Places that are popular tourist stops are also popular with pickpockets. A pair of small Asian women in Barcelona, Spain, stood next to me on the metro car that had just arrived for us and a lot of other tourists. We were in a crowd of people who had descended from the city’s popular funicular ride to the top of a hill with a picture-worthy view. It was standing room only.
I stood near John, holding onto a post as the metro revved up. One of the small women reached over my head and grabbed the same post I was holding onto. How curious, I thought, that one so little would reach so high.
But at the same instant, I felt busy fingers working away at the Velcro-zipped travel pouch I had slung over one shoulder and under the other arm. I don’t keep money in this pouch (the money was safely in a flat money belt under my shirt), but the pouch did contain our passports, charge cards and Eurail pass.
It seemed as if everything moved into slow-motion. I looked at each of the two women, both of whom made eye-contact with me, and I clutched the travel pouch tighter. The Velcro did its job.
In the middle of this attempted theft, I said to John, “She’s trying to pickpocket me!” At that moment, the two slid away and slipped through the exit just before the doors closed.
It unnerved me. They escaped. But so did I.

Hostels aren’t what they used to be; they’re so much more.
We remember hostels that frowned on anyone over 26 years old, sold bed space in rooms with four or more stacks of bunk beds, forbade alcohol on the premises, and kicked everyone out between midmorning and late afternoon.
Furthermore, they were often in out-of-the-way locations and filled with backpackers. You could save money and you could meet some nice people. But there was no drinking, no loitering, no privacy.
Then one day in a small town on Lago de Como in northern Italy, we happened upon a hostel with a machine in the lobby that dispensed beer for sale. It was the first time we had found a hostel that did not frown on alcohol.
A couple of Irish kids, dead drunk, were sprawled in the lobby in midafternoon. They welcomed us with open arms and asked if we had any coins they could borrow.
We moved on.
In Mennagio, Italy, late that afternoon we discovered a wonderful old inn, a former convent, with quiet monastic rooms that had walls 20 feet high and windows whose shutters blacked out the brightest daylight. Best of all, there was privacy, and there was peace.
But on our most recent trip, with a decision to stay mostly in two-star hotels (with an occasional splurge for luxury lodgings), we learned to add hostels, along with former convents, to our list of potential accommodations.
The main reason was that we discovered many now have private rooms along with the usual dormitory accommodations.
Hostels are still full of young travelers, but older travelers are just as welcome. Many hostels have a bar and some have their own restaurants on the premises. The secret for those of us looking for a place to sleep — and not necessarily a place to mix and mingle — is to ask for a private room well away from the bar scene. Sometimes you might even get a room with its own bathroom. The cost is relatively low, there’s no lockout period, and many are in good downtown locations, close to restaurants, museums and other attractions.
One of our favorite hostels on this trip was in the heart of Berlin: Citystay Hostel, Rosenstrasse 16, Berlin-Mitte (52 euros a night for a double room (cash only, payable in advance). Free Internet access in the lobby.
The window of our private second-floor room opened onto a central garden. We were within walking distance to many attractions, and next to a bus stop for other parts of town.
Another hostel I can recommend is the Bauhaus Hostel in Bruges, Belgium, $73 a night. Internet access in the lobby.
This hostel was party central, with an active bar and big restaurant, but our double room was on the top floor in the building next door and was blissfully quiet. Our window opened onto a sprawl of red tile roofs and beyond that church steeples and sunsets. And the Bauhaus location, in the Old Town, is within easy walking distance to the plaza at the heart of the town with its many attractions.
We ran into two other couples “of a certain age” at the Bruges hostel, both on extended European tours, as we were, and happy to save money on lodging. Both couples were from Australia.
We older travelers weren’t so very different from the mobs of youths swirling all around us. But they talked a lot about paying off college loans or joining the Peace Corps or which towns have the best party scene, while we “veterans” traded travel stories and showed each other pictures of our grown kids.

I love visiting new places, but there is one problem: I almost always get lost.

A sense of direction has never been one of my strengths, a curious shortcoming for a travel writer. And yet, there is one advantage: I’m forced to seek help. And sometimes this leads to happy consequences.

We were strolling in Krakow, Poland’s jewel of a city and home of the Chopin University of Music, named for Poland’s brilliant pianist and composer Frederic Chopin.

After carefully consulting a bus schedule, I insisted we get on the right bus, and so we did. But it wasn’t going in the direction we intended to go. Instead, it headed ever deeper into the suburbs. Finally, John persuaded me it was time to get off the bus, cross the street, and head back to our starting point.

I had flunked navigation once again. John’s a little better at this than I am, but putting our “two heads together” at this particular task doesn’t always work.

We stood under the hot sun, waiting for the bus back to town. As we waited, we pulled out the map once again and debated which stop would get us closest to our destination.

An attractive old woman joined us and said, in an American accent, “May I help you?” She was probably close to 80, and traveling alone. “I’m rediscovering my roots,” she said. “I spent my childhood here, but my family left Poland at the start of World War II. I’ve lived in San Diego all my adult life.”

We were happy to follow her back to the tourist trail. We got off the bus when she did, and then we walked. And walked. She didn’t know Krakow as well as we had assumed. But after several blocks, we did come upon her old school, and it was enjoyable to imagine how it had been all those decades ago.

And then we were in “Kazimierz,” the Jewish Quarter, and understood how much it meant to her to be here. The Jewish life had been all but wiped out, and yet now, 65 years later, not only was it thriving, it was celebrated — with museums, art galleries, synagogues, shops and statues and little parks with benches under ancient shade trees.

“I found my cousin,” our impromptu guide said. “I never knew him, but now we have discovered each other. He has a restaurant, the Klezmer-Hois, the best Jewish restaurant in Krakow.”

We had dinner there that very night. Not only was the traditional Jewish food beautifully prepared and served in an elegant setting, there was absolutely beautiful Klezmer music. It was a Monday night, but the place was full. A woman with a rich alto voice who also played the violin, and her partners, a bass player and an accordionist, entertained us with music from the centuries — love songs, lullabies and ballads to die for. It was a highlight of our stay.

And the next night, at Polonia House, a small concert hall in Krakow’s Old Town, we listened to the music of Chopin.

As we traveled around Europe by train, we saw huge parking lots near the railroad tracks in several cities and towns — not for commuters’ cars, but for their bicycles.

There were rows and rows of hundreds of bikes, sometimes double-decker rows and rows. It was heartening to see so many signs of environmentally tuned-in commuters.

Whether the popularity of bicycle-train commuting is due (along with environmental awareness) to high gas prices or high taxes or incentive programs, the fact is there’s a lot of commuting that isn’t taking place behind the wheel of a car.

Of course, Europeans have an advantage: Their trains run on time. Their trains run on time. Their trains run on time.

Oh, the efficiency of it! The ability to plan your day! The dependability! In America, of course, there must be a few golden examples of this marvelous public service, but not many.

Here’s an example of the opposite situation:

The Amtrak train along the coastline of California is hampered by sharing rail service with the Southern Pacific freight train line which has priority over mere passenger service.

Recently, we took the train from Santa Barbara to San Luis Obispo for an overnight outing. We spent a pleasant Thursday evening enjoying the Thursday Farmers’ Market where musicians and restaurants share space with fresh fruits and vegetable booths.

We strolled around the lively and attractive downtown, grazed our way through the Farmers’ Market, stopped and listened awhile to a trio playing jazz, and slept like babies after all the good food and exercise.

But heading back to Santa Barbara the next day, our Amtrak train rolled to a stop halfway between the two cities, and there we sat for the longest time, on a side rail overlooking the blue Pacific. If we had known we’d be stranded there for more than an hour, we would have packed a picnic lunch.

Finally, a slow-moving freight train rumbled by. Then our train started up again and chugged on down the coast.

Not until we arrived back in Santa Barbara did we find anyone to explain to us what had caused the delay. We were told that when Southern Pacific sold rights to the government for Amtrak to use their rails, they retained right-of-way for their freight trains.

Over the years, there has been little political will to change the terms of the longstanding agreement that favors freight over humans, nor to add tracks for passenger trains. I guess the powers-that-be would rather add lanes to our crowded freeways and build more parking lots for cars.

Here’s more about our successes and difficulties using the Eurail Pass during two months in Europe.

The current price for two adults traveling together, for a virtually unlimited number of trips in 21 countries for two months: $1,409 per person. Other prices, for varying lengths of time, for youths, for a single country or region, in dollars or euros, can be found at Eurail.com.

A few times, there weren’t any seats available for Eurail Pass users. A few other times, we had trouble finding seats once we got aboard. Both of these types of problems were due to the amazing number of vacation days and holidays Europeans get. We found that it was best not to head south as a springtime weekend approaches or north when the work week begins.

To get from Avignon to Barcelona, a relatively short train ride, we ended up booking a train up to Paris, another down to Bordeaux, and another back across southern France, into Spain, and on down to Barcelona. But we’d never been to the town of Bordeaux and it turned out to be such a nice place to stop that we decided to stay on for a couple of days. No problem!

Spain’s spin on the Eurail Pass came as a surprise to us. The Eurail timetable booklet mentioned that some routes required reservations, and that these would cost extra.

It did not mention that nearly every train in Spain required a reservation, and the extra cost was substantial — Madrid to Lisbon, Portugal, $140 extra for the overnight to reserve a sleeping compartment for two, for example. (That’s on top of the initial cost of the Eurail Pass.) Even the short day trip from Madrid to to Granada had a reservation fee of about $11 each.

The round trip between Madrid and Segovia cost $36 each without the pass, but the ticket agent said the fee would be higher with the pass. That was weird.

Although our Eurail Pass was first-class, we saved some money on the train from Madrid to Cordova by going second-class — the reservation fee: $15 each.

Fortunately, the other ten countries we visited using the Eurail Pass had less burdensome rules. Often, reservations weren’t even needed, and there was seldom a problem finding seats in first-class.

Reservations in Germany cost a few extra euros, sometimes nothing at all. In France, from the southern border town of Hendaya, the reservation fee for the train up to Paris only cost an extra $4, and the same for the train from Paris to the lovely coastal town of St. Malo.

From Berlin, Germany, all the way to Copenhagen, Denmark, the extra reservation cost was only $10 each. Finally, we began to think that it had paid off to buy the Eurail Pass before we started our trip. To confirm the wisdom of our purchase, we asked a few prices for traveling without the pass. One example: even for second-class, the cost of a ticket from St. Malo to Paris was $84, and the cost from Paris to Bruges, Belgium, $140. Berlin to Copenhagen, $180 second-class, $285 first-class. And the Eurail Pass is first-class, with all the comforts that provides.

Besides trains from city to city, the pass covers local transportation modes in some places, such as trams and certain metro routes. Check at local stations.

Considering that our farflung itinerary, planned and unplanned, took us to France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and the Czech Republic, we got our money’s worth. We even threw in three days in Krakow, Poland, outside the Eurail Pass bailiwick, with the money we saved.

John and I traveled around Europe for two wonderful months without ever getting behind the wheel of a car.

I loved it every time we strolled along a street so narrow that a car would be a handicap, every time a hotel added 15 euros for parking and it didn’t apply to us, and every time a public bus in its dedicated lane passed a few hundred cars stalled in a traffic jam and we were on the bus.

Okay, okay, there were a few times it would have been nice to have a car — when we wanted to visit a little town off the beaten path, or when it would have been fun to buy a big souvenir and put it in the trunk, rather than reluctantly pass it by because we didn’t want to carry it around for the rest of the trip. (I know, we could ship something home, but we’re not big spenders anyway.)

Then John would remind me about the friends who had parked their rental car next to a garbage bin behind their hotel, and the bin was set on fire, and their rental car was burned to a crisp.

And I would remind him about the time we bumbled around England in a rental car, knocking off a mirror on one side and ruining a tire on the other side before we got the hang of driving on the left.

In my current opinion, trains, trams, buses, metros and taxis are a great way to go. Maybe this is just an interim stage between the adventure of driving yourself and the security of having a tour operator take care of transportation and just about everything else.

Getting on a train in Europe and heading for the next place we wanted to go was a pleasure. The seats in both first- and second-class were always comfortable — hugely more comfortable than any airplane seat in economy class. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the train departed and arrived right on schedule.

On most overnight trains in Europe there is the option of a two-person compartment with clean and comfortable bunk beds. (That, however, does cost a substantial extra fee. More on Eurail’s “extra” fees next time.)

Every metropolitan area we visited made me realize what a difference there is between American and European approaches to public transportation.

In America we build roads, try to keep them in reasonable repair, and encourage people to buy cars and drive them everywhere. Is there really an “American love affair with the automobile” or is it that our other choices are few and far between? In Europe, public transportation is plentiful, convenient, low-cost and well used by local people.

Gasoline costs more there, too. Somewhere between the high price of gasoline and the narrow winding streets probably lies the reason Europeans drive smaller cars. 

Our biggest transportation hassle was figuring out the different systems in each place: read a metro map, find the route, determine the cost, check whether to pay for a ticket in a kiosk or a machine or on the tram or the bus, and so on. It’s not an overwhelming problem, but it does take time. Still, it’s not all bad. You meet a lot of helpful strangers this way.

Here’s a word from my hometown, Santa Barbara, California, a popular destination for luxury seekers, families, and backpackers as well.
Europeans by the busload and Midwesterners in American cars flock to Santa Barbara, famous for its perfect climate (as perfect as climate can ever be), its sandy beaches and its backdrop of mountain wilderness.

But watch out for that wilderness — recent fires have taken a grim toll, 80 houses burned  a couple of weeks ago, and more than 200 last fall. The brush is oily though dry, so caution is crucial. No smoldering cigarettes or carelessly doused barbecue fires.

Still, there’s so much beauty here, on the “American Riviera”   – so-called because of its south-facing shoreline.

Beyond the heavily touristed town, check out the offshore islands that shelter the coastline from the wide Pacific — Channel Islands National Park. Close to the mainland, but protected from development, the five islands, Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Miguel and Santa Barbara, are a place where you can experience California as it was centuries ago.

On these islands, relative isolation over thousands of years created animals, plants, and archeological resources found nowhere else on Earth.
Since acquiring the islands from ranchers and private owners, the National Park Service has worked to remove feral pigs and other animals and non-native plants, allowing such creatures as the Island Fox to make a comeback.

In 2006, the first bald eagle chick to hatch unaided by humans on the Channel Islands in more than 50 years made headlines across the country.

Thanks to the public interest, federal agencies and the Ventura County Office of Education established a webcam that brought live, streaming images of the chick and its parents into the schools and homes of millions of Americans.

This year, the webcam has been reestablished on Santa Cruz Island to again allow for watching the comings and goings at the bald eagle nest. The solar-powered camera runs daily 8 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. To check out the webcam, Visit “Channel Islands Live.”

Back in town, the place to see and be seen is State Street. Weekdays, weekends, anytime, strollers drift through the downtown area, shop in dozens of stores both trendy and chain, and dine in award-winning restaurants and at sidewalk cafes, visit an amazingly well stocked art museum, attend events at the newly renovated Granada Theater (a $60 million restoration project that makes the Granada a world-class theater), and head down the street toward the waterfront, checking out a lively bar scene that revs up in the afternoon and hums until 2 a.m. (Some parts of it even mumble quietly in the morning.)

At the risk of sounding like a tourist office, I really am impressed with the spectacular natural setting and the wealth of other attractions in this “picture postcard town.”

Some hotel owners have complained to the local press that their occupancy rates have fallen over the past few months. One said her hotel’s two-night requirement was cut because visitors coming up for the weekend from the Los Angeles area didn’t want to stay the second night.
But when I drive across town from my home near the beach to a friend’s house on the Riviera (where the mountains begin), it seems to me there are more people around than ever!

Bed-and-breakfast places in grand old Victorian houses near the downtown are popular with visitors. Google “Santa Barbara Bed and Breakfast.”
The Upham Hotel on De la Vina Street, with its Louie’s Restaurant, built in 1871, is one of my favorite places to recommend.
In our neighborhood, several entire furnished houses, owned by people who live elsewhere, are turned over to rental agencies to offer to tourists. Some visitors stay a week, two weeks, a month, or, occasionally, for an entire season. Google “Santa Barbara Vacation Rentals” to find these. Also check out “santabarbara.com” for local tourist information.

Come for the theater and gourmet dining, sightseeing and whale-watching, sailing and surfing, hiking and biking. Visit the Natural History Museum and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and dozens of art galleries selling the works of hundreds of local artists. Ride the 25-cent tourist bus along State Street, down to the wharf and left to the hotels along Cabrillo Boulevard.

And pick up the Santa Barbara Independent, the local newspaper that comes out every Thursday with listings of the week’s events.
Just don’t drive your car down State Street unless you want a slow-moving panorama of tourists, strollers, students and a few showoffs (the guy with the rat on the cat on the dog, the snake charmer, a panhandler or two, the amplified musicians in front of Borders Bookstore), and — waiting at a stoplight to cross State Street, trying to get across town — me in my Altima.

In these tough economic times, what’s a traveler to do? Stay home to save money? Or hang the cost, and take that trip?

There’s another option. You can count pennies just as well overseas as you can at home. Here was one experienced traveler’s experience: a month-long trip across the Atlantic, to three popular destinations, for a grand total of less than $4,000.

Jinny Webber of Santa Barbara, California, used up a lot of frequent-flier miles for her round-trip ticket from Los Angeles to London. She had other places she wanted to visit, but she waited until she got to London to purchase those airline tickets. That was so she could take advantage of the bargain-basement “bucket shops” that specialize in low-cost international air fares to and from London, as advertised in the local newspapers. She was able to purchase a round-trip ticket to Ireland for one long weekend (Ryan Air from Gatwick Airport to Dublin for $36) and one to Morocco for a week (Atlas Blue from Gatwick to Marrakesh for $150).

During her stay in London, Jinny often got around by walking from one place to another, and on the days when her plans took her greater distances, she bought a travel pass for about $20 a day, providing unlimited transportation by subway and bus.

An avid traveler, Jinny has been to London many times, and she has friends there, eager to host her, as she has opened her California home to them as well. Her travel expenses included generous gifts for the friends she visited. On some of the days in London and nearby locales, she stayed in relatively inexpensive bed-and-breakfast places.

Her entertainment included lingering afternoon strolls through free museums, checking out art gallery openings, and going to several plays at the National Theater and other venues when inexpensive tickets were available for performances that night.

Dinners in restaurants (expensive) were interspersed with late-evening snacks in pubs. One of her favorites consisted of a mug of beer with roasted potato wedges with cheese and “leaves,” a pile of undressed lettuce - low-cost, satisfying and fairly healthy.

“I wouldn’t do that very often,” she said, “but it was both satisfying and relatively cheap.”

In Marrakesh, she and a companion stayed at a small hotel in the heart of the old town - Riad Les Oliviers - for about $40 per person for a double room.

She and two other friends also saved money by hiring a cab for a daylong outing to the Atlas mountains rather than taking an organized tour.

“That was cheaper for the three of us, and we had control over our itinerary, including a long hike,” she said.

In the coastal town of Essaouria, they had accommodations in Riad Watier that cost $60 per person, including breakfast on the roof-garden. A two-bedroom suite in the old walled city of Tangier cost $60 as well.

Travel between towns was by “Super Tours” bus, about two hours, $7 each way.

The week in Morocco, including accommodations, meals and shopping, cost Jinny about $900. For London and Dublin her cost was around $3,000, including house gifts for the friends who hosted her.

There are so many places John and I want to visit in Europe, we decided to spend two months there. We made that decision last October, before the market really melted down, but we’re going anyway.

We decided to buy a Eurail pass to use in April and May. We already have our plane tickets in hand, too. And John’s son is going to house-sit for us. All set!

Making the big-ticket purchases early freed our minds for the fun part of getting ready — getting in touch with friends we might visit and deciding which places we really don’t want to miss. And I rationalize that some of the money would be gone by now anyway, due to the economic downturn.

At the Internet site www.Eurail.com you buy directly from Eurail. The user-friendly website promises “lowest price and free shipping.”

We selected unlimited first-class train travel for two months. The cost for two or more traveling together was $1,329 each, plus $12 for insurance in case a pass is lost.

(If you’re 25 or younger, the cost was $1,019; if you’re 26 or older and traveling alone, the cost was $1,569. Other time frames and more limited passes are also on sale. Prices in dollars change at least monthly, depending on the exchange rate.)

There’s another popular website, www.RailEurope.com, which was recommended by a travel agent.

“But I don’t buy off websites myself,” she said. “I prefer to telephone a live human and deal directly.”

We had a conference call, the travel agent, the live human at Rail Europe, and I.

“Why buy at Rail Europe instead of Eurail?”

“We are based in the United States,” the live human said. “And you can make reservations on our website, too.”

She wanted a list of the countries we plan to visit. (Eurail didn’t ask. Its website simply listed the 21 countries the pass covers.)

We want to play it light and loose, and we don’t have an itinerary pinned down yet. All we have decided for sure is that we want to take the plane to Frankfurt, Germany, make our way south to Spain, and then meander through several countries, all the way north to the fjords of Norway, then back to Frankfurt and home.

Conversations with John are like this:

Let’s head for the sun, and save the northern countries for the end of the trip.

Sounds good. How about stopping off in Italy first, and visit the caves of Parma? Remember that article about Parmesan cheese?

And don’t forget Bologna, for the fabulous restaurants. And Florence, for the incomparable collections of art.

Shouldn’t we go directly to Spain, because of the weather in early April? The farther south the better, don’t you think?
Should we stop off in Paris for a few days?

On our way north, let’s take a side trip to Ukraine, to see friends who were in the Peace Corps with us in Russia and now have those great jobs in Kiev.

But that’s so far east. And it’s not on the 21-countries list.

Let’s do it anyway; we’ll have time.

Let’s talk about it later.

Meanwhile, how much for the RailEurope tickets?

The RailEurope.com website was not as user-friendly as the Eurail.com website, and it was hard to figure what the actual cost for a comparable pass would be. The live human said the cost would be $1,668 each if we made the purchase at their website, plus $14 each for the insurance. That price might be lower by now, as the exchange rate has changed.
How much for buying the Rail Europe passes through the travel agent? The same, but with the travel agent’s add-on fee. The advantage? None, that I could see.

The travel agent cheerfully said she couldn’t see any advantage either, and suggested I buy the passes myself from Eurail.com.

I took the leap, while there was still spendable money left in our IRAs, and bought directly from the Eurail.com website. The Eurail pass was hand-delivered the next day, complete with voucher, insurance, maps, train timetables. We are ready!
We’re still debating Ukraine.

       Time is not money, and nowadays that’s a good thought to keep in mind. If you really want to go to Europe, and you have the time, go for it!
       That was the attitude of Toy Story, of Fort Collins, Colorado. She put a fairly large dent in her fairly small fortune, and doesn’t regret it for a minute.
       “I don’t enjoy flying,” she said. She doesn’t like jet lag, she doesn’t like airports, and she’d rather take her time getting there.
       So she took Amtrak from Colorado to New York and booked passage on the Queen Mary – a six-day crossing from New York to England, paying $2,500 for the outbound voyage and $1,700 for the return.
       Toy, who’s 76, had learned of a biking-and-museum-hopping tour of The Netherlands, and the timing coincided with the voyage, so she signed up. But as luck would have it, that tour didn’t attract enough people, so it was canceled. The tour operator offered instead a one-week bike-and-barge tour that covered 50 miles a day and featured gourmet meals on the barge every evening.
       “I’m not a helmet and gel seat person at all,” she said. “But I kept up with the others just fine.” 
       After that, armed with a one-month Eurail pass good for 10 trips, she headed for Paris, spent a day there doing the galleries, and boarded an overnight express train for the beautiful coastal villages of Cinque Terre on the Italian coastline.
       “Getting a Eurail pass was the one thing I wouldn’t do again,” she said. “I spent a thousand dollars for it, and I didn’t get my money’s worth.” (That was because she used several days of her pass to take short train rides to cities near where she was staying, which otherwise would have been relatively inexpensive.)  
       Upon arriving at Cinque Terre’s westernmost village, Monterrosso al More, Toy followed an information sign to an office where a friendly clerk found her a beautiful, inexpensive room in an old remodeled villa, in the center of town.          While waiting for her friend to join her, she spent several days, hiking, exploring the area, and soaking up the sun, along with those all-day excursions.
       The friend was not content with anything less than a four-star hotel, so when she arrived, Toy moved with her into a four-star accommodation “far up in the hills, remote, a terrible choice I would not have made. But she’s a princess.”
       Then it was on to Venice for three spectacular days of walking, sightseeing, concerts and perfect weather, to Milano for shopping, and to Prague, which Toy found to be a “big, fat bore,” with its high prices and Art Deco architecture: “Not my favorite place.”
       Trip highlights? The brilliantly restored marble buildings of classic Italian cities, and the free concerts in churches and concert halls in several places. Even aboard the Queen Mary, some members of the Boston Symphony gave three concerts to delighted passengers.
       Total trip cost – Amtrak train to New York, the voyage to Europe and back, the Eurail pass, a month’s worth of hotel accommodatons, meals and all the usual extras: about $10,000. 
       Was it worth it? “Of course!” Toy said. “I’ve wanted to do this for so long.” There’s a whole world to explore, and now is the time.