At long last, Photo Album publishing has returned

Thanks to Microsoft Expressions Media 2 and Expressions Web 3, I now have the ability to customize my own photo gallery templates and themes, and publish them here with a click of the button. And so without further ado, I bring you the Official Disneyland 2010 Family Vacation Album. I have more photos to add, but this is the format that I'll be using. I'll let you know when it's been updated with more photos so you can check back.

Enjoy :-)

Oh yeah... and I used Zara to create the banner graphic. Pretty, huh? Not bad for an amateur.

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And now, for some photos from our Disneyland trip

(excuse the formatting; it's only temporary. I have Microsoft Expressions working and will republish the whole album using that when I have a moment. I love Expressions, btw. One click, all done. I just have to set up the upload settings so it publishes directly to my server.).

We'll start with our visit to the Bibbity Bobbity Boutique where, for a small king's ransom, your daughter can get dolled up like a princess complete with hair, makeup nails, dress, shoes, tiara, purse, gloves, and royal jewels. I kid you not. And she gets her own "personal royal photographer" to memorialize the entire event from start to finish. Which you can choose to purchase for a lesser king's ransom. Here are a few of them. It was TOTALLY worth it. Even though the look was completely destroyed in the torrential tornado warning rains and winds that were whipping around us as we trudged back to the hotel. She still loved the wet hair piece and insisted on wearing it the rest of the day.

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Off to a Great Wolf Lodge

Sent from my mobile phone

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Adventure Stop on the beach on the way to Great Wolf Lodge

Sent from my mobile phone

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there's a lot to be said for a 3.5 hr stopover

the plane was an hour and a half late taking off and an hour late arriving at Newark. It took a total of 1 and a half hours to get through customs, get my luggage, check my luggage, walk to the security checkpoint and get to the front of the line. Somewhere in there the little perforated end of my boarding pass had come off so the front of the line is as far as I got. The made me leave security, go to the ticket counter, get a new boarding pass, and then line up for security again. The near tears expression on my face when they told me this must have made some impression because the let me go through the employee security line which was much faster. Its still security though so nothing happened at lightening speeds.

All the same I am on the right side of the checkpoint and next to my gate with an hour and a half left tip boarding. Plenty of time to pee and then cool off with a bottle of water. He'll I might even pee again after that.

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One hour later

I have just sat down on the plane. The overhead compartments are jammed with full size suitcases and bulging garment bags. At least the people sitting on either side of me are not amazons. But we're still waiting for at least one more bus load of passengers to arrive and board out here in the middle of the Tarmac. I will not be surprised if I have no suitcases to take through customs in Newark.

On the bright side I am about a quarter mile closer to being home.

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Musical Gates

From the time I arrived at the airport to the time I lined up at my final gate they had changed my departure gate 4 times 51. 57. 59. 56. I am still not actually boarding a plane. I am standing in line with 200 other people to get on a bus ( god I hope there is more than 1) that presumably will take me to a plane.

The fact I am not boarding the plane at an actual gate leaves me feeling a little suspicious. I will be annoyed but not surprised if we have a long wait on the Tarmac.

This seems to be the norm this morning at the Barcelona airport. Today is the last day of the conference so everyone is getting out early.

My flight was significantly overbooked but I got here in enough time such that they were still taking volunteers to wait a day as opposed to not having a choice but to wait. First come, first serve even if you did spend $1500 on a ticket. Don't ya love that.

What's more, I have to clear customs in Newark so if this flight doesn't leave on time me chances of getting my connecting flight to Seattle diminish and I do not relish spending another day away from home.

But one thing at a time I guess. First I just need for this line to start moving. We're already 15 minutes behind our scheduled boarding time.

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alguien que me quiere mucho me ha traido esta camiseta de Barcelona

That's what the t-shirt says that I'm bringing Bobbin home from Barcelona. A lot of her teachers speak spanish so it should be a hit at school, which is why I bought it :-)

I'm free! Last meeting today was cancelled because the person I was supposed to be meeting with left his briefcase with his laptop and passport in the cab so he had bigger things to worry about.

It's been a long long long 5 days. Saturday travel. Sunday weary and weepy sightseeing. Monday meetings. Tuesday more meetings. Wednesday booth duty and a couple more meetings. Tomorrow morning I get up bright and early and leave the hotel to go back home. And I can't wait to get home!

Tim's been posting videos of Bobbin online for me to watch. They've been adorable! I watch them each night before I go to bed.

Bobbin and Tim have called me every morning when she wakes up. She's getting really chatty on the phone, telling me about how quietly she's laying at preschool at naptime, and how they're learning about koalas in class, and what she and Tim have done. Yesterday they went painting at the pottery place. Bobbin told me she painted me a peasant. I'm pretty sure it's actually a present. I get to pick it up on the 19th, apparently.

Tim managed to sneak some bubble bath and chocolates into my suitcase before I left and I've been having a wonderful time each evening soaking in the huge jetted tub in my bathroom, eating chocolates and reading my book. I'm about 3/4 of the way done. I expect the plane ride tomorrow will let me finish it off. Just in time too, because I'll probably not finish another one until I go away again. Which at this point I'm feeling is at least another year away :-)

I can't wait to be back home! It'll be close to 11pm by the time I walk in the door but I'm still going to go wake Bobbin up to tell her I'm home. I'm taking Friday and Monday off to relax and get organized.

14 hours till I head to the airport. Yay!

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It is 2pm. I am finally in my room. And I'll be making ample use of this bathroom tonight!

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Hi Bobbin!

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When in Barcelona on a Sunday, do what the locals do: Mass at Sagrada Familia

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Sagrada Familia

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how does one say "I am mildly annoyed" in Spanish?

Flight to Barcelona was relatively uneventful. I was stuck in the middle seat of the middle section wedged between two men, one of whom was at least 6'6" ( I actually felt kinda bad for him and since he wasn't complaining I figured I really couldn't) and the other a smallish 6'2". But the flight was on time, service decent ( even though we were in coach) and I got my luggage at the other end, so all's well.

Except I arrived at the hotel at 10am and learned I couldn't check in 'til 3pm. Annoyance set in. Cause I have at this point been up a total of 20 hours and prior to that had only 5 hours of sleep.

Make the most of it, I figured. So I got directions to the metro and bought a ticket for what I thought was 4 days ("dies"?) only it only worked once. So I bought another after trying in vain to get help from a Spanish-only speaker through a drive-thru type microphone ( despite the fact the button said in English " push if you need help") and figured out which line to take and finally arrived at the conference site with the intent of picking up my conference pass.

Only I get to the checkin and learn " someone" already picked it up buy they can't tell me who so I have no badge.

And it is Sunday so everything is closed.

And it is still only 11am so I can't check into my hotel.

So here I am. Sitting on some dirty concrete steps blogging via phone. Can't wait to see the international data roaming charges for this!

Viva Espagne.

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I have arrived

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Barcelona, here I come

I am scheduled to leave the house tomorrow morning at 5:05am to head to the airport to go to Barcelona for 6 days for work.

I am not looking forward to it at all. The last time I left Bobbin for any amount of time overnight was exactly two years ago when she was 6 months old. As hard has it was to separate myself from her for 6 nights back then, it is 200x as hard as it is now.

I hope she does ok. If I know she is doing ok then I will do ok. If I know she is having a rough time, then I'm going to be feeling miserable.

Tim has promised to post a photo of them both every day each day while I'm gone so I can check in and see them. And we'll talk when she wakes up in the morning and when she goes to bed at night. Twice a day every day.

Still it was hard saying goodnight to her tonight knowing that it will be the last time I talk with her face to face for 6 days. Ugh.

I'll try and make the most of it. At the very least, I'll try and get some sleep and read a book when I'm not in meetings :-)

Mommy will be home soon Bobbin! I love you! And I'll be thinking about you every minute I'm gone! Have fun with Daddy (and go easy on him :-)).

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Adventures at Grandma and Grandpa's!

As promised, here are the pictures from our trip, complete with descriptions :-)

Baby Girl woke up this morning bright-eyed and busy-tailed at 4am. I brought her into our room in the hopes she'd go back to sleep but she was having none of that. In a cheery way, of course. She managed to occupy herself in our bed for another hour, but as the light slowly brightened our bedroom she started recognizing things and started getting really excited; the alarm clock's LED display, the painting of herons above our dresser, the kitty scratching post... She sat bolt upright in the middle of our bed waving her arms and exclaiming at each familiar sight (and there are a lot of them, obviously). To the point where at 5am I gave up on getting any sleep and picked her up and took her out to the living room, her exclaiming and wriggling in my arms the entire way.

We opened up her Easter basket from her Washington Grandma and Grandpa (the Elmo card was a big hit! As was the furry basket and the care bear. Thank you!) and then one by one I brought out her toys, and one by one she'd let out a squeal of joy at seeing them.

You'd think we were gone 3 months!

She went to town in her jumperoo. Once she remembered how to bounce there was no stopping her.

We finally dozed off for a nap at 7:45am, while watching our Laurie Berkner DVD (which caused a whole lot more wriggling and squeals of delight until she got too tired to do anything but stare blankly at the tv screen).

There's no doubt about it. Baby Girl thoroughly enjoyed her travels - the plane ride, the visit with Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Sarah and Mike and Aunt Glad and Jack and Aunt Penny and Bob and all the dogs, but she also really enjoyed coming home :-)

Enjoy the photos!

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Home sweet home!

We made it! Munchkin fell asleep on the plane just before descent and has been sleeping ever since. Tim and I are enjoying a late night snack of spaghettios and then we're heading off to bed too :-)

Our house still has that "new house smell"... never noticed it before, but it hit me strongly as I walked in tonight. Cool ;-)

Hope to have photos from our trip up sometime tomorrow!

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Firsts

It's our last night at Grandma and Grandpa's. I'm writing this after having consumed 2 glasses of red wine and some absolutely amazing organic european chocolate. hehe.

So how was the trip?

Let's see

First plane ride, first Easter, first meeting Grandma and Grandpa, first crawling, first standing completely unassisted voluntarily, first pancake, first big girl swing in the playground, first whispers of "dadadada", first 10 days in a row spent entirely outside from morning to dusk, first swan sighting, first geese feeding (face ended up in the bun, but it's the intent that counts. more later)...

And one exhausted baby girl (and mommy and daddy and grandma and grandpa and suzie-the-dog). Whew.

We got most of it on camera, so more to follow when we download the pictures and post the corresponding stories.

In summary though - an absolutely wonderful amazing super perfect trip and I'm sad to be leaving tomorrow :-(.

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Over the country and through Toronto to Grandma's and Grandpa's we go

Well - we made it. A few days back, actually, but we've been a tad busy since our arrival :-) The flight went super well! She couldn't have handled it all better. Slept through takeoff, had a nice mid-flight nap in her carseat on the plane, and handled descent and landing like a seasoned traveller. Not a peep other than smiles, giggles, and her usual "bwa bwa babababwabwa" throughout the trip. It was as smooth as silk!

She even weathered the 2-hour drive to my folks house with grace! We had to stop for a potty break, and towards the end she was really looking to get out of the darn carseat (we were able to get up and down on the plane but not so in the car ;-)) but overall she was terrific! Our little munchkin!

Since arrival we've been entertained by my parents' dog Suzie, my sister's dog Dexter, have had some lovely walks to the park to feed the ducks and geese and swans (which she loves!) and played outside all day in the beautiful warm sunny weather (with sunscreen and baseball cap, of course!).

The only tough part has been the strange surroundings and time shift have really caused separation anxiety to hit maximum throttle. So much so that she won't even let Tim hold her - she'll scream herself to sleep first in his arms before she'll settle down and relax. With anyone other than me really, but it's when she does it with Tim that I get the most sad. I don't know how to deal with this. It breaks my heart. I sat on the stairs sobbing while she screamed in her Daddy's arms, me wanting nothing more than to go and hold her and comfort her but we're worried if I do that every time she'll never be ok with Daddy holding and comforting her (although she does fine if I'm no where near the vicinity once I leave her. It's like she knows I'm still in the house, and just choosing to ignore her. Which I'm not). My heart breaks in ways I never knew before when I hear her cry and I'm not right there with her. I can't describe it. The experts disagree too on how to get through this phase - some say go to her all the time and some say let Daddy take care of her. So they're no help either. God I hope we get through this phase soon. It's killing me, and it's just plain bumming Tim out.

Sigh.

But other than that, we're having a blast! Baby Girl is clearly enjoying her grandparents, the walks, the new sights and sounds, and we're enjoying not being home :-)

Already taken several photos but they'll have to wait until we get home before we post 'em.

That's all for now!

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What happens in Vegas...

is a whole lotta nothin' if you're just there for a conference and 2 days of partner meetings and not into gambling, smoking, or drinking yourself completely ill, or strippers, or staying out all night. I could have checked out a show or two I guess, but I was quite content to curl up each evening with a book. I read two books while I was there! and none of them had pictures or big print! I even started a 3rd on the plane home.

Anyway, photos are in. Not a tonne - didn't get out much. But enough to say I was there ;-)

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Silly subtleties and soap stars

Either I have joined the ranks of conspiracy theorists, or there is some truth as to the ulterior motives of the little subtleties I am observing in this silly place.

- The casino is freezing. The restaurants, shops etc. are all comfortable. Granted, the casino is a much larger place so heat probably dissapates more quickly. But I suspect they intentionally keep it cooler to keep people alert and active.

- you can't tell what time of day it is. There is no outside light penetrating the casino. The lighting levels are kept dim and "evening"-like and the lighting is consistent regardless of time of day. And there are no clocks. You can literally gamble the night away and not realize it.

- mirrors mirrors everywhere, and my, don't you look slender in them! I'm pretty sure that the image reflected in all of the many multitude of mirrors throughout this hotel (and they are everywhere) is distorted ever so slightly to make one appear slightly more slender than one really is. Cause you want your guests to feel confident and great about themselves. Because then they'll spend more money. And who doesn't want to hang out in dim lighting and mirrors that make you look thin and attractive?

On a completely separate note, breakfast this morning was entertaining.

As I was waiting for the waitress to arrive to take my order, I casually observed the table next to me. Because that's what I do :-).

The voice in my head sounded something like this

- Hmm... that woman looks like she had botox injected into her lips. And she's awfully thin.

- hmm... Her daughters' names are somewhat eccentric choices. You don't hear those everyday.

- Is that her husband? I doubt it. Must be her boyfriend. Does Tommy Lee know he has a look-a-like wandering about? And those are definitely not his kids.

- That must be the nanny. She seems nice enough...

- a too-thin woman with botox lips, her 80s rockstar-wannabe boyfriend with the laid back attitude, the hispanic nanny, and two eccentrically-named girls. She must be "someone". Wow... that was presumptuous of me. Nice stereo-typing, Heather.

Just as I was finished chastising myself for my stereo-typing, the waitress stopped to pick up the receipt and said to the guy cleaning their table "Do you know who that was? She was on 'Days of our Lives' and 'Dance with the Stars'!"

Hmmm... it seems some stereotypes are rooted in truths. Apparently I was right on the mark; a B-class minor TV celebrity (whose career is apparently approaching if not already on the rocks, if she's doing stuff like 'Dance with the Stars'. Hmm, that was presumptuous of me as well, wasn't it ;-))

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The silliness continues

The hotel I'm staying in, The Wynn (this link is a review site; it has its own web site, but I found it annoying and strikingly devoid of any useful information), boasts the Penske Wynn Ferrari Maserati showroom; Nevada's only factory-authorized Ferrari and Maserati dealership, and which displays more than a dozen vehicles exceeding prices of $700,000. It's $10.00 to get in unless you're a ferrari or maserati owner, and then it's free. Not sure how you prove you're an owner unless you're in the habit of carrying around the title to your car. But then, I don't own either a ferrari or a maserati. I imagine there's some kind of secret owner's handshake or something.

Next door to the showroom is a ferrari merchandise store. And for a mere $125.00 I can purchase a pair of red knit baby booties with the authentic ferrari label on them.

They'd better be hand-knit and virgin wool for that price. I couldn't tell because they were behind glass.

For $225 I can purchase a matching red knit ferrari baby hat and a pair of mittens.

Down at the other end of the hotel are a couple of upscale shopping stores. Were I so inclined, I could drop a measly $75 for an infant D&G tank top. For another $75 I could buy a cute little matching D&G skirt.

The drug store's medicinal aisle sells only "non-drowsy" versions of pain, allergy, and sinus medication. Intentional, I think.

And there's basically a little shop for everything. Why, you never have to leave the comfort of your hotel - everything you could want is right here. Assuming you have any money left, after gambling it away in the casino.

My purchases for the day: 2 postcards, 1 lipstick, 2 postage stamps, some advil (the low lighting level in the hotel is giving me a headache), and some non-drowsy decongestant (I still have the remnants of a cold).

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Vegas first impressions

If I had to choose one word to sum up my impression of Las Vegas it would be "silly".

This place is just plain silly. From the fake statue of liberty and fake eiffel tower to the giant golden sphynx to the disney-esque facades on the larger-than-life hotels, to the big black pyramid, to the lush green golf courses in the middle of the desert, and everything in between. It's all just really silly.

My hotel is silly. Beautiful, but silly. The lobby is a grandiose cavern of coloured tiles and balls of flowers hanging from trees. There's a mile long walk from the front desk to the elevators through, you guessed it, the hotel casino. My room is HUGE (and it's just a standard room) and equipped with a flatscreen TV in the bathroom with remote control, and remote control curtains so I can close off the view without having to get out of bed. Even the minibar is silly. The placard resting on top of it reads

"Feel free to read the ingredients or count the calories. If you decide to indulge...and we hope you do...items that are removed for longer than 60 seconds will be charged directly to your guest account. Placing other items inside the bar may also incur charges to your guest account. Refrigerators for personal items are available through Housekeeping".

I wonder if I was automatically charged for removing the placard?

The view from my hotel room is silly. As I sit here writing this blog entry, my panoramic view consists of an enormous flat saucer-like disc resting on top of the building across the street, a large waterfall falling from fake rock, a gigantic pirate ship, several large gold buildings, at least 3 huge video screens mounted on various buildings, the size of each of which would rival the one in Seahawks Stadium, and which is continuously flashing colourful and sparkly snippets of the shows that are running nightly ("hundreds of thousands of rhinestones, barely covering anything"), and a whole lotta construction.

My room key apparently doubles as my "player card" for the casino. Hmm... does that make me a "player"? :-) It has my name on it.

I'll be taking pictures - not sure if I'll be able to post any before I get back. I'm off now to explore the rest of the silliness of this hotel and then to take a silly bath in my silly bathtub that has a waterfall for a faucet while I watch the silly flatscreen TV.

Gosh - I sure hope there aren't people out there that take this place seriously. Cause, well, that'd just be silly.

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Vancouver 2006 - Part 1

We're back!

And as promised, here are the photos! Tim took a bunch as well that I'll post or link to later as well.

It was a great trip, and Baby Girl handled her first trip away from home extremely well! But I have to say, when we got home and Baby Girl saw Tommy bounding out the door at us, I have NEVER seen a little girl so happy to see her dog as Baby Girl was to see Tommy. I could barely keep a grip on her she got so excited when she saw him; she wanted down right away, big grin on her face, giggling uncontrollably when he sniffed her, and then she insisted we follow him around the house for the next half hour so she could sit and smile at him and occasionally reach out and pet him. She loves him so much, it was pretty sweet :-).

We're pretty happy to be back too. Next time though I think we're gonna have to rent a minivan or a trailer or somethin. Between her clothes suitcase, her food bag, her toy bag, her diapering/bathing bag, her stroller, her booster seat, and her in her carseat, there wasn't really a whole lot of room left for our stuff! And that was just for a 4-day vacation!

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Hockey Night in Vancouver

We weren't sure what to expect but we were prepared to have to leave sometime in the first period depending on how Baby Girl was doing. She'd never been in an environment that loud before, or with that many people, so we were thinking she might get a little spooked.

But no, not our munchkin! The Canadian in her really shone through last night, and she made it through the ENTIRE GAME. Yes, the entire game, and without any fussing AT ALL. And with the exception of a 20-minute cat-nap that began at the end of the first period, she was wide awake, alert, and happy the entire time!

And as usual, she managed to charm her way into the hearts of our entire section and the section next to us. People beside us and behind us couldn't resist waving and making funny faces, their reward being one of Baby Girl's trademark glorious smiles. But several times I turned around to see what Baby Girl was smiling about and several rows up would see grown (drunk)men cooing and waving and gootchie-gooing like they were pros, between gulps of beer. She had them wrapped around her pinkie finger. And when we were heading up at the end of the game, a woman half way up the section next to us said "I just had to tell you your baby made my night! She's so adorable! I watched her the entire game!".

Yup, that's our hockey-lovin' little girl ;-)

Man, are we in trouble when she gets older.

We left the hotel at 6:30pm after dinner in the hotel restaurant for the 7pm game, and didn't get back until after 10pm. Needless to say by the time we got back to our room, Baby Girl was exhausted. It took absolutely no effort to get her into her jammies and give her a bottle and put her to bed, where she stayed (I swear without moving) until 5am this morning.

I think she's still recovering today. I took her out for our morning walk at 8:00am after a breakfast of fruit and oatmeal, we got Tim his birthday morning coffee, and then we all headed down to breakfast where she downed a bunch of cheerios and a teething biscuit. Ah yes... the teething biscuit. She had gummed that thing so hard she managed to actually break a chunk off of it. I actually did a double-take when I saw a little piece of biscuit pop out of her mouth momentarily and then back in again, because I thought she had it in her hand. I opened her mouth and there it was. A nice, big, choking-size chunk! We never let her have them without us watching her like a hawk to begin with, and a good thing too as we've now seen! After breakfast she had a nap in the room and then we headed to the aquarium where we spent a couple of hours watching the balugas and dolphins and sea lions and otters and fish and... you get the idea :-). We hooked up with Jake and Stef afterwards for a late lunch, and she slept through the entire car ride and almost the entire meal :-)She fell asleep in the car on the way back to the hotel, and then after another bottle and some playing, is now sleeping soundly again on the bed with her daddy.

Yup, she's one tired little tyke. But it's been a pretty big adventure for her the last several days and her whole world as she's known it has been completely replaced with hotels and restaurants and lots of stroller and baby-bjorn rides. Lots of information to process, and things to do, and people to charm, and places to go! It's no wonder she's exhausted.

It'll be interesting to see how she reacts when we arrive back home tomorrow.

Yup - we've got lots of great pictures coming but won't be able to transfer them from my camera until we get home.

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We survived the drive and made it to Vancouver!

Baby Girl did SOOOO well. Of course, the normal 2 1/2 hour trip was a 4 1/2 hour trip but we were totally expecting that so we were cool. Baby Girl did AWESOME for her first real road trip (and border crossing!). She amused herself in the back seat, talking, playing with her toys, her feet, some sturdy little junkmail flyers (she loves paper but it has to be sturdy or it just dissolves in her mouth) that we had given her... took a couple of naps, made a couple of rest stops and voila! We were there!

We stopped at a Denny's for a mid-afternoon between-bottle snack, and we stopped at the border for a diaper change. The tunnel after the border into vancouver had been narrowed to a single lane so we found ourselves stuck in traffic for a while there, and that was the only time Baby Girl got a little bit fussy - and can't say that I blame her since at that point it had been about 4 hours since we left home! I found myself flexing in ways my body wasn't meant to, to feed her a bottle from the front seat while she was strapped into her car seat in the back. That was interesting (if we hadn't hit the traffic jam it would have been a non-issue because we would have been at the hotel in time for her bottle). All in all, a very pleasant trip. Some things that we have learned so far though when travelling with a munchkin:

1) Time to switch to those nice platex bottles with the disposable liners. Then all we need to clean are the nipples. Simplifies life considerably.

2) Bring more than one munchkin CD for the ride. Or at least make sure it is a really long one. We must have listened to the "We are... the Laurie Berkner" 5-song CD at least 6 times during the trip. She seems to like it, and she seems to enjoy it when I sing along. It appears to help with the fussies. But as much as even I enjoy Laurie Berkner, one more round of "We are the Dinosaurs" or "This is the happiest song I know" would have made my teeth fall out.

Oh - I should also back up and let y'all know that Baby Girl and I both checked out with a clean bill of health. No fluid in B.G's lungs, and although the doctor was definitely puzzled by the large and tender bumps on the back of my tongue, I exhibited none of the other symptoms that indicate strep and so he wrote me a perscription for amoxicillin "just in case I developed other symptoms over the weekend, otherwise no need to fill it". Uh... I guess he thought he was doing the right thing. Whatever. Bottom line, B.G. has a cold but no fluid in the lungs or ear infections and I should rinse twice a day with salt water.

We arrived at the hotel around ten minutes to 6pm. Our dinner reservations were for 6:30. So we literally had time for Tim to shower, both of us to change, Baby Girl to get a clean diaper, and then we were back in the car and headed to the restaurant where we hooked up with friends Eileen and John, and cousins Jake and Stef for a wonderful birthday dinner for Tim :-) Baby Girl had a blast, and didn't even fuss when she was held by Eileen and then by Stef. In fact, towards the end of the evening she passed out cold on Stef! Hmm... the beginning of the end of separation anxiety? No, not so soon. I think she was just distracted by the new, fascinating, colourful, and loud surroundings, and the total attention that she had of pretty much everyone in the restaurant as well as our friends and family :-)

Yup. She pretty much had the entire room wrapped around her little finger. She'd be standing on my lap and flashing these gorgeous smiles, eyes twinkling, over my shoulder and when I'd turn around there would be a table full of people waving at her and making faces and "goo-gooing" at her and she was just absolutely loving it. It was pretty darn funny :-)

We got her back to the hotel where she is currently sleeping fairly soundly (except for the occasional cough and a moment of wakefulness that I think kinda scared her because she didn't quite know where she was at... we'll see how the night goes!

All in all, a great day and Baby Girl is on track to be an excellent little world traveller :-)

We got lots of pictures, but they'll have to wait till we get back.

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Barcelona

Departure and Arrival
I left for Barcelona on Saturday February 11th. Tim and Baby Girl got up at 5 to drive me to the airport for an 8:00am flight. The flight left Seattle on time and we got into JFK airport a little ahead of schedule, which is where I had to catch my connecting flight to Barcelona. In what I thought was a lucky turn for me, my boarding gate was moved so I didn't have to switch terminals to get on my connecting flight. The flight to Barcelona boarded on time and that is about all that went right when it came to the air travel portion of my trip.

You will recall Saturday is when the big storm hit the east coast. After boarding the plane in NY and pushing off from the terminal, we proceeded to wait over 3 hours on the plane for our turn to be de-iced. I was flying coach, and I was sitting in the last row of the plane - the one in front of the bathrooms that doesn't recline - so it wasn't a comfortable wait. After 3+ hours we were de-iced and then we had to wait another half hour waiting for our turn on the runway. Watching how fast the snow was accumulating outside, I was starting to get a little concerned that we'd have to de-ice again before taking off but thankfully that was not the case.

Plane took off, we got above the weather, and the rest was a pretty uneventful flight to Barcelona. Upon arrival in Barcelona (late Sunday morning) I collected my bags, went through customs and immigration, and quickly exited the airport and grabbed a cab to my hotel.

Who says they speak Spanish in Spain?
My cab driver didn't speak any english, I determined after he rattled on for about 10 minutes loudly in Spanish of which I speak none. After the third time of telling him I didn't understand I thought I'd try a new approach and said instead "Parlez-vous francais?". The cabbie beamed with excitement and replied with an enthusiastic "Oui!" and for the remainder of the trip conducted a fairly one-sided but quite animated conversation in french. I understood most of it and even managed to get out a few questions and sentences in my own broken french. Which, contrary to my experience in france, the cabbie didn't mind because it wasn't his first language either.

French proved to be my saviour for the duration of my stay in Barcelona. I never felt quite at ease in the city as I have in other European cities I've been to, but once I figured out that most people spoke at least as much french as I did I felt a little more comfortable and was able to get around (and get my coworkers around) quite easily. Every cab driver spoke some amount of french as did the Metro dudes and the security people, and most of the restaurant and shop keepers did too so once I figured that out I did quite well for myself.

Getting settled
My hotel turned out to be quite a distance from the convention center, and from the hotel where the other half of our group was staying, and from the meeting rooms we were renting while we were there. In fact, it wasn't really near anything at all. The other half of our group was staying at a hotel just outside the Olympic village, which sounds a lot more exciting than it actually is, as the village is pretty much deserted. However they were near the beach and there was a dock with a bunch of pretty cool restaurants and some bars and dance places so we ended up spending most of our evenings there. The convention center was quite a ways from any shopping and from the old part of Barcelona. So net net - no place where I was having to spend any amount of time was anywhere close to anything interesting to see or do. And on Sundays everything is closed, so there wasn't a whole lot for me to do on my one "free" day of the trip. So I contented myself with taking a taxi to the convention center, picking up my pass, walking a little of the area, and then grabbing a taxi back to the hotel.

That proved to be a little more challenging than you would think. First of all, there are apparently 5 hotels by the name of "A.C.". Only one of which was actually called the "A.C. Barcelona" but that seemed not to matter to the cab drivers who rejected me because they claimed they didn't know which of the 5 hotels they were taking me to. So I ended up having to get a tourist map to get the address of the hotel. However this too ended in frustration because every time I showed the address to a cab driver they'd shake their head and tell me they weren't going there because it was too far. Finally I figured out that in order to get one of these damn taxi drivers to take me anywhere I had to actually get into the car, close the door, put on my seatbelt and wait for him to do the same and THEN tell him the address. Not that they were any more happy about the situation ,but they wouldn't kick me out of the cab once I was in it so that tactic worked fairly well.

I got back to my hotel in time to shower and get changed and meet up with some of my team members in the lobby. We headed over to the 2nd hotel for a meeting with the larger group, and then out for dinner. I learned that our hotel and theirs and the convention center were actually all located close to metro stops so from then on I didn't bother with a cab and took the subway everywhere that was too far to walk.

Meetings, meetings and more meetings
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were filled with meetings pretty much each day from 9am to 5pm. A couple were cancelled late Monday afternoon so I took advantage of the time to walk to the shopping district from our meeting place, see a couple of sights, do some shopping, and explore the metro system further. I can never get my bearings in a new city until I've walked it with a map and tried the local public transportation system. Once I had done that and used my french several more times in the process to communicate, I felt much more comfortable.

Tuesday night was the big night out. They eat dinner late in Spain to begin with; generally restaurants don't start filling up until around 10pm and usually dinner doesn't end until about 1am. So every night was a much later night than I was used to. But Tuesday night we hosted an event from 11pm - 3am for our partners and I didn't get back to the hotel until 5am. Luckily I didn't have a meeting until 10:30 that morning so I managed to catch a couple of hours of sleep before having to get up and get ready for my day. By afternoon I was hurting pretty bad, as was just about everyone in our group.

Sightseeing
As I mentioned the only sightseeing I was able to do the entire time there was on Monday late afternoon for a couple of hours before dinner. I walked from the convention center to one of the big shopping districts and managed to see a couple of the interesting sights along the way:

Casa Milá

Built by Antoni Gaudi around 1905-1910. The locals referred to it as "La Pedrera", translated as "the quarry" when it was built.

Casa Batlló

Also built by Antoni Gaudi between 1904 and 1906.

Our meeting rooms were located in another interesting building of similar style - El Xalet Golferichs Art Museum built by Rubió i Bellver around 1900 I think. The similarity in style is not an accident; Bellver was an assistant of Gaudi, working with him between 1893 and 1905 in la Sagrada Familia, in Casa Batlló and in Park Güell.

The 3GSM Conference was held in the Fira de Barcelona's Palau do Congressos de Barcelona located in the Montjuic area.

For neither of these do I have any photos, as I was trying to keep my daily load light when trudging between conference center and meeting place during the day.

The one place I really wanted to see, La Sagrada Familia, I never got a chance to. But no worries - I'll likely have to go back again next year, and this time Tim and Baby Girl will be coming with me and we'll take some extra days at the end for some real vacation and sight seeing.

But of all the sights in Barcelona that I saw and those I didn't get to see the most beautiful was the one that was waiting for me in my hotel room on Valentine's day when I returned after a full and exhausting day of meetings:

From my beloved Tim and Baby Girl :-)

I definitely would like to go back. I know there is a lot more to Barcelona than the tiny bit I experienced. At least I hope so. While the architecture was interesting, I'm not terribly fond of the whole "Art Nouveau" and "modern" look - I prefer stuff from the middle ages. Buildings with a long and interesting history. And the parts of Barcelona I was in, aside from the interesting buildings mentioned above, was mostly made up of plain cement square or rectangular buildings and in my opinion was all quite ugly. So I look forward to exploring the older parts of Barcelona and the parks and outlying areas on the next trip.

There are a few more photos from my trip here.

Adiós for now!

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I have returned!

I am back. Lots to share, but no energy at the moment. Tim's taking a well earned nap, and so is Baby Girl. Me, I'm just happy to be home!

I think I'll go watch Baby Girl sleeping a bit more and maybe later tonight I'll write about my trip and post the few pictures I took of the few sights I managed to see.

More later!

It's good to be home.

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Off to Barcelona

Off to Barcelona tomorrow morning. I'm all packed except for a couple of articles of clothing that are still hang-drying. I've always loved to travel, but this time I'm not looking forward to the trip. In fact, I'd rather not be going. I'm going to miss Baby Girl terribly. And Tim too, of course. But we've travelled without each other before. It's just tearing me to pieces just thinking about the fact that for 5 whole days I won't have my little sweetheart to cuddle and kiss and hug and play with and tickle and laugh and giggle with.

I'm terrified she's going to forget all about me. She'll forget what I look like, the sound of my voice, the way I hold her.

I'm scared she won't miss me.

And I'll be honest and admit that I'm a little worried that Tim will manage everything just fine without me; even better than I would. And then he'll wonder why I wasn't able to stay on top of it all. I know even if he does manage just fine without me (and most of me does hope he does) he'd never wonder that. Sigh. I'm going to miss Tim too so much!

So I'm trying hard to concentrate on what one could consider the positives of this trip. I mean, since I'm going to be there I might as well get something out of it:

- It's Spain! I've never been to Spain. Although I only have one day of sight seeing and that is the day I arrive. But I didn't want to spend anymore time there than I had to.

- It's probably warmer there than it is here.

- I will be able to get 8 consecutive hours of sleep (I probably won't; my body has pretty much adjusted to the 3am waking, and I actually really love that time with Baby Girl - just me and her)

- There is a gym and a pool in my hotel so I can work out every day!

- I'll get to drink real Spanish Sangria in Spain! And eat real Spanish Tapas!

- I'll be able to add to Baby Girl's growing postcard collection. I started sending her postcards last year before she was born - when I was still pregnant.

But as much as I try and concentrate on the positives, I'd give them all up in a heartbeat if it meant spending that time with Baby Girl and Tim instead.

Ah well.

More later from Barcelona!

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The rain in spain falls mainly in the plains...

Or so I've heard. But I'll get a chance to find out for myself because I'm going to Barcelona in February! GSM World Congress is being held in Barcelona this year (instead of Cannes, which is where I went last year). I've never been to Spain so that's pretty cool.

The really icky part will be leaving Baby Girl for 5 days. I don't know how I'm going to do it. I am sad just thinking about it. For 5 whole days there will be no beautiful little smile to start my day; no little giggles and laughs; no little baby belly to blow raspberries on; no tiny feet to tickle; no little hands to play pat-a-cake with. Ugh. Now I don't want to go! I'm going to miss her terribly!

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We're Back!

Happy Easter everyone!

Border crossings were swift; weather was grey and cold but not an impediment to enjoying a walk around the city on Saturday. Had a wonderful dinner with Jake and Stef to celebrate Tim's birthday last night, and equally wonderful Easter brunch today with Eileen and John.

Tim has summarized the culinary highlights of our trip with photos :-)

I think all in all, a lovely, relaxing weekend!

Oh - and we did control ourselves at Baby Roots - for the most part. Caving in to the teeniest tiniest little pair of Baby Roots track pants and matching hoody (in pink, of course ;-)). I mean - she is half Canadian. It's practically mandated by citizenship law that she maintain at least one article of clothing in her wardrobe at all times that has a beaver logo and the words "Roots Canada" emblazened on it.

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Off to Vancouver!

We're off today for our annual "Tim's Birthday Trip to Vancouver". Normally, we splurge for seats on the glass and watch the Canucks take on whoever is in town at the time. Only there will be no NHL hockey this year, obviously. :-(

We will however still partake of the 2nd part of this little tradition and dine on Spanish Tapas and Sangria (well - for me it will be water ;-)) at our favourite spanish restaurant with my cousin Jake and his wife Stef! So should be a good time!

Ooooh - and Tim promised me at Christmas that once we knew the sex of the baby, the next time we were in Canada we could stop at Baby Roots and buy her something - hee hee :-) So we'll be doing a bit of shopping as well. (Only a bit. I promise to behave!)

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Dining in New Orleans

Last night's dinner was at a place called Louisiana Bistro on Dauphine Street just a few blocks from our hotel. Turned out to be another hit recommendation from our concierge who also was a miracle worker securing us a table for 5 at 7:00pm - right in the middle of prime dinner time in New Orleans at the height of two conferences that are in town. Excellent food. Most of it was seafood, of which I did not partake, but I had their pork chops which was served with jalepeno bread pudding and a spicey creole hollandaise sauce (yes - I said creole hollandaise sauce) and mixed veggies. Very scrumptious. Followed by white chocolate bread putting for dessert. Yum-my.

Today between meetings we had lunch at a place called "Mother's" on Poydras Street (established 60 years ago serving Po' Boys to dock workers) where I had me a nice Roast Beef Po'Boy with creole mustard and shredded cabbage (hold the pickles and the mayo). Atmosphere was great as was the food. For those of you in Seattle, think "Dixie's" in terms of atmosphere and service but with all the traditional New Orleans and Louisiana fare instead of BBQ - Po' Boys (with just about anything in between those two halves of french bread), red beans and rice, bread pudding, and seafood galore.

Sometime tonight I need to hit Cafe du Monde, the original French Market Coffee stand established in 1862 for a beignet fix before heading out of town tomorrow morning. I'll be skipping on the chicory coffee though - no caffeine for me.

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In New Orleans, Sunday is "Drink for Jesus Night"

Dinner was great - we had a wonderful meal at the Pelican Club, which ended around 10:00pm and, feeling that the night was still young, decided to wander down Bourbon Street to meet up with another member of our group.

We ended up at a place called The Famous Door which I later learned, after looking it up on the internet, is Bourbon Street's oldest live music club.

The band that was playing was pretty darn good - they did everything from Cheap Trick, to Journey to Aerosmith to... well, whatever. And did it really well. Baby got a good dose of bass this evening. I've read that babies in utero generally don't start to hear sounds outside the womb until about week 25, but I'm postive that our baby could feel the music tonight! I've been back at the hotel for an hour and he or she is still kicking up a storm.

The people-watching was plentiful as well, but that is true for all of Bourbon street at night, not just The Famous Door. But we'll start with the bar... shot girls pushing test tube drinks - you know, the kind that they hold in their mouth and then tip into yours... etc. etc. Plenty of that going on. And then down in front of the stage were these two little girls - I kid you not, they couldn't have been more than 17... both dressed in these delicate long pink satin prom gowns, shakin' their "thangs", and banging their heads to the beat of the music while waving their neatly manicured little cigarette-gripping fingers in the air, flirting with the band. The only time they stopped was when the shot girls would pass by with the test tubes, and then they'd do double shots and continue dancing. The contrast of the head-banging, shot-drinking, cigarett-smoking party moves with the delicate pink prom dresses was pretty surreal.

It was during a Cheap Trick song that I received a text message from Tim, after several failed attempts to call each other and hear each other over the bar sounds. I flipped open my phone to reply and a man in front of me who had been enthusiastically rocking out to the tune of "I want you to want me" turned around and said "Hey! Put that phone away! This is Cheap Trick!". When the song was over and the band had switched to Aerosmith, he came back and told me it was ok for me to use my phone again, pulled out his own blackberry device and explained that his wife had emailed him during Cheap Trick, but NOTHING would ever interrupt him during a Cheap Trick song, despite the fact that she's 8 months pregnant.

And then there was the huge crowd of guys standing around in the middle of the street outside the bar staring up at one of the wrought iron balconies throwing beads and encouraging the two women who were staggering around up there drinking and giggling to show them their "stuff" (only they weren't yelling "stuff" if you know what I mean).

The city definitely has a smell to it too. It was vaguely noticable during the day, but it was definitely noticeable at night. It smells like... well... a garbage dump.

But I think the moment that really defined it all for me was when the lead singer of the band on stage back at the Famous Door yelled into the microphone during a song change "Hey everybody! It's Sunday night! Sunday night is Drink for Jesus Night! How many of you are Drinkin' for Jesus tonight?" and then proceeded to slug back a test tube shot. With the number of hands that shot up to answer his question I'm thinking (actually I'm hoping) I was the only pregnant woman in the bar tonight... all I was slugging back was water.

New Orleans. Definitely a free spirited town. And the only city I've been in that parties like this on a Sunday night. And it was only 11:00pm when I got back to the hotel.

Unfortunately I had left my CF card for my camera back in my laptop so didn't get any pictures. But we'll be going out again before the trip's over, so I'll make sure I capture some of the "essence" of the city to share with you :-) I wonder if Mondays and Tuesdays are as rowdy as Sundays... hmm... there are just so many things wrong with that question. :-)

Off now to shower and head to bed. We'll see what tomorrow brings us!

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Welcome to The Big Easy

Well - I've made it to New Orleans, after a fairly uneventful flight (my favourite kind) with a 2-hour stop over in Denver. When I went through the self-service check-in at Seattle it gave me the option of upgrading to "Economy Plus" which has "up to 4 inches of extra leg room" for $53. Hell yeah - even if I only get 1 or 2 inches of extra leg room, I'm happy. I think I got the full 4 though - it was actually quite a comfortable trip. It was also a gorgeous day for flying. my "upgrade" put me on the right side of the plane, and since we were taking off to the south, I had a beautiful view of Mount Rainier as we turned onto our flight path to Denver.

After claiming my bag, grabbing a taxi to the hotel, and checking in, it was about midnight local time by the time I got up to my room. They ended up giving me a smoking room though, instead of non-smoking. However you can't really tell it's a smoking room until you actually leave the room and run into people puffing on their cigarettes while waiting for the elevator. It's a nice room - it's actually quite a nice hotel. I'm pretty pleased. AND it has wired high speed internet access. Yay :-)

I woke up about 5:30am this morning. Why, I have no idea - since it'd be about 3:30am in Seattle. I thought going east-bound I'd be more likely to sleep in and wake up around 9am, but nope. Not me. I made myself to stay in bed until about 7:30 but was finally forced out by my all consuming ravenous hunger. Got dressed, and went downstairs for breakfast.

After breakfast, I decided to orient myself to the city. I walked over to the W Hotel - which will be the site of all of the meetings I need to go to - and then figured out where the convention center was. It was only about 9:30am by the time I got back to the hotel but it was already way too warm for a jacket (it was actually way too warm for my light white cotton sweater and jeans, but not a whole lot I could do about that) so I ditched the jacket in my room, and then headed off to see the sights of New Orleans. This is really my only opportunity for sight seeing, since I have meetings Monday and Tuesday and then fly back Wednesday morning.

Our hotel is near the corner of Canal street and the infamous Bourbon Street. However the concierge and the taxi cab driver from the night before suggested that during the day I'd want to walk along Royal street - it's much more interesting during the day. Bourbon Street is active at night, but apparently doens't have a whole lot going on during the day. So I took their advice. Royal Street is filled with galleries and antique stores and little shops although they were still all closed at that time of the morning, and the street fairly quiet.

I took Royal Street through the French Quarter to St. Louis Cathedral, which if you recall from my previous post, is the oldest continuously active Roman Catholic Cathedral in the United States. It was originally built in 1724 and rebuilt twice after a hurricane and a fire. Since it is Sunday, I caught the tail end of a mass when I went in. In fact, I arrived just as they were finishing communion and starting to pass the collection plate. I tell ya - I have the best timing. But I wanted to be respectful, so I stayed and sat quietly in the back, and listened to the hymns and the real pipe organ that was being played by a real pipe organist, and let the hazy childhood memories of going to catholic church on sundays drift over me. When mass was done, I took a look around. It's a gorgeous church, to be sure.

Across from the church is Jackson Square, and as I was crossing the square I saw a line of horse-drawn carriages waiting to give tours of the french quarter to anyone interested. I wasn't sure I wanted to bother, but then I saw this one horse decorated with pretty yellow roses (fake, of course, but still pretty). However the real thing that decided for me that I needed to do this, was when I heard the tour guide speak with his easy, smooth, lilting New Orleans drawl. Wow - I just had to hear more. To be honest I couldn't understand everything he said, but it was really quite pleasant to listen to ;-).

I knew to expect that the French spoken in New Orleans would sound very different from France French or even Quebecois. But it took me quite a while to figure some stuff out. Our tour guide spoke English, but of course, being in the French Quarter, most of the place names were french names. As the tour guide started talking about the "Boo-ka-ray", which he said translated to "old square" I was completely lost. Even having been given the English translation, I was completely stuck. Just as I was thinking to myself that the only word I know in french was "Vieux" It wasn't until I saw the sign "Vieux Carré" that I understood. He wasn't saying "Boo-ka-ray". He was saying "Voo-ka-ray". But had I realized that, it still wouldn't have helped me much. I had to actually see it written down for it to click. To make matters funnier, as I was researching the internet to bring you this link to more information about the "Vieux Carré", the web site I found gives it a pronunciation of [view-ka-ray]- which would have probably been as equally perplexing to me had our driver used that pronunciation instead.

New Orleans actually has quite a rich and interesting French and Spanish history. You all may know this already, but it was quite fascinating to me. I also got a brief lesson on the Louisiana Purchase as we passed by the place where it was signed, and I'll have to go read up on that a bit more, now that my interest has been piqued.

The tour dropped us off back at Jackson Square. From there I strolled up through the farmer's market and flea market. The farmer's market was great fun - air filled with the savoury smell of hot sauces and creole spices. At the end of the market I crossed over to the river walk and strolled along the Mississippi river for a few blocks.

That took me back to St. Louis Street, where the New Orleans School of Cooking and General Store is located. They have real lessons in Creole cooking there during the day, and as it happened there was one in session when I got there. I didn't sit in, since it had already started, but I explored the shop and picked up a souviner for Tim in the process :-)

Another famous landmark on St. Louis Street is Johnny's Po'Boy restaurant. The Po' Boy, or "Poor Boy" is a sandwich made with French bread. According to our tour driver, it started back during a local transit worker's strike. A local restaurant in the French Market took pity on the "poor boys" who were out of work, and concocted sandwiches made from french bread and leftovers that they would sell for pennies to strikers who came by. Also according to our tour guide and my taxi cab driver from the night before (who was as you can tell a fountain of information in his own right), you can put just about anything between two halves of french bread and make it a "po' boy". today they are often filled with seafood - in particular fried oysters. But you can still order them with just about anything in them - especially at Johnny's.

Unfortunately the place was totally packed, and I was hot, and hungry and not inclined to wait. So I'll have to try and make my way back over there on Monday or Tuesday.

I headed back over to Royal Street and by now the shops were all open and the street was lively and filled with people - mostly tourists from the number of people snapping pictures that I observed. According to my taxi driver from last night there is a Nursing conference here in town too (yeah - it's actually a classic combination: Techno Geeks and Nurses. It reminds me of my days at McGill where the engineers would have their friday night engineering beer bashes, and invite the nursing students to attend to increase the ratio of women to men. Not that it really helped them in any way in the end ;-) but I digress). Musicians were playing in all of the indoor/outdoor restaurants and cafes and on the streets. And the thing that struck me as interesting was that as I was walking I didn't hear a single bad musician or singer. I mean - I've been in a lot of cities and heard a lot of street musicians, subway musicians, and "entertainers". You've got your decent ones. And you've gone your really bad ones. But the ones I heard as I walked the streets of New Orleans today were all really good. It is definitely a musical city - true to its fame. Should be totally cool to see and hear it at night.

The above photo also gives you a bit of a glimpse of the wrought iron balconies that are prevalent throughout the french quarter. Although it is called the French Quarter, the wrought iron balconies and the hidden central courtyards are Spanish architectural influences, as Spain was the ruling entity at the time (1762-1800) and as such, were the ones who oversaw the reconstruction of large portions of the city after the big fire in 1788 that burned over 850 structures . The buildings in the quarter are authentic - dating back to the reconstruction of the 1700s.

If you look closely at the balconies, you would also more often than not see them adorned with Mardi Gras beads glinting in the sun. The stores are full of them too. It makes for quite festive looking streets, even when Mardi Gras is over :-)

After a leisurely stroll back down Royal Street to Canal, I returned to the hotel, had lunch in the restaurant there, and then made some dinner reservations for our little team for this evening. The concierge picked a place called the Pelican Club. It's a brief walk from our hotel and should be fun!

Then it is off to meetings tomorrow :-)

(Incidentally, and I'm not normally one to plug this kinda stuff, I found all of the above links and the ones in my previous post using the New MSN Search. I have to say - I've been very impressed with its results since the launch of their new and improved service!)

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Off to New Orleans

I'm off to New Orleans today for another conference. Back on Wednesday. This will be my first time to The Crescent City.

Setting aside its well established reputation for Jazz, food, and Mardis Gras celebrations, there are a number of historical facts about New Orleans that make it an interesting place to visit.

- Louisiana was claimed for French king Louis XIV in 1699 and is the only state that was once a French royal colony.

- New Orleans is the only U.S. city where French was the predominant language for more than one century.

- New Orleans is the American city occupied longest by enemy troops (the Union Army 1862-65) during the Civil War

- The city has approximately 40,000 buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places, more than most other cities in the U.S. including Washington D.C.

- St. Louis Catherdral, located in the historic French Quarter, is the oldest continuously active Roman Catholic Cathedral in the United States. It was originally built in 1724 and rebuilt twice after a hurricane and a fire.

- Many of the tens of thousands of live oak trees that line the city streets and boulevards date back to before the Civil War. They have survived hurricanes, droughts, insects, and fires.

- The New Orleans Streetcar line is the oldest continuously operating rail system in the world.

- The Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra is the only full-time, player-managed symphony in the United States.

Should be a fun trip!

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My turn...

Tim's outta town today and tomorrow. Left for Portland, OR this morning. So it's just me, Tommy, Ginger and Spice (and little tiny person inside me) for tonight and tomorrow. 2 days is easy though - I'll be at work the entire time. Still - I miss him!

Yeah yeah...I know. I'm a mushpot. Whatever. :-)

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Sight Seeing in Cannes - the full report (Part 1)

Now that I'm home with access to bountiful and reliable bandwidth, I can give you the full trip report, Heather-style :-)

Cannes, "Joyau de la Méditerranée", is located in the South of France on the Mediterranean sea in an area also known as la Côte d'Azur, so named for the brilliant blue colour of the water.

Perhaps most famous for the Film Festival, Cannes actually plays host to many gatherings, festivals, and conferences every year. The one that I was there for was 3GSM World Congress.

Sunday 2/13 was my first full day in Cannes and I had most of the day to myself. I had a meeting at 5pm with the folks from my immediate team, and another one at 6pm with the larger group of folks that were there representing our company. So after breakfast, I took the opportunity to do a bit of site seeing before having to think about work.

The first place I chose to explore was Le Suquet. Le Suquet is the highest point of the old town and owes its name to the local Provencal dialect, in which Suquet means "summit". Le Suquet is also where the first dwellings and fortifications of Cannes were erected around 1000 A.D. Today, le Suquet is occupied by la Tour Carrée (the square tower) which began construction in 1080 and was completed 300 years later; the church of Notre-Dame de l'Espérance built in the 17th century; and la Musée de la Castre which is housed in the remains of a former castle built by Marcellicus and inherited by the monks of Lérins around the end of the 11th century.

After touring le Suquet and wandering through the collections at la Musée de la Castre, I wandered back down through le Vieux Port and down the beach back to the hotel.

After a short nap, I headed up to what quickly became known amongst ourselves as well as the companies with whom we were meeting as "The Villa", for my first meeting where we got ourselves oriented, synchronized our schedules, and just generally prepped for Monday.

After our orientation meetings we headed out for our first real dinner in town. It took us a while to find a restaurant that could seat us. It was 9pm, which is the normal dining time for the city (for France / Europe in general), and with 3GSM World Congress in town, everything was packed. We finally found a nice place and after a full stomach, it was back to the hotel for a good night's sleep.

I've posted these and more photos along with more detailed commentary on the pictures in the Cannes 2005 photo album.

More entries and pictures coming soon, so stay tuned!

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Lifestyles of the Rich and Frivolous?

There are some things that you see that are only camera-phone worthy. You know, the "Wow. That's really kinda wacky - I gotta show this to [fill in name here]" sorta pictures. The kinds of things that are only worth the 2 second effort of pulling your camera phone out of your pocket and snapping a picture, vs the 20 second effort of unzipping your bag, pulling out your real camera, taking off the camera lens, focusing and snapping the picture.

Here are two such camera-phone-worthy subjects, snapped during a little jaunt to Monte-Carlo, Monaco Thursday afternoon/evening.

The first is a peacock-feather skirt by Prada. Or was it Escada? Or Gucci? Does it even matter?

The second is a gold-plated bathroom sink :-)

Unfortunately it was passed closing by the time we rolled in to Monte-Carlo so all we could do was window shop. Because otherwise, of course, we'd have been in the stores spending madly. Sure we would have.

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Au revoir, Cannes.

Today was my last day in Cannes. I figured it'd be wise to start the day with a visit to the church just around the corner from my hotel:

With a name like that, it couldn't hurt, could it? :-) A very pretty church. I took some photos of the inside as well, but you'll have to wait for those.

I spent the rest of the day souviner shopping, took a boat ride over to Ile Sainte Marguerite where I saw the prison of the Man in the Iron Mask, and wandered the fort, museum, and forest paths for two hours. The boat ride back was followed by a nice lunch by the marina after which I took a nap at the hotel, packed, and then had a great dinner at an out-of-the-way little italian restaurant in the old section of town. All in all, a very nice way to spend the last day.

I don't have the bandwidth or the software to upload all the pictures I took on the trip, or a reliable enough connection to provide all the usual commentary, history, etc. so you'll have to check back Sunday for the full report and photos.

I'm off to bed. Have to leave the hotel at 6am to get to the airport in Nice.

Next stop - HOME!

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I'm Free! (Almost)

Just wrapped up my last meeting of the conference! The only thing left for me to do now is "booth duty" - i'm on the schedule for tomorrow morning. I've never done "booth duty" before but I'm told it's a no-brainer. I stand there and demo our product to people who come by. Only most people that come by, I'm told, will not really be interested in our product or a demo, but are more likely more interested in "schmoozing" and asking totally random questions that are completely unrelated to the product that I am demoing. And since tomorrow is the official last day of the conference, most people will be bailing early, so I suspect there won't be that many people coming by our booth at all. But I'll be there, with my black pants and shoes, and white shirt with our logo on it, demo script fresh in my mind, all ready to do my thing.

I wandered around the exhibitions on my own this morning, and noticed that quite a few booths had oddly, scantily, or flashily (is that a word?) women handing things out, or demoing products, or go-go dancing on platforms to techno-music. So I'll happily take my black pants, white logo'd shirt, and demo script over any of that ;-)

I wanted to take pictures - I had my camera phone (actually Tim's!) but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I think it was the fact that I was the only woman standing in a sea of men also holding out their camera phones pretending to check their schedules.

Anyway - after 12:30pm tomorrow I'm a free woman! Tomorrow afternoon and all day friday belong to ME! ME ME ME. I can get up whenever I want, eat whereever and whenever I want, go whereever I want, and indulge my gelato cravings (not only is this the land of italian restaurants, it's also the land of gelato - I guess being so close to Italy, and on the mediterranean and everything ;-)). Oh - and check out the ferrari store for Tim (even though I already bought him a souviner ;-))

Then it's off home on Saturday! bright and early. With a 5 hour stopover in Heathrow. But it'll be ok, because I'll be on my way home!!

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Why it's called la Côte d'Azur

The pictures don't really do it justice. But here's the real reason why I'm here:

And this next one is just for Tim - the store is right around the corner from the hotel I'm staying in. I promise to check it out when it is open before I leave! ;-)

I have many more pictures from my little adventure roaming around the town today but they'll have to wait until I get home cause the bandwidth and reliability here just sucks.

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All settled in...

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Ramblings from a travel-weary mind

Well - I finally made it to Cannes. All in all, a very uneventful trip to Nice, which is nice (I never get tired of saying that ;-)). Had some turbulance. Made me laugh at the people who had ordered wine with dinner as it was splish-splashing all out of their glass. Me - I had water. I just put the cap on and stayed dry.

We actually left Seattle an hour late, but arrived over Heathrow half an hour earlier than originally scheduled. Go figure. as it turns out though, we ended up arriving at our gate exactly at the originally scheduled time - they made us fly in a holding pattern for 30 minutes due to winds.

The flight from Seattle to Heathrow was pleasantly not full. I was in an aisle seat (strategery on my part - being pregnant and all, I anticipated many trips to the bathroom, and I was right). but the seat next to me was also empty so I conveniently usurped it for my purse and my laptop bag, eliminating the need for me to put anything in the overhead bins. It also came in handy when I decided to take a nap. Extra space. It's a good thing.

10 reasons why I like flying British Airways Economy Class better than North American airline economy class:

1) Don't need to pay for the headphones for the movie
2) EVERYONE gets a pillow AND a blanket
3) Each seat has its own personal TV embedded in the back of the seat in front.
4) You get 18 channels of Movies and TV to choose from. Options are good.
5) Even in the 50th row (5th from the back) I still get my choice of their two meals
6) Free mini-bottle of wine for dinner; and your choice - red or white. Being pregnant I went with sparkling mineral water and opted out of the wine. BUT it's still pretty cool.
7-10) They give you a little kit containing slippers, an eye mask, toothbrush and toothpaste - yes - in economy class!

No doubt about it. If you gotta go overseas economy class, do it with BA. They'll take care of you.

My stop-over in Heathrow was 4 hours. I wandered the shops, bought and sent some postcards, had a meal, napped a bit, and then wandered over to my gate when it was finally posted. They booked me business class from London to Nice (all together now - "which is nice" ;-)). Except for the gentleman sitting in the middle next to me - who had a carry-on larger than my checked bag and who was insisting that he was going to sit with the thing between his legs the whole flight. He lost the argument and the flight attendant took it away. Thank goodness. but then he was up and down every 5 minutes - he wanted to get something from his bag; he wanted a glass of water; he wanted to go to the bathroom.... whatever.

So I finally got to Nice - on schedule (which is...? what?) and one of my coworkers had a car waiting for him and gave me a ride as well.

There are palm trees here. It's quite tropical looking actually. It's warmer than Seattle is right now, but not "summer" temps. My hotel isn't that far from the beach. I might go exploring tomorrow. Ah - my hotel. Not exactly the 4 star that most of the rest of the gang is staying in (there are 5 of us staying at this hotel. The rest of the folks from work are staying in what is referred to as "The Villa". "The Villa" has a heated swimming pool, and spa, and fitness room, and it's absolutely gorgeous from what I saw as we drove past it on the way to MY hotel). I'd call this hotel a very basic and european 3-star. It is clean. The staff is friendly. It's conveniently located. It is reasonably priced. I'd stay here again I think. Especially if I was on a budget and paying for the trip myself (which thankfully I am not ;-)). But there is a bit of false advertising going on with their web site with respect to the services they offer. "Room Service" only refers to breakfast. The "Wireless Internet Access" is archaic, flakey and unreliable. The "nicely appointed rooms" are the size of our bathroom at home (but that is really not all that surprising in Europe). The "view of the bay" must have been referring to the rooms on the other side of the hotel because all I have from my room is a view of the building across the street. The bathroom is marble - I'll give them that. And I did get free slippers.

Anyway - that's where I'm at. It's 1:00pm in Seattle; 9:00pm here in Cannes. I'm exhausted. Discounting the 3-4 hours of "rest" I got on the plane to London and in the Heathrow departure lounge, I've been up for a total of 30 hours. So with that, I think I'll turn in and see about getting a fresh start tomorrow.

Bon Nuit!

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Vive la France!

I'm off to France tomorrow, in case you haven't guessed! 8 whole days. I'd come home sooner, since Tim isn't coming with me, but I couldn't get a flight back before Saturday. Besides - it gives Tim an extra day to "get the kitties back on track". Heh... I'll believe that when I see it :-)

I have a lovely 4 hour stop-over in Heathrow on the way there. Sigh. I am booked business class from Heathrow to Nice which is nice (had to be said) because the flights were so full. That's like less than a 2 hour flight though. Bummer that the flights weren't as full on the Seattle-Heathrow leg... that'd be a comfy flight ;-) C'est la vie.

Anyway - all that matters is that I get there safely, in one piece, have an uneventful week full of meetings, and then come home safely, in one piece. That's all I want. That and a good night's sleep.

Vive la France!

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Cannes you do the Can-can?

Woohoo! I'm getting to travel for work! It's been a few years. Last time I had to travel extensively for work was almost 5 years ago and then it was just to other cities in the U.S. Last time I had to travel internationally for work was my trip to London and Paris in 1999.

But now I've got not one but two pretty cool trips coming up.

The first is in Feb for 8 days. I'll be in Cannes, France for an industry conference. I'll actually be staying in Nice, which is nice. (It had to be said.) I've been to France several times, but never to Cannes or Nice. I'm TOTALLY looking forward to it!

The second is in March for 5 days. I'll be heading to New Orleans for another conference. Never been. Should be fun!

Tim is going to take care of the kitties and dogs while I'm gone. I believe his exact words were "I'm going to get the cats back on track". See - I have a bit of a problem with the kitties. It's been going on for a couple of years now. As they've gotten older their feeding habits - actually, their hungry times - have changed. I've always fed them fixed portions at fixed times; I can't leave food out all the time or Spice in particular will gorge himself and explode. So as kittens they would get fed one serving in the morning at breakfast, and one serving in the evening at dinner. When they got a bit older, they stopped wanting to eat in the morning and started getting hungrier at night, so I would feed them two servings each at dinner. When we moved in with Tim, their eating habits changed yet again - and I started feeding them one serving each at 10pm and another each at 11pm so that they wouldn't wake me up at 2am starving and wanting food.

Well now they've discovered that they can still wake me up at 2am starving and in order to preserve my sanity and maintain a decent night's sleep, I'll give in to their wet-noses-in-the-eye and paws-in-the-ear and scalp-kneading, and give them another half portion or so.

So now they're now testing the limits, and it's starting to affect Tim (because invariably now at 2am not only am I getting up to feed them, I'm also muttering "god damn stupid cats" and swearing a lot, which wakes Tim up). They don't bug Tim. They know he is immune to their charms. So while I am gone, Tim's going to "get them back on track". I hope it works :-)

Anyway - Back to Cannes. I found an interesting history of the city at cannes-on-line.com that is worth a read. Not sure if I'll get up the courage to use any of my french while I'm there. It's pretty rusty... could do me more harm than good :-) Ah well. We'll see. At any rate, I'm SOOO excited!

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Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

The snow really let loose last night, turned into freezing rain this morning, then switched to ice pellets, and back to snow briefly before quitting entirely (for the moment). It's below freezing now, our street still hasn't been plowed out, and the slushy snow/ice pellet/rainwater mixture is calf-high.

BUT I'm a happy li'l Canadian cause it's gonna be a WHITE Christmas!

Below are some random photos from our first week at my folks in Simcoe.

Last Sunday Dad took Tim and I to the local arena just blocks from my folks house where we watched the Simcoe Junior C hockey team, the "Simcoe Storm" take on Woodstock in what turned out to be a blow-out victory for Simcoe. The final score was 9-0. It was a blast though to watch, even if it was fairly one-sided :-)

Not far from my parents' house is a gorgeous little park that the town decks out in lights and decorations and little scenes every year. It's really pretty at night, and we've wandered over several times after dinner to take in the lights and watch the kids be mesmerized by the little moving displays.

During the day we'll walk over to the same park to feed the ducks and geese and seagulls. This one nipped me just after the photo was taken because I was clearly NOT tossing the bread fast enough, and didn't I understand he had other things to do, places to be? Hmmph. Or should I say "Honk"!

We also caught a glimpse of a brilliant red cardinal on one of our walks through the park. I love these birds - especially in the snow.

Last night is when it really started coming down. Tim and my Dad set to work shovelling the drive way when we got back from our evening walk to the park. It would prove to be rather fruitless though...

Because this is what we woke up to this morning!

Not that Diva, my folks' princess..er...german shephard minded!

Oh - and Happy Anniversary to my Mom and Dad! Today is their 37th :-)

Looking forward to having Sarah home tomorrow. Roads were just too treacherous for her to get out of Ottawa today. We're on a Lasagna moratorium until she arrives (but that hasn't stopped us from eating well while we've been here :-))

More later. Happy Holidays everyone!

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Hel no, we won't go

For a couple of days this week it looked like I was going to get to travel to Helsinki for work in November. November is probably not the height of tourist season - I imagine it's a little chilly there this time of year. Still -I've never been, so it would have been cool (pun intended). Unfortunately not all of the people we were going to be meeting with would actually be in Helsinki so we all agreed to a conference call instead. Ah well!

But I can't let all my research go to waste, so here you go. Facts about Helsinki and Canadian Passports.

If you're a Canadian travelling to Finland (which, of course, is where Helsinki is) you need to make sure your passport is valid for a minimum of 3 months after your expected departure from Finland. They don't want to chance anyone expiring during their visit. Good to know.

My passport expires on Nov 20th. Of course. So I spent Monday running around virtually and literally finding out what I'd need to do to get a new valid Canadian passport from here in the US in less than 9 business days. If you ever find yourself in this predicament (because oh so many of you reading this are Canadians married to Americans who changed your last name and are living in the US)Here's what you do:

First you gotta get the possport application. That involves finding the web site pertaining to Canadian Passports. I'll save you the trouble. It's http://www.ppt.gc.ca/passport_office/about_e.asp

Once you download the application, then you gotta figure out the fees. The fees are entertaining. Naturally, you can expect to pay an application processing fee. And depending on whether you are applying from the US or from Canada it is different. And depending on whether you are applying for a 48-page passport or a 24-page passport it is different. And depending on whether you are under or over 16 years of age, it is different. Luckily this is all spelled out for you in the FAQs. Of course, if you're getting your name changed (which I am because my current passport is still in my maiden name. I know, I know... I've had over a year...) you have to pay a name changing fee also. AND if you're requesting it be processed with urgency you have to pay an urgency processing fee too. It being a Canadian passport and all, the fees must be paid in Canadian funds - cash or cashier's cheque (that's "check" for Americans) or money order. So then you gotta find a place that will issue you a cashier's check or money order in canadian funds because you're not going to send cash through the mail. Not all banks do Canadian money orders or cashier's che[ck|que]s.

Ok - so next you gotta get some passport photos taken. Not so hard right? Head to your nearest Kinko's. Only Canadian passport photo requirements are different than US passport photo requirements (and no - it's not just a matter of cm vs inches). Canadian passport photos must be 2 3/4 inches tall by 2 inches wide. US passport photos must be 2 inches tall by 2 inches wide. And you cannot smile in Canadian Passport photos. You must maintain a "neutral expression with your mouth closed" or your picture will be rejected. I think US passports let you smile. Or at least, it's not against the law to smile like it is for Canadians. You'll wanna point these differences out to the Kinko's guy BEFORE he snaps your picture. AH - but even after training the photo dude on the subtle art of taking a Candian passport photo you will realize that the special passport photo cutter they use is physically built to cut a square 2"x2" picture and is not adjustable. So you need to have dude cut the photos by hand. Oh, but wait - unless you took the picture correctly the photos will print out without enough space at the bottom to cut a proper 2 3/4" length so the head will end up too far down the photo frame, and you'll have to have dude retake the photo. And it is after these retaken photos are printed then that you will learn that their equipment (the little special digital passport photo cam that all Kinko's now sport) are physically built to take a square 2"x2" picture that is also non-adjustable so you end up with a lot of white space at the bottom of your 2 3/4" length photo and although the Canadian passport photo instructions don't say anything about trailing whitespace at the bottom of the photo being unacceptable, you know it is ultimately going to come down to the bitter old woman sitting in the window-less cubicle in Hull, Quebec, with bandaids on all her fingers from papercuts obtained handling passport applications and photos, and whether or not she's having a good day.

I took the chance she'd be having a good day. Next, you need to make sure that the back of one of the two photos is stamped with the photographer's address and date taken. Of course Kinko's, being the professional business center that it is, doesn't have such a stamp so you need to have photo dude write all that info in by hand on the back of that little 2 3/4" x 2" photo in ink that will not smear off, get him to initial it, and then hope there is enough room for your own name and signature, as well as the hand written statement that your guarantor is required to write on the back of the same photo along with her signature.

Oh - that brings us to The Guarantor. It is not sufficient enough to provide your current passport, your original birth certificate (copies, even notarized, not accepted), a notarized copy of your drivers license, a notarized copy of your marriage license, a notarized copy of your permanent resident card, and the names and contact information for two personal references who have known you for at least two years. All of which are requirements themselves. You also have to have a Guarantor sign your application, your photo, and all your identification. Ah - but the Guarantor can't just be anyone. The guarantor must be someone who has known you personally for at least two years AND must be either a
- dentist, medical doctor or chiropractor
- lawyer
- notary public
- pharmacist
- police officer, judge, or magistrate
- signing officer of a bank or trust company or of a financial institution that offers the full range of banking services (cash withdrawals, deposits and savings).

Now - I have had the same vetrinerian for the last two years - but I don't know her personally. And I have been going to the same pharmacist to get my perscriptions filled for the last two years, but she doesn't know me personally either. Neither does the dentist or doctor I've been seeing for the last 10 years. And the cop who stopped me for speeding certainly doesn't know me personally (and I'd like to keep it that way). I don't know any lawyers, judges or magistrates personally. And once I've signed the loan papers, I try hard to ensure the loan officers at my bank don't see me enough to know me personally.

So what's a Canadian to do?

Well - it turns out, there's a FORM you can fill out - a "Declaration in Lieu of Guarantor" that you can have signed by a Notary Public if you don't know anyone who fills the Guarantor qualifications.

But you can't download this form from the web site. No. It is available only in Canadian "missions". So you gotta figure out where the nearest one of those is, and then trek down there and pick up the form (or if it is too far, call and have them send it to you). Lucky for me there is a Canadian Consulate in Seattle so all I had to do was ask Mappoint for directions and head on down to pick up the form.

So you've got the form - next you gotta find a Notary Public to sign it and your photos. And you probably have to stop at a bank machine along the way because generally they only take cash and not debit cards. And when you finally find one and get to her office, and have her notarize and sign the Declaration in Lieu of Guarantor, the back of your passport photo, the copy of your driver's license, the copy of your permanent residence card, and the copy of your marriage license (unless that was already notarized and certified by the county officer where you got it) you're almost home free.

The only piece left is the matter of "urgency". The web site unfortunately doesn't define what qualifies for "urgent" processing. It just says you need to provide "proof of urgency". So you gotta find out what consitutes "proof". If you didn't ask the Consulate when you went to pick up your "Declaration in Lieu of Guarantor" form, you will need to call them back and ask. And you will be told that you need a letter from your employer explaining the need for travel, as well as the actual plane ticket purchased for the travel. AND you have to apply in person (no mail-in urgent applications).

Now - if you're willing to settle for a non-machine readable passport, the Consulate in Seattle can do this for you overnight or within a couple of business days. However if you're a frequent traveller a non-machine-readable passport is a pain in the butt, so you'll have to trek up to Vancouver on a weekday and plan on lining up around 7:30am at the local passport office to get processed.

So this is how I spent my Monday, and tuesday morning I typed up a letter explaining the need for me to travel and got my boss to sign it, and was just waiting for the confirmation of the meetings in Helsinki to book my flight and hotel, and then head downtown to the Consulate to submit it all for processing (by now having accumulated a pile of paper so thick I needed a binder clip to secure it) when the whole thing fell through and we decided to do the conf call instead.

On the bright side - we are going to Canada for christmas and it would be a good idea to have a valid passport for that, so it's just as well I have everything together and can just send it in and let it get processed normally.

Hmm... I just realized that I promised facts about Helsinki too. Here are some stats, courtesy of the City of Helsinki Web Site which has a nice history of the city as well I'll let you read on your own.

City of Helsinki
Founded 1550
Capital of Finland 1812

Total area 686 sq.km
Sea 500 sq.km
Land 186 sq.km
Shoreline (mainland) 98 km
Islands 315

Mean temperature (whole year 2003) 5.6°C
Warmest month July, mean temperature 17.2°C
Coldest month February, mean temperature -4.9°C

Total population (2003/2004) 559,330
Men 46,6 %
Women 53,4 %
Finnish-speaking 87 %
Swedish-speaking 6,3 %
Population density (2002) 2,996 inhabitants per sq.km
Total population in the Helsinki Region (2003/2004) 1,233,000

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Yesterday was "Take your Wife and Her Friend to Work Day" for Tim

Well, not really... but that's what we did! Tim was working 107.7 The End's 13th Annual "Endfest" this weekend, and Janel and I went to see the show (and I went to see my wonderful husband at work, doing his thing which I've heard from many many sources that he does EXTREMELY well, but that I had not yet had an opportunty to see myself!)

Tim mixed the sound for the first act - Metric and we got there just in time to see it. I wasn't actually expecting to be able to actually see Tim close up while we were there, but when we walked into our section there he was in the sound mixer area (I'm told that it is actually called the "Front Of House Mix Position") doing his thing and looking very much in his element.

Yes - I pointed and giggled and said "Look! There he is!". Me, his 33 year old wife.I felt like such a groupie :-)

After composing ourselves from the "sighting" of Tim, Janel and I stood behind him for about 5 minutes or so snapping pictures with her cell phone camera (I don't have the photos yet - we have to figure out how to get them from her phone to my email... probably at the next Friday night movie night, if not sooner :-). I'll post them when I get them). Tim of course, was completely oblivious to us :-).

So we slipped quietly into one of the rows next to where he was, and enjoyed the show (and every once in a while I'd sneak a peek over to my left to watch Tim :-)).

As I said, the first act was Metric. Never heard of them. But that's not surprising. Janel and I were both feeling a little... ahem... "older" than the average age of the crowd that was currently surrounding us (the crowd changed throughout the evening though, as there was a mixture of "newer" and "older" acts throughout the evening). But I did find them highly entertaining :-)

After the set I called Tim on his cell phone and showed him where we were sitting.

Next was another band I had not heard of... Muse. They were great - really liked them. Will have to go find a CD.

When Muse ended, We went over and chatted with Tim, and Steve (friend & coworker of Tim's, who I'd met through many football games :-)) and Steve was kind enough to take Janel and I on a little back stage tour.

The End had made a big deal in their advertising about the fact that they had this rotating stage set up, so that there would be no wait-time between sets. We watched them setting up the back side of the stage, and Steve showed us the different stations on either side and how they were able to sound check the one in back while the band was playing on the one in front.

By this time, the Psychedelic Furs were on stage, so I was finally recognizing some of the songs ;-)

We returned to our seats, enjoyed the rest of the Phsychedelic Furs. Following the Psychedelic Furs was a band called Yeah Yeah Yeahs Who I gather have been around for a while, but I think I only recognized one song. Wasn't terribly impressed with their show though.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs were followed by X, who were pretty good. And they in turn were followed by the Violent Femmes, who were great! And next came Franz Ferdinand, who was really great! (another gotta get one of their CDs).

By this time the crowd where we were had grown in anticipation of the next act to grace the stage - Echo and The Bunnymen.

Echo and the Bunnymen... what can I say?

My personal opinion: They stunk. They reeked. They were absolutely horrific. Dude was arrogant, egotistical, rude, and whiney to say the least. His constant stream of complaints and insults were dull, childish, witless and annoying. I'll never pay money to see them perform.

The final act was the Presidents of the United States... who... ROCKED! We left before they ended (it was getting cold, and I was getting sleepy - having gotten up at 6am that morning when Tim's alarm went off, to help make sure he got out of bed :-)).

There will be no doubt much more information about the show, and the acts, and lots of cool photos in Tim's entry at crappymusic.com so I'll just finish off here.

All in all, a VERY fun day! Thanks Steve, for the back stage tour! And Tim - what can I say - It was a lot of fun watching "The Other Tim" at work :-) You're the best. And the coolest. I Love you! ;-)

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Our Fair State

The grass is always greener on the other side, they say.

Apparently they are right. At least, this little guy thinks so.

Tim, Dave, Rich and I went to the Evergreen State Fair this weekend. It was my first state fair (Canada has fairs, but not states. Duh). Lotsa fun! My favourites were the miniature horses - so CUTE!

Followed closely by the baby pygmy goats, the adult pygmy goats, the bunnies, the birds of prey, the sheep, the regular goats, the ducks, the cats, the dogs, the giant horses, the cows, and the bulls - geez, the bulls. Ack.

I took a few pictures. But with both Dave and Tim with me and toting cameras as well, I figured photos would be pretty well covered (and they were - you can see Tim's pictures at crappymusic ) and so mostly just enjoyed walking around, people-and-animal watching.

I also enjoyed my first taste of Fry Bread, had a piece of elephant ear (in Ottawa these are called Beaver Tails. Same thing but slightly different shape, as I'm sure you can guess. Ask Tim. He'll tell ya - last time we were in Ottawa he had some tail) and followed that with a pinch of cotton candy. All of which followed my greasy fair burger smothered in cheese and onions. I figured it was all good though - I have a pretty strong stomach, and I don't do temporary fair rides (as much as I love rides, there's something about not wanting to get on the rides on the last day of the fair, a few hours before they're taken apart and packed up. Call me paranoid) so I knew it was all in there to stay. I mean c'mon. I was at a FAIR. When in Rome... or whatever.

Since I brought them up, thought you might enjoy the recipe.

Beaver Tail Recipe
found on www.razzledazzlerecipes.com

Dough:
1/2 cup warm water
5 teaspoons dry yeast
pinch of sugar
1 cup warm milk
1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
1/3 cup oil
4 1/4 - 5 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
oil for frying
granulated sugar for dusting
cinnamon

In a large mixing bowl, stir together the yeast, warm water and pinch
of sugar. Allow to stand a couple of minutes to allow yeast to swell or dissolve.

Stir in remaining sugar, milk, vanilla, eggs, oil, salt and most of flour to make soft dough. Knead 5-8 minutes (by hand or with a dough hook), adding flour as needed to form a firm, smooth, elastic dough. Place in a greased bowl.

Place bowl in a plastic bag and seal. (If not using right away, you can
refrigerate the dough at this point). Let rise in a covered, lightly greased bowl, about 30-40 minutes. Gently deflate dough, (if dough is coming out of the fridge, allow to warm up about 40 minutes before proceeding).

Pinch off a golf ball sized piece of dough. Roll out into an oval and let rest, covered with a tea towel, while you are preparing the remaining dough.

Heat about 4 inches of oil in fryer (a wok works best but you can use a Dutch oven or whatever you usually use for frying). Temperature of the oil should be about 385 F. Test by tossing in a tiny bit of dough and see if it sizzles and swells immediately. If it does, the oil temperature is where it should be.

Stretch the ovals into a tail - thinning them out and enlarging them as you do. Add the beaver tails to the hot oil, about 1-2 at a time.

Turn once to fry until the undersides are deep brown. Lift beaver tails out with tongs and drain on paper towels.

Fill a large bowl with a few cups of white sugar . Toss beaver tails in sugar (with a little cinnamon if you wish) and shake off excess. (Heather's Note: Really, this should be cinnamon sugar - you should be able to taste the cinnamon! And also squirt a little lemon on it. Mmm!)

You can also top off Beaver Tails with whatever preserves, pie fillings or even just powdered sugar.

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Back from Salish Lodge!

We're back from Salish Lodge at Snoqualmie Falls, where Tim and I spent two days to celebrate our first anniversary! Ok, technically our anniversary isn't until August 30th, but the timing worked out better this way :-) It was perfect - very relaxing. We both had massages at the spa, and made ample use of their therapeutic pools, went hiking down to the base of the falls, ate scrumptious food at the restaurant, and relaxed in our room in front of a crackling fire, with the roar of the falls audible in the background. All in all, a very very nice way to celebrate our first anniversary!

Highlights: The huge jetted tub and fireplace in the room; the balcony overlooking the river; falling asleep to the sound of the falls in the background; the absolutely amazing dinner we had in their main dining room our 2nd night; and the hike down to the base of the falls and back.

Lowlights: The older couple at the table directly behind Tim during lunch who were clearly there for a romantic getaway, who kept noisy-kissing (you know - that saliva-sucking kissing sound that totally grosses you out) and groping each other (she was practically sitting in his lap, and he had his hand up her pantleg the whole time while she massaged his thigh and would lean forward so her boob would brush against his arm). Get a room already. That's what we did! Besides, I was trying to eat.

Heh ;-) Anyway - it was a wonderful little escape. Here are the pictures!.

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2004 National Capital Marathon

Back in May, Tim and I went to visit my sister, Sarah, in Ottawa. It so happened the weekend we picked to visit was the National Capital Marathon weekend.

When I was in highschool I remember my friends and I volunteering to be a water-hander-outer along the marathon route. We'd get up early and meet at the water station, and we'd be given these light yellow "Ottawa Citizen" (the local newspaper) t-shirts to wear, and we'd spend the morning setting up the tables and pouring water into paper cups while we waited for the marathon to start.

Back then, I remember they had the wheelchair, and the running race, but I don't remember there being an inline skate race. Heck - I don't remember there being inline skates, period, at the time ;-)

Well, now they have an inline skating half-marathon and full marathon, in addition to the regular walking/running marathon and half-marathon races, and the wheelchair race.

I never would have guessed back then in highschool, while I was pouring water into those paper cups, that I'd ever be entered into one of the National Capital race day events. If you read my 2003 Disney Marathon entry, you'll recall that I really wasn't much of an athlete in highschool. Yet - here we were in Ottawa, me with my inline skates, all set to race 14 miles...er... excuse me... 21 km (afterall, we were in CANADA) on what I believe was the exact same loop along which I had handed out water oh those many years ago ;-)

I hadn't actually planned on racing. When we told my sister we were coming over for a long weekend, she had mentioned she was entered into the race that same weekend and we told her we'd come watch and cheer her on! She casually suggested I bring my blades and enter too, but I declined. However a week before we were scheduled to leave, I called her up and she changed my mind :-)

I hadn't been actively training for the event... in fact, at that point I had been somewhat lax in my workout routine. I knew I'd be able to finish it - I'd been skating about half the distance - 7 miles - once a week with friends. But I didn't actually train or prepare for it and I was no where near the same physical condition I was in when I ran the Disney marathon.

My sister, on the other hand, had been training :-) So I told her I'd enter and skate with her if she promised not to let me slow her down. She promised, and was true to her word :-) I'm so proud of her! Way to go Sarah ;-). Sarah finished before me - with a race time of 1:02 after getting off to a great start and managing to get out ahead of the crowds right away, while I lagged behind trying to figure out how to pass the giggling group of little teenage girls in tight jeans who were skating in front of me. There were also a lot of hills, which slowed me down on the last half of the course. My finish time was 1:27. Not great - but I kept reminding myself I hadn't been training for it (or for anything for that matter).

We were both lapped by the full marathon in-line skaters though. That was slightly demoralizing:-) I think they finished the full marathon in just under an hour. Scared me half to death when they whizzed by us. As they approached from behind they sounded like an angry swarm of bees, getting progressively louder, and then suddenly, they were past us. I swear I felt a breeze as they went by, but all I saw was a blur of technicoloured spandex, and they were gone.

BUT - I finished the race, without incident and feeling great - no soreness or tiredness (in fact, was ready for some sight seeing after we showered and had some breakfast at the hotel). And most importantly - I got my finish medal :-) Now I have two medals as evidence of my athleticism! One for Disney and one for this. It's amazing what a little piece of cheap metal on a ribbon can do to make you feel like a true athlete. In fact, I've since made myself a promise. I will only enter events in which I get a medal at the end. No t-shirts or posters or certificates as prizes. I want a medal. Hung around my neck by one of those medal-hander-outers at the end of the race. It feels so... Olympian! ;-)

As with the Disney race, there were photographers stationed at several points throughout the course, snapping pictures of all of the participants as they wheeled, walked, ran, or skated their way along the route. And as usual, after the event they sent out a link where you can search (by bib number) for and order photos of yourself... for an exorbitant amount of money. Which I of course shelled out. I just got them in the mail on Friday, so here they are - photos of me during the race :-)

Check out Tim's Ottawa photos on crappymusic.comfor more pictures taken during our visit to my other Nation's Capital.

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Rome Day 5

On our 5th day in Rome we hired a private driver and guide and took a trip out to Ostia Antiqua to see the ruins of the ancient port town that had once been a flourishing and diverse commercial center.

It's more expensive to do it that way, but you get to see the site on your schedule taking as much time as you want, you don't have to stick to a "scripted" tour, and you get the benefit of the guide's full and rich knowledge of the history of the site. Quite often you'll hear stories and information that is not part of a scripted group tour.

The name Ostia comes from the latin word "Ostium", meaning "mouth" - so named because it was situated at the mouth of the Tiber river. I say "was" because the coastline and landscape has changed considerably in the many centuries that have since passed. At the time when Ostia was a flourishing port town, the coastline was about 4km inland from where it is now and salt marshes extended between the river and a pond that no longer exists.

Our Ostia tour was an amazing experience - like walking through a 2000 year old ghost town. The structures and road ways are fairly well preserved and intact. You can even see wheel ruts in the ancient stones of the road. Even some of the original furnishings - like the large marble slab table in the fish store on which one can imagine the prioprietor displaying the morning's catch - remain in several of the buildings where they were originally excavated.

Some of the most interesting areas we explored:

- The markets / "corporations" behind the theatre
- the fish store
- The flour mill - with the mill stones still in position
- the toilets!
- the Thermopoleum and the "Coffee bars" as our guide referred to them because of the starbucks coffee-bar style eating counters :-) basically ancient restaurants where locals and visitors could pull up to a counter, order food, and catch up on the days gossip.
- the intricately tiled floors of the baths
- The Theatre
- The temples
- The fire fighter barracks (of which unfortunately I cannot find our photos)

It was easy to imagine the busy throng of the 100,000+ citizens going about their lives in the streets of the town day in and day out given how well preserved the buildings all were.

We wandered amid the ruins for hours, as our guide explained the structures, the architecture, the building techniques and methods used to do things like fight fires, heat the steam and bath houses, carry the waste away from under the toilets... etc.

The story of Ostia is an interesting one. I think one of the things I found most interesting about the town was its rich mixture of diverse culture and religions.

Numerous cults and religions were imported from eastern countries via traders, solders and lsaves brought to rome from conquered countries. In the excavation at Ostia thus far, 18 Mithraeums have been found, dating from the II and III century. There is also a fairly large Synagogue built in the middle of the I century AD, by the Jewish community of 2,000 - 3,000 traders and merchants who lived in Ostia. There are traces of an ancient Basilica, St. Cyriacus near the theater and remnants of another Basilica on the Decumanus (main rode through Ostia). There were also temples, statues, and sanctuaries dedicated to the egyptian diety Serapis; to Sabatius and Attis - divinities from Frigia, a region in Asia Minor; Bellona, anient latin goddes of War, and to numerous Roman dieties.

Pictures from our visit to Ostia

This was I think my most favourite day in Italy. It was a gorgeous day - hot like the rest of them, deep blue, cloudless sky, and there were very few tourists exploring the ruins. But the best part was the fact that everything we looked at, touched, and walked on was steeped in the ancient history of at least 20 centuries!

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Rome Day 4

Our 4th day in Rome was somewhat adhoc. We had no real agenda or list of things to see. We decided to just sort of set out in a direction and see where it would take us. You have to do that at least once in a foreign city!

The previous day we had asked our concierge for a good place to shop for art. We wanted to take home something - a painting or sculpture or something - to remind us of our trip. What she ended up directing us to was the antiques district. And while it was not what we had in mind when we had asked, we do both love antiques, and it was a fun and interesting day!

We started off in Piazza Navona. Piazza Navona is about half way between Vatican City and the Palatine, both of which you've learned about if you've read our previous days pages :-)

(Don't you just LOVE mappoint.msn.com?! I type in a place name, like Piazza Navona (actually - I typed in Piazza Narvona, which is incorrect) and it brings me a beautiful map like this.)

Anyway - back to Piazza Navona. Piazza Navona was built by Bernini in the 1600s. It is rather long - more of a rectangle than a square, resembling an ancient "circus" (stadium for races, like Circus Maximus which I've mentioned on previous pages), and that is not by accident. It was built over the remains of Circus Domitianus.

This piazza features 3 beautiful fountains, and is surrounded by many beautiful, old buildings. On the western side of the Piazza is the Church of Sant'Angese in Agone. (pronounced, apparently, as "uhn-YEH-seh").

The piazza comes alive as morning progresses - Italians out for their morning stroll, the newspaper, or a coffee; artists setting up their booths, people gathering by one of the fountains; tourists with maps out, planning their route for the day. It's a fun place to hang out and people-watch.

There are tours available that will take you underneath the Piazza to view the ruins of the circus on which it was built, but we didn't know that at the time, and we were content to just wander... It was actually a really fun experience. We'd be walking down a rambling cobblestone street only to turn a corner and find ourselves in a small piazza with a beautiful fountain, or standing in front of a huge and ancient church, or staring at some monument dating back to the 7th or 8th century. It was like being on an Easter Egg hunt, only finding beautiful roman treasures instead of eggs.

This 4th day in Rome was also The Day of The Bad Dining Experience. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we had a bad dining experience in Rome. Didn't think it was possible did you? Furthermore, it was all my fault. Me. I am the one to blame. Here's the story.

We had been wandering through the streets all morning. It was about noon and I was starting to get hungry. There were cafes on every corner, but I had my heart set on two things. 1) Dining outdoors (better people watching; more fun; great weather), and 2) Pizza. (Real italian pizza). Tim only had one criteria - that it not be one of the cafes that bordered the square because it would be too filled with tourists. I shared my criteria with Tim, and he shared his with me and together we started looking for a cafe that fit our desires. We finally came across a pizzeria as we turned onto another street. It was pizza. It was set back from the square. But alas, had no outdoor dining. "How about this?" said Tim. "It's ok. But I want to sit outside and eat", said I. "There don't appear to be any pizza places with outdoor seating" said Tim. "Let's just eat here". I was about to give in when I spotted another restaurant across the street. "How about over there?" I asked. "Where?" Tim asked. "There" I said, pointing across the street to a little cafe with outdoor seating, and a waitress carrying a pizza over to a table. "They have pizza, and outdoor seating. Let's eat there!" I said enthusiastically. "Are you sure?" asked Tim, puzzled. "Yes! Absolutely. Let's eat there". I was determined to get my outdoor pizza. So Tim gave in, and we wandered over and sat down. Tim kept giving me weird looks the whole time, wondering what was going on in my head.

The waitress came out and handed us menus. "Thanks!" I said. Still enthusiastically. I was about to have pizza. I opened the menu. I remember commenting to Tim unless you didn't mind ending up with seafood on your plate, which I do, so I always diligently translated the menu using the pocket dictionary, before ordering :-). Tim looked at me as if to say "Duh". I thought, "what duh? We're in Italy. Why put English on the menus?" That should have been my first clue. But I ignored it.

I selected my pizza - the Marguerita. Tim decided to order the Caprese salad. We love caprese and ordered it almost every chance we got - big juicy slices of fresh tomatoes and fresh basil leaves, thick, soft slices or chunks of mozzarella di bufala (real mozzarella is made with buffalo milk, not cow's milk), drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Yum! I didn't order any salad. I figured I'd have some of Tim's :-). We ordered drinks. I didn't get asked if I wanted fizzy or non-fizzy water. I had acquired a taste for the fizzy stuff, since our honeymoon started. I didn't notice until she brought out my bottle of flat water that she had neglected to ask. That should have been my 2nd clue.

My 3rd clue should have been all of the English-first-language speaking tourists surrounding us. I have to admit, I did notice that. But it wasn't until Tim's salad actually arrived that I realized that something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.

The waitress brought out Tim's salad, set it in front of him, and walked away. Tim and I stared in horror. The salad... it was in a BOWL... and worse, it had... LETTUCE... in it. Mounds and mounds of shredded lettuce! It might as well have been a regular garden salad! Sure, there were tomatoes (2 chunks), and one slice of mozzarella, but there was also lettuce, and I think some sweet peppers in there too! What WAS this atrocity?! It was about as "caprese" as the stuff they serve in our salad bar at work. At that point, as I was expressing my indignation at seeing lettuce and peppers in caprese salad, I happened to glance over Tim's shoulder and notice the sign pronouncing the name of the cafe.

The Big Apple Cafe

In big bold red diner letters against a stylized backdrop of the New York skyline.

ACK! We were eating in an American diner in the middle of Rome! I pointed this out to Tim. Who gave me a REAL "duh" look this time, and said "Yeah... I thought you knew!"

Thought I knew?! Had I known that was the name of the restaurant, I'd never have suggested we eat there! Why didn't he say anything?

Apparently, he did. He said "are you sure?". Ahem. Yes, well, a little elaboration at the time would have helped. Of course, in his defense, it was a pretty big sign. But I was so enamoured with the idea of Pizza outside, that I hadn't seen the sign (quite literally) and that's where we ended up eating.

The horror didn't end there, however. The waitress returned with my marguerita pizza. I stared glumly at my plate. I had my pizza all right. Big fat rolls of dough that was undercooked (raw in some places), a bunch of haphazardly placed cherry tomatoes that would roll around and fall to the ground whenever I picked up a slice, or attempted to cut into it. Cheese that had the consistency of mozzarella, but that is where the similarity ended. And... no tomato sauce. No sauce!

Sigh.

I picked through my pizza and Tim picked through his salad. We were both disappointed. And every now and then Tim would pause, look at me, fork in the air, and say "How could you not know? How did you miss the sign?". D'oh.

Ah - but we're still not finished.

To top off this wonderful feast, we were accompanied by a couple of wandering accordion players. Yes - they knew where the tourist money was. It was at the Big Apple Cafe. Because the patrons who frequent that place - what do they know? They think that stuff is romantic. They'll love it! It's in all their American movies. And then they'll give us money. Yup - so there we were, eating our caprese salad full of lettuce, and our doughy pizza without sauce, to the romantic strains of Italian accordion music.

As if that wasn't enough, when they finished their ditty, they began soliciting the tables for their "fee". If the food wasn't enough to make Tim grumpy, you should have seen his face when he realized that they were asking for money. Muttering under his breath "I didn't ask them to play. They weren't playing for me. I didn't even think they were any good. If they had been good that would have been another thing. Why should I give them money". Of course, if you know Tim, you know that wasn't a verbatim quote... he said some other things too :-). It was the moment that he finished this private little tirade that they chose to appear at our table, jingling their little purse in Tim's face, nodding and smiling. He was trapped. And with nothing smaller than a 2-Euro coin. Into the bag he tossed it, scowling. They bobbed up and down in thanks, and, still smiling, moved on.

The waitress came back out to check on how we were doing. I asked for the receipt. She looked at our plates - still half full (half empty, I was thinking optimistically. I couldn't figure out how we managed to consume half the meal, given how much we didn't enjoy it). She asked "Everything ok?". "Oh yes, it was fine. Just a lot of food. We're both full", I replied with a smile.

We paid the check and left. Yup. It was all my fault.

Finally Tim started to see the humour and irony in the whole experience. I wasn't there yet. But that didn't keep him from poking fun, and practicing his spin of the story he would tell all our friends when we got back home about how I led him to his worst Italian meal ever, in the heart of Rome.

I told him that he could make fun of me all he wanted to, but NOT until we found a very authentic Italian gelateria, in which I could drown my sorrow and embarrassment. He consented. We quickly found a gelateria (by this time we had walked nearly back to the Spanish steps), bought me an ice cream cone, which I happily consumed as we sat on the steps watching the crowds of people go by. OK. Gelato takes away all the pain and makes the world a happy place. Mmmm.

So that was our Bad Dining Experience. I promised to write about it on the web site, and to take full blame, and to let Tim review it before I published it to be sure I captured the whole abysmal experience accurately.

So one moment, while I call for Tim.

Well, aside from the dining experience the rest of the day was spent pleasantly window shopping and browsing antique stores. Many stores had workshops attached, that were open, so you could see the woodworkers at their craft, restoring old furniture and art frames, etc. We passed a movie shoot (Italian). And many more monuments and fountains and little secret piazzas tucked away where you least expect it, and beautiful buildings and narrow streets, and people on their vespas touring the marketplace. All in all, a wonderful day. Enjoy the pictures! :-).

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Rome Day 3

Our third day in Rome. It was another late breakfast around 10am, and then out to explore the city. Our agenda for the day was the Coliseum, the Forums, and the Paletine. It was a Day of Ruins :-)

At this point, it is appropriate to talk a little bit about the topography and layout and founding of Rome.

According to one version of the legend, Ancient Rome was founded around 753 B.C. by twin brothers Romulus and Remus, the sons of Mars (God of War) and Rhea Silvia (also known as "Ilia"), who was one of the vestal virgins, and daughter of Numitor, Deposed king of Alba Longa.

The same version says that Numitor had been deposed by his brother Amulius. Numitor wanted to secure his eventual return to the throne, so he made his daughter, Rhea Silvia, into a priestess so that she would bear no successors to challenge his claim. Much to his chagrin, however, she gave birth to twins Romulus and Remus. When the twins were born, Numitor ordered them placed in a basket and thrown into the Tiber River where they were intended to drown. Instead of drowning, however, they were rescued by a she-wolf on the slope of the Palatine Hill who cared for them as if they were her own.

Some time later, they were later discovered by a shepherd, who with his wife, raised them to manhood. Once grown, the brothers deposed Amulius and placed Numitor, their grandfather, back on the throne.

After all this the brothers decided to build a city. They selected the hill from which they had been rescued as the founding spot. From what I have read of Romulus and Remus, they seemed a very quarrelsome pair, who delighted in pushing one another's buttons. Romulus built a wall around the newly founded city to protect it. Remus, wanting to show his brother how woefully inadequate the wall was at keeping unwanted people out, leapt over the wall and was promptly killed at the hands of his brother (if not by his brother, certainly at his orders). Romulus, therefore, became sole ruler of the city, and it is after him that the city supposedly got its name.

Ancient Rome actually encompassed 7 hills: Quirinal, Virninal, Esquiline, Capitoline, Palatine, Aventine, and Caelian. To the west of the chain of hills lies the Tiber River. Most of these hills are still very much in evidence today. Fairly extensive excavations cover the sites today, and are open to tourists.

Our Day of Ruins covered only a small portion of this area, beginning at the Coliseum and ending at the far end of the Palatine Hill.

The Coliseum lies in the center of three of the seven hills. Palatine Hill is to the west, Capitoline Hill is to the northwest, and Esquiline Hill is to the northeast.

Construction of the Coliseum was started under the reign of Roman Emperor Vespasian (AD 69 - 79) and was completed by his younger son, Emperor Domitan, in AD 81. Its original name was the Flavian Amphitheater. Fires and earthquakes were frequent in ancient Rome, and the Coliseum was not impervious to them. Many modifications, repairs, and renovations were performed up through the 6th century. Post 6th century, the coliseum suffered through more earthquakes and much neglect. Over the course of the succeeding centuries the coliseum became a "quarry" - robbed of most of its marble facing, decorations, and metal supports which were used in the construction of monuments and other buildings. Who knows how many of the old buildings and monuments still standing and very much in use today, are built from materials "stolen" from the coliseum? The metal may also have been put to use in weaponry through the course of any number of battles and wars. Despite this neglect, abuse, and "recycling" of materials more than 1/3 of the original structure still stands today. And even in its dilapidated state, it is a magnificent and powerful structure, invoking colourful images of ancient times - gladiators and fierce beasts and slaves and crowds of people there to watch the fantastic spectacles that would always end in both glory and death.

When Tim visited the Coliseum 10 years ago, it was wide open to the wandering public. No fences or blockades or turnstiles or ticket booths. One was free to come and go on the first level and the level below. A ticket was needed to get up to the upper levels, but other than that, you could walk anywhere, on any surface, without waiting in line, without barriers.

In 1995 a major restoration effort was undertaken. The outer walls and foundations were reinforced to prevent further crumbling and deterioration. You can tell which parts have been restored by the different layering technique used for the bricks - which is intentional, so that tourists can tell the real authentic ancient original portions of the coliseum from the reinforcements that were made.

Today when you go to the Coliseum, if it's high tourist season (as it was when we went) you'll be waiting in line for at least 45 minutes to purchase a ticket and enter through the turnstile. Today all except for the main arched entranceway is blocked off with tall, seemingly impenetrable, steel grates. It is no longer possible to wander through the lower levels, and on the first level, you are restricted to one of the two inner circular paths. You can no longer wander out into the middle grounds of the coliseum. However all of this, I think is for the good of the Coliseum and will go a long ways to protecting this precious souvenir of ancient times, so that it can be enjoyed by countless future generations. So while the line was a bit annoying, the rest was very enjoyable, although I know Tim was a bit disappointed at first at how much it had changed, and I can certainly understand that as well.

One thing hadn't changed much in the 10 years that Tim had last visited. And that was the cats. Rome is famous for its feral cat population. And the Coliseum is home to many. We saw numerous kitties during our exploration of the ancient amphitheater. In places that no human could venture for lack of space or just the precariousness of their hideouts, kitties were climbing and frolicking and chasing and stalking. Word of caution from one cat lover to another. It's common sense, but so easy to forget. Don't touch the cats. They are feral. They are no longer domesticated. But they are an awful lot of fun to watch!

Rome, in fact, passed some laws protecting these cats by classifying their territories as habitats, making it illegal to evict (ie remove, displace, relocate) them. It's not clear how that has helped the feral cat population. In searching around the internet for more information on the "Roman Cat Laws" I came across an excellent article describing the cat scene in Rome exactly as we had observed.

As we were waiting in line to by our tickets, we noticed a colourful banner on every other column of the outer ring. On the banner was the word "Nike". It seems logical, right? That an ancient forum that played host to countless displays of athleticism and heroism would be sponsored by a major athletic-wear company? Maybe that's where they were getting the funds for all the restoration taking place, right? Let me reassure you - Ancient Rome has not sold out to the evil corporate empires. "Nike" as it turns out, is the ancient Greek goddess of Victory. The banners were advertising a special exhibit on the upper level, celebrating "Victory" and the tradition of athletic competitions that played a significant role in ancient Greek and Roman cultures.

The exhibit was interesting, educational, and contained many artifacts from the coliseum itself . There were many statues and decorations and slabs of marble that once adorned the walls and seats. The most interesting of these had ancient roman graffiti etched into them, as the translations mounted next to the displays would reveal. The name of a patron's favourite gladiator, a cartoon depicting a slave's demise at the hand of a warrior, a ferocious beast in its final death throes, or the ancient roman equivalant of "I was here" scratched into the stone. It was amusing to stand there and stare at the graffiti and imagine the environment as it must have been when it was being written - What was the author wearing? What was happening around him? (It was likely a him, although I suppose it could have been a her :-)). What were the sounds, the colours, the actions? What was the occasion? Was it the equivalent of a "guys night out"? Was he laughing, and talking with his buddies, cheering and high-five-ing them when something good happened; booing and swearing when something bad happened, drinking the ancient roman equivalent of a beer, eating the ancient roman equivalent of a hot dog, waving the ancient roman equivalent of a foam finger, watching the ancient roman equivalent of football players battling it out on the field, scratching out his picture in the soft marble during the ancient roman equivalent of half-time?

vs

There were numerous ancient statues of athletes - from chariot drivers, to runners, to discus throwers. Some were Greek, but most were Roman copies of Greek originals. The Roman copies were ancient in their own right, most dating back to the first century A.D, and were replicas of even older Greek originals that dated back to 2nd and 3rd centuries B.C. The ancient Romans were enamored with Greek arts and culture. They were, in fact, fascinated by most foreign cultures. Imitation is, they say, the sincerest form of flattery, and the ancient Romans were master flatters with their reproductions of ancient Greek statues, and adoption of ancient Greek customs and practices - such as athletic games and competition.

In all, we spent about 3 or 4 hours at the Coliseum, finally surfacing from our waking and walking dreams of ancient Roman games and competition, to locate ourselves some lunch, and then continue our Day of Ruins by crossing the street and entering the Roman Forum.

The Forum was, in its day, the center of economic, civic, and religious life in Rome. But all that remains now are ruins of the numerous public buildings, temples, and ceremonial arches. When we were there, we watched with some interest some of the excavations that were underway - the painstaking process of dusting and scraping and sifting through pails of dirt.

An aside: For those of you who know me well, you know that my dream education, were I ever to decide to go back to school, would be to study full time the subjects of Ancient and Medieval History, Linguistics, Religion, Archaeology and Astronomy, after which I would be fully qualified to realize my life-long ambition to grow up to be Indiana Jones... In Space. I'd keep my legal name, of course. I've become quite attached to it (even having just changed the last part within the last few weeks) but I would only use it only for school reunions and such. My friends would call me Indi. :-)

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So you can imagine that throughout our entire visit to Rome my imagination was running wild with the people, events, culture, that was happening in the exact places I was walking, standing, sleeping, eating, breathing, over 2000 years ago. Ok - so technically, there were things happening over 2000 years ago everywhere that I've ever walked, stood, slept, ate, and breathed. The difference being that most of my walking, standing, sleeping, eating, breathing has taken place here in North America (with brief interruptions to Europe and one visit to Australia). And 2000 years ago in North America, in the spots I have inhabited, there was a whole lot of wilderness going on, but not much else. Well now, let me double check that. Ok. So I've never been to Louisiana, Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and New York where apparently they have discovered "mounds" that were constructed between 1700 BC and 200 AD. And in Texas they have flint quarries that had been mined for more than 10,000 years. Ok. So in an attempt to demonstrate how much more exciting from a historical perspective it is to be walking the streets of Rome than it is to be walking the streets of North America, I'm actually finding North America is no slouch in the way of ancient action. However isolated it was from the affairs of the rest of the world 2000 years ago, it seems, nonetheless, that history did in fact occur everywhere including North America.

But let's get back to Rome.

Although the forum ruins are vast, in reality only a small portion of the site has been excavated. Much still lies buried underneath the hill, and the modern day streets and buildings. The forums are fascinating, and many structures are surprisingly in tact. As with the Coliseum, you must stay on the paths and most of the excavated ruins are now "protected" by low-slung rope "barriers" that line the path. Everyone is respectful of the ropes though. Some partially excavated ruins are covered by corrugated tin "roofs" to protect them from the rain, wind, and sun as they are being examined.

Even in their ruined state, the Forums are impressive. Some of the buildings still standing are just massive - the Romans built on a grand scale! Of course, it wasn't built in a day :-) One of my favourite sites in the Forum, though, was the Temple of Julius Caesar, which was built by Caesar's nephew Octavianin 42 B.C (2 years after the infamous assassination) on the spot where his body was burned. When we visited, there were fresh flowers on the site. Two thousand and forty five years later, people are still putting flowers on the site where his body was burned. Do you think in the year 4003 people will be putting flowers on my grave? Not likely. But then again, I'm also not likely to become "Dictator for Life" of an empire as vast as powerful as was Rome during the time of his reign. Whatever. :-)

After scouring the Forums for a couple of hours, traipsing through ruins (at least those that the paths would lead us through), we were ready to move on to the Palatine.

Recall that the Palatine was one of the seven hills on which Rome was built. In fact was the hill where legend has Romulus and Remus discovered by their she-wolf. As such, the Palatine was the location choice for the residences of most of the Roman emperors of the period, and this is reflected in the ruins - fountains, mosaics, gardens, and palaces.

At the base of the Palatine is the infamous Circus Maximus, where the chariot races took place. In its time it held 150,000 spectators. Elliptical in shape, all you see currently is a large, open plain. The basin of Circus Maximus still lies buried.

As the afternoon was drawing to a close, we rounded up our tour at the edge of the Palatine and headed back via the street to the Coliseum. It was here that we discovered how the Cats of Rome survived. It wasn't on pure hunting skill alone, we found. As we approached the Coliseum we saw an elderly woman layered in clothing crouching next to one of the steel grated archways. She was pouring water from a water bottle into one of the plastic basins that we had noticed earlier tucked underneath the grates and behind the stones. After cleaning the basin she filled it with new food, as the kitties watched with great interest. She never imposed herself on the cats - she did her thing while they watched and waited, and then they did their thing while she watched and waited. And as the entire scene unfolded before us, we watched and waited. And took pictures. The money for the food that the cat lady provides, we learned as we watched, came from donations from passers-by dropping euros into the cat lady's cup, which she had set by her supplies with a sign that I imagine explained the purpose to which the money would be put. And many people donated as they walked past. Some taking great interest in her activities, stopping to watch and even chat, and others dropping the money in without much of a notice. Finally, when all the food and water was gone, the basins cleaned and put back under the grate, the kitties and the cat lady went their separate ways. Until the next day. And so on.

We finally moved on and hailed ourselves a taxi and headed back to the hotel where we cleaned ourselves up, and headed out to dinner to an absolutely wonderful restaurant (they were ALL wonderful :-) at the recommendation of our concierge, who also arranged the reservations.

After spending an entire day absorbing absorbing 2000+ years of roman history through the soles of our feet, and consuming a sumptuous dinner al fresco in the heart of Rome, there are few ways to end such a grand day that aren't just going to end up feeling very anti-climatic. (ok, true... we WERE on our honeymoon. It wasn't going to be THAT hard to find a way to end our day on the appropriate note!). However I just HAD to indulge myself in one more roman pleasure. Well... I don't know how roman it really is, but it seemed appropriate to me. a heaping bowl of italian gelato, in a steamy hot bubble bath. Mmm mmm mmm. :-)

And... here are the pictures from Day 3. Enjoy!

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Rome Day 2

Our first full day in Rome. No longer having to adhere to a set agenda and schedule, we indulged ourselves a bit and slept in until around 9:30... heaven! Had a leisurely breakfast in the hotel, and then planned our day.

We decided that this would be our Vatican City day. Tim had told me you pretty much need a whole day to tour Vatican City. We decided to walk, given the weather and the fact that we didn't need to be anywhere at a certain time. We headed down the hill and cut through Villa Borghese, down to the Spanish Steps, and then wandered over to Vatican City. While it was a beautiful day, it was also HOT! And while I'm a fan of the hot weather, Tim is not. Plus, he's a guy. So by the time we had made it about half way to the city walls, he was pretty hot and very bothered :-). This was the day that we learned that if we were going to travel any distance in Rome, and wanted to arrive in fairly civilized condition, we should plan on taking a taxi :-)

If I haven't already mentioned, Tim had been to Rome before (about 10 years ago). I had not. I'd seen it on TV of course - the infamous overhead shot of the magnificent circular Piazza San Pietro (St. Peter's Square). But it was about 100 times more impressive in person.

St. Peter's Basilica is ENORMOUS. It's huge! As we sat near the entrance of the square staring at the impressive architecture surrounding us, drinking our icy bottled water, I was struck with a bit of disbelief - I've seen this place in pictures, on TV, in movies, but I couldn't believe that I was actually here!

The day we arrived in Rome, the Pope had just returned from a 4-day trip to Slovakia. They were setting up the square for his Weekly General Audience that was planned for the next day (9/17). There was a huge stage in front of the basilica, and a large portion of the square was blocked off where they were setting up the seats. I guess this is something he does every Wednesday. Had we known that there was going to be a General Audience the next day, we might have gone back. Although it would have been quite chaotic I'm sure. We could tell that they were setting up for something big, but we had assumed it was for a Sunday mass on the 21st. It wasn't until I started writing this web page, and started researching the pope's schedule for the week we were there, that I learned that what they must have been preparing for was the general audience on the 17th. On the 21st, he was apparently in his summer retreat in Castelgandolfo, Italy :-).

If you're truly interested in learning more about the Vatican, you can browse through the Official Vatican Web Site. Yes - the Vatican has a web site. They also have their own Internet Domain. ".va" :-). In case you were totally unaware, they also have a television broadcasting station and a radio station.

At any rate, here was our agenda for the day:

- Walk to Vatican City
- Sit in the square, admire the surroundings, and people watch for a while
- Wander through the Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel
- Talk the stairs up to the Cupola in St. Peter's Basilica and take in the breathtaking view of Rome
- Take a cab back to the hotel to shower and change and enjoy a glass of wine on the balcony
- Take a stroll over to the Trevi Fountain, throw in our coins to ensure our return to Rome, and enjoy a nice dinner.
- End the day back at the hotel bar sipping our complimentary cocktails

And that's exactly what we did! It was perfect. Here are just a few of my favourite pictures from the day.

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Rome Day 1

9/15/03 - the start of our Roman Holiday :-)

We checked out of our hotel in Milan around 8. Got to the train station around 9. Our train was scheduled to leave at 10.

The train station in Milan is impressive. It was designed by Ulisse Stacchini in 1912, who combined the popular Art Deco style of the time with the grandeur of ancient Roman architecture. Check out this brief description and history of the building. Bottom line is it is quite a grand train station.

We arrived at the station and I had to go to the ticket booth to ask where we go next to catch the train. Good thing I did - as it turns out, the final destination for our train was not Rome, as I had thought, but Naples. In Italy, all the trains are listed on the schedule according to their final destination. So in order for us to figure out what track our train was arriving at, we would have had to know that it's final destination was Naples. The ticket agent at the counter informed me we were looking for the train destined for Napoli. Sure enough we found it on the arrival/departure board listed as "Napoli". Glad I had asked.

Train arrived on the designated track, which we found without a problem. We had purchased our train reservations as well as our tickets online. Did I already go over how the whole ticket/reservation thing works? Ah yes - in Planning our Honeymoon. If you didn't read that yet, check it out - it explains why you need to buy a reservation as well as a ticket :-).

Our car was #4, so it was closer to the far end of the train than the near end, so we had a bit of a hike. Both Tim and I were really nervous about the whole boarding aspect. Both of us having taken trains in Europe previously, we knew that they didn't wait around - they left when they said they would and you typically had about 10 minutes total to find your track, walk to your car, and board with your luggage.

There was no reason to panic though. it was about a half hour before it departed. I guess if I had bothered to look at my watch I would have figured out we'd have more time :-) The luggage was the hardest part. Neither Tim nor I are very light packers. Tim will tell you himself he "packs like a girl" :-) Well hey - we were going to Italy for 12 days, and we needed to be prepared for dressy as well as casual outings. I took 4 pairs of shoes :-) Anyway - the luggage was pretty heavy, but we managed to lug it onto the train and drop it into the luggage bin at the front of the car.

The car was really comfortable. I guess that's not always the case, even when you book 1st class reservations and tickets... we were told by several folks (all Italian) that it depends on the railway and your destination. Our train was Eurostar Italia. The car looked and smelled new, and had nice big comfy seats that reclined, tables that folded away, etc.

We didn't have window seats, but the windows were big enough that we had a perfect view of the countryside throughout our trip, without having to lean over our neighbours. The train made two stops - the first in Bologna and the second in Firenze (Florence) and then it was straight to Roma. The entire trip was 4.5 hours. We were both glad we took the train though - it was well worth the extra time (vs flying) because we saw so much beautiful Italian countryside. The time flew - it didn't feel like 4.5 hours until we got close to Rome. The last half hour as we approached Rome consisted of tunnel after tunnel after tunnel... it was actually making us both a little sick because every time we went through a tunnel the pressure would change and our ears would constantly pop - it was actually painful in the long tunnels. Still though - it was a very enjoyable and comfortable way to get to Rome. We were happy though, to be able to get our luggage and step out under the beautiful blue Roman sky to hail a taxi!

We were able to locate the taxi line fairly quickly, and before long were sitting in a cab being driven to our hotel. In the taxi ride to the hotel, Tim managed to impress our cab driver AND me by informing him that we were in Rome on our Luna di Miele - literally translated, that's "Honey Moon" and is in fact the term in Italy for honeymoon. Unbeknownst to me, while we were on the train to Rome, Tim had been flitting through our pocket Italian dictionary looking this up. I really was impressed.

I had heard about these Roman taxi drivers... I mean, in movies, and on that TV commercial for Kodak Film - you know the one (you do if you have cable, anyway) - with the two girls who get into a cab in rome and get a whirlwind tour of the city, whizzing through Rome, pointing and shouting out as he drove past the colosseum and other famous landmarks as the girls snapped pictures. The pictures by the girl who didn't use kodak film came out blurry wheras the pictures of the one who did use kodak film turned out picture-perfect. Well - our taxi driver did not disappoint! That was our exact experience (minus the picture snapping. We had too many bags in the back seat with us). Our driver chattered on in a mix of Italian and English, gesturing wildly when he didn't know the right english word (sometimes with both hands!). And if we thought the drivers in Milan were mad, we didn't even know what to call the drivers in Rome. It was road chaos like I have never seen it (except for my trip in highschool for spring break to the Dominican Republic. Those drivers were way scary too) and we were right in the middle of it, and I'm sure creating our fair share of it as well.

As our driver zoomed around the cars that weren't moving fast enough for his liking, and squeaked between vehicles at a standstill at a light creating his own lane, and swerved around scooters only to have to swerve again to avoid hitting a cyclist, he pointed out the sights and gave us a bit of history between angry shakes of his fist to the imbecile in front of us who decided to wait for the light to turn green before moving.

We motored past the Modern Art museum, numerous churches and catherdrals and monuments and arches and remnants of the city wall, and passed through the Villa Borghese (more on that below) at what I was sure must have been record speeds for that particular section of road, arriving safely at our destination - the Lord Byron Hotel.

The Lord Byron Hotel is a 5 star hotel, and it was our little indulgence on the trip (one of the many, I guess, to be honest :-). This was, after all, our honeymoon! The hotel was amazing. The residential area in which it is situated appears to be an older and fairly affluent neighbourhood. Many embassies and ambassador residences were located nearby. The hotel is just up the street from the Villa Borghese. To look on a map, it is just north of it. The Villa Borghese is an expansive park, that contains a zoo, a beautiful lake, a dog park, many walking and running trails, and of course, paths that are lined with flowers and shrubs and statues and monuments, as is common in all of Rome :-). It goes from our Hotel all the way down to the Spanish Steps, and was the primary route we took to walk into Rome to shop and see the sights each day. It's a gorgeous park. More on that later.

We checked into our hotel and were taken up to our room on the 3rd floor. There are 5 floors in the hotel, plus the restaurant floor below the lobby. There are 28 guest rooms. It's a small and intimate hotel, yet definitely world class and worthy of its 5 star status. I imagine it is also frequented by visitors to the embassies that, as I mentioned, are located in the neighbourhood.

Our room. Our room was WAAAAAAAAAAAAY cool! Very unique. I have to figure out how to describe it. The room is probably a bit larger than regular, by European standards. It held a queen-size bed (not a King like in Crivi's Hotel in Milan), a desk, a set of drawers, a mini-bar and two closets. There was a large window, and also a large glass door that opened up onto a large balcony shared with 2 other rooms, that overlooked the front entrance to the hotel (which was quite a pretty view). But that's not all. The wall against which the bed was situated was mirrored from top to bottom, left to right, in its entirety, giving the illusion of a much larger space (I know what you're thinking. We're on our honeymoon, staying in a hotel with mirrored walls. I assure you it was very tasteful. And before you ask, NO - there were no mirrors on the ceiling). The closets were mounted on this mirrored wall. They didn't touch the floor. This was to provide space for the two bedside tables that were placed on either side of the bed. Opening the closet you looked way up and wondered how in the world you were going to reach the rod and hangers to hang your clothes. Until you discovered a pole that dropped down from the rod in the middle of the closet and figured out that if you pulled on it, it would actually pull the rod and hangers down until they were extended out of the closet and parallel with the floor, and at the perfect height for you to proceed with your unpacking and hanging. Then when you were done you just pushed the rod in and it raised everything back up and into the closet. Very clever use of space. If you still can't quite picture it, watch this little video:

The bathroom was large, and covered floor to ceiling in marble. It was beautiful. And I was delighted to find a large deep soaking tub, and complimentary bubble bath, waiting for me :-). I love my bubble baths!

The balcony as I mentioned was large. On it was a small round cast iron patio table, and 3 cushioned cast iron chairs. Oh - and a potted lime tree. Bearing limes. How often do you stay in a hotel with a lime tree bearing ripened limes on your balcony? Downstairs by the entrance were small orange trees bearing ripe oranges. Too cool.

Snooping around to discover what other treasures lay hidden in this room, I found two luxurious terry cloth robes bearing the Lord Byron Hotel emblem, and two pairs of soft terry slippers with the same LBH crest on those. Yay! No - we didn't steal them. We left them there.

Of course I had to try them on :-)

We quickly unpacked and washed up a bit, and set out to explore a bit of the city before dinner.

We decided to head down the hill and explore the Villa Borghese. We were delighted to discover the man-made lake at the top of the trail, which surrounded a small roman structure.

There were lots of people in the park. Many on blankets in the grass picnicking (or, having finished picnicking, indulging in a little... ahem... dessert), on park benches, strolling along the statue-lined paths enjoying a quiet and romantic afternoon.

At this point I do have to stop and talk a bit more about this park, or rather the people we observed in it. We strolled through this park daily - morning, noon, afternoon, night. And it didn't matter what time of day it was as we were walking through, invariably, on almost every park bench, on the grass, or standing up against a monument, we found couples making out. Not kissing. MAKING OUT. I kid you not. And sometimes they were really loud! Not moany kind of load, but smacking kind of loud. You know - the open mouth kissing sound? Shudder. I mean - it's kinda romantic and all - and very much in line with the italian (and in particular roman) stereotype with which I was familiar. But still a little odd. And it wasn't just the "young 'uns" either. Couples in the teens, couples in their 30's, couples in the 50's... couples in their 70's. It left an impression and I thought worthy of mention. It was all part of the Rome experience :-)

Anyway, we wandered through the park exploring, and eventually made our way to The Spanish Steps, or, translated in Italian, "Scalla di Spagna". It is interesting to note that the locals do not refer to them as The Spanish Steps. Before you say "duh", let me tell you they also do not not refer to them as "Scalla di Spagna". They call them by their real name - "Scalinata della Trinita dei Monte". Trinita dei Monte is the name of the church that is situated at the top of the steps. And it is not a Spanish church. It was founded by the French in 1495.

The steps themselves were built to unite two streets - Via del Babuino (one of the 3 main arteries that radiate into the city from the Piazza del Popolo (no - that is not the Pope's square :-) Popolo means "people")), and Via Felice. Since it's inception it has been a meeting place for locals and tourists alike (although probably more tourists than Romans). What do you do at the Spanish Steps? Why, you sit on them. You sit on the steps and watch the people and the city, eat an ice cream cone, read a book, or just hang out and talk. And we did all of that. Not all at once, mind you. We made several trips to the Spanish Steps. Mornings, afternoons, evenings. It didn't matter what time we came though, it was always lively and colourful and filled with people. A pretty cool place!

At the bottom of the spanish steps is the start of the main shopping district of Rome. We wandered through a couple of the streets - observing similar stores and people as were in Milan's fashion district. Although there were much more people.

In our wanderings we explored a few cathedrals. I have to say, the cathedrals and churches in the city were almost unrecognizable from the street front in many cases. Buildings and shops had grown up around them over the years, and unless you read the writing above the door or the plaque on the wall next to it, you wouldn't know until you had seen a few, that it was a church because all you could see was the front, which went up so high it was not possible to view the cupola or spire that probably existed at the top.

The churches and cathedrals were beautiful. Adorned with old, and often ancient, works of art - paintings, tapestries, and mosaics, gilded ceilings with depictions of angels and saints and heavens painted on them, marble columns and floors... they are definitely worth seeing. You won't see them all though. There are far too many.

  

After exploring the shopping area, a few churches, and the steps, we decided to catch a taxi back to the hotel, grab a nap, shower up and then go for dinner. I neglected to mention upon checking into the hotel we were given a voucher for 2 full-course meals in their 5-star restaurant. So we had already decided we would celebrate our arrival in Rome with a nice dinner in our hotel.

When we got back to our room we were pleasantly surprised to find a chilled bottle of champagne on the table with two glasses, and a note wishing us a pleasant stay. I remembered then that on our Itinerary our travel agent (Sarah at Elizabeth Holmes Travel) had put in a request for a room with balcony for "honeymoon". I'm pretty sure that was the reason for the champagne as well. What a nice way of recognizing the specialness of our vacation!

We decided to get a bit dressed up (Tim had brought 2 jackets and I a number of dresses in anticipation of getting to dress up a bit while on our honeymoon, but we didn't need them in Milan) and indulge in a little champagne before going down to the restaurant.

The meal was wonderful - all 4 courses (now that we were no longer eating 4 course lunches as well, we were finding the 4 course dinners much more manageable :-)). And by the time we had finished we were ready to turn in for the night, get a good night's sleep, and start fresh in the morning, ready to explore Rome in earnest.

Here are pictures from our first day in Rome.

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Milan Day 3

9/14/2003 - It's Race Day!!! The day we had waited for was finally here!
Race day started out similar to the other 2 days - woke up early, shower, dressed, and headed down to the lobby to meet the group and get on the bus. Georgio was our driver for this 3rd day. I think he had had plenty of rest the night before, and he was there an hour early this time just to make sure that he didn't miss us :-)

As you can imagine, the traffic SUCKED. But we had left plenty of time to get to the track. Even so, once we got into Monza itself, traffic slowed to a virtual halt. It took us about an hour to move about 10 feet. I'm not exaggerating. At this point we noticed people abandoning their buses in droves. A couple of folks from our group opted to walk as well and insisted on being let off. We were only about a 15 minute walk from the entrance but we didn't know that at the time. It was hard to see with so much traffic. About a half hour later, Steve decided to go see what the hold up was. He found the entrance and had us get off the bus. As we were walking I noticed that not only had passengers abandoned their buses, but a number of buses also had no drivers. That might explain why things slowed down a bit :-)

We got through the entrance and still had about a half hour walk to the stands. The excitement was in the air - you could feel it. And the entire grounds, no matter where you looked, was a sea of red - everyone decked out in the Ferrari colours (myself and Tim included, of course!)

We got to our stand about 11:30am. About 2 and a half hours after we had left our hotel. The driver's parade had started at 11:15am however.

The Driver's Parade is something to see and experience at most of the tracks. In Montreal for example, they brought in antique austin healeys for the drivers to be driven in. Similarly at other circuits special cars are brought in to take the drivers around the circuit, there's music, flags, and of course the infamous "pit babes" - the 6-foot tall, slim, model-type girls in short skirts, high heels, and spandex tops carrying the flags. Seriously! You'll see pictures of the Monza pit babes below. In Monza however for the drivers parade they pile all the drivers onto the back of a flatbed truck and drive the truck around the circuit. It's not quite as big a deal. So we missed out on the driver's parade but we were ok with that.

We wandered around a little bit and then headed into the restaurant for lunch. Lunch on Race day was similar to Lunch the previous day. Except there was most definitely an added sense of urgency. They began serving on the stroke of noon, and the Formula1 Grid presentation was scheduled to start at 12:45. The Grid presentation is pretty cool to see - it's when all the cars come out of the pits, do their reconnaissance lap, and then go to their starting grid spot in the formation. All the team members for each car swarm around checking the car, getting everything ready, etc (see Grand Prix Day 2 for more details). The Grid presentation is scheduled to be over by 1:15 and then the race starts at 1:30.

So the waiters had a daunting task ahead of them - feed all of these people a 4 course meal (plus champagne before and coffee afterward) before 12:45. They were a little stressed. More than once I caught the head waiter glancing at his watch, staring around the room in panic, and barking orders to his waiterlings. Service, food, and wine was it's usual high level of excellence though. Nothing suffered from the accelerated pace, and all of us patrons just wanted to get through the meal quickly and get to our seats anyway so we didn't miss anything!

We finished up promptly at 12:45 and raced up to our seats (along with everyone else :-)). Not a moment too soon, for the pit babes were out - two per grid position - flags waving, in their tight red miniskirts, tops, and heels. Even I was impressed :-). A marching band was brought out to play what I can only assume was the Italian National Anthem. We were all standing, and the Italians in the stands were singing so I'm pretty sure that's what it was :-). IT was quite impressive. They marched in formation while playing, making all kinds of patterns on the track. Pretty cool, and they sounded great! Huge cheers erupted when they finished.

Around each car there was a beehive of activity. Swarms of red around the ferraris, buzzing blue activity around the BMWs, yellow clad technicians scurrying around the jordan cars, green around jaguar, etc. Racks of tires out on the track along with fuel pumps and tools and computers on wheels. Tuning and measuring and tracking and tweaking and debating ensued for about 15 minutes. Then, a mad rush to the gate at the side to get off the track (there are very strict rules governing when the team technical staff must get off the track and I believe your car is penalized if you fail to adhere to these rules). At this point the Pit Babes march out in single file with the nation flag of the driver or car they were representing, starting from the end of the grid and working their way up to the front of the grid. Quite a formal ceremony it was, the pit babe exit from the track, which seemed at odds with their outfits and the obvious purpose they served but impressive nonetheless!

Flags courtesy of ITA's Flags of All Countries used with permission

Then the formation lap begins. The formation lap consists of all cars starting their engines, and when given the ok they take off at a measured pace and, staying in formation (no passing allowed unless under very very specific circumstances) they complete a lap around the track. At the end of the lap they drive back into their grid positions, engines running, and then the countdown to start begins.

If you haven't figured out by now given my vivid descriptions of the grid and what is happening in it as we watch, our seats were right at the start/finish line. In fact, to be more precise, our seats lined up directly with the pole position. The only people who had a better seat than us were the dignitaries to our left whose highly decorated viewing platform lined up directly with the checkered start/finish line itself. We couldn't have asked for better seats!

Next, the countdown winds down, the lights at the starting line go out and the race begins! And so does the real excitement!

Two cars didn't make it out of the grid at the start. One had to be rolled out of the way and back into the pits. The other eventually got going but ended up coming into the pits after his first lap.

It was taking about 1 minute and 22 seconds on average to complete a lap at Monza for this race. That's not the track record - I can't remember what it is.. I think it's around 1 minute, 20 seconds. They measure everything to the 1/1000 of a second - eg 1:20:124. Everything is very precise. No lap records were set at this Grand Prix, but a new F1 speed record for the track was set by Michael Schumacher - driving faster than 368 kmh on the pit straight! (Sorry... forgot myself for a moment. Or perhaps I should say, remembered myself for a moment :-) 368 kmh translates into over 228 mph :-))

It was actually a pretty close race for most of it. I won't give you the play-by-play. There are numerous web sites that document what happened and have great stories and photos, not the least of which is the Official Monza Web Site. Check it out if you are interested! I will say that for the first hour (race was over in about an hour and a half). it was pretty neck-and-neck between Michael Schumacher (Ferrari) and Juan Pablo Montoya (BMW). By the time there were just 10-15 laps left to go, however, Michael had a strong lead and unless something happened to his car or he made a mistake, he was the sure winner. And in fact that is what happened. Michael came in first, Montoya second, and Rubins Barachello, also Ferrari, came in 3rd.

Well you can imagine the pandemonium that erupted with Ferrari on the 1st and 3rd pedestals on the winner's podium!

Monza is one of the few places left where they open the track to the public after the race and you're actually allowed to walk on it. Montreal is another track and we actually did that. In fact I'm not sure if any place other than Monza and Montreal do it anymore. Both Tim and I knew this in advance and we had already asked Steve if it would be ok to have them wait for us while we walked the track after the race.

At about the same point that Michael established a clear lead, about 10-12 laps to go, the crowd started building in front of one of the gates that would be opened up onto the track. It was about 4 lines deep the first time Tim looked, and then a minute or two later, it had grown to about 12 lines deep, people shoulder to shoulder, the front line pressing up against the police barrier and the police straining to hold them back.

It was at this point that Tim and I looked at each other and decided that we were too chicken to try and face that crowd. We decided instead to sit back and watch. And I'm kinda glad we did because I've never seen anything like what happened next.

As soon as the race ended and the last car pulled into the pits, the police stood back, the gates were opened, and the crowd flooded the scene. It was like watching a huge tidal wave of red water breaking over the track - hordes and hordes of red-clad fans and flags of every nation, flowed out onto the track and started moving towards the elevated podium. People here and there would stop at the start/finish to kneel down and kiss it, momentarily interrupting the flow, which now looked like a fast flowing river about to crest its banks.

I believe the total attendance was 210,000. That's almost twice what we saw in Montreal. I don't think I've ever been in a crowd of 210,000 people. And I swear that at least half of them were on the track at this point.

As the drivers made their way out onto the podeum, the crowd erupted into cheers. I've never heard anything so loud. It was, as Tim says, pretty electric!

The awards ceremony proceeded, as did the obligatory champagne spraying, and at this point we made our way down to the restaurant to meet up with the rest of our group, grab a drink, and wait until the crowd had petered out enough for us to sanely make our way back to the bus.

What an experience!

I chose not to post many pictures here - just a few photos that will give you a bit of a flavour for how the day went. Tim has many more race day photos on his site if you want to check them out.

After the crowds thinned out at the track we made our way back to the bus. We had to find it - remember we left the bus in Monza outside the gates so we didn't know where it was going to park. According to Georgio it took about an hour and a half after we left to make it into the gate and to the bus parking lot! Glad we walked!

We eventually found the bus, and thanks to Georgio, who had the air conditioning at full blast, it was already nice and cool. I'm not sure if I mentioned yet, but the entire time that we were in Italy the temperature never dipped below 85 (most days it was around 90); never was there a cloud in the sky, nor was there ever a breeze. It was pretty hot, and it was also somewhat humid. And in a crowd of 210,000 people there's not a lot of opportunity to cool down.

Once we had everyone assembled we got on the bus and headed back to Milan. By now most of the buses had already left. It really wasn't terribly bad getting back into Milan. I think probably about an hour or so. Waiting out the worst of it in the restaurant definitely helped!

Tonight was our final night in Milan. Steve and Angie had made reservations at a family-run restaurant called L'Assassino which translated, is "The Murderer". I told you our restaurant names were going to be odd :-)

The food was absolutely fantastic - you're probably tired of hearing that by now. I can't emphasize enough how fantastic it was. We already miss it. So much, in fact, we've made reservations at our favourite Italian restaurant (Il Capretto D'oro - The Golden Goat), a mere week upon returning to Seattle. It's a wonderful restaurant and the closest we can get to Italy without climbing on another plane! But, as has become habit on this web site, I digress :-)

The food was wonderful, the wine was wonderful, the atmosphere was perfect, and the company was excellent! Tim and I really enjoyed the whole group. Everyone was so friendly, and very interesting, and we all got along well and had a lot of fun together. Not always the case when you throw 14 complete strangers from all across the continental US (and a couple from the UK for good measure) together for 4 days of intense (and scheduled) activity. But we couldn't have hooked up with a better group of people. I hope we keep in touch, and see them all again on future trips!

By now you know the dinner drill - wine, antipasti, wine, pasta, wine, meat or fish, wine, dessert, coffee. Same here. But I do have to make mention of the anti pasti course specifically. Rather than select from a menu, our waiter (I believe at the request of Steve) wheeled out this 2-decker cart full of the most amazing dishes, and he proceeded to select at random several samplings from multiple dishes for each of us as our anti pasti. All I had to tell the waiter was "no seafood" and I was presented with a plate that by itself could have been a complete meal. There were little meatballs, and steamed vegetables and salads (even a potato salad that was really great!) and tomatoes and mozzerella (the real stuff - from bufala - ahem - buffalo :-)) and a whole bunch of stuff. It was pretty impressive.

The ambience was perfect for our last night in Milan. It was filled with italian families and absolutely no tourists. Lots of jovial Italian chatter and laughter and even a singing of Happy Birthday in Italian, as we ate our meal. Here are a few pictures of our last supper in Milan

I was sad the Grand Prix was over (it went by so quickly) but Tim and I were also ready to move onto Rome, and Phase II of our Honeymoon - where it would just be the two of us :-)

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Milan Day 2

Grand Prix Day 2 is the qualifying session. Remember I told you (unless you didn't read the Day 1 entry yet ;-))The fastest qualifying time on day 1 gets to go last on day 2. The slowest qualifying time on day 1 goes first on day 2. Going last is considered an advantage because the track has better grip and traction due to all the other cars that have already gone and left their rubber on the road. So - the faster you are on day 1, the later you get to go out on day 2.
The goal of day 2 is to determine who gets "pole position" for the race on Sunday, and in general in what order the cars line up in the grid on race day.

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The Grid & Starting Formation on Race Day The starting grid is in a staggered 1 x 1 formation and the rows on the grid are separated by 16 metres. 30 minutes before the time of the start of the race, the cars leave the pits to cover a reconnaissance lap. At the end of this lap they will stop on the grid in starting order with their engines stopped. At the one minute signal, the engines are started and all team personnel must leave the grid by the time the 15 second signal is given. When the green lights at the start line are illuminated the cars begin their formation lap with the pole position driver leading. Formation within the formation lap is kept tight and no passing is permitted (unless it is to reestablish the original starting order). When the cars come back to the grid at the end of the formation lap they will stop on their respective grid positions, keeping their engines running. Once all the cars have come to a halt the 5 second light will appear, followed by the 4, 3, 2, and 1 second lights. At any time after the 1 second light appears, the race will be started by extinguishing all red lights. Those are just the basics. The rules are actually quite a bit more complex. If you're interested, check out the Official 2003 Formula 1 Sporting Regulations. There are 26 more pages of rules :-).

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However Day 2 was also our "Pitwalk" day. As part of the F1Tours Gold package, we received Pitwalk passes for Saturday at 7:30am. Yes - I said 7:30am. And, if you've read my previous days web pages, you know that means getting up at around 5:00am, to be ready to leave no later than 6:00am so that we can get through the Milan traffic and arrive in time to attend the Pitwalk at 7:30am. We had to ask for a wakeup call :-)

Despite Steve's supreme organization and planning, Georgio failed to show up at 6:00am on Saturday morning. Getting 3 hours of sleep a night, and having a "main squeeze" can do that to you :-) But we weren't worried. Steve called for two cabs, and we made it to the track in record time (record time compared to our previous record from day one. However we could probably have walked to Monza and arrived in record time in that comparison :-)). It all went very smoothly.

Not all tracks offer the opportunity to walk the pits. I think there are only a few left who do this. I know that the US Grand Prix in Indianapolis does pit walks. But from what I can tell they're a mob scene. Ours wasn't like that. If you want to do the pitwalk you buy a reservation for a specific day and time. And the number of people on the pitwalk is quite manageable. There was no mob scene. (well - there was a mini mob scene around the ferrari pit when they were revving their engines, but still nothing on the order of Indianapolis

Check out the mob scene in the pitwalk at Inianapolis. Ours was nothing like this - we got some GREAT pictures!

I think for our pitwalk we were also able to get a lot closer to the cars. And having Steve with us was a total bonus. He's been doing this gig for 20 years now, and has made a lot of connections with driver and staff of various teams. So he was able to get us behind the ropes of one team to get our picture taken next to an actual car! Way cool :-) The entire experience was very cool. Again - below are just a few pictures. Tim has many many (many many) more at

The Gold package also includes a seated breakfast and lunch in the restaurant below our seats. So let me explain how this works. Breakfast is breakfast - nothing really major here - pastries and croissants, coffee of course, juice, etc. The normal continental type of spread. But Lunch. Sigh. Lunch. Here's how lunch went for both Day 2 and Day 3 of the Grand Prix.

You start with a glass of champagne. This is quickly accompanied by a selection of Anti Pasti (basically the appetizer course). Typically this included a selection of cheeses, meats (proscuitto most typically, often served with melon) and breads. Sometimes it was a salad of some sort (caprese, or other).

You munch and you eat, and you sip your champagne, you talk, you laugh, you sip more champagne (because if you finish your glass before the anti pasti course is over, they will refill you, of course).

Finally the 2nd course begins. This is the pasta course. You are served not one but TWO selections of pasta. Each of which, if you were eating normally, would probably serve on its own as an entire meal. Lucky for me, often times one of the two pasta selections was a seafood dish. Blech. (unless you like seafood. Which I do not). But if any of the wait staff realized that I declined the seafood portion of my pasta course, they would come by and scoop extra helpings of the non-seafood pasta selection onto my plate. But who's complaining? It was great. Sigh :-).

Oh - I need to also mention that with the serving of the pasta course, the flow of champagne ends, the champagne glasses are taken away, and the flow of white wine begins.

It is here I must digress from the menu description because I need to offer a helpful tip to all you other north americans who have difficulty, when faced with a formal table set with 3 glasses, which glass is used for what beverage. The champagne glass is easy - you shouldn't ever have a problem picking that one out. It's the tall skinny flute. What you gotta watch out for is the wine vs the water glass. Both are shaped like your typical wine glass (and it is also interesting to note the same glass is used for both red and white wine in many establishments). One is slightly larger than the other. So here's how it works. For all you people out there who would reason that the larger glass must be the wine glass because you'd rather drink wine than water - YOU'D BE WRONG. The larger glass is the water glass. The smaller glass is the wine glass. Let me tell you how this relates to our story.

There are 4 of us - all of us are americans (I've lived in the US enough that I've granted myself unofficial dual-citizen status) - who have purchased the gold package. We go in to have lunch (which is served between the practice session and the qualifying session), locate our reserved table, and sit down. We drink our champagne, enjoy our anti pasti, and as the bottle of white wine and the bottle of water are placed simultanously on our table, we realize we're faced with a rather large and daunting decision. Which glass does the water go in, and which glass does the wine go in? None of us know for sure. We glance around at the other tables, but no one near us has been seated yet and the rest haven't poured their beverages either. Maybe they have the same question? Doubtful. They're all Italian. Well - being rather thirsty we decide that we'll all choose the same size glass for our water and that way if we're wrong, we'll all be wrong (there is comfort in numbers. Especially in a foreign country when you're about to commit a potential dining faux pas.). So we conduct a vote, and the large glass wins as the glass for wine, and the smaller one for water.

Right after we poured both the wine and the water, I glanced over at the table next to us and learned that we had, in fact, chosen wrong. However at this point in time we chose to blame the wait staff since in all reality they should have poured our beverages for us :-) At any rate, the wine and water didn't taste any different for being in the wrong glasses, and we figured being wrong was somewhat expected of us given that we're from the US, so we sat back, relaxed, ate our pasta and drank our wine figuring no one would notice anyway.

Now - the wait staff had in fact noticed. I am betting they were probably secretly quite appalled at what we had done. We were probably the butt of many wine/glass jokes in the kitchen. But they were very professional and kept their thoughts to themselves and continued to serve us as they would everyone else. And while they did so, they formulated a plan. A grand scheme to subtley get this table of uncouth americans to switch their wine and water around without even noticing.

Oh, they were good. They were very very good. I was extremely impressed with the subtle and masterful way in which they carried out this plan. None of the other tables noticed, and I for one was quite grateful to have been brought back into the land of civilized formal dining etiquette. Here's how they did it.

I was their first "conversion". At the point at which during our pasta course I had drained the last drops of wine from my glass, I moved on to my on my water. While I was sipping my water from what was supposed to have been my wine glass, a waiter stealthily moved in and poured water into my wine glass. NOTE - the wait staff was not pouring anyone's water. Water was something you poured yourself. He also knew I had water. It was phase 1 of their plot. I finished the water that was in my wine glass, and as soon as I did so the waiter returned and filled the glass with wine. Presto! I had been converted. I was now operating within the normal parameters of dining etiquette. The plan was a success. We all noticed, but no one else had. The same exercise was repeated for Tim, Judith, and Bob (our companions) as they finished their beverages. Now we knew, and now we could relax. We had been corrected :-)

OK - back to the menu description. Anti pasti and white wine was followed quite leisurely by the meat course and red wine (dining is a very leisurely experience. More on that later in the web site). The meat course consisted of one, sometimes two, selections of either a beef or a fish. I of course would decline the fish, and being wise now to their tactics, would also quickly cover my plate before they could slide a 2nd beef selection onto it (to make up for the lack of fish). I had to. It was the only way I was going to survive the entire trip without having to purchase a whole new wardrobe!

Meat and wine proceeded at the same leisurely pace. When it was all over the table was cleared, and we were offered dessert. Dessert was often a concoction of gelato and berries, or it was some kind of cake. Whatever it was, it was always heavenly. Sigh.

Finally, with dessert all done, coffee was served. Espresso of course.

So at this point on Day 2 of the grand prix, after getting up at 5am, walking the pits for an hour, and consuming 4 courses of absolutely delectable food and wine, I was ready for a hard earned nap. That was not to be - because we had to get back up to our seats in time for the start of the qualifying sessions!

The qualifying sessions are sometimes even more exciting than the race. This is where lap records are made as the drivers compete for the most coveted starting position on the grid - pole position. I think there's also a lot of strategy and some psyschology involved as well. You want to do as well as you need to in order to get pole position but you don't want to give all your secrets and tactics away. However you also want to show the other drivers what you're capable of and intimidate them a bit; make them think twice about tomorrow regardless of what their starting position is. Cause you're a threat and a force to be reckoned with. I dunno :-).

There is definitely a lot of strategy involved though. There are a lot of rules governing the qualifying sessions. For example:

- the driver who drives in the qualifying session is the driver who must drive in the race
- the car that is driven in the qualifying session is the car that must be driven in the race
- the car must be equipped with the same tires and the same amount of fuel for the qualifying session that it will be for the start of the race

That last one is a very interesting one. I believe it is also new for the 2003 season, and it has really helped step up the competitiveness of the races. If you think about it, it makes sense. The lighter your car is, the faster it goes. The less fuel in your car the lighter it is. Therefore, for qualifying session, only put as much fuel in the car as you need in order to complete the session, and your car will be as light as it can be, which will help you go faster. Tires also play a very important role. Your selection of tires is based largely on the current track conditions. If the track is really hot and dry, the tires you choose for your car will be different than if the track is cool and/or damp or wet from a recent rainfall. But if you are required to start the race in the same tires that you qualified in, then you need to put a bit more strategy behind your tire selection for the qualifying session. You need to factor in the anticipated track conditions for the next day.

There is also your whole pit strategy. It is not possible to complete an entire race without a pitstop. Even if everything is working on your car, you're going to need to refuel at least once, and you're probably going to need to replace your tires at least once. But if you plan a one-stop strategy (ie one pitstop for refueling and possible tire change) that means you're starting your car with a lot more fuel than someone who is planning a two-stop strategy. That may (not necessarily but may) give the other an advantage in the beginning while your car is heavier with more fuel and consequently moving more slowly. But then they are likely to stop for their first refuel before you, and by then you'll have burned some and made your car lighter, and theirs will be more full... Typically teams will plan for either 1 or 2 stops. I've only ever seen more than 2 stops when there has been something wrong with the car between refuelings.

There are all sorts of other parameters that go into deciding the pitstop strategy, the tires, the fuel levels, the qualifying speeds, etc. They have all kinds of really smart people and a lot of data and computers whose jobs it is to figure all this stuff out.

Anyway - in the end, they were quite exciting, and it was not necessarily a given that Michael Schumacher would take pole position (which, actually, he did :-)). And we had a fantastic time!

Yes - we do have pictures from Grand Prix day 2. I actually only included a small selection of the photos we took during the pitwalk and one taken at lunch. If you wanna see them all - more pitwalk photos and all of the qualifying session photos - check out Tim's pictures of:

- Grand Prix Day 2 - Pitwalk
- Grand Prix Day 2 - Qualifying Sessions

The ride home from Monza was uneventful. I should tell you though, that we learned that the bus finally showed up at the hotel at 8am, and was told to meet us at the track in the parking area, which it did, and which we successfully found. Georgio wasn't our driver though. I can't remember our new driver's name. He was very competent and we got back to the hotel very quickly. And he was pretty fun too!

We decided that afternoon to check out the infamous fashion district. I had done a little research and knew the street we wanted to hit was Via Monte Napoleone. We walked back up to the Piazza Duomo and followed the map to the street we were looking for.

I'm sorry we don't have any pictures of our actual window shopping experience. I think we were both a in a bit of a people-watching stupor to be able to remember to pull out the camera and take pictures.

We had definitely found the "hot spot" of Milan for fashion, as evidenced by the names in gold letters that appeared above the boutique stores, and by the large amount of glitz we observed on the tourist shoppers. Yup - this was it.

We ventured into one store. I can't remember if it was Prada or Escada or Dolce & Gabbana (say that fast over and over .It has a a nice rhythm to it :-). They all looked the same to me after a while.

I have never been in a store before in which I didn't know how to shop. Really. I walked into this place and I had no idea what to do. I was out of my shopping league.

The floor was divided into "nooks". Each nook had beautifully hung clothes around the perimeter. I swear every hanger of clothing was separated by the next by exactly 3.5 centimeters.

Each nook had an attendant. A woman or man impeccably dressed, hair and makeup perfectly done, and he or she was poised and ready.

Ready for what, I wasn't sure. I couldn't speak the language, although I'm quite sure they could speak English. But I didn't know what they were there for. I was afraid to touch the clothes myself because I suspected that was their job, but if I didn't ruffle through the rack, how would I know what I liked?

And even if I did figure out what I liked, there was only one of each garment on the rack. What if it wasn't my size? Where were they keeping the rest? And where were the change rooms?

Oh, the despair. The only thing that saved me was the knowledge that I couldn't possibly afford anything in the store anyway, so what did it matter.

I mustered up the best "I have money and I know what I'm doing and I could buy anything in this store if I wanted to" look on my face and I proceeded to "browse". Browse without touching, that is. I must have looked really odd.

The one time I did venture over to a rack, sliding a couple of hangers over to take a closer look at an item, Tim informed me later, the attendant immediately rushed over when I had walked away to respace the hangers. I asked if she had a ruler with her. Tim didn't understand. I bet she did.

Tim looked at shoes and belts. There were nooks with men's clothing and accessories. He found a pair of shoes he really liked, but they were $900 Euros. Do you know, my wedding dress cost $900. I'd be damned if Tim was going to own a pair of shoes that cost more than my wedding dress! Actually, Tim is extremely fiscally responsible. He took one look at the price (It couldn't have been THAT high end a shop come to think of it; all the items had price tags on them) he descretely put it down and walked away. Tim wasn't afraid to touch anything. That's one of the things that I admire about him. I tried to take his lead :-)

In the end it was a rather entertaining shopping experience. We were mocked in some stores (discretely, of course, but nothing gets past Tim!) because of the department store bag I was carrying around with me containing the department store sweater I had purchased on the way to the high fashion district. What was I thinking? I could have purchased the sweater on the way BACK from the high fashion district! ;-)

I did eventually find a store that was more my speed. Max Mara. I'm now a fan. I have no idea if it is Italian or not. Who cares. It was a little more user friendly.

There were of course all the usual non-italian designers in the area as well - Chanel, etc. And of course the jewellers.

There was also a lot of designer accessory stores. Like the designer baby stroller store. Again - I wish I had a picture. These things were quite outlandish! We actually did see a woman later pushing a designer carriage down the sidewalk, Gucci shopping bag over her arm. Wacky! Gotta love it :-)

The best part of the afternoon though, came on the walk back to the hotel. As we were passing through the piazza on the other side of that arched shopping mall we heard two very large, argumentative, voices. WE turned around and experienced our very first truly Italian Moment.

It was about 5pm in the afternoon and surrounding the fountain in the middle of the piazza were several groups of older italian gentlemen. Some were feeding the pigeons, some were holding a newspaper as if to read it, but all were engaged in extremely lively debate involving wild arm gesturing, and loud and passionate voices.

You could tell that no matter what day you came to this piazza, the scene would be the same - this was most definitely a daily ritual. Get a paper, go to the park, sit by the fountain, feed the pigeons, and discuss and debate with whomever happened to be there.

Two gentlemen in particular caught our attention. One standing with arms crossed and an expression as if to say "Impossible. Prove it. I don't believe you. You don't know what you're talking about". The other leaning inward, gesturing wildly, impassionately making his argument to his listener. We moved to the edge of the square, sat down, and watched. In a few minutes they reversed roles. And back and forth they went. Behind them were similar scenes of men in groups of 2 or 3 or 4, some shouting, some standing. Arms flailing. Voices climbing and combining into a mad italian crescendo. Pigeons fluttering to get out of the way as the arm gestures intensified. And the rest of the world walking by as if nothing was going on. Tim managed to get a few pictures to capture the moment. We should have made an AVI so you could have heard the sound too :-) Ah well!

The other thing that I wanted to capture was the prolific use of Motor Scooters as the primary mode of transportation. They were everywhere. And it was clear why. Traffic was awful no matter what time of day, but on one of these things you could maneuver your way through the worst of it or, if there wasn't enough room to squeeze by, you could ride your scooter up onto the sidewalk and escape the worst of the traffic that way. Apparently pedestrians do NOT have the right-of-way even on the sidewalks. Trust me :-) The other advantage the scooter gives you is it can slip through the smallest of alleyways and streets that even the little "smart cars" won't fit through. AND they're much easier to park on the sidewalk, and drive the wrong way down one-way streets (doesn't create nearly as much havoc).

Here are our sight-seeing pictures from Day 2 in Milan, after we returned from Qualifying Sessions.

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Milan Day 1

The Grand Prix is a 3-day event. Day 1, Friday, consists of an optional test session, a free practice session, and the first qualifying session.

The optional test session takes place in the morning. This is an opportunity for the teams to run tests on the track, gather measurements, metrics, try things out, etc. Not many teams opt to do this - most have done their testing earlier in the season. But a few do make use of the time.

The free practice session is just that. It is an hour during which the teams can run practice laps around the track.

The purpose of the first qualifying session is to determine the order in which the cars go out for the 2nd qualifying session on Day 2 (on Day 2, the cars go out 1 at a time to qualify. therefore it is necessary to determine the order in which they will go out).
Each car gets 2 runs on day 1. The faster of his 2 times is his qualifying time for day 1.

The fastest qualifying time on day 1 gets to go last on day 2. The slowest qualifying time on day 1 goes first on day 2. Going last is considered an advantage because the track has better grip and traction due to all the other cars that have already gone and left their rubber on the road. So - the faster you are on day 1, the later you get to go out on day 2.

And I knew all of that without looking it up (or asking Tim) ;-). See what he's done to me?

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Grand Prix Information For more info on Formula1 Grand Prix stuff in general, check out the following sites

- FIA - International Automobile Federation
- Formula1.com
- F1-Live.com
- GrandPrix.com

For more info on the Italian Grand Prix in Monza, check out the official web site of the Autodromo Nazionale Monza!

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Anyway - a number of us (not all of us - some folks went sight-seeing and shopping instead, saving their race energy for the big day :-)) attended the Day 1 sessions which went from 11:00am - 3:00pm with a break in the middle for lunch. Angie and Steve had rented a larger van with a driver to come pick us and take us out to the track and back. The track is not actually in Milan - it is in Monza. Monza is a very pretty town that is about 30 minutes away from Milan assuming there is no traffic. When there is traffic, which there always is in Milan, it can take up to an hour and a half! It also depends on how familiar the driver is with the route :-) Our driver's name was Georgio. Georgio didn't speak very much English, and he had never been to Monza before. He was also driving on about 3 hours sleep. I guess he has a second job at night in a bar or a restaurant or club or something. He also, as we learned later on, has "a girl". We taught him that in America we call that a "main squeeze" :-) The drive to Monza was quite an adventure - but a lot of fun! He was a pretty easy-going guy with a great sense of humour :-) And, in the end, we got there before the practice began at 11, and we got to see most of Monza, and some of the surrounding area to boot!

Here are a few of my pictures from Day 1 of the Grand Prix in Monza.

Tim took a whole bunch more great photos of the cars.

The Day 1 qualifying sessions finished at 3:00pm. It took us a little while to get back to Milan (but not as long as it took us to get out there - Georgio had an opportunity to take a nap while he was waiting for us, and Steve showed him a faster route, and proactively navigated). Angie and Steve had made reservations at a great restaurant for dinner later in the evening. (more on that below) so we had a bit of time to kill and we decided to take the opportunity to go and visit the main attraction in Milan (besides the fashion district, of course) and that is The "Duomo". Duomo is Italian for Cathedral. (If you want to verify that, see for yourself!). In Milan, however, when people say "Il Duomo", they mean only one cathedral. The cathedral.

The Duomo is in the center of Milan - quite literally. Milan's roads are laid out in spokes and concentric circles. The spokes all lead to the piazza (square) that contains the Duomo, and the concentric circles run around it. It's not quite as straightforward as that though - there are a lot of little roads, and alley ways, and weird bumps and turns and wigglies and other little concentrations of roads that branch out. But that's the general concept.

We're told by our concierge that the Duomo is about a 15-20 minute walk from the hotel, so we decide to give it a try. Very straightforward directions - go out of the hotel, turn left, follow the road until the bend, and then stay with the trolley tracks until you hit the center. Easy easy easy. We followed the instructions (stopping to take a few pictures of random statues and fountains and churches here and there, and to look in store windows on the way) and sure enough, found ourselves in the Piazza Duomo.

The Duomo is magnificent! It took more than 500 years to build (started in 1387, and finished in 1887) and is just an absolutely amazing architectural and artistic feat. And it's HUGE. Of course, as I was later to learn, it is dwarfed by St. Peter's Basilica but on it's own it is absolutely monstrous.

Across from the Piazza is an enormous arch that serves as the entrance to a shopping "mall". That too is quite impressive. If you pass all the way through the mall you find yourself on the edge of the infamous and exclusive shopping area of Milan A few blocks away is the main drag - Via Monte Napoleone. This is where all the top names in fashion and design have their stores. We saved that for another day. Suffice it to say we did a lot of window shopping in Milan, and no actual purchasing :-)

We had a great time wandering through the cathedral - the pillars reminded me of huge forests of giant trees - and enjoyed ourselves people watching in the Piazza, and checking out the mall. We left what we thought was plenty of time for the 20 minute walk back to the hotel, so that we could shower and change for dinner.

Now - remember I told you about how the streets of Milan are laid out - spokes and concentric circles with the Piazza Duomo at the center. Many of those "spoke" streets come very close together at the center, and it is very easy to pick the wrong one. And, since the spokes radiate outwards, if you stray too far down the wrong one before you realize it is the wrong one, you have quite a hike across the wheel to get back on the right spoke. So by now you've figured out that is precisely what happened to us :-) We were a little panicked but thanks to Tim's trusty sense of direction and navigation skills we eventually got back on track. And saw some interesting buildings in the process :-)

We got back to the hotel in time for a quick wash and change, and then we headed out to dinner. Dinner was at a nearby restaurant - about a 10 minute walk. The restaurant was called "Al Penny". Which translates to "To the Penny". Tony was our waiter at "Al Penny". Tony was very cool, and a lot of fun - it was a great evening! "Al Penny" is a bit of an odd name for an Italian restaurant. So I had to ask. "Tony," I said, "Why is this restaurant called 'The Penny'"? It clearly was referring to a real penny - the restaurant logo was on the window and one the wine bottles and it was clearly a penny. Tony didn't know but he told us he'd ask the proprietor and come back. And he did. With a strange story. I'm not sure I have it right because my Italian is limited to pasta dishes and coffee drinks, and Tony's english, although much better than my Italian, was still a challenge. I believe the story is this: Many years ago the proprietor went to America. I don't remember why - I think just for a visit. And on that trip he met a woman. The woman was apparently quite beautiful or at the very least, quite memorable. And either the woman's name was Penny, or she gave him some change and as she counted it out she said something to the effect of "to the penny". The proprietor returned to Italy but never forgot the woman. And when he opened his restaurant he decided to name it "Al Penny" as a reminder of her.

In either case, a good story. I should have known it would have involved a woman somehow :-) And very well told by Tony - he was very patient with me, and I think enjoyed hearing the story himself and relaying it back to us and was quite amused that I had even asked! I just wish I had listened better, or clarified at the time. But he was doing so well I didn't want to interrupt him!

We took a bunch of pictures from Piazza Duomo, from inside the mall (it has a name - I wish I could remember it) and from inside the cathedral itself. Oh - and a couple of those interesting buildings we saw when we were lost (ahem... detoured). And there are a couple in there of "Al Penny" and Tony too. And then a few shots of us straggling back up to our hotel room, tummies full of absolutely yummy Italian food and great wine, ready for bed :-)

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Arrival in Milan

We arrived in Milan at 4:50pm. Angie and Steve were already waiting for us at the Airport along with another group member who had arrived a bit earlier.

We got our first taste of Italian drivers on the way to the hotel. We were not disappointed! Steve and Angie had rented a van for the duration of the trip so that they could shuttle us back and forth to the airport. Angie drove while Steve navigated. It was the middle of rush hour, and traffic was worse than I've ever seen it in Seattle! Traffic signals, signs, crosswalks, and those lines in the road that form lanes are purely a suggestion in Italy. It was quite an adventure!

Our hotel was on the corner of a one-way street, and by the time we were approaching we were all pretty exhausted and ready to get out of the van and into our rooms, so we did what any good local Italian would do, and turned the wrong way onto the one way street and promptly drove the van up onto the sidewalk and parked it. Wish we had taken a picture - the entire proceeding was quite amusing :-)

A few pictures of our arrival in Milan

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Departure for Italy

Our honeymoon began on Wednesday 9/10/2003. It actually began on 9/9 - Tim took the day off work, and I took a half day to prepare, pack, etc. Truth be told, I actually started packing the Sunday before (I was a little excited) and Tim went into his usual "travel mode" the evening of 9/8. Despite, or perhaps because of, his 15 years of constant traveling, airports, and suitcase-living, Tim goes into his "travel-mode" about 24-36 hours before any trip that will last more than 1 day. He needs at least one full day to prepare and pack and sort and file and zip and organize. Me - I just need the night before and morning of. His stress level kicks up a couple of notches around the same time too, and doesn't really settle down until we're settled into our seats of whatever mode of transportation we are taking. I know this, and yet I still manage to push a few buttons every time we travel. But as we were wandering the airport waiting for our flight, Tim did take the time to point out several other couples doing the same, the husband of which would be talking in low sharp whispers and the wife strolling along just rolling her eyes or responding back with a "don't snap at ME... it's not MY fault the flight attendant's computer wasn't working"... and each time Tim saw such a couple he'd say "See? You're not the only wife whose husband is snapping at her for no reason!" :-).

We flew British Airways because they had a direct flight from Seattle to London, and because they are generally a comfortable airline with good service. Our plane was scheduled to depart Seattle at 6:40pm and arrive in Heathrow at noon local time on 9/11. We were then to catch a connecting flight at 1:45pm which would arrive in Milan at 4:50pm.

Tim arranged to have a car pick us up at home and take us to the airport, which was very comfy. We arrived at the airport a little more than the required 2 hours prior to departure. It being a Wednesday afternoon there really weren't any lines and the airport wasn't terribly busy which was nice.

The start of our trip was no less perfect than the rest of the honeymoon would turn out to be. The attendant that was checking us in heard us whispering about our honeymoon to each other while we were waiting and took the liberty of upgrading us to business class! Not a bad way to start :-) We were pretty giddy after that, and on the entire flight over to London (the champagne they served us during takeoff probably helped too ;-)).

We took a few photos at the airport and on the plane. They're a little goofy. We tried hard to amuse ourselves while we waited to embark on our honeymoon adventure :-)

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My First Marathon - Jan 12th 2003

I ran my first marathon - 26.2 miles - on January 12th 2003

I use the qualifier "first" because it is entirely conceivable that I will run another someday. I'm loosely targeting the 2005 Walt Disney Marathon as my next full marathon... we shall see :-)

The tale begins in June of 2002 when, as I was home sick, a pamphlet arrived in my mail advertising the American Stroke Association's "Train to End Stroke". (You should know that a number of fairly significant decisions have I made while at home sick after receiving an unsolicited phone call, house call, or mail. Our security system, for example - signed up for free installation after answering the door to an ADT salesman while home sick. Our replacement of all of our single-pane metal windows with double-pane insulated top-of-the-line vinyl windows? Decided after answering a phone call from an Andersen Windows salesperson while home sick. The marathon? Decided after reading a pamphlet I received in the marathon... while home sick. I have regretted none of these decisions, and they all have turned out QUITE well, I must say. An equal number (if not more) of my significant decisions have been made while completely healthy, so I'm not terribly worried. But I find it an interesting phenomenon, none the less. :-)

I received this pamphlet in the mail in June of 2002. I have no idea how it is that I got on their mailing list. I don't believe I had made a donation to them previously. In fact, I don't think *I* was on their mailing list, rather "current resident" for my house is how the pamphlet was addressed. At any rate, I opened it, and read it, and by the time I finished I was convinced that I could walk a full marathon without a problem, that it was a good cause, and that it would be a lot of fun to go to Jamaica.

Hmm... you're scrolling up to the top of the page, re-reading that first sentence, and thinking "Hey - what's this walk a marathon in Jamaica thing? i thought you ran a marathon in Florida". I have to admit - running had not been my original plan. And, I had thought of the two destinations (Walt Disney, or Jamaica) that Jamaica would be the more fun (certainly more exotic).

If any of you knew me in high school, and more precisely, had the misfortune to share gym class with me in high school, you'll remember from those days that a runner (or any other kind of athlete), I was not. I was one of those students in high school who hated gym class more than anything else because it brought down my grade point average. I was NOT one of those girls who would fake her period to get out of gym class - I'd grit my teeth and get through it. But I did NOT enjoy it. Any aspect of it. I did not enjoy getting beat across the legs with a broomball stick in the winter. I did not enjoy playing volleyball in gym class and getting glared at by my team mates every time I missed a volley. I did not enjoy running the laps around the track and feeling like my teeth were going to fall out . I did not enjoy falling behind the pack while cross country skiing. I definitely did not enjoy having 5 minutes to to get out of my stinky sweaty gym clothes, redo my hair (Remember - I went to high school in the eighties - there was a lot of hair spray involved) stuff my bag in my locker, collect my books, and run to class. And, perhaps more than anything, I did NOT enjoy not being the best (or even being average) in gym class.

But, as with all stories on this web site, I digress :-)

I looked up the ASA web site to find out when and where the information meetings for our area were being held so that I could learn more about this marathon. I found an information session scheduled for July in Bellevue and immediately signed up. I then thought it might be fun if I could find someone to do the marathon with so I called my friend Jenn, told her all about it, and she signed up for the information session too.

It was Jenn who set us on the path of running the full marathon. Her reasoning was twofold - 1) that if we're going to go to the trouble of training for a marathon we might as well run the damn thing and 2) if we ran it, it'd be over with quicker (she had done the math to back this up - calculating precisely how much time it would take us to walk it vs run it). I could hardly argue with such logic, so I agreed - let's run it.

At the information session we learned about how much money we had to raise in order to qualify for The marathon (I don't remember the exact totals), learned about how we would be trained, and we heard from some stroke survivors - which I found truly inspirational. By the end of it there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to do this.

We ended up signing up for the Jamaica marathon and over the coming weeks attended our first preparation session where we met the rest of the Seattle-Tacoma "Train To End Stroke" (TTES) team and our coaches, received our training schedules and started learning about equipment, nutrition, training, and fundraising.

Thanks to the generous contributions of my co-workers, friends, and family, and to the charitable donation matching program of the company I work for, I was able to raise the necessary minimum and then some quite early on in the program, which really helped to put my mind at ease and allow me to focus on the physical and mental preparation, and not worry about fundraising the whole time (thank you, all of you, who donated!)

Starting Saturday August 2nd 2002, the team met every saturday at a different point along the burke-gilman trail for our weekly "long run". They didn't start out very long - I think my first run was 3 miles - and then they incremented by a mile each week until we got to 20 miles (early december), after which we started backing off 1-2 miles per week. Prior to our first run, the longest I had ever run was a mile, and that was back in highschool. And I hated it then. I wasn't sure what to expect for this 3-mile run. I was in pretty good shape - had been doing high impact aerobics and 4-mile walks almost every day for the 2 1/2 years prior to starting the training for the marathon. But I had never really put myself to the "test" to see just what all that walking and aerobic activity had done for my cardiovascular system. I still had images of myself at the end of the 4-lap mile run we'd do in gym class, out of breath, lungs hurting and gums stinging. Let me tell you - that first 3 mile run we did? It was a BREEZE! I was SO excited. At the end of the run I was feeling GREAT! Energized. No sore lungs or gums. No out-of-breathness. All that exercise I'd been doing for the prior 2 years actually WORKED! I was FIT! Even more fit than I was in high school (which wasn't all that fit I'm thinking now ;-)). I really felt like I might just be able to run 26.2 miles! Woohoo!

And that was how I felt every saturday just about, up to and including our 10 mile run. I hit a bit of a hiccup on the 12 mile run, but then sailed through the 14-mile run the following week. 16 was tough, but 18 was a tad bit easier... and I was finding throughout that the amount of exercise and my eating habits for the week played a fairly significant role on our "long run" saturdays... if I worked out on Friday, I'd perform poorly on Saturday. So I made Fridays my day off. If I ate red meat the night before, I felt more sluggish so I'd usually have pasta or chicken friday nights for dinner. There was one week where I had taken the week off from work. And I was so excited because I planned to work out every day (except friday)! I roller-bladed 13 miles on monday; I went for a 6 mile run on tuesday; I worked out for an hour and a half on wednesday and thursday alternating between weights and the cardio machine. I took friday off. But saturday - the day of our 12 mile run - I was exhausted. I ended up walking about 4 of those miles and realized that even though I had taken Friday off, I was still recovering from the rest of the week. I was a total slug that day.

It was really quite an interesting experience to put my mind and body through these paces every week while training. Some weeks were good weeks, and some weeks were bad. And I learned that even careful attention to nutrition and training schedules, etc. doesn't guarantee a good run on saturday morning. Sometimes you just have bad runs. Maybe it's stress, maybe it's lack of sleep (or too much sleep), and maybe it's boredom or lack of inspiration some days. But I got through them all, and the feeling of personal accomplishment after each run (because each run I did became the furthest I had ever run as it was always at least a mile more than the previous week) was like nothing I had ever experienced before.

Amazingly enough (especially for Seattle), it rained only one Saturday morning the entire time we were training (August 2nd - end of december). It got cold towards the end of the year, and it rained many other days, of course. But we only ran in the rain once on a Saturday that whole time!

The Jamaica marathon was scheduled to happen in December 2002. the Walt Disney marathon was scheduled for January 2003. The decision to run in the Walt Disney marathon, as fate would have it, was a decision made for me and not by me. While on one of our Saturday runs in October 2002 I fell off the running trail and severely sprained my ankle. I want to point out that the reason I fell off the trail was because I was attempting to avoid a large flock of cyclists who were coming up behind me at what sounded like an alarming speed. I moved over to the right to make room and they swarmed past me - they sounded like angry bees. There were so many of them and the noise was so startling that I lost my footing, and rolled onto my ankle and off the trail. I was in excruciating pain and within seconds my ankle had swollen up to the size of a watermelon. The cyclists didn't stop. Even when I shrieked, fell, and started crying. But a number of very kind and concerned pedestrians did, and tried to help. One of the runners on my team also came by and ran ahead to let the coach know where I was. I ended up having to walk to the nearest road intersection to be picked up. I was miserable. I was unable to train for weeks, and there was no way I was going to be ready to run a full marathon in December, so I worked it out with our coordinator to switch to the Disney Marathon in January. Someone was looking out for me up there because in retrospect I think it was probably the more fun of the two and the better of the two for a first time runner like me. Everything happens for a reason :-) I had a great physical therapist who got me back up and walking (and then running) and eventually I worked my way back up to where the team was at that was preparing for the Walt Disney Marathon.

Before I knew it, it was December. December 2002 was a pretty cool month, and a pretty busy one! We closed on our property (5.6 acres that is the site of our future dream house!) on December 12th that year. And Tim proposed that same night (obviously, I said yes ;-)). My birthday was on the 13th of December. My parents arrived around the 16th or 17th, and my Sister a couple of days later. We had Christmas, I went dress shopping with my mom and sister for my wedding dress and brides maids dresses, we hired a wedding consultant, Celebrated new years. Oh - and I worked out and trained and continued getting ready for the marathon in January ;-).

Before we knew it, the time had come to head to Florida! The marathon was on Saturday the 12th. We arrived Thursday morning, I believe. I spent Thurs and Fri registering, getting my number and my shoe chip (that is what determines your official time), browsing through the sports & fitness exhibition, and generally trying to relax before the big day.

We stayed at the Animal Kingdom Lodge - it was FANTASTIC! What a great hotel! Had a lot of fun walking through the grounds and watching the giraffes and rhinos and elephants and gazelles and exotic birds going about their business all around the hotel.

The night before the marathon, ASA held a pasta party for the entire ASA Train To End Stroke team - which was a few thousand I think. Teams from cities all across the US. Great food and a lot of fun, if slightly overshadowed by some nervousness and anxiety for the big day.

We were supposed to be at the starting line by 6:00 the next morning. Buses were coming to pick us up at our hotel at 5:00. Which meant I wanted to be up by about 4:15am. Which meant I wanted to get to sleep around 7:30pm! We left the pasta party early, headed back to the hotel, and I got everything ready for the morning - laid out my running clothes, after-marathon-clothes & bag (they let you bring a bag that they store for you. One of the BEST tips I got from our coach was to put a pair of sandals in your bag (along with fresh socks, pants, shirt, couple of apples, gatorade, towel, brush/comb), set out my breakfast which consisted of 2 energy bars, gatorade, and an apple for the bus ride (I had discovered during training that having gatorade and a couple of energy bars for breakfast was the perfect way to start off a long run day for me. Everyone is different, but this worked for me). And then I climbed into bed.

As luck would have it (for Tim), there was a football game or baseball game or something on tv to keep him occupied. He was very sweetly watching it at very low volume but it proved to be enough of a distraction that I wasn't able to fall asleep. Tim took my not-so-discrete tossing & turning and mumbling as a hint, and headed down to the bar to watch the rest of the game :-) When he came back up I still wasn't entirely asleep, but close enough.

We had called the front desk for a wakeup call at 4:15. The phone was on Tim's side of the bed. So at promptly 4:15 when the phone rang and woke me from a very very deep sleep, I bolted upright and reached over Tim to make a grab at the phone. However in my half-asleep-but-startled-awake state, I neglected to reach over Tim and ended up punching him in the eye. Really hard. That woke him up pretty fast.

Feeling really bad, and after apologizing profusely and trying to make his eye better, I finally scrambled around Tim and answered the still-ringing phone.

I had forgotten we were in Disney World. I answered the phone expecting a concierge-like voice to tell me that it was my 4:15 wake up call. Instead I got Mickey Mouse, telling me to "Rise and Shine" in that chipper Mickey voice of his. It was perfect :-) This was going to be fun!

I showered (have to start the day off with a shower!), got dressed (2 layers; it was in the mid 30s around 5am), ate my breakfast, and headed down stairs.

Tim went back to bed for a couple of hours before heading over to the park so that he could watch the marathon and look for me :-)

The bus was late getting there, which added to everyone's nervousness. But they finally arrived and took us to the marathon starting point. From there we checked our bags and walked out to our "corral". Because most of us were amateur runners, we were in one of the last corrals which was a good mile and a half walk from the starting line, I swear. The faster you are (using official times from other official marathons) the closer to the start line your corral is. This is so the slow people don't trip up the fast people. Makes sense. A couple of more experienced runners on our team decided to go to a closer corral. I went to the one I was assigned to. I think it was "K". Then proceeded to warm up with other members of the team that I was with, stretching, etc. They were playing peppy music on huge speakers all along the starting line, and every once in a while goofy or mickey or minnie or donald or daisy would talk to us or to each other about the marathon and how exciting it was, and how cool we all were, and what great athletes we all were. Sounds cheesy, but it worked! I was feeling excited, and healthy and ready (if still a bit nervous!!!) And finally - the countdown started. Mickey and Minnie and the gang started counting down, and so did the rest of us, and then with a blaze of fireworks and crescendo of music we were off! Now, there were about 18-22 thousand people there. So we started off at a slow walk, which gradually turned into a brisk walk, which gradually turned into a slow trot, and then a slow jog and eventually we were almost up to normal marathon running speed - but it took some time

How to describe the marathon itself? There are no words! But I'll see what I can do.

We started running in the dark - it was 6:30 and just above freezing. But I barely noticed. The first part of the route took us through Epcot Center and was truly inspiring and energizing. They had all of the buildings lit up - coloured lights everywhere, and all kinds of disney-esque music from all over the world blaring through speakers that lined the running path. It was so cool! Really set us off on the right pace.

26.2 miles is a long way to run and it is impossible to not have to stop to go to the bathroom along the way. the course is prepared for that with port-o-potties at every other mile marker, but 21,000 people is a lot of people to compete with for the dozen or so bathrooms they had at each location. And when you gotta go, you gotta go. Especially given how much liquids I had been consuming over the last week in preparation for the big day. So it was just shortly after the start of the marathon that I learned the secret to marathon bathroom breaking from those who had clearly been-here-done-that before me. In retrospect it is actually quite an entertaining sight - marathon countdown ends, race start is signalled, and everyone starts to run... straight towards the woods off to the right of the running path, guys dropping their running trousers to take a leak, women squatting next to or behind a bush. En mass I swear, hundreds of runners made a break for the tree line within 5 minutes of the start, and there was a steady stream of back and forth of this for the first 5 miles I kid you not. And if you thought yourself above all that and resolutely determined to make it to the port-a-potties at the next mile marker to pee in dignity, you only stood in one of those lines once before casting aside your inhibitions and squatting in the tree line with the rest of them.

For the first 9 miles, I had to pee non-stop. It's not a very glamourous image, is it? Marathon running is not glamourous :-). Our coaches told us to expect that we'd have to constantly "go" for the first few miles of the marathon. I thought that constant feeling of my bladder about to explode would never end. It's bad enough when you've gotta go and you're stuck in traffic, or somewhere sitting down. Try having to pee and running at the same time. Your bladder will love you. But, despite the fact that I would just turn right around and pee it out, I consumed replacement drink and water at every location. Better too much than too little.

After about 9 miles your body, I think, starts to realize "Hmm... she's not going to stop this running thing any time soon, is she? And she's going to keep pumping us full of this water and gatorade stuff every couple of miles, no matter what, isn't she? We might want to hang on to some of this stuff if she's going to keep it up - we'll probably need it. Who knows what other hell she's going to be putting us through and for how long. Ok everyone - She's in it for the long haul. Let's not let this stuff go to waste. Time to grin and bear it."

Then the constant need to go to the bathroom diminishes, and you can settle down and just run, which is nice.

It was also right around the 9 mile marker that I noticed I was running 10 minute miles. Me. 10 minute miles. Sustained. For 9 miles! I was running 12 minute miles (5 miles/hour) at the start of training. At my peak in training I was running 5.5 miles/hour. Not that I kept close track of that stuff - my goal was to finish; I had set no time goal. But I did want to try and keep a consistent pace throughout the run, so that I didn't start out too fast and end up burning myself out early on, and so that I could gauge how I was doing and feeling (compared with training). Each mile marker had a digital clock so that I was able to tell how fast it was running based on how much time elapsed from one mile marker to the next. And I noticed at about the 9 mile marker that I was consistently arriving at the mile markers at xx:y2 (eg 06:42, 06:52, 06:62, etc). I was amazed and shocked, proud of myself, and in complete awe of my body and what it was capable of doing for me - I wasn't out of breath, I didn't feel like I was running too fast, in fact I felt GREAT! So I decided to slow down a little bit so I could prolong this feeling and make it to the end of the marathon :-). That's when I learned how easy it is to get caught up in the energy and excitement of 21,000 people running with you, adreneline flowing through you, music everywhere, people cheering you on... I often wondered what if any effect fans had in a stadium cheering on their team - if the players even noticed it and if so, if it really gave them any sort of lift. There were people lining the marathon path almost the entire way, cheering all of us on ,extending their hands to high-five us as we passed, shouting jumping and waving. And they were all total strangers to me, but that didn't matter - it gave me an extra boost of energy every time we ran through such a crowd - I found myself feeling stronger, running faster, and gravitating towards the sides of the path so I could touch the outstretched hands. It was so cool.In football, this effect is called "the 12th man". I don't know what it's called in running. But whatever it is - it works. It makes a difference!

Disney did an incredible job hosting the marathon, from the planning of the course, to the lights, music, decorations, to the AWESOME volunteers who lined the path and were there cheering us on at every mile marker and beverage stop, and all of the big and little details in between. IF I had to use one word to sum it up, it would be "Magical". Which I think is appropriate. It is the Disney marathon, after all. All of the disney characters were out for the marathon - Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy, Goofy, Pluto, Buzz Lightyear, Winnie the Pooh (and piglet too!), snow white and the seven dwarves, Cinderella and her mice, Simba, and Lilo and Stitch, Peter Pan and Wendy, and every other Disney character you can possibly think of. They were jumping and waving and cheering. Many runners came prepared with disposable cameras and stopped and snapped photos of themselves with each of the characters. I might do that next time :-) All in all, it provided a wonderful distraction from the running - having the characters out there, wondering who you were going to see next. And during the parts of the run where people were unable to congregate (ie parts of hte freeway) to cheer us on, Disney had placed bug bulletin boards with disney trivia questions and answers on them to distract us. "Name the 7 dwarves in Snow White"... by the time I had figured all but 1 of them all out, the answer bulletin board appeared with "Sneezy, Dopey, Grumpy, Sleepy, Happy, Bashful and Doc". Doc. That was it. I always forget Doc.

Well, I will spare you the mile-by-mile commentary. You've heard about the first 9... miles 10-16 were similar. around mile 16 I was starting to look forward to the 19 mile marker where I knew our seattle coaches and mentors would be waiting for us. That thought distracted me and kept me going at the same time... I think for miles 16, 17, and 18 I was constantly thinking to myself "not far now to the 19 mile marker; you can do it; only 3 more miles to go; only 2 more miles to go; not far now to the 19 mile marker; you can do it; only 1.5 miles to go; only 1 mile to go; you can do it; don't stop; almost there; you can probably hear them; is that them? Waving? It's them! Wave! run! Keep running! You can do it". Rebecca, our coordinator, snapped my picture as I ran past and waved; one of our coaches volunteered to run with me for about a mile which was awesome - I needed it. And then, the 19 mile marker was behind me and I was at the 20. The coach had gone back to run with someone else. And now I noticed my feet hurting. Not unbearable; but they were definitely sore. I had passed the 19 mile marker. The end was still 6.2 miles away and I didn't really relish the thought of spending 6 miles thinking "only 6 more miles to go... not far now" considering how long it had felt getting to the 19 mile marker from the 16 mile marker. That's when I started thinking of Tim, my Mom, my Dad, my sister, all the people who donated money to me because they believed in what I was doing, and believed in me. I started imagining Tim along the side lines somewhere cheering me on - I knew he would be there but didn't know exactly where, so my thoughts turned to trying to spot Tim in the crowds that I passed, while trying desparately to ignore my hurting feet. My mantra for miles 20 and 21 when I wasn't trying to spot Tim was "my feet DON'T hurt. Feet, you do not hurt. You do not hurt, feet. They do not hurt. My feet don't hurt. My feet feel fine. They feel great. Feel great, feet. You must feel great. Do not hurt. I can do this. I can finish this. I'm almost there. And my feet do NOT hurt."

Except, they did hurt. So I walked miles 22 and 23.

Mile 24 found me some renewed inspiration. I only had 2.2 miles to go. I could DO this. I was almost done! How many times have I run 2.2 miles in the last 6 months? Well hell! I'd run it 10.9 times today alone (math provided to be a great distractino throughout the race - I'd calculate my precise pace from marker to marker and the precise time I'd expect to cross the finish line if I maintained pace, and by the time I had sorted that out, I'd have run a mile and would start again). What was 2.2 miles? It was NOTHING. And that became my new mantra. I picked up my feet and started running. And they didn't hurt! The crowds were getting bigger and louder. I was almost there! The trail started to turn back into Epcot Center. We were almost there. Finally I could see the big ball in the distance. The finish line was just past that. I passed the 25 mile marker. 1.2 miles to go! I can DO this! I was starting to feel great again. I wasn't moving very fast, but I was running, and I was smiling, and I knew that I was going to finish this marathon running!

As we entered the main center of Epcot, the trail passed under a huge arched arbor and lining the inside of the arch were all of my friends who had started the race with me - Minnie, Daisy, Donald, Goofy, Pluto, Chip, Dale, and everyone else - they jumped up and down, and clapped, and waved and held out their hands and gave me a high 5; overhead I could here majestic disney orchestra music thundering my welcome to Epcot; At the end of the arch a huge fountain blasted water and a rainbow appeared overhead in the mist as the orchestra was reaching its frenzied crescendo and my heart welled with emotion and my eyes started to blur, and I was feeling so triumphant as I ran, choking back tears of pride love and awe and...

then I stopped being able to breath. I couldn't breath! I was here, 0.2 miles away from the finish line and I couldn't breath. I tried to breath. Nothing. I couldn't take in air. Oh my god! I'm not going to finish the marathon because 0.2 miles from the finish I got choked up with emotion and couldn't breath. I was going to pass out 0.2 miles from the finish. I was NOT going to do that. I had to get a hold of myself. Get a grip, Heather. You did not train for 6 months, and raise $3500, and fly all the way across country, so that you could pass out 0.2 miles from the finish just cause you got a little emotional. Stupid stupid stupid. So I kept running, I forced myself to calm down, and I breathed. And then I breathed a sigh of relief.

So - it is important to remember that a marathon is precisely 26.2 miles. That 0.2 miles becomes very very important towards the end. Because you're not done when you pass the 26 mile mark. You still have 0.2 miles to go. And those are the longest 0.2 miles that you'll ever run. It takes forever. But you know you can do it. After all, what's 0.2 miles? And how many times have you run 0.2 miles today already? Well, 1300 times to be exact. What's another 0.2 miles after having run 1300 of them already? So I kept on running.

I turned the corner to run the last bit of the last 0.2 miles, and that's when I heard my name. "Heather!" "Heather!". They couldn't be talking to me could they? There must be at least a hundred Heather's if not more, running this marathon. Then I saw him - Tim. Tim! Tim was there! I started running towards him happily - "Tim!"... Then he pointed - "No, no - don't run this way - go THAT way - go, Go!" and I looked in the direction he pointed and saw it. The Finish Line. There it was! "Go, go!" he yelled and I started running towards it. He ran with me on the other side of the chainlink fence that separated the spectators from the runners. I could see the clock. I could see the photographers. I could see the big banner. And I could see Mickey Mouse waving me on! I picked up my feet and started running faster ("faster" is a relative term after 26.2 miles, of course), and I felt like I was flying! I was doing it! I was running across the finish line! I was DONE!

Tim ran over to meet him and I hugged him and cried and smiled and laughed and hugged him and kissed him, and I think I kept saying over and over "I did it! I did it!". We headed over to the finishing area where they were handing out aluminum blankets and then headed over to the medal rack where I was presented with my Gold Mickey Medal, and had my picture taken for posterity. I was DONE.

I gathered my bag from the checkout place, and sat down on the ground, and changed my shorts, and shirt (I had peed at least a dozen times in front of 21,000 people; I wasn't going to balk at changing my clothes in front of them too now. Besides - I was wearing my bathing suit underneath, which proved to be the absolute most comfortable undergarment to wear during the run - sweat absorbing and no chaffing). I pulled on my trackpants and sweatshirt, changed my socks and slipped on my sandals. I ate my apple and drank my water. I stretched. I ate my power bar. I stretched. I drank more water. I stretched. And then we got up and walked around and finally headed over to the ASA booth where I checked in to let them know I finished, and hugged my coaches and Rebecca.

Then - we headed over to the bus to take us back to the hotel.

First thing I did in the hotel room? I used a REAL toilet with toilet paper and a flusher and everything. I will spare you the details; suffice it to say I was in there for a REALLY long time. Next thing - I took a shower. A really long, hot shower. It was a beautiful thing. Third thing - I drank more water. And then? I went down to the gym room, hopped on a stationary bike, and pedaled with no resistance for 30 minutes. That was the other valuable tip I got - from my physical therapist no less - as I started getting into the 16, mile runs during training and finding my muscles tightening and waking up the next morning stiff and unable to move, he suggested in addition to stretching and walking around, I pedal on a stationary bike with zero resistance to help get rid of the lactic acid that had built up in my muscles, and to keep everything loosened up. So I biked for 30 minutes, and then? Then I went into the pool for a swim and a walk. The "weightlessness" of being in the water felt really good on my leg muscles. After about 20 minutes in the pool I headed upstairs for another shower. And then Tim and I headed into Downtown Disney to stroll around and help me keep loose. Then it was back to the hotel where I crashed on the bed and did some serious power napping before our victory celebration that night.

I was stiff. Really stiff. And really sore. When I woke up from that nap. It was all I could do to move. And I had to pee again. One thing I didn't mention was that by the end of my marathon my legs had swelled considerably with water retention. And my body was finally realizing I was done and that it could let go of all of the excess fluids it had been holding on to while it tried to figure out what I was doing to it. The swelling went down over the course of the next 2 days, and I swear I've never spent so much time in the bathroom ever. The other odd thing that happened to me - both of my big toenails were bruised. Apparently this is not uncommon for long distance running either. Interesting - it had never happened in training. And I was stiff. Really stiff. And really sore. Did I mention that already?

But I was still much better off than some of the other participants. I saw one woman in a wheelchair - she had stiffened so badly she couldn't move and had to be wheeled around. I mentally thanked my physical therapist for his sage advice as she was wheeled past me.

The celebration dinner was a lot of fun. Lots of people broke out the beer and wine, but there was no way I could consume anything but water and fruit juice - the thought of an alcoholic beverage made me feel dehydrated. And then it was over and we headed back to the hotel for a well deserved night's sleep.

The next two days were spent playing in the disney theme parks. We had a grand time, Tim and I! I wore the 10th Anniversary marathon jacket I had bought when we first arrived, everywhere we went, and was praised and complimented and thanked for my participation and given the warmest of welcomes everywhere. We had a total blast and it was over way too quickly. But I will never forget it. Any of it. Ever. It was one of the most magical and extraordinary experiences of my life.

Pictures of Tim and I enjoying Disney World after the marathon are posted on the crappymusic web site at http://www.crappymusic.com/DisneyMarathon/index.htm .

Below are pictures of me during the marathon. Taken by photographers who were located throughout the course; you could sign up before the marathon with any number of these companies who would take your picture throughout the marathon and then allow you to purchase them (they have to be able to see your number; so there are no pictures of me for the first 8 miles or so, when I was wearing my heavy sweartshirt due to the cold).

My official time was 5:23:39. (the clock in the pictures reflects the time since the starting gun; my official time reflects the time from when I crossed the start line, to when I crossed the finish line. Remember it took me about 12 minutes to get to the starting line given that I was in corral K).

I finished right in the very middle of my gender & age group. Not bad for a first timer, huh! ;-)

Check out photos of me during the race.

And in the days that followed the race, Tim and I had a great time exploring Disney World.

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