So today was a bike-free day! After yesterday we desperately needed it. Well, ok, it wasn’t totally bike-free… we did bike from the Swiss hotel to the train station. But that was all of a mile. Anyways, we had been worried about the possibility of the train strike still affecting us. As you’ll recall, the south of France was experiencing a strike earlier in the week, which had hosed up our plans for getting around the coast. Though I forgot to mention it before, we had been intending to take the train to Genoa at one point yesterday, but found that there was either the same strike in Italy or a sympathy strike, which is what forced us to ground in Savona. But I spoke with the front desk at the hotel last night and found out that since today’s Saturday, the trains are running per normal. Apparently European strikes are a weekday thing… even strikers have the weekend off under socialism. Hahaha.
So anyways. We got our tickets and jumped on the train, and rode the 100 miles or more from Savona to the Cinque Terra. We had no idea which one we would stay in, but we figured we’d skip the first one (Monterosso) as it’s the most touristy and would likely be the hardest to find a hotel in, and I’d been there yearsssss before. We ended up jumping off the train at the last of the 5 towns, in Riomaggiore.
Riomaggiore is a tiny little town that’s nestled in what I’m pretty sure is effectively a fjord. It’s a very steep valley running down to the Med from these high-ass mountains that sit very very close to the water. So the town is super-steep and basically is built like a bunch of switchbacks running up the side of the mountain. It’s also ludicrously beautiful and incredibly quaint… very touristy (though not as much as Monterosso), and easily in my top 3 places we visited in Europe on this trip (with Girona and either Avignon or Lucca, the latter of which my narrating voice hasn’t been to yet, so pretend I didn’t mention that).
We walked our bikes up the super-steep hillside and found a hotel to check into. Our room looked out onto what we called the kirchenplatz (church square), which seemed filled with kids and villagers and flowers and birds at all hours of the day. It was terribly serene, at least for me. We hung out for a bit and watched some European track championships on tv, then headed down to get some food and try to hike between the towns. If you don’t know much about the Cinque Terra, they’re basically a series of 5 small Italian towns that, like Riomaggiore, are squeezed between the coast and these very steep coastal mountains. The road to get to them is really obnoxiously steep, which is why we had no intention of biking in (though maybe Dan and Ben will do a day trip tomorrow (they didn’t)). The towns are crazy beautiful, and there’s a hiking path along the Med that connects all 5. That path has some impressive vistas, and is absolutely worth doing. However, if you’re faint of leg, I’d suggest just going from Riomaggiore to the next one (Manarola); that stretch is pretty easy and still crazy pretty.
So our standing lunch included a bottle of wine, which Dan was hilariously still reluctant to drink openly on the street. At this point in the trip, however, I was an unabashed lush and had no problem letting the world know. But to reassure Dan that it was ok, I asked the lady at the store “posso bere out there?” and she was says with gusto, “Si!! C’e Italia!!!!” To which I turned to Dan and said, “see?! It’s Italia!!!!” And so we drank on the streets. =D After lunch, we picked up the most amazing gelato of the trip, and ate it as we hiked to town #4. The hike was, as mentioned, beautiful. Though the water was incredibly choppy… normally people would try to swim in the rock cove of Riomaggiore, but that would have been suicidal on a day like this. Still, we saw people rock diving in town #4… brave souls. We decided to continue on to town #3, even though it was getting late in the day. We finally rolled into town #3 (starts with a C?) at 7ish. #3 is perched high on a cliff overlooking the Med, and there’s quite the climb up to it from the hiking path. But the view was well worth it.
We grabbed dinner in town (at one of I think 2 restaurants in this tiny-ass village) and Ben won dinner… his pasta dish was phenomenal. The great part was we had no idea what it was… it wasn’t until days later that we looked up the name and found out that the secret, delicious ingredient was none other than… pig cheek!!! Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, pig cheek!!!
So by then it was getting dark, and so we gave up on hiking to the next town (which Dan had done years earlier and said is a bitch of a hike). Instead we walked down to the train station to catch a train back to Riomaggiore. On the way down we ran into 2 Canadian ladies who were headed to Monterosso for a night out on the town… they were pretty fun, tho poorly dressed/shoed for running up and down steep cliffs. After a bit of a wait, we made it back to Rio, where we grabbed some booze and wandered town at night, drinking, eventually ending up by the water. After we were good and drunk, we picked our way back up through the precariously steep alleys to our place and passed out. Yay!
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
CEBToD: Typical Day
I feel like I should log what a typical day for us was, because by the end we’d fallen into a definite pattern to our activities. So here goes.
Each morning we’d wake up around 8am and grab breakfast, either at the hotel if it was free and/or didn’t suck (as many French ones did), or using a combo of grocery store and coffee shop. Then we’d head back to the room, pack up our stuff, suit up in our bibs and jerseys, and lube our taints with copious globs of chamois cream. While one of us checked out, the others would get the bikes from lock-up and start loading them with the panniers and trunk. We popped Aleve daily, to help forestall aches/pains. I also was taking a multivitamin and something called “Sportslegs” that I’d gotten from Performance Bikes… I figured any edge I could get I would need. =D Then we’d re-fill our water bottles with bottled water from 1.5L bottles (Evian, usually), and then put on sunscreen and sunglasses, clip in, and start biking around 10am.
The biking part of the day had been planned out the previous nights over maps we were carrying with us. We basically would plot out what we thought a realistic goal for a next city would be, including if we thought we’d need to take a train at any point. We would pick smaller roads to avoid fast traffic, and tried to stick as close to the coast as possible. Over the weeks, we learned more and more about how to read those maps… we started finding bike paths on them, and elevations, and indications of grade in the road… it’s amazing how much information those maps contain!!!
During the actual biking, we would try to maintain a steady pace, like say 16 mph. That would of course depend on the grade, the amount of sleep/drinking we’d done the night before, when in the day it was, etc. When going uphill, Dan and Ben went first, because they were faster than me, so I’d catch them at the top where they were waiting. Going downhill, Dan typically wanted me going first in case something happened to me. =D Given that I’d only recently wiped out and broken my collarbone, I was still a bit nervous going downhill and would try to keep my speed to 20-25 mph, which basically meant riding my brakes heavily the whole time.
The biking days were punctuated with frequent pee breaks (Dan’s bladder is a wee little one), as well as breaks to snack and drink and take pictures of the beauteousness that surrounded us. For a good swath of the trip we were carrying port flasks, and would take nips throughout the day. ;) We usually stopped somewhere for lunch around 1 or so, and ate pretty heartily, including an espresso at the end. We also would stop in the mid-afternoon around 4 for another espresso and maybe some gelato.
We generally rolled into town around 6pm, after 8 hrs of being “on the road”. We usually only spent 4-4.5 hrs of those 8 actually rolling, tho, with the rest of the time spent on the stops mentioned above. Once we got into town, we tried to find the old center where the pedestrian-only roads were, and then look for a hotel. The hotel had to be roughly 100 euros/night, accept 3 people, and have a place for us to lock up our bikes (we learned to ask about our bikes in 3 diff languages!). It was generally easy finding a hotel for ~100 euros that had triples, and almost every place took bikes. But we’d always ask about breakfast, too, and in so many places it was an extra 10 euros/person/day, and was never worth that much! So that was a bummer we learned to live with. =D
Once checked in, we locked our bikes in the basement/garage/lobby/wherever, and then went upstairs to clean up. We took turns showering, and would wash our bike clothes in the shower with us, using camp soap or body gel. We’d hang up our bike stuff to dry for use the next morning, get dressed in our civvies, and Dan would typically show us “the Marseille” (don’t ask!!!). While we were showering, one of us (usually Dan or Ben) would run out and get snacks, booze, and water bottles for that night and the next day. Once we were all ready, we would head out and wander the town, drinking and looking for a place to eat. Once we’d been fed and explored the town, we’d finish up drinking and head back to the hotel, and typically crash out by midnight. So that translates into roughly 4 hrs biking/day, 8 hrs sleeping/day, and the other 12 hrs spent eating, peeing, and wandering cities. =D
Good times!
Each morning we’d wake up around 8am and grab breakfast, either at the hotel if it was free and/or didn’t suck (as many French ones did), or using a combo of grocery store and coffee shop. Then we’d head back to the room, pack up our stuff, suit up in our bibs and jerseys, and lube our taints with copious globs of chamois cream. While one of us checked out, the others would get the bikes from lock-up and start loading them with the panniers and trunk. We popped Aleve daily, to help forestall aches/pains. I also was taking a multivitamin and something called “Sportslegs” that I’d gotten from Performance Bikes… I figured any edge I could get I would need. =D Then we’d re-fill our water bottles with bottled water from 1.5L bottles (Evian, usually), and then put on sunscreen and sunglasses, clip in, and start biking around 10am.
The biking part of the day had been planned out the previous nights over maps we were carrying with us. We basically would plot out what we thought a realistic goal for a next city would be, including if we thought we’d need to take a train at any point. We would pick smaller roads to avoid fast traffic, and tried to stick as close to the coast as possible. Over the weeks, we learned more and more about how to read those maps… we started finding bike paths on them, and elevations, and indications of grade in the road… it’s amazing how much information those maps contain!!!
During the actual biking, we would try to maintain a steady pace, like say 16 mph. That would of course depend on the grade, the amount of sleep/drinking we’d done the night before, when in the day it was, etc. When going uphill, Dan and Ben went first, because they were faster than me, so I’d catch them at the top where they were waiting. Going downhill, Dan typically wanted me going first in case something happened to me. =D Given that I’d only recently wiped out and broken my collarbone, I was still a bit nervous going downhill and would try to keep my speed to 20-25 mph, which basically meant riding my brakes heavily the whole time.
The biking days were punctuated with frequent pee breaks (Dan’s bladder is a wee little one), as well as breaks to snack and drink and take pictures of the beauteousness that surrounded us. For a good swath of the trip we were carrying port flasks, and would take nips throughout the day. ;) We usually stopped somewhere for lunch around 1 or so, and ate pretty heartily, including an espresso at the end. We also would stop in the mid-afternoon around 4 for another espresso and maybe some gelato.
We generally rolled into town around 6pm, after 8 hrs of being “on the road”. We usually only spent 4-4.5 hrs of those 8 actually rolling, tho, with the rest of the time spent on the stops mentioned above. Once we got into town, we tried to find the old center where the pedestrian-only roads were, and then look for a hotel. The hotel had to be roughly 100 euros/night, accept 3 people, and have a place for us to lock up our bikes (we learned to ask about our bikes in 3 diff languages!). It was generally easy finding a hotel for ~100 euros that had triples, and almost every place took bikes. But we’d always ask about breakfast, too, and in so many places it was an extra 10 euros/person/day, and was never worth that much! So that was a bummer we learned to live with. =D
Once checked in, we locked our bikes in the basement/garage/lobby/wherever, and then went upstairs to clean up. We took turns showering, and would wash our bike clothes in the shower with us, using camp soap or body gel. We’d hang up our bike stuff to dry for use the next morning, get dressed in our civvies, and Dan would typically show us “the Marseille” (don’t ask!!!). While we were showering, one of us (usually Dan or Ben) would run out and get snacks, booze, and water bottles for that night and the next day. Once we were all ready, we would head out and wander the town, drinking and looking for a place to eat. Once we’d been fed and explored the town, we’d finish up drinking and head back to the hotel, and typically crash out by midnight. So that translates into roughly 4 hrs biking/day, 8 hrs sleeping/day, and the other 12 hrs spent eating, peeing, and wandering cities. =D
Good times!
CEBToD: Day 13 -- San Remo to Savona
Ha HA! Bet you thought I’d never get back to blogging my Eurotrip, didn’t you? DIDN’T YOU!!! Well, you were wrong. Sadly, my memory’s slightly hazier at this point, but I’m determined to get it all down before I go to Peru in 6 days and I have to wipe my brain’s vacation RAM to make way for new insanity.
So anyways. Today was a very long and rough day. We wanted to get all the way up to Genoa, from which tomorrow we’d likely be training to the Cinque Terra. But Genoa is 140 km from San Remo (something like 90+miles), and though we expected the terrain to be relatively flat, we weren’t entirely sure we could pull it off. And surprise! We didn’t. =D The ride was much tougher than we’d expected, including numerous climbs that weren’t on the map. Overall, we covered about 60 miles and 2200 ft of elevation, in about 4.5 hrs of riding. Today ended up being our longest ride, short of the first day when Dan and I did our 66 mile monster from Barcelona to Girona. And man, was I feeling at at the end of the day.
Highlights of today were many and varied… we rode through a totally random Italian town that apparently specialized in German tourists, though not, apparently, in the German language. One of the restaurants we passed had a sign advertising the special of the day: “SheiBe mit salat.” For those of you playing the home game, that means “shit with salad,” which of course had us in hysterics for a good 15 minutes. That same place had a random-ass gift shop that sold these magazines that came shrink-wrapped with the most bizarrely unrelated objects… for example, one was shrink-wrapped with walkie-talkies, and another with a ball of yarn. Ben couldn’t get enough of them and kept going in and finding even weirder objects shrink-wrapped to magazines… it was quite amusing.
Anyways, after 100 years of riding we finally decided to call it quits in Savona. It’s a big port city, so there was quite a sizeable downtown / old city, and so we pulled in, dismounted, and Ben and I went off separately scouting for hotels while Dan watched the bikes. I actually stopped a woman on the street who I’d overheard speaking French, and asked her if she knew where the Tourist Office was… she said it was closed already. L So I continued on, and came across an apparently Swiss hotel, where the woman at the front desk spoke English, French, Italian, and German. So we did a convo in half French and half English to see if they could take us, and they could, so I checked out the room and came back down and there was that same French woman I’d asked about the Tourist Office! She apparently had been headed to the same hotel… who knew! I think I tried to say “great minds think alike” in French and hosed it up. Ah well. =D
So I went back and got Dan and Ben (Ben hadn’t had luck finding an alternative), so we checked into the Swiss place. We got ourselves cleaned up, then headed out on a quest for dinner. Omg, it took 1000 years to find food. I mean, we kept finding restaurants but they were all full up, which was such a freaking tease, cause after all that biking today we were DYING. We finally found a gelato place and stocked up on ice cream… I got a chocolate with hot peppers that was really good (the Italian who served me made me try it first cause he was worried it might kill me; most Europeans can’t take spicy foods, I’ve learned, unlike us macho Americans!). I asked the gelato guy where we could get dinner, and he pointed us to a place called Vesuvius. We found it, and hilariously it was like a block from our hotel, after we’d walked basically a giant circle around the city for an hour. D’oh!!! Anyways, dinner was great… multiple courses, multiple beers, then we headed back to the hotel and crashed out.
Good times!
So anyways. Today was a very long and rough day. We wanted to get all the way up to Genoa, from which tomorrow we’d likely be training to the Cinque Terra. But Genoa is 140 km from San Remo (something like 90+miles), and though we expected the terrain to be relatively flat, we weren’t entirely sure we could pull it off. And surprise! We didn’t. =D The ride was much tougher than we’d expected, including numerous climbs that weren’t on the map. Overall, we covered about 60 miles and 2200 ft of elevation, in about 4.5 hrs of riding. Today ended up being our longest ride, short of the first day when Dan and I did our 66 mile monster from Barcelona to Girona. And man, was I feeling at at the end of the day.
Highlights of today were many and varied… we rode through a totally random Italian town that apparently specialized in German tourists, though not, apparently, in the German language. One of the restaurants we passed had a sign advertising the special of the day: “SheiBe mit salat.” For those of you playing the home game, that means “shit with salad,” which of course had us in hysterics for a good 15 minutes. That same place had a random-ass gift shop that sold these magazines that came shrink-wrapped with the most bizarrely unrelated objects… for example, one was shrink-wrapped with walkie-talkies, and another with a ball of yarn. Ben couldn’t get enough of them and kept going in and finding even weirder objects shrink-wrapped to magazines… it was quite amusing.
Anyways, after 100 years of riding we finally decided to call it quits in Savona. It’s a big port city, so there was quite a sizeable downtown / old city, and so we pulled in, dismounted, and Ben and I went off separately scouting for hotels while Dan watched the bikes. I actually stopped a woman on the street who I’d overheard speaking French, and asked her if she knew where the Tourist Office was… she said it was closed already. L So I continued on, and came across an apparently Swiss hotel, where the woman at the front desk spoke English, French, Italian, and German. So we did a convo in half French and half English to see if they could take us, and they could, so I checked out the room and came back down and there was that same French woman I’d asked about the Tourist Office! She apparently had been headed to the same hotel… who knew! I think I tried to say “great minds think alike” in French and hosed it up. Ah well. =D
So I went back and got Dan and Ben (Ben hadn’t had luck finding an alternative), so we checked into the Swiss place. We got ourselves cleaned up, then headed out on a quest for dinner. Omg, it took 1000 years to find food. I mean, we kept finding restaurants but they were all full up, which was such a freaking tease, cause after all that biking today we were DYING. We finally found a gelato place and stocked up on ice cream… I got a chocolate with hot peppers that was really good (the Italian who served me made me try it first cause he was worried it might kill me; most Europeans can’t take spicy foods, I’ve learned, unlike us macho Americans!). I asked the gelato guy where we could get dinner, and he pointed us to a place called Vesuvius. We found it, and hilariously it was like a block from our hotel, after we’d walked basically a giant circle around the city for an hour. D’oh!!! Anyways, dinner was great… multiple courses, multiple beers, then we headed back to the hotel and crashed out.
Good times!
My 2nd earthquake!
So on Thursday night last week I experienced my 2nd ever earthquake! It was pretty awesome. Only a 4.2, but it was just across the bay in the Oakland Hills and so I felt it, baby! It was like 4 in the morning, and I just randomly woke up, and immediately felt this crescendo of deep bass rumblings…
rumblerumblerumblerumbleRUMBLERUMBLERUMBLErumblerumble… the whole building shook and things were rattling, but it was sort of a happy pleasant sort of shake and rattle. Apparently it lasted 10-30 seconds (depending on where you were)… I’m guessing that the low bass of the early part of the crescendo is what woke me up, giving me another 5-10s to enjoy the experience.
Anyways, Leah came running out of her room and yelled through my door, “omg, what was that!!” And I was like, um, hello native Bay Area girl, that was an earthquake. Hahaha. Ah well, she was out of it… it was 4 in the morning and the thing did wake us up.
I have to admit that as it rumbled away for the few seconds it lasted, I was half-expecting the crescendo to continue… I can see how it could have increased to a really destructive level, which would have been kind of cool to witness (assuming I survived). Some day that’ll happen, and I’ll likely still be living here. But it’s nice to know that I’m not really freaked out by earthquakes, and apparently won’t be until the Big One’s actually attempting to kill me.
rumblerumblerumblerumbleRUMBLERUMBLERUMBLErumblerumble… the whole building shook and things were rattling, but it was sort of a happy pleasant sort of shake and rattle. Apparently it lasted 10-30 seconds (depending on where you were)… I’m guessing that the low bass of the early part of the crescendo is what woke me up, giving me another 5-10s to enjoy the experience.
Anyways, Leah came running out of her room and yelled through my door, “omg, what was that!!” And I was like, um, hello native Bay Area girl, that was an earthquake. Hahaha. Ah well, she was out of it… it was 4 in the morning and the thing did wake us up.
I have to admit that as it rumbled away for the few seconds it lasted, I was half-expecting the crescendo to continue… I can see how it could have increased to a really destructive level, which would have been kind of cool to witness (assuming I survived). Some day that’ll happen, and I’ll likely still be living here. But it’s nice to know that I’m not really freaked out by earthquakes, and apparently won’t be until the Big One’s actually attempting to kill me.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Steak and Potter
omg, i'm the worst blogger ever. seriously... i'm so behind.
But I have semi-valid excuses. First of all, while I was gone in Europe I missed internet porn. So I've had some catching up to do. But setting that aside, I've also been super social since coing back. I think I've been out about 7 times in the last 2 weeks. That's not Europe-level drinking, but that's pretty damned good for me. I've been on WoW for all of 5 mins, I think... and I haven't played any other games aside from 10 mins of Civ3 (I got frustrated cause the Romans wiped out my foothold city in their territory).
So what've I been doing? Lessee.... last Thursday was Steak and Potter... dinner at House of Prime Rib with Stefan and Tiffany followed by a midnight showing of the new Harry Potter. The dinner was on me, as congrats to Tiff for finishing her masters program! It was soooo good, too... if you haven't been to HoPR, it's a restaurant in SF that literally only serves Prime Rib (and sides). The food was awesome, and our waitress even better. She was a lot of fun, but it turns out she had us fooled, and she was actually Scottish, but in the 2 yrs since she'd moved here she'd completely mastered the American accent. I told her we would have tipped her better [than 20%] if she'd kept the accent. =P
What else... the movie was great. We saw Transformers on Friday night, too, after dinner at Thirsty Bear... xformers was AWESOME. I've been waiting for that movie since I was 5. It was non-stop action and sooooooooooo fun, and I really liked the dialogue. Esp the kid and the scenes with his parents.
My super hot and hilarious German friend JJ came into town on Sat for 6 days for work... I picked him up and then we bar-hopped with friends of Kelly's starting at 5. We went from Buena Vista Cafe to Rogue to Bigfoot to Cinch to Roger's house, where we watched Eurotrip and ate tots and passed out at 4ish am. Rogue was a lot of fun... I had combo chocolate/hazelnut beers and we met all these random people that were part of the 40-man bar crawl. We picked up a new friend Kevin and brought him with us the rest of the night. By the time we left Rogue it was me, Kelly, Roger, Floria, Joe, Kevin, Tiffany, Stefan, Kelly, and JJ. A good group. =D We tried stalking Vanilla Ice, who was playing a couple doors down from Bigfoot at Red Devil Lounge, but we couldn't find him. So we hung out at the gay bar Cinch before heading to Roger and Joe's.
Sunday I was up at noon and home by 1ish, then helped Kelly clear out her storage unit and move her stuff that evening. She made me and Joe dinner and I drank a bit there, then it was off to work for the week. Nothing Mon/Tues, but Weds we took JJ out for a last hurrah at Zeitgeist, another biergarten (since those are hard for him to find in his native Deutschland). In bed by 2am, up at 6am and off to work for a day of PFI training.
And then tonight we did happy hour at the Academy of Science's 3rd Thursday, where I sipped rum and cokes with the penguins, giant sea bass, and poisonous darter frogs. Yum! Then we got all-u-can-eat ethernopian food at Dazeima (?) on Divis and Hayes with some of Kelly's friends from the EPA. Some crazy hot guy was there as a friend of one of Kelly's friends... he looks like a tall blond surfer version of Joey from Blossom... but he's Cornell-educated and very clever and random, so he was totally up my alley. Alas I'm sure he's straight, as is every guy I ever meet who I'm even remotely interested in. It's my curse, I suppose. I blame Voldemort.
Which reminds me... I'll wrap up by saying that I started the 1st Harry Potter book on my flight home from Europe... after YEARS of refusing to read them in a sort of silent protest against pop culture, I finally caved in and started, and now I'm on book 5. I've been reading one every 2 days or so, minus the drinking hours. I should be ready for the release on Saturday of #7, at this rate. I swear sometimes I'm a smidge demented in the way I do things.
But I have semi-valid excuses. First of all, while I was gone in Europe I missed internet porn. So I've had some catching up to do. But setting that aside, I've also been super social since coing back. I think I've been out about 7 times in the last 2 weeks. That's not Europe-level drinking, but that's pretty damned good for me. I've been on WoW for all of 5 mins, I think... and I haven't played any other games aside from 10 mins of Civ3 (I got frustrated cause the Romans wiped out my foothold city in their territory).
So what've I been doing? Lessee.... last Thursday was Steak and Potter... dinner at House of Prime Rib with Stefan and Tiffany followed by a midnight showing of the new Harry Potter. The dinner was on me, as congrats to Tiff for finishing her masters program! It was soooo good, too... if you haven't been to HoPR, it's a restaurant in SF that literally only serves Prime Rib (and sides). The food was awesome, and our waitress even better. She was a lot of fun, but it turns out she had us fooled, and she was actually Scottish, but in the 2 yrs since she'd moved here she'd completely mastered the American accent. I told her we would have tipped her better [than 20%] if she'd kept the accent. =P
What else... the movie was great. We saw Transformers on Friday night, too, after dinner at Thirsty Bear... xformers was AWESOME. I've been waiting for that movie since I was 5. It was non-stop action and sooooooooooo fun, and I really liked the dialogue. Esp the kid and the scenes with his parents.
My super hot and hilarious German friend JJ came into town on Sat for 6 days for work... I picked him up and then we bar-hopped with friends of Kelly's starting at 5. We went from Buena Vista Cafe to Rogue to Bigfoot to Cinch to Roger's house, where we watched Eurotrip and ate tots and passed out at 4ish am. Rogue was a lot of fun... I had combo chocolate/hazelnut beers and we met all these random people that were part of the 40-man bar crawl. We picked up a new friend Kevin and brought him with us the rest of the night. By the time we left Rogue it was me, Kelly, Roger, Floria, Joe, Kevin, Tiffany, Stefan, Kelly, and JJ. A good group. =D We tried stalking Vanilla Ice, who was playing a couple doors down from Bigfoot at Red Devil Lounge, but we couldn't find him. So we hung out at the gay bar Cinch before heading to Roger and Joe's.
Sunday I was up at noon and home by 1ish, then helped Kelly clear out her storage unit and move her stuff that evening. She made me and Joe dinner and I drank a bit there, then it was off to work for the week. Nothing Mon/Tues, but Weds we took JJ out for a last hurrah at Zeitgeist, another biergarten (since those are hard for him to find in his native Deutschland). In bed by 2am, up at 6am and off to work for a day of PFI training.
And then tonight we did happy hour at the Academy of Science's 3rd Thursday, where I sipped rum and cokes with the penguins, giant sea bass, and poisonous darter frogs. Yum! Then we got all-u-can-eat ethernopian food at Dazeima (?) on Divis and Hayes with some of Kelly's friends from the EPA. Some crazy hot guy was there as a friend of one of Kelly's friends... he looks like a tall blond surfer version of Joey from Blossom... but he's Cornell-educated and very clever and random, so he was totally up my alley. Alas I'm sure he's straight, as is every guy I ever meet who I'm even remotely interested in. It's my curse, I suppose. I blame Voldemort.
Which reminds me... I'll wrap up by saying that I started the 1st Harry Potter book on my flight home from Europe... after YEARS of refusing to read them in a sort of silent protest against pop culture, I finally caved in and started, and now I'm on book 5. I've been reading one every 2 days or so, minus the drinking hours. I should be ready for the release on Saturday of #7, at this rate. I swear sometimes I'm a smidge demented in the way I do things.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
"You look like a French Criminal."
So, I'm back. And I'm alive. I'm also realllly behind on my trip blogging. But when I get home tonight (after a nap) I'll be loading all my pics and video, sorting through to find the good stuff, and then resume posting. It'll take me a week or 2 to catch up on all the Euro-posts, but I'll finish them out, I swear!
But let me give you a brief update. I got home late Sunday night after like 30 hrs of traveling. I took Monday off to recover and just have some alone time at home. Also... I shaved off the facial hair last week, but then I (and the Spaniards) decided that I looked too young and that my new, more spikey 'do looked silly on its own, so I re-grew it. And when I showed up on Tuesday for my first day at work in like 5 weeks, my boss promptly told me all my hair changes make me look like a French criminal. Which is fucking hilarious. =D So obviously I need to find a way to make all these changes work! hehehe. I was also accused of whitening my teeth while I was gone, but I think that's just because I'm a lot more tan (on the body parts you can see, anyways).
Also, I had a phenomenal shag last night (seriously... it was long and intense, in the best way possible), so despite the lost sleep that caused and the resultant aggravation of my low-grade cold, I'm in a great mood. =D And I'm also at work, so I need to cut this posting-break short and get my ass back to the grindstone.
But let me give you a brief update. I got home late Sunday night after like 30 hrs of traveling. I took Monday off to recover and just have some alone time at home. Also... I shaved off the facial hair last week, but then I (and the Spaniards) decided that I looked too young and that my new, more spikey 'do looked silly on its own, so I re-grew it. And when I showed up on Tuesday for my first day at work in like 5 weeks, my boss promptly told me all my hair changes make me look like a French criminal. Which is fucking hilarious. =D So obviously I need to find a way to make all these changes work! hehehe. I was also accused of whitening my teeth while I was gone, but I think that's just because I'm a lot more tan (on the body parts you can see, anyways).
Also, I had a phenomenal shag last night (seriously... it was long and intense, in the best way possible), so despite the lost sleep that caused and the resultant aggravation of my low-grade cold, I'm in a great mood. =D And I'm also at work, so I need to cut this posting-break short and get my ass back to the grindstone.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
CEBToD: Day 12 -- Nice to Monaco to San Remo
"Oh cool.... we had breakfast in France, lunch in Monaco, and we'll have dinner in Italy." That about sums up today. Between 36 and 45 miles (I think 36, but my odometer mysteriously jumped to 45 somewhere at the end of the day), with 1700 feet of climbing, across 4h10m of actual biking. We started in Nice, and biked along the mountainous coast through Monaco over into Italy. 3 countries in one day by bike... we were pretty pleased with ourselves! =D
The ride to Monaco was ridiculously beautiful. Lots of up and down along these cliffs jutting out over the Med... red-roofed villages clinging to the hills... beautiful sunny skies and a light breeze.... lots of biking work, but worth every meter. Villefranche was our favorite... ridiculously beautiful. Monaco itself is super-cool... more freaking petit trains there, but what can you do. We had lunch at a little restaurant adjacent to the yachts... we saw a camaro with IL license plates parked there. Swear to god. We took a picture but couldn't find the owner to chat him up. :( I'm wondering if he drove it there via his yacht. =P We checked out the casinos after a 12% grade climb (only a couple 100 meters long, but dear god that was hard), then left town.
More beautiful French Med vistas... at one point we had a phenomenal descent with only a slight grade that lasted forever and switchedback down a hill on the Med... then the border with Italy! A big deal... we were leaving behind not just France but any hope of being able to communicate with the locals in their native language, as none of us speak Italian. D'oh. Wish us luck.
Italy was more of the same gorgeous viewage... though right outside Ventimiglia was the most dangerous bit of biking we've done the entire trip (and since I'm writing this part post-biking, I can say it was the most dangerous, period). It was a steep descent through a very long tunnel (900 meters or more?), with no interior lighting, bad shoulder so we had to ride in the car lane, and it came up on us too fast for us to pull over and turn on our lights. So it was dark, we werent' easily visible to cars, and it was a perilous ride just given the road quality itself. Very very scary. But over relatively quickly... and really good for me to get over my fear of descent through dark tunnels brought on by my crash. =P Character building!!!
Anyways... more biking, and we decided to stop in San Remo. Random Italian town, but the choice ended up being awesome. The room we got was HUGE.... 2 bedrooms, giant bathroom, balcony overlooking the water, and breakfast included... all for just ~100 euros. And the town itself is very cool.... lots of narrow pathways between ancient buildings, all cut into the hills of the town... so we explored for a while and had a lot of fun with it.
Dinner took us a while to find... most places we came across seemed way too expensive (15+ euros/plate). We finally settled on a random pseudo-touristy-lookin place called Dick Turpins, down by the water. Yeah... I don't get the name, either. =P Our dinner tonight was basically the exact opposite of our dinner 2 nights ago in St. Tropez. Instead of them rushing us through our meal, we sat there for like 3 hrs total, end to end. It was nuts. But the food... hoder, the food!! It was sooooo good. I had a phenomenal lemon risotto that I'm totally going to try making at home. And I ordered some sangria that was floating in this giant-ass bowl at the bar... and oh dear god. It was the best sangria I've had in my LIFE. I'm not exaggerating (me? never!!!). It had nutmeg, cinnamon, bananas, oranges, raspberries, apples, pineapples... it was so good I had multiple foodgasms, right there in front of everyone. I'm getting goosebumps just thinking of it. I should have collected samples to analyze back in the lab so I could duplicate it. Dear god.
And then after dinner we wandered back to a gelato place... and OMG best gelato EVER. I don't know why all the food here was so good, but it was amazingly awesome. I had cafe and coco and something else... and it just danced on my tongue. Dan cited this gelato as what the rest of the trip will likely be like for us. =D
After gelato, Dan pussed out and went to bed. But Ben and I stayed up and drank up on the rooftop deck of our hotel, roughly 6 stories up, with an awesome vista of the town and the Med. Fantastic way to close out the night!!
The ride to Monaco was ridiculously beautiful. Lots of up and down along these cliffs jutting out over the Med... red-roofed villages clinging to the hills... beautiful sunny skies and a light breeze.... lots of biking work, but worth every meter. Villefranche was our favorite... ridiculously beautiful. Monaco itself is super-cool... more freaking petit trains there, but what can you do. We had lunch at a little restaurant adjacent to the yachts... we saw a camaro with IL license plates parked there. Swear to god. We took a picture but couldn't find the owner to chat him up. :( I'm wondering if he drove it there via his yacht. =P We checked out the casinos after a 12% grade climb (only a couple 100 meters long, but dear god that was hard), then left town.
More beautiful French Med vistas... at one point we had a phenomenal descent with only a slight grade that lasted forever and switchedback down a hill on the Med... then the border with Italy! A big deal... we were leaving behind not just France but any hope of being able to communicate with the locals in their native language, as none of us speak Italian. D'oh. Wish us luck.
Italy was more of the same gorgeous viewage... though right outside Ventimiglia was the most dangerous bit of biking we've done the entire trip (and since I'm writing this part post-biking, I can say it was the most dangerous, period). It was a steep descent through a very long tunnel (900 meters or more?), with no interior lighting, bad shoulder so we had to ride in the car lane, and it came up on us too fast for us to pull over and turn on our lights. So it was dark, we werent' easily visible to cars, and it was a perilous ride just given the road quality itself. Very very scary. But over relatively quickly... and really good for me to get over my fear of descent through dark tunnels brought on by my crash. =P Character building!!!
Anyways... more biking, and we decided to stop in San Remo. Random Italian town, but the choice ended up being awesome. The room we got was HUGE.... 2 bedrooms, giant bathroom, balcony overlooking the water, and breakfast included... all for just ~100 euros. And the town itself is very cool.... lots of narrow pathways between ancient buildings, all cut into the hills of the town... so we explored for a while and had a lot of fun with it.
Dinner took us a while to find... most places we came across seemed way too expensive (15+ euros/plate). We finally settled on a random pseudo-touristy-lookin place called Dick Turpins, down by the water. Yeah... I don't get the name, either. =P Our dinner tonight was basically the exact opposite of our dinner 2 nights ago in St. Tropez. Instead of them rushing us through our meal, we sat there for like 3 hrs total, end to end. It was nuts. But the food... hoder, the food!! It was sooooo good. I had a phenomenal lemon risotto that I'm totally going to try making at home. And I ordered some sangria that was floating in this giant-ass bowl at the bar... and oh dear god. It was the best sangria I've had in my LIFE. I'm not exaggerating (me? never!!!). It had nutmeg, cinnamon, bananas, oranges, raspberries, apples, pineapples... it was so good I had multiple foodgasms, right there in front of everyone. I'm getting goosebumps just thinking of it. I should have collected samples to analyze back in the lab so I could duplicate it. Dear god.
And then after dinner we wandered back to a gelato place... and OMG best gelato EVER. I don't know why all the food here was so good, but it was amazingly awesome. I had cafe and coco and something else... and it just danced on my tongue. Dan cited this gelato as what the rest of the trip will likely be like for us. =D
After gelato, Dan pussed out and went to bed. But Ben and I stayed up and drank up on the rooftop deck of our hotel, roughly 6 stories up, with an awesome vista of the town and the Med. Fantastic way to close out the night!!
CEBToD: Day 11 -- St. Tropez to Nice
Today was a weird day. It was pretty easy overall... only 25.6 miles with 567 ft of climbing, taking about 2h10m on the bike. Our original plan had been to bike to a train station and then train it into Nice for the night, so we'd have time to see the city, and have a bit of a bike-break after yesterday's grueling ride. Sounds simple... but I'll explain in a bit why it turned out not to be.
First things first... we checked out and got breakfast in the main square: coffee at a little cafe and then foodstuffs at a grocery next door. We then biked around the bay towards the first train station on the map (St. Tropez, if you'll remember, has no station). It was a beautiful ride... the day was sunny, like it's been for most of the trip, and it was in the 90s... but remarkably I haven't been sweating (probably because of the constant breeze from the biking). There were bike paths for much of the journey, so we were able to really enjoy the ride without fear of being hit by errant cars.
So we pulled into the town (Frejus), which looked really cute during the 5 mins we biked through it. We got to the train station and I went to buy us tickets, but it turns out that all the trains today had been cancelled, except for the first and last. And the last wasn't due for another several hours. She suggested we bike to the next town and see if we could get a train there. We had no idea why the trains had been cancelled; neither, it seemed, did several other Frenchies waiting for the same train. I didn't talk to them, but they were surprised when the ticket lady made a general announcement about the lack of trainage.
So we biked to St. Raphael. The train station there was muuuch bigger. I tracked down a ticket lady and talked to her... to find out that the reason there were no trains was because of a strike! The local train workers were on strike! That's also probably why there was no train service from Aix to Marseille a few days ago, though I can't be sure. So what the SNCF (France's train company) did was to conscript TGVs into local service, since the TGV workers are apparently under a different union. TGVs are their super-fast bullet trains... they hold the global land-speed record for in-service trains. They also don't allow bikes on TGVs. So I brought that up with the ticket lady, and she said we'd have to ask the conductor and it would be up to him. But it was too far to Nice for us to make it there... so if we wanted to get there this was our only option.
So I bought us tickets, and we went and hung out at a cafe, then by the ocean, for the 2 hrs we had to wait for the next TGV with seats. If you can believe it, I broke a toenail while waiting... I kicked my bag and I was wearing sandals.... ow. But I digress. The train pulled up, and 15000 people tried to cram on it all at once. It was like 15 cars long, and everyone had assigned seats (including us) except our bikes. So I ran to a conductor and asked what to do with the bikes, and he was like "no way you can get bikes on here". And I was like, "but we bought tickets! The ticket lady said we could and that you'd help us!" This was all in French, of course. Thank god we weren't in Paris... the southern French are super-nice and he offered to find a spot for the bikes. We ran all the way to the end of the train, and he opened a crazy side door and helped us toss our bikes in. We then left them alone (eeek!) and found our assigned seats. All this took far longer than it was supposed to and the entire train ended up waiting for us. Oops.
But the good news is that we made it! And the ride was super-smooth, albeit slow. We got to Nice and found the conductor to help us pull our bikes off, then saddled up and rolled down to our hotel (which was pre-booked). The woman working the front desk was a gorgeous black French woman... which is weird to see for some reason. I apparently have a bias that the US is the only Euro-derived country that should have Asian and African minorities. Weird, huh? Anyways, we locked up our bikes and then wandered to the beach.
The beach is all rocks, so not so comfy. Dan and Ben swam, and then we walked town. There's a huge-ass rambla here with tons of shops and restaurants, which I hadn't seen last time I was here in 98. After some wandering we went back to shower and change, and then we walked the rambla. We got some dinner doner kebaps, some cafe, some gelato (I think), and walked around drunk. I had pounded a "Maximator" before dinner... which is a beer with 11% alcohol in a half-liter can. omg... wow. I was happy. We got back and slept... but not before watching German-dubbed American Dad and Family Guy, which are shown on MTV. Weird, but perfect for my state of mind at the time. =P
First things first... we checked out and got breakfast in the main square: coffee at a little cafe and then foodstuffs at a grocery next door. We then biked around the bay towards the first train station on the map (St. Tropez, if you'll remember, has no station). It was a beautiful ride... the day was sunny, like it's been for most of the trip, and it was in the 90s... but remarkably I haven't been sweating (probably because of the constant breeze from the biking). There were bike paths for much of the journey, so we were able to really enjoy the ride without fear of being hit by errant cars.
So we pulled into the town (Frejus), which looked really cute during the 5 mins we biked through it. We got to the train station and I went to buy us tickets, but it turns out that all the trains today had been cancelled, except for the first and last. And the last wasn't due for another several hours. She suggested we bike to the next town and see if we could get a train there. We had no idea why the trains had been cancelled; neither, it seemed, did several other Frenchies waiting for the same train. I didn't talk to them, but they were surprised when the ticket lady made a general announcement about the lack of trainage.
So we biked to St. Raphael. The train station there was muuuch bigger. I tracked down a ticket lady and talked to her... to find out that the reason there were no trains was because of a strike! The local train workers were on strike! That's also probably why there was no train service from Aix to Marseille a few days ago, though I can't be sure. So what the SNCF (France's train company) did was to conscript TGVs into local service, since the TGV workers are apparently under a different union. TGVs are their super-fast bullet trains... they hold the global land-speed record for in-service trains. They also don't allow bikes on TGVs. So I brought that up with the ticket lady, and she said we'd have to ask the conductor and it would be up to him. But it was too far to Nice for us to make it there... so if we wanted to get there this was our only option.
So I bought us tickets, and we went and hung out at a cafe, then by the ocean, for the 2 hrs we had to wait for the next TGV with seats. If you can believe it, I broke a toenail while waiting... I kicked my bag and I was wearing sandals.... ow. But I digress. The train pulled up, and 15000 people tried to cram on it all at once. It was like 15 cars long, and everyone had assigned seats (including us) except our bikes. So I ran to a conductor and asked what to do with the bikes, and he was like "no way you can get bikes on here". And I was like, "but we bought tickets! The ticket lady said we could and that you'd help us!" This was all in French, of course. Thank god we weren't in Paris... the southern French are super-nice and he offered to find a spot for the bikes. We ran all the way to the end of the train, and he opened a crazy side door and helped us toss our bikes in. We then left them alone (eeek!) and found our assigned seats. All this took far longer than it was supposed to and the entire train ended up waiting for us. Oops.
But the good news is that we made it! And the ride was super-smooth, albeit slow. We got to Nice and found the conductor to help us pull our bikes off, then saddled up and rolled down to our hotel (which was pre-booked). The woman working the front desk was a gorgeous black French woman... which is weird to see for some reason. I apparently have a bias that the US is the only Euro-derived country that should have Asian and African minorities. Weird, huh? Anyways, we locked up our bikes and then wandered to the beach.
The beach is all rocks, so not so comfy. Dan and Ben swam, and then we walked town. There's a huge-ass rambla here with tons of shops and restaurants, which I hadn't seen last time I was here in 98. After some wandering we went back to shower and change, and then we walked the rambla. We got some dinner doner kebaps, some cafe, some gelato (I think), and walked around drunk. I had pounded a "Maximator" before dinner... which is a beer with 11% alcohol in a half-liter can. omg... wow. I was happy. We got back and slept... but not before watching German-dubbed American Dad and Family Guy, which are shown on MTV. Weird, but perfect for my state of mind at the time. =P
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