My New Home

Lou made herself right at home as soon as I started unpacking. Cleo is the white one and he was a little bit more shy but I managed to coax him up onto my bed to say hi.

It didn't take me long to get unpacked. My room is huge! A drastic change from not even having my own room. And my room before that was pretty small.

I really like it though, from the yellow walls, to the glow in the dark stars and giant moon on the ceiling, to the large walk-in closet. There are more drawers and shelves than I have stuff for!

Jenn is really nice too. We stayed up drinking tea and talking. About our pets mostly. We seem to share a passion for them.

Tomorrow I will get up and go grocery shopping. Then I think I'll just hang around my new home, maybe explore the neighborhood.

Here are a couple more photos of Halifax. One of the Navy ships, and there are three submarines beside it but you can't tell in this photo.

Roma

Next stop, Rome. If you like old things, Rome is the place to be. Stunning ruins of great proportions are at every turn. It is really an amazing city. It is very easy to see how it was the centre of such a vast empire.

Yes, I really was there. Saint Peter's in the background.

Our campsite was the same idea as in Florence but farther from the city this time. It required

both bus and metro to get downtown. The bus was always so crammed coming home that we often walked up to the bus stop before the popular one to try and secure a seat. Once the bus driver actually had to leave some people behind.

The campsite wasn't as picturesque as Florence either. Instead of being scattered among olive trees, the tents were side by side in long rows.

There was a Panorama grocery store right across the road from the campsite which became our Italian equivalent to Monoprix. These scales were common in european grocery stores for the produce. You put what you want on the scale and press the appropriate number for that item(often with a handy little illustration on the button), and it spits out a sticker with the price on it. Some places were smart and had an employee to do this for you because otherwise it would be very easy to hold onto the bag a bit to make it weigh less.

Oh, Mulino Bianco, why don't you exist over here? Delicious cookies.

Nice

So that beautiful looking beach is actually big rocks that are covered in chalk so, not only is it really uncomfortable, it also makes everything that touches it white. We still spent long hours there getting burnt but it wasn't at all what I was expecting.Nice is beautiful though. From the palm trees and stunning water to the small streets of the old city. We walked through a flower market and observed the various sea food that everyone was consuming(not my thing).

It is an incredibly clean city, unlike many of the others we visited.

We stayed in the Hotel Baccarat which was a very nice place and excellent for meeting other young travelers (we were the youngest though). It had a kitchen so we had fun cooking wonderful meals and talking with the other kitchen users. We did our grocery shopping at the fine Monoprix there and I very much wish I had gotten a photo as we grew quite fond of it.

The owner of the place was very nice. He sat with us while we ate dinner one night and gave us free drinks while he talked with Willow about the electro-magnetic field of the heart. His accent was strong so I struggled to keep up.

We were in a six bed dorm and the other occupants came and went while we were there. At first there were two Finnish party girls with huge suitcases who left behind brochures for expensive real estate, and barely used shampoo that we snaffled up. There was a german guy that came, and the rest were americans.

We climbed to the top of the hill which is where you get glorious views of the beach and city. On top we ate lunch and discovered some ancient ruins.

Halifax, Nova Scotia

I'm here! I haven't been here long but I already really like Halifax. It is small but alive.

It has a lot of similarities to Victoria being a harbor city. The downtown also reminds me a little bit of San Francisco because it is on a steep slope.

This is the clock tower. You can hear it chiming on the hour. Apparently a gun fires at noon in the fort(where I took these photos from) but I haven't heard that yet.

The energy is a bit different from Victoria, however, as it is very much a university town rather than a retirement one. Dalhousie campuses and residences seem to be everywhere.

This image shows one of the two bridges from Halifax to Dartmouth, and apparently there is a bit of rivalry between the two cities.

I have found an apartment on Shirley St. which is a twenty minute walk to NSCAD(right downtown). Shirley runs parallel to Quinpool which is a main street that looked interesting when we drove past it. I look forward to checking that out. I haven't moved in yet so photos of my room and the place are yet to come.

I'm off!

Bye everyone. I'm off to Halifax tonight. My bags are packed and I am just waiting for my mum to come sit on them with me so I can get them closed.

I'll miss you all and I am glad I got a chance to see many of you before I leave. Thank you very much for the wonderful farewell.

More from the other side of the country.

Florence part2

All throughout the city they have these lamp posts that are three squatting legs. In the background you can see the famous Ponte Vecchio, the bridge with all the jewelry stores along it.

This was a beautiful house that we

stumbled upon while walking through a quiet residential area.

We did a lot of widow shopping in all the fancy designer stores in Florence. I particularly liked these.

Some more european graffiti.

Florence

My first taste of Italy. Enchanting.

We took a train from Strasbourg to Paris, then Paris to Nice (overnight), then Nice to Milan, then Milan to Florence. It was a long haul but Florence was worth it.

We arrived at night and had a very hard time finding our campsite. From finding the right bus to getting off at the right stop. Then we set off on foot in the wrong direction when we had really been almost there. But we asked a few locals and they pointed us in the right direction.

In this photo you can see the tents set up among the olive trees.

We were right next to Piazza Michelangelo which looks out over the city. It is also the home of a bronze replica of David. One of three Davids in the city.

Folding Letter

This is a piece I just finished to send in to my school. They wanted students to mail in a piece of art that could be hung on the wall and it will go in a show when we get there.

Strasbourg

On our way from Paris to Strasbourg we decided to stop in Nancy to make the most of one of the travel days on our eurail passes. It turned out to be a bit of a drag because we were stuck walking around with our backpacks. We spent the majority of our time there sitting in a large square and people watching.

It was lovely to arrive in Strasbourg to the familiar face of Noemie who was Willow's exchange in grade 11. She had a friend with her from Spain and we all went together for drinks.

I know a few people who went to Strasbourg on exchange and they all neglected to tell me just how beautiful it is. It is now one of the most beautiful european cities I have seen.

We were warned by some florists in Nancy that it was a bad time to be going to Strasbourg. It was the time of the Nato

Summit so many of the world leaders were present. Which of course means heightened security. There were thousands of french police in the city. And thousands more of protestors and rioters camped outside the city. Signs of the security were everywhere from roadblocks to all the manholes being sealed.

Noemie lives in a small town called Muzig, outside of Strasbourg. We stayed there with her very welcoming family. Except one night that we spent with Gaelle.

We did not stay in Strasbourg a long time. Soon we were off to spend over 24hrs on the train.

Paris part 2

I had to add a token photo of the famous Paris but this is it. We went to Notre Dame and the catacombs and so on but I'm going to stick to the little observances of the place which is more what our trip was about.

It is true, the french do have a lot of little dogs. Some of which are treated like royalty.

So many tiny cars. A lot of things in Europe are smaller than here. I love the small cars though. I never got used to them and still wanted to take pictures after weeks of seeing them.

No, this is not a liquor store. This is simply the wine section at the grocery store.

The thing about Paris that surprised me: it was really dirty. I had heard that it was cleaner than London but that wasn't my experience of it.

Paris

Arriving in Paris was not the pleasant experience it ought to have been. We arrived at Gare du Nord and simply wanted to know where we could go to find a place to stay. We were sent from one person to the next and eventually back to the first again. No one could help. I was utterly lost as I couldn't understand a word of it all. Thank goodness Willow was there to speak french.Eventually we set off down the street in search of a place to stay. We came to a hotel that looked fairly cheap and checked in for the night. After some research at a nearby internet cafe we discovered that we had stumbled on one of the better deals in town. We had our own room with a private bathroom and a balcony. Disregarding the one hundred stairs to our floor and the bugs in the bathroom, it was not bad. This photo shows the view from our balcony. The Basilique du Sacre Coeur was beautiful lit up at night.

We went to what was supposed to be the most picturesque market in Paris (the name escapes me). It turned out to be the only one we went to so I have nothing to compare it with. I took some pictures of the local staples, but bread seems to be missing.

I found myself quite taken with european graffiti. A lot of it is stenciled so it looks neater and it often has a political message. We also noticed that in Paris, more often than not, there would be graffiti on the sidewalks or on vans but not on the walls. We wondered if it was because the buildings are too beautiful to deface.

Here are some examples. You will see more when I get to Italy.

Calais

After leaving London we spent one night in Dover before taking a ferry to Calais. We had been reading a very old guide book about Dover so we arrived there under the impression that there were two hostels in Dover. We wandered for a long time in the pouring rain before discovering that the numbers are done differently over there. Where we go back and forth across the street, they go down one side and back up the other. So we turned around and trudged back the way we came until we reached the appropriate location. And to our horror there stood an abandoned and burnt building.

We asked at the tourist information place and they said there was no hostel in Dover and hadn't been for years. So we found the cheapest B&B we could (still a fortune). We thought a double bed was cheaper than two singles so we said we would share. The man gave us a funny look and thinking back, the rooms were probably the same price.

They served us an english breakfast that Willow took advantage of but I didn't have much appetite for the greasy food. But we were paying for it anyway so I tried to eat as much as I could. This turned out to be a mistake when we were crossing the channel. It wasn't too rough

but I spent the entire time with my head on the table.

When we arrived in Calais it was so windy that they couldn't lower the foot passenger ramp so we had to wait until all the cars were off and they sent a bus on to get us.

We set off with a little map to find our hostel. Determined to avoid paying for the bus. Of course hours of wandering the industrial part of Calais followed but eventually we found our way and discovered that the hostel was quite nice. And not far from the beautiful beach. The Video below is to illustrate the fun we had on that beach.

We left Calais after only one night there (it is really very small) and boarded a train for Paris...

In Loving Memory

It has been a hard time for me with loosing pets. Two years ago my "little kitten" Mina who belonged to Willow and I was hit by a car. She was, perhaps, a stuck up princess but that was only because she was over-loved from the time she could fit in the palm of my hand. It still brings tears to my eyes to think of her.

Next the cat that had been with my mum and I for 16 years up and vanished. For anyone who knew Raven that was not an unusual occurrence. But this time was different. Unlike the past when he had been found weeks later locked in a neighbors shed, or had turned up at my grandma's having found his way across Victoria from our new apartment, this time he never reappeared. It was winter and we got a lot of snow right after he left. And he was old. I can dream that he found a new home where he is being hand fed tuna on a velvet pillow but my heart tells me that isn't so.

And then, while I was away in Europe for nine weeks, my dog Chipo died. I wasn't told until my return but somehow I knew. I had a vivid dream while on Santorini that he was gone and that my mum wouldn't tell me. I was worried when I left that this would happen. I wish I had said a proper goodbye just in case.