Moving Right Along

It hardly seems possible that this year is almost over.  Tomorrow is December first.  The thing I am most excited about next year is the awesome cat calendar I got from Rome.  Well, that's the first thing off the top of my head.  This year has been a lot of work, and a lot of good stuff too.  And a few things I could do without.  But it still seems too early in the year to really do a synopsis.  And right now, most of why I'm writing this blog entry is the whole finishing out the month of November with a blog entry every day.  I need to finish cleaning the kitchen, and watch stuff on TV.  And maybe finish the book I'm reading.  Not a lot of excitement for a Wednesday.

Sitting in a Circle

Since I got back from my trip, my therapy group started back up and I have been going.  Strange on some levels because I'm not very sure that I need to go to it, and also the people whom I think probably need to go aren't.  But it's not like I'm going around diagnosing anyone, you know.

Anyway, it's interesting being back in the bosom of this now smaller group, and being closer in the clutches of my therapist, whom I have had some issues with recently.  I probably should write more about that at a later date when I'm not just trying to bang out an entry at the end of the day at work.  But having an ongoing issue with her lends a certain sarcasm on my part to the proceedings.  I know that even when I'm unconscious of it, I can be a passive-aggressive bitch.  I caught myself being really sarcastic the other week, and she either didn't get it or pretended not to.  I don't really think that kind of behavior goes anywhere, especially not in a therapeutic relationship.

DMA is Marching Onward

DMA just set up her own blog if you want to check it out:  DMA Marches On.  I encouraged her to start blogging because it's a good way to keep one's self accountable and all of that jazz.

Speaking of accountability, I have been stealthily participating in NaBloPoMo this month by putting in a post a day.  Apparently this month, it is not necessarily about the content for me, just the number of posts.  And I'm a few days away from having a post a day.  I last did the whole month of posts back in 2007.  Funny to read it now, because it was just when I was getting back from my first trip to Europe with DMA.  And just getting my ex out of my life.  I could swear that I thought we broke up in 2006, but there it is, 2007, with him getting out of my life.  Weird.  Anyway four years is a long ass time.  I should be able to do two more blog posts this week and then finish out the month with 30 days of posting.

Computer Woes

Finally back to posting non-Italy related content.  I found the whole alphabet a pretty easy device for having something to write about every day.

The night of Thanksgiving, I had a perfect storm of irritation with my computer and iPhone.  I was trying to run an update of iOS on my phone, and it crashed in the middle, then I could not boot up my computer and it had erased all the data on my phone, rendering it totally not usable.  I spent about an hour restoring my computer from backup (and I will just add that there is nothing better in the computer world than backing your shit up on a regular basis and if you aren't doing it yourself, you are going to pay someone a freaking fortune to do it for you when the computer crashes).  Then I still couldn't get it to update my phone.  Thankfully I was able to do it the next day.  At a certain point though, I was pretty certain that I was going to have to buy a new computer and a new phone.  I honestly don't know why my computer, which isn't that old, has such problems sometimes.  Though every Mac that I have had has had some sort of problem at some point, but it's usually a physical problem, like they won't power up, won't reboot, or just are out of date.  This computer is now over three years old, and it certainly allows me to reboot it all the time, and until this week, it didn't have a problem where when it was booting up, not even recognizing the OS.

This computer has made me anxious all year.  I remember in January, the first time it started locking up for no reason, and me restoring it from backup.  Taking it into the Apple store a few times.  I have run fixes on it.  The guy at the Apple store completely restored the whole operating system from scratch.  I keep thinking at some point, I want to get a new computer just because this one makes me so anxious that it is going to stop working at some important point.  As it is now, I am watching the clock, because sometimes if it's been on for over an hour, it locks up for no apparent reason (though at the Apple store, they said it didn't appear to have hardware problems).  And now that it's out of warranty...

It seems like things just are not built to last sometimes, and there are faults built into electronics so we'll have to turn around and buy new ones every few years.  I am certainly not going to join some no electronics society, but I find it frustrating both in how things break and also how quick I am to just junk something and buy a new one.  I think a lot about all the things that I end up throwing away, and how I can reuse them or resell them.  For instance, I always buy salads to bring into work, and the salads all come in packaging that I end up throwing away.  It might be able to be recycled, but then I'd have to clean it, and how easy is that to do at work, particularly when I'm already being lazy at work.  So lately I have been making my own salads in reusable tupperware, and I feel like that is already doing something.  But I could do more.  But I am resigned that I will be having to buy a new computer at some point in the next year.

Z is for Zzzz

The thing about traveling with someone who wanted to march me all over the city (and kept coming up with numbers of how many miles we actually walked in a day, etc) was that often there was nothing I wanted to do more at the end of the day than sleep.  I did really miss my fabulous pillow-top bed at home a lot, but I found the beds we stayed in pretty relaxing after a hard day of death-marching.

Beds in Florence

The bed in Venice - two twins we pushed apart for actual sleep.

And there was a moment, when I got home, and fell into my own bed, and I was just happy to be home, sleeping in my own bed.  No matter how far you rome, there is no place like home!

Y is for Yellow

Ponte Vecchio is both yellow in color, and also the place where many gold sellers set up shop.  Apparently, Florence is great for shopping, particularly buying leather and gold.  While I was posting on Facebook, someone suggested that I should buy some gold while I was there.  I did not.  For starters, it wasn't a great exchange rate and I ended up spending most of my money on food anyway.  But it goes on the list of things to do when I'm rich.  Gold!

X is for Xylophone

On our last day in Venice, we had a pretty mediocre lunch at an annoying restaurant.  I do think that other than eating at our B&B's restaurant, most of the meals we had in Venice were just so-so, particularly compared to the delicious food in Florence.  And after that mediocre meal, we were both kind of tired of walking through the Venice rain, and determined to just go back to the room and maybe start packing, or take a nap.  But then we turned a corner, and found this amazing museum of musical instruments.  I'm not even sure what the name of it was, but it was a beautiful hall that looked almost like a church, and it was playing classical music, and just relaxing and filled with interesting old instruments in beautiful condition.  I did not manage to take a photo of a xylophone here, but you can see some of the other instruments that I did photograph.

W is for Wine

I don't think that we had wine with every meal, but we definitely had wine with most dinners.  There were a lot of nice restaurants with extensive wine lists, but we generally ordered il vino della casa, the house wine.  And the wines in Italy were invariably delicious.  Often when I'd be ready to take a photo, DMA would move the wine glasses quickly to make sure they were in the picture.

This is a photo of one of our better meals.  The dish on the left was a saltimbocca, and the one in the foreground is the osso bucco that DMA ended up ordering two times because she liked it so much.  It went very well with the red house wine that we ordered that night.

V is for Vaporetto

Vaporetto is what they call the water bus (plural vaporetti) in Venice.  Much like any sort of other bus, you sit and wait at a station for your bus to come along.  Though unlike any other bus I've ever been on, the station is on the water and rocks back and forth.  I think that Venice is not for the easily seasick.  Being there made me feel like I had sealegs, and when I finally got back to solid ground, I still felt slightly wobbly.  I am usually good at looking at a map and figuring out a public transportation system, but for some reason, I felt totally at sea (ha) in Venice, and I couldn't figure out how the vaporetti worked.  A few times, we weren't sure which station was the right one for the bus going in the proper direction, and once or twice it seemed to take hours to get anywhere, making me think that we had gone the wrong way.  There was one extremely helpful woman who sold us tickets asking where we actually wanted to go, instead of just telling us how to get there in the way that I thought was right (but would have been both more expensive and taken much longer).

U is for Umbria

We took a day trip to Perugia (you can read more about it here) which is located in the region of Umbria.  Umbria is known for producing gastronomic delights.  We didn't get to see as much of Umbria or eat at any restaurants there, but it seemed like a really beautiful region, full of hills and valleys.  For some reason, on the trip to Umbria, I kept saying "we're under the Tuscan sun," and DMA kept correcting me that we were in Umbria, not Tuscany.  And also it was raining.  These are the weird thoughts that occur to me when I'm traveling.  And also seeing this photo reminds me that I want to go back to Italy, and see more of Umbria and Perugia.

T is for Trains

The train system in Italy is one of the most comprehensive systems I've experienced.  The trains go pretty much everywhere, to every city and destination.  The rates are reasonable, the timetables are frequent, and the trains are reasonably comfortable.  Part of our idea behind this trip was starting in Rome and working our way to Venice, then flying out of Venice.  Trenitalia made it very easy to do that.  DMA did a lot of research and found that we could get discount fares if we bought our tickets early.

This photo was the only train photo that I took, on our way to Perugia.  It was raining heavily that day, but it felt cozy being on the train.

S is for Sugar

Other than our almost daily gelato, we didn't eat that many sweets and desserts.  However, we did have this lovely chocolate cake selection at a cafe.  The cafe itself was at a palazzo we visited, and the palazzo itself was pretty impressive (and gave me ideas of how I want to live when I make millions on selling cute photos of my cats), but the lunch at the cafe was just okay.  But then, there were these awesome desserts.  I think ordering dessert can be risky if you aren't sure exactly what is going to be in something, but these chocolate items were delicious, especially when washed down with strong espresso.

R is for River

It's probably something I take for granted, growing up in California, how most cities that are older than a certain age were founded on rivers.  Both Rome and Florence have a river running through them, and there is a sense of that river being an actual boundary that has existed for hundreds of years.  In reading guides of where to stay in Rome, the name Trastevere came up.  This is the district on the west side of the river, and it is further from the major touristic scene, but it is also a district with a bunch of really inexpensive restaurants and shops.  Much the same in Florence, Oltarno is the district on the "other" side of the river, further from the major attractions but still not too far.

By the banks of the Tevere, in Rome.

River Arno, in Pisa

River Arno, in Florence

Q is for Quiet

We had originally stayed in Florence with the intention of doing three day trips from there (Perugia, Pisa, and Bologna), but we ended up only doing two day trips and spending an additional day hanging around Florence.  We were going to visit Santa Croce church but it was only open for visitors in the afternoon (because it was actually being used as a church), so we took a long walk across the river and ended up going to this cool park at the top of the hill. You could look out and see the whole of the city, and the park was nice and quiet and not filled with annoying tourists.  There was even a restroom there.  Quiet is not something I got much of on this trip, so it was good to experience some of it.

P is for Pizza

I heard that pizza was different in Italy, but hearing about it and experiencing it are two different things. The best pizza we had was the kind that is almost flat, just a flat crust with a generous amount of cheese, and covered with meats and/or other toppings.  It really bares little resemblance to heavy American pizza, with our thick crusts and piles of cheese.  The Italian pizza was just fresh and cooked quickly in a wood-fired oven.  The pizza pictured right is the "diavolo" pizza, which had spicy salami on top.  It went nicely with a salad and a glass of wine.  I think one of the best things about Italian pizza is that it's so fresh and simple, and cooked so quickly, there is no soggy bottom or heaviness of being too covered in cheese.

O is for Ostia

Ostia Antica was a harbor city, once the site of Rome's seaport.  Now it's a large archaeological crammed full of well-preserved ruins.  We spent a few hours there, walking on stone steps and gawking at ancient wonders.  Most of the buildings are just in ruins, where you can guess at what they were used for, but there are a lot of signs telling you what is what, and still work being done preserving this ancient place.  Ostia Antica is only a short thirty minute ride out of Rome, and the guidebooks said that it is as good of a historical site as Pompeii (which we talked about going to, but didn't).  I got a lot of really good pictures there, including this one.  We also had lunch at an interesting restaurant that day, which was right outside the gate, and were served by a waiter dressed in a Roman uniform.

N is for Nerdy

Reproduction of da Vinci painting

For the longest time (way way before Dan Brown ever wrote the words Da Vinci and Code in the same sentence), I have always thought that Leonardo da Vinci was awesome.  The guy was so ahead of his time with his inventions and creations, and his understanding of how the world works.  I'm no scientific genius, that is for sure, but I definitely have an appreciation for science museums.  That is why I was excited to go to the Museo di Leonardo da Vinci in Florence.  It's a small few rooms that are packed to the rafters with wood recreations of some of the greater inventions from his drawings.  I was just looking around in awe that someone hundreds of years ago was able to come up with these things.  It's good that DMA didn't join me in this museum, because there would have been a bunch of pictures of me looking slack-jawed.  However, I did take lots of photos for posterity, including these two.

Paragliding, Renaissance-style

This is a tank, made of wood.  Ready for battle.

M is for Museums

One of the things that is great while traveling is getting to go to museums.  Though different countries and different museums have policies about how much museums cost (too bad they aren't all free) and if you can take photographs in them or not.  I think when I went to the Louvre, I took a hundred photographs.  I do know that the flash from photographs can damage art works, so I was happy to learn how to turn the flash off my camera for some of my indoor shots.  Here are some assorted museum photos.

Outside the Uffizi in Florence.  You can't take photos inside.

Ceilings at the Vatican Museum.  

From Palatine Hill museum.  Unfinished jigsaw puzzle, over two thousand years old.

From the Guggenheim Museum in Venice.

L is for Leaning

According to some, Pisa is a tourist trap.  People come from far and wide to see this leaning tower of theirs.  Essentially an error in grounding a building becomes a "must-see" site.  And yet, the leaning tower of Pisa is pretty cool.  I didn't want to pay the fifteen euros to climb to the top, but I got a few pictures of it from the outside.  The leaning tower is part of the Piazza dei Miracoli (plaza of miracles).  Instead of paying the fifteen euros to climb, we paid for a combination ticket to go into the Duomo which is a beautiful medieval cathedral, and the Baptistery.  The Baptistery is a this tall round building with terrific acoustics.  There was some chanting music playing, and there was an amazing echo.

We were only in the town of Pisa for a few hours, but it was really great to walk around there.  We saw a farmer's market, a bunch of cool narrow streets, views on the river, and some other interesting old buildings.  Pisa is only a one hour train ride from Florence, really worth the trip.

K is for Kitties

Cats sunning themselves

While we were in Rome, we were walking down from the Pantheon, and then stumbled across a large square with construction, and then stopped to cross a street, and then saw a cat sitting there.  Then a stairway down, with a sign, telling us that we had found Torre Argentina Cat Sanctuary.  I remember seeing something about this shelter online before our trip, and DMA had a coworker who also mentioned it.  It was a pleasure to get to go into the shelter, and pet and visit with the kitties there.

Pictures of some of the resident cats

I think since I know about cat shelters in the US, I was more interested in finding out how this shelter was different, than getting the whole "you should donate" speech that they gave most of the visitors.  The mission at Torre Argentina is similar to shelters here in the US, in California, that there are cats that need care and homes.  They also took in a lot of cats that need medical care and we were in the room with the special needs cats for a while.  They keep those cats inside to make sure that they don't get injured being outside.

Kiki's Roman doppleganger, fed on a diet of pasta

Anyway, if I ever moved to Rome, I know where I'd volunteer!  I recommend checking out their website, and sending them a donation if you feel moved to do so.  We both bought a few items at their gift shop while we were there.

J is for Jewish Quarter

We didn't end up seeing the Jewish Quarter when we were in Venice, but we did see the one in Rome.  I think in the guidebooks, it is referred to as the Jewish Ghetto.  It was interesting, a few blocks of old buildings and some kosher restaurants.  In Venice, I heard some people in front of us in line at the Guggenheim talking about seeing the Jewish Quarter in Venice.  They went on a tour, and said it was just like the rest of Venice except the buildings were very tall there, and they toured three synagogues.

Now I am thinking that K would also stand for kosher restaurants, since the letter K doesn't appear in Italian, but I will have to come up with something separately for that letter!

I is for Italian

I spent about a year studying Italian, both at a community college, and at a university level, and I didn't end up speaking that much Italian to people while I was in Italy.  I would say that by and large, most people know English, particularly people in the hospitality and service industries.  (In fact, our last night in Florence, we were seated next to some French people who were trying to order dinner, and the people who worked at the restaurant didn't really understand their French, so they were trying to come up with the English words.)  However, we did have a charming Italian conversation with a native who looked somewhat like Leonardo da Vinci (the guy on the right).  He was sitting in a park, feeding pigeons, and started talking to us about where he was from, and where we were from.

H is for Hotel

A friend of mine told me that hotels in Italy had the toilet tank above the toilet, on the wall, and so I took this picture for her.  We stayed at a B&B in Rome and another B&B in Venice, but in Florence, we stayed at a hotel called Nuova Italia.  I really recommend this hotel.  It is a two-star hotel, great for the budget traveler, and located only a few blocks from the Santa Maria Novella train station.  The proprietors are a welcoming, friendly family who went out of their way to make sure that our stay was great.  They speak excellent English, and when I sent them an email ahead of time, asking for instructions on how to get there, they sent me explicit instructions on the location.  Also the hotel is located within mere blocks of the Duomo.  And across the street from the best restaurant we ate at in Florence.

I liked staying at B&Bs, but I felt like staying at a hotel is a little easier, because there is always someone on staff in case you encounter any problems.  And the folks at Nuova Italia were especially helpful at resolving issues and being responsive to what we needed.

G is for Glass

In preparation for what I wanted to see in Venice, I only had two things on my list.  One of them was going to Murano, to see where glass is made.  It's about an hour away from the St Marco's Square by water-taxi, and well worth the journey.  The guidebook said that one should try to go to the museum and also see glass being made.  Museo del Vetro, while costing a pricey eight euros for entrance, did provide an in depth historical look at glass that was made in Murano and Venice, and some of the ridiculously ornate items that were made for rich people.  Unfortunately, the museum has a no photography rule.

After visiting the museo, DMA and I searched for a glass blowing studio.  There were quite a few places that pulled a "bait and switch," saying that there was a free glass blowing demonstration, only you'd get in there and they'd expect you to pay some additional euros (but then you could look at the items they were selling for free, how generous of them).  The place we did end up going into was in the way back of a shop we walked into, and I kept expecting some asshat was going to pop out and ask for money, but no, they had a simple bin for donations.  It was a rainy day, and a bit cold, but very warm near where the fire was.  The guys creating the glass really seemed intent on showing us all the moves, and I was drawn to the colorful pile of glass chunks that were just the cast-offs from what they were creating.  We got to see them make a goblet that was one color, then had white drizzled in a pattern on the side of it.  It was really interesting to see it being made, and I'd totally recommend the experience.

F is for Fountain

No, I didn't throw any coins into the fountain.  I couldn't even really get near the Trevi fountain.  Because there were just hordes of tourists in every direction.  I remember thinking of the scene in La Dolce Vita, where the woman is dancing around in the Trevi fountain, and thinking about how it would be impossible to do that now.  Because there are just so many tourists.  I think DMA and I immediately dismissed it as very touristy, but we kept coming back to the area because one of our favorite restaurants was right near there, and also there was a really great gelato place.  Also, Trevi was a nice (but a bit too much uphill and downhill for my tastes) walk from our B&B.  And yeah, that gelato place right near Trevi fountain is pretty awesome.

E is for Eating

I don't think we ever had any really bad meals in Italy.  There were a few meals that had bad elements, like when I ordered a two part dinner, and part one was an awesome pasta with gorgonzola sauce, and part two was an overcooked parmigiana-like meat item drowned in a tasty sauce.  So the meat was poorly cooked, but the rest was really tasty, so you can't totally discount that meal, but there was no need to go back to that restaurant again.

However, we did go back to the same restaurant a few times.  In Rome we went back to a place near Trevi fountain, that had an osso bucco that DMA loved.  And we had dinner four times at the same osteria across from our hotel in Florence.  And twice we had lunch at the restaurant near Santo Spirito Church.  This is the place that served a gnocchi with a cheese sauce and truffle oil.  The truffle taste was subtle, but the whole effect was probably one of the richest, most complex dishes I have eaten.  We made the mistake of ordering two of them, and it was one of the few dishes that I just couldn't finish.

D is for Duomo

After five days in Roman ruins, we went to Florence.  Our lovely hotel was mere blocks from the Duomo, which is the symbol of Florence, and with the Colosseum and the leaning tower of Pisa, one of the three must-see landmarks in Italy.  According to one of the books I bought on the trip anyway.  The Duomo is ancient, but nowhere near as ancient as the Colosseum.  It's huge and it's just ornate and beautiful.  Everywhere we walked in the city, you could see the Duomo from a distance.

Not being the death-marching type myself, I didn't take it upon myself to climb all the stairs, but DMA did get tickets to climb to the top of the dome and also at the top of the campanile.  Often when I travel, my inner laziness wins out, and now I am thinking that I should have done it with her, so I'd have more photos from the top.  Then again, it wasn't like we weren't walking many hours a day anyway, so I can cut myself a bit of slack in my reminiscing.

C is for Colosseum

The Colosseum is probably the most famous landmark in Rome.  It's on all the post cards.  So we knew we'd have to go there.  We actually started at the Palatine Hill, and then the Foro Romano, and then made our way down to the Colosseum.  Does the word colossal come from the word colosseum?  Or is it the other way around.  Anyway, it's hard to tell from mere photographs just how massive the Colosseum is.  And like most of Rome, it's been restored enough so you can walk around safely, but not so much that you don't get an idea of what it was like back in the days before asphalt.  You walk up rough stone staircases, and then you look around at all the stone seating.

A large part of what drew me to a trip to Italy in the first place was seeing Rome.  I have read a lot of books and seen movies and shows, and the idea of walking around where people lived and died over two thousand years ago is really fascinating to me.  Visiting the Colosseum was the highlight of that, really made me think about history, and also about what people two thousand years from now would think if they were walking around where I live now.  What will survive?  Will there be media works (movies, books, something yet not invented) about our times now?  The Colosseum was filled with noisy tourists, and yet it also seemed silent to me, all those old ancient stones.

B is for Bridges

In reading one of the many books that I got in preparation for my trip, it said that the city of Venice is essentially a bunch of man made islands connected together by bridges.  In fact, if I weren't so lazy right now, I'd go find which book it was in, because it told me exactly how many bridges there were in Venice.

The largest of these bridges is the Rialto Bridge, which our hotel was a few blocks from.  I should say that the concept of a block is a bit different on essentially an island with no motor vehicles.  Italy was land of twisty streets anyway, with both Rome and Florence seeming like a warren of dead-ending streets.  But Venice was something else.  Anyway, the Rialto Bridge is the largest bridge in Venice, and I read at one time, it was the only bridge over the Grand Canal.  And this giant Rialto Bridge, that seemed like it took forever to cross, we walked over it twice with our suitcases, dragging them up.  There is some notion of accessibility for wheelchairs and whatnot in some parts of Venice, but not on Rialto.  And not on the small bridge pictured in this photo.

A is for Arch

I am still adjusting to being back home.  The first few nights, I slept a long time, and would wake up randomly in the middle of the night.  But having to be up early every day to be at work is more stressful, and I'm out of synch, waking up at 5 am, and not being able to go back to sleep.  I feel like I'm fighting off the slight cold I got on my trip.  But yeah, it was fabulous and wonderful, and really felt in some ways like the trip of a lifetime.  And while I'm not going to upload all of my photos here or anything, I figured I can post a few, alphabetically.  

So, A is for an arch that I saw right outside the Coliseum.  I know that I read the sign about this arch, but I don't really remember what it was about exactly, and it's kind of funny because while it looks a bit like the Arc de Triomphe, it's way less interesting than the Coliseum itself.  But with my camera, I snapped a photo of it anyway, and realized that if this alphabet theme works for Sue Grafton, it could work for me.