As I said, we didn't pay for a gondola ride, but they were pretty to watch
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We caught a water bus later in the afternoon to head to the train station.
It was VERY crowded--body to body people.
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(This next part is Roy)
We then thought that we would start heading
towards the train station as our train was to leave at 6:20 pm. The pathways are very confusing and it is
easy to get lost. We weren’t making much
progress to get back to the train station so we decided to get on a water bus.
It was super crowded, but helped us get back in time.
Catharine bought some peanut brittle type of
stuff made out of peanuts and almonds, very good.
We got on a bullet train in the first class
car. The seats were nice, they gave us a
choice of juice, water bottes and a snack.
We were getting pretty exhausted due to jet lag. We arrived at Verona where we had to change
trains. There we went potty and got a
small snack for dinner (Panino and fruit cups).
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We then boarded the train to Bolzano arriving
around 10:15 pm.
 Roy is in his element on trains. He took so many
pictures of them we will have to make an "Italy Train Book.
Bolzano
We arrived in Bolzano quite late and took a taxi to the hotel. The travel agent booking our trip said that we could get a much better deal if we used a Marriott package, so most of our hotels were Marriott. This one was very nice, but it was about 20 minutes from downtown. It was in the industrial section of the city. Other than the air conditioning, this was probably the nicest hotel we stayed in, and it had the most delicious breakfast. We kept telling them at the desk that the air conditioning didn't seem to be working well. The vents felt cool, but they were not adequate. Roy suffered with a heat rash during the 2nd night and was pretty miserable. We had the same problem in Milan, but when we complained at the desk, they told us that they turn the air down in September, but they were accommodating and turned the air up in our room. It was the only night we slept cool (a little too cool for me).
The breakfast included made to order eggs (omelets), smoked salmon and a soft cheese, roasted tomatoes, lunch meats (not my thing for breakfast), granola, various seeds, yogurt, fruit, pastries and local breads with jams. It was fabulous.
We had to be at church the first day by 9:00--at least that's what the internet said, it didn't actually start until 9:30. The door was locked when we got there, but there were people inside somehow--and the branch president arrived with the key shortly. I was so impressed with the faith of the members. I was also very impressed with the branch president. Roy and he figured that he was in the ward as a teenager when Roy was there as a missionary. Roy had brought pictures with him and he was showing them to one young returned missionary sister. She said, "Oh, that's my dad...and that's my grandma...and that's my great grandma." The dad was there. He didn't really remember Roy, but he thought it was fun that there was picture proof. We went to see the grandma (who had a broken arm and so was at home). She was about 75. She was married to a non-member. She said that she had gone through a period of inactivity. It seemed that many of her posterity were still in the church. The following are pictures of some of the members.
This lady with her brother in the top and her mother below would have been
in the ward while Roy was there.
In this picture are me and Roy, Francesca (the sister missionary returned from France, her mother and father, and the Branch President, Paulo. It was gratifying to Roy to see people that he knew that were still active. There were others that he knew that were not present that day, but were serving in other areas, and there were some that were not coming any more. Roy felt a little sad that the branch wasn't any larger than it was 41 years ago. After church we were talking with a sister. She normally went to church in Trento--a short distance away--but needed an interview for a temple recommend with the Stake President (whom we also met). There was a man with her who had driven her to the area. She told us that he had been a member a short time but had given up. He attended occasionally. Since they obviously needed lunch, too, we ended up sharing a table and visiting. I think the man liked practicing his English.
The sister in the picture above had never married. She spoke excellent English. The man ordered a beer with his pizza. Roy and I shared a quattro stracciatella pizza and a salad.
Following church and a short rest, we took a bus downtown and followed a city tour from our guide book. It was not a large city, but it was quaint with a lot of Austrian architecture. This part of Italy was Austria before the end of WWI. The people love to order a drink or a dessert and sit in the square. Roy says that's a big part of their entertainment. There was a cute store that sold Loaker products (the wafer cookies with the European chocolate inside). They had many more options than we get in the states, but they were so soft and it was so hot that we were sure we couldn't take any home.
We are in the square in this picture. The umbrellas are one of the several places that people were gathering.
This is the Loaker store (taken through the window after closing time). The other section of the store had a dessert counter and gelato at the window. The umbrellas above were in front of this store.
This was the inside of a church in the city. The man gave us a nice organ concert for a few minutes and then the church closed. There were beggars at the door basically charging a non-existent entrance fee. The begger tried to get money again as we went out.
This is the sister who wasn't at church because of her broken arm, Giovanna Favretto. She didn't remember Roy until she saw a picture of him as an Elder, then she said she was starting to remember. She was baptized by one of Roy's companions, so he's pretty sure he confirmed her.
When we arrived back at the hotel, we were just a little bit hungry, so we ordered an antipasto plate at the hotel. Roy ate most of the meat, and I ate the cheese.
The last day in Bolzono we planned to take a Funavia (Tram) up to a city on the mountain called Ritton-Renon. First, though, a stop at the Farmer's Market. We bought delicious bread, fruit and cheese for our lunch later.
Ritton Renon was definitely Austrian--the architecture, the language, and the food. The tourists were mostly Austrian, though we met some English people.
Once we got up the tram, there was a train that took farther into some other small villages. Once again, Roy was in heaven because there was a train.
We hiked around and enjoyed beautiful scenery. When we got hungry we stopped and ordered some soda at an outside restaurant and then proceeded to try to figure out how to eat our own stuff. To be a little more correct, we ordered some apple strudel that was out of this world. It was obviously homemade in authentic German style.
I honestly got tired of being the subject of so many food photos, but what can you do--there were only two of us and no cute grandchildren.
From Ritten-Renon you could see a lot of other small mountain villages. Each one had their own church. We couldn't figure out how they could possibly fill all the pews on Sunday. We walked into one little church in the town of Oberbozen (there were several towns within the Ritton-Renon area). When we turned around to leave, we could not get the door open. We were the only ones inside and it didn't look like anyone was going to visit soon. I kind of panicked that we were locked in and would be stuck there until who knows when. Roy finally figured out how to open the door.
The Mountains in the background are the Dolomites. You could see them from
Bolzano, but not all of them. They were pretty impressive.
Here is one of the little towns with it's own church
In the background of this picture are the "pyramids" one of this little area's claim to fame. I heard them
compared to Bryce Canyon, but as you can see, there is no comparison.
The next few pictures are taken from the Tram (probably mostly on the way up). There were grapevines everywhere you looked. And not only here but throughout all of the parts of Italy we visited.
In the evening we went to a restaurant called "Il Cavallino Bianco" The Little White Horse. Roy wanted to try some Tyrolean cuisine from the area. His main dish was a meat that was basically a thick piece of ham, served with sauerkraut and a large dumpling made with Spake (a sort of bacon). It was probably one of the more disappointing meals as it was nothing special. The soup below had the same meatball in it, which he ate, so when the main dish came, he didn't want to eat another one. The waitress apologized and said she hadn't realized, that she should have offered him some other options. It took me about 3-4 days for my stomach to settle from traveling, so I ordered what I thought would be mild--a "omelette" with cranberries. It was actually like a German Pancake, filled with a sort of cranberry jam (not too sweet). It was a sweet dinner, but I quite enjoyed it.
My stomach had been bothering me since the airplane, and I thought I was coming down with a cold. I asked Roy for a blessing. He gave me one and by morning I was feeling almost 100% back to my normal self.
Our train was to leave Bolzano at 12:15, so after a leisurely breakfast, we packed up and headed to the Ferrovia. Roy took a lot of pictures of the train station, so if you're interested, I'm sure he'd love to show them to you. The couple below were having a good time (a lot of PDA), and at some point they sort of disappeared. I mentioned it to Roy and he said, "They're probably in the elevator making out or something." We were talking to a few women traveling together from South Africa, and after 12:15 or so, we started wondering where our train was. We had been distracted and never saw that our train had been changed to another track, so we missed our first class accommodations on the FrecciaRossa Turbo train from Verona to Milan . After realizing we had a problem, Roy went down to figure out what we could do. He got us on another train to Milan that left at 1:30. We had to rush to another track to get it on time. The women we'd been talking to had been behind Roy in line and couldn't make the same train. We were only delayed by an hour or so, and though it wasn't first class and it wasn't a turbo train we were still in comfortable seats. It was all part of the experience.
I think Bolzano was my favorite city, but Milan was another highlight. We stayed 2 nights in another Marriott, and were blessedly cool the 2nd night. We were about a 30-40 minute walk from the main attractions in Milan, so we planned accordingly and walked to meet our tour group to see the city.
Milan
This is the city's Duomo. It was really quite beautiful. It was opulent, but not
nearly as opulent as the golden church we saw in Ecudor. You can't tell from this picture, but
the church is made of granite and there are thousands of figures built onto the outside
of the building. The tour guide said they are working to
restore some of the figures as they turn black from sun exposure.
The main square with the Duomo
Federal Police
Inside the Duomo
The guide asked us if we knew who Bartholomew was. Since she had
been talking about him as one of the Catholic saints, it didn't occur to me that
he was one of the apostles of Christ. This was one of the depictions that we saw of him--but we
saw other paintings and statues in other parts of Italy. This artist depicted Bartholomew without
skin, as he was skinned alive when he was martyred. He also holds a knife to symbolize this
horrible death. Int he back of the statue, the skin of the face hangs off of him. We were told that
this statue had originally been placed where people could easily see the whole statue, but
people thought it was disgusting to look at and asked the church to move the statue. It was
really quite a remarkable sculpture. Interestingly, in the Rome Temple, the figure of Bartholomew was also
holding a knife. I asked one of the sister missionaries about this and she said, "Everyone always wants
to ask about what each disciple is holding and what it means, but the important thing that is being held are the keys in
Peter's hands that represent the keys of the priesthood. We saw these same keys in other works of art around Italy as well. At the Vatican we were told that one key is the Political Power of the church, and the other represents the Religious (Church) Power. No where did I hear it claimed that it was God's power.
The missionary told us that there is a picture of President Nelson with his hand on Peter's keys where he is quoted as saying, "I hold these same keys."
This was a massive work of stained glass. Each window depicts a different story from the bible. The picture below is the wedding of Joseph and Mary. The 2nd picture (not shown here) is the angel Gabriel announcing to Mary that she will
bear the Christ child. It is supposed to be in order chronologically, but I found it to be inaccurate.
This cross is way up towards the ceiling of the church. The red light indicates where the nail from the true cross of Jesus is stored. Apparently, they display this nail once a year and we just missed it. The nail they claim is the true nail does not look like a nail, but like a tool of torture. It could be like the nails that were used, but I'm not sure how they could really know. They said that someone went to claim it several hundred years after the crucifixion.
The highlight of the tour was the painting of the Lord's Supper by Leonardo Davinci. Some dishonest person walked right into the middle of our tour group and held his hand out for a ticket, hoping that the guide wasn't paying attention and would allow him free entry. She was too bright for that ploy. I asked her if that happened a lot and she said it did.
This painting is painted directly on drywall. It has suffered much damage over the years from misguided people trying to protect it, or touch it up, etc. One person tried to remove it thinking it was a Fresco. When it was finally restored in the "proper way," many layers of paint were removed from it. When the layers were removed down to the original, there were many missing details. The details were added by restorers, so we were told that any bright spots of color were not part of the original. The painting was restored using copies that had been made by students of Leonardo. It was very beautiful and interesting. We were only allowed 15 minutes to see this.
La Scala Opera house (we returned later and saw the opera Rigoletto) The decor for the opera house
is all on the inside.
After the tour we stopped at this pasticceria and bought a
small piece of chocolate mouse cake to eat later.
A shopping mall in the city of Milan (Jieun was concerned I wouldn't look fashionable because the people of Italy, especially here in Milan, are very fashion conscious. She was right--I looked like an American. Plus she was very disappointed that I wasn't interestedin shopping and buying some fashionable Italian clothing. We did walk into Gucci, here, and looked at a wallet. It was only 690 euros :) I did not buy it!!! It happened to be Fashion Week in Milan, so we saw a lot of cameras and women in interesting clothing on the streets.
Lunch in Milan --Quattro Formaggio pizza--4 cheese, and salad with water.
At every restaurant we had water in these glass bottles that cost 4 or 5 euros.
At La Scala, Roy saw these fireman and asked them if he could get a picture with them. They asked, "WHY?" His response, "because you are so awesome!"
The next morning we had another train station experience in the city of Milan. This time we actually took a smaller train because the big ones did not go to Cinque Terra. The train station in Milan was all covered and it was really pretty. Again, Roy took a lot of train pictures of which I'm only sharing one.
Cinque Terra
Arriving in Cinque Terra, city of Monterosso
Roy's thoughts on Monterosso: Breakfast, taxi to the train station.Chocolate Panino bought before we left. Lots of mountains and tunnels heading to Montoroso (Cinque Terra). Taxi to Albergo Coruso. (Albergo means hotel). Really nice guy (Andrea). Did the local hike of the town, hill, church, graves, olive orchard. We had the recommended Seafood Soup at Bellvedere. They brought out a big clay pot and dumped it into a big platter. Lobster, Octopus, Squid, Clams, Mussles, Fish, Shrimp in a light tomato sauce. It was very good. Of course we had Gelato for dessert.
I'm pretty sure you can't tell from this picture, but being in Cinque Terra meant climbing. Hills, stairs, hills and more stairs.
This was the hotel owner, Andrea. He was in his 40's and told us that he and his wife had decided they didn't want kids. He was very nice, but we felt bad for him because of that! This hotel was really just a place to sleep--nothing fancy.
The first night in Cinque Terra, we ate dinner at a seafood restaurant (this region is known for their seafood). In the above picture, Roy is eating his appetizer--Anchovies, a specialty of the region.
This is the big pot of seafood for two that Roy and I shared. It looked like a lot but we actually weren't that full afterwards because there was nothing to go with it and about half of the serving was shell.
The city all lit up in the evening. We sat outside for a couple of hours enjoying the sea breeze and the cool air,
Unbeknownst to us, there were a lot of mosquitoes. They must have been small because they went unnoticed until later when we started to itch!
Here Roy is peeking into one of the restaurant kitchens.
One of the things to do in Cinque Terra is hike. The next morning we hiked from Monterosso to Vernazza, which turned out to be a 100 minute hike. The first half hour was climbing stairs, then we had a slight reprieve and then again went back to climbing hills-- up, then down, then repeat. The ocean looked beautiful, and we thought we might go for a swim, but there was so much to see that the timing was never right.
View of Monterosso from one of the overlooks on the hike
Below: picture of Roy overlooking the city of Vernazza
Roy really wanted to get a picture of a train coming through this tunnel. We waited for several minutes and then hiked on.
After hiking to Vernazza, we took trains to the rest of the cities. In the 4th city we had to climb a lot of hills to get to the restaurant that was recommended by our hotelier. After that we were exhausted, so we skipped the final city and took the train back to Monterosso. We still didn't get home until around 5:00 or so.
This was the middle city--Corneglia. There were 363 steps to get to the city (we cheated and took the bus up, then walked down).
This picture is just slightly out of order. This was on our hike. People trying to make a buck off the tourists will even climb the hill and play music for the hikers.
We were pretty tired by the time we hiked down these stairs to eat in the restaurant called Da Billy
This was back in Monterosso for our final evening meal there. Roy ordered rabbit (he's more daring than I am). I had swordfish.
I shouldn't say that we had gelato almost every day.
Before we left Monterosso for Pisa we went to the little pasticeria down the street for breakfast.
The name of the restaurant was "Laura" The lady making the pastries in the picture above is Laura
The pastries here were the best we had on our whole trip. We did have some in the hotels, but they were not
nearly as tempting!
Pisa
We arrived in Pisa in the early afternoon. We ate lunch at an Osteria--which is basically a cafeteria style restaurant. They also had pizza to order. We shared a quattro formaggio (four cheese pizza) and a salad and it was delicious. We also had a little bit of watermelon. There is only one thing to do there and that is to visit the leaning tower. We mostly went to Pisa because Roy had served there and wanted to attend church. However, I have never seen the tower, and I have to admit it was pretty impressive to walk through an archway into the square and see this massive building that is tilted. We spent a couple of hours in the square visiting the cathedral, the baptistry, a mausoleum, and a museum. We didn't climb the tower because you had to make a reservation for the exact time you wanted to tour it and we weren't sure when we would visit. It's good we didn't try to tour it because our original plan was to visit the square after church on Sunday and it was supposed to rain. We were able to get all our touring done on Saturday. The baptistry was the most interesting. There is a large font, front and center as you walk in. As a missionary Roy asked the priest what it was (knowing exactly what it was). The priest said it was a baptisimal font, that it was used to baptize by immersion and that they didn't do it that way anymore.
 As you can see there are no steps to the font. Roy had asked about that, too, and was told that there were steps at one time.
We went to church on Sunday and again stayed both hours, but this time there was a sister that had been born in the states to Italian parents who translated for me in perfect English. She even read the scriptures from my English phone out loud in Italian for the benefit of the group. Roy was able to ask about members he'd known there. The people were very friendly.
Gianna Foresta with Roy
Me with Bishop Lo Monaco (we had changed after church--we did dress up)
After church a brother Smith took us to the train station. We splurged and bought tickets to an earlier train so we didn't have to wait around for 4 1/2 hours. This train was awesome! It was a turbo train and it took us to Rome at 155 MPH. When we got to Rome we had our first taste of the dishonesty of the Romans. There was a taxi line, and a couple of guys trying to direct people to the taxis. Roy had read about this but had forgotten. You are not supposed to get in a taxi that doesn't have the official symbol on the car door. He even told me, "Don't trust those guys," and then let them lead us to a taxi. He charged us 35 euros which is the most we ever paid for a taxi there. It was about a 15 minute drive (our trip to the temple only cost 30 euros and it was a LOT further).
ROME
When we arrived in Rome we checked into the hotel and then walked to a nearby restaurant. I was feeling great by now, so I ordered the lasagna. They make noodles from scratch in a lot of the restaurants which makes the food very good. Roy had some fresh gnocci, which was also delicious. Amazingly we didn't gain any weight. Probably because we walked everywhere and the portions were of reasonable size. Plus we always shared the pizza.
Of course, we had to have gelato for dessert.
Out walking.
Macaroons. We bought one and shared it. This was just for display
This is the Trevi Fountain. I had Roy take this picture to show how many tourists
were there looking at it.
My dish had Tuna in it. It was cooked through, but still SO tender. It was delicious.
Roy had Carbonara, which is pasta cooked with egg and bacon. I guess he ate this a lot
on his mission.
We just passed these doors on one of our walks. Roy thought the handles looked like big knockers.
At a Lego Store in Rome
As we were trying to take a selfie at the Trevi Fountain, an Italian man offered to do it for us. We let him, then he wanted us to let him take our photo for us with his Polaroid camera. That cost us 4 euros. These Romans are pro at extorting money out of people (The quality of his pictures was not good.)
This place was cute, but we ordered a Caprese pizza to share. It was just sauce and a few bits of fresh mozzarella and tomatoes on it. Elise says that is what a Caprese is, but it wasn't exciting.
A cute Pinocchio store. Italians love Pinocchio
In Rome we went on a tour of the Vatican. It was disappointing. There were so many people they herded us through just like cattle. We could hardly enjoy any of the art or other interesting artifacts. We were told it was high season. They probably had 50,000 people go through the museums that day. What a money maker. The guide explained the Sistine Chapel to us before we entered, because, she said, she couldn't explain it to us when we were inside. I thought that maybe it was a reverence thing, but she still talked to us about where to be, etc. We did not feel the spirit. It was beautiful, but we were given only 10 minutes in a hot and crowded room to examine it.
St. Peter's Basilica
There was a hall of beautiful tapestries. I couldn't imagine an artist weaving these and having them come out so beautifully. Again, we didn't have time to enjoy them.
St. Peter's Square
This picture was in the Basilica. Even with all the people you see in this picture, it doesn't begin to show how it felt to be pushed through the tour with them. St. Peter's basilica was made to handle 60,000 people, so there was actually breathing room.
This was worth seeing. The Pieta by Michael Angelo. It was on display in New York when someone took a hammer to it and broke one of the fingers of Christ as well as doing some other damage.
Sunday evening in Rome we spoke with Nan and Bruce via Marco Polo. There was only one hour time difference between us. Bruce told us about the Villa Borghese Museum, so after visiting with them, I looked the museum up on line and was able to get tickets on Tuesday at 11:00 am which was perfect since we did the Vatican on Monday, and had reservations to go to the Temple at 4:30 Tuesday afternoon. At least at the Villa Borghese they control the amount of people who go in. We were given a two hour block to see the whole museum, at the end of which we were escorted out. This was not a guided tour, but we rented an audio tour while we were there and we were glad we did. The art was beautiful, and the story behind the Villa and some of the art in it was very interesting. Bruce told me all about three of the sculptures we would see. The first was the statue of David by Bernini (below), he said that he liked it a lot more than the David by Michael Angelo because it told him something about David. David has his slingshot ready. He is grimacing with determination, and his armor is discarded below him. It was so incredibly detailed.
Bernini also had several other sculptures and some paintings in the museum.
This picture doesn't do this statue justice. This is Apollo and Daphne. The story is that Apollo loved Daphne and he is chasing her. She appealed to her father to save her, and he turned her into a tree to protect her. You can see the branches growing out of her toes and fingers-Notice Apollo's leg behind him as he runs. Can you imagine carving that out of a marble block?
This sculpture, also by Bernini, is called the Rape of Persephone. If you look behind the statue, you can see his hand holding onto her thigh. His fingers digging into the flesh. It looks so real, and again it is so detailed. Cardinal Borghese, who collected the art and owned the villa discovered the talent that Bernini had and commissioned many of his works.
For better pictures of these statues and a little bit about Bernini's career, see this link: Statues by Bernini
Other artists who have work in the villa weren't as lucky as Bernini. They weren't always paid for their work. Sometimes they were threatened with prison or death so they would give up their collections of paintings. Sometimes he simply stole the art he wanted. One very large painting was commissioned by a mother whose son had been murdered. The painter was asked to depict a scene of mourning. He painted a scene with Christ being carried by his loved ones after his death. It hung in some museum or somewhere, until it didn't--one night it just disappeared. It was discovered that some monks had lowered it out the window. It later showed up in Borghese's villa.
Cardinal Borghese used his money and power quite ruthlessly.
This statue is of the Cardinal himself. If you look closely you can see a color abnormality in the marble right across his forehead. Because of this Bernini carved a 2nd statue that is almost identical to this one. Apparently he did it very quickly, too.
Antonio Canova sculpted this piece. It is of Pauline Bonaparte Borghese, She was a sister to Napolean. Borghese commissioned this piece to celebrate his marriage. This sculpture was also amazing. The cushion looked very real. Apparently some of the people thought it was scandalous for her to pose nude. Her response was, "Why? It was warm. There was a fire going."
In contrast to the Vatican and all the "money changers" there, was the Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We had a reservation to attend a session, so after leaving the villa we had a quick lunch, changed our clothes, and went by taxi to see this beautiful building. The spirit was so strong, the sister missionaries so sweet. The feeling here was entirely different from anywhere else we'd been in Italy. We spoke to some of the missionaries and even knew one of them from our previous stake in Bountiful. We also ran into someone from our first Bountiful ward, the Canyon Estates ward (Elyssa Clifford and her daughter Camille).
Our final dinner was a restaurant that was right next to the hotel. We left the hotel in search of a good restaurant, and it was right there. We looked it up on yelp and saw that it had 4 1/2 stars. Roy had veal, and I had seafood. They had an antipasto bar that was excellent.
This was a map of Italy in the visitors center that showed all of the church buildings throughout the region. It was a positive experience to see this, as Roy felt that the branch in Bolzano and the ward in Pisa had not grown as much as he had hoped they would in 41 years,. The Book of Mormon below was the first Book of Mormon translated into Italian. Apparently it was translated by some missionaries.
The antipasto plate
If you've stuck with me to the end of this letter, you are amazing. When we arrived back home I was pretty jet lagged for a couple of days. We unpacked right away because we knew we didn't want to go to bed too early (we got home just after 7:00 pm). I was sure I had lost my brush because I couldn't find it. I went through my backpack 5 times. I found it a couple of mornings later--in the wrong drawer. I did not remember unpacking it. I also went to write a check for my cleaning ladies and I couldn't find my check book in my purse. I knew I had recently gotten a new set of checks out of my drawer and I was worried it had been stolen or something--I found it--in the refrigerator. I guess I had gotten it out of my purse to write the check at the same time I was putting away groceries. Hopefully I'll have my brain with me for the next week as we have some last minute details to plan for Jennie's wedding.
All in all we had a wonderful trip. It was good to get to Italy after 40 years and see some of the places Roy served in. I don't know that we'll ever get back there again--unless we serve a mission together or something.
We had a lovely dinner to celebrate Jennie and Jordan's wedding given by previous Sunday School teachers of Jordan, the Kjars. I will include more information about that in next week's letter which will probably be all about the wedding.
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Roy is in his element on trains. He took so many
