Saturday, October 31, 2009

Halloween

31 October

There wasn't supposed to be rain today, and for the most part there wasn't, but most of the time we were cycling through a mild mist. Phyllis said it was perfect weather for Halloween.

We thought we'd try to meet up with Ken's ride in Princeton but, on Carter Road, when we had only ten minutes to get all the way to Mountain Lakes, we bagged that idea. The roads were wet anyway; his ride was probably canceled. So we returned to the original plan: to see decorated yards in Lambertville.

Big Joe and I traded off leading, making the route up as we went along, trying to find a route that would avoid traffic, puddles, and piles of wet leaves.

We were rather damp and covered with road splut when we reached Lambertville, but on Union Street a few blocks south of Rojo's we got our reward. Joe and Phyllis rode on ahead while Mighty Mike and Mike B. stayed with me while I shot this video:



The "clunk" you hear early on is an acorn hitting the car next to me. I think that's Mighty Mike doing the sound effects at the end but I'm not sure. They were standing behind me.

Poor Kermit. I'd just put him through the wash and gave him his annual ghost costume. Now he was filthy again.

Mighty Mike had a flat at Rojo's, which gave me enough time to buy a bag of coffee. East Timor this time; it's only available for a few months of the year.

We didn't get very far before Mike's tire was flat again. This time the Mikes pulled out three separate, tiny, pieces of glass, or something.

We rode in and out of rain the rest of the way home. It was the Mikes who pointed out the autumn colors along the Stony Brook.



That's as good as it's going to get around here. Half the leaves are off the trees already, and with the wind the way it is, there won't be much left on the rest of them by tomorrow.

Don't forget to set your clocks back tonight.

Up next: Florence, Italy.

Europe 2009 Part 3: Turin

24-26 September

The train station in Turin was full of graffiti. We hauled our bags up and down stairs before we finally found a way out that got us to the other side of the tracks. By the time we checked into our room it was nearly two o'clock.

This wouldn't have mattered in London or Paris but it mattered here. Most shops and restaurants close around 1 or 2 p.m. and don't re-open for a few hours. The clerk at the hotel desk, who spoke as much English as Jack speaks Italian (i.e. not a whole lot but he can fake it) told us, in Italinglish, where to find an open cafe nearby.

So we walked around the corner and found one. The menu was on a chalk board out on the sidewalk. It was confusing because it was one of those choose-one-from-each-section menus, but we didn't understand that part. It took two waitresses, in tag-team fashion, to help us through it, Jack speaking what little Italian he knew while I just sort of smiled a lot.

Along with some pasta I'd ordered a plate of spinach. Before cooking it the waitress showed it to me. I thought she was just checking to see if that's what I wanted. What she was really saying was, "I'm going to cook this whole mountain of spinach so I hope you'll still have room to eat it." Which I didn't. Jack did his best to help so as not to make these overly pleasant staff unhappy.

The waitress and barista seemed enchanted with us. They didn't get too many travelers. Along with our food they gave us an Italian lesson. We asked them how to order tap water, and they told us.

I ordered espresso. Now, as you know, I like my coffee strong. The darker the roast, the better. However. "This tastes like the bottom of my French press," I told Jack. I mean, there comes a point where the strength overpowers the flavor, where anything interesting about the bean is shoved aside by the taste of burnt something. Now it makes sense why espresso is doled out by the drop. Anything more would be impossible.

I added half a pack of sugar, which would have been more than enough for an American sized cup. Here, in five or six milliliters of espresso, the sugar turned to syrup. I drank it anyway, vowing to try again some other time.

I took a picture of our lessons learned.


Aside from two workmen drinking espresso at the counter we were the only people in the place. We left them a thank-you note in the best Italian Jack could muster. It helps that he knows Latin. It doesn't help that I know French. I kept trying to Italicize French words. That didn't work very well because the words came out in Spanish, a language I thought I'd forgotten. Or maybe I was just speaking some sort of Latinate gibberish. Despite that I sometimes made myself understood, as long as Jack and I were trading off words.

We were in good company, though. The Torinese were fascinated by English, with some amusing results. First, this gambling shop across the street from the cafe:

Then this store closer to the center of town:

In the pedestrian shopping district I found this:

Original, preppy, undercover marines maybe? If so they're sure recruiting young these days.

The hotel rules posted on the door were another source of amusement.

"1. If a fire principle is characterized, set in action the alarm push button nearly
2. Maintain the calm;
3. To it marks them of the alarm, leave the place;"

and so on. They did get "Don't use elevators" right.

"10. If some person found itself with the dresses sets fire to you, and for no reason she never must run because the air would feed the fire. In these cases try to suffocate flames covering them with one covered or of the dressed:"

Sure. Whatever you say.

The next day we set out to explore. We went to the Palazzo Vecchio, about which I already blogged. I only have so much patience for Medieval and Renaissance art as it is, but by the time we finished with the palace I'd seen quite enough Madonnas, naked angels, and Jesus penises. And don't get me started on the number of dresses that just happen to fall off of one shoulder for some gratuitous boob.

I had as much trouble finding vegetarian food in Turin as I did in Paris; the cooking in Turin is very French-influenced. Jack scoped out some Piedmont wine.

Jack wanted a fancy dinner so we found a place, outdoors in a piazza. I don't even remember what I ate, but Jack had a fabulous time. There was cheese with honey and a risotto made with berries and champagne (yummy). The bread was good, too, which, we found out later, would be an exception until Venice. We watched the moon sink behind a church at the other end of the piazza and then went wandering in search of gelato.

On our second day we wandered into a street market that went on for blocks, turned right, and went on for an even longer stretch. When we saw a dried fruit stand I got greedy and wound up with a kilo of dried everything. Strawberries, cranberries, mango, kiwi, pineapple, peaches, pears, far more Euros than I'd intended to spend. The supply ended up lasting us about six days; we ate it for breakfast and whenever we got the munchies.

Since we were hauling a kilo of fruit around anyway, we decided to find some cheese and bread, and then find somewhere along the hillside to eat it all.

We found a German vendor selling pretzel bread, the real thing.

These pictures don't capture the size of the market.


We crossed the river Po. Hooray, another picture of a river by Perpetualheadwinds. At least it's not the Raritan this time.

Our plan was to climb the hill outside the city for a good view. First we found a bench near the bottom where we could eat lunch. I made a fair dent in the fruit kilo and snarfed down most of the pretzel. I said I wanted to go back and get another one on the way home. Jack figured the market would be closed by now.

Anyway, the view:




As best we could figure, we were looking at a small vineyard:

After we got back to the bottom I took a picture of where we'd been. The building was a museum that we decided wasn't worth going into. I did get to go in to use the bathroom. Looking around I determined we'd made the right choice.

Back on the city side of the Po we sat on the grass in a park and watched rowers go by.

Then we walked back home, through the street market again. Even though it was close to 6 p.m. much of it was still going. The pretzel lady was still there so I got another one. The fruit guy had re-stocked. Some vendors had set out generators to power lights over their stalls.

We dropped our stuff in the hotel and went out again in search of dinner. Passing the market again at nearly 8 p.m. we saw a dozen or so vendors still sticking it out.

Turin hosted the Olympics in 2006. Three years on it was obvious that the city was sliding back into what it had been before the big cleanup. There was graffiti everywhere, not much of it interesting. I like graffiti when it's colorful and creative. There's some really good work along the Northeast Corridor train tracks just outside of North Philadelphia that I gawk at on the way into work. Nothing in Turin comes close to that.

We checked our email twice at internet cafes. It was a good thing we'd checked a second time: our hotel reservation in Florence had been canceled. Shortly after making our reservations a month ago our credit card number was stolen and the card frozen (to Bank of America's credit, they found the fraud before we did). We got new cards within days but the Florence hotel tried to run our old number. Jack spent a dramatic half hour on the phone. The hotel had already given away our room but were kind enough to find us a spot in a hotel around the corner, run by a woman who spoke no English.

We had gelato again after dinner.

The next morning I stuffed the dried fruit into my backpack and boarded the train for Florence. The scenery wasn't as good.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Europe 2009 Part 2: Paris

23-24 September

We arrived in Paris mid-day. The first thing we noticed were the beggars as we stood in line at a cash machine to get Euros. They were all women in baggy dresses. Picture your stereotypical beggarwoman and there you have it. We had no cash to give. That's why we were in line at a cash machine.

After we found our hotel we walked around the city for the rest of the day. We came upon one after another Velib stations: parking spots for Paris' commuter bike system.


The bikes are locked in. For a fee you can release the bike from its lock, get wherever you want to go, and lock it up again at the nearest Velib parking spot. At first I thought, "Well, that's a nice idea, but who's gonna bother?" Turns out a lot of people bother. Velibs were everywhere. We must have seen a hundred people riding them, especially as the working day ended.

We wandered along the Seine for a while.


Jack endured the rare event of my taking a picture with people in it.

More Seine:


We watched barges go by. Many of them had obvious living quarters in the rear, complete with curtains in the windows, houseplants on deck, and sometimes even cars on the roof.

Below is a barge docked at the edge of the river. It's tough to see, but there's even a privacy fence on deck. It's behind the canopy.


We stood on a bridge waiting for more barges to pass so I could get a good picture, but none had a car on top.

We strolled to Ile de la Cite and got some gelato. Then we headed south again, towards the Sorbonne. Somewhere in there we went into the Jardin des Plantes. The Plant Garden. Paris keeps tight reins on its greenery. There's very little of it outside of proscribed gardens.

Here, for instance, near the Sorbonne, is a typical Parisian street view:






Jack liked the way the setting sun hit the gold lettering so I took a picture for him. As best I can make out, the words translate to, "Props to the Big Guys."

We had dinner near Gare de Lyon, where our train would leave tomorrow for Turin. Now this is a train station:

In the hotel room was our first encounter with English translation so bad it was funny. Below is a page from the hotel's handbook in our room.

The third item reads, in French, "Babysitter et lit bebe sur demande." The translator, who apparently knew just enough French and just enough English to be clueless, wrote, "Babysitter and reads baby on inquiry." Um, no. It's "Babysitter and baby bed available." (Lit is the word for "bed" but is also the verb "reads.") But, anyway, here, if you need your baby read, they'll apparently do it. This calls into question one of the items farther down on the list, "Personnel polyglotte," translated as "Polyglot staff." Not "multilingual," mind you. That would be too obvious, and, clearly, wrong.

The next morning we left the baby reader behind and boarded the train for Turin, crossing flat countryside that gave way to a section of the Alps along the French-Italian border. Below are the pictures I took from the train window.

First, early morning:



A caboose! I never see those anymore.

"One of these things is not like the other..."

Now we get Alpy.

The yellow stripe is a reflection from the window sill.





My camera takes a self-portrait:







On the other side of the mountains, in the Piedmont area of Italy, is Torino.