Another interest for my dossier

Carmen Sandiego. Ugh. Even the name turns my stomach, churning up 20 years of animosity and frustration. Ever since that fateful day in 1989, when her henchman flunky, Rob M. Blind, slipped through our fingers with the Rio Grande, I have devoted myself to the destruction of Sandiego and her V.I.L.E. criminal empire.

Our irreconcilable differences have knit us together like a sweater made of irony. Her experiences and adventures become mine as I chase her around the globe – our lives lived in lockstep with Carmen always one step ahead.

Most recently, this cat-and-mouse game took me to Iceland – a small island country known for its geothermal energy, fish exports and Viking heritage. Sandiego was there to coordinate the effort of V.I.L.E. operatives to steal Yoko Ono’s Imagine Peace Tower, a shaft of light beaming up from a rock off the coast of Reykjavik.



One can only assume that the malignant madam planned to use the tower to light her secret hideout.

Okay, this is getting ridiculous.

I started with this whole Carmen Sandiego thing because that was where I first learned the term “spelunking.” And I went caving in Iceland. And I’m not patient enough to write an effective transition.

So we went to a cave in Iceland and crawled around. It was nice, but I there were many things that I will have to chalk up to “learning experience.” The next time I go caving, I’ll be so much better. Here are a few lessons for you, my faithful readers, so that you can avoid my mistakes and make a whole bunch of your very own.

1. Do not wear a stocking cap under your helmet. It might be nice for the walk out to the mouth of the cave over uneven aa boulders but once you get inside, the cap will constantly slip down over your eyes and blind you even ore than the intense belly-of-the-whale darkness.

2. Do not wear Danskos. There are two reasons for this – 1) the rough volcanic basalt that you will be clambering over and tripping on will not be kind to the soft leather uppers of your favorite shoes, 2) If you are already pushing 6feet and entering a cave that will scrape the head of even the shortest spelunker, do you really want to be two inches taller? I didn’t think so.

3. If you are a beginner caver, as I was, am and forever will be, it is probably best to take the short cave tour. That way, just when the reality of your situation – that you’ve willingly buried yourself underground (with nothing but a headlamp and a very fragile human guide to keep you oriented) and are wiggling through holes that look just big enough to permit your 6-year old niece – you can catch a glimpse of blue light and know that around the corner the mouth of the cave, blowing snow, and freezing winds are awaiting you with open arms of open space.

4. Never translate cave names from Icelandic into English. Our cave was called Leiðarend, or “the end of the road.”

The way is through.


Oh, and incidentally, Carmen did get the Imagine Peace Tower. But nobody really minded.

Winter wonderland.

"I'm not exaclty sure how Iceland in winter is going to be different from Alaska in winter." This from Jacy, one of my three travel partners during our one and only planning meeting for this, the Iceland trip.

She had a point. Iceland is an isolated, sparsely populated hunk of land in the Arctic. Main activities for tourists include walking on a glacier, ice climbing, and buying cool winter gear. Not exactly the typical beach vacation for wintered-in Alaskans.

But, after being ehre for 2 days, I think that we are all in agreement that Iceland is waaaay different than AK and can totally justify the expense, time, and hassle of traveling thousands of miles laterally across the hemisphere.

First of all, although yesterday we battled a blizzard that blew two-foot drifts across the road and pelted sand-like snowflacks at our faces - we've been promised that the weather is usually quite mild. The Gulf Stream is Iceland's friend and generally keeps the country cool and moist all year but saves it from the deep freeze winters we experience over in the West. Temps in the winter swing between 5 and 55 degrees. We (lucky us!) just happed to catch them in a 5 degree valley.

Second, Iceland is full of Icelanders. Alaska, on the other hand, is very low on Icelanders. Here it seems everyone is Icelandic! It's great! The fashion is more Euro-Nordic (but still sensibly warm), the hotels look like Ikea threw up in the lobbies, and the buildings are a mix of traditional quaint houses and contemporary steel-and-angles design. Way different from the T1-11 subdivisions at home.

Also their language rocks. A mouthful of consonants and funky vowels spoken very quickly. It´s amazing they can get anything said with words like Rauðarárstígur in their vocabulary. But they seem to make it work. And there is nothing cuter than a little girl in braids jabbering to her father in excited Icelandic.

Three. Iceland may not have cool animals or beautiful vegetation or enormous mountains, but it does have one thing that makes it much cooler than Alaska.

Geothermal energy.

Why didn't we think of this? They use it for everyting - inexpensive heat from the steam, geothermically heated water for pools and hot tubs and long, long showers, they pipe water under their sidewalks and parking lots and driveways so they don´t freeze up. It´s fabulous. And I know from experience that winter is easier to bear after a long, hot, free shower.

So there you have it. We are obviously not crazy for traveling to Iceland for a winter vacation.

Honest.

I spent eighteen bucks on a package of digestive biscuits and a thing of British candy.



I can't afford nostalgia.

The key.

I have a long list of wants when it comes to actually sitting down and committing words to (figurative) paper. But there is one thing that transcends mere want. There is something more important than inspiration or a functional computer or a hot cup of coffee or sheets of blank, college-ruled notebook paper or index cards or the Sense and Sensibility soundtrack or a solid character or a laugh-out-loud opening line. Above all these very reasonable requests shines one necessity, the Key Ingredient to Authoring, if you will.

I must have vast wastelands of time.

In England, this was handed to me on a silvah plattah, because as an unemployed expat with no friends, no TV and no internet, my greatest resource was time.

But back in Anchorage, life gets a little more crowded. I have a car, so I can actually go places. I have some people, so I have places to go. I have a job so, that I can continue feeding myself in the manner to which I’ve become accustomed. I have church events. I have a Blockbuster card. Suddenly the hours that used to drift upon my doorstep have melted into an icy puddle of commitments and 99-cent 5-night rentals.

But I think I’ve found a loophole. Turns out, this is a pretty big state. And there are many villages and towns in Alaska that feel even further from home than England. And if by some twist of luck you can find yourself paid to go to these remote villages armed with a calculator and a cooler of groceries, you might also find yourself facing evening after evening of quiet solitude.

I’m writing this post because there is literally nothing else to do.

It’s a foggy, rainy night here in King Cove, a small fishing village on the southwestern tip of Alaska’s mainland. The one channel that comes in on my television’s bunny ears is ratnet – a haphazard conglomeration of all the networks that gets shot out to rural Alaska antennae. Currently the program playing is a how-to on recording and reporting Maritime weather (“only you know the sea and weather conditions at your boat’s coordinates!”), and it puts me in mind, both in tone and era, of the old McDonald’s training videos where they still use the Styrofoam McDLT containers.

I’ve cooked and eaten dinner. I’ve finished my book. I walked around town for awhile until the clerk at the mercantile said, “Aren’t you afraid of bears?” and I decided it would probably be prudent to be a little wary. I’ve fought with the Paleolithic internet.

And still the hours drift.

So I break down and write.

Porcupyre

“Mom, porcupines are pests. Once they come up to your house you have to get rid of them,” JR said as he loaded shells into my dad’s old 22. “They chew wood, they get under your deck. Think of the dogs! Think of the horses!” And with that, my oldest brother strode through the back door and sighted in on the unfortunate prickly porcupine treed in a nearby evergreen.

Like everything my oldest brother says, there was merit. And little room for argument. Or sentimentality. And my mother, with her sixteen years of experience parenting adult children, folded her arms across her chest and decided that she would not pick this battle.

Two muffled pops and the porcupine was dead, a still and spiny little heap. I held our hysterical neighbor dog by the collar (he wanted nothing more than a face full of quills) while JR rolled the body into a laundry basket, walked over to my parents’ burn barrel and lowered the porcupine, basket and all, into the cold ashes.

“Well,” he said, “gotta go.” He loaded his family into their car and headed home. The family farm had been saved from unwanted incisors, and he other irons in the fire.

Which is how the Great Porcupine Cremation of 2009 fell to me.

I’d like to say, for the record, that this was my first ever cremation attempt. Here was what I knew going into it:

1. The human body is 80% water – I apply the same percentage to quilled rodents
2. The porcupine has been dead (by this time) for two days. Rigor mortis is sure to have set in. And it will probably have glassy open eyes. And its tongue might be hanging out like it was on a dead squirrel I saw once.
3. Mom wants her laundry basket back before the cremation commences.

And here are the steps to cremating a porcupine, should you ever be called upon to do so:

Step One: Dump porcupine (hereafter referred to as P) out of laundry basket, into burn barrel.

P appears intact – tongue still contained in mouth; eyes, as hypothesized, glassy; quills white and gray; claws curled into tiny fists to protest the world’s injustices, which have hit him rather hard of late.

Step Two: Start fire by pouring half a cup of gasoline on P and several pieces of pressure-treated junk wood. Watch for nails. Also, as I was told later by JR, watch for explosions from trying to start a fire with gasoline (no explosions noted).

P a bit singed, but was still primarily intact given that the fire was mostly happening above him.

Step Three: Build a bigger fire by throwing all manner of junk wood into barrel until flames are taller than you. Pause to find work gloves. Have a glass of iced tea as you wait for inferno to die down enough to check on P.

P appears slightly more singed, however quills are still intact and glassy eyes still accusatory. At abdomen, P has split open to reveal a ballooning large intestine, color: green.

Step Four: Staying well away from the mouth of the barrel to avoid possible large intestine explosion shrapnel, obtain a large stick or board and attempt to lever P up from its position at the bottom of the fire to the top, without actually pushing him over the edge and on to the ground. The idea being to create a sort of funeral pyre for P in manner of King Arthur or that one crazy king in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Or a Jedi warrior.

P starting to look charred now – no sign of quills. Lots of sizzling as body fluids are released. Skin breaks apart revealing pink flesh underneath. Pervading smell: banana candy.

Step Five: Continue in this manner for…I don’t know, two hours? Add wood, and stir P to the top. Add wood and stir P to the top.

P has lost his tail. His lower organs are also gone, but his lungs are hanging in there like little troopers.

Step Six: Now it’s time for dinner. Get some good pieces of wood (none of that plywood crap) and rebuild your pyre, capping it off with P and then the little grate lid that goes on the barrel. Go inside and wash your hands. Eat rotisserie chicken.

P looks disturbingly similar to rotisserie chicken.

Step Seven: After you have eaten, go check on P. He will look just the same as when you left. But wait! Take off the grate! Tap P with stick. He will dissolve into a pile of dust.

Congratulations! You have just cremated a porcupine! Please send a self-addressed stamped envelope to Way to Go Kevin, along with your check or money order for $29.99, so we can we will mail your commemorative porcupine plaque, complete with certificate of authenticity.

Roadblock of Flesh and Bone

“Watch for moose!” has been my mother’s constant refrain to her children since my parents moved up the mountain two years ago. Their new house sits nestled among acres of tilled fields and scrubby forest and the occasional neighbor farmhouse. In other words, a perfect breeding ground for the oversized ungulates. They walk through our horses’ electric fence about once a week. They browse for potatoes in the garden. They meander along the side of the road as we whiz past, heading back to Anchorage after a weekend of leisure and hauling firewood and a backseat full of Sunday dinner leftovers.

Katy once had a near miss. A bull moose standing just outside the reach of her headlights leaned a little too close and his antlers clattered across the side of her car as she tried to stop on the icy hill. Other than a shaken Katy, and a bull moose whose head probably rang with vibrations for days, they were unharmed.

But a few weeks ago, I crossed an item off my Alaskan list that I hoped would always remain unticked.

I hit a moose.

She just appeared in the far reaches of my low beams, scrambling in the center of the road, trying to avoid my car. I stood on my brakes and the Santa Fe slowed. It slowed almost to a stop on the wind-cleared roads and, for a split second, I thought we were all going to be okay. But, just as the Santa Fe was halted, we caught up with the moose, and clipped her back legs. She sat on my hood, her rump making a loud, metallic thump that I had only heard in the movies when unsuspecting teenagers hit pedestrians in the road.

She recovered her footing quickly, and I don’t think she ever hit the ground. We were all still for a moment – me, with my hands wrapped around my steering wheel; Peter Segal from Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me telling some joke over the radio; the moose, avoiding eye contact, her right back leg lifted gingerly.

As we stood there, avoiding eye contact in the middle of the road, I thought of the moose/vehicle confrontations that I’d heard of in the past.

In high school, I drove past an accident. The car was totaled, its front bumper pushed into the dashboard and windshield shattered. And the moose lay, her legs curled under her, and a stream of blood flowing to the storm drain. They were waiting for the police to come and put the animal down.

When I was in elementary school, my dad hit a moose on his way to work. Again, the car was totaled and the moose was shot.

I’ve broken her leg, I thought. I’ve totaled my car. Now we’ll have to call the Troopers and make them come out and shoot and quarter this animal in negative-fifteen degree weather.

I don’t mind the fact that people kill and eat moose. Moose is a staple in Alaska – its lean meat is healthy and plentiful. But if I’m going to hunt, I want to do it on purpose. Neither of us was looking for a fight. We both just wanted to cross the road.

My fears were allayed when she started putting weight on her leg. Eventually she stepped over the snow berm and crunched through the snow - walking off without even exchanging insurance information.

So she wasn’t broken, although I’m sure that she’ll be sore for a while. And aside from a large dent in my hood, my car was unharmed.

As moose collisions go, this one went about as well as it could have.

And now that I’ve crossed it off my list, I can drive as fast as I want down that mountain.

Just kidding, Mom.

Aw, you're just pulling my leghorn.

Sooo, picking up a chicken isn't as easy as it looks.

Camera work - Natalie Rose (she digs the artsy "everyone is sideways" look)
Chicken consult - the Queen Mother
The video is about 2 1/2 minutes. Budget your time.



Victory!


Caleb had it down on the first try. Smuggo.

Future Jess.

I read in a magazine that the Sahara Desert has a humidity of 20-25%, and that airplane air has about 1%. This may be why I feel like my contacts are going to stick to the insides of my eyeballs when I fly. Any why my tongue swells to twice its original size as I sit, strapped into my blue upholstered chair, and think about the bottle of cool, clear, "geyser-fresh" water that TSA made me throw away.

Sleeping in the arid airplane cabin is especially awkward for me. I clench my jaw in the hopes that muscle memory will spare me the humiliation, but I have a sneaking suspicion that my jaw hangs down like a stroke victim's any time I manage to nod off. My mouth and sinuses feel like they have been swabbed out with cotton when I jolt awake to the sadistically loud and staticky captain announcing that we are experiencing some minor turbulence.

Last week, flying back from China, I had my first experience flying east-to-west across the international date line.

Our flight left the eerily empty and modern Beijing airport at nine in the morning on Saturday. I wore my pajamas and my glasses (see above: "contacts") in the hopes of sleeping the journey away.

We flew for what seemed like a weekend. I ate several meals. I watched a couple movies (have you seen The Hulk? Pretty good!). I read about two hundred pages of my book (Wild Swans - meh). I flipped through the in-flight magazines and the duty-free catalogue. I went on several field trips to various lavatories.

We landed in San Francisco and almost exactly the same time we took off out of Beijing. Nine am, Saturday morning. So really, I was coming from the future.

But if I'm any indication of the future, here's what it's like:

The future is peopled by a bunch of staggering zombies with thick tongues, haggard skin, and dark circles under their eyes. Their fashion seems to consist entirely of jersey-knit pajama pants and chenille sweaters.

Their priorities upon arriving from the future appear to be twofold -
1. Locate, overtake, and habitate any sources of fresh water and western-style toilets
2. Begin the search for an allusive, holy-grail-like item known only as "baggage"

People from the future are desperate to get their baggage. It is not uncommon to hear them say things like "Where is baggage claim?" and "Don't leave your baggage there, what are you crazy?" Be careful, people from the future are liable to move in a mob created by singular purpose. You do not want to get between them and their baggage.

But, above all, if you encounter people from the future who have just landed in their metallic, cylindrical vehicle, and traversed, on foot, a "jet-way" and maybe even a "moving sidewalk," treat them gently.

They will most likely be cranky.

Are you still there, World Wide Internet?

London - Frankfurt - Whitehorse - Anchorage

Anchorage - Houston - Birmingham - Memphis - San Francisco

San Francisco - Tokyo - Shanghai

Chongqing - Xian - Beijing

Beijing - Tokyo - San Francisco - Memphis - Birmingham

Birmingham - Houston - Los Angeles

These have been my flights over the past month. Only a few more next week - Los Angeles - Seattle - Anchorage - and I'll be done with air travel for 2008.

I just got back to the States after a couple weeks of touring like a tourist in China, and I am facing the ever-intimidating prospect of Settling Down in Anchorage. This means finding a job, getting plugged back into ministry at the Chapel, searching out an Anchorage-area writers group, and finally unpacking that bright yellow toiletry bag that has been my constant companion over the past year.

It also means, I hope, taking some time to reflect on everything that has happened since last September, and maybe even sharing some of it with you. It has been a great year, I can tell you that much right now, and I stand on the other side humbled and blessed and tired.

So the posts may be a bit chronologically random as I strive to keep you up to date with my present while catching up on my past.

But I'm back to the blog! Spread the word.

Filler post.

I have been busy wrapping up my time in England during the weeks that have intervened since my last post. (Wow, Jess, wordy much?)

I think I’m just going to skip all the goodbyes and wrap up posts for now, as they are a little overwhelming and I’m trying, trying to be a good novelist and get my thesis ready for the 30th of September (yipes!).

So friends, I’ll see you soon! Stick with me!

Jess

An Infestation

When I was little, and we lived on Greendale Drive in Anchorage, fall arrived with the shrews. While we went about our business - buying new winter coats and enjoying the frosty September mornings - a legion of rodents would begin their annual assault.

Operation Warm and Dry

I, in fact, never saw a live one in the house - just their little mangled corpses pinned beneath a metal bar or a thin, naked tail snaking its way out of the mouth of "Kitty," who was meaner than spit but a fine mouser. Nevertheless, I learned through this experience that home invasions should be frowned upon.

This impression was further reinforced throughout the years. There are those Looney Tunes cartoons featuring a horde of termites that buzz up a wooden home, leaving only a porcelain sink, a tub, and a bewildered couple behind. Then that little baby termite would come and eat up that last toothpick in the guy's mouth. The poor Ingalls family lost their home to those vicious locusts. A cockroach on the counter means there are like twenty thousand in the walls.

And now, as fall approaches, I find that my small-but-fabulous flat is being invaded by a small army of pill bugs.

They're crawling under my back door. This much I know.


Of all the things that I could find every morning on my bath mat, I am happy to say that two or three pill bugs isn't so bad. They don't move quickly, opting for neither "fight" nor "flight" when faced with a stressful situation. Instead, they do this:


Kind of cute, actually.

But even these tiny creatures with their cute little exoskeletons can give me the heebie-jeebies. I blame it all on my Alaska roots - we are taught from a very young age to give moose a wide berth and to never run from a bear, but on the subject of creepy-crawlies we remain largely uneducated and inexperienced.

So it is with a nervous cringe that I tweeze these hapless little critters between my thumb and index finger and fling them out into the back garden (where, I'm sure, they immediately begin the long march back to my bath mat). If they stay still, I'm usually okay. But if they move a tiny little antenna or brush me with one of their hair-like legs, I can't take it. I make a very childish noise and drop them back onto the bathroom floor, where they roll around like tiny billiard balls. And we try again.

I think I'm secretly afraid they are going to run into my mouth.

Do you know where this shirt came from, lady??

PARIS, FRANCE!*

What is it about Paris that intimidates me? Is it the high fashion, the gourmet food, and all the people (even very small children) speaking fluent French?

Yes.

Of all the places that we visited, Paris was the stop that I was most worried about. I saw it as a city that I should know a lot about - it is famous after all - but the things that make it famous are things about which I am an idiot. High society. Romance. Just standing around looking really good. So forgive me if the thought of spending time in this city dredged up those feelings of thirteen-year-old Jessi trying to hang with the cool kids.

As it turned out, Paris is wonderful. Although none of us speak a lick of French beyond the basics like bonjour, merci, and buffet, and although we didn't have Rick Steves or actually any guidance with us whatsoever (we bought a map from a vending machine at the train station), Paris wooed me like she's wooed the rest of the world.

If we had known more about the city, or if we were spending more than 24 hours there, we probably could have done it up solid. But, in the spirit of making the best of it, we just gave it a go, strolling along the Seine from Notre Dame to the Eiffel Tower.

Paris is just chock full of ambiance, with her tree-lined neighborhoods and street vendors. Being there made me want to study art history, to make friends with bohemians, to learn French, and to shop somewhere other than the Gap.

Started at Notre Dame. I wasn't sure if you could see Sarah and me, so I drew a little arrow.


Close up in one of the doorways of the church.


The most legendary foosball table ever is on the bank of the Seine. I really wanted in on that action, but didn't know how to say "C'mon guys! Give me a turn!" in French.


The Arc! Just a few days after the Tour de France, too.


No label. You're not stupid.


Laurilee and I took a Ferris wheel ride to get a different view of Paris.


Eiffel, extreme close-up.


So, Paris was lovely. I understand now why everyone is so crazy about her.


*Mel Gibson, Maverick. It's time to watch it again.

We all need goals.

Much like Michael Phelps, I have some records to break.

I've had the opportunity to visit a lot of different countries in the past ten years. But never could I claim to have slept in three countries on one night.

Until now.

That's right. On one Thursday night/Friday morning I slumbered my way through Italy, Switzerland, and France via an international night train.

I know, I know. Amazing.

Amazing enough to be mentioned in the same breath as the most winningest athlete in the history of the Olympics? (Most winningest? They're running out of superlatives for this guy!)

You be the judge.


Nevermind. I'll be the judge.

And yes. Amazing enough.

I just let the train do all the work. That's my secret.

I think that it could have been built in a day.

Rome! (this is a long one)



We were sad to say goodbye to Florence with all her magical vistas, beautiful statues and cheap accommodations, but the time came to catch a rail and head south to the Capital.

The Termini station gave us our first impression of the city - big, hot, and crowded, with plenty of McDonald's. There are TWO in the train station!

Well, one was across the street.

Our place (a pension, accent on the "on") was near the station, which was always a relief for this pack mule. We found it without incident and immediately participated the grand Roman tradition of taking a long nap during the hottest part of the day. It was glorious.

This started a pattern for our four days in Rome: Wake up, breakfast, see the sights, lunch, sleep, evening walk and dinner. And Rome has got some stuff to see, let me tell you!

On our first evening, we found Capitol Hill and the ruins of the ancient Forum.


And we visited the Pantheon for the first time - this became a nightly stop. There were restaurants lining the piazza and usually a musician or two - see the guy singing opera?


The next morning we sorted out the Metro (we're pretty much experts on any underground system now) and rode it to the Borghese Gallery, an amazing museum set in the middle of a park.

The Gallery used to be the Borghese family's party villa on the outskirts of the city. The downstairs rooms contain mostly sculpture - each room featuring a particularly famous piece in the middle and less-famous pieces around the edge. Oil paintings covered the walls of all the upstairs rooms. Paintings by masters like Michelangelo, Rafael, and Caravaggio.

Hmm. At this point I had planned to describe some of the works that I saw, but I can see that might bog things down a bit. If you're like me, and you can only recognize the names of the great Renaissance artists because of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,then we all have a ways to go before Way to Go Kevin! can focus on art appreciation. So I'll stop there for now.

After the Gallery, we hung around the surrounding park. We rented one of these puppies...

...which are surprisingly fast and complicated. Yup, we were those tourists, tottering on the edge of control, taking up the sidewalk, laughing and yelling at one another to slow down.

It was great.

On our second full day, we demolished ancient Rome (figuratively).

Palatine Hill, home of generations of Caesars and Emperors, is a mound of red-stone ruins today, but with a little imagination, you can picture the Imperial Palace. It also helps if you've seen Gladiator.



After that, we went to the Colosseum. It's a wreck! The floor is all torn up. The walls are falling down. I mean, sure, it's nearly 2,000 years old, but still.


Actually, it was very cool. Not temperature-wise.

Throughout it all, we consulted our good friend Rick Steves. Special thanks to Sarah, who brought him along.



My nose was stuck in this book the entire time.

At Trajan's Column:


At the Forum:


Enjoying the Colosseum:


And Palatine Hill:



On our last day we visited St. Peter's Basilica and the Vatican Museum.

Sistine Chapel, baby!

There was really only one thing at the overwhelming Vatican Museum that we wanted to see so we made a beeline for it and it still took about half an hour of steady walking to even arrive at the chapel door. We were herded like cattle the whole way. Apparently a lot of other people wanted a gander at that ceiling.

But it was worth it. We couldn't take pictures. We couldn't stay long. The overall effect of the chapel was, I'm sure, marred by the hundreds of tourists packed into the room like sardines. And it was still worth it.

St. Peter's Basilica and the home of the Pope were interesting, too. I've only ever seen this square when it is featured in the news because of some papal event, and then it is always smothered with worshipers.

The church itself is huge! Bigger than St. Paul's in London, which is also huge. All the furnishings and statues inside are built on a large scale in order to make the overall effect of the church seems smaller. Does that makes sense? Just ask Rick Steves - he explains it better than me.


Okay, almost done. We ate good food and saw more fun things like the Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain. We ate a LOT of gelato.

We also hiked halfway across Rome for this exciting picture:


Less exciting was the line we discovered when we got there.


Then it was on to Paris via the night train!

Florence.

Florence, or Firenze for those in the know, is very photogenic and I am tempted to skip the airing of my Florentine ignorance and just post some pictures. But I’m not happy if I’m not embarrassing myself, so here goes.

Ask me a month ago, and the only thing I could have told you about Florence is that Lucy wanted to go there in While You were Sleeping.

And I knew it was in Italy.

Reading up a little on the train, I learned that Michelangelo’s David was there, and upon arriving I realized that, overall, Florence is a pretty arty place. The home of
Renaissance art, you might say. And even today, if you can see past all the tourists and the pay toilets, the theme of the city is beauty. Beautiful buildings, music, statues. For centuries, marble figures have been standing on pedestals, posing for students and their sketchbooks. Street musicians are out every night, playing in the piazzas. Sidewalk artists recreate famous paintings with chalk and concrete day after day.

It’s touristy, yes. But I almost feel like that’s fitting. The appreciation of the people around me affected my appreciation, and the impact of this city has reached far beyond her walls. This is where important things started – where men learned how to achieve perspective paintings and how to capture emotion in stone.

And I think that the amount of work and effort and imagination required to try and replicate this world in oils or marble is a testament to the power and imagination of the One who created everything in the first place.

The Piazza della Signoria was my favorite place in Florence. The statues have been there for hundreds of years, turning the square into a famous open-air gallery. This is the original site of Michelangelo's David, but he was moved into a nearby gallery and replaced with a copy in the eighteen hundreds (don't quote me on that date).

Getting our art on.

In the middle is Megan, a friend of a friend who graciously opened her flat up to us for three days AND showed us around town! She's great. You should be friends with her.

Our sweet digs, Florence edition.

An open-air puppet show!

Degrading famous works of art!

Street musicians!

Teaching the next generation the ropes. Very sweet scene.

I took this picture to prove that I was really there, but, on reflection, it looks a little superimposed.

Canal Retentive.

“That is impossible. There is no night train to Venice.”

Laurilee and I stare blankly at the woman behind the ticket counter for so long that she begins to worry that her English wasn’t correct.

“What I mean is,” she says, “That train does not exist.”

“Huh,” I say, “But it’s on the timetable.”

“It does not exist.”

The woman in Marseilles was sweet and helpful, and although she couldn’t magically conjure up a non-existent night-train to Venice, she could get us as far as Nice today and then on to Venice the following afternoon.

Better than nothing, we said, and started looking for accommodations in Nice.

This was the most unexpected hiccup (hiccough? I never know.) during our entire trip, and as problems go, it wasn’t earth-shattering. We had to book a semi-expensive, semi-dodgy hotel near the train station in Nice and we lost half a day of Venice, but other than that it was a piece of cake.

And then, Venice!

It’s all true! No roads! Just canals!

I can’t remember the first time I had ever heard of the concept, but I remember as a little girl trying to imagine what it would be like to use a boat instead of a car. I loved the idea of Venice, full of water-roads and winding walkways.

It was exciting to step out of the train station and be immediately greeted by a busy stretch of the Grand Canal, with tourists loading onto buses and mail-boats zipping past with bags of letters and stacks of parcels.

Venice has some really wonderful sights, including the Guggenheim Museum, Saint Mark’s Basilica and the Accademia art gallery. But we didn’t go to any of them during our shortened stay.

But that was fine. I was mostly just there for the canals.


The day train.



Venice!


See?


Some gondoliers. Too rich for our blood!


The place we stayed brought breakfast to our room. They're sweet.

Word is, the rain in this country stays mainly in the plain

SPAIN!

Although we had to walk up three flights of stairs and share the bathroom with the rest of the floor, I think that our hostel in Barcelona was my favorite. Our room was large – with a bunk bed and a double and a twin. High ceilings, tile floor. We had a small conservatory with giant windows and a table with chairs where we could sit and look into the back windows of the entire block.

Our sweet digs.

The view.

We're so crazy!

I wanted to purchase one of the canaries that the vendors were selling on Las Ramblas, the city’s main pedestrian drag. To my mind sprung a picture of a little yellow bird swinging in his wire cage in our conservatory. We could try and take him on the train, I reasoned, as a fragile and complicated mascot. Or we could have staged some sort of do-gooder freeing ceremony where we flung the bird into the air and watched him fly to liberty, his feathers blending with the setting sun.

Here's me checking out the price of birds.


But, as it turns out, the birds were 40 euros, not even counting the cage, so it was not to be.

All for the best, I suppose. Our freeing ceremony, although good intentioned, would probably have left the bird unable to fend for himself after years of captivity, fighting pigeons five times his size for crumbs of paella and trash. Eventually, we would find him with a five o’clock shadow on his little feathered cheeks and fingerless gloves on his orange feet, whistling a tuneless song, a tiny little hat at his feet to catch contributions.

I don’t want that on my conscience.

So we left the birds at the pet shop and enjoyed our time in Spain anyway. We bought breakfast from the same little coffee shop (The Times) every morning, carrying it back to our hostel to enjoy in the conservatory. Our days were spent rambling on Las Ramblas, learning the Metro, visiting La Sagrada Familia Cathedral, and finding the beach.

Barcelona is in the Catalonian province, and I was worried that everything would be in their own special, secret language of Catalan. But our stammered and fuddled high school Spanish was enough to get us around.

Laurilee and Jannell have a conversation on Las Ramblas.


Sarah and I buy some bread for dinner at the market.


Paella. Probably the most accurate-looking food known to man. There's no mistaking what you're getting yourself into with a plate of paella.


The interior of that eternal work-in-progress, La Sagrada Familia.


On to Italy via the south of France! Note the discrepancy in backpack proportions.