Dog Days Are Over

I've returned home to sweet Montreal and hit the ground running. But I get ahead of myself.

My last few days in England were magical. I had a lovely easyjet flight from Nice to London and made my way back to Oxford from Gatwick, which isn't the quickest route. Unfortunately, I hadn't planned ahead and was ill informed about buses. Instead of a direct bus from the airport to Oxford centre, I was sold a ticket from Gatwick to London to Oxford. Not quick. Not direct. But, at least I saw London!

It turned out to be well timed. The entire bus ride back, I was texting J to figure out who was going to get to Oxford first. She was taking the train from Brizzle and I was old-school bus-ing it. The race was on! I went black ops on the texting when she wrote that her train was pulling into the station. My bus ended up stopping at every possible stop to let people off. When the bus finally pulled up to Gloucester Green, I hopped off and made my way back through the familiar town that I had grown to love to the home that I had become attached to. Along Jericho St, within my first few minutes of being in Oxford, I ran into people that I knew. Love that town.

I of course stopped in at the grog shop to pick up some vino to celebrate my return and as I exited, I saw a tall, leggy platinum blonde girl walking along the other side of the road. I of course cat-called to her. It's times like that I wish I were able to whistle. It turns out that J and I had planned our arrival perfectly! After many hugs, we strolled along to our home away from home and walked in to the cozy Oxford nest. It was a really great night with lots of catching up and wine. Once we finally both admitted that we were knackered, we settled into the Canadian room and had a lovely sleep over.


The next day, we had a really slow start to the day and the finally got ourselves sorted out and headed to Portmeadow to enjoy the sun and warmth. We brought our poi and our books and had a perfect afternoon. The only thing that could have made it a little better would have been a little less goose and duck poo all over the grass. Damn foul fowl. Who do they think they are?


The rest of the day was more of the same. When we felt appropriately sunned, we headed back home and timed it with the arrival of A, N and R, just back from a friend's birthday party in London. After a brief family meeting, we decided that we were going to make a break for it and head to the country.

J and I were incredibly excited to get back to the Cotswolds. A quick 40 minute drive later, we pulled up to Calcot and settled in for a few days of lovely British countryside.

I was shocked by how much the garden had changed from when I was there a month earlier.

In just a few short weeks, there seemed to be an explosion of colours and shapes in her backyard. I could almost imagine the three fairy godmothers from Sleeping Beauty flitting around the garden and pointing their wands at the different flowers to add a splash of colour. Or... I could picture the cards from Alice in Wonderland propping up a ladder against different plants and painting the roses red. Except in this case, the roses were tulips and the red was more of a palette of colours.

Things had bloomed and grown and greened. It was GORGEOUS! That garden is A's pride and glory. I can't imagine how much work it must take to make it so beautiful. In one spot in the kitchen, you can stand and see through the four sections of the garden, all the way to the pasture in the background.

Her garden is an incredible work of art, like a living painting.

There was a great moment when we arrived. The drive to the cottage had involved a 30 minute talk about colours, during which A spent a long eloquent time telling us how much she loathed orange and yellow flowers.

This wasn't new to me. I have heard her say this before. She seems to take their colour as a personal offense. So, we get to the cottage and my first stop is the garden. I walk out and my eye is instantly drawn to a beautiful patch of orange and yellow tulips that are in direct view of the kitchen. Obviously J and I spent the next few days teasing A about this.

The garden really did blow me away.



We went on a long walk through the countryside. When we left, it was warm and sunny, by the time we returned, we had seen sun, rain, rainbows, hail and then more sun.

At the beginning of the walk, I saw an old tire swing by a pond and managed to bully a little kid off of it so that J and I could play on it! After my bullying instincts were satisfied, we continued the walk and passed by old mills, beautiful streams, lovely countryside...

LAMBS! It was lambing season. At one point, J just said "LAMBS" and started running toward a fence. Before I realized what she was talking about, I found myself running to see the absolute overwhelming cuteness of fluffy white lambs.

Newbie

Can you see the umbilical cord?

The best part is that we saw lambs that had JUST been born. One lamb and it's mom had been fenced off. Another mother and baby were in the corner of the field and as we walked up, we saw the lamb take its first few wobbly steps. The mom still had traces of the birthing sack (or whatever that bloody mess is called) on her backside and the baby still had a yellow sack covering its back. The lamb had an umbilical cord trailing from its tummy as it ran after its mom, trying to gain access to some yummy sheep's milk.

The rest of the walk was nice, except that at one point, we noticed that the cloud cover was getting quite dense. Sure enough, ten minutes later, it started raining. Then hailing. Being the troopers that we are, we kept walking. A kept telling us that there a pub just over the next hill. She was lying most of those times. By the time we got over the last hill, there was a pub. For some reason, on top of closing early, pubs also close in the afternoon. A noticed that I hadn't planned my wardrobe for rain and that my previously white shirt was no longer very opaque... Cunning woman that she is, she sent me ahead of the group to talk our way in to the pub for a drink. One round of drinks later, we had the very nice bartender call us a taxi to take us home to warm up in front of the Aga.

The next two days were spent playing Blokus, Charades and reading in the garden. The first of my tearful goodbyes happened at the train station when we dropped J off for her train back to Brizzle.

The night before my flight home, I said another tearful goodbye to A and R. (Something tells me that I'll be having a lot of these over the next two weeks.)

N drove me back to Oxford so that I could pack and get ready for my long flight. I didn't end up sleeping and got to the airport at 4:30am, 4 hours before my flight. It was wayyyy too early, but the advantage was that I was able to upgrade to first class... meaning that I got drunk the entire flight.

The stewardess came by my big comfy seat as everyone was boarding...
"Hello Miss, would you like orange juice or sparkling wine to start?"
My answer: "Yes!"

Needless to say, the 7 and a half hour flight passed by in a daze and I was the first one off, the first one through the doors where I ran to my mommy who was waiting patiently!
Home sweet home!

Happy news!

Check out the bottom of the page, under "The ecological impacts of economic inequality"

http://gonzalezlab.weebly.com/research.html

AND

My bio and picture will be put up on the website for the GIFTs research project I'm working on!

Holidaze and Rivieras

I got a bed in a dorm and before I had time to grab my things to go do some work on the GIFTs project, I made a friend. And then another. And then another. And then another. OY. Needless to say, I got no work done, partied til the wee hours of the morning with my new friends and woke up to my friend calling me to ask when I was coming over.

Ap, who I know from McGill Enviro program, graduated last April and I hadn’t seen her since. We arranged a place to meet and had a much-needed cheesy run and hug moment on the street J I stayed with her and her dad at their apartment, which was in the process of being packed up. Her dad just retired from his job at WFP and they are moving to Florida. Ap just got into a masters program at Columbia! It’s so amazing to see where all my friends from enviro are going and what they are specializing in. Our group of friends from McGill are scattered all over the world now and even if we haven’t spoken in a while, all it takes is a little message and it’s like no time has passed!

It was so wonderful to see her. We spent a lovely few days together and I got the food and shopping tour of Rome that I wanted. The days were filled with lots of sun, laughing, giggling and catching up on the past year. We did a little bit of sightseeing. Ap kept luring me to interesting places with the promise of good food. Sneaky.

I booked a flight to Cannes to come visit my aunt and uncle. My uncle was here working and my aunt came to play! It was so great to see them. We shared a lovely teeny apartment that turned out to be just perfect for the three of us. It was like extreme luxury camping. My first full day here required a change of wardrobe. I had packed for late winter/early spring and the weather has since changed to summer. Hot, sunny, summer. Poor me. I know. But, I get grumpy when I’m hot and sweaty. So, new clothes were needed. The morning consisted of a long walk to find a non-existent public pool with my aunt and her cousin B, also here for work. The afternoon consisted of a very successful shopping mission, during which I purchased the exact items I wanted.

 
Yesterday, we woke up and had a lazy breakfast on our sunny balcony and then headed out for our day of exploring. Our mission was to find a coastal walk on le Cap d’Antibes. My aunt and I took the train down the coast a little and got off the train in Antibes. We navigated our way around and then hopped in a taxi and were dropped at the beginning of the trail. 

The walk was glorious. The trail was beautifully constructed from carved flat stones and laid out perfectly along the edge of the water. We stopped to eat our prepacked lunch at a perfect spot with a chair-like perch on the white rocks of the cliff. Our view while eating lunch was of the pristine blue sea, with little white sailboats bobbing along.

Auntie M and I made our way back to Cannes. An easy bus and train ride later, we were back in town, just in time for me to skype with my GIFTs supervisor. 

After my “work” meeting, I headed back to our cute little apartment and we got ready to go out for dinner with a friend of theirs from the biz. The restaurant was an Armenian place where the menu is set and the food is plentiful. Too plentiful. 

What ended up being the appetizers had filled us all up. Then there was the main course. Then there was the second main course. Then dessert. By the end of it, I thought I was going to pop. Their friend was a riot. He is an Austrian Jew from Uruguay who is constantly mistaken for a Spaniard in his own country. He had a wonderful way with words and kept us entertained throughout the meal. Very intense, funny and interesting. He requested that I make him sound taller than he is. 

I sent the aunt and uncle off on their next adventure to Barcelona and stayed behind to relax in the apartment in Cannes. I spent the last two days catching up on my GIFTs work, reading and lying in the sun on the balcony. Nothing extremely exciting, but exactly what I wanted to do. 

Now, I'm heading back home to Oxford for a few days before I head back to Montreal. My wife is meeting me at the homebase tonight and she is staying for a few days. A is taking us to the country and I can't think of a better way to finish off nearly four months of jumping around than spending some time in the country with loved ones. 

Ischia to Capua

After a few days in Ischia, we decided it was time to move on. After a few days of ho-humming, we got our act together, decided on an agriturismo inland between Naples and Rome and made our way there for two nights.

 

We drove through this tunnel

 



The agriturismo was in Capua, which is just off of the autostrada, and I would be surprised if that town had ever seen non-Italian tourists. We were constantly surprised by the fact that no one spoke English. It is an arrogant tourist thing to say, I know, but true!

We spent two lovely days in Capua, exploring the teeny town and surrounding areas. On the drive back to Rome, we stopped at a mini-coliseum in Capua. It was spectacular. And empty. We were the only people, let alone tourists there! This was an area where they would train the gladiators before sending them off to Rome to fight in the Colosseo.

The drive back to Rome was speedy and easy, with one more stop along the way for lunch. We ended up in a little town at a non-descript resto where we had the best pasta of the entire trip! After lunch, we had some time to kill so we drove up the mountain, in search of a grotto. We kept getting distracted by different signs and fun-looking roads so we never actually made it to the cave. We did find a little cemetery overlooking a man-made lake with snow-capped mountains in the background. After having satisfied our sun-needs, we hit the road again and headed to Rome. I dropped A and dad off at the airport and headed into Rome to find a hostel for the night.

I is in Ischia

Hide and Seek Peacock

Nice Castle!

It has been awhile. I’ve been slacking on the blogging. What I haven’t been slacking on is the fun-having, food-eating, sun-worshipping and life-loving.

I have to backtrack now to remember all the good times that I have been lucky enough to enjoy over the past two weeks.

One thing I feel I must mention, is how incredibly lucky I feel to be graced with such wonderful loved ones. I have just been bouncing from one wonderful person to another over the past few months and I can’t even begin to explain how fortunate I feel to have such great people in my life. I must have been a saint in a past life to be blessed with such an amazing existence. I know that tragedy, sorrow and difficult times make for more interesting reading and more well-rounded people… sorry to disappoint folks. It’s been all smooth sailing on my end with no waves in sight. That is, other than the waves I’ll be crossing tomorrow, on my way to Ile Ste-Marguerite, off of Cannes. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Our time in Ischia was… well… wonderful. We were there one week before tourist season and so there were very few annoying people crowding our space. The only downside was that the thermal baths around the island weren’t yet open to the public. Lucky for us, I had managed to book our apartment somewhere with a thermal bath just metres from our door. After a first night of fitful sleep with me worrying that I had made a big mistake booking us at this place, dad woke me up like he used to when I was a kid. (No, not by sending the family dog outside to get cold feet before he would put him into my bed… that one was reserved for my big bro! ;) 

The Caterpillar!

I woke up to freshly made coffee, a view to take one’s breath away and a suggestion to hop into the thermal bath before I sat down for breakfast. 

The view was perfect. We had a big balcony that had a panoramic view of the island, with Mount Epomeo on the left, the Villa Ravino Giardino in the center and the bright blue Mediterranean on the right. My fears that I had chosen the wrong place to stay quickly disappeared when A walked in and had already visited the garden. Phew.

We spent one day touring the local town market and stocking up on delicious food for our kitchen. We were directed to the market by a string of locals who understood our charades for food. The market was relatively small with two fish stalls and three fruit stalls. A and dad found the fish stall they wanted to buy their food at. The fishmonger was such a character. A huge rotund man with hands the size of my face, he started laughing and responding to my dad's silliness. I've never seen fish that was so fresh. I actually saw one that was still alive. No joke. I didn't want to tell the man in case he just smashed it with his huge hands and fish juice went flying everywhere.

San Angelo

Another day was spent driving around the coast, trying to find the beach that supposedly had thermal springs shooting off into the Med. We didn’t find it. What we did find was my intolerance to narrow roads that barely allowed our little car to pass through. OY. My poor nerves. We did find an adorable little town called San Angelo with a Presqu’Ile, jutting off of the end of it. A and I went to find a place to sun ourselves on the flat rock overlooking the bright blue sea.

The next cloudy day found us walking up the highest point on the island (Mt Epomeo) which had the self-proclaimed title “the best panoramic view in the world”. Unfortunately, it was too cloudy to judge, but it was REALLY cool! We drove up partway and then parked and hiked the rest of the way, through what I can only imagine were ravines, roughly carved out over the years by gushing water. The higher we climbed, the more the terrain changed from quite lush forest to ashy-white stone that was easily broken up by hand.

As we climbed, we passed by men who were cutting down trees in the woods. A called it coppicing and it seemed like a very efficient forestry management technique. They could cut one tree trunk in every ~10m² patch. That truck, after many years, would sprout one or many more trunks and then the men (I assume) would return and cut another. It’s like shaving! You cut them down and they grow back thicker and more plentiful. How is that for a visual? Except in this case, it is more like selective shaving, since there weren’t many trees being cut. I also noticed that they were careful of where they selected the trees. No trees were cut on steep inclines, I assume to ensure that erosion wouldn’t occur.

At the Top!

A volcano with a view

Back on track. We climbed to what I assumed was the very top, and found a few little vineyards at the base of what I can only assume was an old pilgrimage site. It was a church or chapel (no idea what the difference is) carved directly into the cliff of Epomeo. I should mention that Epomeo is an inactive volcano. Hence the ashy-white stone and the really interesting rock formations. We climbed around the top and found a little trail that would lead to the very highest peak. A had disappeared at this point, so dad and I made our way up. I left him at a point just past his comfort zone, holding onto the rock. I pranced onwards to see how high I could get and what I could see. It turned out that the path was carved out ALL the way to the top, where an Italian flag was flying at 788m above Ischia. Luck had it that as soon as I reached the peak, the clouds parted and left me with a small window of a view onto the town on the coast of the Island.

Hearing the increasingly stressed out calls from my dad, making sure I hadn’t plummeted to my death, I made my way back down and we returned to the car to find A. We all returned safely to our precious thermal bath.

The one rainy day we had, we ended up going into Napoli. I must admit that dad and I had settled in to relax for the day. A was going without us and we realized that she would have way more fun than us, so we joined. Also, we needed her to protect us from the Napolitans. We parked the car by the port in Ischia and took the ferry, car-less, into the city of thieves. We had a fabulous day walking around the city. I want to go back. It was fabulous. The city exudes this air of old grandeur. The first building we walked into was a shopping area that must have been an old train station. Vaulted glass ceilings that felt like they were 50m high, big extravagant designs and just… classy. The main road was lined with old palazzios with huge doors that carriages would have gone through to pick up the rich people for their rendez-vous. A friend of mine had described the city perfectly: “gritty and wonderful”.

Sunset from the roof of our apartment

The volcano I would conquer!

We left Napoli rather reluctantly, A more than the rest of us. We hopped a ferry back to Ischia and had no pick-pocketing incidents. 

The side of Epomeo