I know this is obscenely overdue, but here it is — the final chapter of my spring break adventures from back in April!

When I woke up in Sorrento, I discovered that my “deluxe hostel” also had an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet, complete with tasty Italian pastries and various sugar-loaded cakes. At the time, I didn’t realize that it cost an extra 5 Euros, but it was totally worth it.

The rain had cleared up and Sorrento was under bright blue skies. There is a certain charm to the place, in spite of being completely geared towards tourism. I guess at this point in the trip, I was used to hyper-touristy Italian cities and was just glad that this one was smaller and more intimate than most.

In my mind, there are two particularly peculiar aspects of Sorrento. First of all, it is inundated with Anglophones — Brits, Americans, Australians, etc. (and about 99% of them are over age 45, which shouldn’t come as a surprise for a top Rick Steves recommendation). Secondly, Sorrento has an obscene amount of stray animals — hordes of dirty cats watch you walk down the street, as you try to avoid the not-so-friendly-looking dogs running towards you. It’s sad.

Anyway, the primary reason I stayed in Sorrento was to see the Amalfi Coast, which didn’t disappoint. I boarded a bus loaded with an international cornucopia of (mostly aged) tourists. As chance would have it, a French kid sat next to me. But I was focused on the view from the window as the bus climbed up to the high, winding coastal road.

Ah! The views…

The scenery was absolutely spectacular. Comparable to, and perhaps even surpassing the Pacific Coast Highway.

However, the view was rendered slightly less enjoyable by the inevitable motion sickness caused by driving along this twisting, winding cliffside road. The road is remarkably narrow – barely wide enough to fit two cars, nevermind a bus – and the locals speed around corners like maniacs. The tunnels that pass through sections of cliff are even narrower than the road itself, which led to an interesting event that I’ll mention in a bit.

My first stop was Positano, a town whose lightly-colored Mediterranean houses are organically situated upon a staircase of rock that descends into the sea. Both the landscape and the architecture were quite different from what I had seen up to this point in the north of Italy. Of course, Positano is another tourist magnet, but I was thoroughly enchanted by its attractively decorated shops and enflowered walkways leading to the beach. There was a pleasant, almost exotic ambiance here — the feel was more “Eastern” than anything I’d experienced before, almost looking more like Greece than Cinque Terre.

But the biggest draw was the sea. I had never seen such beautiful, bright azure-tinted water with my own eyes. I followed a small cliffside path, covered with shy little green lizards, to a quiet beach distant from the hustle and bustle of the town. There were only about two other people on the beach, and I just plopped down on the rocks somewhere and enjoyed the sun’s warmth. After all the hectic moving around I had done on this trip, it was a delightful moment of peace and reflection. The bright blue water, the crash of the waves … I’m undeniably drawn to the ocean and it has a profound introspective impact on me.

After a very tranquil respite, I returned to the town and bought a lemon slushie from one of the local street vendors. They were using real, locally-grown lemons so I had to give it a try. Quite good. I then bought a bus ticket to Amalfi from a very friendly shopkeeper, who provided me with a delightful little history lesson on the region in Italian. He asked me if I was Italian, which I assume is a positive evaluation of my language skills.

I hopped on the bus towards Amalfi, the next town along the coast. The ride revealed even more dramatic scenery as we wound along the  road, passing castle ruins and a tiny beach wedged between two huge cliffs (one of which was decorated with a perpetual manger scene).

Amalfi’s bright white houses stood out in stark contrast to the green landscape and blue water. Although seemingly smaller than Positano, the town was even more bustling with tourists. I was a little put off, since there wasn’t really anywhere to escape the crowds. The exterior of Amalfi’s cathedral was stunning, but you had to pay to go inside. I ended up just getting a tasty calzone and eating it by the sea while waiting for the bus back to Sorrento.

The ride back to Sorrento was nothing short of an experience. The trouble largely began when our bus was about to enter one of the coastal road’s narrow tunnels, only to stop just in time to avoid a head-on collision with an oncoming bus. The problem was that the tunnel opened up to a sharp corner in the road, so it was very difficult for either bus driver to manoeuvre into a position to let the other one pass. The oncoming bus managed to leave a gap for the cars behind it to pass, and then decided that the best option would be to drive backwards along the cliffside road.

The oncoming bus started speeding in reverse, apparently quite confident that there wouldn’t be any cars behind it. The bus driver had to back up to a spot where the road was straight enough and wide enough for our bus to pass it, which wasn’t an easy task. He must have driven backwards at for at least 5 minutes before we managed to pass him, stopping occasionally to let perplexed motorists in his lane go by.

The initial bottleneck had already caused our bus a delay, but we were stopped for an additional 15 minutes or so when we reached a traffic jam on the road. I never discovered the reason; but I think it was either road work or fallen rocks. The most amusing thing to me was that during this whole ordeal of a trip, our bus driver was extremely amused by everything that was happening and didn’t show one sign of frustration. When we were stuck in traffic he just got out, had a smoke and chatted with some of the passengers.

Back in Sorrento, I enjoyed another relaxing night with a room to myself. Although I intended to get up early the next day with the purpose of seeing Pompeii, the best laid plans of mice and men… Instead I slept in and decided I would rather have more time in Rome than stop in Pompeii for just a couple of hours. Although I felt a little disappointed, ultimately I think it was a good decision.

It was kind of slow-goings from Sorrento to Naples to Rome, but I was happy when I arrived in the capital. It took me a while to find my hostel because it wasn’t very well-signed (the bottom floor was a café), but I called and made very good use of my Italian skills. It was warm and I was sweaty from carrying all my bags around, so the hostel owner kindly gave me a free Coke. I was shown my room and then I set off to explore the Eternal City.

My first target was the Colosseum. As I rounded a corner, it emerged right in front of me, in all its glory. It’s a very magical moment when you first set eyes on such an iconic structure — the Eiffel Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge — and the Colosseum was no exception. It definitely lives up to its iconic status — this thing is big. I got goosebumps and/or butterflies just looking at it. I was in freaking Rome.

I decided not to go into the Colosseum right away, but rather to get a more general overview of the city first. I had two more days in Rome, which was considerably more time than I’d spent anywhere else on this trip. As I walked past the Imperial Forum, I was simply overwhelmed. Sure, there were tourists everywhere, but the sheer awesomeness of the ubiquitous Roman architecture overshadowed any sense of “kitsch.” I had no idea that this part of central Rome was so well-preserved and undeveloped. It was incredible.

One of my few complaints about Rome is that it is not very pedestrian-friendly. There is a lack of crosswalks, even sidewalks, and walk signals; to aggravate things, the drivers are very aggressive and your chances of having one stop for you are next to zero. As I remarked to my Italian friend Claudia, “È pericoloso camminare a Roma!”

As I passed by the impressive Victor Emmanuel monument and headed towards the Tiber, it started to rain. Not a downpour, but just enough to make my evening stroll through Rome even more romantic. I found shelter beneath the virtual forest of trees along the Tiber, which was a pleasant surprise — the Seine could learn a thing or two. As the sun went down and the street lamps went on, the light reflecting on the wet cobblestones was magical.

I zig-zagged my way through Medieval Rome’s cobblestone streets, towards the Piazza Navona and the Campo de’ Fiori. The evening sky was incredible; first, the pink and blue hues of sunset clashed against massive, white cumulus clouds. As the light faded away, the sky turned an amazing dark, cobalt blue. The illuminated fountains at the Piazza Navona were just magical at this time.

I grabbed some kind of square pizza (I think) for dinner and sat at the foot of the Giordano Bruno statue in the Campo de’ Fiori whilst I ate it. I watched a group of French schoolchildren taunt and terrorize one of those “statue” street performers, although he remained completely still throughout (even when the kids pretended to kick over his money can). Eventually, though, the dramatic evening sky took a turn for the worse and it began to thunder and downpour. The street performer got out of costume and took off, and I followed his lead.

Even though I was getting soaked as I made my way back to my hostel, there was a certain romance to it all nonetheless. The lights, the rain, the thunder and lightning — there was no question that I was in the Eternal City. It felt epic. I passed through the beautifully illuminated Piazza della Repubblica before reaching my hostel, where I encountered my roommates – three college-aged Canadians from Ottawa who were drinking and blasting hip hop when I walked in.

They seemed friendly enough when we were introduced, but it didn’t take long to realise that they were pathetic jerks. The course of their conversation turned to their various sexploits and plans for the evening — each one of them expected to seduce an Italian girl and take her back to the room, and their subsequent descriptions were a little too graphic to post here. I dreaded the idea of waking up at 3am to you-know-what, but I just laughed to myself when they all came back in the middle of the night empty-handed and surprised about it.

The next morning I discovered a lovely little Roman sculpture garden nearby, then plotted a course between some of the big tourist attractions — the enchanting but inevitably overcrowded Fontana di Trevi, the ancient Pantheon, the Medieval Castel Sant’Angelo, and ultimately the Vatican. These latter two, in particular, were most impressive and grandiose.

Before crossing the Tiber to visit the Castel Sant’Angelo, I decided to eat lunch along the edge of the river. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be quite as popular in Rome as it is in Paris, so most of my company were rather sketchy homeless characters. The biggest disappointment, however, was that I accidentally dropped my precious bottle of water into the Tiber and watched it float downstream. I felt doubly bad because I was contributing to what is already a rather dirty river.

I headed to the mighty Castel and enjoyed its sweeping panoramic views of the city. From there it was on to the Vatican — I didn’t realise that you could literally walk straight in via a main boulevard, but it was cool to see the flags suddenly change from Italian to Vatican. Nuns and priests were sprinkled in among the hordes of tourists, and there were a lot of fancy cars about — I guess not everyone takes a vow of poverty. St. Peter’s was impressive and imposing from outside, and the line to get inside was just as impressive and imposing.

I survived the queue and entered the massive basilica. The ubiquitous Renaissance artwork was overwhelming. It was impossible to get a sense of the hugeness of all the statues and other artwork dozens of feet above me. Still, I was a little disappointed … I much preferred the mystique of the Gothic cathedrals I had visited in France and England. The architecture just appeals to me a lot more, I guess.

I caught a glimpse of the silly Swiss Guard, then practically blinked and was out of the Vatican, whereupon I got somewhat lost on the western side of the Tiber and couldn’t find the entrance to the Gianicolo. But I did find the Fontana dell’Acqua and enjoyed the impressive view. I began the long descent towards the river and back into the heart of Rome towards the Roman Forum.

Luckily, entrance to the Forum and the Colosseum was free on this particular day. Unfortunately, it was getting late, so I had to rush a little to see as much as I could before everything closed. I’m not sure if I had ever really paid attention to what the interior of the Colosseum looked like on TV before, so it seemed different I guess. I eavesdropped for a few minutes on a guided tour and realised that it would’ve been so worth the extra money — instead I was just walking along, trying to take everything in and read the little signs here and there, but mostly just overwhelmed.

Some Spanish tourists also asked me to take their picture, but with all the people in the Colosseum I couldn’t tell who was in their group and who wasn’t. Judging by the looks on their faces when I handed them back the camera, I think I included way too many people in the group shot whom they didn’t even know; they were on the rightmost edge of the frame.

From the Colosseum I headed to the Forum, once again completely overwhelmed (and mesmerised) by the ubiquitous ruins. But the late afternoon lighting was very dramatic and the mystique of the place was awesome. I just couldn’t get my mind to imagine what it looked like two millennia ago, partly because I really had no idea what I was looking at most of the time.

My next mission was to reach the park overlooking the Piazza del Popolo before sunset. Rome has an extremely limited subway system, but it would take me where I wanted to go. I got stuck behind some confused American tourists at the ticket machine, but still managed to reach the Piazza on time. Lovey-dovey couples abounded at the best sunset viewpoint in Rome (or so I’m told) and had to fend off aggressive Bangladeshi rose salesmen.

The sun set and filled the sky with a yellow and orange glow, as the lights of the city turned on one by one.

The next morning, I rendezvoused with my old Roman friend Claudia from Sussex. She was gracious enough to give me a tour of her city, including some of the more “authentic” parts of Rome and her old stomping grounds. We visited the beautifully enflowered Spanish Steps and gradually walked our way to an authentic Roman restaurant for lunch, which Claudia very kindly treated me to. The appetizer of salumi (mixed meat – a very Italian thing), bruschetta and beans was excellent; the penne alla carbonara was incredibly cheesy; and the tiramisu was the best I’ve ever tasted in my life.

It was a really hot day and we had done a lot of walking already, so we headed to the Gianicolo for some shade. Claudia shared her childhood memories of watching the puppet show. We then headed to another park where she had spent much of her childhood, the sprawling grounds of a former villa. It was both a Saturday and the Day of Liberation, so the park was full of Italian families. It was astonishing — while most of Rome was crawling with tourists, I suddenly discovered where all of the real Italians were.

The villa grounds were enchanting. Huge shade trees blocked out the harsh sun and all the greenery was delightful. I was so happy that I got to see this side of Rome that I would never have known about.

From there, Claudia accompanied me to the bus stop that would take me back to my hostel. I don’t remember how long we waited for the bus, but it must have been at least half an hour. We reasoned that there might have been a limited schedule due to the holiday. Claudia was nice enough to wait with me the whole time!

I returned to my hostel, which I must point out was not situated in the nicest part of the city by any means. I had never really felt unsafe anytime during my travels until this point; I think I witnessed two separate arrests in the area around my hostel. Oh well – the hostel was cheap!

I had to leave sometime around 4 in the morning to catch my bus to the airport. For some reason the bus driver was playing Amy Winehouse, which was an odd soundtrack for a 4 a.m. ride to the Ciampino airport. Anyway, I said goodbye to Italy as I boarded my plane for Paris. I was happy to be going back “home,” especially after such an exhilirating and busy Spring Break, but I also felt a strong desire to return to Italy.

My opinions on the country are mixed, in large part because I was turned off by the touristiness of the big cities and many other areas. Some Italians lament the lack of respect their countrymen have for property and cleanliness (i.e. graffiti, litter, etc.) and I think this does reduce the aesthetic appeal of many areas (Naples is probably the best example). Rome was my favourite city, but I felt that the touristiness even here was a little too much — it didn’t seem to have as many “authentic” areas in the heart of the city where you can escape the tourists, which is much easier in Paris IMO.

The subpar train system was also a little annoying, although it didn’t screw up my schedule too much. But I did really enjoy the incredible amount of history in the cities and the stunning beauty of the more rural areas I visited (Lake Como, Cinque Terre, Tuscany, Amalfi Coast). I was very interested by the cultural differences between North and South (old southern men in suits walking arm-in-arm? How Godfather). Italians seem to be an honest, outgoing people; the sense of propriety is also not as strict as in France. While some Italians called me “ragazzo,” or “giovane,” I would always be a “monsieur” to the French (although I guess I did hear “jeune homme” on occasion).

I really want to go back to Italy to get a broader view of the country. I particularly want to visit areas that are not as popular with the tourists. And I miss speaking Italian.

Photos:

Amalfi Coast – Part I

Amalfi Coast – Part II

Rome – Part I

Rome – Part II

Rome – Part III

It’s that time of month again!

I began my day with a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios (co-labelled as Cheerios au Miel et aux Noix) and last night’s Daily Show. I almost always watch a TV show when I eat a meal. It’s fun and time-efficient!

The view from my bedroom window. Just another day on Borden Street…

I don’t have classes on Thursdays, but I do meet with my thesis advisor to discuss my research progress. In preparation, I was doing some acoustic analysis of my New Hampshire speaker recordings. I’m measuring vowel formants in historically /a/ words in New England, e.g. half, last, father, aunt, car, and start. Younger speakers tend to advance the vowel in words of the half, last lexical set towards /æ/ (e.g. at, trap), whereas the vowel in the other words is retracted towards /ɑ/ (e.g. cot, log). Part of my goal is to map the vowel ranges for different speakers.

My morning “commute” takes me down the length of Borden Street, past its colourful Victorian homes. I liked the combination of these pallid, lifeless leaves with the other colours in view.

The second stretch of my walk to school takes me down Harbord Street. My destination is that monstruous, grey, 1970s structure in the distance — Robarts Library, which houses the Linguistics department. If you look carefully you’ll notice the Portuguese language driving school with a French name.

Just outside Robarts, we have a nice view of part of the Toronto skyline as well as U of T’s diverse architectural styles. There’s also a man in a cape crossing the street, whom I later saw at the ATM (sore-ee, ABM) in Robarts getting some cash. I think he was some kind of minister. Minister of awesome.

My advisor is Jack Chambers, who is the long-standing leading expert on Canadian English and one of the most accomplished dialectologists anywhere. I hope he doesn’t mind that I surreptitiously photographed him.

Another candid shot of my fellow graduate students in the Linguistics department lounge. I spent the remainder of the afternoon and most of the evening here, even after everybody else had gone home. I pratically live here now.

I was perusing through J.C. Wells’ very comprehensive three-volume set on dialects of English, searching for sections relevant to my thesis project. It took me at least an hour to figure out how to photocopy the pages correctly, but in the end I managed!

By the time I finally emerged from the artifically lit department, it had been dark out for several hours already. That’s kind of a depressing feeling.

I really wanted to get a good shot of the CN Tower at nighttime, but it was hard to find a high, flat surface to set my camera on. This shot at College and Spadina was the best I could manage. The tower’s in the background, but it’s partially obscured by the lamp post. Oh well.

Even though I had returned home, it seemed like my work would never end. It was time to enter some data for my Field Methods course into our online databse. The goal of the course is to analyse the structure of a language that you’ve never been exposed to, using only utterances that you elicit from a native speaker of said language in class. The language this year is Tigrinya, a Semitic language spoken in Eritrea. It has been a challenge to unravel the grammar of this language, thanks in no small part to its vast phonetic inventory — Tigrinya has a number of typologically marked guttural consonants and central vowels that are nearly impossible to distinguish from one another. The language also has a really complex templatic morphology and a bunch of copular verbs that I haven’t figured out yet. I will be spending most of the weekend writing a paper on this.

It’s a fun course, though, and the skill set I’m developing is really useful. Our Tigrinya speaker is a wicked cool guy and I’ve begun to develop an appreciation for the beauty of Semitic languages.

So that’s November 2009.

It’s been one full year since I started doing these, so I’d like to thank LB again for introducing me to the concept, and also to the dude in the blogosphere who invented it. So, without further ado…

The 12th was Canadian Thanksgiving, which I spent in America. Just to show how cyclic life is, this day strangely mirrors my previous October 12th, when I was also home for a long weekend and about to fly back to school.

Angel recently got a very short haircut, so we affectionately refer to her as a chupacabra or a goat from Darfur. I took this as she was about to do her morning duty. I guess she wanted some privacy.

My last breakfast in New Hampshire for two months had to be something good. I enjoyed the real maple syrup and the view from the dining room.

Since the weekend had been mostly cloudy, I took advantage of the clear morning on the 12th to make my standard walk up to Sunset Heights. I liked the contrast between these lovely yellow-orange trees and the blue sky. This has been an interesting foliage season — the colour arrived a bit earlier than usual, but with a more sporadic geographic distribution. Something with the cold weather and the rain this summer, I guess. Overall, the colours definitely weren’t as good as the previous two years, but still amazing by any standard.

Newfound Lake and Mt. Cardigan from the top of the hill.

I spotted the crescent moon and thought it would make for a nice composition with the red tree.

Nothing like a rainbow of leaves on a fall day in New England…

After packing my things, it was time to say goodbye to Bristol. My dad drove me to the airport in Boston – we left at 3pm for an 8pm flight, assuming that the normally 2 hour drive could be a bit longer due to the holiday traffic.

Nothing could have prepared us for this. I-93 was clogged with leaf peepers returning south; it was bumper-to-bumper traffic between Concord and Manchester. It took us an hour and a half just to go from Concord to the Hooksett tolls.

Concerned that I was going to miss my flight, I called Air Canada to see if I could get on a later one. There weren’t any other flights that night, but there was one the next morning. I asked what the price difference would be: “$975.” “Sorry?” “$975.” “…Okay, thank you then.”

We *had* to make it to the airport on time.

Fortunately, the traffic dispersed south of Manchester and we were able to cruise speedily into Boston (well, as speedily as one ever can in Boston). I snapped this shot on the awesome Zakim Bridge shortly before our arrival at Logan. We got to the airport just around 7pm; the check-in deadline was 7:10. I checked-in and got through security very quickly, so all was well.

The flight was short and enjoyable, especially because Air Canada has little touch-operated TV screens with tons of TV shows and movies you can watch (even during take-off). I watched some French travel show about Paris and an episode of Flight of the Conchords. Still, I was pretty exhausted by the time we landed in Toronto, so I wasn’t too thrilled about going through customs.

I will say that Toronto probably has the coolest, most ultra-modern aiport I’ve ever seen. This is what the baggage claim area looks like — the whole place is very space age. I collected my bag and jumped on the bus to the subway that took me home. It was only after I got back to my room that I opened my luggage and discovered that my toiletteries bag had been accidentally replaced with a woman’s pink toiletteries bag by the security screeners. My brief vacation was over, and it was back to one of the most frustrating and challenging months of my life.

I moved to Toronto 11 days ago to begin my graduate studies at the University of Toronto, and so far I’ve enjoyed my time here quite a bit. We’ve had perfect weather every single day so far — sunny, dry, comfortably warm. I know it won’t last forever, so I took advantage of the beautiful day on the 12th to walk around the city. Toronto is huge and takes a long time to traverse on foot (at least compared to Boston), but everywhere you go there is density and human activity (unlike (Hel)LA)).  I’ve yet to try out the extensive and probably very useful streetcar system, whose wires are intersecting the CN Tower in the photo above. Snapped at the southern edge of U of T’s campus.

My Canadian morning wouldn’t be complete without a stop at Timmy Ho’s for breakfast.

I was very fortunate to arrive in Toronto at the start of the Toronto International Film Festival. I ordered several tickets in advance and my first screening was on the 12th in the historic Elgin Theatre on Yonge Street. The line to get in wrapped around the entire block, but they managed to fit us all in there. I was way up on the balcony.

The movie was “The Informant!” by Steven Soderbergh, a dark comedy based on the true story of the bipolar corporate whistleblower / embezzler, Mark Whitacre — portrayed brilliantly by Matt Damon. When Soderbergh came out on stage, he began his brief speech with: “As Winston Churchill once said about cinema… actually, he never said anything about cinema.” He set the tone for a film that had the audience in stitches with its dry humour and flawlessly natural, awkward delivery. I love seeing comedies in theatres (especially ones with 1500 seats), because the comedic effect is just so amplified.

Side note: as I soon discovered, there is a particular tradition at TIFF screenings when the anti-piracy warning is displayed before the film. The audience is supposed to cry out, “Arrrrrrr!” like pirates. That was quite an interesting surprise.

After “The Informant!”, I headed straight over to Roy Thomson Hall to catch my second film of the festival: “Agora,” with Rachel Weisz, who portrays Hypatia, the 4th century philosopher from Alexandria. This movie was on several “most anticipated” lists, but I left the screening a little disappointed. The role hardly showcased Weisz’s talents and the acting was limited by clunky, “ancient-sounding” dialogue. The film does have a relevant message: it condemns violence and intolerance in the name of religion. But at times, it felt like you were being beaten over the head by the message as if you were too dumb to understand it. This seemed to take away from the artistic quality of the work, IMHO.

On the other hand, it was the North American premiere and a special gala screening, and I managed to get in for half price with a student ticket.

That’s Roy Thomson Hall on the right with St. Andrew’s Church at centre. On the lower left you can see part of Toronto’s “PATH” system, a network of underground pedestrian tunnels in the downtown core. Those should come in handy during the winter.

I stopped at Queen & Spadina to get a photo of the masses of pedestrians, when this gentleman saw my camera and asked, “Do you want to take my picture?” How could I refuse? He was very cheery but decided to don a serious face for the photo. I showed him the picture after I took it, but I don’t think he was completely satisfied with how it came out. Lol.

I continued my journey through the city along Queen Street, entering the infamously eccentric “Queen West” neighbourhood. While I expected the hippies and hipsters on the sidewalk, I didn’t expect for zombies to round the corner. I first had suspicions when I saw people dressed in Umbrella uniforms (see: Resident Evil), but the zombie costumes stole the show. I can only assume they were headed to some kind of zombie walk event, because there were tons of them — they just coming and coming. Ahhhh!!!!

Among the other oddities in Queen West was this adult store with two young ladies dancing suggestively in the store windows, in lieu of mannequins. It was just one of the most intriguingly absurd things I’ve ever seen.

My ultimate destination in Queen West was Trinity Bellwoods Park, which I had read was the best park in Toronto for people-watching. It certainly is (and for dog-watching, too).

From there, I headed north along a residential street in Little Portugal, replete with divinely colourful front gardens like this one. Although Toronto has a wide array of “ethnic neighbourhoods,” they are not nearly as homogenous or segregated as those in most other cities I’ve visited. I’m fairly certain that Toronto is the most diverse and well-integregated city I’ve ever been to.

My own residence (the red side of the building above) is located on a pleasant Victorian residential street somewhere in-between Chinatown, Little Italy, and the University neighbourhood, although they really just blend together. However, my landlords and all the other tenants are Chinese. I’ve still not managed to actually meet my two other “housemates,” although I do hear them from time to time… still waiting for that icebreaker, I guess.

My spacious room occupies the entire front side of the second floor — the one with all the blinds closed. The room is  simultaneously blessed and cursed by the amount of sunlight it lets in… but mostly blessed. I’m sure the sunniness will help fend off the wintertime blues.

A bit late with this one since the 12th coincided with day 10 of my epic cross-country road trip. More on that later.

Devin, Madeline, Brynie, and I woke up early on the 12th at our couchsurfing hosts’ residence in Portland, Oregon to hit the road. By this point in the trip, we had all become accustomed to the necessity of getting up early and sleeping in the car. We headed west from Portland towards the Pacific Coast, and then picked up Highway 101. Our target: Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park in northern California.

The people in Oregon were arguably among the most interesting we encountered on our trip. To put it simply, there are a lot of hippies there. We spotted this car somewhere as we drove from sleepy coastal town to sleepy coastal town. The setting reminded us of Maine (Brynie had to remind herself that we were driving down the coast, not up it), with a bit less charm.

With our luck, we arrived in the Pacific Northwest during the first days of cold, cloudy, and rainy weather they’ve had all summer. Although many of the seaside vistas were shrouded in fog, the coastline still had a mysterious, epic allure. All I could think of was The Goonies.

When I spotted a sign for a viewpoint of the Heceta Head Lighthouse, I had to pull over. Unfortunately, the lighthouse was barely visible through the fog, so we were about to get back onto the road when a couple at the turnoff said to us, “Hey, there are whales over here.” So there were! I can’t say what kind they were, but we enjoyed the fortunate sighting.

You can make out the Heceta Head Lighthouse in the distant left if you squint.

At the very same viewpoint, we turned and faced left to see this popular bathing spot for sea lions.

Further south along the 101, the rugged coastline gave way to an vast swath of undulating sand dunes. We made a stop somewhere in the Oregon Sand Dunes National Recreation Area and walked a short trail to the dunes. It was bizarre to emerge from the dense, lush Northwestern forest onto a landscape that more closely resembles the Sahara. The sand stretched so far that the ocean wasn’t even visible.

Madeline couldn’t resist rolling down one of the dunes. She was cleaning sand off herself for the next few days.

Miraculously, the clouds finally dissipated as we began to approach California. Actually, the sunshine was short-lived, as we continously moved in and out of thick fog, but it was nice while it lasted. I took this shot of the Isaac Lee Patterson Bridge heading into Gold Beach. The Coast Highway in Oregon has a number of stunning bridges from the 1930s. The Art Deco lover in me was ecstatic.

As we turned the bend upon this vista, the car let out a communal gasp. The photo does little justice to the scale and beauty of these behemoths. This is why the Pacific Coast Highway is arguably the most scenic drive in America.

Before entering California, we reached some kind of border checkpoint — Agricultural Inspection. Our apples and bananas were a-ok, so the Golden State let us enter. Once over the state line, we noticed that the drivers suddenly became more aggressive. Hmm. It was getting late at this point, so the evening light shining through patches of clouds made for some interesting lighting.

This wasn’t our first night driving after sundown. We had gotten to our campsites after dark on several occasions due to car trouble, excessive picture taking, traffic, etc. What made this time different is that there was no apparent reason for us to have reached the redwoods so late — we were entirely on schedule. The only possible explanation: Google’s estimated driving time was way off.

We reached the entrance to Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park just as the very last remnants of sunlight were fading away. The drive to our campsite was at once impressive and frightening — the road was lined with massive redwoods, trunks easily 10 feet in diameter, towering a good one or two hundred feet in the air. The trees needed their own reflective markers because they jutted slightly into the narrow road. The posted speed limit of 45 was remarkably unsafe (especially with our terrible headlights) — even at 25, it felt like we were racing across Endor on speeder bikes.

Unfortunately, the darkness meant that I couldn’t get any good pictures of the incredible Redwoods. I just got one shot looking towards the night sky with my tripod at our campsite, but none of the highly visible stars came out. The smell in the air was incredible. We were greeted by a huge dragonfly of Jurassic proportions. The Redwoods turned out to be one of my favorite places on the entire trip, but all of my photos are from the 13th.

Ok, I know this happened like a million years ago (well, about 13 weeks ago), but I need to finish recounting my trans-European adventures.

The big “detour” in my Spring Break was our side-trip to the French Riviera, where we met up with LB, our high school French teacher, and the Newfound kids who were doing the same trip that we had done 5 years prior.

The trains along the coast from Cinque Terre towards France were quite slow and had to make stops at pretty much every station. Fortunately, at some point along the Italian coast, we finally emerged out of the clouds and rain that had dominated the previous two days. We changed trains in Genova, where our brief attempt to see some of the city led us only to a statue of Christopher Columbus.

It was a relief when we got to Ventimiglia and boarded an SNCF train. Madeline was particularly excited to hear French instead of Italian, but we also realized how much nicer French trains are than, well, pretty much any other trains in the world. As the train crossed the border into upscale Menton, the cityscape seemed a sharp contrast to the graffiti-plagued Italian cities we had seen in the past week. Even Monaco’s underground train station was incredibly immaculate. But that’s not really a surprise, considering it’s Monaco.

It was nice to be in Nice again (no pun intended). Our hostel was in the less glamourous area near the train station, but that was fine. It wasn’t a long walk to the beach or the Place Masséna.

Although we had planned to meet up with LB the following day in Nice, we decided to surprise him. We had the address of the hotel in Cannes where the Newfounders were staying, so we hopped on a train to Cannes and began our stake-out. We didn’t know whether they were still inside the hotel, but we figured they had to drop by at some point before dinner. We set up an observation point on a bench in a plaza near the hotel entrance, and Madeline and I took turns making surveillance passes in front of the hotel lobby to see if we could see any Newfounders. We thought we saw Albert, the group’s tour guide (the same tour guide for our trip back in 2004), but we weren’t sure.

Finally, we spotted the entire tour group departing the hotel, presumably heading to dinner. At this point, we were already quite giddy with excitement, but suddenly our adrenaline jumped tenfold. It was a challenge to follow the group without being seen — we had to be careful to keep our distance and blend in with the locals. It was wicked fun. Although the group took a scenic route through Cannes that made our stalking an even longer adventure, they finally entered into a restaurant. Unfortunately, they filled up the entire interior of it.

Madeline and I decided to eat at the single table outside, and wait for an opportune moment to go in and surprise LB. But the waiters were quite busy and the space inside the restaurant was limited, so we decided not to get in their way. We ordered our own meals (which were absolutely delicious, although we had made the mistake of eating lunch rather late) and waited until after we’d finished to go in. Upon seeing us, LB’s reaction was, “Oh my ****ing Lord.” Mission accomplished.

We spent the evening looking (unsuccessfully) for a geocache in Cannes with LB, Mrs. Mills, and the entire Newfound crew. But it was fun nonetheless. We returned to Nice that evening and spent the next morning lounging on the beach.

After a few bad directions given by Albert, we eventually established a rendezvous point with LB and then went out to lunch in the old city along with a chaperone and a student on the trip. I tried the local specialty, daube niçoise, which was very wine-y. After lunch, we got gelato at Finocchio, renowned for its variety of flavours — I got cinnamon and white chocolate. We concluded our time with LB by (successfully) finding a cache in Nice.

That evening, Madeline headed to the train station to return to Paris. I had only completed one half of my spring break, and it already felt like an eternity. I felt so exhausted that I could have gone back to Paris right then and there, but I was committed to my plans to see more of Italy. First, I needed to do laundry.

I left before sunrise the next day to get the train to Ventimiglia. Once in Italy, I had to retrace my route along the painfully slow coastal railway. Even worse — the weather was cold and rainy, and for some reason our train car had no heat or electricity. Since the coastal railway is comprised largely of tunnels, this meant long stretches of pitch blackness. Oh, and there was nearly an hour delay at one station. Announcements were being made about the delay which I couldn’t make out, but even the Italians had no idea what was going on. I was afraid I needed to change trains, but in the end things seemed to work out.

The next stop in my journey was Siena, an attractive Tuscan city near Florence. Still dominated somewhat by tourists, but less crowded than the bigger cities. The Piazza del Campo was nothing short of impressive, and I managed to climb the Torre del Mangia shortly before it closed. The views of the city and the surrounding countryside were amazing in the late afternoon light. When I reached the top of the tower, I was greeted by two French children who said, “Bonjour,” to me, not expecting me to respond in French. They giggled when I told them I was American. I don’t think they believed me.

The kids, their family and I all got a shock when the bells on top of the tower decided to ring deafeningly loud.

It was funny being with a French family on vacation in Italy — they suddenly felt like my compatriots. It was strangely comforting. As much as the French get a bad rap, I felt more uncomfortable interacting with Italians — not because of my language skills, but because it seemed like the Italians were less likely to conceal their “attitude” and often communicated rather bluntly. I hate to make generalizations, because the bad apples are few and far between (just like in any other culture in the world), but overall my personal interactions weren’t quite as “warm” as I expected in Italy.

Anyway, my experience in Siena was sadly limited due to my timeframe. It seemed like it would’ve been a cool place to spend the night (that’s what Rick Steves says, anyway), but at this point in the trip I was pretty tired of super-touristy cities anyway. I enjoyed the train rides through the green Tuscan countryside, however, weaving in and out of forested thickets and fields covered by golden flowers, with the occasional castle or villa around the corner. On the departing train from Siena, I sat near a couple of Belgian girls who kept code-switching between Dutch and French…pretty cool.

After a very long travel day, I had completely retraced my steps back to Florence, where I arrived rather late in the evening. I stayed at a different hostel this time — it seemed good on paper, but the reality was quite different. It was the epitome of a party hostel, almost all the patrons were obnoxious American college students, and the noise level from their collective squawking was deafening. They all seemed to know each other already, which made things more awkward, and I had to politely decline their invitations to go party at some bar because I needed to get up around 5am the following morning. Of course, I was awoken early when they all came back from a night on the town at 4am.

The manager of the hostel had tricked me into paying extra for Internet access and breakfast by making it sound as if they were included in the basic price. Upon realizing this, I thought I would take advantage of these extra features, but the one computer with Internet access was powered down and password-protected (no one was around to give me the code) and breakfast didn’t start until 8 or 9am (well after I had to leave). However, there was a large bowl of cookies on the front desk, so I helped myself to a generous portion of them for breakfast.

My much-needed respite from the big city came in the form of San Gimignano, a small hilltop village adorned with some impressively huge Medieval stone towers — kind of like 12th Century skyscrapers. I left Florence at the crack of dawn and alighted in Poggibonsi, where I almost missed the bus to San Gimignano (in Italy you can’t seem to buy tickets on the bus, you have to go to a newsstand).

In a bizarre flashback to my time on the Isle of Skye in Scotland, my bus was full of loud Italian teenagers being brought to school. So much for a relaxing morning ride through the Tuscan countryside. That said, my first glimpse of San Gimignano was breathtaking, and it was even greater once I got there. It was early, so the Medieval streets were virtually empty and I felt like I had the whole village to myself.

Whilst waiting for the “Big Tower” (Torre Grossa) to open to visitors, I explored some Medieval wells on the edge of the village. Now they have fish swimming in them. When I headed up the tower, I was the only person at the top. It was a glorious moment of solitude, with the wind blowing across the endless green fields and the rolling hills in the distance.

San Gimignano was beautiful, and it made me regret that I had not explored more of the Italian countryside. But there will always be other trips to Italy, right?

I returned to Florence for one final time, bought a cheap Italian travel magazine to keep me occupied on my next train ride, and hopped on a high-speed train for Naples. Despite all the stress and fatigue of my journey, something happened to me during this train ride, and I just felt intensely happy for a brief, fleeting moment. I haven’t felt that way in years.

I think it was the recognition that all my dreams about places on a map were being realized in front of my eyes. I was in Italy, for crying out loud.

After passing by some incredible scenery — towering Apennines, ancient fortified hilltop cities, awesome rock formations — I arrived in the massive ghetto of a city known as Naples, in the shadow of Mt. Vesuvius.

That’s the view of Vesuvius from Sorrento — to get there, I had to take the Naples commuter rail system for what seemed like an eternity. I had to stand for most of the ride, and all the while I was very aware of where my backpack was. The constant reminders about pickpocketers didn’t help my paranoia.

I could tell that the people in Naples were of a different breed. These were the stereotypical Italians that we Americans think of, with the exaggerated hand gestures, Fonzie-esque speech patterns, and generally “gritty” appearance. One particularly outgoing Italian man decided to strike up a conversation with everyone in his general vicinity, even if they didn’t want to talk. He also began to sing.

When I finally got to Sorrento, it was raining pretty hard. I couldn’t find a map, either, so I had no idea where my hostel was. I trekked back and forth down the length of the city’s narrow pedestrian lanes with my heavy backpack on. Despite being totally lost, there was something soothing about being in the evening rain, with the warm lights from all the tourist shops shimmering on the wet cobblestones.

After finding my hostel, I realized I had no cash so I couldn’t check in. I then had to search for an ATM — specifically, one that accepted American Express. I literally spent hours that evening criss-crossing the city. Finding an ATM was hard enough; I came across three of them before finding one that took my card. Boy was I relieved.

My hard work was rewarded. My hostel in Sorrento was one of the least expensive hostels I’ve stayed in, but it was also by far the nicest hostel I’ve ever stayed in. It was called a “deluxe hostel” and looked a lot more like a hotel, with a huge lobby, well-dressed reception workers, magnetic room keys, huge bathrooms, and marble flooring everywhere. To make things even better, I had an entire 6-person room to myself.

I delighted in Sorrento’s incredible values, getting an extremely filling one-person pizza with plenty of toppings for only 4 Euros that night. I slept like a baby.

Photos:

The Riviera

Siena

San Gimignano

My Mom and I spent the weekend camping near Lake Willoughby in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. On the 12th, we woke up early after a mere few hours of sleep — thunderstorms, downpours, noisy neighbors, and uncomfortable sleeping conditions kept us up most of the night. We also discovered that our new tent isn’t exactly waterproof.

The good thing about the overnight storms is that they cleared away the clouds and brought some gorgeous weather. This was the view of Lake Willoughby’s crystal clear water and Mt. Hor in the morning, just across the street from the campground. Lake Willoughby is a beautiful glacial lake framed by mountains — there’s also a nude beach that we accidentally stumbled upon the day before.

Following an itinerary suggested in “Backroads of New England,” we ascended a dirt road east of the lake. The views of farmland and distant hills around the lake were stunning. Here you can see Wheeler Mountain and the northern end of Lake Willoughby.

No Vermont photo album would be complete without a shot of a dairy cow. My Mom liked the eyes on this one.

We continued along our route towards the village of Island Pond in Brighton. This was the site of the first international railroad junction in the United States (it’s less than 15 miles south of the Canadian border). Despite being in the middle of nowhere, the town’s in much nicer shape than a lot of the villages in the Northeast Kingdom — probably a testament to its former economic heydays. The public beach along the pond was closed (we got there too early), but I snapped this shot of the village across the water.

Only a few minutes after spotting a deer near Island Pond, we saw this young moose in the middle of the road. He retreated into the woods, but not before I could get a nice picture.

Our morning drive then brought us to the Burke Mountain toll road. Talk about quintessential Vermont — the office is in a sugar house, and to pay the toll you just drop your cash into the wooden box at the right.

We drove to the top of the mountain and then climbed the fire tower for an amazing panoramic view of the area. The cool breeze and sunshine made for a particularly tranquil experience. This was the view to the northeast, looking across the Great North Woods, with New Hampshire in the distance.

We hadn’t eaten breakfast in the morning, so on our way south we stopped at a diner in St. Johnsbury for brunch. Very tasty and reasonably priced food. I got “The Heritage,” which came with a small ham-and-broccoli omelette, home fries, and two blueberry pancakes. Needless to say, my mom helped me out with it. In the booth behind her were two local old ladies speaking French.

After crossing the border back into New Hampshire, I snapped this shot of Mt. Lafayette on the approach to Franconia Notch.

I spent the afternoon unpacking and unwinding. We ate supper on the deck for the first time this summer. That’s our rain-soaked tent draped over the railing.

I wanted to get to bed early after such a long day, but first I had to try out my brother’s latest gaming purchase, Red Alert 3. The original games were among my favorite PC strategy games back in the day. My video gaming experiences are sadly few and far between these days, so it was nice to finally play again. I’m a little rusty, but it was still a blast.

Back home in NH. It feels good to be home, even on drizzly, cloudy mornings like this one. Angel is pretty old now but she’s still the same little puppy, and I love her more every day.

After the rain cleared and the sun reappeared, I went outside for some fresh air. Although the weather this week has been kind of crappy, I’ve definitely gotten more sun at home than I did in the previous month in Paris. These daisies, one of the most abundant June wildflowers in NH, are growing in our backyard.

Another typical New Hampshire wildflower that blooms in June, these lupines are opening up in my mom’s garden. My camera has a hard time photographing flowers, so I had to fiddle around with the focus, white balance, and exposure for this result.

My desk. I spent the last week cleaning and organizing my room — this is the most well-organized it’s been in 10 years. It’s amazing what treasures you find when you clean out those old drawers. And you can’t miss the homage to my Paris memories.

Since I’ll be moving to Toronto for graduate school in the fall, I have to apply for a Canadian study permit. My favourite question on the application: “In periods of either peace or war, have you ever been involved in the commission of a war crime or crime against humanity, such as: willful killing, torture, attacks upon, enslavement, starvation or other inhumane acts committed against civilians or prisoners of war; or deportation of civilians?”

We had a big family get-together at our house on the 13th, so I did some vacuuming in preparation.

Madeline somehow managed to finagle her way into her second 12 of 12 in a row. She asked me to go with her to the Plymouth Wal-Mart so we could pick out a GPS to replace the one she lost in Europe.

Snapped this shot at the rotary in Plymouth, looking towards Mt. Stinson. Maybe I’ll hike it again this summer.

We ended up not finding an affordable GPS at Wal-Mart, but we did find some baguettes to alleviate our gastronomical nostalgia. They taste like day-old French bread, but after a few minutes in the oven, they’re decent. We also came across two French-Canadian biker women while looking through the bakery.

Before leaving France, I had promised myself that when I returned home I would get a hot fudge sundae with Reese’s peanut butter cup ice cream at the Big Catch. We headed to the Catch after Wal-Mart and made my dream come true. When the girl was scooping the ice cream, I overheard her say, “Oh my God… there’s like an entire Reese’s in here.” Turns out, there were THREE full, intact peanut butter cups in the sundae, covered by ice cream, hot fudge, and whipped cream. It was amazing.

I didn’t eat dinner that night.

To burn off some of those sundae calories, I walked up to Sunset Heights at sundown. It was pretty, but I think I left before the best part.

Now that Conan’s on at 11:30, I watch him almost every night. It really sucks that he moved out to LA before I got a chance to see his show in New York, but I’m glad that the feel of the show hasn’t changed at all to accommodate a more “mainsteam” audience. There are still a lot of ridiculous bits. I’m just happy that the show has a bigger budget now, so those ridiculous bits are even more elaborate. I love Coco.

Part 2 of my two-week adventure!

We left off in Gimmelwald, that supremely beautiful and tranquil little Swiss village. Madeline and I got up early in the morning, were served a little breakfast by Walter, and then took the tram back down the valley. We returned to Interlaken and then got on the Golden Pass train towards Montreux.

This was the only leg of the trip that I had already done before (back in April 2007), but it was nice to see the beautiful countryside along the route again. I can’t stress how awesome the train rides in Switzerland are; practically every route offers breathtaking views around every corner. Although we failed to obtain window seats on the train into French Switzerland, the view of Lake Geneva and the Dents du Midi on the approach towards Montreux was even more incredible than I’d remembered.

Unfortunately, our descent into Montreux was interrupted when the train stopped abruptly near a road crossing. We were never really sure exactly what happened, but we gathered that maybe a truck had gotten stuck on the tracks and they had to move it. At any rate, we had to wait almost 30 minutes before we got moving again.

Once in Montreux, we walked along the Quai des Fleurs towards our hostel near the Chateau de Chillon. It was warm and sunny, and plenty of people were enjoying the nice day on the promenade. This is still one of my favourite places in Europe.

It was nice to be able to speak French again, even if just for a day! The Swiss have kind of weird accents, though, that sometimes sound a bit Germanicized. One advantage of their accent is that they usually speak more slowly than the French (especially Parisians). We bought some gruyere cheese, Swiss bread and chocolates for supper and ate on the edge of the lake as the sun set.

The next morning, we got on a train headed back into Italy. We passed through more of French Switzerland, entered back into the German part, went through a mountain tunnel and emerged in a verdant Italian Alpine valley, all in a couple of hours. We retraced our path a little bit when we returned to the Milan train station, where I was asked another question by a Spanish tourist:

“Esto es Milano Centrale?”

Fortunately I understood the question, but why does everyone assume I speak Spanish?!

From Milan we continued on towards Florence, passing from the flat, industrialized plain of northern Italy to the gentle, forested hills of Tuscany. I liked the “green” feeling of Florence (emphasized by the architecture), although, like Venice, the atmosphere was distinctly touristy. Not as crowded as Venice, but there was a ridiculous amount of Americans — Madeline even met some friends from her program at our hostel.

We arrived in the late afternoon so we only had a few hours to really see the city, unfortunately. We traced a route between the major sights, including the beautiful Duomo:

We saw the exterior of the Palazzo Vecchio, the Ponte Vecchio, and tried to see the Giardini di Boboli, but got there too late. Instead, we opted for some delicious gelato. Based on word of mouth, it seems like the gelaterias in Florence are uniformly good, whereas other food is very hit-or-miss. We scored a “miss” at a buffet place near our hostel. It was cheap, but the food was re-heated in a microwave and pretty gross. The service wasn’t particularly friendly, either.

We did get the obligatory view of the city from the Piazza Michelangelo, which was nice. We spent the evening just walking around, passing by a group of kids playing soccer with a dog. The dog honestly thought he was on the same level as the human players and even managed to get the ball a couple of times. It was adorable.

I felt bad that we didn’t really have a chance to soak in all the cultural and historical offerings of Florence. We didn’t have time for museums or anything. I suppose I’d like to go back someday, although I was still a little turned off by the touristiness that seems to pervade all the major Italian cities.

The following morning, our string of good weather finally ran out. We headed towards the coast under grey skies and rain. Despite a misunderstanding of our train-changing schedule (and the discovery that Italian train station clocks are not uniformly accurate), we arrived in Riomaggiore that afternoon. We took an unnecessarily roundabout route to get to our hostel, which turned out to be more of a room-letting agency.

We were given a room up one of the little side streets in the village. It was supposed to have been a shared 4-person room, but we ended up getting a 2-person room, with a TV, kitchenette, and en-suite bathroom — for 18 Euros a night per person! Pretty sweet. I think the woman who gave us the room was Italian-American — maybe she just liked us.

In spite of the rain, I spent a little time exploring the village, with its narrow, steep staircases and numerous lemon groves. I was tempted to just reach out and pick a few lemons for myself. I really liked the vibe of Riomaggiore — touristy, certainly, but not too crowded, and still very “authentic” in a lot of ways. Not to mention how awesome the “organic” layout of the town is.

We found a nice little pizzeria for dinner, and ordered our pizza to go. We brought it to the rocks on the edge of the sea and ate while the sun set over the stormy Mediterranean.

That night, we were awoken by the sounds of drunken tourists at a bar on the street beneath our room. They sounded like young people, and presumably Canadian — they were singing “O Canada” at the top of their lungs. They were even singing it in French, although I could tell they weren’t French-Canadian. Oh, drunk Canucks.

Hoping that the weather would improve for our coastal hike, we were a bit disappointed the following morning when the grey skies were still overhead. Well, at least there was blue sky over the sea. We set off anyway, following the via dell’Amore towards Manarola, the second of the five Cinque Terre villages. We got some tasty pastries for breakfast at “un bar.” Although the Italians do make some nice pastries, they really can’t compete with the variety and deliciousness of French pastries.

Despite warnings that the path between Manarola and the next village, Corniglia, was closed due to dangerous weather conditions, we found the gate open so continued anyway. We arrived in Corniglia without incident, although we did have to climb up 382 stairs to get there. Corniglia is the middle of the 5 villages and consequently the most isolated. It has a decidedly less touristy atmosphere, probably because it doesn’t sit directly on the water, either. We found the village and the adjacent trails full of cats. I’m not sure why.

After Corniglia, the coastal trail became much “rougher” and more difficult, resembling a true hike more than an even, groomed path. The trail passed lemon groves, vineyards, and olive groves, giving us a nice look at the local agriculture. It was also good exercise. When we reached the viewpoint overlooking the fourth village, Vernazza, the sun finally peeked its head out momentarily. The view of Vernazza was just splendid.

Descending into the village, we found some tasty pesto foccaccias for lunch and briefly toured the castle area. The weather was rapidly deterioriating, however, and we decided not to continue on to the fifth and final town, Monterosso. We knew that the last section of the trail was the longest and the most difficult, and we were already pretty tired. Besides, I had heard that Monterosso lacked much of the charm of the other villages. As we got to the Vernazza train station to head back to Riomaggiore, we knew we had made the right decision — it started pouring.

Oddly enough, the rain gave way to blue skies when we got back to Riomaggiore. We went to the rocky beach near the village and watched the huge waves crash along the shore. The tranquility was interrupted when a huge group of American college students came to sunbathe and swim in the freezing water. We made fun of them for a while before returning to our room. Feeling rather exhausted, we decided to take a lengthy nap for the remainder of the afternoon. All of our fast-paced travelling had really caught up with us.

We decided to make use of our kitchenette for dinner, cooking some kind of frozen spaghetti and shrimp dish, which didn’t turn out that great. Oh well. We spent the evening just watching TV and reflecting on how much stuff we’d already done in one week. I wasn’t sure that I could keep going for another week.

Photos:

Montreux

Florence

Cinque Terre – Part I

Cinque Terre – Part II

My last 12 of 12 in Paris. Where has the time gone?

Le petit déjeuner. I like Nutella, but only in moderation — I’ve been a eating a little too much lately, and the appeal starts to wear off after a while. It’s also one of the only foods in the house that isn’t organic.

My first class was French 300 (Grammar and Composition). The theme of today’s class was French cuisine — we watched a mouth-watering cooking show by this guy, my professor Anne-Catherine’s best friend. We also gave reports on regional French specialties (I discussed my experiences with Alasacian tarte flambée and Daube niçoise). I snapped this shot of my professor during our 5-minute break, when a few of my hungry classmates went to the boulangerie.

My “Paris Avant-Gardes” course was next. We watched A Bout de Souffle. Well, not exactly — I had only had about 4 hours sleep the night before, so I accidentally slept through much of the film. I really wanted to see it, too, since the last time was in high school. I managed to get this shot at the end of it.

When I got home around 2pm, I re-heated the piece of the tomato quiche left over from the previous night’s dinner for lunch. Pico was interested.

Unfortunately, this moment prompted an event that pretty much ruined my day. You see, my host mother makes delicious quiche. There’s always some left over, so the first time she made it she offered me to re-heat it for lunch the next day. Every time we’ve had quiche since then (maybe 3 or 4 times), I’ve always asked if I could have some of the leftovers for lunch, and my host mother has always obliged.

When we had the tomato quiche (a new recipe) for dinner, I wasn’t particularly hungry so I didn’t eat that much. My host mother was surprised I didn’t eat more and thought I didn’t like it, despite my reassurances. When I saw the leftovers in the fridge (only one piece), I figured my host mother had already eaten lunch and would’ve wanted me to eat the leftovers.

Later in the day, my host mother, visibly upset, confronted me and told me that she had wanted to eat the quiche for lunch. When I said I was sorry, she replied, “I hope you’re sorry.” It was the first time we’ve ever had any tension of the sort, but it made me feel terrible. If she had wanted me to eat more quiche the night before, why was it a problem if I ate it the day after? It cast a shadow on the rest of my day, and has been weighing on my mind ever since.

The thing that bothers me the most, though, is how she’s never expressed any kind of anger towards me until this point, which in all reality was a rather trivial affair. It makes me suspect that she’s kept any frustrations that she has with me pent up inside, because I can never gauge her mood. But how can she expect me to read her mind? Or am I just worrying for nothing?

The quiche wasn’t even that good when I re-heated it.

When the cloudy, drizzly morning gave way to a sunny late afternoon, I decided to go for a walk along the Canal Saint-Martin between the 10th and the 11th. When I got out of the metro at République, I stumbled upon a massive congregation of Sri Lankan Tamils who were sort of camping out everywhere. I soon discovered that they were protesting the alleged genocide of the Tamil people by the Sri Lankan army.

In the bed photographed above (hidden behind the two men sitting), were two men who have been leading a hunger strike for 35 days. Apparently, the protestors were forced to leave this morning, but the hunger strikers came back in wheelchairs. It’s amazing how much stuff going on in the world we just don’t hear about in the West.

This was my first time walking along the canal. Paris has so many cool things.

I suppose the canal isn’t as well known as a lot of other Paris attractions because it’s located in a “popular” (working class) area of the city (which is essentially the entire eastern half). There’s such a hugely different vibe between this area and, say, the 8th or the 16th, but it always feels much more lively (I also find that the more touristy the area is, the ruder the people are). I liked the brightly colored shops in this view, which reminded me a lot of England.

I walked through the Square Villemin, a nice little park that was bustling with people enjoying the (recently rare) nice weather. These old French women caught my eye. Nobody in the world is as well-dressed as French women, especially Parisians.

I got on the metro around rush hour at a busy Gare de l’Est to go back home. Line 5 direction Place d’Italie, changing at Oberkampf for line 9 direction Mairie de Montreuil. Descente à Charonne.

After dinner, I met up with Madeline at Ecole Militaire to visit the Eiffel Tower. It was her second-to-last night in Paris, so we wanted to do something special. It was our first time up the tower since 2004.

I think we had to wait in line for about 45 minutes (long for a Tuesday night, eh?), but it was well worth it. There’s just something magical about taking the elevator through the iron patchwork of the tower and then seeing the city of lights from the top. We’re now experts at pointing out all of Paris’ landmarks — we could even see the Ferris wheel at the Foire du Trone.

We had to wait a long time for the elevator back down, so we didn’t get to the bottom until around midnight, just as the tower began to sparkle. We relived one of our early nights in the city by buying waffles from the stand across from the tower. Fearing that we might miss the last metro, we ate them while walking back to Ecole Militaire. Messy, but delicious.