And so it ends! (For now).

I'm currently sitting in CDG Airport in Paris, watching Friends Trip--perhaps the worst French tele-reality series in the world, but also clearly the best--and awaiting my flight. It's just another plane, like the billion others I have taken this year, with a couple key differences: 1) It's not RyanAir. 2) It's taking me HOME.

Tonight, when I finally stop fighting the jetlag and lay me down to sleep, it will be in my own bed, at home in Washington DC. Cuddling my cat; I missed that little bugger. All in all, it's a mind-bending thought, although I know that as soon as I'm home, novelty will wear off within five minutes, to be replaced by simple comfort. (And, within a couple days, the yearning to go abroad again).

Friends at home, look out! I'm comin' in hard 4 hugz.

*This post has no photos, because I have broken all my phones this year. Mean streets of Europe strike back.*

Again and again...Italy

So I recently listed all the cities in Italy that I've visited, and I was shocked.

Verona, Venice, Milan, Rome, Florence, Padova, Genova, Cinque Terre, Napoli, Modena, Bologna, Palermo, Torino, Soave, Sanremo, Imperia, Pisa, Prato, Siena, San Gimignano, Assisi, Sorrento...well I may have missed one or two but you get the picture.

I still have tons of places to see--though I don't think I can accomplish any more this time around, considering that I leave in a matter of days! Italy pulls me back time and time again. I know that you can never really tick off a box after visiting a country as if to say, "Done! Don't need to go back there." But it's getting a bit ridiculous how often I try to sneak back to Italy, as I have managed to do thanks to Workaway and one extremely generous (and adorable) Italian family.

Workaway is a site that allows you to find and contact various Workawayers all over the world, and you provide whatever services they require in return for shelter! A lot of it is farm-y, manual labor type stuff, like working vineyards or family farms, but there's a fair bit of kids who need looking after in this world, too. After searching the listings for months, I found a family whose schedule worked with mine, and they extended an invitation for me to come to Soave, Italy! I had to Google it, but perhaps if you're a wine connoisseur (wow that was hard to spell) you already know it, as the city shares the same name as a famous white wine that comes from the area. Just outside of Verona, Soave is a little medieval village nestled in rolling green hills. It has amazingly-preserved walls all around it, and the castle standing sentry atop the hill is in great condition (in fact, it's one of the best in the Veneto region, which I discovered when I finally got to visit the interior this past week).

So in this final stretch in Europe, I've been living with the lovely parents (Ludo and Matteo) and their 2 beautiful girls (Lavinia, 2, and Matilde, 7) in Soave. I try to help out around the house a bit, and I'm an extra hand with the kids, but since they have 2 great sets of grandparents, there's actually not a whole ton of work for me to do! I do lots of roaming, however, in and around Verona. The Veneto region is in pretty fierce competition with Tuscany in this Beauty Contest, if you ask me.

SOAVE

VERONA

The Adige River and the Ponte Pietra, as seen from Castel San Pietro

Veronese rooftops

Verona as seen from the Santuario Madonna di Lourdes, which apparently a lot of tourists neglect to visit (according to Cesare, the most beautiful Italian boy I have ever seen in my life, whom I met last night in a foccacia shop...where I ended up sitting for like two hours, if only to look at his face some more). But it was stunning! 

No wonder Romeo and Juliet had a thing. This place is painfully romantic. (Well, painful probably just because I'm here alone. Cesare, where you at?!)

 LA MIA FAMIGLIA ITALIANA

The little nuggetinos: Matilde strikes a pose while Lavinia...dances?

Matteo, hard at work making gelato for the bar! 

Ludo and Gaia (the dog) chilling during our family picnic near Lake Garda

 Life in Italy: The Pros. I've been working on a little list of things that I love here, trying to work out what I love so much about the country and its people. Here's what I got so far:

1. Little kid repetition is way cuter in Italian than in American. (NOTE: After spending more time abroad this year and making so many friends and acquaintances from the U.K. and other Anglophone countries, I more and more see the need to differentiate between American English and other varieties). “Ancora!”, or “again”, comes after anything you do that is even the slightest bit amusing. Often, it’s lifting the child in some playful fashion, and after a chorus of ancora’s, you’ll find that your arms hate you a little bit. “Diamo care!” which actually means “andiamo giocare,” aka Let’s go play! This one usually comes around 8 AM, and whether you like it or not, it’s playtime, punk. 

2. Gesticulating is not a way of communicating. It’s a way of life. I think of the dinner during which Matteo, deep in conversation with his father, unintentionally threw his pizza crust into the salad—then used the offending hand to gesture frustratedly over what he had just done. 

 3. Eating quickly and vivaciously is apparently the only way to eat. Even the kids get into it: I’ve seen my little nuggetinos eat—enthusiastically—loads of cured meats (practically had to fight off a 2-year old to get to the speck) and fancy salamis, stuff undressed rucola into their tiny mouths, reach for a slab of runny Gorgonzola, and fight a parent for slices of purple cabbage. None of that “plain buttered noodles please” nonsense for these kiddos. In Italy, the little ones inhale stuff that I didn't even consider until my second decade on Earth. (Granted, this was largely due to lack of contact with some of this stuff, but Dog Gambit, I live in the capital of arguably the most powerful country in the world! Why do I have so much trouble finding some passable Prosciutto!?). 

4. The price of wine is still a shock to my system. My first instinct is to drop to my knees and praise Bacchus or whatever deity brought me this gift. My second is to treat said gift as if it may disappear at any minute, grabbing as many bottles as possible and taking home to care for them and love them…until the last drop. 2 euros for a sound bottle of wine; 60 cents for a glass in a respectable neighborhood bar. (My advice? Follow the youths. The students—my fellow cash-strapped winos—know where to go). It’s unreal. The hangover, however, is very, very real.    

Ciao for nao. Hoping to have a post about my side trips soon, but we'll see if that gets done before I leave Italy! I remember writing posts about France long after my return to the States, trying frantically to catch up on my blog, and it was a little depressing. I'll do my best to avoid the "posthumous posting" this time around (sorry that phrasing is so morbid, I just couldn't think of another way to put it). 

THIRTY-EIGHT (Idle Time in Italy)

Though my trip with Jared--my last bout of bouncing around before "settling" in Italy, where I am now in my final stretch with a beautiful Italian family near Verona--began and end in Paris (see previous post; "SEVENTEEN"), there was some time spent in Italy as well. We mocked ourselves for essentially just repeating the style of trip we did two years ago in 2013: a week in France and a week in Italy. In our defense, Paris was the only repeat city!

This time around, we hit:
France- Paris, Digne, Aix, Cannes, Nice
Italy- Genova, Rome, Napoli

1. Genova. Genova was chosen largely because we were able to get there fairly easily by train from Nice (Nizza in italiano, I love that), and we found a cheap flight to Napoli from there. Lucky for us, we also found an amazing Couchsurfer to host us. Alfredo was just an all-around cool dude, very smart and funny, and so generous with his time, his home, his food, and his city knowledge (which was impressive!). Jared and I couldn't get over the extent to which we lucked out in finding Alfredo. He was a poet and he didn't know it, but he was also a great friend to make.

I think I was considerably more excited about the fact that pesto sauce comes from Genova (hence, pesto alle genovese) but did you know that apparently Christopher Columbus hailed from there as well? The building below...is like something that has to do with him. Maybe his house? I donno--where is Alfredo when you need him!?

Ah, here he is. Droppin' knowledge bombs on Jared, LIKE A BO$$.

This is the baller view from Alfredo's house. Epitomizes the world "villa," don't you think?

2. Napoli. Napoli was the great thing that almost wasn't. Originally, when we decided to do Italy (in planning the trip, South of France was the sure thing, but we were considering tacking on Spain), I was pretty vocal about having my heart set on Napoli. For whatever reason (read: pizza), it has been a city on my list for a few years now, ever since I really started dreaming up trips with some inkling that they could really happen. Later, I backed off as it started to seem unrealistic to get from Nice all the way down to Naples, then 2.5 hours North to Rome in time for our flight back to Paris, all in a matter of days. 

If not for the persistence/optimism of my traveling companion, who seemed to pick up on how much I wanted to go (and who wanted to go, as well), I don't think it would've happened. So I am so thankful for him, because we found a flight to Napoli from Genova for about 50 euro, and I got to see an Italian city unlike any other I've visited. Naples is like it's own little world apart from the rest of Italy; the closest Italian city I could compare it to would be Palermo, in Sicily, which has a similar grungy-ness. Naples is just doin' its own thing. It is laid back and chaotic, beautiful and ugly, young and old, all at once. It's certainly colorful, and diverse both in population but also in all that it offers: visits to Pompeii, Vesuvius, Herculaneum, Sorrento, the ocean--there's so much within reach! 

"This year will be legendary." If Napoli says so, I'm inclined to believe it. Considering that I rang in 2015 in Berlin and am currently writing a post on traveling Italy, I'd say the prediction has certainly held true thus far. I feel very, very lucky. 

We visited Herculaneum instead of Pompeii, in the interest of time. It's smaller and less-visited, but ultimately in better shape. It took us a few hours to see everything there was to see, but it was so worth it. We even saw skeletons, which drove home the fact that people really lived there perhaps a bit more than the remains of frescoes and murals on the walls. 

We stayed in the amazing Six Small Rooms Hostel, which has a great location and a lovely small staff (internationals who work at the hostel in exchange for a bed, mostly) who are more than willing to help you out and make personal recommendations. One American chick who welcomed us, Anne, actually helped me plan our entire itinerary for our limited time in the city! It was ABSOLUTELY NOT a party hostel--as the name suggests, it is cozy and fosters a feeling of community in an almost familial way. It is not the place to stumble home drunk at 5 AM--in fact, there's a midnight lock-up (though no fear, you can get keys from the front desk, so we managed to experience the nightlife a bit). But I've never stayed in a hostel with such a warm, home-y atmosphere (that's a lie, Mosquito Hostel in Krakow was like a home away from home; I never wanted to leave). But it's rare. I'll stop now, but we loved it. I want to live in Napoli--preferably there. I'm thinking a couple of months would do me--maybe in 2016, so that year can be legendary too.

And I'm deadly serious about wanting to live there, for many reasons. I felt myself falling in love with the city alarmingly quickly. The chaos is just shy of overwhelming, and the grunge factor is mixed in with so much color, so much life, that I just relished it. It felt like the people there were exactly the stereotypical image I had in my mind's eye when asked to conjure up "an Italian." The language is spoken loudly, quickly, and with abundant hand gestures. There are markets in the streets and stalls fighting for space amid stores whose wares seem to be spilling forth out onto the uneven stones, and old ladies dragging their purchases behind them do battle with loud, smelly motos. It's great. (I'm mostly on the sideline trying to avoid death-by-car, eat a quickly-melting gelato, and take a picture all at once).

But let's be real, I could also stay just for the pizza.

Dinner on night #1, at Di Matteo, where we split a bottle of wine, a bottle of water, a plate of fritti misti, and 2 pizzas...for 20 euro. Unreal. That's the other beautiful thing I forgot to mention: Napoli is cheap. It's fantastic. 

The cheapness extends to the nightlife, which is unlike anything I've ever experienced, but should be adopted by all countries&cultures. Bars are rendered moot, replaced instead by bar-like shops where you get super cheap drinks (my delicious German beer was 1 euro a bottle!) and stand outside in the piazzas, lounging against stone fountains and church steps, making random friends and enjoying the nice summer nights. 

3. Rome. The upside to being an extremely lucky human with a couple of generous, well-educated and well-traveled parents is that even at a young age, I had already visited quite a few places. The downside? My appreciation was limited, and so are my memories. So when I say that I had been to Rome 3x before this trip, it can't mean much. Certain places, like the Vatican-area (see below), looked like postcards pulled from a box inside my head, I remembered them so clearly. But most things, and certainly the general vibes of cities, are lost to time. 

Still, I was reluctant to return to Rome, since I didn't remember loving it, and I have found that most people have a strong love or hate relationship with the place, and the binary is strict. It was a Jared pick, but RyanAir took his side, and so we went to Rome. 

I'm so glad. 

It was overwhelming in some ways, like in the seemingly constant presence of hordes of other tourists, and in the overloaded column of things falling under Sights to See. We had only two nights there, which was not enough and which forced us to run around all day and wake up way too early every morning, but we still had a great time. Lots of walking, lots of waiting in line (NEVER AGAIN WILL I GO TO THE VATICAN MUSEUMS, THAT IS MY SOLEMN VOW--Jared, if you're reading this, that was for you kiddo. But NEVER again). But it was beautiful, it was lively, it was so fun to explore--and there were so many neighborhoods off the beaten track that merited a visit. I want to go back again and spend time in those places, now that I've refreshed my Swiss cheese memory. 

Praying to the Gods of queues--MAKE IT GO FASTER

This night was magic. This is our friend Patrizia, in her son's restaurant, where she runs the game. She is wearing my necklace, which she complimented, so I gave it to her. (Want to know how to become instant best friends with a sweet Italian lady? That's how). Little experiences like that set Rome apart for us--it wasn't just jostling tourists and pounding the pavement, throwing elbows to get a good picture of Some Old Thing. It was a beautiful place, where real people live and authentic kindnesses and interactions occur. You just have to wander a bit, maybe...say, to Bistrot San Lorenzo!

SEVENTEEN (Frolicking in France)

Alternate title for this post: When Everything that Could go Wrong, Did go Wrong, and it was Beautiful.

There’s no such thing as a perfect trip to Paris, however romanticized in gold-tinged Sepia tones, eau de toilette’d and otherwise unblemished the city may be in the minds of most Americans—especially (unsurprisingly) those who haven’t yet been. Don’t get me wrong; I am a firm believer in the magic of Paris. That place is so magical, it’s bout fit to burst—ask anyone who has seen the sunset Seine-side from where the île de Saint-Louis drops down to the river, only to climb back up the stone steps after darkness has fallen, crossed the little bridge, and been smacked in the face by the glory of Notre Dame by night. The church is otherworldly at night, once the tourist-hawks’ shops have shuttered, the tourists themselves have gone to their too-small (the website threw around adjectives like “cozy” and “quaint” with abandon, a gilded veneer of the truth: “so small you’ll hate your spouse within 2 days and your kids long before that—p.s. luggage not recommended if you plan on actually sleeping within the confines of the cage, excusez-moi, room) chambres d’hôtel, and the fairy lights have come to life. Ask those who have ventured further on their nightwalk, temporarily occupying a nook on the Pont Neuf to watch the Eiffel Tower sparkling against the dark sky—glittering with less permanence, but more power, than all the multi-faceted gems in the windows at Cartier, that oversized jewel box perched on the Champs-Élysées. Lasting only a handful of minutes, those sparkles—when you finally manage to catch them, running up the stairs of the metro to do so, glancing at your watch and cursing the 6 minute wait for the train—inevitably cause a sharp intake of breath, and then nearly no movement at all until they are gone just as quickly as they came. 

But, like any big city, Paris ain’t no postcard. Behind that pretty exterior hide all the evils of any major metropolis; I’d argue that for some reason, these evils are exacerbated in Paris. The place has a tendency to chew you up and spit you out (perhaps because it knows you’ll always come crawling back?). I’ve certainly been used and abused a time or two…or ten. A particularly painful memory comes to the forefront of my mind, however, involving a severe lack of sleep, two enormous suitcases, a slew of judgmental looks, and my public weeping outside the train station after one of the longest days of my life—but I just keep going back. And every time I do, I feel a rush of comfort, the kind that only comes from returning home after a long time away. The bad times happen, but they happen in PARIS, and that’s the beauty of it. 

So it’s with a sort of rueful, self-deprecating nostalgia that I look back on my most recent stint in the City of Lights (and Darks), which went comically wrong. (Admittedly, the vast majority of the misfortune fell upon my dear Punky, and though I wished it upon myself time and time again, Paris had other plans). I’m going to step carefully around the trouble we had on our trip—maybe it is too soon for it to be comical, I suppose—to get to the point: it was amazing. Never in my life could I have dreamt that we would have a reunion after all that time and under the circumstances, and certainly not one so epic. I use that word in all seriousness; it was really and truly one for the record books.

And where did it begin, and where did it end?

Paris. 

One of our other little nagging problems on the trip was our physical inability to see the sunset. It was the one thing I wanted to do every single day, and for whatever reason, we simply could not get our act together to see it happen! But from night #1, we tried, first on the hill of Montmartre, at the feel of the majestic Sacre Coeur.

Crêpes helped. With all problems. Always.

Picnics too.

We followed the sunshine and headed South, to see my new stomping grounds. That meant lots of hikes and picnics in and around Aix-en-Provence, one wild night in Nice, and even a day trip to my hamlet, D-les-B.

Le Barrage de Bimont, aka a really big dam at the foot of Mt. St Victoire. Hehe, I almost put an n on the end of dam. Guess which word I use more frequently?

Cezanne's mountain, in the...stone

Café au lait & un croissant au chocolat for breakfast--parts of la vie française that are easy to adopt, non?

Conquering the mountain in Digne...

and in Aix. This one was considerably tougher, due to the constant gusts of wind battering us against death-defying cliffs. No big deal.

The view from La Croix de Provence was worth it!

Oh I forgot! We popped by Cannes for the afternoon on the way to Nice, mostly because the film festival was going on and we wanted to see the scene. Didn't see much except for other gawkers, but it was pretty exciting. Also, I got to swim in the Mediterranean! Cannes>Nice on that score, since the beaches there are sand, not rocks.

See for yourself.

But Nice is pretty Nice too! (Apologies. Couldn't help myself). 

The fountains on the big square in Nice; our hostel (Villa Saint Exupery Beach Hostel) was amazing and just around the corner. We were only there for one night, so we scooped up a bunch of people in our dorm and went out together. It was highly successful--9 people in a 10 bed dorm all on a wine-fueled adventure :)

MORAL OF THE STORY: But like, Paris doe.