Starting in the mid-16th century, young aristocrats — mainly from Britain — took extended trips around Europe to complete their education. It was called the Grand Tour.
The goal of this trip is to acquire knowledge through experience. It could last from several months to, in some cases, years. The aristocrats would visit the countries of France, Italy, Germany and Switzerland.
Connie and I took a “Short Tour” of Switzerland and Italy with our daughter Abigail — September 21-29. Abby has been working on her Doctorate in Physics through the University of Wisconsin-Madison at CERN in Genéva, Switzerland for the last six months.
Our Boeing 767 landed on September 21 at the Genéva airport. Our first stop was a tour of Abby’s work. There Abby pointed out the office where the World Wide Web was invented in 1989.
No trip to Europe would be complete without visiting a church — we saw 14, at least one each day. Downtown old Genéva contained the only Protestant church on our itinerary. St. Pierre Cathedral was built as a Roman Catholic cathedral, but became a Reformed Protestant Church during the Reformation. We climbed the stairs to its bell tower for an excellent view of the city.
As a Catholic, I must set straight a fallacy of the Genéva church’s pamphlet. It stated that Protestants do not worship the Virgin Mary — implying that Catholics do. No one of the Catholic faith worships Mary. For a better understanding, read the “Hail Mary” prayer based on the Annunciation and the Visitation found in the Gospel of Luke.
One of the things you quickly learn in Europe is how to use public transportation. While there we traveled by bus, tram and train (both large and small).
We spent day two of our trip on a fast train to Venice, Italy — a city of marble palaces built on a lagoon. Venice is home to nearly 200 churches, with the granddaddy being the Basilica di San Marco which contains the body of St. Mark.
The cathedral’s walls and ceiling of San Marco contain more than 86,000 sq. feet of mosaic art; many made with 24-carat gold leaf fused onto the back of glass to represent divine light.
All of the churches in Italy we visited were full of beautiful works of art, including paintings, mosaics, frescoes and statues. Catholic churches use art to tell the stories of the bible and educate the faithful. This started long before Gutenberg invented the printing press.
The main form of transportation in Venice was by foot. During our stay, we walked an average of 7.5 miles a day through the maze of avenues and bridges on the 118 islands which make up the city.
While in Venice, we enjoyed excellent Italian cuisine, a romantic ride on a Gondola, and being serenaded by a gentleman with an accordion.
After three nights in the city known as the queen-of-the-sea, we boarded a train for Verona.
Besides its beautiful churches, Verona is known for the Arena; its Roman Amphitheater completed around 30 AD. It is the third-largest in Italy after Rome’s Colosseum and the arena at Capua, able to seat 25,000 spectators in its 44 tiers of marble seats.
Verona is also the setting for William Shakespeare’s tragedy “Romeo and Juliet.” So we visited the Casa di Giulietta (house of Juliet) and stroked the right breast of her statue for good luck.
After two nights in Verona, our next train had a three-hour layover in Milan, where we took the opportunity to tour the Metropolitan Cathedral-Basilica of the Nativity of Saint Mary. Around here, we celebrate the anniversaries of our churches after they are 100 to 150 years old. Construction on the Milan Cathedral began in 1386. The final details were completed in 1965.
It is the largest church in the Italian Republic — the bigger St. Peter’s Basilica is in the State of Vatican City, a sovereign state.
The cathedral has 40 marble columns, 80 feet high, and can hold 40,000. A small red light in the dome above the apse marks where one of the nails reputedly from the Crucifixion of Christ is. After visiting it in 1867, Mark Twain said, “that one might study it a week without exhausting its interest.” Alas, we only could afford an hour.
After a couple more trains and a steep half-mile walk up a hill, we arrived at our last destination — the Hotel de Ville in the medieval town of Gruyéres, Switzerland. There we toured a castle, dined on cheese fondue and visited a cheese factory.
No matter how far you travel from home — across the ocean, the country, or our great state of Missouri — you learn that happiness comes not from material things but from memories.
