Pisa and Florence: Day 11

Day 11
Woke up early. No time for breakfast. Andrea dropped us off at Termini station and hugged and said, "Ciao, bella" to each of us. We were a bit late, and we rushed to our train platform. It felt really Darjeeling. Next time I shouldn't pack so much.The train was pretty empty. The girls slept mostly while I wrote and drew and stared out our train window. Saw a lot of countryside and for almost an hour, we traveled along the beach. Arrived in Pisa around 11H.
We left our baggage at the station and walked around town, looking for a place to eat. We settled at an outdoor cafe that was alright. Then we got gelato. The tower is across town, but the town isn't so big. We took photos and I took some of people posing ridiculously in front of the tower. It was just too funny not to. Went souvenir shopping, and I got some really nice Florentine stationery because I could not help myself.

Went back to the train station and got tickets (5 euros to Firenze!). We mostly slept during the 3 hours. Arrived at the train station and walked to our hostel which took maybe 20 minutes, not that bad. The hostel girl was super nice, and so was our place. I was expecting to rough it a bit, but ours was like a hotel! We had our own bathroom and a spiral staircase to a loft that had 2 beds and another bed downstairs. Pretty sweet. Our view overlooked all the red rooftop buildings and here and there we saw a church dome.
We chilled for a bit and consulted my Let's Go Europe 2007 for a place to eat. I named some places and prices. Keisha was interested in Acqua Al 2 for their blueberry steak. It was finally decided, and we headed out for dinner.

The restaurant was dimly lit, and they let us in even though we didn't have a reservation. A lot of the diners were American. It felt like being in Pasadena. We then found out that they have another restaurant in San Diego. I got the balsamic steak, Keisha the blueberry steak, and Lucia the fish.

My food arrived, a big mass covered in a thick, dark substance that resembled oil. It was scary. Keisha and Lucia stared at it too. I cut of a chunk and dipped it in the sauce. Everyone said my face practically melted at first bite of my steak. It was heaven. We all ate slowly savoring our good food and pausing to sip the house wine. This older American couple sat by us and kept wanting to talk to us. At times, they were totally silent, listening to our conversations about guys. They were a bit uppity, well-to-do types from San Diego. We could sometimes hear the wife getting mad at the husband. It was weird. When they overheard us ordering limoncellos after our meals, they were all impressed saying, "So! You've been here awhile now!"We walked around the city at night. Got gelato and stood along the River Arno and then went to Ponte Vecchio, the oldest bridge in Firenze. Listened to a musician do "Mad World" by Tears for Fears on guitar. It was quite moving. Walked back to the hostel, passing by Piazza della Republica. An amazing, but long day.

Giverny

Here are some photos from Giverny. But before I get to those, some pins and postcards from Senlis:
A view of the garden from the second story of Monet's lovely abode.
Me skipping for joy in such a lovely garden to the laughter of my friends.
The Japanese bridge in the distance
The quaint food stand.
Pouring on my lovely street.

la nuit de rien

Tonight is "night of museums" and loads of museums are open until midnight. But I'm still tired from last night, and I just want to stay in with tea like an old lady.

Today, went to Giverny to see Monet's house and garden. His house is so beautiful inside. Couldn't take photos though. Took photos of lots of flowers and trees and birds. Then Lucia, Susie, Melissa, and Lily and I found a small outdoor restaurant by a stream and spent two hours there talking and eating. It was nice. The chef came out and talked to the people at each table, it was cute. Will post photos of gardens later.

I've got tons of homework to do, blurg. 2 tests next week and 4 papers to write. Boo. Like a lot of people here, I'm kind of over school and just can't wait for summer even though this year has been one really lax school year. I don't even feel like it's been a school year, more like a gap year. I just hope all this doesn't transfer into next school year. I have to find a job and work my ass off so I can graduate in time, but I know that even with 12 units a semester, I'll make it. I don't want to worry about the future, but it's so hard not to.

my adventures in wonderland

Here are some photos I promised from Chantilly and Senlis. Also, I'm going to continue to stretch out the posts for Italy. As I wrote before, they'll be interspersed between my regular Paris posts.

Where to go in Chantilly
A wooded path
On the bus ride to Senlis
Postcard Convention





So goth.
















Exciting, no?

































A tasty treat: a Saint Honoré, complete with crème de Chantilly
Forgot to tell you that there was a carnival going on at Senlis as well.
Carnival food stands are much cooler here
If that doesn't move you, or inspire you, or make you imagine of simpler times, then you are a robot.

back from Wonderland

I have fallen through the looking-glass. Barbara B. invited me to go to Chantilly and Senlis for the day with her and Theresa. It's so nice when people invite me to things. It's really thoughtful. I don't plan a lot, so I usually have nothing to invite people to other than a spontaneous roast chicken dinner party that I sometimes have. But I'm always so astounded when people invite me to something or call me up to hang out. It means they want me around, that they like me or at least they can tolerate my presence.

Met up with them early in the morning. I'd love to post pics, but maybe later since the whole photo problem thingy. Took a train to Chantilly and it was such a lovely ride, all green pastures. And this group of bikers came on with their tight shorts, and they were so cute discussing their biking plans at the forest Coye.

We arrived in Chantilly and got tickets for the bus to Senlis. The original plan was just to hang out in Senlis, a well-preserved medieval city. But our bus wouldn't be here for an hour so we got time to kill in Chantilly. Chantilly is the horse capital of France. I like horses. Maybe because I think of knights in shining armor and girls in period dresses riding them.

We walked around the forest, and I suddenly remembered why I love the color green so much. It just reminds me of spring and nature and growth, and there were so many shades of it as we walked under all these tree-lines paths and reached the horse racing track. I saw a chateau in the distance and I asked Barbara, who's been here many times before, if that was the chateau of Chantilly. She said, "Yes. That's the one for the horses. The one next to it is for humans." I replied, "It's much smaller!" The Duke Orlean really liked horses.

Went to the tourism office and got some info. I found that you can rent bikes there! I might come back to rent a bike for a day. Then we took the bus to Senlis. We ate lunch at the park (tuna baguette--yum!). There was a family in the park (2 boys and 1 girl) and the dad was playing ball with them while the mom was sunning. The little girl fell and started to cry, running towards mom. When mom kissed her boo-boo, she returned to the ball game. The dad started cheering for her that she was coming back to play, and then her older brothers clapped their hands too. It was lovely. We then wandered the small city. Today there was a small "convention" for postcards at a church, so we went to that for 1 euro.

Oh. My. Gosh. Amazing. I'm a sucker for flea markets and yard sales, so this was right up my alley. Tables of vintage postcards, old letters, stamps, and trinkets. At one corner of the room was a long table where people where eating and drinking wine. We went from table to table. Mostly old guys were collectors, but they were really nice, asking if I was looking for a theme or a certain country or part of France for a postcard. I looked for cinema themes (not that great) and postcards about places I've visited. I also got a bunch of postcards for Cannes because the Cannes film festival is coming up. I've never been there but hope to someday, and not as a tourist. I can wait until then. I also chose some for their photo and the letter written on the back. Most of them had letters written on the back. My oldest one is from 1938.

I was reading some postcards, and it's funny that some of them have just one line on them or nothing at all. The one liners say "un bon souvenir" and who it's from. Sometimes, and here's what fascinated me, it said something totally weird. One of them said, "It's John Toole" or something like that, just an answer to a question. Today's equivalent would be a MySpace or Facebook wall post. Back then we had postcards. Life was simpler and slower.

So I got a bunch of old postcards with their stamps on the back, and also some really cool pins for 10 centimes each! That's like 25 cents each! They were really, really cool too. Can't wait to show you photos.

Walked around the city and some parks and just took in the sun and amazing weather. I really felt like I was in another world. Sometimes, we'd walk down these cobblestone streets, and there would be no sign of cars, nothing that could relate to this time and era, and it's like you're back in the 13th century. We walked along a path and found a creek, and it was so picturesque, it was just so hard to believe that this was really real. It was like something out of my imagination. And I felt that, if this was real, what else can be real for me? What else can be possible? And I thought about all my dreams, all that I ever wanted, and it all felt attainable. It was wonderful.

We went back to Chantilly and got off in the middle of the city instead of at the train station. Went to Barbara's fave boulangerie and got something to munch on for dinner. I got a quiche. We ate it in front of the chateau for horses. Then, because the horse racing fields were open, we walked through them barefoot since the grass was nice and cool and the sun still shining. We played with this really energetic dog while its owners were picnicking. It was hilarious, this dog picked up the biggest stick ever, it was practically a branch the length of my arm span, and he wanted to play fetch with it. So funny.

Arrived at the station, and went home. A lovely day in the countryside.

Outside Roma: Day 8 and 9

Day 8Andrea planned for us to go to Tivoli today. He's a really good planner. He doesn't talk a lot, and we're alike that way. He would just subtly suggest things that he thought were good ideas. Like the day before Tivoli he said, "You know, it's so nice out we should have a day trip to Tivoli--you don't have to spend all 4 days in Rome. We can go to Tivoli, and my friend is having a picnic at a lake and we can go to that too. You don't want to be stuck in museums on such beautiful days." Boy was he right.

Went to Tivoli to see Villa Adriana, a city created by the Roman emperor Hadrian in the 2nd century AD. It's also on the UNESCO World Heritage List. I kind of want to see everything on this list. There's 851 properties.We enjoyed this sunny, breezy day walking through ruins and gardens. It's crazy to think that it's all still there, standing. Not in perfect condition, but the remnants are there. Today, we destroy everything. We leave nothing behind anymore. Maybe because it has no value. What does that say about us? No one will ever know someone lived in that building or something or other because it's no longer there, it's a Target now. Some of us will remember and reminisce, but we'll soon forget because that's Target, and they're having a sale on dvds.

Afterwards, Andrea drove us to Lago di Martignanno (I think that's the name). It was really hard to get there, way out in the country. I'm talking dirt roads and minimal signs. We got lost, and he had to call his friend to give him directions. There were two lakes, one bigger one and a smaller one, and we were going to the smaller one.It was a nice lake. Andrea had said, "In America, you like big. We like little." The lake was "little", but still big to me. And it was surrounded by green, and people were playing soccer and having picnics and sunbathing. It was nice. We met the guy hosting, his friend Carlo, who's super nice and reminded me of my friend Vilaska. The Roman version of Vilaska, haha. He offered us barbecue meat and bread and wine. We talked to an American girl who's teaching in Rome, a Spanish girl Marta, this hilarious guy Giovanni who kept giving us more wine, and other really nice Italian people. It was really cool. We raved how amazing Italian people were compared to the French, and Marta said, "When Italians love you, they love you forever. When they don't...watch out!" A storm started to come, so we left right before the downpour.

Day 9We woke up early to leave for Pompeii and see the ruined city. Andrea woke us up by using his computer in the main room where we were sleeping. He greeted us with, "You know that lake we were at yesterday? Someone died at the bigger one when we were there. A boat capsized and a man drowned."

We stopped on the way for a coffee and cornetta (like a croissant or any other pastry) at a coffee shop. I love the idea of just going to a bar and enjoying a cappuccino while standing. Especially when you don't have the time to really savor it like the French. Keisha bought some Vogue magazines--I perused the decorating one--and we were off.Pompeii was huge, bigger than Villa Adriana and it's a UNESCO World Heritage site as well. I just couldn't believe how much they uncovered, and it was all an accident. A city lost for more than a thousand years due to catastrophe. Maybe someone will undercover what we ourselves destroyed and learn something about us one day. We walked around, at a lost for words. In the "Garden of the Fugitives" we saw the plaster casts of Pompeiians at their moment of death, adults and children. We followed Andrea up a hill that was clearly not made for walking up and sat at one of the highest points in the city and ate oranges. We didn't talk much.

After Pompeii, we drove to the seaside city of Sorrento. Andrea had never been there, but always wanted to. It was really hard to find parking, so Andrea parked in a parking lot for an apartment building, and he sweet-talked the owner, a nice lady, into parking there. He told her in his sweet sounding Italian, "We're just visiting. We're only here for a couple hours. Would it be alright if we stayed here?" And the lady ate it up. I noticed that he's really good at buttering people up and making them bend to his will.

We got lunch at an outdoor cafe. I had the gnocchi "Sorrento-style". We walked toward this cliff, and Lucia asked an Italian lady to take our picture for us. When Andrea saw the photo, he said, "Let's take another one. Don't ask those Italian ladies. I will ask that German man." And he went toward the German tourists and asked if he could take a photo. The German did so happily, and afterwards he added, "Tell me if you like it. I framed the ocean in it." He showed it to Andrea and Andrea said, "Wow! It's great!" And it was. So, if you ever need someone to take good pictures of you, a German tourist is the best bet.
On the way back to the car, we'd pass orange trees full of oranges. Lucia, being so tall, got some for us. Andrea just said, "I don't know these tourists." Got home around 7 and around 10ish we went out and got pizza cooked "Naples" style. It was really good. Flat, not too much cheese. We then walked around the city, and it wasn't crowded at all, and there were barely any cars, and we walked in the middle of the street like it was nothing. We just followed Andrea, not knowing where we were going--he likes to do that--and then we ended up at the Spanish Steps. Unfortunately, I went bagless and didn't have my camera. Oh well.

Catania, Sicilia: Day 3, 4 and 5.

Day 3

Lots of hanging out and lounging around. Big lunch at Adriano's grandparents. The grandmother cooked pasta, meats, and prepared salad, and we ate it in that order. I love how they have salad last. I'm going to start having salad last. It just feels right. I can imagine that going over well in the states, "Can you bring out the salad after my main dish?" Yeah, right. They'll think I'm a total weirdo. Adriano's grandfather was HILARIOUS when Keisha couldn't use the cheese grater correctly. The block of parmesan fell into Keisha's pasta and got sauce all over it. He'd put his hands on his head and laugh and mutter things in Italian. He tried to guess my nationality. "Spanish?" No, filipino. "Indonesian?" I just laughed.

Went upstairs and hung out with Enza and Maurizio's dog, Max for a while--we were all in a food coma. Then we took Adriano to the airport. He could only stay in Sicilia for the weekend. For the next 2 days it was going to be just us girls and the family.

Going around Sicilia is like being in the Philippines, almost. At least the Philippines I remember. A bit run down, but extremely beautiful nonetheless. Things are a little bit harsher, but we dealt with it, we didn't complain. That night we didn't have any running water--not in the shower or the kitchen. But we thought of it as an adventure, a small sacrifice. We called the family who was super helpful and slightly worried that we'd be in the country without Adriano. They said that maybe it would be on tomorrow. And it was.The house we were staying in is sort of...weird. The windows have iron bars, and then it has these shutters, kind of like the kinds that stores have that go completely over the whole front of the store when a store is closed. And then finally the glass window. The door, and there's only one, gets super, super stuck, and it it's hard to open from the inside. If there was a fire...well, it'd be really hard to get out. Lucia once said, after we tried so hard to open the shutters but utterly failed, "I don't like how we can hear everything going on outside and not see it." I said, "This house has the makings for a horror film. 3 girls alone in the Sicilian countryside and things go wrong right when the big strong man leaves." Lucia laughed uncomfortably at my reference to the water not running.
Day 4Aunt Rosa and Uncle Rosario picked us up at the house. Rosario opened the door from the outside for us. We drove to Mt. Edna and walked along the Silvestri crater. It was really cool. On the ride, Keisha told Rosario that I studied film. He looked at me through the rear view mirror and said, "Fellini." I said, "Yes, Fellini" in Italian cuz I didn't know what else to say. Rosa made us sandwiches, and we pulled off the road and had a picnic near Mt. Edna. Then they drove us to Syracusa to show us the Greco theater there and the Ear of Dionysius. On the drive back to Catania, Rosario drove by the beach. He must've heard of our disappointment. We pulled of the road and into this small neighborhood by the beach. We got weird looks from old fishermen as we walked toward the ocean and took of our shoes to feel the water. Rosario and Rosa watched from the car, smiling.They took us home and Rosa had extra sandwiches for us to eat later which was really sweet. I'm just astounded by this family and how well they treated us. Since day 1 I was seeing all these similarities between this Italian family and most Filipino families and how they treat complete strangers as family.

Since there was still light out, Keisha and Lucia went to go look for the beach while I stayed in and drew and wrote.

Day 5Our last day in Catania. Amara picked us up and we went shopping around the city center. Had my first taste of gelato: pistachio and coconut. So good. Baskin Robbins is garbage compared to this stuff. Amara showed us around the city. We went to Vincenzo Bellini's house which is now a museum. He's an opera composer from Sicily. Went to the Ursino Castle, saw some religious art, and I got my haircut at Enza's.For our last night, we stayed at Rosa and Rosario's house since Rosario can drive us to the airport in the morning when he has to work. Our place is hard to find and the whole family was worried about a taxi not being able to get there. We had our last meal with R. and R. and Amara and Eratzio. Chicken, potatoes, salad, and ice cream. Yum. We talked about languages and literature. Eratzio had said, "Why did God have to make so many languages?" Sometimes he would just speak to us in Italian and then when he looked confused he would ask Amara to translate for him. Rosario taught us some Sicilian words and proudly displayed his English skills. It was a great last meal.