What a change! From warm and sunny Rome to cool and damp (one might say, CHILLY) Northern Ireland. But we have been enveloped in the warmth and hospitality of Mary, Ed’s second cousin on his mother’s side, and Mary’s husband Tony.

Ed and I first met Mary and Tony in 1989 when Ed’s brother, Bill, the Muldoon genealogist, guided a family group to the Furey’s lovely home in Derry, Northern Ireland. The group included Ed’s parents and constitutes one of a myriad of fond memories of Bill.

The title of this post,  “Home Sweet Home, ” refers not only to our return from Europe to US, but also to our time in Ed’s ancestral home, Ireland, and the home, wherever it is geographically, where we are loved by family or friends and appreciated and we are grateful. We found HOME in many places and faces on this lengthy and complicated trip.

May God continue to grant us the Providence of mercy to find and build that home for our sisters and brothers near and far.

POSTSCRIPT As of October 23 we are in DC but 6 weeks of traveling caught up with us so we both have heavy colds that make it difficult to talk without succumbing to coughing fits. We apologize for any delay in communicating with you. We are headed to Minnesota to visit Ed’s brother Bill’s resting place next to Lake Sagawatan at St John’s Abbey and then to Naples, Florida for the winter by October 30.

We close the posts for our 2025 Camino by sharing some final images.

Our beloved Pope Francis declared 2025 a Jubilee Year of forgiveness, love and joy.

So we knew that Rome would be especially crowded with pilgrims… but we were not prepared for the sizes of the crowds we encountered.

We visited Rome twice on this trip — once to catch the Ryanair flight to Dubrovnik, and the second time before flying on Ryanair to Dublin. Rome is our favorite city in the world.

A major Roman highlight was our long-sought visit to the Galleria Borghese, an amazing museum set in a large park within the city. Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1579-1633), nephew of Pope Paul V, was a voracious collecter of ancient Roman art and commissioner of contemporary art from such as Bernini and Carravaggio. It seems that whenever he wanted a piece, he would ask his uncle the Pope to apply pressure so here could get what he wanted.

This blog post will close with a short mention of another Italian city we visited briefly: Bologna. We basically had to go to Bologna in order to catch a train into Ravenna (see other blog post) so we spent one night there. On the plus side: Basilica San Petronio and Museo Archaeologie’s interesting and important Egyptian collection (mostly purchased from dealers). On the other side: a B&B host who was NOT courteous or helpful, a broken lock threatening our access to our room, and a monopoly called Bologna Taxi that promised but failed to send a taxi (no Uber.)

As of October 13 we’ve been in Ireland, the subject of the next post and our last stop in Europe before return to the US. (We’ll be in DC from late on October 22 until October 28 and in Naples, Florida from late on October 30. (In between we’ll have 2 days in Minnesota.)

To explain why we went to Dubrovnik, go back in your mind to the pre-Covid era. At that time, Ed and I had begun to plan a rail trip to parts of Central Europe (formerly known as Eastern Europe) that we had never visited. Since those plans were quashed by the pandemic, more recently we have inserted some of these places into other trips; for example two years ago we visited Krakow, Poland (and our dear Camino friend,  Lukacs) and also Prague.

Last week we went to Budapest as part of this Central Eutopean exploration, and on Wednesday we went to Dubrovnik, Croatia, on the eastern coast of the Adriatic. Since our start point was Ravenna, a difficult-to-reach place in northeast Italy,  we first traveled by train to Bologna and then to Rome, then flew from Rome Fiumicino Airport to Dubrovnik. Ryanair (and other low-cost airlines) make this affordable, if not streamlined. Rather than fly, i would have liked to take an ordinary ferry with the locals but apparently they stop sailing in September.

Our guide, Nina, recommended to us by a Broadmoor friend, greatly enhanced our enjoyment and learning. She explained a lot about the Republic of Ragusa, based for hundreds of years in Dubrovnik, and its maritime dominance. Most importantly, Nina shared her personal stories from the War of 1991-1996 when the Yugoslav National Army attacked mostly civilian Dubrovnik. She was 13 when the attack and bombardment began and she lives today with the memories and aftermath of war.

We were glad for our physical training from the Camino as Nina took us on the demanding circuit of the Old City walls, which are still complete and include a lot of steep steps. At one point Nina greeted a couple sitting in their small terrace abutting the wall. It was her former violin teacher and her former math teacher, enjoying their generations- old family home. (Like Ed,  Nina is a product of a Jesuit education! Ed went to BC High and Boston College.)

We learned a lot from Nina about ordinary people dealing with invasion, war, unexpected violence, heroism, loss.

We left Dubrovnik on our third day to stay in a small town called Ćilipi in the Konavle region, near the airport. There is a single road,  one lane each way, that hairpin up from the city above the sea, almost unbelievably picturesque but easily blocked by an accident or weather, so we made the drive the day before our morning flight. This turned into a delightful highlight of our visit.

Our cousin-in-law, Charles Franich, had told us that a branch of his family had provided land for the construction of Dubrovnik airport. We were able to visit the museum,  pictured above, which preserves and perpetuates local costumes and traditions, little changed for hundreds of years.

With her grace and enthusiasm — and impeccable English — all Croatian children study English starting in first grade — the museum’s director Dragonika imparted an appreciation for the beauty of the embroidery and its significance for the lives of girls and women of the countryside. Incidentally,  our guide, Nina, also had a grandmother from Konavle (or Konavala).

Our flight from Dubrovnik back to Rome, only one hour, fortunately contained none of the excitement and drama of our arrival in high winds.

You know that we have long been set on visiting Ravenna, capital of the Western Roman Empire from 5th-8th centuries CE. Our 4 day visit to this lovely and unspoiled small city was even more wonderful than we hoped.

With an excellent and thoughtful introduction by our local guide,  Angela, we fell into a comfortable relationship with the city. Ed chose a fantastic Hotel Gironda — not really a hotel but a stunningly restored medieval townhouse as a B&B — which is in the historical center.

On our second day, we decided to trek to an important site,  Sant’ Apollinaire in Classe, 6 km away. Partly we are still into the rhythm of walking 15,000 steps a day on average,  and partly because there was a local, one -day strike by government employees and students (so no bus service.)

While we were in Classe, which was a quiet place because away from Ravenna, Ed suffered an attack from a woman in her 30’s who tried to aggressively pick Ed’s pocket. She was under the supervision of an older woman who stood nearby. This was an unpleasant and so far, once in a lifetime experience for Ed and me.

In our last full day in Ravenna, we walked to the Mausoleum of Theodoric, Museo Nazionale, and revisited our favorite sites in the different light,  morning versus afternoon, of our first visit. We went to mass in the Church of St Francis (October 4) at the Church of St Francis, an ancient structure with a crypt full of water due to Ravenna’s high water table.

Overall our visit to Ravenna revealed a place of ancient beauty created by artists sponsored by imperial rulers of deep and subtle belief. Thanks to the challenges of a watery landscape, Ravenna escaped destructive conquest, flowered brilliantly for 500 years and then fell into a quiet sleep so that we can visit today

We left the Camino and plunged into the non-Camino world in a good way by discovering that Ed had booked us on Iberia Business Class to Budapest. The photo above shows Ed indicating that we are in Boarding Group 1 from Bilbao to Madrid and Madrid to Budapest. Nice meals served on the plane reminded us of the way air travel used to be!

We enjoyed some wonderful meals and sights in Budapest, thanks to Ed’s selection of a great hotel on Andrassy avenue, the city heart. We spend some of our time trying to repair Anne’s cell phone which suffered a fall in the Camino (at least it wasn’t either of us people).

A very moving experience was our visit to the Great Synagogue and Jewish Museum which taught us about more than 800,000 people were murdered in just 2-1/2 months, the last months before the Nazi surrender. We consider us to be fortunate that we were able to visit the day before the synagogue closed to the public for Yom Kippur.

We left Budapest for Ravenna on September 30 and just concluded a magical visit of four days. Due to the continued weakness of Anne’s cell phone battery, Anne’s photography and blog posting is constrained. The next post will, we hope,  describe Ravenna. Today we are in transit to Dubrovnik which we hope to reach by October 7.