He has died a thousand thousand deaths…

Cinque Terre Trails

Our route today will pass through the Cinque Terre (5 lands) along the northern Italian coast. The trail is about 7.5 miles long, and winds through five towns that cling to the edge of coast. There is realistically no road access, to get between these towns, you’re reduced to boats, the trails, or the train. As a result, each of these towns preserve a colloquial feel, towns without a single street, boulevard, and anything resembling such, they are entirely, walking towns.

And they are stunning in scenery. Hiking the trails is quite arduous, though well maintained, there are hundreds of steps up and down the cliffs between each town, allowing for elevation changes of hundreds of feet. The scenery is comparable to Big Sur in northern California, with the added benefit of a picturesque coastal village every couple of miles to provide local color, excellent dining and refreshment. Indeed, after sweating canteens, diving into the incredibly blue waters of the Mediterranean recharges one’s cells like no gatorade ever could. The water is heated pool temperature, and so incredibly blue and clear that you can see right to the bottom some 30 ft below. Under the surface, schools of fish swim without need of goggles or snorkeling gear for clear viewing; the experience is just a little bit incredible.

Winding rails, similar to roller coaster tracks weave in and out of the coastal cliffs, these are the rails to the grape trains, small carriages that allow a grape picker to clip their harvest to and send to the collection point. Grapes are a predominant crop in the region, they are carefully tended, and I spy some sort of curing process going on in the home of one of the locals, his grapes hung carefully all across his apartment.

Hikers on this trail quickly fall into very definitive stereotypes. Italians are decked out in capris and pumas, looking more like they belong at the mall or the beach. Americans and Australians have obviously been reading REI catalogues and are equipped for hiking. Austrians, French, and Germans have been reading expedition manuals, and are equipped for serious trekking, full mountaineering boots, camel backs, and telescoping walking sticks. I run into a french woman who asks me some random question in french, to which I respond back in kind. She compliments me on my accent, and asks if I’m french.

“Je parle un petit peu, mais non.” I reply with my standard catchphrase.

“Ou, tu es Italiano?” She aks.

“Non! Etats-Unis!” I declare triumphantly.

“Oh, Americano!” Her surprise is evident, and she flexes her biceps to communicate her general impression of Americans. I hope it’s positive, but feel it best I not pursue it and we bid farewell as she continues down the trail. It’s been fun all along, playing the greeting game with italians and frenchies, spitting back at them in their language of choice just as fast as they can dish it. Success is the best confidence booster. Though sometimes I mash the languages together in my attempt to answer appropriately to amusing results.

The day is warm, the steps are many and steep, but I jog the stairs with ease, a lifetime of foregoing elevators seems to be be paying off. A few days before, while wandering Venice, I’d have to sit every ten to twenty minutes, as my lower back would ache constantly from traversing and standing around the city. Today, with miles of vertical traversal, I’ve never felt better. An english man curses me mildly as I jog up the vertical stack, sweat running rivers down my chest. Somewhere, over the years, I’ve trained my body to accept the vertical, at the expense of the horizontal. My father has the same disposition, and probably would approve of my mountain goat antics as I bounce from boulder to boulder up the cliffs. Near the towns, the trails become quite picturesque, merging directly into the towns themselves, on rock staircases. A saxaphone player sits by the trail, his simple tunes echoing off the cliffs and lending a distinctly Italian vibe to the whole adventure.

Cinque Terre

Three towns down, we pull out the map to consult the route towards the fourth town. It is here the map gets confusing. There are two trails, the steep hill trail, and an easier one, one that runs a hundred meters above the water along the cliffs. Though the coast trail is the preferred route, it also labeled somewhat confusingly on the map as “closed.” Here in front of us however, a well constructed staircase descends down towards the coast, and the painted markers delineating the trail are plain to see.

“Up or down?” I ask Bee Jin.

“Down,” is her simple answer and we descend towards the train station of the third town.

Below, we pass the station and continue, a trail marker indicates that the trail is closed ahead, but as far as we can see, the trail continues, an easy sidewalk down a leafy path. Shrugging, we continue down the trail past rows and rows of block apartments, their entire surfaces facing the trail covered in a tough plastic mesh. Behind the mesh, the gaping holes of their windows betray an abandoned complex, gutted and emptied except for the lone toilet.

Abandoned apartments

Down this long corridor we walk, eventually it opens up again to a view of the beach some forty meters below. A steel staircase falls towards the narrow beach. Down below the old, baked, saggy leather flesh of the elderly lies baking on their towels, completely absent of clothing. So, here we are, a nude beach, and unsurprisingly, not a tantalizing piece of skin to be seen anywhere. The elderly have nothing to show, and so are more concerned with matching their scrotum color to their forearms.

We stalk down the path again, some three hundred meters ahead, we finally run into a rusted gate with a sign on it. Though the italian is indecipherable, the message is clear, the trail is closed. To go back to the high trail is over a mile behind, to go back in this heat is hardly something we’re eager to contemplate. I propose to go down to the beach, skipping along the boulders by the cliffs all the way to the next town. Bee Jin, down with the idea of an adventure, agrees.

We backtrack to the staircase leading to the old nude flesh, and make our way down, providing a spectacle to the locals simply by our youth. We pick our way down the beach, surprising lone nudists far down the beach, dancing away from the waves as it laps our feet. The thread we run is particularly narrow and we pick our way on boulders at the bottom of tall cliffs that go up to the trail somewhere above us. The going is somewhat slow, and I’m particularly startled as I clamber over a boulder to spot the rotting carcass of a dolphin, brown with decay, it’s tongue and teeth falling out of its mouth. Nothing has come to eat the flesh, or pick the soft tissues of the eyes, and they stare back at me in ominous warning. I stand there for a minute, testing the wind gently for the scent of decay, but detect nothing.

Bad omens

Nonplussed, I continue down the beach, looking back at Bee Jin some hundred meters behind me to see her reaction to the carcass. She’s far too concerned with the boulder field and not breaking her camera however, and walks by the body within touching distance without ever noticing it. I shrug my shoulders and put my camera away, picking through the boulder field again; it’s gotten difficult enough that I need both hands to navigate the path.

Soon enough though, the path ends. The waves lap straight into the cliffs, the boulders end suddenly, and our options diminish abruptly. The rock is broken here into a chimney of sorts, allowing for some good hand holds for rock climbing up. Or, we turn back, over the boulder field, all the way back to the last town, almost two miles away. Bee Jin looks at it all.

“Back?”

Back was never in my vocabulary, and the handholds look good enough, even for someone without experience to clamber up, I grab her camera bag and strap it to myself.

“Up.” I respond.

I clamber up easily, and wait as she navigates the handholds with some difficulty, offering her tips to clamber up the chimney. For a time, things go well enough; thirty meters up however, the chimney peters out into nothing, and all that’s left is a pointed ledge of jagged rocks that stick out of the cliff. I grimace silently; though it’s now gotten significantly more difficult, it’s gotten quite dangerous for someone of Bee Jin’s limited ability, and we’re not roped in to anything or each other. Down is no longer an option either, though coming up wasn’t terribly hard, going down is nearly impossible to a novice climber, and I press my lips in frustration. In my reckless confidence in my own abilities, I have pushed Bee Jin’s well past any sort of acceptable safety tolerance, and now we’re stuck on a ledge a third of the way up a rotting cliff with a limited number of downright shitty options.

Still, hesitation will not help our cause, and if there are two qualities I’ve always had in copious quantity, it has been confidence and arrogance. I employ it here, instructing Bee Jin to follow my path exactly and climb up the protruding ledge. I am dismally aware that the last pull I took utilized my unique strength to body weight ratio, allowing me to pull myself up to the narrow shelf without my legs helping at all. Though this is fine for myself, I know Bee Jin will never make the last pull. There is nothing to do except guide her up the ledge, lock in my right arm, and then pull her up the last few feet up to the ledge I’m standing on. The maneuver goes off well enough, but the ledge is too small, and to allow her to stand on it, I roll to the side, directly into a cactus. A thousand thousand needles pierce my thighs and forearm, but I’m oblivious to the sensation. With startling quickness, the threads of our lives has narrowed to narrow slits in a dark tunnel, and the task of getting off this cliff face is all that matters, cactus be damned.

The broken line of ledges continues up above us and we repeat the process again, and again; I scramble up a couple of feet to a narrow ledge that just allows for us to pause, and instruct Bee Jin where to place her limbs, and when she’s close enough, pull her forcefully up to whatever ledge I’m on. My voice is controlled and calm, the same tone I use when winning over cats and dogs, and I offer small congratulations every time she makes a ledge. For her part, Bee Jin is a champ, she follows my directions explicitly, answers my questions punctually, and climbs with the knowledge that her life depends on it.

“Bring your butt into the cliff, don’t cross your feet,” I instruct in firm tones that also sooth in their noise. Communication is key, and I know that she needs a constant stream of instructions, even mindless noise to assure her that I’m going to lead her out of this.

Because I’m going to lead her out, I’m responsible for this mess, and I’ll be damned if I don’t fix it appropriately. I lead the way again, the cliff is rotten, every rock treacherous, and I grab solid looking boulders and yank them out of the dry crumbly dirt and toss them to the side. When I pause on another ledge to instruct Bee Jin again, I mentally trace our routes and options, the universe, the multi-verse has narrowed to an incredibly small set of choices and paths to climb. Nothing else matters, not my arms bleeding and torn by cactuses, not Bee Jin’s legs racked by acacia thorns, not the white sap of cactus juice that stains the front of my pants like an overexcited masturbatory accident. We have to go up.

And up has just run out.

The protruding rocks we’ve been climbing up this cliff face end in a snarl of cactus and acacia bushes, there is nothing to grab onto anymore. To my right, a moraine of rock and dirt of a recent landslide sliding off the cliff down into the Mediterranean some sixty meters below.

The landslide area isn’t quite as steep, the incline in places is just enough that it would be possible to stand, but we’d have to lose altitude to get to them, and worse, we’d be in the moraine, an extremely dangerous area of sliding dirt and rock, with few handholds and even more treacherous footing. Still, up has run out. The multi-verse of options has collapsed once again, we’re getting close to where I could count the multiple universes on two hands, and I feel their probabilities dancing around me, ethereal, and yet tantalizing close, ready to collapse with every action we take.

“We need to get to that incline.” I point at a slightly less steep section of the moraine, “Be extremely careful of your footing and handholds, the ground is loose here.” And off I spring to the ledge my steps disturbing a small avalanche of dirt and rock that tumbles down the moraine some thirty meters and then drops off the cliff suddenly into the boulders erupting from the sea’s edge.

“C’mon over,” I motion to Bee Jin. She navigates the first section successfully, and we cling to the dirt like treed cats. Again and again, I maneuver to a higher incline, point out the handholds, lock myself in, and pull Bee Jin up. Sometimes the ledges are too small, and I have her climb over me to the ledge, while I dangle on protruding rocks and work my way around her to another ledge. Several times Bee Jin slips, and a worried tone escapes her as she scrabbles for another hand hold.

“No, no. Not that.” I admonish gently. In my mind’s eye, I watch the multiverse expand suddenly, but all of these new universes immediate options involve Bee Jin tumbling off the cliff entirely. I push them out of my mind, and pull her up to another ledge. Though she isn’t panicked, I can hear her breathing accelerate, and if she crosses that threshold, we’ll be stuck for good, and fear will push us off into the void as certainly as any of these treacherous hand holds.

“Just a few more feet, I point to a ledge that looks as wide as a boulevard, and solid to boot, on the edge of the moraine, some three meters above us. I work my way up again, and instruct Bee Jin.

“Grab the rocks, right hand there, left hand there, and up!” She grabs the rocks, and clambers up.

“Here, grab my hand.” She obeys and I pull her up, but even as I pull I feel my other handhold give away suddenly, and her weight pulls down on me abruptly pulling me away from the cliff face. My feet are well braced, and I collapse without thinking, sinking to my knees putting the center of gravity behind me into the cliff face. Bejin gives a terrified yelp as she plummets, and my other hand scrabbles for a new purchase even as I murmur insistently.

“Easy, easy, I got you, everything is fine.” I now need to say the words for my own benefit as well, the lie I must tell to prevent the unthinkable. Somewhere in the pit of my stomach, the first flash of panic arrived, and I sooth it out, easing it away even as my other arm finds a new hand hold and grabs frantically. It’s a lousy position though, most of this position is dependent on my legs as opposed to my upper body, which was never my strong suit, and between the wave of panic and this uncompromising position, I watch my legs tremble suddenly at the strain, feel them shake as the sharp taste of fear rides down my lower body.

“Bee Jin, you need to go back down, this path isn’t going to work, I need to find a new purchase to secure.” She complies and I turn to the task at hand finding a new place to lock in.

“All right, now, grab my arm.” She complies, and I pull her up, and continue pushing. ‘Climb over me, grab the ledge above me,” she does, and I push her from below. “Go go go!”

She hauls herself over the ledge, and I scramble up after her. We’ve crossed the moraine, and are sitting on crumbling concrete, the closed trail. Across the moraine, some twenty meters wide, the other section of the trail yawns into the empty openness. So this is why the trail is closed. Bee Jin gives a cry of emotion and hugs me.

“We did it! We’re alive!”

I smile quietly, ashamed that I’ve put her into this position in the first place and offer my apologies. And suddenly the pain in my arms and legs comes flooding up, and I notice the thousands of cactus quills stuck into my limbs. Beejin is covered in them too, though to a lesser degree, and we spend the next few minutes picking the very worse of them out. Beejin insists on snapping a few photos of our success, but I’m too mentally drained to take my own photos, and even then, a photo seems to suddenly cheapen the meaning of our lives that we just snatched out of death’s hands. Though I agree to Bee Jin’s pictures, I make no move towards my own camera, focusing instead of pulling spines out.

Though much of my body is covered in random spines, cactuses like to grow them in clumps, and where they clump into my skin, it is explicitly irritating, feeling like a stitch binding my flesh together. I pull at them with some measure of success.

When we’ve rested a bit, we walk down the remainder of the trail to the next town. A kilometer later we encounter the other gate, barred with jagged spikes to prevent the persistent. After what we just went through, the gate might as well be a ladder, and I clamber over it in a heartbeat, navigating the spikes with ease. Bee Jin protests the whole thing loudly, yelping and hollering at the whole ordeal, causing a scene and drawing the swimming locals attention.

I ignore her cries and let her scream all she feels like. Her raucous noise is proof positive that she’s not in any real danger, and perhaps she’s making up for the terror of the cliffside. When she’s over, we continue down the path, the locals muttering at us and how we’ve come over the wrong side of the gate. When we get into town, I take the first opportunity to dive into the Mediterranean again, letting the azure waters wash the sweat and dirt off, floating in the waters, picking cactus spines off my legs.

The sweet taste of life, bobbing in the cool water, the scratches from the thorns bright and angry red on my limbs; I smile at our brush with Death.

“That’s two for me bud.” I smirk and dive under water, blowing bubbles.

Riding rails.

TrainItalia isn’t actually all that bad, now that I’ve gotten to experience the full range of locomotives it deploys. The train from Venice to Milan is a fast modern affair, and we blow through the countryside at a grand clip, putting our pokey Acela Express to shame through and through. Nothing quite so entertaining as thundering by traffic on the freeway at speeds twice as fast. Here, in the northern country, things finally start looking productive. Farms, industrial warehouses and buildings dominate our journey, and I hope all the menfolk are hard at work somewhere in them, because Italy seems to be a country largely dominated by women from our brief taste of it so far.

Our seat mates on the train are a pair of fashionably attired Italian women, probably to be expected of individuals going to Milan. I’ve trained Bee Jin to watch for what is important to look for in women, the aesthetic gold so to speak. She nudges me excitedly, with the idea that one of the women are close to ideal. Afterall, this specimen has golden hair, a particular feature made by blond hair on tanned skin, something she has gravitated on for quite a while. I roll my eyes at her excitement. At the station in Milan she interrogates me on my lack of interest.

“Underage Bee Jin!” I exclaim.

“But she has nice boobies, and golden hair!” she protests. If my eyes could roll anymore, they would be tumblers on a slot machine.

“Look at the jaw line, and her cheeks! Entirely too much baby fat attached to her face, and didn’t you see the bracelets she was wearing? Little puppy dogs and hearts? What woman beyond the age of sixteen do you see wearing that bunk?”

“Sixteen? You think?” She asks incredulously. I smile grimly and nod. “There was nothing to see there.”

Milan is an impressive station, built with an arching lattice of steel and glass, the station’s overhang conveys grace and power at once, and Bee Jin stops to snap a couple pictures. Just off the platforms, Gucci, and other shops of its caliber crowd the marketplace, intruding into the travel area like I’ve not seen yet in Italy. Milan however, is just a way station, and minutes later we’re on another train to Genova.

At the station however, just before the train pulls out of the station, I get a taste of a popular Italian scam. Two young girls rush through the cabin distributing little leaflets that supposedly describe a destitute situation involving a newborn baby. Minutes later, they come back to ask for change, and their leaflets back! As curious an approach to panhandling if I’ve ever seen one.

This train isn’t as modern or as fast as the one that brought us to Milan, but even so, it manages speeds that would put our Acela Express to shame, rumbling along the mountains at speeds that still put automobiles in our dust. To get trains through this mountainous area at such speeds, tunnels are paramount, and we pass through several before we trundle into the Genova central station.

Genova is when I start pushing the envelope of my Italian, slinging words and phrases I see around me together.

“Duo billiggteria a Montorosso par favore.” The ticket lady answers in a chatter of Italian, and I realize helplessly that though I can slam an interrogative and declarative down with enough confidence and accent to be taken for a proper italian speaker, my comprehensive skills are non-existent.

“Scusi-mi?” I mumble, the wind suddenly deflated.

“18 euros.” Comes the response.

This story is to repeated often, now with a week in country, I’m picking up enough Italian, and applying the six years of French and six months of Spanish I’ve had in me to piece together enough to create a working language out of Italian. It proves to be an exciting game, where I am rewarded with instant comprehension by the person I’m speaking to, and I fail to understand a damn thing they’re saying back to me. Still, it’s a start, and the failure to understand is hardly any reason for me to not continue my attempts.

In any case, we are directed to an underground platform for the train to Montorosso, The train is a slow pokey thing, that stops at every stop possible, inching our way down the coast towards our destination of Cinque Terre. And it is quite a coast, the landscape is stereotypically mediterranean, the warmth and fantastic landscape something quite typical of my own home in Los Angeles.

Here the train is packed with old French Tourists eager to get on the Italian Riviera, and young Italian highschool students traveling home from their schools in Genova. Italians are a tan bunch, a lifetime, and generations basking in the warm sun of the peninsula, have led to a culture that worship the sun as much as any Californian, and probably more. From golden teens, to leather skinned elders who enjoy chasing the sunshine at any opportunity, I can only approve of their idea of the good life.

Montorosso is the northern most town of the Cinque Terre, a set of five towns on the northern Italian coast that have a reputation for being the less well known cousin of the French Rivera. They’re all within five miles of each other, linked by many trails as well as trains. It is here we are to spend our last few days in Italy, and upon our exiting the train, it becomes apparent that it was a good choice. The station exits some forty feet from the waterfront, a small beach lined with umbrellas and beach chairs lines the impossibly clear water.

Montorosso is small enough, that its not known to harbor reservations for people just staying one night, but hotel after hotel that I call, is completely filled up. Thankfully, tourist information points us to the only place left that still has open rooms, and we find ourselves with excellent seaside views steps away from the sand. I take the time to dive into the Mediterranean, an amazing body of water high in salinity, high in temperature, and disgracefully lacking in the wave department.

After our evening swim, we take the time to poke around Montorrosso. It’s a very picturesque environment, with restaurants clinging to the rocks on the cliffs, offering fine fare and stunning views. I poke into an old German pillbox, meant to protect the area against the Allies should they decide to go poking around and invade the Axis’s preferred vacation spot before they went and grabbed the French Riviera for themselves. The view is great, the ability to machine gun down enemies apparent, but after a few minutes of clambering the rocks hunkered down, I find all the weak points, the access routes that allow you to get up close and throw in a grenade, or squeeze a burst from a flamethrower and toast the inhabitants. If invading the Italian Riviera is necessary, I got the plans for its successful execution.

The rest of the town is a small collection of bars and eateries, all which are packed at this late hour. A collection of singing and dancing in the center of the town attracts our attention, and we find that they’re selling lasagna and risotto to the accompaniment of the music. We’re apparently stumbled on some sort of fundraiser, and we hand over our euros to chow on some entirely mediocre food. They also sell lemon peel glasses, and after befriending an American from Seattle who is traveling by her lonesome, she explains to us that we’ve stumbled on a festival of fishermen. Apparently, when a fisherman dies by the cruel hand of the sea, the fishermen all get together once a year, and sing songs to the widow’s wife in mourning. Over time, the festival has expanded to include the restaurants and bars, and everyone sings and cavorts on whether anyone has really died or not.

Which is fine, but does nothing to explain the damn lemon glasses. Having given us this piece of information, our newfound friend dances away into the crowd to rejoin the festivities, leaving us as puzzled as before. We finish the evening in a local pub, apparently well frequented by Americans, as they’ve left defaced dollar bills throughout the entire establishment as evidence of their passing. Moretti is the local beer here, and though it ranges from lager to a mild amber, I find it quite pleasing despite its lack of prestige.

Venice

Leaning tower of Venice

The next day dawns even later. I roll out at a disgusting eleven o’clock, and when we finally do make our way into Venice, it is well into the noon hour. Throughout the day, we  wander throughout Venice, with little rhyme or purpose, frequently getting lost and found again. One thing that’s particularly quint about Italians, is the way they hang their laundry between buildings on their clotheslines. Somehow, they usually match the pastel colors of the buildings passing along a very pleasing aesthetic, completely unlike the dirty looking laundry that collects outside the windows of buildings in Asia.

Italian women are a particularly wonderful thing as well. Though they come in all shapes and sizes, a significantly larger proportion of the population believes in rather sheer clothing, and as a result, spend considerable time ensuring that their undergarments match their clothes as well as enhance their figure, it is a clothing choice I can support without hesitation.

Venice is a purely tourist destination. The entire city is built of stone and brick in the middle of the water, for what reason, I cannot quite fathom. The cost must have been outrageous, and even now, transportation of goods and trash into and out of the island city must be done entirely on foot, using wheelbarrows and carts that work up and down these ridiculous stepped bridges.

Besides all that, the typical gondolas, romantic singers and guitar players, Venice is a city of artisans. There are several universities devoted to art and architecture here in the city, and students run to and fro amongst the press of tourists. Every shop seems to be another artisan outlet, glass and bead works, sculpture shops, and venetian masks all compete for our attention. And the venetian masks are fantastic, each one is more elaborate then the next, commanding prices into the hundred of dollars, never before have I been particularly intrigued by venetian balls and the related costuming, but here, with the outfits resplendent in details and intricacy, I suddenly have the urge to concoct a mask of my own and attend one of these elaborate events. And concoct a mask I will have to, because while the female masks are all sorts of beautiful, the male masks are overwhelmingly boring and similar. Long nose, horse head, jester mask, these are the archetypes I apparently must play with, I will have to change it all up and throw in some Batman.

Venice graffiti

Euro geeks and bad BO

Piazzo Centrale in Firenze

Late. This air conditioned room in the heart of Florence hermetically sealed from the outside world has caused us to sleep in grossly. Our friends Meredith and John are on their way out to the airport to return to the states just as we make our way to checkout. A quick swap of travel books and some last minute tour advice, and we part ways. The morning is a wandering around to various false tourist attractions. The map says, Leonardo Da Vinci Musee, but apparently that means university or something, as tourists are not allowed. The market centrale is a nice change of pace from the usual assortment of historical landmarks, boasting a plethora of leather goods, and a diverse meat and produce market. The meat is particularly interesting; we find meticulously cleaned cow heads, and whole rabbits sans fur for sale.

Piazzo Centrale in Firenze

We wander down alleyways in a meandering fashion, back towards the south of Florence. We pop into the Medici palace flying the American colors the day before, and wander it’s cavernous interior filled with large marble statues of epic figures. A pair of wrestlers is particularly noticeable in that one of the wrestlers has a firm grasp on the other’s penis to extract whatever advantage he can. The next time a wrestler tries to talk his way out of the fact that wrestling is fruit filled fun, I’m going to show them this photograph.

Renaissance Statues

When we’re done we exit into a back alley, and run into a local snack shop offering; self serve wine and a small deli. The venue is packed with locals, and we stop in to see what the locals are eating. Quite a bit better then the tourists is my final verdict after eating a spicy eggplant with proscuitto on a panini, by far the most flavor I’ve enjoyed in this country so far.

By noon we’ve progressed back to the back alleys of the Pitti Palace. The complex is a sprawling mess of art galleries and gardens. The gardens prove to be a hot, unkept, and largely unimpressive collection whose only redeeming factor is some of the better views of the city. We pass the Belevedere fort, which is closed, apparently because two people died in the same spot due to mysterious causes. Supposedly, dogs and cats have died or had various maladies when around this specific location over the years as well, and so protesters have forced the government’s hand and had this location closed, perhaps permanently.

Back in the city proper, we wander around seeking gelato, and by chance stumble into a popsicle vendor instead who boasts popsicles made from the very highest quality organic fruit puree we are assured. Which is fine by me, as they prove to be some of the best popsicles I’ve ever encountered.

A block away from the Duomo, we run into a bona fide geek shop, packed with Magic: The Gathering cards, Warhammer 40K figurines, and Dungeon and Dragon books. Magic cards go for a pretty euro, and I find myself wondering if I could get a better price on my ancient collection in Europe then in the States. In the back, I come across a guy and girl playing some western game I vaguely recall. In front the display is packed with Harry Potter wands. Harry and Ron’s are the most expensive, until I spot Dolores Umbridge’s wand, a disgusting affair that looks more like a dildo then a wand, it rests on a disgustingly pink and gold display unit, and I suddenly recall how revolting the character was in the movies. What is just as disgusting however, is the amount of funk coming off these geeky Italian men. Euros often display a pride in BO that is unheard of in the States, and here, you combine geeky funk with Euro BO, and the stench is overwhelming. Bee Jin made a cursory once through the shop before the smell assaulted her senses and she’s waiting outside. When I finally am without, she asks incredulously.

“Do you not smell that?”

“Oh I smell it all right,” I reply, wiping a tear from my eye. “But I’m white, so I can tolerate  it a bit longer then you. Still, disgusting.” I agree.

Dante’s church and quiet parts of eastern Florence wrap up our tour, and we return to the train station for our journey to Venice. The train is a modern EuroStar affair, the fastest of the TrainItalia trains, and I am somewhat disgruntled by the fact that it’s so late and I cannot witness our speed. Instead all I get is the popping of ears and pressure as we roar through the Italian countryside.

Dante's Church

We get off in Venice, but apparently one stop too early, so the cab ride to our hotel is a bit more ridiculous then it need be. The Hilton we’ve checked into is very nice, with Aeron chairs and real double beds of excellent comfort. Up until this point, every bed we’ve been in has been two twin beds that are pushed together to create a double for couples, or pulled apart for singles such as ourselves. For each of us to have a full sized double bed is an unlooked for luxury. Outside we wait for the bus that will take us into Venice proper. It is here I spot my first prostitute, waiting at the gas station across the street. Her pimp drives up, and then drives off, and suddenly I have a revelation why I’ve seen so few prostitutes in all my travels. I stay at hotels which are neither nasty enough for prostitutes, nor fancy enough for them. Here, at the Hilton, suddenly is a venue where work is probably easy enough to find, with accommodations to match.

Venice is a maze of stepped bridges and stone streets. I watch people maneuver luggage up and down the stepped bridges, some of recent construct, and can only wonder why nobody uses smooth, sloping bridges. Dinner is a pizza, at some chain looking establishment. I get some pizza that promises to be death on a plate, as evidenced by the skull and crossbones accompanying the hotness rating of the pizza. It’s delightfully flavorful, and of robust body compared to the other Italian pizzas I’ve had so far. The heat is a long way from death on a plate, but it is hot enough that I know that the next day is going to be rather uncomfortable in the restroom. We do a quick run through of Venice in the dark, but arrive at our bus stop just as the last bus is pulling away from the evening, and are forced to take another expensive cab back to our hotel at the mainland. There, as we pass each gas station, I see a pair of working girls, waiting for a John, and take amusement in witnessing a glimpse of the seedy underbelly of Venice.

Urine discipline.

Duomo

The next morning we pack into John and Meredith’s rental Fiat, a small little Panda which barely accommodates the four of us and our luggage in Tetris fashion. For a day, our paths will coincide to the nearby city of Florence, and we partake in a short road trip through the Tuscany countryside with our LA neighbors. The main highways are all toll roads in Italy, and are well maintained and serviced as a result. Rest stops loom above the highway and are well equipped with shops and eateries in the latest fashion. Restrooms don’t have seats however, so suddenly one must engage the quad muscles in a hover fashion like women over the basin in order to complete one’s business.

Florence is a warm, typical mediterranean looking city has more resemblance to a living museum then anything else, it’s apartments built up solidly some three to four stories, betraying the population density and sophistication that existed in this city six hundred years before. It is warm though, resembling east LA in climate, and the Italians are suitably tanned as a result. Indeed, I run across “gone tanning” signs in shop windows, whether in mockery or sincerity I can’t tell, but it does underly the truth of the country.

We set to explore the city and sites, and immediately are oppressed by the overwhelming presence of the Duomo, which I take to mean two domes. Apparently, there is an inner dome, and an outer dome, one supporting the other. The Duomo is a gothic cathedral done in particularly vibrant colors, even garish by gothic standards. Though the structure is impressive in the extreme, I feel that something is missing by the fact that it rests on ground level with the street, something of this size and massiveness feels deserving of some sort of raised structure to accommodate the structure appropriately.  The structure is incredibly huge, a massive Renaissance block of marble and brick that boasts the first dome in the world completed since the fall of the Roman empire some one thousand years before.

We pause for a moment in a crowded square next to a Medici palace of some sort, it’s a curious looking thing, part church, part palatial apartments, and part fort, the entire structure defies immediate classification. Even more confusing, the structure boasts an Italian and European Union flag… With a US flag flying high above.

“What in the world is our flag doing up there?” I ask bewilderedly.

“Haven’t you heard of 9/11?,” John replies. I facepalm stupidly, unable to believe I’ve forgotten, and impressed that the Italians haven’t.

The Leonardo museum is a rather lame affair, but the Galileo museum makes up for it, packed with intricate scientific instruments that led to the verification of a heliocentric universe. Here we also witness elaborate wax sculptures of complicated childbirths made more then two hundred years before. The dawn of modern anatomy comes with particularly brutal visualizations of forceps inserted into the vagina to enable extraction of difficult births. The procedures and tools seem barely helpful, and gives explanation to the necessity of cesarian section.

Eventually it’s late in the afternoon, and we stop for beer and pizza. The beer is italian, so is nothing special in nature, but in the sweltering Tuscany heat, is well appreciated, and strangely, as the trip progresses, I come to prefer Moretti’s particularly unimpressive heritage. A full liter goes down my gullet, with an unsatisfying margarita pizza that I expected to resemble some sort of caprese but instead has more in common with a basic cheese pizza.

We leave to view the Pitti Palace, but are disappointed when we find it closed; it is at this point that my bladder comes knocking, hard. The party decides that we need to head back to our hotel, and by the end of the journey, my bladder is so distended that I’m sweating bullets from every pore in my body, trying to dissipate the excess moisture. The self-discipline pays off, and I make it to a urinal in time but the relief is so relaxing, that I pass out back in the hotel after the hair raising experience. Note to self, holding a liter of liquid in your body for sixty minutes is about as exhausting as any sexual activity I’ve ever performed. Bee Jin is much amused by the whole performance, especially when she reveals that I’m running around with a map of all the public restrooms in Florence after the fact.

When I do come to, we head out to dinner, another mediocre experience. The server tries to sell us on secondis and what have you, but I’m unwilling to pursue mediocrity further, and stick to putting the minimal amount of food into my gullet. Gelato and small meals is my formula at this point. Though not the largest fan of ice cream and sweets, my grading scale is a lot less critical at the moment, and the sweet coolness is a relief in the heat that follows us around the living museum.

Florence at sunset

A Tuscany Wedding

Old Cameras

Wedding day. Dense clouds enshroud the valley below, and a thick dew covers the otherwise dry hills. I stack in breakfast and wait for Brian’s cousin to come pick me up to take me to the wedding preparations at the villa. JP arrives shortly, and we fruitlessly do a brief search for a grocery store of some sort, as the villa is without supplies, and people are anticipating breakfast. Instead, JP makes a run out into the villa’s garden and scrounges up whatever presents itself to a makeshift breakfast. Cabbage and tomato salad with scrambled eggs and peppers is the menu and nobody complains, though I’m quite happy to have tucked in handsomely at my own hotel previously.

Wedding preparations for myself resemble the army with a hurry up and wait attitude. Now that I’m actually at the villa, there seems no press for me to be there at all, and I doze off by the pool while the wedding chaos swirls around me. And chaos it is, the villa is as remote as any destination in my homestate of Wyoming, on top of a remote ridge, accessible only by a treacherous gravel dirt road that twists and turns, and denies many of the italian vehicles passage as they stall out on the steep road.

The wedding planner seems to be a particular problem, strong language follows almost any phone conversation with her, and I am particularly glad that it’s not my problem. “Don’t have a wedding in Italy,” Alyssa advises, the bride to be passing on her hard learned intelligence.

Eventually the wedding commences, me in my tuxedo playing the role of usher in this bridal party, amid a fantastic landscape harboring an extravagant villa. The decorations are rather amazing, the piles and piles of flowers rivaling nothing I’ve seen since the day my uncle was wed some twenty years ago to a senator’s daughter (niece?) in Washington DC. The day however is murderously warm, and rivers of sweat run down my chest in the confines of my three piece.

Something hitches in the chamber orchestra. Our wedding party is extremely short, and the orchestra keeps repeating their last page of music because the wedding planner hasn’t communicated to them that the wedding procession has ended. The music drags on and on, the orchestra looking more and more desperate as nobody comes up, Alyssa in full bridal garb getting more and more frustrated as her bridal music has not played to allow her to process down the aisle. Eventually, Alyssa’s sister takes charge, informing them to change the music, and Alyssa finally makes her appearance, resplendent in a mermaid style bridal dress. For the rest of us, it is a relief that things can move on, as mascara melts in the afternoon heat, and the flower petals we’re supposed to shower the bride and groom with are rapidly wilting.

When they are finally wed, they take off for their pictures, and the rest of us lounge around, drinking strange orange Italian drinks, and eating fancy h’ordeurs. Here I get to watch two families attempting to interact as they’re brought together in the periphery of marriage. A couple characters instantly stand out amongst the family. Paul, is Brian’s stepdad, and is a self-admitted redneck from Alabama. He’s got a stash of beer in the fridge which he indulges in frequently, and I take an instant liking to the fellow and his rustic edges. In many ways, his unease with the unknown, in food, drink, and Italy, are something I can empathize with in my own Wyoming roots. Though I’ve long since moved on in my regard for the world, I sense a comforting colloquialism in Paul’s mannerisms and world outlook. The other character is Larry, Brian’s birth father. The man has a lazy eye that Brian has inherited slightly, but his conversation and history make for fascinating listening, and I am entertained by his stories, and large heart laced with scar tissue from an emotionally strained life.

Finally, late in the evening, the bride and groom return, allowing the jazz set to leave, and for us to proceed to our wedding dinner. A sumptuous spread is put before us, filet mignon, lobster, and an excellent pasta in a well reduced sauce, a spread of red and white wines, and an abundance of champagne. Even the bread here is good, which is a surprise, as for the past few days, I have been entirely underwhelmed by Italian bread, which up to this point I’ve considered to be bland and without character whatsoever.

As dinner ends, we make our way to the opposite side of the building for the wedding cake. A very modern affair, which is enhanced by a spread of fireworks; this has now officially gotten to be quite the extravagant event.

And also the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Apparently we were supposed to get an extravagant fireworks show, as opposed to the merely dazzling one, and Aylssa’s tensions with the wedding planner comes to a head, the yelling brought indoors as various members of the family try to assist the situation.

For the rest of us, there is wedding cake, and ridiculously sumptuous desserts that I dig into to ignore the war going on inside. Eventually the wedding planner leaves in a flurry of shouts, doing their best to avoid a stall out on the road outbound and having to face the disgrace of coming back to face Alyssa.

The mood has dipped considerably, but we patch that up with a flurry of shots and moves on the dance floor. Larry now busts out his hidden weapon, the man is quite well versed in many forms of dance, and he leads many a woman out onto the floor, schooling them on the floor right and left. I haven’t put this much effort into dancing since the last wedding a year ago, but I discover that tuxedo shoes slip and slide on the dance floor, making previously unobtainable dance moves suddenly easy, although treacherous as more then once I almost end up on my face.

The night finally ends with Alyssa and Brian diving in full wedding regalia into the pool, much to my shock. I’m strongly tempted to follow suit, but refrain as I don’t want to take the spotlight off the bridal couple, nor am I particularly interested in racking up additional charges on my rental tuxedo in the event of inadvertently ruining something beyond repair.

Tuscany Sunset

A pointless drive in a Panda.

Morning in Tuscany

Sunlight streams into the open windows of my bedroom, accented by the coo of pigeons and the morning crow of a nearby rooster. The entire rustic scene is quite delightful, and  I wallow in the golden light of morning till the nearby church bells peal eight bells.
Breakfast is provided by the hotel, and I dine on a pleasant supply of croissants and fresh fruit; the latter of which is delightfully ripe. As midday approaches, John, Meredith and I make an effort to reach Siena, some 70km away over twisting mountain roads. The tiny Fiat Panda struggles over the hills under John’s expert control, and we join the parade of tiny cars, darting in between trucks and marveling at the suddenly large proportions of an Audi A3 that passes us every once in a while.

Siena, proves too much for our itinerary, and we stop at a random restaurant at a random town in the middle of nowhere to grab our midday meal. Meredith and I order the menu del gierno, which proves to be a large order of random things that we don’t quite understand. After we order, Meredith pulls out her phrase book and we make the realization that I had just ordered a plate of “boiled meat.” Which later turns out to be veal boiled in a lemon sauce. The pasta ragu is welcome, as the past two days have been the meager affair of airplane food, but the boiled veal in lemon sauce proves to be too much, as does the insalata, which is a dismal affair with only oil and vinegar to serve as dressing. Like the day before, the lettuce is an old and bitter plate of fail.

The server takes personal offense to our not cleaning our plates, and I wonder if we’ll always have to vacuum our food to avoid the hurt puppy dog eyes in the future. We take our leave, and head back in the direction we came, leaving the random stop in the middle of Siena province.

Our next stop is a remote villa where the wedding will be held, the next hill over from our own hotel. We navigate a treacherous gravel road towards a grand manse next to a pool overlooking the valley. Within we find our friends who are to get married on the morrow, along with their extended the family. The property is a rustic affair with all the trappings of modernity. Apparently the property it sits on, and the surrounding country side, is a historical landmark; purposely tilled and planted, the entire area is done in such a matter since the 14th century to fulfill the aesthetic needs of painters. The property itself boasts a pool with a sauna and underground shower, and I take the opportunity to take advantage of the facilities in the warm midday sun.

Shuttles are supposed to run from the main road, back to the villa, and we all watch amusedly as they struggle with the hill and sharp cutbacks. The bride and groom are my friends Brian and Alyssa, and they’re struggling with unwanted last minute woes. The wedding planner has charged them twice, and despite getting the charge removed from their credit card, the charge is coming back time and time again, despite frustrated phone conversations. Nothing like arguing money in a foreign language to make one frustrated.

Rehearsal Dinner

In the evening, we partake in a rehearsal dinner back at our own hotel at il Poggio. Though the meal is scheduled for 6:30 to take advantage of the golden hour for photos, numerous holdups ensure that the party does not arrive till an hour later, well into blue hour. Everyone looks sharp and dapper, Alyssa looks particularly stunning in a modern white gown of some sort that I could never hope to identify and we all sit down to enjoy the best that Il Poggio offers. The food is all local, hand crafted on the spot, and is indeed one of the best meals I’ve had in Italy so far.

And while all the vegetables are hand picked right here on the property, I wonder if Italians ever heard of salad dressing, what would they think when I put a bottle of “Italian” salad dressing in front of them, or better, a big ol crock of ranch? The appetizer is a spread of assorted cured meats and local baked bread. The main course is a pasta in spicy sauce, which is well reduced, but hardly spicy. The pasta is handmade, and while the unevenness of the fat noodles is particularly quaint, it’s hard to say that they’re particularly better then any other pasta I’ve ever had, except perhaps for the roughness of their texture, and how it allows them to absorb sauces better then the machined pastas we are typically used to. That being said, I’m a fan of angel hair pasta, that fine, delicate strand of pasta that requires the sweet precision of machines to create. Thank goodness for the tomato, to think that Italians probably used half a dozen ingredients for over a thousand years, and when the tomato was brought over from the new world, they suddenly had seven.

The wine flows freely into the evening, as everyone gets to know each other, raucous stories are traded, and the laughter intrudes on whatever delicate affair the Italians on vacation are used to. Though some of our party hints that this night could go on well into the evening, we all bid adieu, as we all seek some shut eye before anticipation of the big event that looms before us on the morrow.

Roma

Airlines on the bad list. Alaska Airlines, US Airways, North Korean Air.

Airlines on the better list: Frontier, Virgin, Cathay Pacific, Dragon Air, Asiana

So the flight to Italy is on US Airways, which is a resounding disappointment. The planes are old, the service is skimpy, the inflight entertainment is largely nonexistent, and the seats are small to the point that I can’t even stuff my carryon underneath. Boooo…

But there is some small consolation, I’m starting to be able to sleep on planes a bit. Not for long stretches, and not very easily, but I can succumb to exhaustion on planes finally, and that’s something to be excited about I suppose. Actually, that’s a huge improvement. One of the benefits of getting old I spose?

Rome International is something of a disappointment as well. In fact, LAX just barely beats it out for the lousiest first world airport I’ve been to to date. Italian customs is a joke, the passport agent waves me through with just a brief question of my destination, no stamp, nothing. Next time I’m bringing a bunch of invasive species just to teach the Romans that Gauls are not the only invading hoard they have to worry about.

Rome countryside is rather underwhelming as well. Though you’d expect a feeling of antiquity to permeate the experience, you instead just feel like everything is run down. Concrete cracks, graffiti proliferates, weeds run rampant tearing up mortar and brick. Out the train window, a tall weed that looks like corn covers the immediate landscape entirely. The train itself is less then amazing. A dirty old thing, the seats don’t recline, and the train is neither fast nor amazing despite being an express train to Rome’s city center. In fact comparatively speaking, this train ranks far below China’s trains, and in some cases comes in below even the trains I ran with in Vietnam. Somewhat disconcerting considering that you expect a first world experience in Rome.

Between the news of Italy’s economic woes, and the personal anecdotes of the complete lack of jobs in Italy, I suppose it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise however that Italy is on the slump. There is no economic thirst, no vigor to this landscape. The middle age workforce is missing from the picture. No where do I see the professional business casual one might see anywhere in the US or Asia, the tell tale sign of the working professional, the wage maker of the economic infrastructure. No office buildings, no manufacturing buildings. Instead, I see the elderly, and the young; this, it would appear is what a service economy looks like.

The central Rome Terminal is a bustling affair of tourists however, and I wander around aimlessly, trying to recall how to get to my destination, or even recall what my destination is. Maps appear to be in short supply in this country, and it is only through my tour book that I finally puzzle out where I need to go. It has been a long day already however, and I’m famished so I find a self serve cafe in the train station and help myself to a fruit salad and cobb salad, and am entirely distressed to find the salad dry and bitter, with no hit of dressing anywhere in the establishment. I eat the food mechanically, pushing nutrients and calories down without enjoyment, until I can withstand the awful flavor no longer and push the bowl of disgusting aside.

My hunger temporarily quelled, I move along to a travel agency to get help to my destination, a little town called Chiusi. The travel agent assists me well enough alternating between english and italian in an easy back and forth manner that I pick up the intent if not the exact meaning. This train is no more impressive then the Leonardo express that brought me here from the airport, the on board restroom looking like a sad imitation of a Vietnamese first class water closet. It is at this point I decide that I’ll never run down Amtrak or our domestic train systems again. For all their failures, and our lack of funding of the system, they are quite a bit more palatable then this decrepit railway that holds Italy together. Though I wish to watch the landscape, and am fearful of missing my stop, sleep hits like a ton of bricks, and I nap fitfully throughout the ride.

I disembark at Chiusi with little affair, and am plagued by the need to use the restroom, and here I find something I’ve never encountered before; a bathroom attendant, who appears to make this her very real and possibly even state sanctioned job. I can’t tell for certain if you’re supposed to tip her, or if the fee was 50 cents, but in any case I give her 50 cents to avoid any potential disapproval.

I wander around the train station in a ghost town, looking for a car rental. Here I am thwarted however; the town is dead beyond belief because I’ve arrived right during the lunchtime break. In the states, I would expect all the workers to go to cafes and the like for their midday meal. I am at a loss where everyone goes during their midday break here, which judging by the signs last between 2 and 3 hours a day, and shutters the town in its entirety.

I shrug and take a cab instead, not eager to hang around the train station for an extra 2 hours just to rent a car. The cab driver has a limited english vocabulary, and I have an even more limited grasp of the italian language, so our journey and communication is basic and quiet. However the cab driver goes to great pains to communicate to me that he is going to pass a slow moving truck by going into on coming traffic, and not to be alarmed. I nod my understanding and acquiescence, he revs the tiny car as fast as it’s little motor will go and we pass the truck without incident. I am however, terribly bemused at how apologetic the cabbie is that he had to perform the maneuver. I wonder if he’s trying to repair a sullied reputation amongst Italian cabbies, or if he simply gets a lot of extraordinarily timid english speaking passengers.

The landscape moves to golden rolling hills with holdfasts on top of any major hill, and a close collection of buildings around it. The hotel I’m staying at is the Il Poggio, and it proves to be an epic little retreat with a commanding view of the landscape around it. Though I am deathly tired, I resolve to continue the day, hoping to combat jet lag and win. I walk up a nearby hill with a cluster of stone and brick buildings. The avenues have steps, and are much too small for any motor vehicle, and betray its ancient heritage. Here there are picture opportunities galore. The perfect, typical Roman landscape is preserved entirely. I can’t wait to take my camera out on the morrow, as today, my eyes are so shot I am having trouble merely focusing on the simple objects in front of me.

The hotel grounds are home to a startling number of cats, all sunning themselves luxuriantly in the warm Tuscany sun. On a distant hillside, the hotel’s equestrian farm can be seen, and closer, a pair of women have chatted for hours about nothing in the shade of a cafe.

My friends Meredith and John have arrived in the late evening, and we take our supper at a small restaurant that advertises pizza as their speciality. I make an order of chicory greens out of pure curiosity, the only knowledge I have of the substance is that the roots can be roasted to make a poor imitation of coffee. The greens turn out to be a disappointment, but whether it’s because of the greens themselves, or the shoddy way they are boiled and dumped on a plate with a wedge of lemon, I couldn’t say. The pizza is decidedly mediocre, whisper thin and displaying neither the visual or sensual complexity I have become accustomed to in even my own creations. Day one of my culinary adventure in Italy is decidedly a disappointment.

Whale chasing.

Victoria Harbor

Sunday Brunch is an american enough experience a block away from our hotel. Long lines, familiar looking food, and homeless bums and meth heads providing the morning’s entertainment. Perhaps Canada gets the socialist tag, but there are still the homeless here, looking for the odd handout.

Our particular bum opens up with poetry which is slightly amusing, but quickly devolves into crazy territory, regaling us with tales of a store that moves three times around the block, over the course of several months, and how that coincides with specific license plates, and how that leads him to be the witness of great miracles and the Devil, and somehow the Vatican will take notice of his crazy ramblings when he writes them.

Of course he asks for change as well, for “coffee” he explains, and we pass the spare coinage over, hoping to be rid of his presence. In particular, he’s got some gnarly ass fingernails which make my skin continuously crawl. Vietnam was horrifying with all their long nails, but these are long and uncared for in the slightest, and I can feel my neck hairs standing in disgust. After quite a while more of unwanted monologue, he finally takes off… And returns some twenty minutes later while we’re still in line to wish us a “happy breakfast” and sipping a cup of coffee. How strange it is that it’s actually what he said he’d buy and not alcohol.

After breakfast, our party splits up; half our party wishes to go rent scooters and tour the local countryside, and while I’m all about motorbikes in foreign countries, I’ve got my mind set on whale watching today, so Eric, my coworker in Seattle, tags along for our aquatic adventure.

The boats we grab a ride on are small open air  craft, with a seating capacity of twelve and brandishing two two hundred horsepower motors on the back. They’re dashing little craft, and require us to be wearing dry suits as protection from the ocean spray we are expecting to encounter. Our boat driver is a cute dreadlocked girl who obviously is more comfortable out on her boat and around whales then she is around people, and she gives us a quick rundown of her safety rules, which largely boils down to, don’t stand up when she’s going fast. Fair enough, we navigate the harbor passing incoming whale watching boats and ferries from Port Townsend, puttering along sedately. One of the incoming boats throws her lunch, a giant cookie; she misses her catch, and it falls into the water. I’ve written it off as lost, but she’s a persistent hippie thing, and motors the boat around to fish her cookie out of the ocean water, half sludge and brown goo. “I need the extra salt” she laughs and digs in.

Prince of Whales

About the same time she throws open the throttle and the boat roars into 40 knots of burly, bouncing up and down on the waves. At this speed, at this altitude, there is nothing to this experience that resembles a boat or seasickness, instead, it’s just a giant roller coaster, and my lips peel back in excitement as I feel my ass lift off the seat and slam down, over and over again. This, this, THIS. Speed in your face. Surfing and SPEED. Damn it feels good.

Orca Dinner

She motors us around some rocks and points out some seals, quiet and curious. Quiet because the orcas haven’t visited them yet. Apparently, Orcas are picky eaters as well, and some adhere to a strict pescatarian diet. The locals pods, are all pescatarians, and would not eat seals if it was the last choice on earth. “Enlightened” whales my vegetarian friends would call em. Transient orcas, those that travel the length of the pacific coast are just the opposite, eating only marine mammals. Captive transients apparently would rather die then subsist on disgusting fish flesh. Though our guide says they act like different species, I would say that more then anything, they’re displaying different cultural values.

And so our chase for orcas begins, we find a pod quickly enough, harassed at a distance by a fair number of whale watching boats. Everyone is so distant however, that the novelty of seeing orcas quickly wears off and I nap in the bright summer sun. While surfing, I’ve had the pleasure of being within touching distance of dolphins, so I’m definitively less impressed by our distant encounters with their large killer cousins.

Eventually, she motors around a lighthouse covered in seals, California seals, and Stella Sea lions. For a while they provide more amusement, grunting and snorting. “It’s all males,” our driver informs us. “This is a bachelor hang out, not a breeding colony.” And so we watch large males head but and push each other off the sunning rocks, vying for their status up and down the sea lion hierarchy.

Abruptly, our driver guns the boat away, apparently to chase another pod of whales, and my hat flips off in the wind. I shrug and give it up for lost. It was a beat up old adidas hat, some two or three years old. My favorite, but hardly irreplaceable. Our driver however, has other ideas, and displays the same persistence with my hat that she did with her cookie earlier. Maneuvering the boat to make a pass for it. I toss my camera equipment to Eric, and hook my feet into the seat, leaning far over the side grasping for my hat, submerging my head in the process. No dice.

Again she flips the boat, and I reach for it, but it passes underneath the boat, and is snatched up by a frenchman on the other side, and he hands it to me, soaked in sea water.

“Now don’t lose it!” she admonishes me, and I shout my thanks. The Puerto Rican woman behind me claps enthusiastically.

“The most excitement of the whole trip!”

I grin and wring the sea water out of my hat. After three years, I suppose the thing needed a bath of some sort.

Orcas

America’s Hat

Flowers at the Butchart Gardens

I’ve never been to Canada before. I’ve been to Mexico, North Korea, and points further east, but never Canada. Which, all things considered, is a little strange, because Canada is probably the best first option for a first time traveler from the US. More importantly, I’ve been coming up to Seattle for three years now in the summer, and still never been to America’s Hat.

That ends now, sorta. Here I am, sitting on a morning ferry from Seattle to Victoria, Canada. Granted it’s on Vancouver Island, so I’m still not going to be on mainland Canada, but, it’s a start. I’m traveling with a co worker and my childhood friend and college roommate as well as his fiance. It’s a three hour ferry ride to Victoria, and I become a quick student in gin rummy and spades winning my first two games. There is some significant chop en route throwing Jeff’s fiance Zoe into fits with an upset stomach, but the games are engaging enough that I disassociate from the turbulent motion almost entirely.

Victoria harbor is a quaint little thing, idyllic and pretty, and we are greeted by seaplanes landing and taking off shuttling people too and from the mainland. Customs is surprisingly tough, the Canadian customs agents all wear bulletproof jackets and are fully armed. I wonder if Americans are the unwashed uncivilized horde to them. Beyond the customs check, we cross over into Canada, on a bright crisp summer day.

Canada, or at least Victoria, is quite the picturesque little microcosm of the US. The landscaping is well attended to, the buildings are a pleasant mashup of modern architecture and colonial stonework, the people are attractive, and their manners are ridiculous. Please thank you, and apologies drip off of every sentence, and a permanently bemused smile etches itself into my face as a result. This apparently, isn’t necessarily how mainlanders act however I’m told, rather, as North America’s largest island, this is Canadian Aloha spirit. Even so, Canada, and Canadians give you the impression of exuberant six year olds with rosy cheeks, the entire population is so bloody cute you want to pinch their cheeks in a grandmotherly fashion. We walk down the street with the light traffic and horse drawn carriages, looking for a place to breakfast. We stumble across the Bard and Banker, a Scottish pub that comes with recommendations from co-workers that have already been here, and we drop in to sample their wares.

Bard and Banker

Everyone here is in skirts and kilts, which, which brings me two realizations. Canadians got some great looking legs, and they are remarkably tolerant of the cold. The temperature is barely mid 60s, and yet, every girl out here is rocking short shorts and t-shirts. I am reminded of my childhood in Colorado, where we’d be in shorts if the sun was out, playing soccer in the snow, and though I remember how 60 degrees used to be warm, that memory hasn’t followed to me to California.

Our hotel is a modest affair of a Best Western, made more curious by the fact that it’s on geek street and gay street. The block is wall to wall comic and game shops, anchored on the one end by gay night clubs. That is something I think I’d pay to see, a gay Magic tournament, if ever there was a place where that could happen, this seems like it.

Emo Bronies

Our plan is to take the bus out to the Butchart Gardens some 30 km away, and we wait at the stop for the last bus. It is here that you realize how bloody white Canada is. Everyone on the bus is white, young white, working white, old white. All white, all painfully polite. The argument that other countries in the world do things better then the US is suddenly brought into question. While it is nice that everyone rides the bus here, and Japan doesn’t have guns, and Norway has amazing socialized health care, the example before my eyes reminds me that those solutions were implemented in very homogeneous societies; while we may not have the best system, we should be commended for challenging more racial and social barriers then any other nation I’ve visited to date. The bus finally arrives, but it’s packed, and the bus driver informs us that he’ll radio that he had to leave people behind, and another bus will be along for us shortly.

We acquiesce, and settle to wait. An hour later however, no bus ever shows up, and we hail a cab instead. Outside of the tourist downtown, Victoria looks much like anywhere in the US with strip malls, apartment complexes, and grass. This would be the white America that our conservative friends in the midwest always dream of. What irony that this situation is nourished by the teat of social welfare.

The Butchart Gardens are an extensive garden built and maintained by the Butchart family, originally for the purpose of entertaining their private guests, but now has been landscaped and expanded to the point where it is now a large commercial enterprise. Ever since my first botanical garden tour in St. Louis almost twenty years ago, I’ve been a sucker for nature, wild and managed alike, and a good garden is always high on my priority list of tourist attractions to attend. While very pretty, and well landscaped into the old limestone quarry, the gardens aren’t anything terribly out of the ordinary, but it does finish with an impressive fireworks display, synchronized to opera and classical music. It’s a good show, and makes up for the fact that I didn’t get any fireworks on the 4th back in debt ridden California.

That evening we visit an Irish pub, which is filled with lively good natured patrons and great beer. I try a local ginger flavored beer which proves spicy and tasty if rather light in body. Victoria however, closes early, and the clock hasn’t even hit one before last call is announced in polite and cordial tones and we’re chased out into the street.