallery in Venice; visiting the places of Herman Hesse's childhood and early adult life in the Black Forest; seeing medieval frescoes of the Day of Judgement in the Camposanto (a mausoleum) in Pisa, beside the famous Leaning Tower; examining marvellous mosaic pavements in the Cathedral at Sienna, a few days after the Palio (a famous horse-race around the central piazza); riding a vaporetto (water-bus) down the Grand Canal in Venice, moonlight reflecting off the water; drinking a late evening sambucca in a medieval piazza in San Gimignano; swimming at dawn, before sunrise, in an open air swimming pool, with only the distant sound of cockerels crowing from the surrounding Tuscan hillsides.
Low-spots included visiting Disneyland, Paris (which I hated without reservation); looking forward to swimming in a pool in Mannheim, only to find that pool was too cold, and then it started to rain heavily; standing in line for 30 minutes in an airline security queue 15 minutes after the scheduled departure time; being served non-vegan food in an expensive Italian restaurant having tried to make it very clear what was and was not required ("Non posso mangiare formaggio."); sitting for hours in traffic jams while trying to head north out of Paris on the morning of the solar eclipse; the airliner approaching Pisa plummeting about 500 feet due to turbulence within heavy cloud, everyone wondering whether the aircraft was about to crash, and then needing to carry a sick-bag around with me for the next few hours; waiting for hours in Poggibonsi for a bus that never arrived.
Over the past month I have driven about 4,000 miles; flown about 4,000 miles; ascended and descended the Eiffel Tower in Paris (the lift jammed, and scared my partner badly), a huge CN Tower-like structure in Stuttgart, and the Campanile in San Gimignano; visited seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites (Paris, Strasbourg, Maulbronn Monastery, Venice, Pisa, San Gimignano, Sienna); drunk more bottles of Schwabian beer, cans of very strong Amsterdam ale (mostly in Paris) and Italian Chianti wine than it would be polite to remember; eaten at least a dozen full-size pizzas; slept in eight different beds; and shot two and a half cassettes of camcorder tape.
In case the above sounds uncharacteristic, over the past fifteen months I have visited Eire, France (2x), Belgium (2x), Netherlands (2x), Germany, Italy (3x), Monaco and Spain.
I am now working on trips to visit five more UNESCO World Heritage Sites:
1. West Yorkshire (Museum of Television and Film, Bradford; Hockney gallery, Saltaire);
2 Giant's Causeway in County Antrim, Northern Ireland (UNESCO WHS);
3. the Scilly Isles, off Cornwall, and the Tate Gallery, St Ives, Cornwall, UK;
4. the Channel Isles (Jersey and Guernsey), UK;
5. Carcassonne, a medieval town in central France (UNESCO WHS);
6. Berlin / Potsdam in Germany (UNESCO WHS);
7. Lisbon in Portugal (UNESCO WHS);
8. Madrid in Spain (UNESCO WHS).
I should also like to return soon to:
1. Barcelona, Granada, Cordoba and Seville in Spain;
2. Venice, Rome and the Aolian Islands (off the north coast of Sicily) in Italy;
3. Paris, Reims, Rouen, Chartres and Giverny (Monet's gardens) in France;
4. Monte Carlo in Monaco;
5. Amsterdam in the Netherlands;
6. Bruges and Ghent in Belgium;
7. the Tate Gallery, London, UK;
8. the Isle of Wight, Hampshire, UK;
9. Chester, Cheshire and the Tate Gallery, Liverpool, UK
10. North of England Sculpture Park, Wakefield, Yorkshire, UK;
11. Ottawa, Toronto, Lake Louise, Vancouver and Victoria in Canada.
My mid- to long-term term goals include:
1. St Petersburg and Moscow in Russia;
2. Hanover in Germany;
3. Vaduz in Liechtenstein (large collection of German expressionist paintings)
4. Florence and Pompeii in mainland Italy, Bagheria in Sicily and north-east coast of Sardinia;
5. the Acropolis in Athens, Greece;
6. Malta, Crete, Rhodes and Cyprus in the Mediterranean;
7. Istanbul in Turkey;
8. Petra in Syria
9. Jerusalem and the Dead Sea in Israel;
10. the Pyramids, Sphinx, etc., and the Red Sea in Egypt;
11. Dubai in the United Arab Emirates;
12. Muscat and Sur in Oman;
13. the Rub-al-Khali desert in Saudi Arabia;
14. Marrakech and Agadir in Morocco;
15. the Great Rift Valley, Kilimanjaro and the Serengeti in Tanzania;
16. Goa, the Taj Mahal and Srinagar (Kashmir) in India;
17. Kathmandu and Everest in Nepal;
18. Bali and Java in Indonesia;
19. the Great Barrier Reef and Ayer's Rock in Australia;
20. Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and the Great Wall in China;
21. Tokyo and Kyoto in Japan;
22. the Kamchatka peninsula (land of ice and fire) in Russia;
23. whale-watching in Prince Rupert Sound, British Columbia, Canada;
24. San Francisco, the Grand Canyon and Yosemite National Park, USA;
25. the West Indies, e.g. Barbados, Jamaica;
26. Popacatapetl in Mexico;
27. the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador;
28. Pitcairn Island and Easter Island in the South Pacific;
29. the Peruvian Andes;
30. Florida, New York and Boston in the United States;
31. sailing the St Lawrence from Niagara Falls to the Atlantic, Canada/USA;
32. Reykjavik, Iceland.
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