From Puerto Rico with Love

Look at the View
Originally uploaded by -J:

Some people spend Thanksgiving with family. We tend to just head to warmer climates. When you live in Florida, it can be difficult to find warmer climates, unless you decide to go to the Keys, leave the United States, or ... go to Puerto Rico.

I was excited to go for the food and while the food was delicious, when I go back, I will probably be going for much more than the food. There were a ton of beautiful panoramic scenes like this one, there was lots of walking to be done, and lots to do.

It is kind of amazing how much is packed onto that little island. It has its own rain forest, temperate forests, caves, rum factory, forts, beautiful ocean views, bio luminescent bays, and coffee. And that doesn't even cover all of it. Plus, I didn't have to go through customs once. Brilliant!

Delays

As some of you know, I went to New York two weeks ago to see the premiere of my girlfriend's play - the one she wrote, not the one she acted in, as she would likely never actually get on stage as a performer. She can barely handle the thought of people listening to her words being spoken on the stage, as she waits and hopes for signs of the audience's approval. Given that I was flying to New York, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to fly Jet Blue and see what all the hype was about. My own personal TV? How bad could it be.

My flight out was early in the morning, maybe 6AM. It was a fairly empty flight and everyone managed to get there on-time and board in an orderly fashion. Everyone that is, except one of the pilots. Good times. We sat there in the plane waiting for 30 minutes until the pilot managed to get to the plane. Once we were airborne, the Direct TV refused to work. So, they gave us free movies. Not bad. I watched Kung Fu Panda (something mindless that I did not have to give serious mental thought to) and because they build so much extra time into their arrival times, we easily arrived on-time. So, while I started out disliking Jet Blue and thinking they were incompetant, I left thinking maybe it was just an anomoly.

While in New York, I got to see two or three performances of my girlfriend's play, see and meet fun people, and sample delicious food. It seems like delicious food is everywhere up there, much like it is in Chicago. You generally do not have to worry about whether you will like the food at a particular restaurant because, one way or another, you are going to. (Except for the overpriced fish that I ordered that tasted a little too much like fish. Although, I have to admit, it and all of its accompaniments were cooked perfectly. Plus, I had tacos before I arrived. So, I was already well fed.) I also got to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and experience what it is like to be surrounded by hordes of rude, annoying people that I really just wanted to push over the side. It was also on this walk that I discovered that my digital camera was broken, with a huge crack in its LCD. Good times.

The house we were staying at had a king sized Temperpedic style bed. Except, it's a different brand called Isotonic. That bed was amazing. It was like I could sleep forever on it. You woke up and if you didn't want to be awake yet, you just rolled over and fell back to sleep. Absolutely fantastic. I have a terrible time sleeping - the act often aludes me, especially if I want to sleep extra, but I realize now it is because all the sleep has been hiding in this bed. Fantastic. Unfortunately, the owners of the house also had a dog. It wasn't there while we were, but as anyone who knows me and my allergies can attest, that doesn't matter.

Now, to be fair, it is unclear whether I had a cold or allergies or both. What is known is that by night two, I had a sore throat and I remained sick for the next two days I was in New York. To add to my feelings or terribleness, Jet Blue delayed my return flight for five hours (four in the airport and the next one on the plane). I met two seasoned fliers in the airport that explained it was not just bad luck, it was Jet Blue. In fact, as I looked around the airport, I saw that all the surrounding flights out were also delayed. I now officially hated them. We eventually filed onto our very full flight, and there I was sandwiched in-between two women - one young and one old. Like before and after photos maybe. (My girlfriend stayed for the following week in New York, as she still had more shows.)

I arrived home, and placed a call to my office, leaving a message to let them know there was just no way I could come in on Monday. My voice sounded awful and I had a fever. During the course of last week, I went from feeling like I was almost better to losing my voice and feeling like I was never going to be able to speak again. My doctor wasn't sure what I had, but he gave me antibiotics in case it was a sinus or respiratory infection, given the blood and other oddly colored fluids emanating from me, it seemed like a safe bet. However, I delayed in starting on the antibiotics, as he and I wondered, maybe it was just allergies, delaying my recovery. Finally, towards the end of last week, when my voice was almost completely gone, I started on the antibiotics, and then spent this entire weekend doing nothing but sleeping and reading. I think my voice if slowly coming back now, but it will probably not be until the end of next week that I am fully recovered. Somehow, I know this is all Jet Blue's fault.

Monteverde - Life in the Clouds

Our last day in Monteverde was a little more of the same. We started out with another cloud forest hike, only this time through the other cloud forest. The only way you could really tell the difference, though, was by the muddiness of it all. The Santa Elena Reserve has a lot more mud and is not very well maintained. Probably as a result of this, however, there seem to be far fewer tourists and you can probably enjoy yourselves far more there than at the other reserve, if you can get over the fact that you're going to get muddy.

We hired a guide for this cloud forest hike, which ended up being a complete waste of money. First, the hotel sort of misled us regarding the cost, and it ended up being twice as much as what they had told us, as the price they gave did not include the cost of park admission. However, the tougher part was the family with us in our group had a little 10 year old boy who was acting very much like a little 10 year old boy, making lots of noise and splashing around in the puddles. If we had not already done so many other rain forest hikes and seen so much already, we may have been upset about it. There were also far more people on these trails, which I am sure did not help matters. We did happen to see a snake sitting way up in the forest - the guides had found it at the entry to the park and one of them had trained his telescope on it. Even still, it took some time to really spot it, as it camoflauged itself so well.

After the tour ended, we decided to hike through the forest some more on our own. Almost immediately, we saw more monkeys. I think we also saw some other birds and such, as well, and located a little waterfall that was peacefully rushing along. Overall, I think we did better on our own than with the guide, which was really so different than any of our past experiences. It was this little tour that reminded me that you could have a great guide but you cannot always pick who is on the tour with you, and that can really affect things. However, it was still a lot of fun and we enjoyed ourselves.

In the afternoon, we went on a coffee plantation tour. The other folks that had signed up for the tour did not end up going. So, we had our very own private tour of the plantation, and got to pelt tons of questions at our tour guide about Costa Rica culture and life. He also lifted entire sections from the moview The Bucket List to give us a brief history of coffee, a fact we did not know until we happened to see the movie on our flight home. You gotta love an enterprising tour guide. Overall, this was a really awesome tour, and a nice alternative to all the purely nature/rainforest hikes we had been doing. Plus, we got to meet the actual plantation owner (Don Juan), who is this really old, short man who does not speak a lick of English. He happened to be walking the grounds and saw us there.

And with that, we ended our Costa Rican adventure. Yes, there are gaps (like our trip to the airport where we got stuck for probably 45 minutes because a tour bus in front of us had skidded off the road) and things I probably forgot to mention (like the fact that if you use your credit card to pay the departure tax at the airport, it's considered a cash advance and you get hit with an extra charge by your bank), but I think it covers a lot of it. We hope to go back in maybe a year or two, but that will all depend, I suppose on whether planes are still flying and if they so, how expensive ticket prices are, as will so many of our travel ideas. On the bright side, I was really glad I got to go here while it was still economically feasible and before it became even more touristed than it already is. I wonder how Costa Rica will find a balance between its tourist economy and their ecological endeavors. Hopefully, they are able to achieve it because it would be sad to lose such a beautiful landscape.

Monteverde - From the Air

Early in the morning, we got picked up from our hotel and taken to one of the cloud forests in Monteverde. Monteverde has two "cloud forests," one on either side of the Continental Divide. The clever name for these eco-wonderlands is derived from the fact that they are literally in the clouds. As such, you are generally always walking through a fine mist while you are walking through these areas.

Today was to be our day of breezing through the upper canopy on zip lines like crazy tourists. This notion was completely petrifying to my girlfriend, but I was too tired to be scared. For anyone not familiar with zip lining, there is a series of cables and platforms (about 18 where we were) through an area (in this case a rainforest canopy) and you sort of slide along these cables, from platform to platform at really high speeds. Some systems provide you with a braking lever. Ours, however, left us with only our hands to stop us, as they gave us thick gloves and explained how we had to grip the cable when we needed to stop or slow down. This was by far the hardest part because you never knew if you were going too fast or not fast enough, or when to start braking. As an added bonus, about half-way through, there was a very tall platform where they handed you a rope and they pushed you off, and while it looked and felt like you were plummeting to the ground, the rope you were holding would catch you just before the ground and swing you out into this large clearing. They call it a Tarzan Swing. I called it excitement with gravity.

Zip lining was a nice experience but certainly nothing too exciting for either of us, unless you count the adrenaline rush. However, we were glad we did it so that we could say that we did it. After that little 1 or 2 hour adventure was over, we got to go on a self-guided cloud forest hike, which included (you guessed it) more hanging bridges. By now, though, we had become connoisseurs of these contraptions, comparing and contrasting them. "These seem more stable." "The last ones looked nicer." Etc. We are not sure if we did not see much wildlife on the self-guided hike because all of the nature blended into itself, which seems completely possible, or if it was because only a scant hundred or so feet away crazy tourists were flying and screaming through the air, zip lining their little hearts out. It was probably more likely the latter, or at least a healthy mix of the two.

Next we got a bite to eat, followed immediately by another butterfly garden. However, this one was much larger and had a guide, which was really helpful. The other helpful item was that it stopped raining when we entered the garden and the butterflies became far more active. We learned all of the things we had learned (and forgotten) about butterflies in grade school, as well as a few things we had never known before. For example, some of the design patterns on the backs of butterflies make them look like owls or snakes, or the fact that butterfly wings are covered with scales and they reflect the light and that's what gives them their pretty colors.

After we were finished here, we went up the road a little ways to the Santa Elena Reserve, which is a huge park-like area run by a school, and did some hiking through there for a couple of hours, returning afterwards to where we had gone zip lining to catch the last shuttle out, which we had drop us off in the downtown area so that we could grab dinner, use an ATM, and get some groceries.

According to our handy guidebook, and the map our hotel gave us, Monteverde only has one bank and ATM. Unfortunately for us, the bank closed at 3PM and the ATM had decided it no longer wanted to work. Fortunately, however, we ran into two American teachers on a mission for cash, who had been asking around town and thought they had located a secret ATM. We followed them along in their mission, which ended up proving successful - as we found a little ATM tucked away in a super tiny nondescript room of a strip mall. Cash in had, we went to try and find dinner.

It seems many of the restaurants in the area had changed since the publication of our guidebook, and so, we just found somewhere that looked nice and clean and had dinner. It was nice that the place we picked was across the street from the grocery store and also right next door to the local ice cream parlor, which we also decided to sample.

Tired, well fed, with groceries and cash in-hand, we took a taxi back down the long and bumpy road to our hotel and turned in for the evening.

Arenal to Monteverde

The next day was our trip over to Monteverde. The two towns are not that far apart, unless you count vertical distance. The main problem is the roads between the two places are really rough and difficult to navigate. However, there are some horseback tours that can get you there and another service called jeep-boat-jeep that can easily get you there quickly, and shave at least an hour (of really rough travel) off the overall trek. Its clever name is derived from the fact that a jeep or taxi takes you to a boat that transports you across the Arenal Lake, to another jeep or shuttle, which drops you off at your hotel.

The boat ride was gorgeous and would have been very enjoyable if it wasn't for the two insane annoying teenagers behind us. The woman was from London, I think. I was not quite clear where the guy was from. They were maybe sleeping together but it was hard to say. Based upon the conversation, it sounded like they had been backpacking and staying in some hostels and that she had a boyfriend somewhere. All I know for certain is the two would not shut up for the entire one hour long boat trip and the conversation wasn't even fun to listen to. So, it wasn't like you could just sit back and enjoy a nice eavesdropping session. Instead you just felt trapped with this overwhelming hope that these two would somehow pass out mid-sentence and end your suffering.

Fortunately, the boat ride did have a terminus and we were not on the same shuttle with the non-stop-talking duo. This is where things got even more beautiful. Basically, this entire end of the drive is uphill and you find yourself looking out the window at seemingly never ending countryside with rolling fields and farms and just natural beauty that your brain has trouble processing. Within the span of the drive, the temperature drops about 10 degrees (Fahrenheit) and the roads continue to get increasingly miserable.

Finally, we got to our hotel, which was only about 500 meters down the road from the Cloud Forest Reserve. Along the road to there, is the Hummingbird Museum, which is basically a little shop. My guidebook recommended going to this shop for some free hummingbird observation. So, we headed up the road and were astounded with the hummingbirds zipping around the little outdoor area, whisking in-between the feeders and trees. They went so fast and so close, you often worried that they were going to hit you. However, they were much too smart to do something stupid like that and easily negotiated their way around any innocent bystanders. Afterward, we briefly checked out the Reserve, which was closing and headed home to our hotel to get to our night tour.

This was pretty cool, as we got to walk through the rain forest at night and see lots of nocturnal animals, even tarantulas. It had its moments of being a little scary, like when everyone turned their flashlights off and you realized how dark it really was and that anything could be crawling on you, including that huge spider that was only 3 feet away when you initially turned off your light. It was really a great experience.

Arenal on the Water

For our last full day in Arenal, we booked a canoe trip. We had a tough time deciding between a canoe trip or waterfall rapelling, but in the end we decided the canoe trip would be calmer, easier, and more peaceful. It was a half day trip down a Class II or III river. Given that we had never really been on any river with a real current, this was an entirely new experience. It was a fun trip. It was a little difficult because it was the first time my girlfriend and I had ever acted as a canoe team and I would have trouble understanding why she was doing what she was doing. Plus, sometimes, we would row the wrong way with our correcting strokes or whatever so the other one would be rowing so much harder not understanding why it wasn't working, but we learned a lot both about canoeing and about each other. For example, she learned that I could not always see the obstacles ahead of us that she could, as she was in front, and I learned to just trust more that she knew what she was doing and just offer her as much power as I could, and try to remember which way I was supposed to be rowing. Eventually, we seemed to get a lot better at it and even the guide said we were doing really good at one point.

(I would say that was probably the biggest part about this trip - learning about each other. With all of this hiking and canoeing and everything else, we seemed to learn so much about what and how the other person thought and how to communicate better. I had not expected my girlfriend and I to learn so much about one another on the trip but we did. The canoe trip was probably the pinnacle of all of this because of the way people experience it. It was seemingly the hardest and best part of the trip for me, but not in the way you would expect. I would say my favorite day in Arenal was the 13+ hour hiking day, but the day that probably made the most lasting impact in my relationship with my girlfriend was the day of the canoe trip.)

After we finished our trip, they made us lunch by the river. It was good and we got to talk to the three other people on the canoe tour with us, who were all really cool and around our age, probably a little younger. They were staying in-town and were leaving for Monteverde that day. We were able to recommend a couple different things they could try before they left and it ended up being really helpful to them.

That afternoon, we went to the Arenal Observatory Lodge, which is a hotel but also one of the best places to be able to see the volcano lava flows at night. It is really out of the way. So, if you intend to go into the city at all while staying in Arenal, I would not recommend staying there. However, if you are good with staying on-site the whole time you are there and just book lots of tours that include transportation, it is really a nice place to stay. We walked on some of their private paths, one of which led to a little waterfall, which was really nice, but the paths are not maintained as well. On our way back up we saw, you guessed it, more monkeys. (We saw monkeys pretty much every day that we were there. In fact, even when we go out hiking or kayaking now that we are home, we constantly think we are going to see monkeys in the trees.)

After the little hike, we made our ways back up towards the lodge, after another small hike through some gardens. Somehow, while waiting for the night to come, my girlfriend and I got separated. She had decided she wanted to go sit on another area of the deck and when I went to find her, I couldn't. So, after looking for her for a while I decided maybe she had gone back to where had been hiking before in the gardens. So, I went back but I couldn't find her. I did find a really awesome place for us to watch the volcano and it seemed no one else was there. I went back to try and find her and ran into her. She was so upset. She had no idea where I had been. I guess I had somehow just failed to see her back on the deck because she was sitting in a different area with some random people. Reunited, we went to the place I had found to watch the volcano and the clouds cleared a little so that we could see the top of the volcano and the lava. It was amazing. However, the best view came on the cab ride home when the clouds completely cleared and we could see lava just pouring down the side of the mountain. It was amazing.

Hiking Arenal

This was probably one of our most active days of the entire trip, with activities beginning at around 8AM and not finishing until 11 that night.

Once again, it began with a delicious, but early breakfast, which we finished in-time for our early morning pickup to get us to our 8AM hike through the rain forest. There were an abundance of hanging bridges there, as well. Again, our guide was really cool and our group was fairly small. There was a family of three women (a mother and her two college-aged daughters), two other girls (probably in college) and a third girl from Germany. The hike was kind of long and there were a lot of inclines and declines. Our guide took us the opposite direction that a lot of the other groups were going (its a circular route). This reduced the amount of other groups we had to deal with along the way and made the hike slightly easier. He had recently injured his foot playing soccer and wanted to take it a little easy.

After finishing here, we dropped off the two college girls but kept everyone else and went on our hike down to see the La Fortuna waterfall. It is about 500 steps down, on a pretty steep decline. Once you get there, though, you get to swim in the absolutely ice cold water, just beneath the waterfall. The German girl had absolutely no issues with it and jumped right in. My girlfriend and the mother of the other two girls made their way in pretty easily. Then one of the daughters went in, which left only the other daughter and me. It was during all of this that I learned that this (Colombian) family was from Miami. So, we all bonded, learned what they did for a living, where they worked, etc. The mother was a teacher and the two daughters were in college. One of them worked at a restaurant I know. Eventually, I got in but the last daughter was having a rough time. Finally, I convinced her to come in with the logic, how often are you going to get to do this. Bam, she was in.

Once we got out and managed to get our shoes on - fortunately, we had brought a couple extra towels and we shared them with the others so that they could dry off and get their feet back into their shoes. Then there was the difficult and strenuous hike back up the mountain. During all of this we also learned that the German girl worked for a company in Germany that was going to begin offering tours to Costa Rica for older/retired people. So, she was trying to try out all the activities to determine which ones were appropriate for that age group. We all seemed to feel this was not one of them.

We, eventually, made it to the top and then they dropped us off for lunch and we were told we would have a different tour guide for the second half of our trip. We were all sort of disappointed by this because our guide had so far been great, but whatever. Our lunch ended up being at the same restaurant we had gone to dinner at the night before. Again, it was absolutely fantastic and it included dessert, which was the awesome ice cream with hunks of brownie in it. The entire meal was quite good and the vegetables were just as fresh as the fruit.

Refueled and rested, we did a little souvenir shopping, but the rain had started and it was pouring by the time we got onto our tour bus, heading towards the Volcano hike. Along the way, we picked up a group of about three or four Cubans from Miami. It was hilarious. So, everyone was speaking some form of Spanish. The guide wasn't sure he wanted to do the hike because of the rain and asked us if we really wanted to go, but we were all insistent that we just had to go hiking. So, we got out and began the hike. The first five to ten minutes were miserable and wet but then the sky inexplicably cleared and we were able to continue our hike. It was really cool.

The day we landed, the volcano had begun to be more active and there was a lot more lava coming out than normal. So much so that they had closed off part of the path which takes you right to where the lava rocks are from the last large eruption. However, the Cubans being shrewed negotiators convinced the guide to let us go up unaccompanied and we got to stand on the lava rocks. It was staggering how far the rocks had been blown out of the volcano, and a little disturbing that it could easily happen again and this time hit us. Fortunately, the guide came up and stopped us from going too far and we headed back to the bus.

Next stop, hot springs. We went to the Tabacon hot springs and it was really pretty. The springs there all sort of flow through these man-made gardens, with rocks and such there that you can sit on as the water rushes past you, or there are pools that you can wade through and a waterfall that you can stand behind. The water is around 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) and it was just what we needed after such a strenuous day of hiking - it was about 6PM when we got there. Dinner was at 8 and then we were scheduled to go home. Our guide, however, took us all back to the volcano to try and get some night lava shots, but it was fogged over and we ended back at home, at around 11PM. What a day.

Arenal From Above

For our first full day in Arenal, we had breakfast at the little dining area - a huge buffet included with our room. The fruit was incedibly fresh and delicious every day. If you like pineapple, papya, and bananas, you are going to love Costa Rica. After supplying ourselves with food, we went on a Sky Tram ride up to the top of a platform that offers some absolutely beautiful views of the active side of the Arenal Volcano and the man-made Arenal Lake. The shuttle that took us there seemed to be filled with trendy older-hipsters. Somehow, we just did not seem to fit in with them, as they discussed their new cars and all of the money they were spending here and there. Fortunately, we were separated from them upon our arrival, as they wanted to zipline down the mountain and we had already decided we were going to do that in Monteverde. So, they matched us up with another group of folks that were pretty nice. We had two guides - one was very new to the area, she was from Bahli and I think the other one was helping her out.

After we got to the upper platform and took lots of pictures, they took us on a small rainforest hike and explained lots of nature to us. As our first tour and nature seminar, it was really good. They refreshed our memory of epiphites and bromiliades and were really nice. After all of that was done, we made our way back to the platform for our ride back down. It was a really nice and easy trip, and helped get us oriented.

One thing I noticed that was different from my trip to Italy was it seemed like absolutely no one had done any preparatory work in anticipation of the trip, let alone thought to carry a guide book around with them. I could not seem to get my head around this, as I seemed to use my book even more once I got there. It helped us find our way to a local ecological park that is affiliated with the local schools - teaching lots of nature classes. For only a few dollars, we got to wander around the whole park that was completely devoid of tourists except for us and see a sloth, iguanas, herons, poison dart frogs, a butterfly garden, and all sorts of other stuff. It was really awesome, and so incredibly inexpensive. An entire experience I would have missed without my guidebook.

Afterwards, we made our way into the town, had lunch at the great inexpensive place recommended by my guidebook, found a couple of ATMs and a grocery store. Once again, nearly no tourists were to be found in our restaurant. The grocery store was really helpful for getting water and snack food. As is to be expected, water can be really expensive in the hotels and gift shops. All the money saved could be put towards activities, food, and souvenirs.

That night, we had planned on going to a steak restaurant recommended by my guidebook, but our hotel concierge said that we would like this other place more. So, he had us go there. It really was good. I had this half of chicken cooked in banana leaves with this delicious sauce. Fantastic. And my girlfriend had some steak, which was also really good. Even though this was probably one of the nicest restaurants in the entire town, it was probably about as expensive as going to Chili's here in the US. Completely ridiculous.

It was a very productive day and just what we needed in anticipation of our long day coming up.

Our First Cabin

Early the next morning, we awoke and experimented with our shower - trying to make it hot but not scalding. The place we stayed at in San Jose also had a shared kitchen area, with free coffee and lots of different teas. It was really a cool little place and relatively empty. There seemed to be about three college-aged girls staying in another room just down the way from us, but I think that was everyone in our particular building. So, it was nice and quiet. I imagine a bunch of college kids could have a blast there ... except, it is in downtown San Jose.

We checked out and left our luggage with the hotel front-desk folks while we went to grab breakfast at a little place down the road. This was the first time I was to have black beans and rice for breakfast. What a trip. The traditional food there, though, is far more bland than many other Latin areas. Quite different than what I expected, but good and cheap.

Our shuttle out to Arenal got to our hotel almost as soon as we returned from breakfast and whisked us off to our first private cabin. The trip out was really easy after you got out of the small and busy roads of the San Jose area. Pretty soon, most of civilization fell away and you were driving through much more rural areas. It was really cool. The cabins at our resort were sort of like little duplexes. So, there might be someone on the other side of your duplex but you would never know it unless you saw them. There were trees and shrubs everywhere making you feel more secluded. The showers were also really cool because they were sort of open in the ceiling, providing you with daylight in there, and there were plants set into a little alcove just beyond the shower. We also had these really cool rocking chairs on our front porch. So, you could just sit and relax and watch the humming birds.

We spent a lot of that day just enjoying our cabin and trying to make the AC work. We were, unfortunately, unsuccessful with this latter task and they switched us to a new and bigger cabin. We were somehow not as happy with the second cabin as the first, but they were both really fantastic. The view from both rooms was of the pretty landscaping that dominated the area that was our resort and then the omnipresent volcano beyond. Really, really pretty.

This was probably our least active day of the entire trip. We walked a little while out to the road (our resort was set off from the main highway in Arenal), and determined that walking into the town or anywhere else really was not something worth undertaking. The streets there were not really laid out for pedestrians until you got into the actual town, and given the driving down there, you were really risking an awful lot by attempting to walk.

Takeoffs and Landings

As some of you know, I was in Costa Rica last week. However, in order to get to Costa Rica, I had to fly. I suppose I didn't have to fly. I could have taken and boat, but that would have gotten me there far too slowly and I would have missed all my other reservations. In an attempt to minimize any angst over possible hurricanes that might occur between the time I booked the flight and the time I actually took the flight, I acquired travel insurance from AIG. The insurance was also taken out to cover possible lost luggage (that never happens, right) and the potential need to be evacuated in the event my girlfriend or I developed some rare disease or had an injury and needed to be airlifted out. We were happy to learn how ridiculously cheap this insurance was. For all of that, covering lost luggage, all hotel and airline reservations that might be lost and getting airlifted out in the event of an emergency, and a whole bunch of other stuff I had never even considered, it was under $100 for both of us. Totally worth it. However, no insurance policy that I took out could have possibly protected me against the flight I had to Costa Rica.

It all started simply enough. The flight was in the afternoon and I was rushing to get to the airport after getting hung up at an estate plan signing because the couple failed to tell us that they had multiple aliases. Not only that, but as we revised the documents further, more and more names came out of them. For example, after revising them a second time, we were about to sign and the wife said, "Does it matter that I have a different name on my driver's license?" Nah, who cares about silly things like names. My girlfriend was worried that they would close our flight because we would not be getting there two hours in advance. Having never experienced anything like that, this thought had never occurred to me. Now, I was suddenly stressed and concerned that I would not even be able to get on my plane.

We dropped off the car and, eventually, got on our shuttle to the airport. Upon getting to the ticketing area, we learned something really cool. At the airport, we were able to self-check-in for our international flight with checked luggage. Brilliant. It was the coolest thing ever. We just scanned our credit cards and passports and the the luggage tags printed out at the counter and they would call us over, stick the luggage stuff on them and off we went. One hurdle cleared. Next we went through security and grabbed a quick sandwich before heading to the gate, where our flight had almost finished boarding - no waiting around for us.

My girlfriend was excited that we were to have a female pilot. I was excited to just be on the plane. As we took off, and the beautiful ocean spread out around us, and my girlfriend started snapping pictures of the Keys and Cuba, as we quickly wizzed past them.. Before we knew it, after some heavy turbulence, we were over San Jose. There was a slight problem, however, the airport was closed. What?!

See, that heavy turbulence we passed through on the way there was owing to heavy thunderstorms. Well, evidently, some were still lingering over the San Jose airport and the entire airport had closed. Worse still, the pilot could not raise the tower on the radio to determine how bad the conditions were on the ground. So, with 20 minutes of fuel left (the pilot provided frequent updates of such things), we began to circle the airport. About a half-hour later, the pilot explained that we would be attempting to land now, as the weather had slightly improved. If this did not work, we would have to divert to the other airport in Liberia.

As we broke through the clouds, on our final approach, just as we were able to see the earth below us, the pilot veered off and hauled ass to Liberia, explaining along the way that the landing was not going to work and we barely had any fuel left so we would have to fly through some storms, expect some turbulence, sorry for the inconvenience.

About 18 minutes later, we landed in Liberia. Go us. Several of the passengers were more than willing to simply get off here and arrange for transportation out from this airport, but they wouldn't let us deplane. They tried to blame it on the fact that the airport is not equipped with immigration. Unfortunately, for them, a few of the passengers knew better and voiced their displeasure with being lied to. Yes, I was one of those passengers, but it's not my fault. My book on Costa Rica clearly indicates that their airport in Liberia accepts international flights and that there is a massive effort underway to try to expand it to accommodate more direct flights. Not to mention the fact that I actually looked at booking a direct flight into Liberia when I bought the tickets to begin with, but the cost was too high.

They refueled our plane and about 30 to 45 minutes later, we were back on our way to San Jose. This time, we landed. Wooo! Not only that, we finally got to get off the plane. For reference, our flight was due in by 4PM (local time, that's 6 EDT). It is now around 6 their time. We are hungry. We hurry towards immigration and stand in-line. And stand in-line. The line seems to be moving, but we cannot tell where the people are going. It becomes clear that the line is only moving because they are changing the number of rows in the labyrinth that is the rope line. After about a half-hour, we learn that immigration is closed for everyone that is not a Costa Rican citizen because the electrical storm brought down their computer systems. They estimate that they will be restored in about 2 to 3 hours. Joy.

At about 9:30 (local time), immigration begins to show signs of activity again and we are all rushed through. We grab our luggage, which is fortunately, still sitting there in baggage claim and rush to find our ride to the hotel. After trying to make the phones work for a while, my girlfriend finds a man that has a sign with my name on it. He locates a shuttle for us and we are whisked off to our hotel, in the rain. We arrive at the hotel at 10PM (local time). We are starving and without any local currency. Plus, it's pouring rain, very dark, and San Jose is sort of a sketchy place to hang out in after-hours. Fortunately, we are just down the road from a 24 hour Shell gasoline station, with an ATM. Score one for the petroleum company. We go and get local currency, after taking some time to figure out that 10,000 colones basically equals $20, not a $200, and we dine on scrumptious peanuts and pretzels. Hence, ended our first day (and adventure) in Costa Rica.

Oh, one of you asked if I will be posting pictures of the trip. The answer is I already have, and you obviously do not keep up with my Flickr page, which is not surprising, as I do not think many people do. There are some photos of the trip over there. I have more that I am working on uploading to Picasa and once they are on Picasa, I will provide another link. For now, Flickr is what's available.

Another Orlando Weekend

The trip began easily enough, but was quickly interrupted by a near-collision I experienced. This ended up requiring that I have all four of my tires replaced. Apparently, when you slam on your brakes, flat areas can be created on portions of the tires, which explained why my car was making funny sounds and additional vibration as I drove afterwards. I also had to locate my girlfriend when I arrived. She was at a Books-A-Million. So, the thought was she could ask the employees how I should get there, as it is located just off of I-4, which is the road I was on. As it turns out, no one at the store had the slightest clue how to get to their store. I ended up having to drive around for over an hour to find my way to the store. Absolutely insane.

I got to see several more plays while I was at the Fringe Festival this weekend. It was really cool. Some of the performances I found not so appealing but a lot of them were quite interesting. We also got to experience 5 Guys Burgers and Fries. It was really good. However, it was about 3 o'clock before I actually got to eat anything that day and that was it, so I may have been slightly biased and just overjoyed to be able to finally eat anything at all. However, I will go to another one soon and test this theory.

My girlfriend's final performance went quite well. Some of the audience members even stood when they applauded. One item I should probably clarify is my girlfriend's role in the play. I think some folks may think she is starring in it, but she is not. Instead, she wrote, produced and directed it. That probably does not make a huge difference to many of my readers, but it may make a difference to at least a few of you trying to get a clear picture of the whole setup.

While we were in Orlando, we went to the Dandelion Cafe, which was a new and exciting experience. Their menu had probably about two pages filled with different types of teas and the decor was very different - a little 70s-like or something exhibiting that laid-back and independent vibe. We got to try some hummus and some of their other culinary delights. It was probably the first healthy meal we were able to enjoy while we were there. Thank goodness for local kindness.

I also managed to get sick while I was in Orlando, which I am still trying to recover from. Hopefully, my doctor will quell everyone's fears today and say it is just a small cold with fever. I will be quite happy to be well again.

Another Blog

I don't know how it happened, but somehow I got roped into becoming a member of the creative team for a new blog. It sounds exciting when I say "creative team" doesn't it? It sounds like I am working on some super-awesome thing doesn't it? Well, maybe I am. One never knows. In any event, the new blog is all non-fiction and wholly related to the arts and advertising (what a combination). We will have to see what develops from it.

One thing I have realized is that Blogger is the home for me, for now. Over the past few weeks, I have been thinking of switching over to Wordpress because I think their themes are snazzy - especially the three column ones that Blogger does not seem to offer. However, I learned while I was helping on this new project that Wordpress has some limitations as well. For example, embedding with iframes is so not happening there and do you see that new Creative Commons icon on my blog - in the left hand column? No? Well, trust me, it's there. It took me a half hour to figure out how to get it to appear in Wordpress.

Wordpress does have some cool stuff going for it. For example, integrating your domain name is fairly easy and you can easily create separate pages for your blog, which can make it a more multi-purpose portal, with some open ended growth potential. However, I think the restrictions were enough to keep me around on Blogger, at least for a little while longer.

In other news, American Airlines will now begin charging you to check any bags at all. No, I do not mean any bags after the first one. I mean all of your checked bags are going to cost you. Fly safely.

Fumbling for a Topic

I have been at a bit of a loss as to what to write. I have also lacked the time to do so. I do not feel as guilty for not writing as much anymore, though, as I feel so few people still read my blog. That could be false. I do not really check my statistics, but I assume fewer people are reading what I have to say, as I seem to have less things to say.

I thought about saying something regarding politics, but I really have nothing to say. Unlike most people, I do not seem to like anyone running for office. As near as I can calculate things, pretty much anyone that gets into office will have done so by raising millions and millions of dollars, and I assume that lots of that money will have come from special interest groups, to whom the candidate will be beholden, and nothing will really change. All that might change is we will, hopefully, have a more articulate president. However, I still do not feel I will be adequately represented. How can someone that makes over $500,000.00 a year really know what is important to me? I just do not feel they will. There are lots of exciting sound bytes, though. I keep hearing about "change" and "experience". So, I assume we are to anticipate experiencing a change, but I have not been listening too closely.

I could talk about my trips. A few weeks ago, I spent the weekend in a house built on stilts in the middle of the ocean. There's something you don't do everyday. It was really cool to be able to wake up every morning, look out of whichever window you happened to pick and see ocean, and it made experiencing sunrises and sunsets much easier. It also made it easier to relax because really, what the hell else are you going to do. The night before we left, a few of the folks there were cleaning some fish they had just caught and out came the bull sharks, and there went the fishermen - all trying to hook themselves a shark. Unfortunately, no one was really equipped to take down a shark, but I have a feeling that in the coming months, I am going to hear a story about how one of the folks there caught a shark and now I have to come help them eat it.

This past weekend, we went hiking. Well, in Florida one does not really go hiking so much as off-road walking. However, we do have mosquitoes and alligators that keep you on your toes. For example, yesterday we saw six - that's right, I said six - alligators. One idiot was crazy enough to go walking up to one of the 'gators so that he could get a better picture. This must be why God made alligators afraid of humans - we are freaking crazy. We had enough foresight to forgo the canoing adventure, as it looked like it might rain and just as we departed, the skies opened up and released a deluge. We were left with no choice but to all retreat home, and consume an entire pork shoulder. I think my life may be less complete without various pork products.

I really have not been writing here as much as I would like. Much of it has to do with time constraints. However, another part of it is not knowing what to write. I often find myself struggling to find a good topic, or something I find interesting enough to say something about. Perhaps I should create a suggestion box.

It's Been A While

I know, I know. I have not written in over a week on this thing I call my blog, but again, I have been busy.

I went to Chicago two weekends ago and experienced both Pizzeria Uno and Pizzeria Due. The latter is across the street from the former. Apparently, early on, Uno's just got too darn crowded. So the owner opened up a second restaurant across the street. Brilliant! And because not as many people seem to know about Pizzeria Due, it appears to be less crowded and easier to get a table there. We went to Uno's on a whim, saying well, while their pizza is often a little too greasy, we are in Chicago and we should at east try it to say that we tried it before we leave. Oh my God. Forget Giordano's. Forget Gino's East. No, no, no, my friend. Pizzeria Uno and Due is where it is at. Uno's was so good we went to Due the next day for more. And even today, I wake up with a desire to go back and have some more. Certainly, the best deep dish pizza I have ever had. I wish the franchised stores could make it as well as those two places do.

I discovered a new Web-based financial management site. It was written up in a number of places and got some stellar reviews. In fact, the reviews were so good, the company was inundated with new customers wanting to use their product, and their servers couldn't keep up with the demand. It took them several days to install additional servers and get everything running smoothly but they appear to have accomplished it. What is so cool about this site, is you enter your username and password for all of your credit card and bank accounts and it automatically goes there and pulls all your transaction data and keeps it up to date on an ongoing basis, so you do not have to keep entering your transactions as you go. It also categorizes your transactions, and keeps track of your debt to cash ratio and your interest rates and gives you a comparative analysis, based upon national averages, makes suggestions of you could save additional money, and gives you charts as to how much of your budget goes to what - travel, entertainment, gas, groceries, etc. In short, it's exactly what I always wanted. The site is called Mint, and it's completely free. How is it free you may ask because I sure know I did. Well, remember how I said it figures out ways for you to save money, like it pointed out to me that I could open an ING checking account and earn over 4% on my money. 4% in a checking account with no minimum balance! Insane. Well, ING pays them for that ad placement recommendation, as do other companies that offer cool programs and offers that can save or earn you extra money. Is it safe? Well, they sound pretty safe, and their security practices have been approved by e-Trust and Verisign.

As to the trip planning for Costa Rica, because Kate asked. The planning is going great. I have mostly figured out all the logistics of the trip and have selected hotels that we could probably stay at and how much most of all of that will cost. I eliminated one city and possibly added a different one, as it was just logistically easier. Our trip will probably not involve most of the beaches in Costa Rica, which we are mostly ok with, as we live in Florida and can go to the beach whenever we want. We were more interested in the rafting, kayaking, volcanoes and rain forest exploration than the beaches. Maybe if we go back, we will try to take in more beach areas. Overall, though, the trip sounds like it is going to be amazing. Absolutely everyone I know who has been says it is just an amazing place and as more and more retired foreigners and speculators are settling there and trying to make it even more of a tourist destination, I feel fairly sure that if I do not get there soon, I will lose almost any chance I have of seeing it as something other than Disneyland. And that's the story on Costa Rica. If you have any individual questions, let me know. I have looked through about eight travel books on the country and have a couple of favorites so far, but we will see how I feel about them after I get back. I have also done research on other areas of the country and the beaches, but my predominant focus has been elsewhere.

Ok, now off to being busy again.

Italy Days 6 through 8 (Florence, Sienna, and Rome)

Because I just cannot take drawing this out any longer and because the last few days all sort of bunch together in my brain, with lots of interesting isolated events, but nothing I feel like really focusing on here, I will try to cover the final days of my trip in a more fast and loose, cursory style.

My remaining days in Italy went fairly smoothly, as I attempted to spend as little time as possible with my companion and as much time as I could doing my own thing. This really only worked in Florence, but once I was on my way to Sienna, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel and truly felt there was no challenge I could not face.

The day I spent on my own in Florence was rather uneventful. I went and found the post office, via the British Embassy (don't ask) and mailed the one post card I had been requested to send. Although, upon my return I was informed that I was supposed to send a magnet (not a post card) and that they had never actually received either. This was really irritating to me - not because I had someone complaining to me about what I hadn't given them, but more because I had spent so much time finding the darn post office and given up a visit to the palace gardens and the darn thing still hadn't gotten to where it was directed.

I visited another couple of museums and found what was allegedly the best gelato in Italy. It isn't, though. The best gelato I found in Italy is at a place called Gelato de Medici in Florence and it is tasty. It is also outside of the city proper and would not be easily located by most tourists. However, if you happen to get lost and stumble upon it in the northeastern area of the city, I highly recommend that you just stop whatever you are doing and eat because you will likely never have the opportunity to experience that flavor again. (Although, there are many other good gelato places in Italy.)

That night, we all went out to a bar where you would buy a single drink and then eat from this buffet for free until there was nothing left to eat. This was my kind of place. Although, there still wasn't very much meat to be had and I mostly ate pasta and risotto. We then wandered around for a bit and climbed to a summit located a little outside of the main city and admired the night view of the city below. I attempted to take a decent picture of the view, but my camera does not seem to be well suited for night photography and I was eventually forced to give up.

Once we got back down, the women were tired and went off to journey home, but the rest of us went to a local pub. It was pretty cool because almost everyone here were college students and they all spoke English. The majority of them seemed to be much younger than me and I didn't really have very much to discuss with them, but I at least understood the bulk of the words coming out of their mouths. It was nice to not feel so isolated and alone.

On our way up the road, away from the pub, the sole remaining girl in our group let out a shout. It appears some stranger behind me had taken his date's head and slammed it against the stone wall a couple of times. One of the guys in our group was already going after the attacker so the three other guys joined in. This seemed to be probably the coolest thing ever. I was about to get into my first Italian street brawl and I had three other chaps backing me up. It was foolproof. I remember thinking that I was never going to get back to the States and that I'd have to call the American Embassy before the night was over, but still feeling that it was totally worth it. I was also fairly sure that the guy might be able to take at least two of us.

The fight never actually happened, and all we really did was distract him long enough to allow her to retreat back down the road, where there were more people. This, however, seemed to be an acceptable solution to us, as he wasn't likely going to be allowed to beat her up in front of even more people. So our work was done, even though two of us still wanted to go kick his ass. Half of me just wanted to do it to see how it would all work out.

The next day (day seven), we boarded our train to Sienna and bid adieu to all of the wonders and delights of Florence.

We arrived and upon learning our first choice hotel was full, proceeded to the nearest convent. I felt we had to stay with the nuns for our last stop in Italy. After all, had it not been a nun that had helped us so much in Assisi? Plus, it was close and had forty rooms. They couldn't possibly all be filled we figured. Fortunately, our logic appeared to be correct and a room was acquired. Once in our room, we learned that the showers here didn't even have doors, which we felt should make showering even more exciting the next morning.

We then set out to explore the main attractions of the city, which included a large bell tower (with approximately 500 steps). The city was a really pretty place, but kind of an annoying one to walk around in because you could not really go anywhere without walking up and down enormous hills. It was like Assisi in that respect, but not as scenic (in my opinion) and was more eclectic in its elevations. However, we were able to quickly cover the main sites in a very short amount of time in our first and second (day eight) days there. After a little sightseeing on day eight, I finished the rest of my shopping and we found our way back to the train station and to Rome. My companion had used her frequent flier miles (she accrues through work) to book us a room at the Hilton adjacent to the airport in Rome so that we wouldn't have to wake up too early to get to our early morning flight the next day. It wouldn't have matter, though, as I could not sleep at all that night and was up and ready to go well before any alarm was set to go off.

We met some cool Americans for our flight home (day nine) and helped the teenager with them get her passport stamped and get through security. It was pretty cool to be able to socialize with random people again. We landed, made it through security twice (once in Rome and once in Paris because somehow even though you never leave the secured area, they have to check you again), caught our connecting flight, which departed an hour late, and flew home. I dropped my companion off at her apartment and haven't spoken to her since.

Italy Day 5 (Florence)

We arrived at the Florence train station and set out to locate the people that would be letting us stay with them. My traveling companion's father had some folks he knew (around our age) that had offered to let us stay with them. I would be staying with a guy and she would be staying with a woman. I thought this was owing to our sexual orientations, but learned upon our arrival that they had been expecting two women.

Locating our hosts proved to be a little difficult, and my companion became irritated that I had decided to exit on the left side of the train station, when the parking lot was located on the right. Note that there was no way for either of us to know which side of the station the parking lot was on, and we didn't actually need the lot to meet our hosts anyway, as they parked away from the station anyway. This did not keep her from becoming irate and lecturing me on the art of meeting people. In retrospect, I'm still surprised that I never lost my temper with her the entire time I was on the trip.

Once we were settled in, we set out for some lunch and then visited the Duomo and Medici Chapel. They were both very impressive. We even hiked up the over 400 stairs to the top of the Duomo to gaze upon the city below. The view was beautiful, and a cold front had just pushed through the day before, forcing all of the haze out of the atmosphere and making the view absolutely crystal clear. Finally, we eventually wandered back to where were to meet our hosts and found a cool souvenir shop where I was able to acquire nearly all of my gift souvenirs for the folks at home.

At this point, I was fairly sure that I really couldn't take any more sacred art. In my opinion, there were only so many different ways you could paint the cross and various scenes from the Bible, and I was fairly sure that I had seen them all, or at least as many as I could take. This seems somewhat understandable, after I had spent five days doing practically nothing but staring at sacred art and architecture. My companion was driving me a little crazy and I was getting pretty tired of eating starch every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It wasn't that I didn't like it. I just wanted more (or any) meat for my money.

Our hosts came home and we eventually walked to dinner. The person leading us (the woman my companion was to stay with) had a fairly terrible sense of direction and we got lost for at least an hour. My companion never complained once, but I knew it was driving her absolutely nuts. I thought it was somehow fitting that she was to be staying, and led home, by this directionless woman.

My companion informed me that she was going to Pisa the next day, but I had opted to forgo this city, as I was told by many that the only real item of note there was the Leaning Tower and I didn't want to spend a bunch of Euros and time on a train with my travelling mate to go see a silly tower that I knew would be leaning.

Dinner was really good. We ate with a few other Italians that worked with our hosts and I had one of the largest calzones I had ever had in my life. It was really good and then we spent the remainder of the night playing soccer and volleyball in the middle of the square outside. It had a ton of other locals there and they were all singing (I distinctly remember Pearl Jam) and drinking until after we went home at about 1am. Bear in mind that this was in the middle of the week. Those Italians sure do know how to have fun.

Italy Day 4 (Assisi)

After our rude awakening and after my traveling companion had given the bathroom a good washing, we set off to explore the city that is Assisi. (Incidentally, I have pictures of the entire trip posted with captions online, but some of the photos are personal and I've been trying to decide how to handle this. At some point, I will transfer over the personal ones to a private album and only leave the public ones up and post a link here. However, until that day comes, I have to know you and you have to email me and request the link.)

Assisi is commonly associated with St. Francis, who believed that the church should be more interested in simplicity and not so pretentious in its displays. The city itself, is really rather hilly and you can't get much of anywhere without walking up or down, and it remains basically unchanged from more ancient times. It even still have the wall to the city intact. For me, this was much more like the Italy I had wanted to see, much less touristy and far more authentic feeling.

One thing we learned was that after doing Rome in three days, doing any other city was a piece of cake, more or less. We were able to walk the entire span of the city in very little time and the number of sights to see was far less compared to the ancient Roman city. This afforded me the time to take a long secluded three mile uphill walk (and hike) to St. Francis' private sanctuary. (They even still hold Mass in the woods up there.) Most people take a taxi to the Sanctuary, but my feeling was that if St. Francis could do it, I could do it.

The sanctuary is really an amazing area for nature lovers and they have hiking and biking trails that you could likely explore for many hours. Unfortunately, by the time I got there, I no longer had many hours. However, the journey up was a bit humorous to me, as lots of people making the walk up have hiking shoes and gear. I had basketball sneakers and a pair of cargo shorts, with my trusty iPod. I'd get to a resting point and take a two minute break and see a few hikers (usually from Germany) come up with their big packs and they'd look at me - this strange little fellow with none of the required gear.

Hours later, I returned (going down was so much easier than going up - except for the falling rocks) and we went to dinner, which was good because I had neglected to eat the whole day and had built up a bit of an appetite. The restaurant we chose was really cool. There were no other patrons there when we arrived and it was definitely off the beaten path. I had pasta and Italian sausage and my companion had rabbit, which she wanted me to try, but after having the sausage, there was simply no way I could do it. I simply could not bring myself to blemish the delightful flavor that was still swirling in my mouth. I have never had sausage that good. (Minor caveat - when I go to an Italian restaurant in America, I am always served bread and there is olive oil on the side with herbs in it. I was never served this way the entire time I was in Italy.)

The next morning, we left for Florence - the city that I awaited with great anticipation, after so many people (not the least of which being Jill) told me what an amazing city it is.

Italy (Night 3/Morning 4) Assisi

After exploring Rome for the third day, we boarded a train and headed to Assisi. For those of you that have no idea where I'm talking about, you can read more about it. Basically, it's a small city located in Umbria, but that probably doesn't tell many of you very much more than when I said we headed to Assisi. However, if you take a gander at this map, you can more easily see where I went. One thing I have to say about traveling is it sure will help you learn your geography.

So the train ride was basically uneventful. My traveling companion looked at me with raised eyebrow upon learning that I wrote in my journal everyday. Apparently, this somehow conflicted with the very serious reading she was doing across for me, or somehow didn't comport with what she felt a journal was meant to be. Perhaps a journal, in her mind, is only met to be updated with significant events - like meeting the Pope or witnessing a bank robbery - I'm not sure. All I know is that it clearly did not meet her approval that I was updating my journal again. I mean, it had only been a day.

So the train ride was mostly uneventful. We did meet a young Albanian girl traveling with her family who desperately wanted to make friends with us and talk, but there was quite a language barrier. This did not dissuade her from trying as hard as possible to teach us and I have to say it was immensely entertaining. It also helped keep my traveling companion from absolutely stressing out that we had missed our stop or were going the wrong way or some other ridiculous thing. As soon as we went through a stop that wasn't in her little book, there was no calming her down, and despite her professions that she was calm and it wasn't a "big deal", you could tell from her inability to sit still and her constantly looking everywhere from some sort of direction that she was immediately stressed. Enter the Albanian girl to set things right. (We had just been to the Vatican and St. Peter's Cathedral that day so I was pretty much feeling God was at work.) Now if you don't think that was divine, wait for what comes next.

There we are, waiting at our bus stop, outside the train station in the cold. (OK, it was probably 50, but for me and the other Italians there that's pretty darn cold.) And in walks the nun. Now seeing nuns, priests, and monks in Italy is not rare. I think they are about as prolific as ancient monuments in Rome, but I had never seen one waiting for a bus. She walked up to me and asked me what time it was. Upon figuring out that I didn't speak Italian and she barely spoke English, she stared at my watch with me and figured out whether she had understood what I had tried to tell her. My traveling companion came over a few minutes later and was able to communicate a little better with the nun and explained to her where we were trying to stay for the night. (We had no hotel reservations after Rome, so we were totally winging it.) Upon boarding the bus, the locals and the bus driver burst into a spirited discussion about where we should get let off for our hotel. They ended up letting us off one stop early, which was good because our planned stop would have involved walking down a whole lot stairs, and the nun walked us to our hotel. How cool is that? I decided God was totally on our side at that point, and we got to the hotel and got a room. We had to get a triple, which was a little bit more than the double we had planned on, but it was worth it.

We hadn't eaten dinner so we went to try and find somewhere still open. In Rome or Florence this would not have been much of an issue, as Italians generally eat pretty late anyway and 8 or 9 at night is just about the time they show up for dinner. However, in Assisi, getting food at 10PM was not going to be easily accomplished. We settled for whatever was open, and I think I had some sort of pizza. We had planned to sleep in the next morning. However, we quickly learned that was so not going to happen, as you could hear absolutely all of the outdoor sounds perfectly from our room - the car driving past, the people walking, the churches bells (oh, I said churches) - and all of them conspired against us sleeping anywhere past 7. So I got up to take our shower, which ended up being tricky.

Our shower didn't really have walls. It sort of had doors that were to act as walls, but if you were in the shower too long and the water was too high, you'd quickly overflow into the remainder of the bathroom. I quickly realized this before even getting into the shower and was very strategic in my water usage and showering. I came out and warned my companion. She came out a while later and informed me that she had more or less flooded the bathroom. Convinced that it had to be a problem with the drain, she later complained to the hotel folks, who sent a young Peruvian goddess over to mop up my companion's mess and provide us with new towels. (The next morning pretty much went the same way for my companion. She just couldn't quite seem to get a handle on using less water pressure or something.)

Clean and awake, off we went to explore the splendors of Assisi.

Rome (Days 2 & 3)

My second two days in Rome were mostly spent looking at really old things. That's the thing about Rome, you can't really go anywhere without stumbling over some ancient building or monument, or something else equally impressive. This is the reason Rome has been having such a hard time creating a third subway line - every time they go digging, they find something historical. Those Romans sure did like to build.

We went to the Colosseum and Palatine Hill, which is where a huge ancient castle stood for many, many years. Most or all of the marble from these two immense structures was taken for the Vatican. Apparently, while it's good to be the king, it is sometimes better to be the Pope. It is also a "little known fact" that the Vatican never paid for most of the marble that was quarried for it. I guess it was hard to collect from the person that was supposed to be the representation of God.

We also went to the Vatican and St. Peter's Cathedral and a few places in-between. It is not easy to get into the Vatican and we had to wait in-line for almost three hours, which brings me to an interesting caveat. Lines mean nothing in Italy. I don't care if it's the line to get into the Vatican or the line in the grocery store. If you aren't cutting in line, you aren't Italian. The other interesting thing was that I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside most of the places I went to. So while I went there, I can't really prove it. I saw the Sistine Chapel, however, and was duly impressed. Although, I believe I might have been more impressed by the Raphael Rooms for their amazing use of light.

I am not a huge fan of sacred art and, to an extent, I think a lot of it is pretty ridiculous. However, while I was there, I gained a new appreciation for much of what these artists were doing and attempting to convey. I saw the progression of the positioning of people and the way light is reflected and represented. I saw the importance that the artists attached to certain sections of biblical text and their tireless devotion to achieving a finished product that was often simply amazing. At the same time, I was often struck with all the adornments that decorated these places of God and was left to puzzle over whether all of the money used on these things might not have been better spent on feeding the poor. However, I learned that I was not alone in this question and there were many spiritual leaders even back then that thought along these same lines.

Each day, we walked for about ten hours and tried to see as much as possible. The food was always good, but it was far more starchy than I had expected. The thing I had to remind myself of was that Italians were poor and often Italian food was peasant food. So they cooked mostly what was cheap and in great supply, bread, pasta, and other various starches are easy to come by - as is really good cheese. However, if you're looking for meat, you're looking to spend an awful lot to get it, and usually the two do not mix. If there is any meat added to a starch, it is often a very small amount. For example, a panini will often have a single slice of prosciutto. Pizza will have a hunk or two of sausage or ham if you ask for it. Pasta might have a few hunks of meat in its meat sauce. However, more often than not, you're usually eating a lot of starch and drinking wine, which is cheaper or about as expensive as water.

Rome still remains an amazing city and I would say that if you are only ever going to see one city in Italy, Rome would have to be at the top of the list. There is just so much to see in it.

Rome (Day 1)

Just to start out, I want to make clear that I'm not sure I will be giving a day by day account of my trip, but I thought the first day of it deserved a little something special. I am still working on the photos.

We arrived in Rome the day after we left. For those of you playing at home, I got on a plane at about 5:30 in the afternoon on a Friday, but didn't arrive in Rome until about midday Saturday. Fortunately, our hotel was near the central train station in Rome (Termini). So after taking the express shuttle from the main airport to Rome (11 Euros poorer - the rate has gone up since the tour books were published - and about a half hour later) we completed our brief walk to our hotel. Of course, it being midday and all (even though I hadn't really slept), we showered and immediately set off to take in some of the sights, sounds, and smells that are Italy.

Our journey began at the Spanish Steps. All great journeys begin with a single step they say, or in this case, several. I think it was as soon as I got to there that I felt Rome was like Disney World. Just the amazing amount of tourists and folks crowding around both The Steps and every other major sight I saw in Rome made me feel that I could have had the same experience going to Epcot, and it would have been cheaper, dammit.

Rome has some amazing architecture, however, and is truly a splendor to behold. You really cannot go anywhere without seeing something impressive, even if it's just the pizza in the window of a local eatery or the gelato that flows like water. Something is bound to impress. My travelling companion was lured in by a painting in one of the squares that she decided she simply had to have. So after looking at all of the others, and really considering it for a while, she gave in and spent the 100 Euros necessary to acquire it. (100 Euros was half price, but really everything was half price unless you were really dumb like this one girl we saw who quickly expressed her love for everything to the kiosk folks).

Pictures taken and painting in hand, it was time for dinner. I had mapped out all of our food destinations in every city we were going to before we arrived. So off we went to a place that even had red and white checked table clothes and of course, house wine (Chianti). (For those of you that don't know, the house wines come in unmarked containers. I say containers because sometimes it came in bottles, sometimes in carafes, and other times in pitches.) The food was so good, I decided I needed to have two meals - a pizza and then a full plate of pasta with Italian sausage. While I know German sausage is supposed to be a marvel to behold, I have always been somewhat partial to the Italian variety.

Afterwards, we meandered home and I took a Tylenol sleeping pill and passed out by ten (Italy time), 4PM (US).