Cool People in Hot Places

One cool thing about this trip is that we’ve met so many people:

In Granada, our persnickety front desk clerk corrected the way I held my passport out to him because he didn’t like my hand positioning. He also spent about ten minutes drawing perfect swirly arrows all over a paper map for us, telling us what to do while there. (Who carries a paper map?!) He seemed pretty excited about sending us to a bath house, which I tried to goad Steve into doing on the days while I was at my work conference, to no avail.

In Barcelona we didn’t so much meet as we bonded with every other hotel guest in an exchange of angry faces at 11pm at night when the fire alarm went off and we had to leave the building and stand on the street. I’d been in the shower when it started so Steve assumed... I’d done something wrong in there to cause the alarm noise? I was about to make a joke that this is what marriage is all about— assuming your spouse is at fault no matter what— but then I realized that if the situations were reversed I would’ve 100% assumed HE had somehow showered wrong so... yeah.

In Paris we had a dinner at a sidewalk cafe and met two women who worked for Disneyland Paris who’ve lived there for 20 years. One of them had a stupidly cute one year old son who just learned to walk and who therefore walked in and out of the restaurant past us ... I want to say 70 times? He even held hands with Steve for a bit but I did not get jealous.

Steve’s feet are injured so he stayed in that cafe drinking while I walked around Paris for about 90 minutes but when I got back he was still there, now chatting with an uber friendly couple from Boston who now want us to visit them at their summer place in Cape Cod. I think Steve lured them into being his friends by lying, telling them they don’t have strong Boston accents. (I sometimes do this thing where I accidentally mimic people’s accents while talking to them but I felt like a free vacation to Cape Cod was at stake so I really restrained myself and tried to sound Canadian by saying ‘eh’ a lot.

We met a lovely museum employee when we took a train 280 miles outside of Paris to Nancy France for the day, just so we could see the one Caravaggio painting there. People in Nancy don’t speak much English at all, but they sure speak French quickly!  I accidentally told her I spoke German because the French words for ‘German’ and ‘England’ sound kinda the same to me. The weirdest part of the whole thing is I have semi secretly been learning German on the  duolingo app for a year, and I’m ashamed to admit this but the only German words I can really remember are ‘roommate’ (because it sounds like ‘boner’) and ‘desire’ (because the word is ‘lust’).

Today before we left Paris Steve took the metro out to see a special park while I stayed in the city and walked around the Seine, near Norte Dame. Paris has been so hot— 30 degrees every day, so I was cooling off under a beautiful tree in a park beside the Shakespeare and company bookstore when I look over at another park bench a distance away and a man there looks at me and gestures between us, asking if I wanted him to come over. I shook my head no, and laughed. He came over and sat down anyway.  The confidence! And the audacity! of flirtatious young men in Paris! (And also I guess the desperation! Because I don’t look rich and I’m clearly old.)  Right when he started to tell me I must have some German in my ancestry because of my perfect blue eyes, and was I visiting Paris alone? I got a text that Steve was ready to meet me at the bookstore. Park guy seemed a little startled but ultimately relieved that my husband  wasn’t coming to meet me in the park when I explained this. I should also mention that park guy is Steve’s least favourite person we have met on this trip.

Now we’re in Rouen for a few days. Who is next??

Hells Bells

Granada has a huge, beautiful cathedral that sits on a square that has rivers of narrow alley-like streets streaming away from it. Every alley is the same— apartments above, small cafes and bars and souvenir shops below. It’s a fun vibe at night because street musicians roam around performing, and they’re GOOD. (It’s mostly guitarists and singers but one guy absolutely rocked a homemade cello thing made out of an overturned garbage can,  broom handle, and string.) We wanted to have a sangria and tapas there in an alley our last night, but it was not meant to be. Why? Because it was international yoga day.

Hundreds of people on yoga mats packed the square while a woman on the top of the cathedral steps droned on into a microphone. I guess she was leading the class? Because everyone below moved in unison. There was someone quite insistently drumming beside the leader throughout, so she needed to get a bit shouty about her instructions. I saw frustrated musicians with guitars walk up the alley towards the cathedral square to see what was going on, only to turn around dejectedly and head somewhere else. I also saw a few male photographers, greedily raising cameras overhead to get shots of ladies colourful asses raised (and probably silently farting) in unison. They are the (downward) dogs. 

How long does this last, do you think? I asked. Steve shrugged.

When I looked over again, they were all in tree pose. I could see their arms raised high over spectators heads. Was it wrong that I wanted to run over and gently tip one of them over so she fell into the next woman, creating a domino effect? Maybe it would be less wrong if I felt very zen while I imagined it.

We drank and ate.

Finally, yoga class had reached Shavasana. Nap time. This is my favourite part of yoga— having a little snooze at the end. Why don’t all athletic endeavours include this? I imagine my friends and I after soccer, napping on the turf. We could even throw in a cuddle. This would solve so many of the world’s problems, I decided. No more hooliganism. If the pros played each other and then cozied up at the end? I think of Ronaldo and Messi. Messi has more ballon d’or awards but he’d still be little spoon. 

Shavasana meant it finally got a little quieter in the square. But then... the bells at the cathedral went off and everyone went apeshit.

These bells were LOUD, so everyone in the alley jumped a little. There was no sign of them letting up. Dogs started barking in the apartments and in the street, riling each other up. Kids covered their ears, and a baby started to cry. The woman with the mic tried to shout over the din— but with the constant bells and barking, I couldn’t hear what she was saying, no one could. I couldn’t understand the language she was speaking anyway but the frantic; stressed out change in her voice— that came out loud and clear, like the bells.  I liked to imagine she was shrieking ‘LET YOUR SHOULDERS RELAX! CLEAR YOUR MIND!’ 

Finally, I felt at peace.

In Praise of In Flight Enemies

Since moving to Edmonton for school, Sophie flies a lot and does this thing where she picks an ‘enemy’ on every flight she takes. It could be a person in the aisle seat who falls asleep, blocking bathroom access. Once it was a little kid who was funnier than her and she was jealous. Her new temporary enemy is usually the first thing we talk about on the drive home from the airport. I’ve flown a lot these last two days and for the first time, I’ve made flight enemies myself.

On the 9 hour flight to London not only did I not get any armrest space, I had to gently remove a stranger’s elbow from my knee. Twice. She was so fast and loose with her elbows that during dinner she tipped my red wine askew while gesturing animatedly. I felt quite proud of having caught my wine cup in time and I moved it to the left side of my tray instead, only to then promptly spill it on myself and Steve. I guess that useless looking little divot on your tray table is a more solid cup holder than it would appear. (And as I type this I realize that it probably makes me Steve’s prime flight enemy. None of us are immune.)

Today was a new day with a new flight to Spain. And a new enemy! The man beside me not only conquered the entire armrest between us with his arm but also encroached well past it into my precious narrow airspace. He spread out. With his hairy arms. How hairy, you ask? Would it be too much to say the hair in his arms was 5 inches long? It would, but I’m going to say it anyway. In my zest to demonize my new foe I also couldn’t help noticing that as he fell asleep, his far leg manspread well into the aisle as well. Everything about him oozed into whatever space it could find. He was melted cheese. Melted, hairy cheese. I looked down and saw in horror that he had taken off both his socks and shoes and had curled the gnarled, hobbity toes of one foot around the bar dividing our legroom. He gripped to it like an animal clinging to a branch for safety.

With fifteen minutes left in the flight he began making attempts at small talk which I was very ready to rebuff. But then he noticed the poetry book Steve was reading and they got to talking across me and it turns out they’re both literature professors and poets who have published in some of the same places and they know some people in common. To hear each other they rudely leaned across me but then the hairy man had the audacity to very kindly keep trying to include me in the conversation in a polite and respectful way, which had the effect of me transferring enemy status to Steve. (I was able to do this because I can only assume that by this point the gentleman had also uncurled his toes from that bar because from the way he leaned in, the angle would’ve been impossible.)

And Steve has already exchanged emails with his new bestie. But who knows if the love will last because Steve just found out this guy has a bigger Wikipedia page than him. Trouble in paradise! 

Anyway guys Granada is really nice! I put a picture of it here for you.

Beers in the Tiergarten/Tears in the Beer Garden

Last day in the last city on this trip: Berlin. So different than the storybook quaintness of Prague or the classical elegance of Vienna, Berlin is a mixture of post WWII buildings, a few older structures pockmarked with shrapnel as a reminder of the war, and remnants and reminders of the Berlin Wall. The whole two week trip had been planned as a quirky holiday to see more Caravaggio paintings (and that’s been wonderful), but it’s also been a great— dare I say post pandemic? adventurous holiday. And a chance to drink a lot of great German beer.

A bit of backstory: there used to be five Caravaggio paintings in Berlin but three were destroyed here when the flak tower they were stored in had a fire during WWII. Ever since I learned this I doubted that it was true— at least one of them is very small portrait, similar in size to the Mona Lisa— so my theory is that someone picked it up and tucked it under their arm back then and their naive grandson has it hanging in their condo somewhere here. In fact, a tiny bit of me thought if I just walked around snooping through condo windows here over these three days I’d probably find it, and become a celebrated darling of the art history world— but alas, no. 

But I feel like we’ve walked around the city enough to say we tried. I mean we have walked. So last night we decided to treat ourselves by strolling to a great big beer garden in the park and we got really, really, soused. By accident. I’m not even sure how it happened— it had been a super hot day and we hadn’t eaten much and at the end of the day we’d walked on heavy legs quite far to find this place— so the beer was cold and went down fast. It was touch and go for a bit there.

“I’ve got the spins, can I just lie down here for a bit?”

“Steve, no. We’ll get kicked out.”

“So?”

“We’ll get kicked out in German which seems worse. Plus are you just gonna lie down outside a beer garden then? Look it’s all stinging nettles.”

“How am I gonna walk to the bathroom?”

And so on. We had an elaborate plan to save a bit of beer in one glass so we could pretend to spill it on his shorts in case he had to just pee in place... you know, so it looked like spilled beer on his shorts instead of pee. Then we had the brilliant idea to maybe we should get some food to soak up some of the alcohol— but who was going to do this?  Walk over to the food court area and order and pay for food when menus are all in German?  And carry it back on a tray? Navigating the bathroom was too difficult, so this felt NASA level complicated. Finding a missing Caravaggio seemed easier in that moment.

In the end the task fell to me and even then I screwed it up. The German word for pizza is ‘pizza’ but somehow I managed to order us a handful of arugula instead. “Just this?” The pizza guy indicated, in German, as he held up leaves. “Nein!” I said, possibly a little too hysterically. Luckily pointing helps. So in the end we got pizza and paid (and peed!) AND somehow stumbled drunkenly home through the beautiful Tiergarten, probably a little bit too loudly, back to our hotel.

Taking it easy today :) 

Disney, But Make it Sexy

At the risk of making a snap judgement on a city I’ve only been in for a few hours, I can’t helping but compare Prague to Disneyland. The cobbled, curved streets! The colourful buildings painted yellow and peach with wooden shutters on small windows! A little cobblestoned bridge covered in statues that cars can’t drive on! I keep expecting Belle from Beauty and the Beast to throw open her shutters and start bitching about the baker’s bread in her poor provincial town as I round every corner. It’s beautiful.

Of course there are no rides here like in Disneyland, but Prague really makes up for it by having tons of quaint little cannabis shops. Picture a Disney theme park dotted with stores where you can buy Mickey Mouse ears, but replace the mouse ears with weed and then multiply that number of shops by ten. Add to that the fact that the Czech Republic is also world famous for it’s lager so lots of beer is sold everywhere, all of which creates a fun mix of young, wasted people, whooping loudly while wandering the streets with nothing but churches, a famous old clock, and a cobbled bridge for fun. 

But wait— I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the Prague Sex Machines Museum— it seems fun. It claims to house 350 items but the ones I noticed were a chastity belt made out of metal containing what look like vampire teeth, a vibrator that appears to attach to a Kitchen Aid mixer (it comes with a guarantee!) and a dildo that looks like it was stitched out of an old baseball mitt. 

You know what, never mind, it’s really not that much like Disneyland.

Uncouth in Vienna

Travel sucks! Why? Here’s a list

See if you can get the gist.

My bag is zipped but without doubt

Forgot to leave my liquids out

Security lineup’s long as heck

And I get picked for random check

Now at the gate and there’s a guy 

Who cuts the line- no reason why,

My flight’s delayed; they’re out of food

The customs folks are kinda rude

But when I get to a new city

Damn, it’s looking uber pretty!

The view’s divine, the locals cool

The buildings— architectural jewels

The metaphorical grass is green 

The sights— the best you’ve ever seen 

Vienna is a visual froth 

These folks are cut from different cloth 

Saw paintings, sculpture, coins and more

Music, churches, marble floors.

It’s gorgeous and I feel my luck 

And yet— alas, I am a schmuck

Cause—  it all feels like a lot 

Some designers lost the plot 

While violins can sound so placid 

Decor reads more like Trump on acid 

You like gold! We get it dude 

But when you use this much it’s crude 

Or maybe I’m just not cut out 

For what Vienna’s all about 

Like —I am sadly, such a keener

To giggle when there’s talk of weiners;

Get tipsy walking cobbled stones,

Waver into cycling zones

Not saying I am unintelligent 

But maybe somewhat... less than elegant

Vienna you are style and grace 

But I’m ready for a different pace 

And so tomorrow— off to Prague 

Where I will write a different blog :)

 

Dublin Days

Today, on the app I use to learn German, I had to practice the phrase “Are you jogging right now?” which if you think about it, is a pretty cruel thing to say to someone. (If I were ever to jog again I’d hope it’d be sorta obvious.) Steve overheard me and said “Why practice German at this point? Are you that worried about the language barrier?” because we leave for Vienna tomorrow. But it’s our last night in Dublin and if I’m honest I’ve not understood a whole lot of what’s been said since we got to Ireland and it’s meant to be the language I speak. Today, for example, it was raining so fiercely that we ducked into a donut shop to wait it out and after we started chatting with a local I realized I might’ve told her I'm coming to her house. 

She said her house is beside the Guinness factory, which i understood to be both fifteen minutes away and also thirty minutes away. Foolishly I made an attempt to chat more and asked why there were only buses and taxis in Dublin and no regular cars driving around and she answered by telling me that in the unknowably distanced town where she lives, they use horses and buggies. After we heard that Steve and I just started nodding a lot. She said you couldn’t swim on the beach there as a kid because the water was all Guinness flavoured, and Steve tried to engage with “Oh, so it smells like Guinness near the factory?” but she just said no. 

I could tell she was pretty disappointed with these idiot Canadians. She held up her phone to show us an instagram video of the Guinness factory and I honestly thought it might’ve been a Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory type situation but with a beer river instead of chocolate but it was just a video of a beach. Any beach. There was no factory at all in the video. 

At this point we were clearly just having two parallel and completely unrelated conversations in the same language. Maybe she asked me if I was jogging right now. Maybe she even asked it in German, and in hindsight, I might’ve been willing to take up jogging in that moment if it would’ve clarified what the hell we were talking about. It was still raining and there was nowhere else dry to stand so this was our life now. 

When it finally cleared up a little and we said goodbye, I checked to make sure I still had my wallet but it was only partly because I thought she might’ve been distracting us with her high falutin horse-and-buggy-talk while her accomplice stole our stuff. But no one tried to steal anything of course, she was just a friendly person and as usual, I am an idiot. 

As we strolled back through thick puddles to our hotel, Steve saw on google maps that Dublin has a leprechaun museum. “What would that museum have in it?” he said, and it hit me.

Maybe that woman was a leprechaun. Like, the worlds tallest leprechaun? And she was trying to get us to go visit the museum and there are horses and buggies and Guinness swimming pools and frosted lucky charms and even a beach in there?

And I wouldn’t be surprised because Dublin is magical. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard people spontaneously break into song or laughed and clinked drinks in the last two days. It’s very easy to smile here. Next time I’ll stay longer for sure. And maybe practice learning Irish in my app before I come.

Hank the Fifth Turtle

There are two unfinished Michelangelo paintings in the National Gallery in London. He has unfinished sculptures on display in Florence too, right near his famous one of David (he calls them ‘the prisoners’ because they’re still ‘imprisoned’ in rock, I think.) And I remember Hannah telling me years ago that what she remembers from the audio tour of the Sistine Chapel was that Pope Julius II had to repeatedly nag Michelangelo to finish painting it. What’s up buddy? Buckle down and gift er done, Michelangelo.

What if he didn’t actually finish anything though? Lots of artists had apprentices or workshops where younger people toiled to learn their craft, so what if when doing the Sistene ceiling, Michelangelo was distracted by a new paint colour and just really wanted to focus on clouds for awhile in a corner, and had some novice rando come up with the main Adam and God finger touching bit that’s in the middle? What if he was like “Look, paint what you want, I don’t care, as long as at least one of em is naked. You know. Make it nice.” (Because Michelangelo is Italian, he talks like he’s in The Godfather in my imagination. Maybe he even said ‘budda bing bada boom’ — what do I know). And what if that uncredited guy had to just sit back and say nothing while people made Michelangelo fridge magnets of his creation until the end of time and he got zero credit for it?

Or maybe Michelangelo had helpers sculpting the boring bits of David? Like you’re a new sculptor and it’s your first big chance with the chisel and on your first day Michelangelo just said “Ok, you’re on pubes and toenails this month. Don’t screw up.” 

What if these helper artists didn’t have poetic sounding Italian names either but were just called Hank or something....? I mean no one names a teenage mutant ninja turtle Hank. I guess some people are just destined for greatness. 

Out in London

I’d forgotten. It’s been years since I’d jet off somewhere on a plane and I’d just simply forgotten what it’s like to fly, trapped beside some old guy whose leg touches yours but with whom you never made eye contact for 9 hours, whose elbow is not only taking up the entire armrest but also ever so slightly and annoyingly sticks out into your side of it. Years since I’d felt that odd feeling when that person seated behind you fiddles with the seat pocket attached to the back of your chair literally dozens of times during the flight, and each time it can’t help but feel like a surprise soft graze across the top of your buttcrack. I’d also forgotten that flicker of disappointment you get when you finally turn around at the end of the flight to see who’d been seated there doing that only to discover that it was just some random stranger and not, in fact, Daniel Craig, like you’d hoped.

Anyway we’re here now, in London. We were headed elsewhere but when we discovered the National Gallery was nearby I made the executive decision that we were going in there immediately to see the Caravaggio paintings (the museum is free), and I took a photo of this beautiful basket of fruit in his painting Supper at Emmaus. See how it juts off the edge? It’s inviting the viewer in with that precariousness. We want to push it back on the table for safety. (Or to put it another way, we want Daniel Craig, to just ever so gently, graze the edge of the basket with his hand the way he might tuck things into an airplane seat pocket.) An art historian I studied said that where other painters keep the viewer at a distance with their formal compositions, Caravaggio removes that virtual velvet rope when he lets things hang off the edge like that. 

Then we walked in the opposite direction of, well, nearly everyone, because they were off to see a parade with the Queen for her Jubilee celebration while we were headed to Shakespeare’s rebuilt outdoor globe theatre to see Much Ado About Nothing. I know what you’re thinking but I don’t care because I am a bard nerd and IT WAS THE COOLEST. It wasn’t a normal stage at all but had a runway style section that protrudes out at an angle where like in Shakespeare’s day, the ‘groundlings’ audience members stand in the dirt; paying just 5 pounds to see the show (and many get to be a part of it, since the actors often talked to them during the play, brought them on stage, or once even rode a motorcycle through them to enter the scene). In keeping with the theme of this blog I feel I should tell you Daniel Craig was NOT in the play but has acted in theatre productions of Othello and Macbeth in the past and he was probably busy protecting the Queen in the guise of James Bond today

Final Holiday Thoughts

4 random thoughts on Italy to leave you with:

MUSIC

We heard a lot of old American music playing here, like Queen, AC/DC, and Bon Jovi. In fact an old guy on the train had Bohemian Rhapsody as his ringtone and he kept getting called and didn’t know how to answer it, and eventually people started singing along to it. Then on a different train today there was a young guy playing ‘You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman’ on repeat so loud we could all hear it through his headphones. We’d been thinking it would be nice to hear some Italian music for once but then today in the park I heard a guy with an accordion play the same 15 second Italian sounding riff for 15 minutes in a row trying to make tips from tourists and I decided I never need to hear that again.

CARAVAGGIO PAINTINGS

Turns out if you plan well and are willing to walk over 30,000 steps, you can see 11 Caravaggio paintings in one day in Rome.  (Or twelve if the f*&@ing Borghese gallery doesn’t lend one out to a special exhibit in Naples during your visit.) There are only 60-70 of his paintings in the whole world. Sandy really doesn’t care about this at all and is a really good sport.

SANDWICHES

People think pasta and pizza are going to be the big thing in Italy, but I’m telling you guys- there’s these sandwiches. Very specific sandwiches. The restaurant selling them is right below our apartment on a tiny street in Florence - it started out as a single small place but has grown to four restaurants all next to or across from each other selling exactly the same thing, and at ten o’clock at night there are more than sixty people lined up to get these sandwiches to go. I don’t even really know what’s in them, the whole menu is in Italian- but Sandy took a picture of it and spent half an hour googling and translating all the ingredients to English so I just get whatever she orders. Everything is amazing. We’ve had them for times in six days. The city of Florence had to make a special street ordinance against people eating on our street, specifically because of these sandwiches! The sandwich fine is up to five hundred euros. I’m drooling typing this, guys. It’s because I bought one tonight and ate half of it and I’m saving the other half for breakfast. I’m going to dream about it.

DICK PICS

My kid texted me to tell me that the photo I put of Michelangelo’s David statue on Instagram was inappropriate (or in her words ‘So Mum, you’re kinda posting a lot of dick pics huh?’) I thought that since today is my last day, I’d switch things up and leave you with an ass pic instead. This is a beautiful Bernini statue that I snuck a picture of at the Borghese gallery today when the security guard wasn’t looking for a second. Geez, the things people will do for a piece of ass, amirite?!

Thanks for reading along.

Cinque Terre

Had a bit of a day.

Finally some sun so we took a long train ride to the coast for a beach day. Then, in one of the tiny towns of Cinque Terre, Italy, nine thousand miles away from home, we ran into some Tsawwassen people we know. We were too dumbfounded to take pics with them, but I did snap these:

 

J

Took six trains and not once did anyone ever ask to see our tickets to check if we paid. Drank beer. Swam in the Mediterranean. Watched some kids playing soccer in a small netted seaside field, trash talking each other like crazy. They were good. One little boy who was maybe 7 or 8 scored twice and both times he did a blatant post goal crotch grab at the opponents bench in celebration. 

A pretty good day.

Gregorian Rants

Today we went to hear Gregorian chants in a church in Florence. At the top of the stairs outside the church before I went in, I took this photo of the city in the rain. You can even see a bride and groom taking their wedding photographs near the middle if you look closely. Isn’t it kind of lovely? I feel like an instagram influencer posting this.  Hashtag blessed and all that.

Here’s the real story behind this photo though: I had to really hoof it all the way up here from our apartment to make it in time for the chanting thing, so I was dripping in sweat when I took this. Also, it had begun to rain during my walk there so my converse shoes were soaked right through and ... was that me I could smell? It was. I smelled like a wet dog.

When I entered the church, a security-guard-looking guy admonished me for bringing my umbrella in with me. Oops. I sat down and the minutes ticked by. Was it ever going to start? I used this time to ponder what a moron I was. Why did I come? I’m not religious. I don’t even know who Greg is or why he sings. Can you google in a church? (No.) And was the service going to be in Italian or Latin? Once it started, I tried to follow but the only words I could make out were focaccia and pesto and I’m not even sure those were right (I was hungry). The singing was lovely but it was just one guy at the front doing it, except every once in awhile the umbrella-hating security-guard-guy would sing back at him.  (I know. He was not a security guard at all. I see that now.)

I wanted to bolt but I didn’t, and ultimately, I’m kinda glad. Everyone seemed very nice during the part where you shake hands and they politely ignored my wet dog aroma. Plus it was built in the eleventh century and the acoustics were amazing in there- even I could’ve sung some stuff and sounded decent.

Hehe .... I’m kidding. You can only expect people to take so much.

Looking Up

Everyone with money in medieval and Renaissance times had elaborately decorated ceilings. Not just the bedrooms, every room. The whole palace.  Why? It hurts your neck to keep looking up there. I bet some of their conversations about these ceilings went something like this:

King: Why’d you set your alarm so early?

Queen: Shh, I’ve snoozed it.  I need nine more minutes.

King: But the thing is you don’t have a job or anything. You don’t have anywhere to go. Starbucks hasn’t been invented yet so it’s not like you need to line up for an iced coffee before you start a long commute or something.

Queen: I don’t even really know what ice is.

King: My point exactly.

Queen: But I feel someone should really get up and yell at the servants to dust all the gold frames on the paintings in the dining room though.

King: Honey, we haven’t been in there in months.

Queen: I was planning on laying down on the floor in there later so I could look at the ceiling.

King:  Really? Why?

Queen:  I don’t have much else to do.

King: True. Ok. While we’re here, perhaps we should enjoy the ceiling in here then? Were looking up at it already anyway, and you’ve still got a few minutes before that alarm goes.

Queen: Sure, why not. Ok. What’s going on here, exactly?

King: Who knows? I like how her boob is hanging out though, that’s fun.

Queen: And he’s wearing a silly helmet.

King: Yes he is. Good stuff.

*alarm sounds*

Market Day

The market stall guys in Florence are shameless.

“Signora! Good morning. You like bags? Please, signora, please.” He gestures to bags.

“No, grazie,” I say, smiling and waving my hand, as I walk on.

“Don’t go, Signora. Where you go? Stay, Signora. I give you best price. For you, special price. First customer of the day price.”  The markets been open for hours already. There’s no way I’m the first customer of the day.

Next guy has the same shtick, except he opens a small coin purse to show me how empty it is. “I have nothing. Please. You buy. Best price.”

There are variations, of course. “Signora, please, your smile, where are you from? USA?”

“Canada,” I say.

“Canada!” he bellows. “For Canada I give 150% discount.  USA 100% more price.” He laughs. So do I actually.  Emboldened, he adds “Please. You buy.”

“You’re going to pay me to take this bag away?” I ask, one eyebrow raised.

“We talk,” he promises, gesturing to his market stall. “Please.”

It starts to rain.  I am near the cashmere scarves stall now, and this man lets me huddle under the awning.  “This rain so shit,” he says. “So, so shit.” I agree with him. “You buy scarf?” he adds. (I did actually. I bought two.)

More strolling. One guy who’d I’d spoken to earlier about bags greets me a bit too warmly with the high-five-half-hug-combo favoured by athletes that it’s like we’ve known each other forever. Friends I’ve played hundreds of soccer games with are less friendly and affectionate than this. I still didn’t buy a bag from him. I’m awful.

The sun comes out again, suddenly. I snap this picture of the cool street sculpture where one of the market stall guys has locked his bike at the edge of the market.  He walks away, smoking and frowning.

“Signora!” A young man calls out to me, again waving me back over to the market. “Please. You like bags?” I look for a second. All the bags look the same as all the other stall’s bags. I start to walk away.  “Just looking,” I say. “Grazie.”

“Ok, ok, looking is free, free looking,” he says. I smile and walk on. “Free boyfriend?” he calls out after me.

They really are so very desperate.

Botticelli and the Bee Gees

There’s a 3D model of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence for visually impaired people and it looks like this:

I’m not sure if you can tell which area of the 3D painting gets touched the most from this photo, but suffice to say it’s Venus’s naughty bits.  Both sighted and visually impaired people were interacting with it while I was there, but no one’s ‘reading’ the ocean, and based on the very clean condition of her figure, the fully clothed angel beside her is getting almost no action either. I guess sighted or not, we all want to feel her luminous skin. It’s not like the two women look very different than each other, see? 

                                           

Truthfully, all of Boticelli’s figures look alike to me. These two look just like each other and like the three Graces in a nearby painting, Spring. 

Here, same deal. For whatever reason these guys made me think of the Bee Gees sitting down for a Mother’s Day pic with their mum. (So yeah, if their mum is Venus AND the Madonna, it’s no wonder they sang like angels).

And they all also look a little like HIM. At least I think so. Except according to texts from the time, he was quite ... rotund. Can you see it? Hard to tell here in this self portrait but maybe he flattered himself with lighting and angles, the way we all do in selfies. But we also know this because Botticelli is not his real name, but a nickname that means ‘little barrel’, and texts mention his ‘unfortunate resemblance’ to the round vessel. (His real name was Alessandro Filipepi.) Can you imagine being a beloved artist for hundreds of years, whose work millions flock to see each year, and everyone still calls you fatso? 

Meat, mmmkay?

Yet another morning of driving through the Tuscan countryside full of beautiful castellas and sloping, green vineyards. Ho hum. (I’m kidding. I would never get tired of this view.) “Would it kill them to plant some vines in a random, squiggly way for once instead of all straight lines, just to mix things up?” I asked, and Sandy said “Well yeah, kinda, remember, they told us the grapes are picked by a machine, and that would make it tough to do.” I nodded stupidly, pretending I remembered this information I’d been told at a tasting after probably four glasses of wine. Sandy likely retains information better because she’s less of a lush. Also, she’s driving.

But then in the afternoon we switched it up: we ditched the car and took the tram into Florence and checked into a little apartment right beside the Uffizi gallery. Vincent, our landlord, is great even though he says “mmmkay?” at the end of all his sentences like the goofy teacher on South Park. After a couple of glasses of wine with us he recommended we eat lamprodotto while we’re here- tripe sandwiches where “they boil up all the guts of the cow in a big pot, and every once in awhile, you get an eyeball or a finger mixed in there too, mmmkay? Then they stick it on bread. It’s so delicious!”, as well as the bistecca fiorentina, a massive T bone steak that weighs four pounds and measures four fingers in thickness. Dear god. There’s no way anyone is feeling mmmkay after either of these meals. But screw it. I might try them anyway.

Vincent also told us to walk up to the Piazzale Michelangelo tonight because there was going to be a big party and fireworks. We did go, walking all the way in heavy rain, and it turns out he was wrong  mmmkay, there was no party. It was pretty empty.  But the view of the city.... whoa.

There’s a Lot of Cocks in Chianti

There’s a lot of cocks in Chianti.

See what I mean? This one’s in the centre of town. But they’re everywhere. Boy do they stand out. Curious, about all the, uh, cock-fuss was, I did a bit of research and learned that there was a medieval era disagreement between Siena and Florence as to who owned the Chianti area- it’s gorgeous and both cities wanted to claim its land. They agreed that each city would choose a knight to ride towards each other and wherever the knights met would be the border between the cities, but on the selected day, the knights couldn’t start their ride until a cock in their city crowed at daybreak. Siena fed its cock well and it slept in, but Florence didn’t feed its cock at all so it woke early, and starving... meaning the Florentine knight got started much earlier and rode much further. So... that’s why Chianti is part of Florence. Anyone else think HGTV should steal this idea and create a show with cocks that settle property disputes? Just throwing that out there.

And yes, I realize I could have used the word rooster here, but it just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Travels in Tuscany

We knew driving in Italy might be a challenge.

The young woman who rented us our little fiat gave us her personal email address, ostensibly because  she wanted to hear about our trip~ or perhaps she had a perverse sense of humour and could tell how clueless we were at the counter with our paper map and false confidence. When we got in the car I pulled down the sun visor and said “is that blood?!” at the big red stain smeared across it. We howled with laughter. “This is the adventure part of our trip,” we decided as we pulled out into heavy rush hour traffic with the loose instructions of ‘go left’ and ‘follow signs for Castellina.’

I’m not going to tell you how often we got honked at for going too slow or how many times we drove down tiny winding streets barely wide enough for a car. Sandy is a trooper for taking on the driving but I’m afraid she’s used to a much better navigator than me, as evidenced by her habit of cheerily calling out road names and numbers I was meant to find on this paper map that we soon discovered contained only very main highways. I contributed nothing: “Maybe that way?” I ventured, repeatedly getting us even more lost, until the sun started to set and we were two women in the middle of nowhere with no phone service and blood on our sun visor, accosting the few strangers we could find in this tiny dark town, begging for directions.

Everyone tried to help. All the Italian I’d been learning on my duolingo phone app got me nowhere with what they said though. All I could recall in Italian were words like boy, girl, apple, sugar. Well where the appley, sugary hell were we? One man adorably mimed diving into a pool, I think to tell us the road went downhill. Or maybe he was suggesting we plunge off a cliff to our deaths since we were clearly never going to find our villa.

In the end we made it with the help of  two kind restaurant servers who googled it for us. It was the only lit building in the whole town. They offered to make us coffee - maybe they could tell we’d been awake for more than 30 hours and were a little stressed and ready to sleep in the car? Turns out we were only 6 minutes away and had been driving back and forth nearby in the dark for, well, forever.

But in the morning, we got to eat breakfast here:

Last Night in Paris

No lie: as I leaned out the window to take this sunset picture Sophie leaned out too, and I said "What are you doing?!  Get outta there, I'm trying to get a nice shot of the view." And then I realized how much better she made the view and felt instantly nostalgic about how great my kid is and what a lovely time we've had here.  A bientot, Paris.  We leave in the morning.

See the wind in the hair bit?  I did that.  Pretty pro.  Just saying.

Underground Ugly Paris

We found ourselves with a free day so I googled Paris museums and asked Sophie what she'd like to do. She might seem sweet on the exterior, my kid, but inside she is obviously creepy and morbid since she chose either the Vampire Museum or the Catacombs.

Turns out the Vampire Museum requires you to make an appointment in advance-- you cannot just show up-- and more often than not you end up with a private tour by the serious vampire enthusiast who runs the place, which includes all sorts of weird artifacts, including a mummified cat.

So.... the catacombs it is!  It's an underground museum of bones that were all put together after a whole bunch of old cemeteries in Paris were overcrowded due to black plague and revolutions and whatnot.

We arrive at 10:30am to a long line.  But we are good at this-- we did Versailles yesterday and that lineup took an hour and a half.  At Disneyland Paris last weekend we accidentally waited a whole hour for the stupid Dumbo ride.  Today we have planned, so we have snacks and are in shade.  We are pros.

The thing is though..... this line is reallllllllly slow.  Two hours in and we are in the hot sun and having stupid conversations like this:

Soph:  What we need here, I think, is a person who's really cold and who doesn't mind waiting in lineups.  Then we could just go to a cafe nearby and they could wait for us.

Me:  Who is that exactly?  Frosty the Snowman?

Soph: Why him?

Me: Well, he likes cold.  Plus he can't walk to a cafe because he has no legs.  He just stands there.  He'd be good at this.

Soph: Mum, he'd melt.

Me: Okay, technically, yes, but then the people behind us could just, like, kick the carrot nose along to hold our place in line.

Soph: Mum, Frosty doesn't have a carrot nose.

Me: He doesn't?  Yes he does, he's a frickin snowman.

Soph: The song, mum: "with a corncob pipe, and a button nose".   No one is going to kick a button.   A button is not going to hold our place in line.

Damn. She has a point.

So we take turns waiting.  One will go try to find a shady spot in a square nearby to sit while the other is the carrot.  The carrot who is roasting in the hot sun, not moving, waiting to see dead bodies.  The German couple behind us give up and leave.

While I wait I listen to the Seattle couple behind us bicker about who is taking time off when Wade comes to visit net week.  They really drag it out.  I want to contact Wade and tell him don't bother.  I feel so bad for Wade.

I also notice the petite French girl in front of me in the line who is gorgeous and so French looking in her summer skirt has the thickest hair on her legs I've ever seen-- thicker than Seattle guy in his shorts.  Immediately I wonder if she doesn't shave her pits, and as though she can read my mind, she shifts her weight and puts a hand on her hip, and I can see with her tank top on that there's no hair there.  Why does she shave there and not her legs?  Can I ask her? We've never spoken but I feel that I know her since we've spent so much time together.

A woman rides by on a bicycle and stops at a traffic light.  She's also so Parisien- no helmet, wearing cute little sandals and a lovely patterned chic sleeveless shift.... and a Hannibal Lector mask on her face.  Just.  Why.

I see a very large, beer bellied man, wearing a Mickey Mouse Backpack and holding a pink flowered umbrella guarding him against the hot sun.

Another hour goes by.   Sophie says "Catacombs?! Cata-come on, is more like it."  I say "I think the bones in there are just the bones of the people who died waiting so long in the lineup."  We agree that the private tour with the creepy dude at the Vampire museum is looking so sweet right now.

At least they give us gorgeous foliage to look at in the lineup, like this:

It must be the only ugly area of Paris.

In the fourth hour the German couple who gave up two hours ago walks by and points to us and laughs outrageously in German.  It's the only time I've never heard someone speaking German not sound mad.  They are genuinely giddy about our misfortune.

Finally after four and a half hours we get in and walk down about 200 stairs and a few kilometres of low ceilinged narrow stone hallways and run into some information boards and then.... rooms and rooms and rooms that look like this:

They only show skulls and femurs, and tell us to imagine that there's so much more than we can actually see from our vantage point.  There are six million dead people in there.  We feel so bad for making stupid jokes in the lineup.  These are real people.

We learn that in 1898 a hundred people set up a private party in the catacombs and listened to Beethoven down there.  And in 2004 police discovered a full movie theatre setup in a cavern down there, with screen, projector, bar, tables, and chairs.  People are so weird.

Exiting through the gift shop made us instantly feel better about ourselves too though, once we saw  all the silly skull shaped joke products like this:

Full disclosure: My first thought when I saw this last one was "Mmmmm, BACON."  So perhaps I'm not so very sensitive after all.