I am still working on more travelogues and hope to have a few more to publish tomorrow, before my staycation comes to an abrupt end on Tuesday. I've spent the last week and change being and feeling incredibly domestic. I baked no less than 3 times, made pancakes and several other meals from scratch, tried my hand at making a homemade dressing this evening, did a lot of cleaning, planted some herbs on my windowsill, and just generally caught up on life and with friends. It's been a lovely week, though I am looking forward to going back to work owing to the fact that I actually have some idea as to how to do my job this year, so it is that much more exciting to welcome a new staff and start a new year/semester.

ch-ch-ch-changes

I updated the sidebar a bit with a new photo, some links to my favorite or most interesting entries, and some links to other sites I frequent, thus making it impossibly long. This is all in honor of having written in this space for more than 3 (!!) years now. Hope you enjoy!

travelogue, day 3: cannes and nice, france

I woke up at 8AM to a pitch black room, which was a truly odd experience (but made for great sleeping most of the time!). I showered and got ready for the day, fully expecting to spend it alone wandering Cannes. After grabbing a quick breakfast in the Windjammer, I got in line near the pool to receive my tender boat ticket, as we were not able to dock directly at Cannes. They were calling Boat #5 as I received a ticket for #10 and 15-20 minutes later, called my boat for boarding.

I got on the top deck of the small tender boat and saw Steven and Fiona get on my same boat, though they had to sit at the bottom. We waved and exchanged greetings. Cruising away from the ship was really neat and gave me an appreciation for just how large the ship really is:



Of course, the views of Cannes were fantastic from this distance, too:



When I got off the tenderboat, Steven and Fiona were waiting for me and asked me to join them in going to Nice. I readily accepted and we walked through Cannes, trying to find the train station. Eventually, we found it and bought our tickets to Nice:



We had some time to kill before the next train, so we strolled some more through the streets of Cannes before boarding the train:



I shared my seat with a lovely young Spanish woman who had lots of family with her. As we sped by the coast of southern France, it was absolutely breathtaking. We went through quite a lot of small towns and villages before arriving in Nice. Here is the hotel opposite the train station (which in itself was quite gorgeous and I regret not taking a picture of it):



We wandered around Nice for awhile before deciding it was time for lunch. My companions, bless their heart, asked if I wanted to eat at a “KFC or something,” perhaps believing all Americans are all about fast food? I assured them that, no, I’d really rather eat at French café if that was alright. We found a cute one and settled into the table. I ordered a croque monsieur with a salad and a Coca Light:



Diet Coke in Europe is amazing. It is much better tasting than the stuff we get in the states, but I didn’t figure out why until later in my trip (stay tuned for more ramblings about the nature of Diet Coke!).

After lunch, we walked towards the pebbly beaches. The rocks on the beach were smooth but fairly good sized—at least as big as my palm. Though I think they’d be lovely for the warmth factor, I’m not sure how comfortable all the folks laying out and catching the sun could have felt. Steven and Fiona laughed at me when I pulled out my little baggie to grab some sand from the French Riviera. They joked that a French cop was coming my way and I better hurry up!









We (or rather I) did a fair amount of shopping and came away with two new casual handbags from a French Claire’s-like store. I admitted to Steven and Fiona that France was hard for me because my default reaction to “foreign languages” is to speak in Spanish. I was constantly saying “si” to store clerks when they were really waiting for me to say “oui.” When we were in a perfume store shopping for that perfect fragrance, a clerk approached us. I was too engrossed by the options to hear her and so Steven said to me, “Hey, she wants to know if you’re doing fine.”

“ssss…I mean, OUI!!!!!!” I said really loudly, and my companions burst out laughing. The clerk was at least a little amused, too.

Shopping in Nice was my first exposure to the Frenchies' love affair with tiny, yappy dogs. They were everywhere, including in this department store:



We caught the train back to Cannes in the late afternoon and snoozed on the “choo choo,” as we decided the universal word for train was. In Cannes, we found the film festival building and red carpet before heading back to the tender boat:



My overall impressions of Cannes and Nice were that they were nice towns in beautiful surroundings, but they didn’t hold much allure for me. Sure, I’d go back if someone took me, but it probably wouldn’t be my first, second, third or fourth choice for a vacation destination in Europe.



Once we were back on the ship, I relaxed for awhile and then got dressed for formal night in the dining room. Because it was formal night, I allowed myself to have a slightly more swanky (read: caloric) meal that I ordinarily would choose. I started with shrimp cocktail:



And had the sliced filet of beef with mushrooms, asparagus and mashed potatoes. I ordered it medium but it didn't come that way, as you can see:



Dessert, a grand marnier soufflé, was quite good:



My dining companions got a kick out of my continuous picture taking of the food and often had to remind me after my first bite to remember to take the picture (as seen above with the souffle)! Dinner seemed to go so slowly that evening and it took forever for us to get out of there, which made me a little cranky. The waiters singing for the dining room almost made up for it:



Here I am in all the splendor of the dining room on formal evening:



(uh, something about the wrap is making my midsection seem a lot wider than usual. weird.)

I think I went to bed at a decent hour after doing some research on Florence and Pisa, which were my stops the next day. I also called the spa and booked a pedicure for Friday morning, during our long day at sea headed back to Barcelona.

travelogue, day 2: barcelona, spain and the navigator of the seas

I woke around 7AM and headed out to walk Las Ramblas and take some pictures. It was incredibly deserted at 8 AM and just a couple hours later would be crowded with street performers, tourists, and lots of vendors. I found La Boqueria, the famous Ramblas market:



And wandered the stalls for quite some time, passing singing fish mongers, and lots of vendors setting up their fresh and dried goods. I passed an absolutely stinky sheepshead and saw some very gorgeous fruits and fish, among other things:







I headed back to Grau to pack up and store my bags and then went next door to Bar Centric for breakfast.

I know now that I definitely should have ordered a café con leche, as the server asked me several times if I wanted one and everyone else was drinking it! I went for a sort of Americanized breakfast, knowing I’d need some protein to get me through til I could eat again later that afternoon (and not knowing when, exactly, that would be). So fresh squeezed OJ (amazing), an “omelette,” and “toasts” it was.

After my leisurely meal, I took a seat and people watched on Las Ramblas:



Too soon, it was time to gather my bags, haul up a small hill near the Hard Rock Café and grab a taxi from the congregation of them there. After a little bit of earnest communication, the taxi driver understood where I was trying to go and got me to the port in good time. My bags were taken by some porters and I got in the very, very long line for check in (even though most of the checkin process had been completed online):



My first impression of the folks working for Royal Caribbean was not that great—everyone but me seemed to get a flyer with a map of the ship and instructions for a 4:30 drill and importantly, the first places you could start feeding your face once on board. By the time I realized the flyers had passed me by, three separate agents were unable to find one in English for me.

After getting my boarding picture taken, I made my way to my cabin, 1283 on Deck 10, and snapped a few pictures of it. It was more spacious than I expected it to be. The bed (2 twins put together) was large and inviting, there were lots of cubbies and storage spaces, a nice, comfy couch with a coffee table and a spacious closet. The bathroom was small (and the shower smaller), but fine for 1 person and her ridiculous amount of cosmetics.







I headed up to the Windjammer Café to get some lunch. The Windjammer is the buffet on the ship and while I managed 2-3 meals there throughout the week, I was never, ever impressed with the food. Still, I was able to find some veggies (in such high demand while traveling!). Interestingly, the host at the buffet asked, straight up, why I was alone. I had no interesting answer for him and was slightly offended by the question, but got over myself eventually. The real answer was that I was alone because I could be, I suppose.

I desperately wanted to take a nap, but there were a lot of announcements happening over the PA system for the upcoming drill at 4:30. Promptly at 4:25, I donned my stylish lifejacket and joined my fellow passengers on the deck at my appointed station:



At 6 PM, I headed to the Schooner Bar to meet up with some other folks from Cruise Critic and talk about possible travel plans later in the week. It was a lovely time and I was so lucky to meet Brenda and Rick, and Steven and Fiona. They would prove to be good friends and friendly faces throughout the cruise.

I was nervous for dinner in the formal dining room. For those of you unfamiliar, you are seated with other folks for dinner each night and my worry was that I might get seated with say, a group of 5 that all knew each other. My fears were completely unfounded and I feel incredibly lucky to have gotten seated where I did, for a number of reasons. First, our table was near the window and so we had a wonderful view of the sea each evening (though the sun was sometimes a problem, our waiters were always great at lowering the shades as needed). Secondly, these two crazy German ladies were the highlight of my evening, every evening:



Noreen and Doreen were both in their thirties, friends, and doing back to back cruises (this was the second one and thus their second week on the ship). They were so much fun and so friendly and so lovely.

Thirdly, Maria from Detroit was celebrating her 40th birthday by also taking the cruise solo. She was a sweetheart and it was a lot of fun to hear about her travels during the day.



I have heard that RCI food is a cut above most cruiseliner food (particularly Carnival, but not necessarily Celebrity). It was alright--I didn't eat anything all week that absolutely blew me away, but I did have some decent meals. That first night I started with a onion and gruyere tart, which was quite good:



And then followed it with a lackluster spinach salad, and some okay shrimp ravioli nestled on a bed of braised spinach and topped with fried leeks:



Dessert was a dark chocolate cake with cherries soaked (allegedly) in kirsch. It was serviceable, though chocolate is never my favorite:



After dinner, Maria and I headed to the opening night show in the theatre. It featured a Charlie Chaplin impersonator, a singing cruise director and some truly amazing aerial artists from Eastern Europe. Bed called my name after the show and so I went back to my cabin to rest up for the next day. After we set sail, I was amazed at how little the ship seemed to move. I didn’t have to get my sea legs at all on this cruise, which I was pretty thankful for. Our first day in port would be in Cannes and I had few plans but to wander around and take in Southern France.

525,600 minutes

I'm interrupting your regularly scheduled travelogues to mark time. I'd be remiss if I did not point out that a year ago today, June 25, at approximately 9 AM EST, I walked away from Tucson. In actuality, I drove, but it was a true walking away. I walked away from a love that was no good for me and a social circle that, for reasons I still cannot fully explain, had become incredibly toxic. I walked away from a house and town I loved, and a ring of mountains that still take my breath away when I look at them in pictures. I walked away from the best decision, even considering all the last minute heartbreak, I'd probably ever made in my adult life, diploma in hand, having accomplished what I moved there to do and so much more.

I am happier now than I was then, maybe happier than I could have ever hoped to be there, despite how painful and heartwrenching it was for me to leave. Still, a year here and I have come to appreciate this little town and its quirks. I am good at my job, and am recognized for being good at it on a regular basis. I have made some truly fantastic and wonderful friends here. I feel loved by them, and my friends and family elsewhere, in ways that I never appreciated until I learned to open myself up to small town rhythms. I am growing and cultivating myself in ways I could not seem to discover in Tucson.

Really and truly, I hope I never forget how fortunate and blessed and just plain lucky I feel on this day to be in this place, at this place, in my life.

travelogue, days 0 and 1: indianapolis, in and barcelona, spain

My flight was scheduled to leave Indy around 2 PM on Saturday, May 31st, so asked my friends Lindsay and Luke to take me to the airport a little after 10, knowing we’d have a bit of a drive. I was working on only about four hours of a sleep, having decided to exhaust myself so that when I got on my transatlantic flight later that evening, I’d be able to sleep at least a little. L&L arrived, we loaded my luggage (Luke, as he was lifting my suitcase into his trunk, “Jeez! Do you have a body in there?”) and dropped off my car for some much needed body work, scheduled to get done while I gallivanted around Europe.

The ride to the airport was uneventful and full of fun chatter. Too soon, I was saying goodbye to my friends and thanking them for the ride. I weighed my suitcase and found it was 3 pounds over the limit, so I took some books out and shoved them into my backpack (in a bit of a panic a couple nights before, I went to Barnes & Noble and loaded up on guides for Italy and France, as well as an Italian phrase book. I’d had the sudden realization that “OH MY GOD I AM GOING TO ITALY AND I DO NOT SPEAK ITALIAN and OH MY GOD I AM GOING TO FRANCE AND I DO NOT SPEAK FRENCH”). Security, etc was easy enough and then there was the wait.

See, the evening before we’d seen storms of really impressive caliber. I’ve lived in the Midwest a long time and I’m not sure I’d ever seen trees bend the way I saw them bend in the view from Jeff’s apartment. As it happened, the storms moved on to the northeast, precisely where I was hoping to get that afternoon. To make a long story short, I sat in the Indianapolis airport for 5.5 hours before we were finally able to board our plane. We couldn’t get clearance to leave due to the storms in Newark and I watched my originally very well planned and very cushioned layover (3.5 hours) get smaller and smaller by the minute.

We did eventually leave Indy and there were passengers on our flight in much worse shape than I, though I knew my connection would be tight. None of it fazed me though, something that I needed a witness to and so I called Mel to say precisely that. “I want you to know that I’ve been sitting in this airport for 5 hours and it’s questionable whether I will make my flight to Barcelona once we finally leave. If this had happened 6 months, a year ago, I’d be flipping my shit. But..eh. I’ll get to Europe eventually. It’s a little like I’ve smoked all the pot in the world, but haven’t actually touched anything since that one summer at that one music festival. CAN I GET A WITNESS?”

When we touched down in Newark, I had 30 minutes until the scheduled departure of my flight and they were well into boarding when I finally got off my plane. Terminal C is enormous and of course my new gate was on the opposite side of the terminal. You’ve never seen a fat girl run so fast through an airport, friends. I can only imagine how comical it was to observe, since I was laughing about it my own self. When I finally reached my gate, red faced, sweaty and out of breath, they were calling the absolute final boarding. I was the last person to get on the plane and when my seat mates granted me access to my window seat, I collapsed into it with a heavy, sweaty sigh.

And then we sat on the tarmac for 2.5 hours.

No matter, we left eventually and made up some time in the air. I had a really nice woman sitting next to me. She and her siblings had all brought their children on a big family vacation (which apparently their parents pay for each year) for a cruise through the Mediterranean. They were on a different cruise line than me, but we had fun talking about our different ports. She really was sweet and had a great sense of humor and a wonderful Tennessee accent.

When we touched down in Barcelona (now 1 June), I was feeling pretty good. I’d had a few hours of sort-of sleep on the plane and so wasn’t as tired as I thought I’d be. It was an easy trip through immigration to get my visa stamp (woohoo! First stamp in my very first passport is Spain—the way it ought to be!) and then to the luggage carousel to get my suitcase. It never appeared, so still undaunted and just so darn happy to be in Europe, I went to the counter to file a claim. The clerk was sweet but made me a little nervous because she said Continental was not very good at exchanging information about the whereabouts of luggage and she seemed fairly concerned I was planning to get on a cruise ship the next day. We finished up the claim and she briefly mentioned that sometimes they put luggage on the next flight which would be arriving around 1:30 (about 1.5 hours from then).

I was poised to leave the airport and check into my hotel, but decided to stick around for the next flight to arrive. I reasoned that an hour and a half wasn’t too long to wait and I’d rather have my luggage in hand than wait for it to be delivered who-knows-when. It was a bit of a gamble, knowing that my time in Barcelona would be limited, but it paid off as my suitcase was one of the first on the carousel when the next flight arrived.

I made my very first European ATM withdrawal but sadly did not get any coins, which I was hoping for because I was super thirsty and in need of a diet coke. I got in the taxi line and after some broken exchanges, my taxi driver understood where we were headed: Hosteria Grau, just off Las Ramblas.



Check in was easy, though lugging my suitcase up two flights of windy stairs was not, so much. However, my room on the second floor was remarkably clean and newly renovated and met my needs just perfectly:



I had to ask the clerk to help me figure out the lights, as I didn’t realize I had to insert my room key into a light switch to complete the circuit for the room. Once that was taken care of, I took the world’s most welcome shower and changed clothing.

Before I left, I had booked and paid for a scooter tour of Barcelona. Exhausted, I had to really talk myself into going on the tour and am I ever so glad I did.
I was the only person to show up for the tour at the appointed time and this was the scooter I was going to drive:



At least, it was the scooter I was going to drive until I did a test drive and Lalo, my unbelievably good looking 29 year old Italian tour operator, said, very sweetly, “Um, maybe you will feel safer riding with me?” Riding on the back of a really hot guy’s scooter? A really hot guy with an accent? From Italy? Through the streets of Barcelona? OKAY.



And that’s how I spent 2 hours touring Barcelona with a man who despises George W. Bush nearly as much as I do and to whom I taught the word “cocky” (also in reference to Bush). He was even sweet when I launched many of my ungraceful dismounts of the bike. Those hours were two of the most fantastic in my life—it was just the most surreal experience to be zipping up and down the streets of Barcelona, climbing Montjuic on! a! scooter!, viewing La Sagrada Familia from afar, passing bullfighting protestors, seeing Port Olympic and so much more.





Eventually we made our way back to the tour office and kiss kissed on the cheek to say goodbye. I walked along Port Vell for awhile and stopped to get some gelato and do some people watching. Eventually, I hailed a cab and headed back to Grau. I grabbed my travel journal and made some small talk with other travelers in the comfortable lounge area before checking e-mail and dashing some notes off to family and friends to let them know I arrived safely.



Then I retreated to my room to do some reading. I managed to stay awake (barely) until about 10 PM, at which point most of Barcelona was just getting their party started, but I figured was a late enough bedtime to not mess me up too much in the coming days on the ship.

monument-al

So my dad and I finally picked out a gravestone for his and mom's dual plot yesterday. We got a double header (heh) and it was generally easy and not at all stressful (though there were a lot of decisions to be made). Dad kept deferring to me because I'm "the one who will have to look at it for the rest of my life."

However, just as we had settled on the design of the monument (as they are called) he said, "Oh, now we just need to add a cross."

"A cross? You want a cross on there?"

"Yes."

Now let me pause and explain that my parents were never terribly religious people and did not raise me in any particular faith, though they identify themselves most strongly with Catholicism and in the past 2 years began attending services regularly again. I am their agnostic who prays or whatever, and the subject of religion has never been a big deal before--we all seem to live and let live. My dad, in particular, has never been judgmental of my faith or lack thereof.

"Really? Um, but I thought you said I'd be the one who has to look at this the rest of my life."

"All the better!"

Hilarious.

my friends got married

Aren't they beautiful?

back

I'm back, jet lagged and all (it is 3:30 AM eastern when I am writing this--slept for 5 hours and my body is all, hey! lazy! time to get up! it's morning where you've been!), with 650 pictures. Stay tuned this lovely, leisurely month for travelogues and pictures up the yin yang. For now, though, I have to turn this ship around and haul ass up to Wisco in 24 hours to celebrate with some of my nearest and dearest, and to meet the newest baby Inaz. And spend some time with a boy I've been seeing. More on all of that later, too.