the road to a better failure

abetterfailure @ 2007-06-06T11:43:00

2007-06-06T17:58:41Z

woah! hi! time for an update.

i quit my job about a month ago, which i hated to do... it really was a fun job. i miss the people. i quit said job in preparation to move out of my sunny little basement suite - yeah, we still have a lease until november, but will and i need some time apart so i'm running home to the safe, comfortable arms of my parent's house in SW calgary and coughing up my savings for my remainder of the rent. ch-ch-changeeeeeees.

this week is finals, so i will officially be done practically every secondary course i could have taken and will be well prepared for whatever i want to take next year and the years to follow. and i never have to apologetically explain that "i'm upgrading, still..." when old friends ask me what i'm up to. my mark dropped 25% from math30p to calculus, which doesn't bode well for the future, but i honestly haven't even opened my textbook to do homework more than two or three times since february so i'm pleased i got through it at all. it started out that i had no time, working 40 hours a week and going to school 16. now that i have all the time in the world i have no excuse. you hear that, sarah?! you have no excuse! get off the computer! get off!!!

still going into engineering, for some reason... *kills self in advance*

this summer will and i meant to go away (we were thinking cuba), but my vacation money is going to rent now (boo-hoo) and even if it weren't, we probably wouldn't feel like going anywhere together anyhow. i have a camping trip booked with my family for the end of june, just after my last exam, so i'm really looking forward to that. shortly after i get back i'm taking a summer course in psychology to get ahead on next year's courseload. engineering is the only faculty where you are forced to take 6 classes in one of your first year semesters so i'm taking my option now to avoid that. brilliant, i know! if i can't handle two courses and a lax job, six classes might be a stretch. august is all mine but i'm thinking it's going to pass on by without any consideration to how long i need it to last. yeah, that's right, august. i'm on to you. don't you even think it.

come september, i'll be living in residence at the u of c.. my marks guaranteed me a single room so at least i'll have my own space. sarah in a dorm! oh my god! i sat next to a table of six kids about that age when i went out for breakfast with my mom this morning and couldn't even endure half an hour of stupidity without pondering methods of sending flying cutlery their way. i don't really want to do the whole thing, but the temptation to be on campus was pretty strong, so when the deadline came i said "what the heck.." and put my deposit down. i can always come and stay at home or even will's if it's too noisy or annoying. we'll see how long i last with them darn youngins and their shenanagins. *shakes cane*

anyhow, apparently working in a restaurant and living with will in our subterranean den of plenty wasn't good for me because i've got some extra weight to drop. hopefully the summer will be good for me and i can get out more and get back into shape. long term relationships make you fat and worse yet, overly comfortable with your fat, gross self. it's unfortunate. but happy.

oh, our xbox 360 died. in my opinion, it couldn't bear watching will play lord of the rings online anymore and was driven by insanity to take it's own life. i know how it feels. oh well, one less thing to debate ownership of, i suppose. i'll have to smuggle the wii out. my life would be so empty without the mii plaza music.. *doo doo dooooo do do doooooooo*

okay, the end. hope you're all feeling as productive and happy as i am, minus all the quiet bitterness and bloaty fat cells. <3

because i'm not dead, yet..

2007-01-27T15:52:36Z

i figure it's time for that yearly update sort of thing. haven't written anything, blogged anywhere or even talked to many since i got back from europe at the end of september.

will and i are living in a very sunny little basement suite (in bridgeland, for the calgarians) full of ikea furniture and piles of clothes and too many baked goods for two humans. it has the atmosphere of a place occupied by people who don't know what tidy means but it's very homey. things stay where you put them, for better or worse. bridgeland isn't such a bad place to live although i don't think much of NE calgary. there are days where i would like to be back home. but they are few.

i'm working full time now as a coffee-bar-customer-service-wage-slave at an upstart high-end take out food restaurant (weird, i know..) not far from where will and i are living. it's just a killing time sort of job. fairly enjoyable. they let me bake things and give me good hours (so i actually get to see will every once in a while) so i'm happy enough. the pay is fine and the next two options were starbucks and blockbuster, so... yeah. will is still bashing his head against the wall at his cushy desk job, revolutionizing the world of video-on-demand one line of code at a time. he's happy enough. we're happy enough. so long as i do my share of the dishes and don't leave hair in the shower or my keys in the door. i don't ask much of him, other than to pick up the slack when i get lazy.

i refused to get cable in order to try and safeguard some of our time against wasting and instead, we've somehow ended up with a wii, an xbox360 and the old ps2, as well as a darn nice gaming pc. we're dorks. it's like the power rangers - we came together in our dorkitude to form a singular and immense superdork force, greater and more powerful than we ever were by our lonesomes. erm... yeah. at least everyone is jealous of our wii - gets me a lot of fanfare at work. not that i play it much. interesting idea, execution lacking. i'm waiting for the next generation.

as i'm sure i mentioned, i finally got myself out of high school this past august, making me overripe for post-secondary.. i'll be going u of c in the fall. the.. gulp.. engineering program. i got my early acceptance letter last week but i'm going to be dragging my ass to chinook college for one more semester so i can pick up calculus. i guess the whole thing is fairly exciting, in a "excuse-me-while-i-cry-and-soil-myself" kind of way. the long term plan is chemical engineering, and the long-long term plan is biochemical engineering. i'm going to grow giant strawberries that aren't woody and design tumor masticating nanoparticles (particles against cancer...yes, the pacmen) and found artificial meat factories with festering, pulsating meatwads laid out on steel tables in a costco-sized warehouse. i'm sure if the university ever saw that sentence they would withdraw my acceptance on the on the grounds of questionable moral fibre. just kidding, i'll do good work. with stem cells. :D

well, that's life right now, i suppose. i just did a 12 day stretch where i was into work every day for some reason or another (we had an iron chef competition/staff party on my one day off) so i'm heading to the mountains for some much cherished time away with the family. hope you are all well and happy. <3

Catching up..

2006-09-28T13:21:11Z

Originally published at sarah does europe. Please leave any comments there.

I realized today that I am a full three days behind on our adventure… I guess I’m probably burning out. Let’s get caught up, shall we?!

Tunisia. Tunisia was a very interesting place. It is a French-Arab nation in North Africa, fairly small in size and population. The colonial history was very evident… villas and small mansions all over, some well kept and others in disrepair. Tunisia is definitely one of those places where you feel alright about being on a tour, even though it was very touristy, it had a very different feeling from the other ports on this cruise. The first part of our tour took us to Carthage. The remains of Carthage are spread out over a large space that has been built upon recently, so the excavated sites are surrounded by residential areas. The Roman Bath complex was immense and very neat, but some of these places, you have to have a really excellent imagination (and a very good guide) to understand what you are seeing. Our guide got flustered by the crowds and seemed to cut our visit short, anxious to get to the next site before everybody else. We also saw a nearby colosseum (always slightly unsettling), a mosaics museum and some other things that I can’t recall – it’s been too long, sorry! Afterwards we were whisked off to Sidi Bou Said, a touristy sort of shopping village. All of the buildings had that typical Mediterranean whitewash with blue trim that you often see in Greece (like Santorini) and Italy. The very persistent shop owners literally grab you (but in a friendly way) and try to get you to look at their things. It was an experience. I got a ceramic platter for half of the original price, which is supposedly the very most that you’re supposed to pay… I have a lot to learn in the world of haggling – I would have tried to get him to come down more but our bus was leaving and we had to get back to our meeting point. So that was Tunisia, I guess. I went, I saw, I got a plate. I think my pale skin gives me away around here, everybody always wants to know where I’m from. I got showered with jasmine flowers by a man who claimed to love me and anointed (more like assaulted) by a man selling perfumed oils – perhaps they sensed my need, having become unable to shower. As expected, the area was quite poor looking (especially after being in Monaco last week), but the tourist infrastructure seems to be coming along… I’m glad we spared ourselves the shock of going into Tunis (the capital city), I think it may have been too much. Quite a day. I’ll have to post a picture of me with the guide, he was so funny!

Back to Italy for our next port, Palermo, on the northwestern coast of Sicily. We had the pleasure of docking with three big cruise ships, which meant that there would be a stampede of other people on top of the nineteen hundred from our own ship. Our tour was a bit of a mess – we left an hour late because docking was delayed, the weather was terrible, it rained all day, the traffic was insane. The first site on our tour was an old villa, neat old building but it was crowded and we had to wait about 30 minutes in the storm before they would let us in. There wasn’t anything to see inside (just walls, floor and ceilings) and the outside was all dirt and garbage, I think they were in the process of landscaping. Next we went to the catacombs, where Fransican monks preserved and displayed dead bodies for about 3 centuries beginning in the mid 1500’s. The catacombs contain 8000 bodies in various states of preservation, some just skeletons and some with skin and hair and the whole thing. Mom hated it, I thought it was fascinating. Each body is dressed up in what I assume were the person’s best clothes, so it was neat to see what the remains were wearing. No pictures again – the priests have cameras installed throughout the catacombs and watch for errant photo takers. I don’t want to get myself on anybody’s naughty list. Anyway, Palermo was a big of a write off – we were kind of sluggish and grumpy all day and didn’t see a lot worth mentioning.

The very last port of our trip was Naples. We had been there on the Prinsendam and did Pompeii that day. Naples has a crime problem and generally isn’t held in very high regard even as sightseeing goes, so we took the jetfoil to Capri, one of the islands in the bay of Naples. Very, very touristy, although that was to be expected. We were blessed with fairly calm seas for the ride over which takes about 45 minutes. Upon reaching Capri we took a minibus up to the town of Anacapri, which has a lively tourist shopping area and a chairlift to the highest point on the island. Mom didn’t want to go on the lift but I knew it was a good thing to do so I grabbed a ticket and said “Okay, I’ll go.. you wait down here.” She allows follows like a lost puppy when I do that. In the end, she was very glad to have gone up – it was a beautiful view and well worth it. We had a delicious lunch (pasta, salad and fried sole with white wine and homemade gelato) in a quaint little hotel with a beautiful view. I think it was probably called the Bellavista, they all are… Some middle-aged Italian man was filming a music video in the main square, lip-syncing and emoting and being served cappuccino after cappuccino (I guess they couldn’t get the shot). People were very interested, but I couldn’t tell you who he was. Afterwards we took the Funicular (yes, like the song…) back down to the port. If you don’t know what a funicular is, it’s a slanted train set on a hill controlled by a cable… I had never been on one before so that was an experience. We had more shopping time before we caught our jetfoil back to Naples but I walked away empty handed – it was all tourist junk that I didn’t want to have to pack. I meant to buy Limoncello but I have enough liquid stuff to worry about getting home so I decided to forget it. I got a yummy lemon ice-slush thing instead and enjoyed that while Karen made idle chatter with a Toyota dealer from Minnesota. Beautiful, beautiful day, even with all the crowding – unlike a lot of the places we’ve been visiting, Capri’s draw is the scenery, not what has been built there. That was a nice change.

Oh, I guess I should update on my itchy situation. I went to see the ship’s doctor and he checked out my rashes, asked me a bunch of questions trying to narrow down what the problem could be – he was amazingly nice and gracious for us having called him at 10:30pm on a formal night. The nurse had been sitting up in the smoking room having a cigar and apologized for the smell, hehe. The doctor gave me some Benadryl and some Prednisone (a steroid) to help keep the inflammation down. He insisted that it couldn’t be the water and that people would pay to use the ship’s water it’s so clean (I guess we are those people, technically). All I know is that if I touched the water without recently having put a Prednisone in my system, I flared up. I can’t wait to have a bath now that I’m off the ship because I was limited to very quick showers and sponge baths over the past three days. I have to wean myself off of the steroids now and hopefully I’ll be okay, we’ll see what happens. I wasn’t eating anything new and I have no allergies so even if it wasn’t the water, it had to have been some strange environmental sensitivity. I’m going to be scared to cruise again! I can see you rejoicing, Dad. You too, Willy.

Anyhow, we’re back in Rome today. I think I’ve blown the Trevi Fountain thing out of the water (throwing a coin in for safe return to Rome) because I’ve returned twice now and never bothered to do it. We got up at 7 this morning and had 5 hours swallowed up by the travel gods, finally getting to our hotel at noon and checking in at 1. Disembarkation is always a bit of a fiasco and the drive from Civitavecchia is over an hour so that makes the process a little more tedious. True to form, Karen crashed at the sight of a bed, and I plugged in my laptop at the site of a power outlet. We plan to venture out soon and get a late lunch but the city is buzzing today – Rome appears to actually have Romans in it again, a far cry from the deserted atmosphere in the beginning of August. Kind of intimidating.

Sorry for talking your ears off, but I figure there’s no sense in conking out now. One last report on Rome (we’re here until Saturday morning, giving us a day and a half to kill) and I’ll have nothing else to write about. Hard to believe it’s almost over.

ITCHY ITCHY ITCHY!

2006-09-24T12:59:45Z

Originally published at sarah does europe. Please leave any comments there.

Well, yesterday was Palma de Mallorca, our last Spanish port. I had no idea I’d like Spain so much! It’s interesting that I do, because the original post-grad trip I had been whimsically planning for a number of years was backpacking Spain. I think after spending this little bit of time there, it’s still on the agenda.

We did a tour that took us across the island from the capital city of Palma to Porto Cristo, where a very beautiful cave system has been commercialized and turned into a tourist attraction. The caves are quite busy, and our group (typical busload of about 25-30 people) joined many, many other groups to ooze down the steps in the caves like a big seething mass. So many people! The caves were stunning, I think that skillful lighting had a lot to do with it – very subtle and spooky. They have built a paved kind of path that winds up and down, and I found it very peculiar to be “caving” with no real hazards, a paved path underneath my feet and handrails at my side. There are stalactites and stalagmites everywhere, huge pillars reaching up from the floor and tiny icicle-covered ceilings. Unfortunately for you, they don’t allow cameras in the caves and have men with well-practiced looks of intimidation planted along the route. People never pay attention of course, and snap away, flashes flashing… Then there’s me, pursing my lips, clutching my camera, too honest to sneak one photo even sans flash. Meh.

After the caves we drove to Manacor, where the Majorica (a brand) pearl factory is. Mallorcan pearls are supposedly renowned worldwide – they are manufactured, not cultured, but they are made with organic marine materials and are supposedly indistinguishable from cultured pearls. It was a very beautiful place, but kind of like a shark tank at feeding time with three busloads of enthusiastic HAL shoppers dumped into one big showroom. Regardless, we didn’t walk away empty-handed…

We came back and I intended to go wander a bit, as there was a small rocky beach about 5 minutes from where the ship was docked, but laziness set in and I ended up napping and messing about on the laptop until dinner time. Dinner was yet another delicious piece of juicy, rare Filet Mignon – I’m going to morph into a big hunk of bleeding beef if I don’t start choosing my dinners more sensibly. After dinner we went to see “The Devil Wears Prada” (elementary, predictable, light-hearted fun) and up to the Crows Nest, where we had a drink and chatted with the servers – they’re all so friendly. One of them mentioned he used to sing for one of the bands on his last ship and Mom asked him to sing us something. He picked a song for me, something about long black hair and being wonderful – I think it might have been Eric Clapton? It was sweet.

Anyway, the most CURIOUS, CURIOUS thing is happening to me. We get back from the Crows Nest and I walk past our fruit basket on the way to the verandah, and I see this lovely little pear… We skipped dessert to make our movie on time, so I ate it. I stood out on the balcony for about 5 minutes and then came in to have my nightly bath. I get out, dry off, get into my sleeping clothes and wander over to bed. All of a sudden my ankles get vaguely itchy. I scratch, giggling a bit and whining to mom about having itchy ankles. Then my elbows start feeling similarly itchy. I scratch those for a while, still amused. I look down at my ankles…

Little white welts. Curious indeed. Same thing on the elbows. I scratch, giggle some more. More welts. I sit and stare at my limbs, enthralled. Bigger welts. Welts growing and joining into sprawling conglomerate welts. Not giggling any more. Very itchy. Oh my god, allergic to pears… or something else? Not Filet mignon… peanuts? Ate peanuts in Crows nest. Oh dear… Wait, ate peanuts a month or two ago and was fine. Can’t be peanuts. Oh no, so itchy. Itchy itchy itchy! Maybe a cold bath will help…

So I take a cold bath. It gets worse. I’ve never had hives once in all of my 20 years, and I had no idea what they came from. I spray some lidocaine onto the areas that are itching the most, and I decide to try to go to sleep, wondering what the hell I’m going to look like in the morning. I lay there, worrying, wondering if it could be the sheets, or too much chocolate, or diet coke, or god knows what. I finally fell asleep. When I got up to go to the bathroom some hours later, I made the mistake of turning the lights on and looking in the mirror. My ankles and elbows had been enveloped completely by huge white blanket-welts, all puffy and itchy and multiple inches in diameter. My legs, knees and various other random spots were dotted with smaller hives. It was terrible. I wish I would have thought to take a picture, hehe. Wrote off attending today’s formal dinner and got back to sleep, somehow.

We wake up to room service this morning and imagine my delight that upon inspection, I am nearly better. Only a couple of spots left on my knees, feet and elbows. I toy with the idea of getting another allergy test done when I get home to figure out what the heck is going on and resign myself to a life without pears. We eat, and I dash off to have my morning bath. I run it and it fills up, all hot and steamy and inviting, and I only have to have my feet in there for 30 seconds before it dawns on me. I am relieved for a moment, pleased that I can still eat pears (it was a very good pear) but it didn’t take long to conclude that developing a serious sensitivity to your only water supply is probably more dire than not being able to eat pears.

The short story (the long story was fun, no?) is that all of a sudden, I appear to be allergic to the ships water. I can’t touch it without my skin getting all red and angry and ballooning up like a particularly tempermental pufferfish. Now, that’s a big deal to a girl who bathes/showers at least twice a day (or more). Especially when said girl is speeding towards North Africa, where it is quite hot and dirty. To ensure the accuracy of my suspicions I have been conducting scientific tests to narrow down the problem. Since I was having baths, I thought it might be some chemical residue on the tub, so I sprayed my left leg and foot with the detachable showerhead for a couple minutes and observed. Welts. I ran the sink tap over my right arm for a few minutes. Welts. I’m pretty sure that I’m right about this. My best guess is that perhaps they chemically treat the water to make it pure enough for use and I have developed some kind of sensitivity.

So, that’s not fun. I haven’t really figured out what I’m going to do yet. I’ll probably end up washing with $2 bottles of Evian and resign myself to smelling mediocre and being dirty until we disembark on Thursday morning. Once I get up and out of the cabin I’ll probably try to catch the nurse and ask her about my situation, because it really does seem very strange.

Anyway, that’s all the news. It’s a sea day today, the waves don’t look to be more than 5 or 6 feet, and it’s cloudy and overcast. No welts to be seen, and the area is expected to remain clear so long as the Sarah keeps dry. We’re probably about 100 miles north of Algiers and enroute to our next port, La Goulette, Tunisia. We get in there 7am tomorrow.

Hope everyone is well, we’re really missing home! One more week!

Barrrrrrrrrthelonaaaaaaaa!

2006-09-22T20:50:40Z

Originally published at sarah does europe. Please leave any comments there.

We docked in Barcelona at 7am, ate breakfast (room service again), and scrambled to get ready for yet another tour. Factoring in time to make it from our cabin down to the Queen’s Lounge (the show lounge, where the tours meet) is a new necessity for us – we’re always late. We made it off the ship and to our bus on time and we were off.

Barcelona, or what I saw of it, is an amazingly beautiful city. All of the buildings have such character and for being so old, it’s remarkably clean and fresh looking. Every building in the historic center is gorgeous and well-kept. Even on a grey, gloomy kind of day like today, the city was buzzing with energy. Everywhere you looked there were people crowding in cafes, concerts being set up, and people watching people watching people. Much less graffiti than in Rome or Athens, I don’t know whether that is due to general contentment or a very adept clean-up crew. As a sidenote, I noticed that a lot of the graffiti in Rome had to do with the Catholic Church (“VATICANO MAFIA” and whatnot) and Barcelona is a city with only one cathedral, so… they don’t have that to protest. Hell, we’ve been visiting churches for a month now and we had to come HERE to see a naked Jesus sculpted into a façade of a church, complete with genitals. Scandalous! Anyway, I have totally fallen in love with this city. I will be back.

The tour today (I don’t mind having a tour on the big city days, as the sheer size of some places can be a bit overwhelming) was called “Gaudi’s Barcelona.” Antoni Gaudi was an architect who lived here from 1852 to 1926. Barcelona is full of his buildings, and if you’ve seen his style, you understand that you can tell instantly if you’re looking at something that Gaudi designed. I’m no architecture critic but I find his work fascinating because to me, it has a very organic feeling about it – there are no straight lines, everything curves and undulates and is just ever so slightly off. His buildings and structures somehow end up perfect as wholes, while being imperfect in all of their parts. Blah blah blah. I obviously have some “scholarly-young-lady-likes-to-hear-herself-talk” building up in me, with my lack of classes. Anyway.

We stopped at Park Guell, which was intended to be a gated community for some 60 families outside of Barcelona, in the style of the English garden city. In the end, the area was prepared with several structures (constructed on Gaudi’s plans) but only three homes were built before the project was abandoned for financial reasons. The area is a park today, and the three houses that were built are being used as a school, a museum and private home. It is a very interesting, pretty place. The tour guide kept saying that Gaudi invented the mosaic, and I guess I have no reason to disbelieve her, because I’ve never seen so much mosaic work in all my life.

Next we saw La Sagrada Familia, which is a famous church and Gaudi’s most ambitious project. You would know it if you have seen a picture of it. It is a massive structure, all in stone, and it’s been under construction since 1883… They think it will be complete by 2020. I don’t really know that it would be worth your time for me to try to describe it. Suffice it to say that Gaudi was insane. His buildings are like nothing I’ve ever seen. What is so amazing to me is that his work is so different, and yet he still had large-scale projects that were funded and constructed to completion. People were willing to accept him for the crazy bastard he was. If he had lived in Canada or the States, the holders of the purse-strings would look at his plans, shout “Preposterous!! No way!!” and move on. I find the whole thing to be very curious. Regardless, Gaudi’s work definitely adds a bit of fancy and peculiarity to the city. I love it.

We abandoned tour after that, as the next stop was the ship and I couldn’t live with myself if we went back at 1pm when the boat isn’t leaving until almost 10pm. I thought seeing the aquarium might be fun so we wandered over to the Port Vell area and walked through a shopping mall (very nice clothes here, I was tempted) to get to the aquarium. It was rather smaller than I expected but had two tunnels fit with moving sidewalks that took you underneath the main tanks, full of big, strange fishes, rays, and sharks. I enjoyed that part, especially since I’ve been reading a book called “The Life of Pi” which is an Old Man and the Sea-esque story about a young castaway’s ordeals in the Pacific ocean. Since the writer was Spanish, he used some Spanish names for the creatures the main character encountered, so I was able to pick them out. In one chapter he talked about the character killing a dorado fish and observing their strange stress response of turning colors rapidly, leading the character to feel like he was “clubbing a rainbow to death.” We saw some of those. Was that worth that many sentences? Hrm. I need an editor.

Afterwards we sat down at a café (or maybe it was a bar) and had a Mojito each (very tart and chock full of fresh mint, mmm!) and shared a grilled ham and cheese sandwich. How incredibly adventurous of us, I know. We were just trying to get a quick snack though, and the appetizer menu went like this: mussels, clams, cockles, prawns…. and so on. At least I think that’s what it read, you can never be sure when you don’t have a phrasebook. Sometimes when you sit down to eat in a strange country you just want something you know. The positive is that I have kept Mom out of McDonald’s for nearly a month now, and let me tell you, it’s been tough.

We wandered up the very famous street “Las Ramblas.” There is a market that has anything and everything you could ever want to buy, and the street is tree-lined and lively, full of people. Along both sides are typical people watching cafes with fresh seafood, tapas and colorful drinks. One of our dining stewards was saying that Barcelona is the highlight of the cruise for a lot of the crew because they love to shop here. Unfortunately, shopping is just not at the top of our priority list so we weren’t too excited – remember, we are two ladies who wandered out of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul empty-handed! It was a very nice afternoon, although the clouds started to spit a bit, which dampened our courage to push on. Mom wanted to take a taxi back but my frugal self was convinced that the port bus at 1.50 euros a pop was the way to go, and I saved us 4 or 5 euros on getting back - a decent fattening of the gelato fund.

Mom had a nap, I finished my book (was it ever nice to have the time to sit down and read something cover to cover in a day). We just got back from a lovely supper in the dining room. I feel terrible eating on the ship when Spain is just off the gangway, but really, the food is GOOD, the people are friendly, and it’s already paid for… When I come back one day and do the totally immersive backpacking kind of adventure, the “oh-my-god-what-am-I-eating” experience will be more appropriate. For now, I’m happy in my little home away from home.

Nice and Eze..

2006-09-20T19:16:08Z

Originally published at sarah does europe. Please leave any comments there.

The last couple of days have been SO long and all-consuming, I’m kind of dreading writing them up, but I feel a certain responsibility to all of you and to myself to keep a decent record of this adventure… So here I am, marching on like a good soldier.

We’ve boarded our second ship, the ms Noordam. I’m not going to be too honest about it because I don’t want to seem like a spoiled brat… It’s a beautiful ship, very lavishly decorated, very friendly staff – I just kind of feel like I’m living in a big Las Vegas-y shopping mall. To me (and yes, I understand that I am probably a minority) a cruise ship is a means of transportation from one place to the next, and if they feed me enough to keep me going and give me something to explore every day, I’m content. I’m not really very enthusiastic about excess. The Prinsendam was like a big old yacht full of friendly, familiar faces – the Noordam is a gargantuan mess of people and shops and loud colors and never-ending stairwells and passages. Mom and I both felt the shock of going from small-ship-huge-cabin to small-cabin-huge-ship on the first day, but I think we’ve settled in now and we’re getting used to the new atmosphere. Our cabin is compact but comfortable, and I even unpacked this time – I lived out of my suitcase the entire 16 days on the Prinsendam.

Our assigned table in the dining room was in the very centre of the huge circular room, sunk in a little pit with two other tables for two flanking us, less than 6 inches between tables. No view, which disappointed us after having spent the past two weeks watching the sunsets at dinner every evening. After one awkward meal having to alternate between talking to the couple on the left and the couple on the right we decided that we should probably switch. The poor Maitre’D was getting so much crap from so many people about table assignments that I didn’t think we’d get to change, but set Karen on a problem and, well, if you know Karen.. Anyway, she somehow charmed him into giving the two of us a lovely, private table for 4 along a banister with nice view out the back windows. I don’t know how she does it.

The first port of our cruise was Monte Carlo, Monaco. Karen was intent on visiting France so we booked a 9 hour tour that included stops in Nice and Eze as well as a guided tour of Monaco. Yet another warm, beautiful day… the rain we ran into in Rome hasn’t followed us, thank goodness. Monaco was a very strange place to be – it just seemed unsettlingly wealthy. The entire country is 0.9 square miles in size and there is a police officer for every 60 citizens. As far as the cost of property, for each portion of space the size of a phonebooth, you pay between 8 and 22 thousand Euros. The harbor was full of gorgeous yachts as we were in port one day before the annual yacht show. Some of them were almost half as long as the Noordam, and probably 2/3 the size of the Prinsendam. Mom was grateful to see the church where Princess Grace is buried (her tomb was covered with flowers as the anniversary of her death was on the 14th of September) and we also saw the particular curve where her accident took place. After our day trip into France we came back to see the casino and Mom and I decided to forgo the 10 euro entry fee to the real casino (although we did have a quick look inside) and went over to slum it in one of the other casinos. We put some money in a Star Wars slot machine – we won 60 euros on the Death Star bonus after Darth defeated Obi Wan (you have to take a side) and my boring no-fun self was whining “Cash out… Cash out!!!” the whole time. In the end we lost that and I finally convinced her to cash out before we lost our original investment. We made 0.25 – I was pleased, and ordered myself a slightly larger size gelato today with our winnings in mind. I would have cashed out with the 60 euros, but I don’t know if I could have eaten that much gelato…

Both Nice and Eze were beautiful – I wish I could say more about them but it’s kind of all a blur. Nice had a lovely beach (it was rocks, not sand, but it didn’t seem to impede the enjoyment of the sunbathers), and the obligatory topless European beach ladies were indeed topless. We wandered down the seaside promenade, through the beautiful flower market, and into some of the shops along the main tourist street. There was a lovely confectionary/chocolate shop called “Auer” that drew us in – spent way too much money. They make the most delicious chocolate, I’m afraid that the things we bought might not even make it home. Sorry!

The climb up to the top of Eze was ALMOST worth the view, it’s a steep climb. The town is perched quite high in the cliffs overlooking the sea and it was a typical medieval town – we’ve seen so many at this point. It reminded me of San Gimignano in its character – very narrow streets and lots of climbing and winding. Lovely shops and beautiful vistas. Dinner was in a small restaurant in Eze, a nice salad, chicken and fried potatoes in a mushroom cream sauce, espresso (which I am coming to love…) and a dessert made with sponge cake, strawberry ice cream and crème anglaise. I have to say, I’m glad we’re touring Italy and not France – French cuisine is so incredibly rich. I got sucked in by the little parfumerie at the base of the town – oops! I’ve been so good and frugal the past three weeks and all of a sudden, I’m completely blowing it. I guess now that we’re free of the Istanbul to Rome weight restrictions I feel like I can start loading up on stuff. Sorry, Dad.. hehe.

Today we had a transfer to Florence, about 2 hours from the port of Livorno depending on the traffic. We were into the city centre by 10:30am and high-tailed it over the the Accademia museums to get in line for David as we neglected to make reservations. I should have known that Mom wouldn’t be content to see the copy in front of the old Town Hall. We were in line by 11 and made it into the museum just before 12:30. Well, what can one say about David? He is big… and naked… Hehehe, just kidding. He was quite spectacular – it’s the subtle things like the curvature of his muscles and the veins running down his arms and hands that make him so beautiful. I would say it was worth the wait, although we did come across the copy later on and it was pretty darn close. We had lunch in a very nice restaurant off of the Piazza San Croce, which is the prime area for buying leather in Florence. We had our typical Italian lunch – salad with oil and vinegar, bread, white wine and pasta. Mom had spaghetti pomodoro, I had the very best gnocchi I’ve ever had… Oh my god, it was so tender. Mmmmfdmghfmhs. We also had some of the best gelato we’ve had yet. More limone (lemon) and fragola (strawberry) for me, Karen always gets pistachio and vanilla. It seems like Florence is definitely a city to eat in. In terms of shopping, we actually made up for yesterday’s indiscretions by buying nothing today – we were too busy sightseeing and trying to navigate the town. We really enjoyed being set loose in a city for 6 hours with no one to follow and nowhere to go. Beautiful day.

We’ve just left the port of Livorno (I’ve been watching the sailaway out the window) and are now enroute to Spain. Tomorrow will be a much needed sea day – we’ve had two 10 hour days of touring and it’ll be nice to sit still for once. I can only bring myself to sit down and type things up every second day, so I’ll try to write after Barcelona or perhaps even after Palma. Today was our very last day in the area of Tuscany. It’s hard to believe the trip is finally winding down.

“Rome: A man who lives by exhibiting to travellers his grandmother’s corpse..”

2006-09-18T20:23:03Z

Originally published at sarah does europe. Please leave any comments there.

Buonasera! We’re back in the land of “oh-my-god-I-want-to-eat-everything-I-see-and-I-don’t-care-how-fat-I-get”… both good
and bad. Certainly different than the land of “oh-my-god-I-don’t-want-to-eat-ever-again-but-dinner-is-at-six-and-I-hope-
my-dress-fits” which we will return to tomorrow, upon boarding our next ship.

Our flight from Rome to Istanbul was actually quite pleasant… it was only two hours long and that feels like nothing after
you have a long haul under your belt. Alitalia obviously put some research time into how to appease Karen, because they
gave her a ham and cheese sandwich (well, proscuitto and formaggio on ciabatta – it is an Italian airline, after all) and
some cookies and she drifted off, content with the world. We had to take a holding pattern for 20 some minutes before we
were allowed to land because the conditions at the airport were bad, but we touched down alright and met our
transportation. Got into hotel okay. Everything is well and good.

I came across a passage about Rome in a book I’ve been reading (Traveller’s Tales Italy) that described the place better
than I could so I thought I’d share it: “During the day, Rome has the feeling of rot and revelation one experiences when
in the private domain of a handsome old woman, where sweat, sex, cologne, rouge, yellowed notes and papers, bottled
remedies with indecipherable labels, crumbling flowers, photographs that seem to have been taken in a brownish gray mist,
clothes stained with experience but never worn anymore, and the smells of countless meals have formed a heavy collective
presence in the air. It’s ruins are like the sagging and corded throatline of a beauty once too sensuous to be believed
and now too soulful to be perfectly understood. Of course, nothing we worry about is old in the halls where the laws of
nature were written, but in our human effort, with everything over so fast, a city like Rome seems very, very old.”
Obviously Stanley Crouch likes to write romantically, and certainly, what he writes is true, but Rome is definitely not
all romance. This particular visit, we’ve seen more in the way of metropolitan chaos - traffic, smog and dirty, graffiti-
covered streets and buildings. It seems to depend on your stamina and state of mind - big crazy cities have a tendency to
tire you out, and they become less fascinating and less enthralling as you lose steam. We were a little tired out this
time around, I think. Regardless, it is a bewildering city (I mean that in the best possible way), both the old and the
new.

Last night we ventured out for supper around 8pm and ended up in a little basement restaurant not far from where we’re
staying. It seems like there are no bad restaurants in Rome - if there are, we haven’t found them yet. Even if we did
find one, I would put a bad meal down to bad menu choices (ie. not going with the specialities) rather than a lack of
skill or quality. We had a nice salad each, bread, more very good wine, and shared an order of spaghetti carbonara –
pasta with cream, cheese, eggs, garlic and bacon. That dish is always very, very good in Rome - we’ve had it about three
times. I love Italy.

We attempted to sleep in today but I was up by 8. Karen was out and about doing Karen things all morning… planning,
scheming, getting her way. She’s so good at this stuff. As for me, I’m better at hanging around indoors and doing things
like bathing. Bathing seems more necessary when you’re in these big cities. After a day like yesterday, waking up in
Istanbul and going to sleep in Rome (I’m the luckiest girl ever…), I needed a good washing.

We took a walk this afternoon, did some shopping and lingered momentarily at the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain and various
little Piazzas and shop windows. Karen also likes to linger momentarily – I feel bad because we keep butting heads about
our tourist-ing styles. I’m all business, and I make all efforts to try and look like I know exactly where I’m going all
the time. If anybody talks to me, I smile at them like “I know what you’re up to..” and keep walking intently, ignoring
them completely if they persist. Mom likes to wander, stop and look at things, talk to people (even if they’re dodgy)…
She’ll probably get more out of her way in the long run. People just do things differently, I guess.

The weather is very temperamental today, it’s been pouring randomly and Mom was forced to buy some umbrellas from the
opportunistic street vendors that spring up everywhere when it starts to rain. I would have liked to make it down to
the Pantheon to see the rain coming down through the hole in the dome, but we had loaded up on stuff by the time I thought
of it and ended up heading back in the direction of the hotel.

We stopped for lunch at Vito’s, a little bar about two and a half blocks from our hotel that serves pizza and other
delicious junk food. We had been there before with a group from the pre-cruise and liked it so we decided to forgo
adventure and stop in before it started pouring again. We each had a beer and shared a plate of patates frites (okay, I’m
just trying to sound fancy – French fries), an order of arancini (deep fried risotto balls filled with cheese and
vegetables), and a lot of bruschetta (some with tomatoes and basil, some with just oil and garlic). I can live on a
cruise ship where food is free and ready 24 hours a day for over two weeks and do fine, but one day in Italy leaves me
feeling like a whale.

Anyway, I don’t want to spend any more time sitting around when I could be out and about. Rome is quite a city and our
time here has gone so fast, as usual. We’re being transferred out to Civitavecchia (yet another place name that I have
been pronouncing incorrectly for over a year) tomorrow at 12:30, which means we’ll be at the ship by 2pm. I hope the
Noordam knows what it’s in for, having us party animals aboard… hehe. Yeah right. We were pretty busy on the last cruise
– this time I plan to contribute to the “sleeping passenger” and “lazing passenger” quotas as much as possible.

3 weeks down, 2 to go. Crazy!

Goodbye Prinsendam, Hello Turkey..

2006-09-16T05:55:28Z

Originally published at sarah does europe. Please leave any comments there.

Sorry I’ve gotten a bit behind with writing, we’ve been so busy. We disembarked the Prinsendam today and I am writing this from our room at the Four Seasons Hotel in Istanbul. Holy crap, it’s the most beautiful place ever… More on that later.

Our first day in Turkey was Kusadasi, where we had a private tour booked with 11 other people from our Cruise Critic rollcall. We used Sammy’s Travel (thanks to Grumpy for making all of the arrangements) and had a lovely day. We were in port from 8am to 3:30 and the ship left port for Istanbul not long after 4pm. We saw Mary’s house first and it struck me as a bit of a tourist trap, but it was a neat drive up the mountainside and the site was very pretty. Next we went to Ephesus and spent the better part of two hours wandering the ruins. Very beautifully reconstructed. Very busy.

Afterwards we went to a Turkish carpet place for the traditionally touristy and notoriously impressive carpet lecture. They sit you down, tell you about the carpets, offer you refreshments and send in multiple hunky young strongarms to roll out rug after rug at your feet. It was quite the experience. I had my first Turkish coffee – the coffee is brewed with the grits in, so you can’t stir it and you have to be very careful when you get to the bottom third of the cup. I was pressured into “medium sugar” and found it to be very sweet, it kind of made me ill. Next time no sugar, I don’t care how bitter it is. Anyway, apart from the particularly cute carpet roller who looked like a Turkish Johnny Depp, my favorite part was seeing the silkworm cocoons and watching how they loosen them in hot water and spin them into thread. Fascinating! Least favorite part – the girls my age sitting there hunched over the looms weaving the carpets. They were supposedly part of a government certified carpet weaving course but they looked so tired and I know from my marathon sewing sessions that sitting that way kills you after 4 hours let alone 7 hour shifts day after day.

We also went to a small roadside ceramics place which had absolutely beautiful things. Endured yet another demonstration that started with a man forming a piece of clay into a vase (he made it look too easy – it would have been a better demonstration if he had to struggle) and more youngish girls painting the intricate patterns onto the raw pieces. Their showroom was just beautiful and it was very difficult to leave empty handed. I couldn’t bring myself to get anything as it was all quite expensive and I really have no place for Turkish ceramics in my life right now. But they had this gorgeous turquoise blue section with lovely bowls, plates, serving sets and teapots - I would have loved to bring some of it home. I think Karen wanted to bring all of it home. She showed very commendable restraint.

We also visited the Tomb of St. John, yet another place that might have meant more to me were I a more religious person. The site was on top of a hill and offered a beautiful view of the area, from the Ephesus site to the mountains where we visited Mary’s house and all the way out to the sea. Nearby we visited a small mosque, our very first one, and were introduced to a lovely man who let me enter with a tank top, shorts and a bare head – that was strange.

Anyway, we made it to Istanbul. The first day we got into port at 1pm and took a 4 hour tour of the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace and the Grand Bazaar. Of course, four hours isn’t nearly enough to see all three of those sites, especially when you factor in time between sites and waiting around for 30 people to go to the bathroom. At the time I was frustrated but knowing now just how little time we had/have in Istanbul, it was probably a good move. At least we got a glimpse of the major sites even if we didn’t really have time to enjoy them. We only had 20 minutes at the Grand Bazaar which wasn’t enough time to find something you wanted, let along haggle the seller down to a reasonable price. We did have a walk around and get a sense of the place – it was overwhelming. 40 hectares of stalls, each with its own persistent, ruthless and charismatic shopkeeper… you have to be a very good shopper to get a deal, I think.

Disembarkation was sad until we finally got off the ship (they assign you a time and a number and then they call them out in sequence - Karen and I were joking about how it reminded us of bingo, except you lose…). We were stressing out about how we were going to get to the hotel because we hadn’t contacted them to let them know when we’d be disembarking. Lo and behold, a nicely dressed young man is holding a “Ms. K. Read” sign right inside the pier terminal, and he and his porter hasten to grab our luggage and whisk us outside through the honking and chaos and crowds to a waiting BMW limo, complete with leather seats, fruit, water and cold towels. Lovely! We wonder how long he was waiting… We arrived at the hotel and the doorman gave our keys to the driver, who walked us straight to our beautiful, huge room. Best…hotel…ever.

So, Istanbul. It’s a crazy place, but any place would be with 15 million people in it. By now, we’re used to old buildings, but Istanbul definitely has a different feel than the rest of the places we’ve been in. It’s an incredibly diverse place. Crossing the street is a death wish even on the walk light – if you’re not confident, they’ll keep coming at you. I think Karen thought that she was going to get hit about 10 times yesterday – she has a cute little “OH MY GOD!#@!$!” kind of run that I haven’t seen until now. I thought that street-crossing was bad in Italy. We haven’t ventured out much – last night we walked over to the Blue Mosque and took some pictures of the outside, had a coke outside of the Haghia Sophia and visited the Basilica Cistern, which was very nice. We’re on our way out to actually visit the inside of the Haghia Sophia right now, after breakfast.

Our flight back to Rome is at 2:30pm and we have a car booked to take us to the airport around 11:30, so I better wrap this up if we’re going to have any time in the museum. Wish I could say more – Turkey is a very fascinating place.

Onward and eastward..

2006-09-12T21:16:26Z

Originally published at sarah does europe. Please leave any comments there.

Well, last day in Greece. Katakolon (yesterday, pronounced Kat-ack-o-lon, not Kata-colon like I’ve been saying for months.. hehe) was a write off as far as I was concerned… I didn’t sleep well and ended up in bed until well after noon. Apparently I’m hitting my wall because I haven’t felt like that yet on the trip. Mom went on our scheduled tour to the Mercouri Winery by herself but wasn’t really in the mood for booze at 9 am, naturally. She said she spent the morning running around after the farm animals – ducks and dogs and cats and geese and god knows what else. What a cute lady.

Today is day 19, and that means we are 54.2585% of the way through our trip. Sad, huh? We only have 3 days (of 16) left on the Prinsendam now. I hope we like the Noordam. So, we’re in Athens, today. Or we were, for a little more than 4 hours. We took an 8am tour to go see the Acropolis. I know Will wanted to hear about Greek food… I’m sorry, dear, the only thing I’ve ingested in Greece has been a diet Nestle Iced tea – it tasted funny in a not specifically Greek way. Seeing as I’m stuck on the ship this evening, I seem to have passed through Greece (3 days, basically) without eating any Greek food or attempting any Greek language. Isn’t that just a cruise ship for you. Hrmph.

As I was saying (sorry) we went to the Acropolis this morning. We had a small tour of the city enroute but I couldn’t really hear/understand our guide so I don’t know what I saw. Athens is a very big city. There are a lot of strangely shaped apartment buildings, tall and narrow, and everyone seems to have a balcony with awnings and green plants. The traffic was pretty bad but nothing worse than Rome. We got to the Acropolis and after 15 minutes of standing around pretending to be able to hear our guide we finally decided to mutiny and wander around on our own. It was neat to see the Parthenon but it was very busy and also quite difficult to keep your footing on the polished marble especially when one is in leather-soled flip-flops… idiotic footwear choice one again. You’d think I would have realized by now. Consequently, the tour might have been better named “Sarah’s feet, in flip flops, on slippery marble” because that was what I was looking at the whole time. Beautiful site, though. All these “brief glimpse of x area” tours tend to inspire a certain desire to learn more. I don’t know when I’ll be back to Greece though. It’s nice, but it just hasn’t felt like a Sarah kind of place. Whatever that means.

There has been a shuttle bus running into the city all day but Mom was pretty much done for the day and I haven’t got the courage to go in alone because Athens is kind of scary, what with the language barrier and its sheer size. I did see the young Australian girl go but didn’t have the chance or initiative to ask if I could join her. Too late now, I think.

Looking at my pictures, it appears I am either burning out or completely uninspired by what I have seen of Greece. They’re all so mediocre. I tried to post some of the better ones but they really are lacking something. Speaking of pictures, I discovered that my wireless connection is much better from the Lido deck and I am able to upload pictures successfully there, so there are so new ones in the galleries. Off to dinner, again. Last night when we were eating dessert one of our tablemates remarked that it wouldn’t be long before her body told her “ALRIGHT, YOU HAVE ABUSED ME FOR THE LAST TIME…” and that’s about how I feel. I’m sorry, body. Just a few more days. We’re doing okay, don’t go and get fat on me now… Tomorrow is a Turkey day, and I don’t mean the gravy and stuffing kind. Should be interesting!

It’s all Greek to me.. (sorry, couldn’t resist)

2006-09-10T14:30:34Z

Originally published at sarah does europe. Please leave any comments there.

Yesterday was Dubrovnik, Croatia. It was very windy in the morning, and it was an extremely rough night getting there. Mom was pretty sick, I think. Like everywhere else we’ve been, though, the sun comes out before noon and heats everything up. I feel like I’m being slow-cooked.

The whole area didn’t seem very large at all, and the walled city itself was completely walkable. And I mean that in multiple senses – one of the major tourist pulls is walking the walls themselves, which surround the town on all sides, extending up the hills in behind and around to the ocean. Yet another medieval looking place that was founded by Romans, fell under Venetian control, and eventually fell to Napoleon’s army. People sure were busy, back in those days. The town itself was lovely albeit insanely busy. I knew it would be, because I found out before hand that there were 5 other ships docking with us. We caught a shuttle into town on our own – no tour. So, Dubrovnik… The streets were paved with marble tiles and they’ve been polished to a perfectly smooth shine by all of the foot traffic over the years – very pretty. It was refreshing to have NO motorized vehicles besides the odd little electric cart for transporting goods… Just when I’ve finally gotten used to having people speed past on mopeds in 6-foot wide alleyways.

We stopped at a family restaurant and had lunch – the rest of the table had spaghetti but I went for a salad and a “Dubrovnik platter” which consisted of olives, tomatoes, cheese, cured ham, etc. It was all pretty good but I went into the back to use the ladies room and I think I saw the leg my ham came from hanging from the bar. Hmm…

Supposedly ties were invented in Croatia and I meant to be the tourist and bring some back for the men in my life, but they started at about 400 kuna, which is roughly $80 US, if I have my conversions right. Sorry guys – but I know you all hate ties anyway.

Today we stopped in Corfu, Greece. It is a very small little island – we drove across in less than 30 minutes. Mom and I had a tour booked – Paleokastritsa and Corfu town. Paleokastritsa is a resort area on the northwest part of the island – very nice area, very lush. Perfect azure and turquoise water. I don’t know what the point of taking us there was, because it’s really the kind of place where one should settle in for a month or more, swimming everyday and napping every afternoon. I wore an inappropriate semi-revealing dress, having forgotten that today was a religious-buildings kind of day, and had to wear a stinky, haggard shawl for our tour through the monastery. I’m the only tourist in Europe obsessed with photographing the cats – what’s up with that?

Corfu town was a nice, touristy kind of town with lots of shops and atmosphere. The language has been a bit of a shock – I’m to the point where I can communicate and figure things out in Italian but Greek is completely illogical, foreign and bizarre to me. I guess we only have a couple more Greek ports and then it’s back to romance languages, far more my style.

I’ve been trying to take advantage of the ship activities because I’ve been so ansy at night, after mom has crashed. I went to the show last night by myself and enjoyed it – it was a very witty, self-deprecating female English violinist who played beautifully elegant pieces and told horrible, dirty jokes in between. I’m going to go again tonight, I think. I think it’s a Charlie Chaplin-esque kind of guy. Those kind of shows you stay out of the front row unless you want to be horribly embarassed..

Still having a ball, although I’m admittedly miserable to have left Italy. I really loved it there. Only 4 more days on the Prinsendam, and I really don’t want to leave this ship, either. I think Mom feels the same way. We’ve met a number of people who are continuing on with the next cruise (Istanbul to Athens) and I think we wish we were too, but when we were booking, Mom really had no interest in the Black Sea. Of course I am by no means complaining. Until next time!

Bellisima Venezia..

2006-09-08T11:43:35Z

Originally published at sarah does europe. Please leave any comments there.

Day two in Venice… Having spent the evening out, I came back and slept until nearly 11. Mom slept in too. We didn’t really do much until after 3pm because we knew that the height of the crowds, not to mention the heat, is the early afternoon. It was a pretend sea day. We finally mustered the effort to get back out into the city around 6pm. I convinced Karen to walk with me to Piazzale Roma, which is the closest ACTV (Venice public transport) terminal. I had a bit of an idea where to go because I walked that way the previous evening/morning. We caught the #1 vaporetto (water bus), which takes you down the Grand Canal for 5 euros per trip. Excellent way to see the city, especially if you snag one of the coveted outside seats at the front and back, or a spot along the edge in the middle.

We got off at Piazza San Marco and wandered the square a bit, people watching and taking photos. We decided to take the elevator up the bell tower, which was beautiful. We caught the end of the sunset from the top and got some nice pictures of the city. You could walk all the way around and see the entirety of Venice with all its little cobbled streets, narrow canals and red-tiled roofs. It’s difficult to get a sense of the size of a place from the ground. Not to say it’s a big place, because it really isn’t. Completely worthwhile.

We wandered a bit more, looked at art stands along the promenade and taking in our last night in Venice. I love the Piazza San Marco at night – one of the cafes always has a string quartet playing (you pay a surcharge for the music should you wish to eat/drink there) so that adds to the atmosphere. The buildings have lights spaced along their facades and the typical Venetian lampposts are everywhere, so it’s all romantically lit and magical. There is marble set into the cobblestone streets in geometric patterns and it glows when the light hits at the right angle.

I didn’t want to stress Mom out so I conceded to go back shortly before 9pm. Since our trip on the #1 was a scenic but long trip (about an hour) we decided to find a shorter way home. We found the stop for the #82, and even got on going in the right direction. We were back to the Piazzale Roma in half an hour.

Karen was infused with confidence once the ship was in [distant] sight. Karen wanted spaghetti. Karen had to have spaghetti. We found a cute restaurant/snack bar not far from the vaporetto terminal and wandered around, trying out 4 different tables before we finally figured out where to sit and who to talk to. We had a glass of chianti and a plate of spaghetti each. Mom’s was pomodoro (tomato) and mine was bolognese (meat, tasted like beef and veal) – some of the best food we’ve had yet. Mmmmm. We finished up with a piece of tiramisu and deliciously creamy cappuccinos. Heavenly. Not a tourist in the place, which is generally a good sign – so long as it’s got locals in it, and isn’t just empty altogether. I don’t know whether I was just really hungry (I wasn’t able to stomach much earlier in the day after my long evening) but I would say it was our best meal yet.

We came back to the room and slept perfectly, satisfied tourists with happy tummies.

We slept in this morning but still managed to get back into the city by 10am, this time taking the Alilaguna shuttle from the Stazione Marittima through the Guidecca canal to Saint Marks. We just wandered a bit and I bought some art from two very charismatic Italian street artists – there must be hundreds of stands set up with the artists selling their work in this city. The biggest tourist souvenirs are probably the Venetian masks (which are everywhere) and art. Easy to pack, although my total souvenir costs rose exponentially from 2 euros to 47 euros. Eek. Mom wanted to get back early so we didn’t wander far.

We came back to the ship and ate here, because we couldn’t justify another 50 euro lunch. This is a very expensive place. I found sushi at the Lido buffet… you see it all the time on the bigger ships but I don’t know if the Prinsendam is the right market. Very good. We have a formal night tonight and we’re dining with a group of 8 from the pre-cruise in the Pinnacle Grill (the fancy restaurant, you pay a surcharge to eat there). Of course, it happens to be our turn to buy the wine. Let’s hope the sommelier goes easy on us.

It’s “all aboard” time right now and we sail in half an hour, provided everybody is on the ship. We’re heading south down the Adriatic to our next port, Dubrovnik, Croatia. Arrividerci, Italy!

The Least Serene Republic

2006-09-07T21:30:41Z

Originally published at sarah does europe. Please leave any comments there.

I haven’t had time to update in the last couple of days, we’ve been so busy. Our one and only sea day for the cruise came and went – we didn’t really do all that much, just attended the Explorations lectures (one was the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire and the other was on the Venetian empire, made me feel at home again – life is strange sans classes to attend). Nothing else to say about that. It was nice to have a lazy kind of day.

The next day was Ravenna, a port I was looking forward to as I heard it was not visited often by cruise ships. The reasoning behind it’s obscurity became apparent rather quickly once we came in – the town center had nothing to offer but shopping and a few small, standard churches (they all look the same to me, at this point). The real reason for stopping there seems to have been the early Christian mosaics, which date back… a long ways. I don’t know because we obviously didn’t take that tour. I can tell you a lot about Italian makeup, though, as we spent most of the afternoon putzing around cosmetic stores with our shopping-crazy friends. We’re learning to follow the locals, in terms of food. More pizza was had (proscuitto, as usual) – pretty darn good.

On to the good stuff. We’ve arrived in Venice, which was probably one of my most highly anticipated ports. A lot of people we’ve spoken with on the ship have agreed that the 2 ½ day stay here was a major factor in their choosing the itinerary, which is certainly true for me. So, what’s it like?

Well, first of all, it really doesn’t smell very badly at all – I had heard bad things, but it’s kind of like a cruise ship. You come across a strange odor now and then, but it’s usually localized and either it moves away from you or you move away from it. The weather here has been the hottest so far, or it feels that way, with the humidity. Very hot and muggy. No other place has poufed up my hair like this place has.

The first day here, I dragged Mom up to the top deck to watch sail-in and eat breakfast. We came in on the Guidecca canal to reach the port, which is about 20 some minutes from Piazza San Marco, generally considered to be the centre of Venice. We took the shuttle boat from the dock to San Marco and made it to the Doge’s Palace with time to spare, meaning we didn’t have to forfeit the $70 we prepaid for the Secrets tour. I loved it – we got to go though hidden passageways and see the shabby underworld hiding behind all of the ornate decoration. I got the feeling that Mom liked the ornate side better. Highlights were probably Casanova’s cell and the suspended ceiling of a 54 metre hall, which we got to see from the attic side. Fascinating. Unfortunately the Doge’s palace came complete with the omnipresent “NO-PHOOOO-TO!” men – you’ll just have to visit yourself. I don’t know what we did all day, but we didn’t get back onto the ship until around 3pm. Getting lost in Venice is a pleasure, especially when there is nobody around. Ate yet another pizza in an overpriced trattatoria which obviously wasn’t far enough away from the tourist streets – first food I’ve had since I got to Italy that I would genuinely call “bad.”

At 7 pm, we went back into the city for a gondola ride. We got a grumpy gondolier, wouldn’t sing for us, but he stayed close to other boats so we got the benefit of their more animated gondoliers. I took a lot of videos, and the serenade is always sweeter when somebody else is paying. The boats feel tippy and have to stay balanced, so you’re almost afraid to move when you’re in one, especially with five other people. I wasn’t disappointed. Hate to say this, but it reminded me of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride in Disneyland, for some strange reason. I felt stupid for thinking that at the time, telling myself “Oh Sarah, how dare you compare this to Disneyland?” But having spent a fair amount of time here in Venice, I realize that it wouldn’t be so far off to consider it a theme park of sorts. A bloody expensive one, too.

After the gondola, we came back to the ship AGAIN and went to the Queens Lounge, where they were showing the new “Casanova” movie in lieu of the nightly show. We settled in for popcorn and such when one of the cruise staffers asked if I’d like to go into Venice with him and his friend instead of hanging around watching the silly movie. I couldn’t say no… I didn’t get back to my room until 6am though, and I’m still recovering. Got to experience Venetian nightlife, which seems to consist of university students that crawl along as the bars close. I’d endure the pain of dancing to Christina Aguliera songs after coming this far any time, if it meant that I’d get Venice to myself like I did on the walk back to the ship (extraordinarily quiet, and no traffic on the side canals, so they just sit there all glassy and beautiful). Needless to say I slept in late this morning.

So, that concludes my first 24ish hours in Venice. It’s a magical place – like nowhere else. I’d write about my day today, but I need to get to sleep if I’m going to milk the last of my Venice hours effectively in the morning. Ciao bell[a/o]!

Who knew that volcanos can make boots?

2006-09-03T18:50:23Z

Originally published at sarah does europe. Please leave any comments there.

We’ve just left Messina, Sicily and the ship is sailing through the Strait of Messina, around the boot and heading from the Ionian Sea into the Adriatic Sea. Mom and I are sitting out on the balcony in our HAL bathrobes with our feet up, watching the mainland go by. The weather is lovely and the sun is on the other side of the ship, so it’s nice and cool.

Yesterday we saw Pompeii from our port, Napoli, or Naples. We really enjoyed seeing the ruins, although the city is just immense. We had a lovely guide and she showed us what she considered to be the most important sites – you could have spent days wandering the streets. We only saw four of the plaster casts that you always see on TV. Our tablemate Rosemary took the adventurous route and rode the Circumvesuviana train with another couple to get to the site, then paid a guide (who turned out to be a professor out of Stanford) to take them around. She got the interesting tour – he was telling her all kinds of scholarly secrets about Pompeii. According to him, the people casts are just an elaborate hoax to get you to feel something for the people of Pompeii… I would have liked to have been on that tour. Ours was very by the book. My favorite part was the brothel, hehe.. It was set up like a hotel, with stone beds set in small rooms. Above each doorway was a rather obscene fresco depicting the specialty of the woman who occupied that particular room. Pervs.

Today was Taormina and Mt. Etna. Taormina was yet another lovely medieval town, but it was perched high up on the cliffs overlooking the sea, unlike the towns that we saw inland in Tuscany. The roads here are crazy – the guide said we’d be going through 30 tunnels in the 9 hours of the tour. Taormina was a beautiful little town, and for the first time, I was overcome by a terrible desire to buy everything I saw. Gorgeous clothes stores. Some of them were selling winter coats, and I was very tempted. If only my Willy were there to tell me, “Sarah, the last thing you need is another black wool peacoat.” We also saw the Greco-Roman theatre, which was built at the very top of a cliff with a gorgeous view of Messina, Catania and the bay below. Lovely place. We stopped in a bakery to get a snack before we left, and I had a terrible time trying to get the guy behind the counter to give us his favorite pastry – there was too much to choose from and I thought he probably would know best. Of course, I should have realized that favorite in Italian is just favorito. Most…delicious..thing…ever. Perfect, golden, flaky puff pastry filled with sweetened cream cheese and bits of chocolate. Mmm.

Mt. Etna was neat. We drove 6600 feet up the volcano and passed at least three or four lava flows from different eruptions. The earth is completely black, and in a lot of areas, the grasses haven’t had a chance to take hold yet – there is just lichen and rock. The volcano is 11000 feet at it’s peak, so we obviously didn’t make it to the top. We had lunch up there, typical Italian multiple-course fare, with appetizers, a pasta course, salad, meat (veal again..), dessert (a tiramisu-like cake) and espresso. We were serenaded by yet another roaming restaurant band, this time with a young flute boy who owes my tympanic membranes damages. Holy high notes. After lunch we had time to wander around the extinct craters and do some picture taking. It was a lovely day- gorgeous views, even from the bus. I didn’t even mind the herding today – maybe I’m getting used to it.

Only two Italian ports left, Ravenna and Venice, and then we sail back out of the Adriatic towards Greece and Turkey. Tomorrow will be a much appreciated sea day and the first formal night of the cruise. We skipped dinner tonight to sit around like bums in our comfy robes, ordered food to the room, and we’re probably going to spend the rest of the evening out on the balcony listening to the waves and watching the coastline until bedtime. In true Mediterranean fashion, I think it’s safe to say that we’re happy as clams. Pictures aren’t uploading tonight, I’ll try again tomorrow. Until next time…

More Tuscan Countryside, and Pisa..

2006-09-01T20:15:01Z

Originally published at sarah does europe. Please leave any comments there.

We had nothing concrete planned for yesterday so we just walked around our very first port, the small town of Alghero, which is on the island of Sardinia, the second largest island in the Mediterranean. It seemed to be a resort town for rich Europeans, there were a lot of small villas that seemed rentable. It is a walled city, not unlike Dubrovnik in Croatia, and walking the walls always makes quick work of spare time. We wandered the streets a bit and went into a few churches (which are all starting to look the same, at this point). I’ve been in more churches in the last week than I have in my entire life. Eventually we settled down in a very cheap little cafe along the waterfront and had a proscuitto and cheese panini and a Heineken. Having reached the sea, the quantity and availability of seafood is starting to rear it’s fishy head. Maybe I’ll open up - you people at home might be happy to know that I’ve finally started to come around to tomatoes. Perhaps fish is next? Maybe. I’ll throw a photo or two in the gallery - I didn’t take many. We just had a leisurely stroll.

Today, we had a morning tour of Lucca and Pisa. Lucca is yet another Tuscan hilltown, complete with the city walls that you see around nearly every town in the area. The walls supposedly stretched around the old town for 5 km, but we were short on time and Mom hasn’t quite gotten comfortable with wandering around on our own. Nevertheless, we wandered through more atmospheric little cobbled streets, more churches. In Lucca, they ride their bicycles like Romans drive their cars. Mom almost got creamed a couple of times, while we were wandering around gawking like tourists. Lucca’s old town is full of shops, and fairly expensive ones at that. They really love their sunglasses here. It’s a big thing. Sunglasses and gelaterias. We really didn’t get to do anything interesting, there, because we kept getting lost. I wanted to climb the belltower but I couldn’t find it (sounds funny, but you lose all sense of direction when you’re in a little cobbled alleyway you can’t see out of and there are no sensical intersections). Starting to get used to paying for bathrooms. Run-ins with “hole in the ground” toilets has been limited to 1, and it was actually Mom (not me) who used it. She’s a brave soul.

It was just past 11 o’clock when we got into Pisa so the square (called the Campo dei Miracoli, or “field of miracles”) was quite busy. Apparently the name came after the tower started to lean - miracles, bad foundations.. it’s all the same, I guess. We lumbered around in the heat and saw the outsides of the baptistry, the cathedral and the Leaning tower, which is actually the freestanding belltower to the cathedral. It about 1 and 3/4 centuries to finish it, from 1173-1350, and it began to lean 5 years later. So it’s been leaning for a while. The ground is very marshy and soft (not on the surface, I mean the deep ground) - supposedly the other buildings in the square lean as well, but it is difficult to see. Apparently the tower was in braces not long ago, so we have something in common. I think we both look much better. Mom got her obligatory “holding up the tower” shot (which I’ll post), but I didn’t get a chance. Oh well. I did pay two euros for a 2 1/2 inch tall cast pewter leaning tower. First souvineer of the trip, except for the gelato-fat plumping up my cells. Mmm.

We’ve been having a good time on the ship too - lots of food, lots of company. We had put in for a table of 2 in the dining room but we’ve gotten so friendly with the group from the pre-cruise that we asked for a table of 6, with the two Arizonian ladies, and a lovely couple (more adopted grandparents, hehe) from Florida. I’m enjoying the older company. I am in high demand, though.. there is one other girl about my age. We are the only young ladies on the ship and she is trying to track me down. If you know Sarah, you know she just wants to be left alone. I had a message waiting for me from the Cruise director (big honcho) asking me if I would be interested in meeting her and possibly attending some teen group gatherings. The only other young person I’ve seen was a younger kid with a mohawk and chucks - my mom said he was wearing a t-shirt that said “When you talk, I want to eat nails..” Poor kid must be in agony here - a cruise ship is no place for angst.

Anyway, the dinner bell will be coming soon. They actually have a cute white-gloved guy in uniform walking up and down the main stairs playing a tune on the xylophone, in addition to the regular dinner bell.

Thanks for my marks, Dad, I was expecting worse. Hope you and Jeff are taking care of the pets, and the Grandma, and yourselves, of course! We miss you!

Five things..

2006-08-30T21:45:02Z

Originally published at sarah does europe. Please leave any comments there.

While I like to pretend that I’m a progressive, earth-friendly young lady, you can’t help but love being on a cruise ship. It’s such an escape. I was trying to fall asleep last night, thinking about my day, and decided to post what I came up with.

Sarah’s top five cruising curiosities that never get old:

First, the runners up.. Bathing on a cruise ship: I like the ever so gentle sloshing in the tub. Endlessly amusing. Watching movies on a cruise ship: popcorn and everything. It’s just fun.
And the real countdown…

5. Eating on a cruise ship Anything, any time, in your room, in the restaurants, or pretty much anywhere else. This is a place for fat people, whether a person has achieved fatness yet or not. You can have a five course gourmet meal in the dining room every night if you want, or you can just live on pizza, cookies and ice cream. Not only is there food everywhere, but everything is pretty darn good.

4. Sleeping on a cruise ship Perfect sheets (oh my god…so soft), perfect mattresses, perfect pillows, turndown with a chocolate and a note wishing you goodnight… and on turbulent seas, the rocking cradle motion that just lulls you off to sleep.

3. The Cabin Fairy (ie. Room Steward) You never see them, but magically, your room stays clean, you get news and daily programs laid out for you, the minibar stays stocked… nevermind little treats like the aforementioned turndown service complete with the adjustment of the lighting to a relaxing nighttime level.

2. Observing the wildlife. Meeting strange and fascinating creatures is commonplace, and though I feel out of place a lot of the time (75% of the heads on this boat are silver), I enjoy the company on the ship. Some of them can be real devils – we kids tend to think that our elders lose their edge as they get older, but the people I’ve met so far are some of the quickest and wittiest I’ve EVER met. It’s always interesting to have the opportunity to speak with people who you regularly wouldn’t, especially when their views are different from your own.

1. Your hotel follows you. No packing, no unpacking, the comfort of a settled in room every night regardless of how far you’ve traveled. My back will appreciate the fact that my 65 pounds of luggage gets to stay put for a while.

Anchors aweigh..

2006-08-30T19:54:28Z

Originally published at sarah does europe. Please leave any comments there.

We’re aboard the lovely Prinsendam, and I finally have internet… I’ve obviously posted my backlog of entries, which you can read below. Rome was beautiful but we’re both glad to be on the ship and headed to new and exciting places. We’ll be back to Rome in two weeks and we definitely left a lot of things to do when we return (namely the Colosseum and some independent city wandering). Our cabin is BEAUTIFUL. I don’t want to brag, so I’ll leave it at that. We love it.

Boarding was relatively easy, although one of the ladies from our group lost her money belt between the hotel and the port. That couple was very independent, too…imagine wandering around Rome for 4 days without incident then losing your money on the bus! Terrible. We had lunch with a group of 8 from the pre-cruise out on the Lido terrace after we got on. We had a lifeboat drill at 4:30, where everyone gets all prettied up in their life vests and assembles at their muster stations, where you are counted. Supposedly they pull people out of the crowd and hide them to test the crew. I was hoping they’d pull me so I wouldn’t have to stand there packed like a sardine.

After boat drill we met up with the Cruise Critic people, which was nice. There are always sailaway festivities up there and there was a very loud band playing oldies and such. We’ll have to get to know them better, because we had to run off for supper.

Dinner was nice. I had a steak and a baked potato, true to my prairie girl nature. Mmmm. Going to get so fat. Nice table by the window, nice tablemates – although we’re at a table for two, there’s a table for four six inches away. Getting used to small talk with elders – not so bad. I am sick, however, of explaining my education situation.

So, we’ve left the Italian coast from Civitavecchia and are heading southwest through the Tyrrhenian sea towards Sardinia. There is a fair bit of movement tonight (you can always tell by looking at the horizon, if nothing else) although I can still walk in heels, which is the big decider of bad weather. I’m watching myself sway in the mirror as I write this. We dock in Alghero tomorrow, after breakfast.

The crewpeople here are… lonely, I think. The very first time Mom left my side someone ran up to me and introduced himself and wanted to talk. I finally broke down when he started the “You’re very beautiful” thing and said “Yeah, my boyfriend is very beautiful, too…” (Miss you, Willy!) One got my name right away and shouts things at me whenever he sees me. On the way to supper, two young people I hadn’t even seen before greeted me by name. I think younger women are rare on this ship, I’ve only seen one so far.

Karen is being a bad girl and just ran off with her new friend Rosemary – they have a ball together, it’s so cute! Bedtime for us respectable ladies. Plus, I’m too afraid to go out on my own in light of.. well.. let’s just say I’d prefer to stay in the room, alone. Goodnight!

Ahhhh tourists..

2006-08-30T19:41:39Z

Originally published at sarah does europe. Please leave any comments there.

Tourists everywhere. Yes, we’re part of the problem. I know.

We did the Vatican City. Not much to say about it. The atmosphere of the Sistene Chapel was ruined by periodic screams of “SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH…” and “NO…….PH-OTO….” St. Peters was immense and gorgeous inside and out. Quite a place. No, I didn’t burn up upon entry.

Dinner that night was proscuitto pizza and delicious arancini (risotto breaded and deep fried, mmmmm..) at a lovely little place called Vito’s not far from the hotel, rounding out a group of 8 nice people from our hotel. I got to use a bit of my Italian to help out ordering things.

On the 29th we toured Tuscany, stopping at Siena and San Gimignano. Lunch was at Gallonero (The Black Rooster) in Siena. This included a strange mincemeat puff, Onion tart, Porcini tart, Roast duck (complete with various recognizable and unrecognizable bones), and dried fruit pie. Everything was completely covered in cinnamon, including the duck. Ew. Quite possibly the most… interesting.. lunch I have ever had. Conspiracy against the tourists, no doubt about it. Don’t go there. They’re sadists.

Just an update. Maybe look at the pictures in the gallery, took forever to upload them.

Buongiorno Roma

2006-08-30T19:30:34Z

Originally published at sarah does europe. Please leave any comments there.

We got into Rome alright, although I have this nagging feeling that we didn’t go through customs properly – we just kind of walked out of the airport with our bags – didn’t talk to anyone about visas or get our passports checked. I’ve been meaning to bring it up with some of the other guests here but have been too embarrassed… I hope I’m wrong. We were met by a driver at the airport (kind of, he was holding a sign that said “MR. READ”) and brought, at about 150 km/h, to our hotel. There, our tour coordinator gave us our keys, informed us that we were the last of the 38 person group to arrive, and told us that dinner was down the street in about 10 minutes. I took 10 minutes to have a shower and change (too many hours in the same clothes) and then we headed down to the restaurant. We had a proscuitto and cheese salad with some sort of spicy greens, basil risotto and pasta with a very good tomato sauce, another salad with radicchio and more spicy greens, veal with pancetta doused in a very KFC-like gravy, and a strange tiramisu-like dessert with cappuccino. I felt guilty for sending my plates away half finished but when they serve you that much food, what else can you do? Some people were surprised when the food kept coming but I’ve done enough research to know about courses and assumed that we were in for a big spread. I only sent my wine glass flying in the direction of the poor couple across from me once, so that’s good, I guess. So, the hotel. It is a nice, comfortable American sort of place, where they often speak to you in English first. I think that Holland America searched the entirety of the city to find a place that was as much like a cruise ship as possible. They found it. Although, there are certain European eccentricities, one of which is the bidet, complete with safety-sealed “Intimate Cleanser.” Hmm. Thin walls, but other than that, it’s a classy little place. Internet is extremely expensive and I haven’t seen one internet café around here, so I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch. Jet lag hasn’t been too bad, although I was rudely awakened at about 2am last night by mom, going on about our internal clocks keeping us awake. I groggily inferred that apparently, my internal clock was a little blond woman named Karen. I tried to appease her with history documentaries on my laptop, which eventually lulled her to sleep. I feel rather good today. I hope it will last. Today we joined a couple of nice ladies from Arizona for a private car tour, which may or may not have been a rip off/waste of time. Our driver gave us a nice overview of the city and showed us most of the major sites, but it is frustrating (and rather bus-tour-like) to drive up to the colosseum and be told “There.. the colosseum.. Now, we go..” Thankfully we have quite a few more days to explore the city, on our own. It seems silly now, when I’m trying to figure out how to word it, but I hadn’t really imagined the fact that the famous sites and buildings were only the tiniest snapshot of the city. It is a huge mashup of beautiful architecture, old and new, and the major sites that come to mind when one thinks of Rome really don’t convey the enormity of Rome’s charm. Blah blah blah, insert naïve touristy comment here. I made my first visit to a real Italian gelateria, which are absolutely everywhere in this city. I wonder with the obsession lies with the tourists or the locals? I was in a lemon mood so I had limon sorbet and crema de limon – a teensy cup for 2.50 euros. Expensive habit. Tonight we go walking with the group, and out for supper again – hopefully Italy will be kinder to my rapidly-fattening little belly. Breakfast was granola, pineapple yogurt (ohhhhh so good..) and orange juice self-served in the bowels of the hotel, and that’s about all I’ve had today besides the gelato, so I should be okay. Oh, news from next door (thinnest walls ever) – apparently the restaurant we’re going to tonight is very casual, and makes “home made lasagna” … I should hope they do. Pasta better be homemade too.. Well, I better get ready to go. I am feeling like a very lucky girl right now..

ok kids, time for an adventure!

2006-08-11T21:53:55Z

guess what?

"sarah does europe"
from aug. 25th - sept. 30th

alternate titles include:
“sarah the spoiled brat gets more than she deserves”
“sarah makes fool of self due to ignorance of local customs”
“sarah fails to communicate effectively using any and all foreign language”
or the ever popular “sarah gets fat”

i'm not leaving for another two weeks, but feel free to follow along with the inane activities that will take place until i go...including (but not limited to): packing, worrying, being excited, etc. i'll remind you again in two weeks, so you can read/see things that might actually interest you.

http://www.indestructible.org/europe

abetterfailure @ 2006-08-10T21:32:00

2006-08-11T03:35:36Z

will is jetting off to new york on business tomorrow, leaving little old me dateless for the peaches concert on saturday. i was never really keen on going, but i've got the tickets now and i guess i might as well. anyone want to come along?

abetterfailure @ 2006-03-26T11:27:00

2006-03-26T18:29:05Z

i have two extra floor tickets for the strokes, may 14th..
anybody interested?

the obligatory quarterly

2006-01-16T20:08:23Z

so, hello. not dead... no. still here.

my life has been pretty hectic lately - but not in an unfortunate way, to say the least. things are good. will got through his 3 month probationary period with his job and... well, he still has the said job. so i suppose that's good. i'm very proud of him, even if his wardrobe is becoming decidedly more business casual by the day. hehe. as we speak, he's out for lunch with "the guys." i find this difficult to imagine. *smirk*

so yes - things are good for me right now. will and i spend friday-sunday together at my place and meet once during the week for a dinner date kind of thing. better than him living in saskatchewan even though i can tell he's pretty stressed out with his job. he has a room that he pays a very reasonable rent for in renfrew, which is by the bridgeland train station. he's got three roommates but they kind of weird me out so we don't spend much time there, and he's only there monday-friday evenings. it's really nice to have him back. i can't say i ever feel lonesome anymore, but i have to say, we spend so much bloody time together that i can barely keep up with anyone else. i have so many emails to return. how do you tell a significant other of four years that you need to spend less time together? hehe. i don't know.

i've finished my classes for now - i'm on a break until february 6th, which is super. i passed my math courses with...better marks than i could have ever imagined. not that i didn't have to work for them. i have lived and breathed math for six months - and i have to admit, i kind of... enjoy it, now. who'd have thought. not long now until i'm graduated and off to [hopefully] bigger and better things.

christmas was a lot of fun - i told my mom that she could relax this year, and cooked dinner for seven. it was... interesting. i didn't mess anything up too terribly. giftwise i got a great haul including lots of travel books and accessories for europe, a bunch of cookbooks including all three of nigella's, the obligatory jewelery and lingerie from willy (he did good this year), and, well... much more than i deserved. i know some people don't buy into the gifting and decorating and being excited and jolly all the time for no reason, but i find the whole thing awfully entertaining.

i suppose there are only eight months until the big europe trip, now. everything is booked and ready to go - even my travelogue site is built and ready to be updated. i'll post the address here in the summer, a month or two before i go. i'm working hard on convincing my mom to stay in istanbul for a couple days post cruise because we have a nightmare of a flight booked (leaves istanbul at 5am, has an 8 hour stopover in frankfurt and flies through vancouver with another lengthy stopover there). she's terrified of the place though, so i don't want to push it. you know, i think it's sweet that i'm taking one last trip with my mommy before i start taking my own big vacations, but boy, it should be very interesting. the woman hates anything old and to be honest, regards unfamiliar cultures with a lot more xenophobia than curiosity. so...europe is... an interesting choice, for us. hehe.

since i'm already talking about vacations... will and i, who have allowed ourselves bigger dreams as of late, are going vacation crazy as well. we're planning a budget costa rica trip, probably 10 days, for november. i am relieved to be doing something different than the all inclusive package vacations that i'm used to. but, how well i will do in the cheap wilderness camps and public buses of costa rica is yet to be seen. should be interesting.

i am busy trying to learn italian for europe and brushing up my limited spanish for costa rica at the same time - not recommended. every time i try to say something it comes out as a weird "spanitalianish" blend of the two.

and just when you were thinking "that silly spoiled girl gets to travel far more than she deserves"..... i have had this unbelievable urge to jet off to disneyland one last time before i'm old, and it's getting stronger. we found a really great deal.. but.. will isn't willing to ask for two days off instead of just the one. i feel like crawling off into a corner and singing the "dream is a wish your heart makes" song to myself whilst bawling my eyes out. i suppose that's proof that.. well.. i don't have to worry that i'm getting too old for disneyland? heh.

uhm, what else. i haven't been paying much attention to the election. i live in such a conservative stronghold that their candidate in my riding (rob anders) actually left to campaign for his buddy in BC (or so the story goes). i think he's back now - but either way, he doesn't even have to be here to win. and this is the sole MP in all of parliament who voted against giving nelson mandela honorary citizenship, calling him "a terrorist and a communist." the point is that my vote would have accomplished nothing in this constituency. that, and i don't have any idea who i'd have voted for anyway. if i were living alone and poor, chances are my dirty socialist tendencies would take hold and sway me in the NDP direction. but seeing as i'm supported by a conservative oilman, i couldn't very well vote for a party who wants to redistribute his wealth. blah.

so... yeah, that's all. those of you who i haven't spoken with in a while (assuming that we do in fact speak - this friends list is getting a bit past it's prime), i apologize. i'll get back to you! <3

something always takes the place of missing pieces.

2005-07-23T17:00:04Z

a. i'm going home next friday. i've adjusted, so i'm not as excited as i might have been a few weeks ago. i'll be a little sad to leave - not only 'cause of will, but because i'll miss this weird little old house. it's really not so bad out here. oh, here's a picture. i went out on a night that the lighting was really weird and that was the only one that came out alright - i'll go out again and take some more.

b. i've finished english and calm a week early so i have the next few days to figure things out with will, clean up the house and uh... weed the garden? i don't know what the fuck i'll do.. there isn't much around here. when all else fails at home i usually go for a walk, but in arborfield, you hit fields after about 5 minutes in any direction.

c. i finished harry potter. i cried like a fucking baby - it was pathetic. i thought it was a pretty decent installment. it should make a good film, what with all the indulgent teenage drama, and the climax. so.. that's that. another few years of speculation.

d. tomorrow's my 19th birthday. not excited. after 18, birthdays just suck (apart from 21, but i really have no desire to visit our southerly neighbours). i want to go have a ghetto barbeque with tofudogs and candles in a doughnut but at our last "dinner with the parents" will's mom offered to cook dinner and bake me a cake.. i feel bad turning her down. procrastinator that i am, i haven't decided yet. that'll have to be figured out today.

e. domestic news: i have drunk us clean of every source of refreshment again which means ANOTHER trip to the grocery store and ANOTHER drain on my poor battered bank account - but... it's not my fault i'm thirsty? spiders have taken over the bathroom - little tiny ones. it's like an egg sac hatched. i got past the notion that i was in fact killing infants, and did my best to clean them up. also, this is the third week in a row that our ineptitude has seen us forget about garbage day. today i'm going to go look after the garden a bit and raid the raspberry patch that is *kind of* in our yard - please hope with me that the toads aren't around, because they scare the shit out of me.

i'll let you go, now. :)

harry potter day.

2005-07-17T06:04:26Z

i've been in saskatchewanland (arborfield to be exact) dabbling in the chaos of cohabitation... the house is cute - a little old, definitely saskatchewanese in it's construction techniques, but i'm starting to get rather comfortable. it's insect/arachnid inhabitants are friendlier and fewer than the ones in my own room in calgary, which was a pleasant surprise. the spiders like it in the bathtub, the beetles like it in the bedroom, the flies like the kitchen (naturally) and the mosquitoes like it everywhere that there's sweet blood (coincidentally everywhere that i am). my worst concern at the moment is that our mattress, carelessly flopped down on the linoleum, has started to grow obscene amounts of mold on it's underside. being vaguely inexperienced homeowners, we sprayed the entire thing down with bleach - i'd probably be asleep right now if the bedroom didn't smell like a public pool, the kind maintained to kill the worst strains of communicable diseases. can't go in there without a headache hitting me like a brick wall. otherwise, yeah - this is a okay place to be.

i've pissed away over three hundred dollars on food and random things to make this place feel a little more home-like, and i've only been here for about twelve days. living is expensive. at first i was being cheap and making stupid twenty dollar trips to the grocery store, wary of spending too much. but when i realized that we were going almost every day to pick up something or other, i wrote up a goddamn list and put down the $150 for a proper shopping trip. it may not seem like a big deal, but you have to keep in mind that the grocery store is three towns and 40 minutes away. there IS a store in arborfield...but...everything is expired, and the people are weird as all hell.

will's parents, hippies that they are, took a trip into saskatoon to see a concert and left will's 11 year old sister in our care. she brought her little kitten, named 'blueberry', to stay. i haven't spent time with a kitten in the longest time, and they are insane - i can now fully appreciate tiger for all of his quiet, loving laziness. blueberry is a monster. we ended up with grace a day longer than planned because the parents car blew up on the way home - i swear, we used up half of our groceries. i'm vaguely suspicious that she brought the goddamn kitten to distract us from the fact that she was eating up all of our food. while i can't help but feel an affinity for a girl who loves toast, it's a bit much to go through half a loaf of bread and a half-cup of the BECEL margarine (the only brand name food item in the house, a splurge) in one evening. anyway, it was vaguely awkward but ultimately not bad. if i have to put up with a child constantly pulverizing my ass at video games, i'm glad it was will's sister and not some other brat. she's ultimately a very nice, very smart little girl.

somehow, will ended up quitting smoking (again) on the very same day that i started my "LADYTIME" (as he calls it). bad, bad things ensued for about three days - it's a wonder the house is intact and both of us are alive and unharmed. otherwise, things have been relatively peaceful. even though i think i know where this relationship is headed, i'll regretfully admit that we are excellent company for each other. i'mma miss him terribly.

we left shortly after 7 this morning to take grace back to will's parent's house in love (only 40 minutes). after that, we drove into prince albert (another hour and a bit) to pick up the new harry potter book, buy me a goddamn computer chair (we've been fighting over his constantly) and prowl for garage sales. prince albert is funny in that every street seems to end in either a prison, or a school. we ended up at this buffet restaurant ("largest chinese buffet in saskatchewan!") again and i ate too much again. garage sales could have been better. we got an old steamer pot and a big red glass vase, not much else.

we finally got back around quarter to 5. when we got into the house, i was forced to conclude that an unpleasant issue i was hoping would go away was getting worse, and that i should really go see a doctor about it. i don't want anyone to think it was worse than it was - i'll just say 'UTI'. common, basically benign but 'bloody' uncomfortable. out here, you can only see a doctor at either 11, 2 or 7 - and that's a half hour away, in nipawin. so i made the poor boy that had been driving all day take me in to the hospital where i went through the diagnostic procedures (yes it involved a cup) and they gave me antibiotics to tide me over until morning. apparently i have to call a pharmacist tomorrow on their "after hours line" (read: home) and demand that they open their shop so they can give me medicine, because nothing is regularly open on sundays. i haven't even done it yet and i feel vaguely guilty.

i'm quite adverse to writing about this in a public journal because i feel like it reflects poorly upon the kind of person that i am, but i suppose i should face up to the fact that i AM that kind of person and i should stop being so embarassed about it. school is going alright. i've got one assignment left in english 30 and i'm going to have a really good mark, i think, provided i don't fuck up the diploma. which i shouldn't. calm is nuts because it's an eight week course packed into almost 4 weeks, and they don't seem to have trimmed anything at all - it's mind numbingly time-consuming and dull work. but it'll be nice to get it out of the way. two more courses off the impenetrable list that has me trapped.

will and i are arguing about my departure date.. i'm leaving again for a family vacation on the 6th of august, and my only obligation between now and then is my english diploma on the 3rd. i'm not sure what to do.
will: "stay until the 29th or i won't take you to the hospital."
sarah: "i'll stay until the 27th if you drive me to saskatoon so i can fly."
will: "oh, that's an awful deal... okay, but i'm not taking you to the hospital."
sarah: "fuck you, i'll go home now."
will: *stare*
sarah: "i'm going home on the 25th."
will: "you bitch. get out of my car." *slows car to stop on highway*

it seems like every disagreement here ends in "okay, get out of my car." or "okay, get out of my house." then i hit him. then we go make popcorn, or something.

so, that's the update, i guess. hope everyone is having a nice summer, so far.

abetterfailure @ 2005-06-28T01:57:00

2005-06-28T07:55:32Z

yawn. i'm in the midst of tidying up the disaster that is my room, but i'm taking a break... because, well. i'm tired. it doesn't matter that i somehow slept in until noon again, and that i didn't do much all day but sit at the computer doing painfully mindless schoolwork. still tired, somehow. definitely not getting enough exercise.

i feel really, really busy lately. stressed out, like something is always waiting for my attention. i can never seem to get everything i need to done. i don't know how people with actual lives manage it - i suppose things that are paramount to me would become completely unimportant to people that fill up their time with more constructive things. or something. either way, i'm constantly being pulled in all directions. DOTHISDOTHATGETITALLDONENOW. maybe that's why i'm tired. i need a fresh mindset.

i can't stop tonguing my lower front teeth - they're really sensitive today, the whole row of them are aching and randomly sending uncomfortable twinges of dull pain to my toes. it's bizarre. never happened before.

other than that, i'm just listening to music, typing, and keeping all of my limbs tucked up off of the ground in a neat little sarah-ball. cleaning always leaves me painfully aware of all of the creepy-crawlies sharing my space with me... oh the pleasantries of living underground. the centipedes send their regards. as do the larder beetles. oh, and the occasional passers-through, the ants and the sowbugs, they say hi too. and i forgot the house spiders. ahhhhhhhhhhgodhelpme.

anyway, also painfully aware that i will be leaving my comfy home for a month in the barren lands of saskatchewan this time next week. ahhhhhhhh what am i doing. cold feet. very very very chilly, frozen, blue-cold feet. does anyone have any helpful advice as far as cohabitation? i don't want to end up in the cistern under his kitchen - and that's where i'll end up, if i drive him crazy with my incessant girl bullshit. then again, HE might end up in the cistern.... hrrm.

operation ebayseller is going okay. i've got some stuff up this week that should sell fine, but i guess it'll be my last set of auctions for the summer. that is, unless i put will up for sale, or alternately, put him in the cistern and list his belongings. "FOR SALE: WILLY B., EAGER-TO-PLEASE INTELLIGEEK!! NO RESERVE". i listed an old fur coat that belonged to my grandmother - i saved it when we were cleaning out her house, and it's been hanging in the store room ever since. i'm going to be glad if it sells because apart from my sneaking suspicion that the souls of many foxes are living here and bringing bad karma upon me, it just creeps me out. plus there are still crazy people in the world who will pay INSANE amounts of money for furs. and THAT, my friends, could mean an sd400 for sarah. ohhhhhhhh yeah.

six feet under is such a bloody downer, lately. aghgah. *kills self*

well, i have an assignment to finish, laundry to sort, and a room to clean, a novel to absorb for my lit study... and shit, i guess it's 2 AM, so i should probably sleep sometime. we'll see if i can fit it in.