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IDEAS Homes for Vacation & Long-Term Rentals

Made With

These are my writings and photos during 3 month trips taken by my wife, Marcia, and I every other year starting in 1997.

The goal was to spend 3 months in primarily one country on each trip to learn as much as we could about the people, culture, history, language, food, art and heritage of that country.

On our first trip in 1997, instead of sending postcards, I decided it would be quicker to write a diary of where we had been and what we had seen and experienced and send it by email. Being in Italy, I called them "diarios." Since I was also reading about the history and culture of the people, I flavored it with some of that. Then I started adding pictures with the email.

but more specifically for Marcia's mother (Eleanor Wasgatt) in Rockland, Maine (who had never been to Europe)

Soon relatives, friends and colleagues asked me to include them in the email list which kept growing. A problem arose in 2001 when AOL began considering me a spammer because of the number and frequency of the emails I was sending. AOL shut me down 3 separate times requiring calls to the US to turn it back on. The 4th time, they closed my AOL account. Exasperated after the 2001 trip, Vince Daukis (photo right) was kind enough to agree to disperse the emails through his IBM account allowing me to only have to send the one email to him through AOL.

After doing this for the whole 2003 trip, Vince has persuaded me and helped me set up this website, suggesting that people would find it easier just go to the website to read the Diario and see the photos.

Our 1997 trip wasn't really our first to Europe; but our second (and my third). After we were married in Rockland, ME on May 30, 1970, our honeymoon was a flight to Frankfurt to Ljubljana (Slovenia) and ending in Belgrade (Serbia), Yugoslavia. We rented a Japanese car and drove to Budapest, Hungary [my paternal grandparents were both born there] and while toasting with glasses of Tokay wine on the banks of the Danube, we promised each other that if we lasted for 25 years we would return here for our wedding anniversary. Over the ensuing two week trip, we drove to Lake Balaton (Hungary), Zagreb, Split, Zadar and Dubrovnik (Croatia), to Sarajevo and Mostar (Bosnia-Herzegovina) and back to Belgrade. Both countries were communist but Hungary was much more severe, since Tito made Yugoslavia less restrictive. Needless to say we didn't get back for our 25th anniversary but in the middle of our 1997 Italy trip we drove to Budapest and did celebrate our 27th anniversary there. When we checked into our hotel on May 30th, they did not have anything but twin beds. When I told them our story, the Marriot staff put us into the Presidential Suite (for one night only) and sent us up a bottle of champagne. It was quite an experience.

In November of 1974, I had been asked to give my first public lecture on IOL power calculation. To gain credibility regarding my subject, I felt I needed to visit the ophthalmologists in Europe who originated these techniques. Marcia was 8 months pregnant with Jeffrey and she was not allowed to fly, so an optician named Walter Fadden wanted to accompany me since he had never been outside the US. We flew LA to Amsterdam and spent 2 days there. We rented a car and drove to Groningen to visit Dr. Jan Worst and to Terneuzen to visit Dr. Cornelius Binkhorst. We then went to Muenster, Germany to see Dr. Herman Gernet. We then decided to drive to the Brussels airport and fly to Zurich, Switzerland and then on to Rome. The flight over the Alps was grueling and on arrival I had a horrible earache and was treated by a hotel doctor. We toured the sites and visited the Vatican. Our greatest experience was the fettuccini Alfredo at Alfredo's Originale. We flew back to Brussels and drove back to Amsterdam for our return flight home. When I returned, I decided to give up flying for awhile and later discovered my love of taking Amtrak for all my long distance trips. Not flying gave me a good excuse not to have to accede to every request made to me to lecture around the country and around the world. I was home watching my kids grow up for the next 23 years.