The REAL reason to travel

Yesterday was my birthday. Not just any birthday-- my GOLDEN birthday, which I've been anticipating since I was present for a childhood friend's 9th birf on July 9 and she received a golden plastic 9, a golden dress, and cupcakes sprinkled with gold flakes.

I didn't end up doing any of the golden goose-eating, goldschlag-ing, golden body paint-ing things I had originally envisioned for this verra special day; I've got a rather large party coming up in a month, so I was quite content to spend a quiet day with the fam.

One thing that did elevate this birthday from all others, though, was watching my Facebook wall fill with birthday greetings that poured in from all over the world. Friends I met in Morocco, Switzerland, Italy, Holland and Germany all sent well wishes, and I received a deluge of greetings from my beloved former students in France ("I hope you are very fine," "Hope you'll pass a nice day," "Happy birthday and good wedding miss," "You become old LOL,"). Ils me manquent trop!

The sights were breathtaking and the food delish, but my very favorite part of all my travels this past year was meeting so many wonderfully unique and generous people. I made literally hundreds of friends with folks who I know would share a meal with me, house me, and help me out of a jam if I ever ended up in their vicinity again. And hopefully they know I'd do the same for them.

Why I have a crick in my neck

The ceilings, man. The ceilings in Italy were wild. Frescoed, sculpted, tiled crazy talk. I'm shocked I didn't break a limb walking into something while I was staring straight up. Although... at one point I had my elbows raised so I could take a snap of a dome, and I was still gazing heavenward as I brought my arms down. Somehow a woman of short stature had wandered under my armpit in that time, and I accidentally dropped a 'bow on her head.

But other than that, yeah, no ceiling-staring-related injuries...

Dome of St. Peter's Cathedral, Rome

Ceiling of Sistine Chapel, Rome

Dome of Pantheon, Rome

Ceiling of St. Ignatius' Cathedral, Rome

Dome of Duomo, Florence

Ceiling of library in Duomo, Siena

Dome of Duomo, Siena

Vacation from our vacation

Italy was magnificent and beautiful and awe-inspiring. It was also exhausting and expensive and heavy on the communication problems.

The worst of them was when we were on a bus from Florence to Siena and I told the Dude to get off at the first stop whilst I finished zipping up my backpack. Confused as to why no one else was departing, he hesitated, and by the time I had reached the door the bus was already pulling away. "My dear Dude, wherefore didst thou choose not to alight?" I asked, but in a bit more colorful language. He raced up the aisle and tried to pantomime to our driver that we had erred. She stopped a few hundred meters down the road and we departed, but she started to pull away before we could get our baggage from the belly of the bus. Matt raced after it and slapped the door a few times to get her attention. She herself then descended and treated us to a five-minute tirade in Italian that I'm sure was just her commenting on how much she truly loved Americans. 

 After experiences like that, it was such a relief to come back to the bosom of Mother France, where I can understand and be understood (most of the time), where there is no such thing as a 3E per person, inescapable "bread charge" at restaurants, and where baguettes are fresh and plentiful. Except on Mondays. But that's another story.

My French buddy Louis invited us to spend our last weekend of vacation at his family's cabin in Solutré (near Mâcon), which is famous for a massive geological structure known simply as "La Roche." It's also smack dab in the middle of the some of the best white wine vineyards in Burgundy, which produce Pouilly-Fuisée, among others. 

As the cabin had no heat and the early March night temps were hovering around zero degrees Celsius,  first order of business was to build up a roaring fire. Luckily, the Dude's half-Canadian (many moons in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area counts, right?), and had coaxed some life-giving flames in no time.

The next day, after a very grasse matinée (fat morning), we were joined by some other Charollyians for a hike up La Roche. It was pretty durn sweet... a perfect way to wind down from the whirlwind and get reacquainted with La France Profonde, annoying boulangerie hours notwithstanding. 

Funny things I saw in Italy

I see Rome, I see Thebes, I see under your fig leaf.

MTGUE: Most Threatening Guard Uniform Ever. You gotta wonder what the Swiss Guard ever did to the Vatican to get stuck with fancy pants like that.

These little boars went to market.

We couldn't figure out why there was confetti littering the ground of every city we visited. We hypothesized that Italians lean out their windows at 2 a.m. and whisper, "Yay I'm Italian!" before blowing a handful of confetti in the wind.

It wouldn't be a vacation without some sweet mannequins.

The best pizza ever in the world, Amen

Hey buddies. I'm coming at you from our hotel in Roma, where The Dude and I are killing an hour before our train ride to Firenze.

I know I've been ignoring you, as fellow Broad Abroad Emily kindly pointed out. The thing is, the week before The Dude got here I was forced to partake in any activity imaginable that would keep me from thinking, because thinking would make the time slow to an infuriating drip-drip-drip. That mostly meant watching an embarrassing number of episodes of Grey's Anatomy. Like, if I told you how many episodes I was watching you probably wouldn't believe me. Take whatever number you have in your head right now and add three.

So anyway. Rome. We got here on Sunday and we've been church-ing and ruin-ing and walking walking walking. One thing we haven't been doing a lot of, unfortunately, is eating that delicious Italian food we've heard so much about. We keep making really terrible restaurant decisions and paying way too much money for food that tastes like a step above Chef Boyardee. Plus they keep charging us outrageous prices for the bread on the table. Like 3€ per person!

But The Dude really hit on a goldmine in a restaurant we ate in near the Vatican. He ordered a pizza with dried beef, Parmesan and an herb translated into English as "rocket salad" (which I think might be arugula, but I like "rocket salad" better). It was so delicious and amazing and I kept requesting bite after bite of it. I've been on the hunt for such a pizza of my very own, and I finally found it last night in a restaurant called La Dolce Vita in the Piazza Navona. It wasn't quite as amazingly delicious as The Dude's, though, so I had no choice but to return to the Vatican today and the very same pizza as before.

So worth it.