Monday, October 3, 2011

Europe pictures!

Again, this has nothing to do with the house but everyone likes looking at other people's vacation pictures, right? When we were traipsing around Amsterdam I asked Greg, "Remember how you used to pull out the slide projector, invite friends over for dinner, then force them to look at a thousand pictures of your vacation?" and he was like, "What? No, my family wasn't weird."

So let's just pretend I crawled back into the scary closet under the stairs in my parents' house (spiders, OHMYGODSPIDERS) and retrieved that screen that weighed a thousand pounds . . . . and all of these photos are Greg's since my camera took a dump.



Dam Square.

Amsterdam is the Venice of the north! It's very romantic and civilized and there are 650,000 bikes that can go anywhere, making it hazardous to walk if you don't pay attention. Almost everyone speaks English and they are nice about the fact that you can't pronounce anything correctly. And they give you little cookies with your coffee. Free cookies, EFF YEAH, NETHERLANDS! We had spectacular fall weather and I don't think I could love Amsterdam any more. And they have a floating flower market where they tempt you with tulips. I didn't buy any because I had ordered 150 bulbs back in August. And while the bulbs there were cheaper, they didn't have anything you couldn't get online.



They have a lovely botanical garden and they give you zinnia seeds with your admission. They have a greenhouse dedicated to pokey plants that I wanted SO BADLY.


And another greenhouse for terrifying butterflies from hell. When one butterfly floats through my yard I love it. When multiple gigantic butterflies try to land on me? You might as well let a taratula walk across my face. It totally freaked me out.


Giant rhubarb!


Water lillies OH MY GOD.

Each lilypad can hold 40kg, which is like 60 MPH in the US.

My impression of sunflowers.


Then we took a flight to Torino where we discovered that travel days make me so cranky I'm almost evil. Getting to Cinque Terre required us taking a train from the airport to the heart of town where we took a city bus to a different train station where we had to take three more trains to get to Cinque Terre. It was very hot, and I am a doughy American used to being chilled while traveling, so the lack of air conditioning on some of the trains made me irritable (WHY was I wearing jeans?). Greg was trying to do things like put his arm around me and I basically told him, "Touch me again and I will punch you in the throat." It was not my finest hour.

But then we got there and it looks like this!

Overlooking Manarola

We stayed in Riomaggiore; if I had to do it all over again I would have stayed in Vernazza. The youth hostel is in Riomaggiore, which means lots of 18 year olds more interested in drinking than attempting to speak the language or enjoy what's around them. It made me crazy. Being Type-A in Europe is totally counter-productive, just FYI.




Regardless of where you stay it's very cute and there's not a lot to do except hike around and eat gelato and drink wine and watch the water. One day we walked from Riomaggiore to Manarola along the Via dell Amore. Sayeth Rick Steves:
"[It] became established as a lovers’ meeting point for boys and girls from the two towns. (After one extended closure in 1949, the trail was reopened for a Christmas marriage.) A journalist, who noticed all the amorous graffiti along the path, coined the trail’s now-established name, Via dell’Amore: “Pathway of Love.” 
Closing a padlock with your lover onto a cable or railing at a lovey-dovey spot—often a bridge—is the current craze in Italy, having been re-popularized by a teen novel."
I love teen novels and I love locks so I convinced Greg to do it. He even threw the keys in the ocean. Now he's stuck with me! Sucker.


Fun fact: If you stupidly post this photo on Facebook with the caption "We're official" everyone thinks you're engaged and/or pregnant. AS IF I WOULDN'T CHANGE MY RELATIONSHIP STATUS TO ENGAGED AND/OR PREGNANT. Come ON.

Italians will graffiti anything.
Six foot agaves!

We had dinner at the top of a cliff in Vernazza, in a restaurant that slopes noticeably toward the Meditteranean. They opened the clear plastic walls and you could see France going to sleep for the night. We ate risotto di frutta di mare and the owner made us drink limoncello (which they call limoncino in that part of Italy) before leaving.

That tiny hunk of land in the far distance? It's France.

After two days in Cinque Terre we hopped back on the train and stopped off at Pisa. Again, I was very cranky. We got a little turned around and being lost makes very irritable, apparently. I think Greg started thinking about going on a diving expedition for those keys.


Exactly as advertised, it leans.


A few trains later and we were in Florence! Florence feels like New York City after Cinque Terre. It's a little overwhelming coming out of the train station. There are people EVERYWHERE. There is sculpture everywhere, there are beautiful vistas everywhere. It's a gorgeous city.

Fresco depicting the end of time in the Duomo.

3-D Medici floors in the Duomo. 

We hit the Uffizi and saw nine million Renaissance depictions of Jesus and Mary. We climbed the Duomo, which was spectacular. I want to live there--they let atheists do that, right? We saw David at the Accademia, which was spectacular. We ate ravioli in walnut sauce that knocked my socks off at Trattoria Nella. There was this huge extended commotion going on outside all through dinner. One man had urinated in the street and the other man didn't like him defacing the city like that so he called the cops. There were heated conversations and shoving and the whole thing was like a giant stereotype about Italian passion. Then we stumbled out of the trattoria and there was a Charlie Chaplin-esque street performer doing a long routine to music. Florence felt like being in The Truman Show, the Italian version. Amazing buskers play while you wander cobblestone streets that are older than your country. It's unreal.







One last thing: I will never travel again without my American Apparel circle scarf. I read about it on Mighty Girl and it was fantastic. It made covering my shoulders in churches a snap and it did all these things while being small enough to fit in my tiny bag.

Wrap thing

Hands-free, shoulder covered administering of first aid in the Duomo  because I also carried bandaids.

Demonstrating how I could sleep in a rain storm without getting my hair wet.

The normal scarf function catches your tiny cookie crumbs!
I want to go back to there.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

If you're wondering what a cenote is . . .

They are huge sinkholes that form when the ceiling of limestone caves collapse, exposing underground water. They are like the inverse of Karst topography, which is also on the list. This is one we visited near Chichen Itza in the Yucatan Peninsula:



They can be hundreds of feet deep and they tell you to wear a life vest because they will make no attempt to rescue you. Don't you want to swim in one, too?

Monday, September 26, 2011

This has almost nothing to do with the house

Feel free to skip reading this one.

Much of my life has been spent being cautious. I'm a worrier, I'm clumsy, I'm broke, I'm afraid to fly, I always have a lot of reasons for not doing stuff. I've had people tell me I'm boring (which is so rude! and not true!). At some point about five years ago I decided to stop being afraid of stupid stuff. It's okay to be afraid of flying because that shit can actually kill you. But being afraid of karaoke? Unless there's a freak gasoline fight accident at the karaoke bar, you're not going to die. So I finally sang at karaoke and, indeed, I didn't die. Not even of embarrassment! I did other stuff like eating dinner at a restaurant by myself and buying a house. I may be boring but it takes guts to buy a fixer. I've established that here, right?

Then last fall the boy took me to Hawaii with his parents and I flew over the ocean, something I was really nervous about. At the time I joked that if he took me to the all-you-can-eat fried shrimp buffet at The Sizzler, he would have officially fulfilled all of my childhood dreams. But I lied. I'd also need tap dancing lessons. Hawaii, fried shrimp, and tap dancing. This little girl dreamed big.

Maggie over at Mighty Girl created a Mighty List of 100 things to do before she dies, which is a familiar riff on the bucket list. Lots of people make lists (you should in particular check out Jess' 30-while-she's-30 and Amy's life list) but Maggie's is fun to follow because she has corporate sponsorship so she goes amazing places and tells you what she wore.

I started thinking about what would be on my list and looking at other people's lists. It's fun because I've already done some of the stuff that other people want to do. I've done a night swim with manta rays (terrifying and awesome). I've run a 5K and learned sign language. I've grown my own vegetables and made my own limoncello and held adult dinner parties. I've rewired a lamp, seen the Northern Lights, bought a house, and taken hip hop classes. Reading these lists makes me feel way better about my life, which has made me pretty happy so far but still seems boring to other people. I'm not a thrill seeker, so sky diving or bungee jumping won't make my list, though I highly recommend going ziplining to anyone who hasn't tried it. I had to consciously avoid putting things on the list that I thought I *should* do, like hang gliding. That doesn't mean I won't do it at some point, but I don't need to do it before I die to feel content. Also, I love having toenails so running a marathon will never make this list. And why would I run when I can take Zumba classes?

A lot of this is aspirational stuff I've always dreamed about (Italy, manatees) and other stuff is more banal but somehow it hasn't happened yet.

So here's my Mighty List, in no particular order and still in progress:
  1. Go to Hawaii (done 10/10!)
  2. Unlimited fried shrimp at The Sizzler
  3. Take tap dancing lessons
  4. Spend an entire day making bolognese and homemade pasta, drinking wine, and watching The Godfather 1&2 with friends (I did something similar once and it was awesome).
  5. Go to Italy (just done 09/11! ohmygod!)
  6. Visit New York City
  7. Refinish the floors in the house
  8. Road trip of the States
  9. Learn how to can food
  10. Successfully make a boule of bread (mine are always flat)
  11. Bike to a picnic in the park
  12. Vacation on Isla Mujeres
  13. Learn to walk naturally in heels
  14. See Glacier National Park before all the glaciers melt
  15. Learn to salsa dance confidently
  16. Make a pie for someone else, which means not eating a single bite myself
  17. Vacation with my mom
  18. Pay off my credit card debt
  19. Roast my own coffee beans
  20. Learn to crochet
  21. See the manatees in Florida (sea cows, how I love you!)
  22. Learn to type without looking
  23. Take piano lessons
  24. See Machu Picchu
  25. Set foot in seven continents
  26. Croissants in Paris. Remember it fondly afterward with some International Coffee.


  27. Kayak a major body of water
  28. Complete the 3 day Susan G. Koman Race for the Cure
  29. See the Grand Canyon
  30. Get a role in a musical
  31. Attend a seder
  32. Catch a fish
  33. Attend a Dia de los Muertos celebration in Mexico
  34. See the Karst topography in China

  35. Photo yanked from here
  36. Swim in a cenote
  37. Go backpacking again
  38. Take one of my nieces or nephews on an awesome trip
  39. Make my own mozzarella cheese
  40. Have a dinner party and not feel disappointed about how some of the food came out.
  41. Happy hour oysters at Cafe Nell
  42. Camp on the southern Oregon coast
  43. Take a painting class
  44. Learn how to swim, for reals (I *love* being in the water but I do this sad mashup between the breast stroke and doggie paddle and I'd be screwed if I ever needed to get somewhere quickly.)
  45. Get my yard prettified enough to be featured on a garden tour . . .
  46. . . . and then invite LeAnn over for cocktails
  47. Float in the Dead Sea
  48. Sew a sundress
  49. Visit my family in Scotland
  50. Go to Japan
  51. Helicopter ride in Hawaii
  52. Have a ladies-only tea party in the garden where we all wear dresses and eat little sandwiches.
  53. Curry at HA & VL
  54. Take a vacation with Bill
  55. Make pizza on the barbecue
  56. Host a board game night
  57. Find the perfect jeans
  58. Learn how to hit a baseball/softball
  59. Play craps (it's look like so much fun in the movies . . . until something TERRIBLE happens)
  60. Tea in the Chinese garden
  61. Indian food at Vij's in Vancouver
Just a heads up: If you have "take a road trip to all the Sizzlers in the US" on your life list, there's a trip planner on their site. Nothing is stopping you now!

Anybody else have a mighty/bucket list?

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Hey! There's our house!

IFC has posted a sneak preview for season 2 of Portlandia and you can see our house!


Specifically, you can see them talking in our kitchen (including the window trim with a thousand different test paint strips:


In the front of our house:



My water heater straps are finally getting their 15 minutes!

Also: Greg's couch and our rotting front window!

Thursday, September 22, 2011

I love this.

Gigantic pots in the garden, spotted at the Bardini gardens in
Florence. I want. While we're wanting, I also want marble statues and
a water feature depicting a lion vomiting water that forms a river.
That's all I want. And all of those things are possible because I saw
them here.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

I heart Florence

We're thinking a little something like this for the dining room ceiling.
Ha ha, just kidding. I'm never coming back! I'm going to live in the
Duomo and you can't stop me!

Thursday, September 15, 2011

I'm not sure why I was worried.

Cookies abound in Amsterdam! Every time you order coffee they give you
a little one.
I love Amsterdam.