Sunday, July 19 … arriving at my parents’ house in Cranford for lasagna dinner at 5 pm.  Jim Lenney (my choirmaster) and Jamie Pulliam (his partner) stop by the house when they see Bryan coming back from the Dreyer’s Farm around the corner.  This is lucky coincidence as we had planned to visit them before we left, but time was running short.

At Newark airport (EWR) from 7-8 pm, we rest in the President’s Club at Continental with martinis while I stress over the trip (no surprise there).  Between 8 and 9 pm, we roast in the airplane awaiting flight clearance; from 9 pm Eastern Daylight Time to 9 am Madrid time, we’re in the airplane.

The movie is the very bad “Man in the Iron Mask” with Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich, Gerard Depardieu and a poorly performing Leonardo diCaprio.  Some redeeming points, but not many!  And Bryan sleeps most of the way anyway.

Monday, July 20, we arrive at Madrid Airport around 11 am and grab a taxi to the hotel.  From noon to 3 pm, we walk around the area and grab some lunch at Cafeteria Escobar.  Our first language barrier … we have “vegetable baguettes” but it contains tomatoes (technically a fruit) and sliced hard-boiled eggs (not only not a vegetable, but not exactly a favorite of mine!).  Oh, well, the bread’s good!

Then we walk around the area surrounding the Metro Chueko stop, the gay area, although we don’t find much during the day.

Back to our hotel, the Tryp (a major chain there) Ambassador Hotel on Cuesta Santa Domingo; a quite nice and large room and very nice hotel.  At this point, let me compliment Bob McGowan at Turner World Travel in Westfield, NJ who did most of the major planning for this trip.  Great hotels, great advice … thanks Bob!!!

From their web site:  The Hotel Tryp Ambassador is a four star hotel opened in 1990.  This four floor hotel is housed in what was once the Granada Ducal Palace and maintains its original structure.  It is situated in the historical center of Madrid, very close to the Teatro de la Opera, the Royal Place, the Senate and the Gran Via.  The hotel has its own "El Invernaderothr" restaurant with terrace, serving excellent cuisine, and a bar.  The 181 rooms are all equipped with private bathroom, air conditioning, satellite TV, mini-bar, telephone, piped music, safety deposit box and security doors.

The majestic capitol of Spain has impressive buildings, lots of sightseeing, and a truly wild gay concentrated mainly in the area around the metro station Chueca, or if you look at the map, you will see that most of the gay bars are walking distance from there.  Expect a wild time in Madrid.  You can do your sightseeing during the morning, perhaps spend the afternoon at a gay sauna, then move on to the cafes in the early evening and at around 9 pm choose one of the many restaurants in the gay village for an inexpensive but delicious meal.  The gay bars start getting lively around midnight, discos fill up around 3 and then stay packed all night.

First it’s past the Palacio Real (just beautiful) and the Opera, checking out Tiempos Modernos, a great Art Deco store near the Plaza de la Encarnacion, and a stroll around the Plaza Mayor for beer and wine at an outside café.

Dinner is at Casa Gallega (showcasing the regional cuisine of that town); it’s located at Plaza San Miguel, 8 and opened in 1915.  With some fine red sangria, Bryan has a creamy shrimp cocktail (in Europe, it’s always small shrimp in some sort of cream sauce – in this case it tastes like Thousand Island) and grilled salmon, I have tasty mussels and then hake (a large fish) in an oily tomato sauce with whole tomatoes.  Then  for dessert, it’s quiemadas [forgive me if I'm mis-spelling it and please write me], a flamed mixture of grappa, coffee, lemon and sugar.  Very powerful!  And all for 6100 pesatas (about $40).

We’re back in the hotel  by 1 am.  But do we go to sleep?  Oh, no!  We’re off, first to Rick’s at Calle Infantas 26/Clavel (yes, it’s modeled after Casablanca but looks more like a fancy version of Dick’s Bar), then stick our heads in Topxi (and right out), then the New Leather Bar at Calle Pelaya 42 (a very small upstairs, we didn’t check out the dark room downstairs).  There we meet Juan who works in the movie industry and just got back from Cannes.  A very nice man, and great English; he offers to walk us to the Strong Center at Calle Trujillos 7, near the hotel.  There we find the Madrid scene … at 4 am!  Then it’s bedtime by 6 am.

Tuesday, July 21, wake up at 11 am.  By noon, we have lunch at Opera Pizza Slice (“Autentico, Sabor Artesano!) where I have a wonderful Baguette-Jamon Serrano (basically prosciutto and cheese) and Bryan a Vegetal (this time like a pizza) and two beers.

Then to the tabac (tobacco store) where we buy packs of Fortuna cigarettes.  I figure since I’m in Europe I’ll take advantage of it and smoke, and quit again when I return.  We buy some beautiful violet pastilles for Michelle at La Oriental, nicely packaged in a pretty purple box tied with straw.  For only a little over two bucks, I can’t imagine how they make any money on it.

At 1 pm, we walk down Gran Via until we get to the Museo Prado where they have lots of Spanish paintings (imagine that!) - in truth, a lot of Goya and Valezquez (plus some H. Bosch).  Almost too much!  Outside the museum, we buy our one piece of art, a small print of a door on a shoe store (a “Zapateria”), for Bryan’s boss, Michelle, who not only likes shoes but collects pictures of doors; plus two t-shirts with drawings in the style of Keith Haring for us.

Unfortunately, the museum we did want to see, the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Queen Sophia) is closed on Tuesday so we couldn’t see their exhibit on Spanish industrial design from 1950 to the 80s.  But we do see the building, a very old one now outfitted with glass elevators on the outside; that type of clash could fail miserably but works here.

Then we take the Metro subway back (very easy and clean) and have small sandwiches at Rodilla at Calle Preciados, 25.  For about 1,000 pesatas (less than $7) we get about six small white bread (with the crust cut off) sandwiches, most are of the salad types (tuna, egg, even a pink-colored salami) with Coke and Coke Light (which we find is Diet Coke in Europe).

From 6-8 pm, we nap, and then Fernando and his wife arrive around 9. He’s grown up to be quite the handsome man as you can see from this picture of me with him and his wife.  While we walk to a tapas bar, Galera, near the Puerta del Sol, we pass by a famous Spanish movie director with a popular tv talk show host (sorry, I didn’t find out their names).  At the restaurant we have great (if too much) food including a sausages/potato/chili dish, a torilla (omelet in Spain), ham, salmon and two pitchers of sangria.

However, at the end of dinner, when I want to pay, I find my passport and all my credit cards gone.  I’ve been pick-pocketed!  Yes, yes, I know; it was in the front pocket of my blazer.  Mea culpa .  After a walk back to the hotel (stopping for ice cream – hey, some things are important), we’re in our room by 12:30.  And then it’s two hours of wasted time trying to sort everything out before literally crashing at 2:30 am.

Here’s the important things you want to know in this instance.  The American Embassy was wonderful.  They told me to arrive first thing in the morning and they had a new passport in my hands in an hour.  I was prescient and had photo-copied mine which made it go quickly and smoothly.  Remember to do that.

I had the same experience with American Express who had my card awaiting me at their offices in Madrid.

But my four MasterCard/Visa cards?  Forget about it!  I spent almost two hours just trying to cancel them.  And there was no way they could get me a new one for a couple of days at least.  So unless you’re planning to stay in the same place, leave them at home.

Except for Milan, I found that all ATM’s took American Express; and you’re ATM card will work there as well.

Wednesday, July 22.  We’re up at 7 am, but there’s no time to have breakfast with Juan as we had planned.  Instead, we check out and proceed to get the new passport and American Express card.

At 10:30, we go to the Aeroporto and after quick baguettes we board our Iberia Boeing 727 and leave twenty minutes late for Bilbao.  But at least we made it!  At 1:30 pm, we arrive in Bilbao; this is Basque country - very pretty yet sparse scenery.

Our first impression is that Bilbao is very industrial, like Detroit put into Wyoming, but the area of town near the Guggenheim is getting better, and the riverfront is quite lovely.  Our hotel is the NH Villa de Bilboa, Gran Via 87, Bilboa 48011 Spain; a new and very functional hotel.

At 2:30, we go to the Guggenheim Museum itself; this was the main reason for the trip after all, as we are both members of the NY branch.  Architect Frank Gehry has built a huge space, probably three or four times the size of the one in NYC.

As for the main exhibit, China 5000 has more than we expect and the 20th Century Chinese art is really something; plus there’s the famous terra cotta army.  The other galleries show the strength of the museum’s modern (and particularly pop) art collection:  Gilbert + George, a Bill Viola video installation, Jenny Holzer word art (very impressive), Jeffrey Koon’s “Puppy” (outside, three stories tall, constructed of flowers like a Rose Parade float), Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenberg’s motorized knife, a Richard Serra, an Andy Warhol Mao and Marilyn Monroe, and an exhibit of late 50s Helen Frankenthaler.

We buy t-shirts (it’s my plan to buy a white one in every city we visit); this one is about $18 – the one in Madrid was only $5!

Back at the hotel by 6 pm and check in with my secretary, Sophia, about my credit cards and then take a nap until 8 pm.  Continuing the MasterCard/Visa saga, they will only allow her to cancel the cards, not allow them to be sent to my home.  If she had a man’s voice, they never would have objected since she had all my information.  How silly!

By 9 pm, we head off to the gay area in old Bilbao, a small warren of alleyways.  We find the Spartacus guide to be completely out of date here (e.g., a restaurant on Santa Maria is now “Celtics” – yes, an Irish bar) and the bars are either changed or closed.

Finally, we see obviously gay people (and a rainbow flag over the bar) at Bizitza on Calle La Torre.  We have two vodkas (we find no Ketel One on our trip) and listen to lesbian music.  Our bleached blond barmaid with pierced tongue speaks decent English and points out Kasko, a restaurant/bar back on Santa Maria, two alleys away.  She believes they have dancing after food time, but it’s only on weekends.

Nonetheless, it’s a nice place with a piano player and a wall-length Joan Miro – it could actually be real except that there isn’t a good translator in sight.  For food, we both split some succulent white asparagus and shrimp in cream sauce, then medium rare (they don’t ask you in Europe, but they make it the way I like it) steak which is a little tough but tasty, with french fries and chili peppers.  Then chocolate ice cream.  With a bottle of white wine for Bryan and a bottle of rose for me, the bill is only $24!

We take a short walk but find no other obvious gay bars, but we do meet two German guys on a car trip through Europe; so we go back to Bizitza (now playing Men at Work to B’s delight) and have a couple of beers.  Then it’s off to find Congresso, supposedly a disco on the way back to the hotel.  But we don’t find it and wind up having a beer at a fairly straight dance club on Colon de Larreategui playing Gloria Estephan and the like before grabbing a cab home around 2 am.

I drink a small bottle of Etxeko Patxarana (50 proof – ingredients are alcohol, sugar, “pacharanes” and “anis”) which tastes a little like Jaegermeister while an English-language film about homosexual lust (about the same era as Rocky Horror) before we turn off the lights.

Thursday, July 23, 9 am … construction next door!  Like Chinese water torture as wheel barrows of debris goes down a chute.  And no room service in the morning!  We go downstairs and have fine café au lait with fresh orange juice and good croissants before showering and heading out a 11:30 am.

Bryan wanted to check out an architecturally interesting pedestrian foot bridge (and it is too) before going back to the Guggenheim for post cards and one last look.  On the way back to the hotel to get our bags, Bryan can’t help himself and has a burger and fries at Burger King.  Yes, you saw that right!

And then we pass the first of many Haagen-Daz ice cream stores (I mention this for our friend Steve Ratzel, who owns one himself).

We’re off to the airport by 1:30 pm and fly to Barcelona from 2:30 to 3:30.  What a view as we approach along the coast!

At 4 pm, we arrive at our hotel, the five-star Gran Hotel Catalonia, but they’ve screwed up our reservation!  But their offer is to put us up at their new three-star Hotel Allegro at Avenida Portal de L’Angel, 17 which is only a month old and down near Las Ramblas, the happening area of town.  The room actually has a back porch which we never use; so all things being equal, this works out for all concerned.  By 5 pm, we’re on the streets of Barcelona … with tons of people!

Interesting – we’re right near the Gothic Quarter and a block away from Condal Sauna (the gay baths).  We stop in and get a map to the bars and the guy at the desk (who doesn’t speak English but points well!) also suggests a restaurant (Miranda) and a disco (Metro).  After some shopping (I got a Dali t-shirt), we take a two hour nap.

From Brother Cleve:  “When in Barcelona, be sure to check out Bar Marsella.  It's in the old town, on San Jermino at the corner of Hospital (a couple of blocks off Las Ramblas, the main street down by the ocean).  It is the oldest surviving absinthe bar in the world........I think the last time they dusted, absinthe was still legal!  It's a wild, weird, old place, with a painting of a can-can dancer on the mirrored wall that looks like it dates to the late 1800's.”   Sorry Cleve, we never made it!

By 9 pm, we’re looking for food and by 10 pm we’re at Miranda but, even though they’re empty (and with four very cute, East Village type employees), they say they’re booked and suggest Dietrich’s.  But the Chelsea boy bartender there doesn’t offer a clue as to whether they serve food, plus the place is empty also.  We had also passed Eterna (on Casanova, like Miranda) which is listed in the gay guides but it’s also completely empty and looks too dressy – we don’t even go in.

By this time, it’s 10:30 and we’re starving, so we go across the street to Marcelino 2000 at Calle Consejo de Ciento, 236.  It’s a chain, actually, but we have decent food, asparagus and friend calamari for me and tortilla and fried hake for Bryan, plus a semi-decent sangria, all for about twenty bucks plus we get to sit outside on a great intersection.

We go back to Dietrich’s for a martini (made with Martini & Rossi Bianco which makes it taste almost like vanilla) and go back to the hotel to change and call both of our mothers (obviously glad to hear from us).

By 1:30, we’re at Metro (a disco at Sepulveda, 185 – the admission ticket says “Entrada Caballero”) which is still quiet until 2:30.  We have a couple of Absolut vodkas and chat, then listen to very loud music.  We’re there until after 4 am and go to sleep around 5 am.

Friday, July 24, the alarm goes off at 9 am and by 10:30 we’re at a shoe store across from the hotel where Bryan picks up a very cute pair of Bebetto shoes for about $40 and we taxi to the train station by 11:15 am.

On Rail Europe, I have an $8 lunch consisting of a ¼ piece of chicken asado (not bad) with salad and two hot dogs (which Bryan eats), plus a little bottle of red wine for me and Coke for B; the total is about $15.

At 4:10 pm, we change trains at the extremely hot Montpelier train station and at 4:44 we’re off for Nice.  But the seats assigned us are in a car with broken electricity!  So, grabbing a $6 Scotch, we just grab seats in another car; no one cares (or even checks our tickets).

We mainly read and sleep as we pass French farms, not as many ancient buildings as I thought I’d see; but then there are great views of the Mediterranean (especially through Cannes); we also pass through Marseilles which looks very industrial, not at all like in “Casablanca.”

9:30 pm, we arrive at the Nice train station, about eight blocks from the Hotel Westminster (part of the Concorde chain) at 27 Promenade Des Anglais, 06000 Nice, France.

From their website:  “The Westminster Concorde is a superior, 105-room, first-class hotel with a traditional cozy and warm atmosphere. All rooms are soundproofed and are equipped with TV and direct-dial telephone. The hotel has its own collection of famous paintings and features a terrace overlooking the sea with a bar and restaurant.”

But from the gay travel newsletter “Out and About” they say:

At the four-star Hotel Westminster, an incredibly friendly staff almost compensates for the tarnished and crumbly state of the hotel. The faded elegance is somehow appealing and the location overlooking the Mediterranean can't be beat.  Large-scale restoration is promised this year.

Being tired and too lazy to walk, we have a very good dinner at Le Farniente, the hotel restaurant.  Bryan has marinated salmon with dill and guinea pepper, fresh tomatoes with olive oil, then salmon lasagna with dill flavored cream and dried tomatoes.  I have the mussel soup with young leeks and wild mushrooms (the mushrooms and mussels are first presented dry in the bowl and then the soup is ladled onto them, a beautiful presentation) with fresh coriander garnish, then red gurnard (a thick fish, eh) with roma tomatoes and marjoram, green ravioli with fresh cheese (worth the meal) and then a cheese course for the both of us.  For dessert, B gets rhubarb fritters with red berry sauce and I have a cold crème brulee flavored with orange blossom and finally very good coffee.  To drink, a pair of vodkas (he couldn’t understand martinis) and a bottle of 1997 Chateau de Berne, Cotes de Provence (a $15 white).  The total cost of the meal was about $110.

After dinner, we went around the corner to the Hotel Meyerbeer (“Out and About” says “a one-star hotel with four-star friendliness, service, and gay-related information, catering to both gay and lesbian couples and elderly French retirees.  The multi-lingual gay owner will quickly connect you to the local scene.  Rooms are small and simple but very clean, many with private bathrooms and well-provisioned kitchenettes.”) but they’re closed so we go back, read for ten minutes and it’s lights out at 1:30 am.

Saturday, July 25, it’s room service at 10 am with French pastries, jam, regular orange juice and good American coffee.  After showers in the tiny bathroom, we’re out on the streets by 11 am.   We stop into the Hotel Meyerbeer to find the owner is an older Englishman who’s been in Nice for many years; he opened the hotel about five years ago.  His boyfriend is a younger man from Holland; both obviously speak very good English.  They give us a gay map to Nice and some helpful advice.

From noon to 4 pm, we walk around, particularly in Vieux Nice (“old Nice”); it’s very hot!  And we never get to the beach, even though our hotel has it’s own space with lots of chairs and a bar.

We have lunch at Patin Couffin (“Terrasse Chauffee”), a tourist trap at 1, Rue Francis Gallo, across the alley from La Cave, the restaurant where we’ll have dinner.  (I make our reservations there and later actually change them in passable French!)

We split their “specialites Nicoises” which is a plate of fried, breaded, almost tempura vegetables and ground meats followed by a plate of green gnocchi with pot roast and brown sauce, then espresso.  And really, for a tourist trap it had perfect location (that's a very tiny intersection of old medieval alleys), decent prices and passably good food.  I'm sure you could do worse.

Nice is just lovely with amazing stores; although I never find a t-shirt worth buying.  But we see great design and lighting stores and I do pick up a bar of fine soap while B adds to his refrigerator magnet collection.  Interested in cars?  We see a lovely Fiat Barchetta at a dealer (they retail for about $24,000); it’s a small convertible about the size of a Porsche Boxster or Mazda Miata; it’s just gorgeous.

Ah, if only Fiats worked.  At 4 pm, at the middle of our vacation, it’s time for laundry.  Ah, the mundane.  Now, I had originally considered having the hotel do it, but at almost $3 for a pair of socks, we could buy new!   But it really doesn’t pan out as the Laundromat (“Top Speed” at 12, Rue de la Buffa, four blocks from the hotel) is quite expensive; obviously for tourists as the instructions are in four languages.

And Bryan loses his nice Red Cross Army sunglasses sometime during the process so I think we actually lost money; oh, well, he’s had them for over a year.  Read further, and you’ll see some new ones from Armani in his future.

At 6 pm, Bryan naps as I go back to the stores he visited in the vain hope of finding the glasses and then work on this diary.

At 7 pm, we make a phone call to our “Uncle” Ralph to pay our respects; we actually find him home.  At 8 pm, it’s off to dinner with a lovely stroll down the Promenade des Anglais; that's the long path along the Mediterranean combining a four-lane road, boardwalk and beach.  Our hotel is at the geographic center of this road.

Dinner was a mutual recommendation of many gay people - La Cave.  Again from “Out and About”:

La Cave at 6, Rue Francis Gallo, features excellent, healthy, well-presented cuisine in a tiny eight-table establishment, and is so popular with locals, and Delta flight attendants, that it's essential to call ahead for reservations. Three of the four owners are gay and can direct you to nearby bars for an after-dinner drink.

It’s almost midnight by the time we finish but I highly recommend the experience.  But forget the suggestions for a bar; these guys work and sleep 24-7.   “Out and About” suggests these gay bars, which I quote:

“L'Ascenseur (18, Emmanuel Philibert; ascenceu@pratique.fr; +33-4/93-26-35-30) is a mixed gay and lesbian club that is a current favorite. Blue Boy Enterprise (9, rue Spinetta; +33-4/93-44-68-24) is a large disco open all week, from 11 pm to sunrise.”

We have vodkas and then meet Tom Howard and Christian from Oslo, Norway and have a great discussion about architecture and design (Tom’s business) and especially the Guggenheim-Bilbao and its art, led ably by Bryan.  We give them our e-mail addresses and they leave to drive to their vacation house an hour away.  We have one more vodka and have a nice walk home by 3 am.

Sunday, July 26, we’re awake at 5:30 am for a lovely sunrise and tired bones.  By 7 am, we’re at the train station to find it’s thirty minutes late!  So we have croissants, o.j. and coffee ($10) before boarding the train.  And it’s the worst we’ve ever seen; probably forty years old although it must have been quite luxurious when new.  At least it seems we have the reserved cabin all to ourselves.  But at 9 am, a mother, with her daughter and child (all within a life-span of thirty years, those Romans!) join us for two hours!  I put plugs in my ears and sleep while Bryan reads, then another lady joins us.  Still, there’s no conductor and no one checks our tickets.  Then at 11 am, someone comes and tosses the family out to second class.  Ok, I felt somewhat (maybe very) bourgeouis, but.

I continue to nap until 1:30 and our train change (with about a minute to spare) to an incredible Star Trek train (the Pendolino).  There we spend most of our time in the dining car with silver and white table cloths.  Our lunch?

Bryan has tomatoes and mozzarella cheese in olive oil and some passable pasta and chocolate cake; I have Lombo di Suino in Pizzicagnola (ok, pork loin in vinegar sauce) with roasted potatoes and cold spinach; can you imagine having pork like that on a train in America and not being afraid of the vinegar sauce?  I relaxed with a cappuccino and a ’97 Sangiovese while Bryan enjoyed the scenery.

4:41 pm and we arrive in Firenze (Florence to you English-speaking types), purchase some cigarettes (North Pole menthol for Bryan, a limited edition package of Camel Medium for me) and take the cab to the Grand Hotel Villa Cora, about five minutes outside of town at Viale Machiavelli 18 (phone 39/55 2298451).  By 5 pm, we’re in our rooms, the Van Meck Suite 101.

Wow!!!  This is five-star living with a parlor, bedroom and a bathroom the size of the other rooms with Gianni Versace tiles.  It should be; the rate is 710,000 lire per night (~ $412).  From their website:

A splendid Neoclassic style villa located in the suburbs and built at the end of the 1800’s.  Each room is individually decorated and has precious antique furniture and frescoed ceilings.  Offers a large park with garden, swimming pool, restaurant and parking facilities.

From Liverpool, James, 23, now designs women’s jeans for Calvin Klein; he puts him up here for business!  Currently James lives around the corner from us on 13th Street – small world indeed!  Of course, we invite him to join us.

For dinner, Bryan has a shrimp cocktail (yes, in the cream sauce), vegetable soup (you know it as minestrone) and shrimp curry while I have smoke salmon, penne in tomato cream sauce with pancetta and mushrooms and a giant steak with green peppercorns (which is merely ok).  Both of us have vodka martinis (ah, a real hotel) and a bottle of pinot grigio.  Yes, I’ve forgotten what James had.  The cost for B and I is 243,000 lire (about $140).  We arrange to meet James the next night to be gay boys and we’re back in our rooms and asleep by midnight.

Monday, July 27, room service brings a continental breakfast at 8 am along with the amazing Italian red orange juice (but also a lemon juice that is quite astringent).  A leisurely morning and then the car takes us to the center of town by 11 am (told you it was five-star).

We walk from the Piazza S. Trinita (yes, we’re dropped off outside the Ferregamo store) to Il Duomo (where we mistakenly believe Michelangelo’s David is) but the line is long so we continue a long walk to check out a possible gay bar for the evening (we find the address but no bar) and restaurant.

We do find “La Vie en Rose” on Borgo Allegri; it looks cute so we’ll make reservations later.  Then we go into the Santa Croce Church where it looks like Galileo is buried (my Latin is terrible, it might just say “Galileo slept here!”).  Then it’s on to the Palazzo Vecchio (are those statues by Michelangelo in front?  I know, we should have gotten a guide book!).

From 1-2 pm, we have lunch at Ristorante “Il Cavallino” at Via delle Farine, 6 because it’s air-conditioned; and we have them turn it up even more!  Bryan has the shrimp cocktail (in what sauce, do you ask?), minestrone, and spaghetti pomodoro y basil; I have penne in tomato cream sauce and sliced steak with green peppercorns over arugula.  Although technically the same dish as last night, it’s actually a bit better.  With two Cokes and a bottle of water (“no gas”), the bill is 90,160 lire (about $52).

At 2 pm, we walk past the Uffizi Gallery (which happens to be closed on Monday - and I'll save you the trouble of going up a page - it's Monday) and stop at a storefront selling only sunglasses (and I do mean all, every designer who’s ever thought of making sunglasses is represented) where Bryan finds a beautiful pair of Giorgio Armani with deep blue anodizing with much the same shape as his old ones.  He’s very attractive in them!  The store is Foto Ottica Guidoreni (V. Por, S. Maria13) and the glasses cost 220,000 lire ($127, a good price).

Then it’s over to the world famous Ponte Vecchio.  Big deal!  An old bridge over the Arno River packed with ugly gold jewelry and not great prices.  But nearby, Bryan finds some nice ties and both of us find t-shirts (mine is an architectural elevation of Il Duomo, his from U. of Firenze).

By now, we’re very hot and after buying some post cards we head back to our starting point and grab a cab back to the hotel.  At 5 pm, we call Arci-Gay (their new phone number is 488288) where, in halting but good English, the nice man explains how to find the gay bar and confirms our choice for restaurant.

Since we forgot our bathing suits, the hotel car takes us to Il Mauna (a “surf shop” at the bottom of the hill) where we get a couple of suits for about 56,000 lire each ($33), plus a couple of mutants (toys) for our cat, Rosebud, at the pet store adjacent to the shop.

From 6-7:30 we lay by the hotel pool while enjoying Campari and soda brought by our attendant (not bad looking, either).  We finally check our messages at home and I return a call from Mark Enos.  Unfortunately, I don’t catch him in but his room-mate tells me that he’s on the way to the Gay Games in Amsterdam in just a few hours where he will skate to “Diva” (a dance song) dressed in a leopard print body stocking with rings on his fingers and credit cards taped to him.  I certainly hope someone will be taping it!

At 9 pm, we meet James downstairs and cab to La Vie en Rose (“Cucina e Arte – Cuisine High Fresh Quality” at Borgo Allegri, 68).  Our waitress, a large, fun woman out of a Fellini movie brings us apertifs; we notice at least three other tables with gay people.  Bryan asks about “homosexual” bars and she brings us the local gay map (along with a bottle of pinot grigio).

To eat?  Bryan has bruschetta, then a buffalo mozzarella and grilled vegetable plate; I have a warm green bean salad, tagliatelle with zucchini in saffron cream, then turkey breast stuffed with ham in cream sauce.  Lots of cream around, isn’t it?  James?  Oh, well, I’ve forgotten again.  But the total cost of the meal, along with some Muscadet for dessert wine, costs 128,000 lire ($74).

After dinner, we skip the Arci-Gay recommendation (the Piccolo Café) and go straight to Tabasco, which has miraculously appeared where there was nothing this afternoon!  It’s a “hi-tech” video bar, tonight run by “Lefty,” a swarthy Italian with small leather shorts and tight top.  The boys are all handsome in to outstanding (maybe slightly more than a dozen come and go over a couple of hours).  Of course, the first to visit us is a very trashed, pierced boy who falls all over the club before falling all over us!  Finally his woman friend takes him home.  We stay a couple of hours drinking watered down vodka; around 3 am, James leave with Bryan and me and we taxi back.

Tuesday, July 28, the door of our room opens at 7:30 am!  Oh, I forgot.  I’d ordered room service for that time; unfortunately by the time I can get myself out of bed, the coffee is cold.

By 10 am, we’re out the door, deciding to skip breakfast.  Arriving at Il Duomo, the line moves fast; we decide to take a tour by a cute English boy, Henry.  But he’s way too detailed and after 20 minutes we break away and check out the basement (the previous church) by ourselves; Bryan knows all about this stuff anyway.

We take a brief look at the Baptistry and then find the line at the Uffizi (where the David really is) isn’t moving and stretches around the piazza!  Sorry, David!  Instead, we head to a Salvador Dali exhibit that I want to see.

And lucky me … passing Fissimarket on Via Dei Neri, 62/64, I see a new sneaker by Caterpillar that I saw in Spain and had been looking for and not found anywhere else!  They have my size (even though no one spoke English, we did the transaction in pauvre French) and the cost is 100,000 lire ($58).  Yeah!

Next stop is a real surprise:  “Epocale Pop-Graffiti-Cracking” at Galleria Pananti (Piazza Santa Croce, 8) has works by Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein (and some bad Italian art, the “Cracking” part) and many of the pieces for sale at very good prices (a Hockney almost comes home with us for about $3500).

Next door, it’s “Dali, I Tesori del Genio” at Museo Santa Croce; also an exhibit with works for sale.  What fun!  And for Bryan and me, a very good trade off from the Uffizi.

1 pm, hungry.  I want to find a restaurant where I had fried zucchini flowers almost fourteen years ago but we’re out of luck; I actually think it’s the new branch of Harry’s Bar now.  Oh, well; we pass a design store where I get a very cool calculator/clock combination (I know, near the end of the trip!) and, being very hot, we go into the first air-conditioned restaurant we see – Ristorante Buca Mario!  (The menu says “Nel Cuore di Firenze con L’Antica Tradizione della Buona Cucina Toscana” – essentially, regular Florentine food.)

Quick, bring us Moretti Biere (for B) and house red for me!  Bryan has the antipasti Toscano (three types of salami) with crostini tipici, then the lasagnette della casa (today, a green lasagna); I have the pennette al pomodoro piccante, carpaccio di manzo con parmigiano con rucola y carotine (raw beef with arugola and carrots); we both have scrumptious berries with cream and espresso.  Cost is 135,000 lire ($78).

Around 3 pm, we pick up some English-language magazines and a pack of MS Red-Italia cigarettes.  They’ve got Italian art on the box!  Although in Milan, I am brutally teased because Italians feel they’re terrible (they are produced by the Italian State Monopoly).  As Edoardo later says, “oh, but they’re pretty!”  (Snicker, snicker.)  We go back to the hotel pool and Campari and sodas around 6 pm.

We get up around 8 pm and soon we’re in a cab to La Loggia at Piazza le Michelangelo, overlooking all of Florence!  I had eaten there with my family before and wanted to take Bryan there, as it’s very romantic.  First up, two martinis (oh, to be at Dick’s where they know what they are) and a bottle of pinot grigio.

Interestingly, there’s a concert going on in front of us by Paulo Conti.  [Conti is a large pop star in Europe; we'll see posters of him every in the following year.]  Oh, well, it’s better than the muzak that had been playing at the restaurant.

Here’s a coincidence:  Entertainment Weekly has a review of “The Best of Paolo Conte” on Nonesuch:

On his American debut, this 61-year-old Italian jazz-pop singer captures the atmosphere of smoky, lonely bars, tapping the sort of bleary-eyed romanticism well known to fans of Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen and Jacques Brel.  As Conte slurs on “Via Con Me,” “’S wonderful, ‘s wonderful … da-ti-du-di-du.”

Bryan has shrimp cocktail (what, you still don’t know what sauce?), fettucine in mushroom cream sauce, and grilled steak with a different mushroom cream sauce (we must check our cholesterol levels when we get back); I have prosciutto with melon, cheese ravioli with meat sauce, and steak tartare prepared right at our table (and boy is it good!).  This is the best way to learn about this dish and B will become enamored of it.

For dessert, Bryan has the apple tart (not as good as our own Pangea) and both of us have espresso.  Cost is 266,200 lire ($155, very reasonable for that type of restaurant and the view).  We taxi back by midnight.

At 1 am, we go to Tabasco; but this time it’s in a different location, at Piazza S. Cecilia, 3.  Piazza, my ___!  It’s a back alley; but it does have a brass sign that says “gay bar!”  James is already there, along with a friend, John, from work, who lives in Chelsea.  And guess who’s bartending?  Lefty!  We stay for about an hour.

Wednesday, July 29, 7:30 am, major hammering right outside the room!  Construction, next to us?  Oh, well, might as well get up and by 9:30 we’re downstairs in a lovely room for breakfast buffet.  At 11 am, we check out of Paradise and taxi to the train.  But we almost don’t get on board due to some train station confusion.

But once we do, all is fine as it’s the same Pendelino train as before; and another dining car experience.  For lunch, we both have the farfelle (bow-ties) in pomodoro sauce, then B has tomatoes and mozzarella and cream cake while I have beef slices in pizzaiola sauce and a cheese selection; both of us have plums, coffee and a couple of asti spumantes.  Total cost is 91,000 lire ($53); ok, it’s not cheap on the train!

By 2 pm, we’re in the architecturally stunning Milan Centrale train station (hey, where’s the gypsies we’re supposed to see?) and at 2:30 we arrive at our hotel - the Antica Locanda Solferino (Via Castelfidardo 2, Milano).  The rate is 180,000 lire per night (about a hundred bucks) but there’s a reason it’s cheap.  No air-conditioning!  Plus only one electrical outlet in the room, which is rather small.  But it’s a simple place and the people are very nice.  And I must let Bob at Turner Travel off the hook because I found it in a gay guide.  However, it does have the advantage of being just two blocks away from the home of the friends we plan on meeting; purely by coincidence!

4 pm, while Bryan naps I walk over to the home of Giorgio and Enrica Caldara on the Via Moscova; they’re the parents of Gigi, Lara and Edoardo, all of whom have stayed with my parents while students.  They have a fantastic apartment in the upper middle-class district near the Brera district (intellectuals, artists and the like; much like our Greenwich Village).  The parents are both there, as well as Edoardo.  He’s now 23 and after a nice conversation, he shows me the local map and where to go.

I rest with Bryan from 6 to 7 pm and then we walk down the Via Solferino and Via Brera to Il Duomo (yes, there’s one in every Italian city it seems) and the Galleria (a covered arcade where once were small shops but now big chains).  We’re so hungry that rather than wait for dinner, we have a McDonald’s cheeseburger there!

Then we continue walking and eventually have some very good Italian style pizzas (a thinner crust, brick oven style) at Iris (hey, they had a rainbow motif) with beer and wine.  We have a long and very confused walk back to the hotel and by 10:30, exhausted, we fall right asleep!

Thursday, July 30, the garbagemen are out in force at 7 am but that won’t get us out of bed!  Indeed, it doesn’t even wake Bryan.  Around 9 am, coffee and croissants arrive in the room and by 10 am we take the same walk down Via Solferino/Via Brera as yesterday to Il Duomo and the Galleria.  There, a woman is totally rude to us at Rizzoli and the cameo shop is way over-priced; not the same as 14 years ago!

But I do find a white t-shirt to add to my collection, B gets an Italian disco CD and postcards, and we go into Il Duomo where we light candles for my mother and Bryan’s friend Philip (who is moving this day to Los Angeles).  We catch a (very) small exhibit on packaging (“Out of the Box”) at Openspace, next door to the church.  We would have had sandwiches that looked incredibly tasty at a nearby outdoor café buy language, and perhaps Italian methodology (“you must get a ticket”) makes us lose patience and we have fast food burgers at Burghy’s.  We hop in a cab with hopes of catching an architectural exhibit at a museum near the Castello Sforzesco (which I had toured many years ago), but finding it closed we directed the taxi back to the hotel and rested.

4 pm, back to the Caldara’s but we only find Edoardo home.  His brother Gigi (who is now 30 and an anesthesiologist, living in Novarro) arrives a few minutes later.  The four of us talk until about 5:30 (my parents call during the visit, as planned).  We’re pleased to find that Edoardo’s girlfriend, Gala, has a huge dance hit in the States under her name!

At 5:30, B and I walk into the wine store across the street from the hotel and find it’s famous, even appearing in a New York Times article in the past.  Enoteca Cotti (Via Solferino, 42) has an amazing selection of wines as well as olive oils and fine vinegars.  I buy my father a bottle of the owner’s private label Grappa (only $34, and from the owner himself!) while B gets oil and vinegars for his Mom and father’s wife.

A half hour nap for me and a bath for Bryan and we’re off to the Caldara’s again.  The two of us and Gigi walk to the corner taverna (where Gigi knows the owner) for Negronis (Campari/gin/sweet vermouth – yes, it packs a punch).  Then a long walk to a small piazza (and an ancient church where a famous duke was murdered 500 years ago) and an outdoor café where we meet up with his parents.

Now, don't you know that I have neither the name of the restaurant nor the name of the piazza!  But I do remember the food and mosquitoes.  I have a small dish of penne arrabiata, B and Gigi have pizzas, Enrica has a simple grilled fish and grilled zucchini, and Giorgio a very interesting black risotto over tuna.  A bottle of Antinori Rose for me and the parents, Bavarian beer for B and Coke for Gigi.  Then vanilla and lemon ice creams and lots of mosquitoes!  Yes, the first we’ve seen the whole trip (and as an added bonus, Bryan’s famous allergies haven’t bothered him once).  But our hosts show him a new Italian spray for them which he buys at a farmacia on the way past Il Duomo.

Next stop, a free concert in the piazza in front on the Italian stock exchange.  Dulce Pontes, the Portuguese pop singer, is a singer of fado, traditional sad songs.  But she has a good voice and a decent combo behind her so it’s fairly enjoyable.  Interestingly, the Newark Star-Ledger had just reviewed a NJ concert of hers in June, saying:

Pontes fills every song with that mysterious quality known as ‘saudade,” which translates as ‘yearning’ or ‘longing.’  … Comparisons with Linda Ronstadt are apt, both in the ringing, richly colored mezzo-soprano the two women share and in their uncanny ability to inform pop music with folk forms.

At the end of the concert, all parents say goodbye as the rest of us walk to Galleria Meravigli (“Restaurant-Disco-dinner-Event Hall”).  It’s a glass covered courtyard between buildings at Via Meravigli, 3-Via G. Negri, 6.  And it’s the only place in Milan open 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.  There, we introduce them to Absolut martinis.  Huge!  And about $9 each.  Everyone gets a good buzz and fun conversation, particularly with Marco about gay things, the owner about martinis (and he sends over a tray of hot chocolate pastries surrounded by strawberries) and the bartender about vodkas.  We must send over a bottle of Ketel One!

Anyway, by a little after midnight we’re all tired and say good bye.  Gigi, B and I walk down Via Brera; this street that was so quiet earlier in the day suddenly becomes hopping with street vendors and bars!  We are back to the hotel and asleep by 1 am.

Friday, July 31 … the return to America!  We actually wake up early, 6 am Italian time, and before the coffee even arrives at 7:30, we’re dressed and packed and ready to go.  By 8 am, Gigi has picked us up and by 9 am we’re at Malpensa Airport outside of Milan with plenty of time to relax and go shopping at the Duty-Free Shop where I pick up a bottle of Martini & Rossi Bianco (which we don’t have here in the US, it seems to make an almost vanilla flavored martini; cost $5.20) and Godiva chocolates ($27) and Peck condiments ($18) for Mom.

Our 11:05 flight leaves at 11:30 for our 8-hour trip home.  Even though this flight is co-operated by Alitalia, the food is mediocre (salad and a sorry chicken cacciatora with a rather poor example of tiramisu for lunch, later a dead roll with a slice of roast beef and one of pork with some decent grapes).

At least the movie is “Titanic” which I find as good the second time around (B sleeps through most of it).  We arrive at Newark Airport at 2 pm, pass quickly (extremely quickly) through passport and customs, and taxi to Cranford.  While I go through two weeks of mail and messages, B talks to my parents and then we’re off to NYC and home!  Of course Rosebud is glad to see us (yeah, sure).  Ah, home!