froboy

i’m leaving tomorrow morning for my very first trip to normandy, france, to visit the fighting ground and memorials to all the brave allied servicemen who gave their lives for freedom on D Day, 06 June 1944. we’re taking the bus-ferry-bus there and will have guided tours most of the time. in preparation for the trip, we all chose an aspect of the D Day assault, gave briefs, and wrote short papers on it. i covered part of the remarkable, US Army Ranger attack on the 100 foot cliffs of pointe du hoc. i had known nothing about this part of the D Day assault. omaha beach seems to overshadow most everything else. if interested in learning more, this Army site covers it in much detail and i built my brief mostly off it and the cornelius ryan novel, the longest day. i rented the dvd version of the movie based on the novel and it holds up well considering it was made in 1962 and is fairly bloodless by saving private ryan standards. star studded cast too. roddy mcdowell’s best work before his groundbreaking turn as cornelius in planet of the apes. you thought it was a stretch, him playing an ape….in this one, he plays an american serviceman. if you blink, you’ll miss him though.

speaking of metro systems, having just spent some time in roma on the metropolitana let me diss how weak the eternal city’s underground is: aged, filthy, seemingly built on-the-cheap, and limited connectivity with (count’em) two lines in service … pretty lame for a so-called world capital, considering the incredible systems of madrid and barcelona. granted you can only add so many lines and maybe those buried ruins mess things up, but these things should like sports arenas; you should more-or-less replace these things (i.e. cars, station interiors/facilities) every 20 years or so take advantage of modern technology/ammenities (let’s start with air filter systems and freon, amici!). i will say i was pleasantly surprised to find this map showing a new, third line in the works which will actually stop in san pietro (cipro & ottaviano are still hikes/unecessary pennances) as well as get you closer to some cool stuff (around pza navona, pantheon) than barberini currently does.

normally, i’d be bitchin about the weather we had while on the beautiful, volcanic island of santorini in the aegean (clouds and rain three out of four days). but it was so gorgeous regardless of the weather, i won’t. there’s really no place like it. we were lucky in that all but one day cleared out enough at dusk that we were able to experience some of its famous and amazing sunsets. we also had a great little apartment at the highest point on the lip of the caldera (in the town of imerovigli) with a spectacular view. yes, fro-boy was there and sportin the colors. to the other side of mainland greece next - the much greener, ionian island of kerkira (corfu).