Travels

So, since it's been a solid six months since my last post, it seems like a good time to update the blog...

Since April, I...

left Italy (and the EU) to get a new visa. Visited Geneva and spent a weekend in the Alps with my aunt and uncle. While there, I built a dry stone wall (which I have always wanted to do) and, much to the amusement of my psychiatrist aunt managed to hurt the ring finger of my RIGHT hand. A classic Freudian response to upcoming marriage I'm told...

Then off to Spain to visit a friend. Turns out that very little English is spoken in Spain, and even though Spanish may sound like thickly accented Italian to you, speaking Spanish-accented Italian yields strange looks and mixed results. Oddly enough the bus ride from Madrid to Valladolid comes with The Life of Brian dubbed in Spanish. The next morning I was introduced to the Spanish equivalent of a 1950's dinner -- you order giant pieces of fried dough that you dip in thick hot chocolate. Tasty and a wonderful hangover cure, but it makes the Tasty 29 look like healthfood.

From Madrid, back to Rome where I got married (you were probably there, so no pictures), and then headed south to the Amalfi coast, which is stupidly picturesque.

Southern Italy also has the tastiest fried food ever as well as the best seafood. It helps when your dinner was caught in the next town over.

Then, back to Rome where we revisited out favorite sights/sites -- the high point was Pentecost in the Pantheon. We got in by claiming that we were Catholic faithful (the Italian lessons paid off) and watched as thousands of red rose petals were dropped through the oculus at the end of the service.

Then we packed and left for Geneva -- there was a country-wide taxi strike on the night of our departure, so this was far more difficult than it needed to be.

We got to recover in Geneva, where my aunt and uncle filled us with excellent wine and food, and then let us use both their chalet in the French alps and their tiny little Citroen Saxo.

France is amazingly nice - particularly so because there are no Italian cab drivers.

We took the Saxo down to Provence. The driver's side controls of the automatic window broke on the way down, so I spent an evening cheerfully taking apart the car door while parked down the street from our hotel near Avignon. Window was beyond help but cat was safely stowed in the husk of a medieval church that had been gutted during the Revolution.

Even with a window that is taped shut (which makes you look totally French) Provence is amazing. I don't blame the popes of the Great Schism for wanting to hang out there for a few years.

Then (more or less) back to DC and from there... (stay tuned)