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Early stuff (1989-1992: First-time Europe, Germany, USA)

My first time in Europe

The first time I went to Europe was in 1989. I went with my mom on a whirlwind bus tour to London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Cologne, Heidelberg, Rothenburg, Munich, Salzburg, Vienna, Verona, Venice, the Italian Lake District, Zermatt (where the Matterhorn is), Lausanne, Auxerre, and Paris, and then separately to Salisbury, Bath, Stonehenge, Bristol, Llangollen (Wales), Chester, Grasmere (and the English Lake District), Moffat, Edinburgh, York, Harrogate and Belvoir Castle. I don't remember alot from this trip because I was asleep on the bus most of the time, but I do remember that we got lost coming out of wrong exit of the Paris Metro, getting ripped off by a cabbie, that I was sick in Vienna after eating really yummie goulash, and that the tour guide's name was Lideke and she was Dutch. I also believe we drove illegally through Yugoslavia (now Slovenia) because it was faster to go that way. Anyway, the tour started in London, so we flew British Airways, and it was the first time that either my mother or I had actually had to pay for a deck of cards to play with on an airplane (they were "collector" cards with all the airplanes British Airways had ever owned printed on them).

German Exchange

In 1992, after I graduated from high school, I went to Germany with Frau Strauss and half of my German class. It was an exchange with a Gymnasium (high school) in Düren, Germany, and we stayed there for about a month (they had already come to stay with us during spring break). We flew Lufthansa and sat in business class when the stewardesses weren't watching. Anyway, during that month we visited Munich, Neuschwanstein Castle (the one Disneyland copied), the Dachau concentration camp, Rothenburg (unbombed medieval village), Berlin (the wall had just come down), Potsdam and Bonn. I also went with my exchange family to Düsseldorf and Brussels.

Road Trip

Between these two trips to Europe I went on a road trip with my family across (well, in a polygon, actually) the US. This was during the summer of 1990, and we started in Los Angeles and went through Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, San Antonio (neato over-the-river mall), Houston (lots of trees), Baton Rouge, New Orleans (dad wanted to eat at Antoine's), Mobile and Tallahassee on our way to Orlando where we picked up my mom, did Disneyworld and continued on our merry way to Cape Canaveral, Fort Lauderdale (where I was born), Miami, Daytona Beach, Jacksonville, Savannah, Asheville, NC (Biltmore Estates), Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Rapid City (where Mt. Rushmore is), Cheyenne, WY, Denver, Grand Junction, Utah and Las Vegas before heading home. It took 24 days total, and despite what my friend Alexis might say, I don't believe we could have gotten from California to Florida in less than 5 days...

Year Abroad in Spain & Eastern Europe (1995-96)

The Rain in Spain

Instead of spending my junior year abroad like most people do, I opted to graduate first and then go abroad for a year. This was stupid in terms of getting free money, but it certainly gave me alot more freedom. Anyway, I wanted to go to the Basque Country to learn Basque, so I went with the University Studies Abroad Consortium, based at the University of Nevada, Reno, who had programs in Bilbao and San Sebastian, in Spain.

However, before going to Spain, I went with my mom on a little trip to the East Coast. We were going to visit some grad schools, see some of my mom's friends (well, this was why my mom went) and visit my mom's aunt who was dying of cancer. So we went to New Jersey (East Brunswick - mom's friends and Princeton), Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania - NOT Penn State), Ithaca, NY (Cornell), Toronto (mom's friends AND aunt), Niagara Falls (just in the neighborhood), Boston (saw mom's friends, my friend Royce, MIT and Harvard), New Haven, CT (Yale), and then the next week I went to Spain.

I flew Iberia. I would suggest that you find another airline. But since I missed my connection in Madrid, I got to see the city for a couple of hours before continuing onto Bilbao, where I was studying abroad. During the course of the semester I visited San Sebastián (Donostia in Basque), where I was going to be studying the next semester, Portugal (Fatima, Lisbon, Sintra, Cascais and Estoril), the French Pays Basque (Biarritz and Saint Jean de Luz), Gernika (the little Basque town made famous by Picasso's black and white painting "Guernica", which depicts the aftermath of the Luftwaffe bombing ordered by former dictator Franco during the Spanish Civil War), my penpal Clare in London and the prehistoric caves at Altamira.

For Christmas I went to visit my friend Verena at her hometown of Pier, Germany and then met another friend, Maria in Paris for New Year's (we went to Eurodisney). While in Paris I oversaturated on modern art museums and went back to Spain happy and ready to start another semester. Bilbao is generally known as the ugliest city in Spain, so moving to San Sebastián, which was former Queen Maria Cristina's preferred vacation spot, was quite a welcome change. Of course, this didn't keep me from travelling, you know, because once you have the bug you can't get rid of it. So I went to Southern France for Mardi Gras (there's a direct overnight train to Nice from Hendaye, just across the French border). There I saw even more modern art museums, most notably the Musee Matisse which made me flip, the chapel Matisse designed in Vence (which also made me flip) and Fondation Maeght, which was really hard to get to but really worth it. Didn't get to see the Picasso museum in Antibes (it was closed that afternoon), but I did see his studio in Vallauris. Nice was nice but Cannes was a disappointment.

While in San Sebastián I also got the wonderful opportunity to visit the Bosque de Oma, a painted forest. The artist owns the land of the forest and has painted designs on many of the trees. They range from rainbow-type patterns up and down the trunks to eyes watching you. Most of the works involve many painted trees, so they change depending on your point of view. I think wandering around in this forest was maybe the best part of my year.

Anyway, my next trip was during spring break when my friend Doug came from the Bay Area and we went to Andalusia and Morocco. I met him in Barcelona the day after my purse was stolen on a small street in the old part of town. This was a real learning experience and what I got out of it was a profound respect for American Express and the US Consulate in Barcelona who got me a new passport in about half an hour (it took like a week to get the original one in L.A.). For some reason, the whole episode didn't dampen my impression of the city at all. The dragon at Parc Guëll will always smile in my mind and I will always remember Gaudi's architecture. Anyway, after Doug got there we went to Málaga (where we encountered annoying Easter parades blocking all the major roads), Gibraltar (where we encountered a major flash flood that soaked our clothes, shoes, wallets and passports), Tangiers (where we encountered the typical won't-leave-you-alone "guides" while searching for the hotel window from which Matisse painted his "Landscape viewed from a window"), Casablanca (my first time inside a mosque), Sevilla (lots of pretty bridges), Granada (where we saw the Alhambra, sort-of), Córdoba (where I tacked onto a German tour group and got into alot of attractions for free and meditated for an hour inside the most eerily beautiful place I have ever seen - the mosque/cathedral) and finally Madrid, which for some reason, I don't remember at all.

Eastern Europe and Switzerland

After the semester was over, I went up to Paris to meet my mom. Before she arrived I got to visit Bordeaux (nice archaelogical museum), Brussels (awesome comic book museum featuring homegrown Tintin) and Lille. Then after wandering around the city all day WITH our luggage (this bomb scare thing is REALLY annoying), we took a night train to Prague, a city everyone should see sometime in their lives. We saw Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright while we were there, but trust me, there are more interesting attractions than that. The astronomical clock, for one and the black roof architecture, too. We took a day trip to Karlstejn castle, which is on to of a hill and you have to walk all the way up it.

The second city everyone visiting Eastern Europe goes to is Budapest, and we went there, too. Budapest is actually two cities on different sides of the river - Buda and Pest. So it's a much larger city than Prague and I think that makes it lose some of its charm. A nice day trip from there is Szentendre, where I really should have bought that Tao of Pooh book in Hungarian. Anyway, in between Prague and Budapest is Vienna, which was saved from being in "Eastern Europe" at the last minute. I like Vienna and I was glad I got a chance to see it again because the last time I was here I was sick and I didn't get to see a thing. Well, I guess I did see some things, because I remembered them this time around, like the Douglas Perfumerie, where I got my purple and black polka dotted scrunchie.

Anyway, after Austria we went to Switzerland - Zurich, Bern and Geneva in one day, so obviously we didn't go for detail. We basically woke up in Zurich, it was around 7AM, so we had a $4 coffee and I am still kicking myself for not having bought any of those giant sunflowers we saw everywhere in the open markets. They were HUGE! And of course you only remember what you miss, right?... Bern, the capital, has cute little brown bears (their mascots) in pits, little painted statuettes in the middle of the road and Swiss army knife shops along them. Geneva has the fountain spouting water into the air. Honestly - there must be more to the city than that (otherwise why would all the diplomats in the world assemble here?) but we didn't see it, and the postcards didn't show it, so we moved on. I showed my mom a bit of the Basque Country (Bayonne, with the twin spires, Biarritz' beaches, and my apartment in San Sebastián, where my stuff still was). Then we went to Madrid, which once again, I must have slept through, because all I remember is the cow sculpture in the train station across from our hotel. We flew home from there, and that ended my "year" abroad.

France & Scandinavia (Summer 1997)

Southwestern France:

So, I was studying French in France, last summer, right? Well, everyone knows that study abroad is just an excuse to get out of the country. So, these are the places I visited last summer in somewhat chronological order.

I was living in Pau, which is in the southwestern part of France, where the Pyrenées mountains are, close to the Spanish border. It's a small city, but it has movie theatres, an airport and a train station, which is all I really needed. The program I was on organized some weekend excursions and one of them was to the nearby Parc National des Pyrenées, where I was afraid I was going to lose a shoe riding on the ski lift to the top of a mountain.

About half an hour away by train is the Catholic pilgrimage city of Lourdes, where the sick come from all over the world to pray and drink the healing water, like my friend Angela did (and what a collection of water she had...). If you have never seen God's Disneyland, you have to come here.

An hour further along on the same train route is the pink city, Toulouse, France's fourth largest. There's an Ikea here, so it's gotta be pretty big. And rather pretty, too. The architecture of the Capitolium and the square surrounding it is really 'cute'. Rosy pink bricks and iron balconies. Even the MacDonald's and Burger King, which flank the Capitolium on opposite sides of the square, are disguised by their rosy exteriors. Behind the Capitolium is a nice outdoor sculpture of a woman and a child.

Switzerland

After my first Sunday in Pau, I realized that I had to get away on weekends. So the first place I went was Basel, Switzerland. Funky airport. It's actually in France, but if you're going to Basel, you go through customs at the airport and at the other end is a border-free road that leads directly to Switzerland. There are around 30 museums in Basel, which is a good thing because it rained the entire weekend I was there. However, this didn't prevent the Baslers from having a nice outdoor festival on a few of the narrow streets of the old town. It was like Telegraph Avenue, in Berkeley, only done right. The other thing I remember about Basel is the multilingualism. The receptionist at my hotel said everyone that wants to get a service job in Basel pretty much has to speak four languages. And boy can they switch between them. Even the movies were subtitled in two languages.

I also went to Lucerne, since I was in the area, and saw the lion and the water tower, and bought another toy cow (a wood one this time). On the train from Basel I sat across from some Swiss soldiers who were probably about my age. They had these huge backpacks that are bigger than I am, and compared to that, their three feet long rifles looked like toys, and they pretty much treated them that way.

My Tour de France marathon

Okay, so I was studying in France. There were two sessions, one in June and one in July, and in between I went on this whirlwind tour of France via TGV (and lots of really slow regional trains). So the obvious point of departure is Pau. (Duh.) And from there I went up the west coast to La Rochelle (about halfway to Brittany). There's this cute harbor there that gets into alot of pictures, right, so I just had to get one of my own. There are two towers, one on each side, that guard the entry into the marina. They're old and weren't torn down, so lots of British tourists come to see them. And that's La Rochelle.

Just west of the city are a few islands, and I went to one of them - Ile de Ré. What's on this island? Uh...well, there's a lighthouse at the end of it and a little animal park next to that where a nice guy who I had lunch with works, but all these things combined do not make it worth spending an entire day here, so don't miss the early bus back to town.

After this I went to Brittany. I was going to to study French (and painting) in Brittany, but that was too expensive, so that's how I ended up in Pau. Anyway, I got to Nantes first, which I guess is not in the French world view, even in Brittany. But the Chateau of the Dukes of Brittany is there, so I guess it really is. There is an annoying horse-drawn carriage operator who parks her horse-drawn carriage on the street leading up to the chateau, blocking a very nice photo shoot (one of the only spots you might actually be able to get a full view of the chateau), so if you go there and you speak French, you can tell her off for me.

West of Nantes is "Brittany proper." Quimper has one of those Huge Cathedrals that spot the merry land. Of course it's under renovation, but only inside, so atleast you can take pictures of the outside. None of my stained glass pictures ever came out anyway. Not that I learned anything the first time, I just have a bunch of bad pictures of stained glass...

So, the best thing about Quimper is that you can take a bus to the place I liked the most on this trip - la cité des artistes, Pont-Aven. It's so cute!!! (This should be said by Jay with mock-Patti intonation.) Pont-Aven is a tiny town with more art galleries than residents, and more streams and ponds than British tourists (although not by much). It also has a really nice art museum that happened to have a Gauguin exhibit when I was there, so I actually got to see what he painted while he lived there - I guess this is not the norm. Anyway, there's also a nice hand-made jewelry/clothing store near the tourist office with a beautiful hand-printed black dress that I really should have bought.

This was as far west as I wanted to go (not really being interested in actually seeing the rain in Brest, Barbara), so from Quimper I headed north to Morlaix, where there's this huge viaduct that the TGV goes over and you can walk under/through/inside/etc. And get harrassed by sexually-deprived jerks. North of Morlaix off the northern coast of the Finestière ("end of the world") is an island with a fortress on it that's supposed to be on alot of postcards of Brittany. Well, I didn't see very many of these postcards, or much of the island, so I don't even remember what it's called. Something about a chateau and a taureau. It's in the bay of the town of Carantec (which means "heart" in Breton, I think).

Rennes, my next destination, was much more interesting. I liked the architecture there. Especially the square where the theatre and the city hall are. The two buildings are like friendship necklaces - they would fit together if they weren't separated by 50 yards (or whatever distance it is). And not (at least when I was there) under restoration!

The last parts of Brittany I went to were St. Malo, which was "quaint" for awhile (until you see too many quaint little French villages filled with tourists) & Mont St. Michel, which was way overrun by tourists, but way cool nevertheless. Three things are incredible about this place - 1. the superfast tide that all the guidebooks warm you about (get your camera ready!), 2. the view driving up to it: if you think you'll only see postcard quality pictures on postcards, you're dead wrong (again, get your camera ready!) and 3. the abbey itself. Walk down the corridors by yourself after the tour and take a close look in the dark corners.

Chartres, an hour south of Paris by train, has a huge cathedral which is famous for its stained glass, but I think it's the quantity that's notable, not the quality, because none of it is really spectacular. Somehow I always end up in Paris when I'm traveling in Europe. This time I stayed at the Hotel Esmeralda, across the river from Notre Dame, which is a perfect location, except for the English-speaking tourists you hear all night long. But then again, where in Paris don't you hear American tourists all night long? I really didn't see much of the city, I just used it as a base for day trips. I guess it's kind of an expensive city for that, but anyway, it worked.

Anyway, Rouen (where the actual Tour de France starts) has a cool clock. I like big town clocks. The cathedral that Monet painted lots of times is also here (and apparently perpetually covered with scaffolding, because even the postcards show it).

Lyon. I would like this city even if it didn't have that beautiful bass-relief sculpture of the Rhone & the Saone. They are personified as man and woman respectively swiming over each other. The sun came out (it was a rainy day) just as I was about to take a picture of this sculpture and subsequently went back behind the clouds when I had finished. Nearby Vienne is often confused with Vienna, Austria. They are NOT the same! Well, all I can really say about this place is that I arrived half an hour too late to see the largest Roman amphitheatre in France because there was a jazz festival there that night - thank you, Wynton Marsalis!).

Troyes (where Chretien was from) is a quiet town with a nice little fine art museum that has a really good synergy going between the works and the place they are displayed. And Dijon (mustard, wine and shopping) was not a big deal for me - you should see it from above so that you can actually SEE the rainbow-colored tile roofs. See if you can find the marble polar bear (hint: it's in a park).

On my way home I stopped at Angouleme where the CNBDI - the French national comic book museum - is . The colorful modern glass architecture is pretty funky but if you're just into the strips, go to Brussels instead.

Other mini-trips I made:

The Dordogne: Sarlat (awesome restaurants and foie gras...), Lascaux (the caves that you can visit here are replicas, but they're pretty damn impressive ones), Les Eyzies (capital of prehistoric man - tons of tacky tourist parks related to this stuff scatter the roads from Lascaux, including Prehistoparc where you can see grown Frenchmen dressed in saber-tooth tiger loins battle toy mastodons), Perigueux (I missed Bergerac for this?).

Provence: Arles (a stolen wallet meant no money, but that helped me get a better feel for Van Gogh), Avignon (the Pont cost money and I didn't have any, so I didn't get to dance on it), Orange (land o' Font National, which is scary, but not enough to keep me from coming to see Wagner's Tristan and Isolde in the amphitheatre - and freezing my butt off for three hours), Marseille (helpful American Express office does not have any English-speaking personnel, so you can either take advantage of that and get services you're not entitled to because they can't communicate with the American main office, or get really screwed if you happen not to speak French. Don't expect much from La Canebiere.), Aix-en-Provence (no, I didn't think this was the most beautiful city in France, but then again I was sick that day), Montpellier (can we say foreign students??!!! And modern American-style shopping mall, oh, and a Titan-sized statue of a man in a fountain so it looks like he's taking a shower in front of you).

Alsace-Lorraine: Strasbourg - a great city despite (or maybe due to?) its "multiple-personality disorder" (it's a bilingual city - they all say they're French, but they're nicer to you if you speak German) and the single tower on the cathedral (it's really obvious that there should be two, but the whole thing would sink into ground if they built the other one); Metz - Chagall stained glass, parks and rivers make this city much nicer than Nancy, which only has decorative iron gates; Luxembourg - hopped on the wrong train and ended up here (instead of Metz), but I felt like I was really in German-speaking Switzerland. The fruit salad I had for lunch was phenomenal, but the Villeroy and Boch store looked just like any other.)

SCANDINAVIA (all this instead of Basque classes):

Copenhagen - flew here from Paris (almost missed the 7AM flight), then I got here and couldn't find lodging. Finally got into a hostel and got a free night because they forgot to ask me for money. Tivoli and the mermaid were over-hyped, but I enjoyed the rune stones in the National Gallery and the modern stuff in the Ny Glyptotek). Louisiana, which is an awesome modern art museum (kind of like the Getty or Fondation Maeght), is just north of Copenhagen, on the way to Elsinore (Helsinør in Danish), Hamlet's supposed home.

I took the train to Gothenburg, but it was raining, so all I saw was the inside of a shopping mall before I continued on to Oslo. I spent an extra day in Oslo because of the Finnish embassy's short opening hours (and very rude receptionist), and ended up missing out on Trondheim. I finally took the night train to Bergen, so I was pretty tired when I finally made it out to the waterfront (Bryggen) where those old houses on all the pictures of Bergen are. On the way back to Oslo, I took a fjord cruise to Flam and was obsessed with taking pictures of a particular seagull that kept flying out of range whenever I shot at it. By the time I got to Oslo, it was time to catch the night train, and I really wanted to go to Trondheim but I only had a reservation on the Stockholm train, so that's where I went.

The Water Festival was going on in Stockholm at the time and it was like a really big Ren Faire with ducks instead of knights. It was also really hot. I was annoyed at a particular merchant who would not give me a discount on a damaged wooden horse - you know, those painted red ones - that was chipped on the back. This particular horse had it's head turned, and was therefore not symmetrical (you actually had to expend some effort to make it), and this merchant was the only one who had this type of horse, but he only had a damaged one, so I left Stockholm without it.

Helsinki was next, only a night ferry away, and I'm really glad I went - it's a great place to visit in the summer (still a bit nippy, though, but I guess I was just used to 90 degree weather in Stockholm). The big white cathedral on the hill was being renovated (I think this is a theme for everyone's European vacations), so scaffolding covered one of the four little domes that make a ring around the big one, but it was still beautiful. You can really see both the Russian and European influences in the city and makes it twice as interesting.

The second and third largest "cities" in Finland, Tampere and Turku, were probably not worth the trouble it took to get there. The Waino Aakainen sculpture museum in Turku was the highlight of those trips. The Matisse exhibit at Retretti in Punkaharju was a disappointment, too - especially having to spend three extra hours there because of the train schedule.

Saint Petersburg is only a day's sail away from Helsinki (or a really long train ride), so I said, What the heck? and hopped on an organized cruise/tour of Saint Petersburg (they organized the visa, but that's about it - you had to pay extra for everything else). Apparently it is illegal to buy or sell things in any other currency than roubles, but you'd never know this since all the prices anywhere tourists would go are all quoted in US dollars. Not having been in the US for two months bythis point, I didn't have any US dollars, so shopping was kind of a problem - which turned out to be very good for my pocketbook. But the architecture in Saint Petersburg is marvelous. It's really such a shame that they don't have any money to maintain or restore it - the paint is coming off everywhere, and just like in Venice, all the buildings are sinking into the ground. Including the Hermitage, which is one huge museum - imagine filling Versailles with stuff from the Louvre and you'd have a rough approximation. I came and saw the Matisses and was happy.

Estonia's capital, Tallinn, is also across the bay from Helsinki. Only two hours by hydrofoil. This is a recovering former Soviet state. Emphasis on the former Soviet state part, because as soon as you walk out of the old town, you feel it. The medieval city, on the other hand, is remarkably well-preserved and has a Russian church just like the one in Helsinki, even if the area is crawling with pickpockets and thieves. The Mac Donald's is really cheap here - less than one dollar for a cheeseburger, medium fries and OJ.

After I missed my flight and had to spend the night at the Helsinki airport, I finally got to Berlin, where I stayed with my friend Paulina, saw a bunch of museums, took pictures of the bombed cathedral and the Henry Moore statue, and fell asleep repeatedly on the night bus. Then I went to another friend's place on the other side of Germany (near Cologne) and she took me to Maastricht and Bonn, before I had to go back to Paris for my flight back to the US (where I spent an entire afternoon looking for an internet cafe).

I decided to stay in New York for a week instead of taking my connecting flight back to Philly, since I didn't have any lodging there anyway. So I stayed with another friend, saw some more museums, and made a day trip to Brighton Beach to sample some Russian food American-style. Then I got a mysterious phone call a couple days before school started asking me if I wanted to teach Spanish this year. And then I had to come back to Philadelphia and go to school again. Sigh...

Italy & the Mediterranean (Summer 1998)

For those people who want to know what I did with my money this summer, this is it.

O ROMA!

A couple of days after taking a Ph.D. qualifying exam in sociolinguistics (which is miraculously passed), I hopped on a plane for Italy. It was one of those night departures out of JFK just like TWA Flight 800 and that Swissair one that recently blew up. Luckily my plane landed safely in Frankfurt, if somewhat late (obviously I didn't get a direct flight to Italy, but you know what? I'd rather stop in Frankfurt than fly Alitalia overseas). Okay. So it was raining and rather gross looking outside in Frankfurt (and the Swiss guy who sat next to me on the plane said the city was better missed anyway), so I just sat in the airport for three hours instead of venturing out in search of modern art like I usually do. But at least I got a stamp in my passport for Frankfurt airport. Anyway, the flight to Rome was really short (and I still can't get over the fact that you can fly over several countries in the space of an hour if you're in Europe, while it takes two hours to fly the length of California).

So, anyway, on the train from the airport to Roma Termini (O train station of train stations...), I gave some toilet paper (that I stole from the Frankfurt airport) to the British couple sitting across from me, and basically got a free taxi ride from the train station to my hotel. I guess there really still are rewards for being nice to people. Of course this didn't change the fact that I was sitting in the front seat of the taxi and it was my first time in Rome and I have a preoccupation with car accidents. Let's just say it was the first time I ever really appreciated the seat belt. Anyway, I stayed in a really nice small hotel and I'm not going to tell you which one because I don't want you going over there taking up my room (but I'll tell you that Keats and Shelley stayed there, too!).

Well, anyway, I wandered around the city for two days sightseeing (if you want a list of what I saw, pick up any Rome guidebook - Time Out Rome is a good one; this year's Let's Go Rome sucked) and pretending to be able to speak Italian (but it was really just weird Spanish). Then I met my friend Maura at the Vatican and we looked at Bernini's colonnade from the spot where the columns line up into one row (this was more difficult than you might imagine because the whole area was still blocked off with this and that barricade left over from the Pope's morning audience, and the plaques on the ground aren't that big...) But, since half of St. Peter's was covered with scaffolding, we weren't gonna spend a whole afternoon looking at that and I'd already spent the morning staring at (or 'in', I should say) the Sistine Chapel. Anyway, I don't remember what we did after that, but we after we got sick of dogging mopeds in Rome, we went to Ostia Antica and Pompeii at some point and I got a free guided tour from Maura, the archaeologist. We both thought Naples was scary, but they do have a super cool archaeological museum (basically it's where they brought all the best stuff the found at all the excavations nearby).

My friend Margaret was getting married in Rome that weekend, so I actually got to attend a wedding in one of those beautiful Baroque churches that spot the city. This one was called Santa Susanna and it was painted literally from head to toe. After the wedding we all scrammed for taxis to the restaurant in Trastevere where the reception was. I swear, this place was the model for every Hollywood set ever built to film romantic Italian weddings in, musicians and all. Okay, so after pigging out, we all had to scrounge around for taxis again and this time we got the Jerk. The Jerk would not drive us where we wanted to go and would not even drive us close to where we wanted to go because there was traffic. Hello? Aren't you getting paid to sit in traffic? Hello? Anyway, we ended up having to walk most of the way home and we finally got a cab for Margaret's poor mom so that she could get to her hotel.

FIREnze

Okay, so after a nice little fling in Rome, I had to move on to the hottest, humidest, stuffiest city in Italy to justify my status as a student by taking some classes. Florence may be a beautiful walking museum due to it's Renaissance time capsule status, but that doesn't change the fact that the weather there is really unpleasant during the summer months. And all the tourists that swell the streets there in July and August don't help either (ha ha, not that I wasn't one or anything).

I read in some guidebook or somewhere that around 1/4 of the world's most important works of art "live" in Florence. I have to say that I think there's something seriously wrong with this book's particular classificatory scheme (no, I don't think Europe is the only place on earth that has produced works of art worthy of esteem), but it really is true that Florence has more museums, buildings and stuff to look at than you could possibly see in any day or week or probably year. Obviously I didn't get to see all of it in the two months that I was there. Of course Renaissance was never my favorite period or genre of art (the people were really too self-absorbed for my taste), so I wasn't making a really strenuous effort to gorge myself on it. But I really was impressed (literally in my brain) when I saw the David. All three. And I took pictures with a flash just like everyone else, even though you're not allowed to (why you're not allowed to I don't know - it's a sculpture for heaven's sake, and they already destroyed the glossy sheen while cleaning it). Okay, so I came, I saw, and I ate alot of pasta alla boscaiola in the restaurant around the corner (mmm yum yum).

So what about the travel bug?

My second weekend in Florence (i.e. the first chance I got after I started classes) I grabbed my virgin Italian railpass and went to Milan. I actually was intending to go to Pisa, but since I missed the bus to the train station, I ended up getting there two minutes after the train (and my friend) left. This will be a recurring theme through this narration. Anyway, the next train out was going to Milan and the only reason I caught it was because it was delayed half an hour (apparently this train is routinely delayed half an hour because for some reason I didn't process that it was the same train and hopped on it on two subsequent occasions, causing me to miss connections in other cities...)

Okay, so I didn't get to Milan until about 1PM, which meant basically I wasn't gonna get to see Da Vinci's last supper, so instead I went to the top of the very Gothic cathedral and took pictures of the little tiny people below. And the intricate architecture, of course. It wasn't an especially clear day, so you couldn't really see anything further than the ground below, but it was neat to have the lacy carved stone pillars right in your face. I think I sat up there for quite a long time writing in my journal and then I had to wait in line for the elevator down because a whole group of Swiss students had come up in the meantime.

Anyway, after roof hopping, I was pretty hungry, so I had a blueberry frullato in the famous Galleria Emmanuele to the right of the cathedral, and then I went to MacDonald's to go pee (something I learned to do in France, where you know you'll never be far from a *free* toilet if you just look for the golden arches). I do have to say that I found the shopping in the Galleria pretty disappointing. I thought the place would be way bigger. Oh well. Out the back door and across the street is the famous La Scala. Unfortunately I had the same impression of the opera house as the mall, but I didn't get to go inside that one.

Anyway, I was pretty tired by then and it was really hot, so I just decided to go home and come back again some other day and see the rest of the touristic stuff. I suppose if I had known at the time that Eurostar Italia reservations are purely nominal I would've just hopped on the next train back to Florence and none of this would've happened, but then I wouldn't have had anything else to write about in my journal that day. As it turns out, I got my first marriage proposal right there in the Milano Centrale train station. It was from a short, fair-skinned, semi-literal, 24 year old Fiat plant worker who was from Naples (and who therefore spoke a very different dialect of Italian than any I had heard up to that point, rendering my Spanish completely useless in trying to decipher anything he was trying to say). Anyway, he bought me a popsicle and asked me if we could spend the summer together, and when I said that I wasn't accustomed to spending an entire summer with someone I had just met, he asked me if I wanted to be his wife. At that point I decided to get on my train.

So, you'd think that after this little episode I would've met my quota for unwarranted marriage proposal in one summer, wouldn't ya?. Nope. The next day...

I decided to go Venice. Now I think Venice is a truly unique city. Yes, Stockholm and Saint Petersburg are also built on the water, but they are not Venice. They just aren't. Anyway, Venice was perfect that day. Not even the heat, the incredible number of (other) tourists or the unwelcome visitor that attached himself to me parasitically had a chance at ruining it for me. The sunlight (tricky thing that it is) reflected off the water in such a way that it actually didn't look dirty! (My camera, however, wasn't fooled by this, and many of the pictures I took home testified to the green color of the water and the trash in it, but me and my rosy glasses didn't see any of that...)

So, anyway, the entire reason I went to Venice was to see the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. I had been there before and done the gondola ride, bought the t-shirt and took the San Marco pictures, so I didn't see any point in repeating all that, but I hadn't gotten into the whole museum thing yet then, so I thought what the hey, I'll go to Venice for the art and see how my impression of things changes with time as well. But of course once you're there you can't just say okay, I'm going to walk directly to the museum and ignore this cute little alleyway and not see these beautiful building, etc. etc. This was my mistake. See, if I had actually gone directly to the museum I would never have "bumped into" Mr. Zanoni, who very insistently offered to take a picture of me that I didn't particularly want taken when I wandered out of said cute alley back onto a main path. But of course there was no getting rid of him and four hours, many pictures and one lost balloon animal later, he finally got off the train I was taking back to Florence at the last stop near Venice. I tried to lose him in San Marco and I tried to lose him at Peggy's but it was really hopeless. Zanoni, who must be at least 60 years old and had no voice due to a tracheotomy, was widowed and wanted me to be the signora of his house in Parma, Italy. Based on a couple of hours of acquaintance. Whatever. Anyway, at least I got to see the Collection for free...

Some other big cities I went to in Italy were Turin and Bologna. Turin (Torino in Italian) is where I might have actually studied (instead of Florence), since the University Studies Abroad Consortium has a program there, but the program has a business emphasis, and I wanted to study art, so I didn't go. Anyway, the city is very pretty. Some of the vias and piazzas look more like rues and places, but that's not really surprising since it is so close to France. Bologna (which is not pronounced like baloney), is where that bolognese sauce you put on your spaghetti comes from. It's also where you can see a better leaning tower than in Pisa because half of it fell down (you can tell by the height of the tower next to it, which was built in competition with the fallen one). Bologna also has an interested cathedral - half of it, the bottom half, has a facade and the top of it is, well, as bare as San Lorenzo in Florence (i.e. it has horizontal grooves carved into it to receive a nice marble facade, there just isn't one). I don't remember why.

While I was in Bologna, I decided to make short trip to Modena, to visit Pavarotti's hometown and also to see the Ferrari factory, which is actually in Maranello. Modena has these neat tourist street signs with cartoon drawings of the monuments, which aren't as helpful as they are cute because the often point in contradictory directions, but I like them anyway. I also think the arcades of Modena are grander than in Bologna, but maybe it's because there's less pollution here. The Ferrari factory has this high wall with barbed wire surrounding it, but if you take a bus there, you can take pictures of the Ferrari name over the wall. There's a museum down the street full of really old Ferraris (as well as some newer ones) that sells really expensive merchandise printed with the Ferrari logo on it.

If you think the only Disneyland in Europe is outside of Paris, you haven't been to San Marino. Yes, this is actually one of those independent principalities that are floating around the continent (like Liechtenstein, Monaco and Andorra), but it's so clean and neat it looks like Disneyland built it. For a few bucks they'll even give you a stamp in your passport. The principality is located on the top of a mountain (which explains why it isn't part of Italy) and the view from the top is fabulous on a clear day. I would imagine. You can take the "peoplemover" halfway down and video tape the scenery.

Not too far away, and far more interesting in my mind, is Ravenna, capital of Christiandom for some years before they moved it to Constantinople. The mosaics are (as Marguerite would say) loverly, and the major theme, as you might imagine, is gold. But don't waste too much time shopping for shiny souvenirs (like we did), because the sights close early. The shops, on the other hand, were open really late (like midnight) that evening. Bring lots of 400 film. Your pictures will actually come out (well, mine did, at least). Anyway, I guess I'm supposed to say something about Klimt and Ravenna and Byzantine art (for those of you who read the Art part of my webpage). Well, I guess all I need to say is that it is REALLY OBVIOUS that Klimt, who lived in Ravenna, was influenced by the GOLD used in all the mosaics and if you go there and stare at the mosaics and then you buy some Klimt postcards, you'll see the resemblance, just like you can see the resemblance between two brothers who are alike except for one's features being more developed than the other's.

Pisa. See the Leaning Tower. Go home.

I used to always wonder why in the world anyone would buy a calendar full of pictures of Italy (or France or whatever country you find quaint). Well, after having been to Tuscany & neighboring Umbria, I'm starting to understand. The green scenery (greenery?) that you see in The English Patient is real, and it is beautiful. Sure, you can find the lush green hills and fertile valleys in the wine-producing regions of California, too, but they are not spotted with Italian villas nor viewed from the top of the bell tower of an old cathedral. All of the hill towns I went to - Siena, San Gimignano, Vinci, Lucca, Arezzo and Perugia - each had its own character (I don't understand this - every tiny Midwestern town in the US is exactly the same) and its own distinct history. Siena has the Palio, a way-too-crazy-and-intense yearly horse race, and its prison-garb striped cathedral. San Gimignano has its towers and smoked wild boar thighs. Vinci has its strange museum dedicated (however remotely) to native boy Leonardo. Lucca is just plain cute. Arezzo has lofty arcades and neato shieldy things tacked onto the buildings around its Piazza Grande. And Perugia has the mother of all views of the surrounding countryside (not to mention those chocolate baci...).

Assisi, pilgrimage site for Catholics due to its native son Francis, isn't far from Perugia. But I think everyone, Catholic or not, who has any appreciation for painting really ought to make their own pilgrimage there. The frescoes are incredibly well preserved - even after the last earthquake, which took out some of the walls around the town. The ones in Padua are no substitute, so don't be fooled by Let's Go. Unfortunately I was only in Assisi for 45 minutes, so I only got to see the frescoes, but I'm sure there's plenty of other stuff to see. And to buy - there must be, there are so many tourists there.

Also a pilgrimage site in Umbria is Orvieto, where the cathedral with the prettiest facade (at least in my humble opinion, St. Peter's being covered by scaffolding...) resides. Go inside. But not close to lunch time because they'll kick you out in their mad rush to eat. Orvieto also some nice Etruscan restaurants with friendly owners who give you free stuff and pretend to know you even though you've never set foot in their restaurant before. Or maybe he just thought I was someone else. Anyway...

Not being especially partisan to the idea of heat and long siestas, I unsurprisingly spent alot more time in northern Italy than in the south. The northern cities I went to (other than Milan, Torino and Venice) were Verona & Padua, Bergamo & Brescia, Udine & Trieste, and Trent. Verona is the famous setting of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and if you are sick of seeing Leonardo Di Caprio's face, I wouldn't suggest you visit here. His face is generally plastered all over Italy, but since he was Romeo, Verona takes the cake in the number of t-shirts and poster of him you see in relation to postcards of the city's sights (like Juliet's supposed balcony). Verona is also the site of a well-preserved Roman amphitheatre, which was showing Aida when I was there, so there were larger than life props sitting all around the outside of the theatre. If you're into trivia, Verona has a whalebone suspended between two tall buildings that supposedly will fall down on the first person who walks under it that has never told a lie. Personally, I don't think the thing is going anywhere, it looks pretty well attached.

Padua (Padova in Italian) was where I got attacked by the Italian Church of Scientology. Believe it or not, they have penetrated even this sleepy little town. Since I got dragged to their headquarters straight out of the Virgin Megastore by the train station, I didn't get to see much of the sights. Except for the loser frescoes and the loser museum, where I was asked why I spoke Italian (duh, we're in Italy the last time I checked...).

Bergamo is unlike Italy. It seems like it should be in Germany, or Austria, or Switzerland, or any other German-speaking country because it looks so clean and well organized. There are actually two cities - an upper one and a lower one. The upper one has all the pretty old buildings that tourists come to see, along with the super views from the bell tower (don't get caught up there - or walking up the stairs - when it strikes the hour). The lower city has buses and some statues. And lots of banks, as I remember.

I don't really remember or know much about Brescia. I was in such a rush, hopping in and out of my taxi to take pictures and then rushing back to make the train I missed anyway. But the Capitolium was kind of neat, I think it would have been neater floodlit at night, but I didn't have time to wait and find out.

Some of the last places I went (while still lodging in Florence) were Udine, Trieste and Trent. Udine (ooh-dee-na) looks like the younger cousin of Venice. The main piazza has columns with lions and those pink buildings with the fancy mullioned windows. There aren't canals running through the whole city, but there is water. The other thing there isn't in Udine is tourists (yay!). I really liked Udine. All the buildings were pretty, and the arcades were painted on the undersides by modern artists. I think I completed my Winnie the Pooh Happy Meal toy collection there, too. The people working at the Mac Donald's really looked Germanic (stocky blonde women with glasses). But they spoke Italian for sure.

To get to Trieste from Udine, you actually pass through Gorizia, which is in Slovenia. And the big port of Trieste kind of has a multinational flavor to it. The biggest piazza in Italy is here, but if you stand in the middle of it, it doesn't look that big since it's next to the sea. The cathedral on top of the hill has some frescoes in it, but I think the toppled ruins outside are more interesting. Someone had spray painted "100% marble" in purple on one chunk of fallen column. A Picasso-esque female portrait was chiselled into the stone ground nearby. I didn't get home until 2:30 in the morning from Trieste, but I think it was worth it, and I really like to sleep.

Trent (Trento in Italian) has an incredibly eery cathedral, the one in which the decree of the Council of Trent was read so long ago. Disneyland might have created it for a medieval version of Pirates of the Caribbean. It's quite dark inside and the "lamps" give off red light. The stairs that run up and down the sides of the building look like they lead to a dungeon (who knows, maybe they did - downstairs is a prehistoric relics museum nowadays). I discovered the genius of Kodak Max film in this cathedral. All my flashless pictures actually came out, including two freaky ones of angels backlit with aforementioned red light.

Of course now having described in droning detail all my adventures in the north, I should mention that I did actually wander into the south of Italy a little bit. Naples, ugly and dirty as Philadelphia, must have some charm underneath the grub, but I didn't have the time to find it because I was rushing to catch a hydrofoil to Capri. I did notice that all the people I came into contact with really were much friendlier than their northern countrymen, so I am now perpetuating that myth. The young cab driver who took me back to the train station was especially nice (and cute...). My sojourn in Capri was all of half an hour long. And because a Greek tour guide shoved himself in front of me and proceeded to buy 54 tickets for the funicular, I missed it, and was unable to go up to Capri Town. Efkharisto poli! Anyway, I stayed down below at the port and took a bunch of pictures and had a really expensive granita (slush), and hopped back on the boat, making sure to sit outside so I wouldn't feel seasick again... (the cure for me is just to have air in my face).

So back up to the north. Half an hour north of Milan by train is Lugano. Lugano is in Switzerland, but it's really part of Italy, just organized correctly. They speak Italian there (and not in a really different dialect like you get with German and French), and they look like Italians (not blonde and blue-eyed). The only thing is that there is the requisite beautiful lake and scenery you find with all Swiss cities, but then I'm sure there are some Italian cities that are by beautiful lakes, too, I just haven't been to them. Anyway, Lugano has no Swiss army knife stores that do engraving. Trust me, I asked everyone. But there is a really nice sculpture park down by the lake whose most interesting sculpture was actually a fallen tree whose intricately tangled roots had grown into the wall. The main European office for Globus is also here (FYI). It's not very big.

Anyway, other than Switzerland, I also went to Spain, France, Malta, Greece, Egypt and Turkey.

Just like the year before, I went to a minority language conference in Spain. This one was on bilingual code-switching (you know, when people who know more than one language speak both of them at the same time). The lectures were in San Sebastián (Donostia in Basque), which meant that Ihad to take a bunch of trains to get there from Italy and it took all afternoon and all night and I finally got there the next morning. But since the train was late, I missed the lectures for the first day, so I went to nearby Bilbao, where the brand spankin' new Guggenheim Museum is located, and boy was it worth it. This was the highlight of my trip to Italy (funny that it isn't even in Italy, isn't it?). This building, designed by Frank Gehry of Los Angeles, is a wavy, shiny mesh of metal, glass and native pink marble that I found orgasmic and ultimately convinced me that I wanted to go to architecture school. What I remember from when I was living in Bilbao, while the museum was still being built, is the metal skeleton. It looked like the tracks of a rusted roller coaster and was fenced off with ugly corrugated sheet metal. The change absolutely amazed me.

But the funniest thing (and I mean comical, not strange) was that there was a giant dog in front of it, which was the first thing I saw. You're probably thinking How can a dog cover a building? Well, it was a rainbow-colored flower dog, ala Rose Parade, by Jeff Koons that was as tall as the building, and I don't know how long it had been there, but let me tell you, it was starting to smell. Anyway, this piece excluded, I really felt sorry for all the artwork exhibited in the glorious building because noone was paying any attention to anything but la estructura (the fact that photography of the interior of the building is not permitted is REALLY annoying, not that I didn't manage to take plenty photos of just the outside...)

So, anyway, I think I should say a few things about the city of Bilbao itself, cuz Spaniards always bags on it, calling it the armpit of Spain and the only ugly city in the country, etc, etc... Well, since my semester abroad there in 1995, the city has really managed to renew itself, and I was pretty impressed going back (of course, you might not be, because you didn't see it before, but let me tell you, it has gotten better). Not the river, that still looks and smells like toxic waste (which it probably is full of - you know something is wrong when you can't find the bodies of people who jumped in it because the 'water' is opaque...), but the city really has been cleaned up.

So, after the conference was (mostly) over, I went to France to visit my friend Aurelie in Pau (it was on the way home). We spent the day chatting and shopping and I really had alot of fun. Too bad I was only there for the day since I had to catch the night train to Paris. The next day would turn out to be really eventful in Paris. It was World Cup finals, and France ended up winning for the first time in history (no, I don't get it either), but anyway, I was there for a few hours between trains, so I wandered around the Louvre gardens and went to the Musée d'Orsay (I really like modern art) and right before catching the train back I went to the hotel I stayed at last year where I'd left a Picasso poster bought in Berlin, and asked if they still had it, and amazingly enough, they did.

Stuff I haven't gotten to writing about yet:

Malta: Valletta, St Julian's, Sliema, Popeye's village, Dome, 3 cities, Rabat/Mdina

Greece: Athens, Aegina, Poros, Hydra, Cape Sounion, Corinth, Mycenae, Epidaurus, Nauplia, Olympia, Patras, Delphi, Meteora, Glyfada

Egypt: Giza, Saqqara, Memphis, Cairo

Istanbul: having to speak Spanish, all the mosques, Bosporus/Asia, Ortaköy, Akmerkez, Saadet

Yellowstone. Okay, this is not in Italy or the Mediterranean, but I did go here this summer and the outlet malls along the way in Barstow, Vegas and Zion. Stayed in Provo, Utah; saw Grand Teton, Salt Lake City, Park City, Sundance, Mesquite, Vegas (new 'miniature' MGM lion).

E-savers adventures (Fall 1998)

Montreal for Hallowe'en

I went to Montreal on an incredible e-savers fare ($109), which is cheaper than taking Amtrak from Philadelphia, even after all the taxes they added onto the fare. It was the towards the end of fall, and hence the end of tourist season, but there were still some trees that hadn't lost their leaves yet. I guess the cold weather tends to scare away tourists, but since I left Philadelphia pretty early in the morning, it was actually warmer in Montreal when I arrived.

Anyway, my first impressions of Montreal are spiral staircases leading to second floor apartments (as pointed out to me by Gillian Sankoff and which for some unknown reason I had imagined to be very different); coffeehouses on every corner (especially Presse Cafe); and chic boutiques and nice restaurants next door to sleazy sex shops. The downtown area is not very spread out, so it's walkable from end to the other (even for me, and I hate walking). Be careful which street you chose, though, because Montreal is true to its name, and you'll have to walk up the Mont if you're not careful (although it's really just a hill). It's also really SAFE at night, so you can walk around alone without feeling threatened (which was a real treat for me, coming from West Philadelphia...).

The main tourist attraction is the Notre Dame Cathedral (interior bathed in strange blue light), which has alot of candle displays for you to take pictures of and impress your friends with your photographic talent (no flash needed). The exterior is covered with scaffolding, so just go straight in. Especially if it's cold outside. But, if you happen to be standing outside for awhile, you might witness an interesting "changing of the guard". Apparently there is a panhandler post at the entrance to the cathedral, but not just anyone can sit/stand there and ask for money - it's an organized thing with shifts involved, and if you time it just right, you too can see a replacement beggar come along and get some advice from his colleague before he leaves.

The other big deal is the Olympic Park. It's out of the way (meaning you can't walk there), but you can take the Metro. Take the little elevator to the top of the "leaning tower" on a clear day and get a nice view of the city. I think the zoo or some bio park-type-thing is across the street. Parking there is $7, and the only other thing I know about it is that admission costs alot more.

So after you've seen those, forget you're a tourist and go walk around the downtown and find a place to eat. You can do it above ground and see some nice architecture and outdoor art, or underground and hit some nice shops and restaurants. I like the Place de Ville Marie and the little mall under it with the restaurant Marche. The statue of the woman is lit in different colors at night, including blue, which makes it look like a whale tail (at least to me).

An anecdote. As you may know, most people in Montreal speak French as their first language, but they also know English. So one night while I was walking home after dinner, this guy came up to me and asked me for five cents. I said, oh, sorry, I don't speak French, which was just not a good enough for him, so he stops me, and explains to me in English that he is a beggar and he asks for money and do I have five cents to give him? But all I want is to take a picture of him, so I say, can I take a picture of you? He says, how much money are you going to give me? One dollar? No, I don't have a dollar, I say. Bah, he says, well, you can take my picture anyway, and he posed for me holding his hat out pretending to ask for money.

The nuclear engineer grad student working in my little hotel convinced me to spend one of my two days in Montreal doing a day trip to Quebec City. I don't know how he convinced me to do this because I was already complaining that two days were not enough to see Montreal, but I sure am I glad I went. Quebec is the only fortified city in North America. That means it has a wall around it, like alot of European cities, and you can walk around on it and look at the castle on the top of the hill (which is actually a hotel and always has been, but looks beautiful nevertheless). Like Bergamo, Italy, there is an upper city and a lower city. The upper city has the wall, the castle and the oldest building in the city, which houses a traditional restaurant. The lower city has Petit Champlain street, the cutest row of shops and boutiques this side of the Atlantic. You decide which is the better side. The last neat thing about Quebec (that I know of) is the bridges that go over the St. Lawrence River. There are alot of them, and they all seem to have stories attached to them. One of them kept falling down and killing people. Others had to be built in specific ways so that they wouldn't fall down when the river froze in the winter. Try taking pictures from underneath them. But no matter what you should definitely go visit if you're in the area (even during winter when there's a Winter Festival featuring the snowman mascot of the city).

London for Prince Charles' 50th

No, I did not actually fly all the way out to London to celebrate Prince Charles' half century of existence. That I could really care less about, no matter how much the Queen stubs Camilla. But, since US Airway's promotions department seems to be operating on the same calendar as I am, I took advantage of another one of their e-savers fares and spent some time visiting my friend Karina and her nice family.

The Jacket Saga

I lost my jacket even before I got to London. But then I remembered that I only left it at the metal detectors at the airport in Philadelphia, so I let it sit there for awhile and went to pick up my other plane ticket, eat dinner & buy some mints for my friend before I went back to pick it up. Then I got to London (Gatwick airport), and lost my jacket again! But this time I didn't realize I didn't have it until after I had already left the airport (this after the security guard in the Philadelphia airport told me to be careful...), so I had to take the Gatwick Express back to the airport (there's a nice way to waste an hour and a half) to look for my jacket, not knowing whether or not I'd find it. Turns out I left it in the bathroom ("toilets") in the arrivals area, just after customs, where you can't re-enter once you exit... Great. So I had to have the information desk ask the cleaning crew to go search for the jacket and bring it to me. They actually found it, as well as the bear pin on the lapel which had fallen off, and brought me both, an of course later, as I was again forewarned -- I lost the bear pin again, and this time permanently. But at least I have my jacket.

So anyway, what did I do in London? I saw the Wallace Collection with my friend, we walked down Oxford Street to Piccadilly Circus and I took pictures while hanging out the back of a double decker bus. Lionel Richie was in town, so we went to see him, and I was amazed at the efficiency of the Underground on the way home -- after the concert when thousands of people were streaming out of Wembley Auditorium heading for the subway station, we waited less than a minute for the train and it wasn't even packed like a cattle car (we got to sit down).

On day two, I sent a letter to my other friend in London, Clare, whose phone number I didn't have (and she actually got it before I left and called me!), bought a ....load of stuff at the Victoria and Albert Museum gift shop, took a tour of the Natural History Museum during which we saw a "loony" try to jump off the second floor landing onto the dinosaur skeleton below, and searched in vain for Cote D'Or chocolates at Harrod's (this is only impressive if you know that there are two entire rooms full of chocolates at Harrod's). We also saw Sherlock Holmes' supposed house on Baker Street (the Baker Street Underground Station is tiled with his head and pipe).

On the third day I went with Nick (who's a great tour guide) and Astral Travels to Stonehenge. We got there very early, so there weren't any other tourists there, and the sun was shining (as it was during most of my stay in London, strangely enough), so it was very impressive. As you can imagine (or as I had planned), I took alot of pictures... Then we went to Glastonbury tower (aka Avalon), which is on a hill now, but the area surrounding it was underwater during those times, making it an island. On the bottom of the hill are the Chalice Well gardens, where there is coppery water, sheep and great pictures just waiting to be taken. Not very far away are the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, where King Arthur (and Guinevere)'s remains were found. The last stop of the day was Avebury, where there's a giant stone henge (temple) that you can walk up to and touch. The actual circle is far larger than Stonehenge, but since (or hence) it doesn't have the lintel stones across the top, I didn't find it quite as impressive.

Finally found my chocolates on day four at Selfridge's (another big department store in London). Went to see Big Ben as well (with a lovely -- and rare -- blue backdrop). Walked from there along the Thames to the Tate Gallery, which was showing a Sargent exhibit that skipped in order to Oxford.

Oxford consists of "dreamy spires", private colleges, chocolate orange cookies and dead chickens. I guess everyone would agree there are colleges and spires, but let me explain the rest. You see after an entire day squatting in strange positions trying to take interesting pictures, I was hungry, and so I wandered past (well, I wandered in that direction because of the cookie scent) a corner bakery that sold Mrs. Field's type cookies, but they actually had ones that were fruity as well. So I had a chocolate orange cookie -- yummy, and turned around and saw dead chickens hanging by their feet on a string of wire with a sign that said Organic and Free Range Meats. Personally, I am going to get my chicken chopped up in unrecognizable parts from now on.

On the morning before I left we took a walk around Regent's Park, where Tom cruise supposedly takes his kids for walks. It was really early in the morning (it was still misty) and we went in search of swans, but there weren't any out (it was too cold -- the ground was still frozen), so I had to content myself with taking a picture of a crane.

I left London with more than twice the amount of stuff I came with, but luckily not more than I could carry (without checking anything in). Of course, that didn't keep me from buying some Christmas tea and coffee at Victoria Station, but as Eleni knows, I really only wanted the tins they were boxed in... So I finally got to Gatwick, just barely in time for my flight (the woman at the counter curtly said that I should've been there two hours ago -- but why would I want to sit at the airport for two hours when I could be sleeping in?) There were alot of empty seats anyway, so that made a very comfortable (and productive) flight. We landed at 2:15, and I was through customs and at school, in class by 3PM.

Australia & China ("Spring" and Summer 1999)

Stay tuned...

Places I somehow missed along the way (and the "reasons")

Glasgow (not on the tour), the Alhambra - Granada, Spain (too many tourists), Rabat, Morocco (didn't think of it), Andorra (no train), Trondheim, Norway (train was fully booked), Leppavirta, Finland - and possibly my old penpal Mari Hamalainen (my own stupidity), Assisi, Italy (dinner with Jen and Lina), Brescia (ran out of time), Padova, Italy (attacked by members of the Church of Scientology outside the Virgin Megastore), Anacapri (sucky Italian summer train schedules and rude Greek tour guide), Urbino, Italy (not on the rail network), Sicily (bad planning), Graz, Austria (it was raining in Trent, so I just went home), Thessaloniki, Greece (Egypt Air cancelled my flight from Cairo back to Athens), Santiago de Compostela, Spain (too far west), Toledo, Spain (lazy), Oporto, Portugal; Carcassonne (passing by it on the train was enough), Amiens (class started a day earlier than I thought), Besançon (didn't think of it until too late), Collioure, Gothenburg (it was raining), Hamburg (flew to Berlin instead of taking the ferry)...and a bunch of Basque classes...

Where I'd like to go (other than the above):

Alaska; Iceland; South America (Santiago, Buenos Aires, Macchu Picchu...); Ireland; Moscow