Jacques Fortier

Well, I’m doing laundry, so it’s time to fill in more stuff about my travels.

Today was my second day in Florence. I had planned on getting up early, doing laundry, and then going downtown and seeing some museums. Well, I didn’t get up early, and then the desk didn’t have any laundry tokens. So, I headed downtown to see some museums. The first one I went to was the Bargello, which was mainly a sculpture museum. It was alright, but I didn’t think it was anything special. I think the Louvre really killed sculpture for me. The Renaissance sculptors were definitely really good (especially in comparison to what came before them), but the things the 17th and 18th century French sculptors were doing were just amazing. The level of detail they managed to get was incredible, and their work is better preserved (which definitely helps). After the museum, I headed to Vivoli again to get some more of their gelato. It definitely is the best gelato I’ve ever had. It really tastes like you’re eating whatever fruit it is supposed to be (I’ve decided the mark of quality is how good a gelateria’s fruit gelatos taste).

My next stop was the Uffizi. I was dumb and didn’t get reservations, so I went and took a look at the line. It was really long and not moving very much. So, after grabbing a bite to eat, I went and took my place. A French couple from Lyon got in line after me, and we chatted for a while about the different regions of France and Canada. But the husband got impatient so they ended up getting reservations to come back later. So, I turned to the people in front of me, who turned out to be from Toronto. We chatted for a while, but then they gave up too. So, I talked to the people behind me, who were also from Canada. Finally, after close to three hours of waiting, we got in.

The museum itself was really cool. It was very well laid-out, showing the progression of Italian painting from the Byzantine period to the beginning of the 18th century. It was mostly Italian, but every once in a while they’d throw stuff in to show how other countries were influencing and being influenced by the Italians. Everything was nice and chronological, so you could see for example when people stopped using gold backgrounds and started putting in real stuff, when they started to figure out perspectice, when they started using atmospheric perspective, when they started doing non-religious stuff. Then, right at the end, you all of a sudden started to see things that didn’t even have people in them! That was where the collection ended, which was too bad. I guess the Italians were less important in the 18th and 19th century, so there was less stuff to show.

After the Uffizi, I was pretty much done with Florence. I headed back to the side of the river where the campground is, got off at Piazzale Michelangelo to check out and record the view, and then headed over here to do laundry.

Well, I’m once again wearing down extra internet time, and I’m pretty beat, so it seemed like a good idea to write some more.

So I arrived in Florence around 11h00 this morning. I just barely caught the 10h00 train from Lucca. I got to the station, checked my bag, and then promptly lost the claim ticket. I’m really hoping no one found and went to get my bag, but right now I just really don’t want to know. Since I’d decided to wear pants today, I figured I should knock all of the churches out. I started at Santa Maria Novella, which was absolutely beautiful on the inside (no pictures allowed though). It was pretty crappy on the outside though. The Strozzi side chapel I thought was really cool. The frescoes were very vivid (although not quite so much as the dome of the choir of one of the churches in Verona) and I just thought it really meshed well with the architecture.

On the way to San Lorenzo, I naturally stopped at one of the recommended gelato shops, this one being the Gellateria of the Bermuda Triangle. I didn’t disappear or anything, but the gelato was pretty good.

The next stop was San Lorenzo, which also had a crappy exterior (apparently Michelangelo was supposed to design an exterior but didn’t finish it) and a really really nice interior. The art was actually properly lit, partly because of the design (thanks to the genius of Brunelleschi), which let in a lot more light than you usually get in the Gothic cathedrals in France, and because they actually went to the trouble of setting up nice diffuse lighting that let you view the works from all different angles. There were some really cool sculptures by Donatello.

My final church was the big kahuna, the Duomo (Cathedral) Santa Maria del Fiore, one of the most massive cathedrals in the world. When I walked up to it I thought, “at last, a cathedral with a decent exterior”. It actually didn’t feel all that big from the inside, but it was once again very nicely lit, although not quite as well as San Lorenzo. There wasn’t much in the way of art on the side, which was pretty plain and boring. I decided to shell out for the bell tower outside the cathedral. The climg wasn’t too bad and the view was pretty cool, but there was this damn dome in the way .

After the cathedrals, I went to eat at the Trattoria Anita. They had an awesome lunch menu: two courses and a vegetable for only 5.50 euros. There was an American girl inside who was also eating alone, so I went and introduced myself so that I wouldn’t have to eat alone. Her name was Eleanor a she was a Biology major at Harvard. Turns out she was also studying in France and spending a little bit in Italy before heading back to the US. It was nice having a cool person to talk to at dinner once again (I seem to be having a pretty good record at that so far). After lunch, she wanted to go to the Duomo and I was going to the science museum, so we went our separate ways.

The science museum was really cool. They had all sorts of scientific instruments from the Renaissance onward. There were tons of telescopes, Galileo’s middle finger (which I thought was a particularly appropriate choice), all different kinds of compasses (the geometric, not magnetic kinds), globes, a whole bunch of chemistry things, very detailed anatomy models showing how to do Ceasarean sections, breach births, and all that good stuff, and a whole bunch of electrical stuff that I didn’t have time to look at because the museum was closing. There was also a girl called Rachel who went to Ohio State who was just as interested as me in all the stuff (almost everyone else was just breezing through). We got to talking and after the museum closed we went for gelato together. We went to Vivoli, which very well may be the best gelato place in the world. The flavors were all so rich, and everything was so creamy. Their peach was incredibly peachy. I’m definitely going to have to go back. We were both pretty beat, so we just sat down in a random place and chatted for an hour. Weirdly enough, she had also finished a study abroad in France, was travelling in Italy before heading back to the US, was staying in the same hostel as Eleanor, and recommended all of the same museums.

So that’s day one of Florence. For day two, I’ll be checking out the art museums. Of course, I’ll probably also be spending a lot of time checking out the lines because I didn’t get reservations. Oh well.

Well, Lucca ended up being not quite everything I had hoped for, but it was still a nice day.

My problems started on the way from Venice to Lucca. My train from Venice was an hour late, so I got to sit around forever waiting for it to arrive. There were a bunch of Italian teenagers in my compartment, but they didn’t speak much English and I wasn’t feeling up to stretching my limited Italian enough to have a conversation, so we didn’t talk much. Then when I got to Florence, I had to wait over an hour to transfer. So, I ended up getting into Lucca around 3 pm.

I had written down the wrong directions for my hostel, so it took me forever to find it, no thanks to the people who run it (their website said they were inside Lucca, which was untrue, and they were useless when I called them). When I got there, the hostel looked really great, but they told me to go upstairs and “Wait ten minutes so they could take me to the other building.” I thought I was just going next door or something, so I wasn’t sure why I had to wait so long. I found out it was because they were actually putting me in another hotel on the other side of the city. The guy who ran it was even more surly than the people at the place I was supposed to stay at, and the place was just dirty. There were all kinds of marks on the walls, the paint was peeling, and the floor of my room hadn’t been swept. Plus… well, let’s just say the walls were thin. Obviously when you’re staying in a hostel you aren’t always going to get the nicest places, but I think it’s reasonable to expect a place to at least try to be clean. And, it’s just really shitty when you put a lot of time into planning a trip and finding a good place to stay only to arrive and find out that someone’s running a bait and switch on you.

I was just on my way out when my roommate arrived. He was an officer in the US Army called Luke, a few years older than me, and pretty cool. He was definitely much more refined than you’d expect from an army officer. I guess just the fact that he was spending part of his leave in Lucca was a pretty big hint.

So we headed into town and checked out the sights, not that there were all that many. Lucca has a decent cathedral, but it was being heavily restored, so there wasn’t much to see. Plus, it was raining lightly, so we didn’t feel like doing too much exploring. After wandering around for a while, we ended up having dinner at some random tourist trap. I couldn’t believe how bad their Insalata Caprese was–a complete disgrace to Italians everywhere. After dinner we just sat and talked about random stuff for a while. Unlike almost every other restaurant I’ve been to in Europe, the waitress really seemed to want to get us out of there, because she immediately gave us the cheque (I almost always have to ask) and then hovered 5 feet away waiting for us to pay it/.

The nightlife section of the Lets Go profile of Lucca basically was a description of the felateria, which apparently had “throngs” of people every night. We checked it out after dinner, and while there were no throngs in sight, they had some pretty good gelato. Not the best, but still very good. They were the first gelateria where I saw “Zuppa Inglese” (yep, English Soup… still no idea what that means). After the gelateria, we wandered around a bit more, then went to an enoteca (wine bar) recommended by the waitress at the restaurant. I wanted to try grappa, which I tried to order, but they were apparently out of it. I got the gist that the waitress was suggested something else instead, but I had no idea what she suggested, so I just smiled and said, “Si, va bene”. Whatever I got was incredibly alcoholic: even more so than grappa according to Luke. I could feel my stomach rebelling after just the smallest tastes, so I ended up not finishing it.

So that was pretty much it for Lucca. After the enoteca, we headed back to the hotel, got some rest, and then went our separate ways in the morning. Lucca was a pretty cool town, but the hotel really ruined it for me. It’s really a place where you want to go to just relax and unwind. But for that, you need a few good friends, and a place to stay that feels homier and doesn’t make you pissed off about being ripped off. The walls of the city were pretty cool. They’re like 15 yards wide, and they’ve been made into a park that forms a ring around the city, with trees and bike and walking paths. They would have made for a great walk with views of the city and the surrounding hills… if it hadn’t been raining.

My first real stop in Italy was Verona. The train ride from Milan was pretty interesting. There were a bunch of people in my compartment, one of whom saw me thumbing through Lets Go, and asked if I spoke English and if I was an American. I replied (in Italian) that I did speak English and I gave him the explanation about my dual citizenship, and we started talking about Italy and Switzerland and stuff (in English at this point, because we’d reached the end of my Italian skills). After a bit, he asked me if I spoke French, so I moved the conversation into French, just because I could. He didn’t miss a beat, so I started to wonder how many languages he spoke, because so far I’d heard flawless English, Italian, and French. It turned out that he spoke around 10 different languages (or so he said). He said he was a writer, and whenever he wrote about a country, he liked to learn their language and their history because he liked to really understand the culture of a place before he wrote about it. At that point we were at his stop, and I didn’t think to ask his name, which was too bad. It would’ve been cool to actually read something by a guy that I had met.

A while later, I got to Verona, and hopped on the bus to the downtown. My first stop was the arena, to pick up my tickets for that night’s performance of Aida. And by arena, I mean the Roman arena, not a modern one. Every summer, Verona puts on a opera festival in their Roman arena. There was no way I was going to miss it, especially given that they were performing Verdi’s Aida the night I was in town. I had no problem getting the tickets, so I headed further into town to start exploring.

So I’m in Italy. I probably won’t normally be this obsessive about posting, but I had to pay for a full hour of internet so that I could get my purchase confirmation for my opera tickets for tomorrow, so I figured I might as well use it and make a post.

I had to stay up way too late last night getting my room cleaned up, so I’m pretty beat. I got into Milan at 7:30 pm after pretty much a whole day on the train. The train ride was really nice. We went through Switzerland, so the scenery was naturally beautiful. There’s just something about riding through a valley seeing mountains disappearing into the clouds on both sides of you. And for some reason, lakes look ten times more beautiful when they’re in the mountains. Once we got into Italy we passed by Lake Maggiore, which looked like a great place to take a vacation. It was kind of overdeveloped, but the scenery was just so incredibly green, and the lake looked pretty peaceful. The city of Stresa looked like a had a little beach on the lake… if only I had time to check it out.

So as soon as I walked out of the Milan train station, I ran into a guy who was claiming to be Hungarian tourist and clearly trying to scam me. It was a pretty nice introduction to Milan. Pretty much all I’ve done in Milan is grab dinner and, of course, gelato. As soon as I got done with the scammer, I saw people eating gelato and tracked down the closest gelato stand. Since I’m running on 5 hours of sleep and it’s incredibly hot even at 10 pm, I think I’m just going to bed. Tomorrow I’ll spend a full day exploring Verona and then go see Aida in the Roman arena, which apparently has amazing acoustics. In case anyone cares, this is my itinerary:

Right here.

Well, after an absolutely horrible week, I’m heading to Cinque Terre, Italy to meet up with Dan and Vickie. Here’s the town (Riomaggiore) where I’ll be staying:

Jealous? I hope so!

Vickie and I went to see the Tour de France, because it was pulling into Nancy, which is just 45 minutes by train from Metz. It was pretty cool. The route was pretty crowded, but it was cold and rainy, so that helped keep the crowds to a reasonable level. I’m not a Tour expert, but I have a feeling that in good weather we wouldn’t have been able to get to the front of the barricades 250m from the finish line.

We had to stand around for an hour waiting for the racers to arrive. Fortunately, there was a bunch of entertainment, with a local radio station announcing the race, a jumbotron just barely in view, and a whole bunch of floats and cars driving the route throwing out promotional stuff. I think the truck with the hose and the foam mallets would have been a bit funnier if it hadn’t been so cold and wet. There was also a bunch of trucks with girls who looked like they should have been wearing bikinis who were instead wearing long sleeves and pants.

After a bunch of cold and wet raining, the riders finally started to get close to the finish line. The leader was a dude from the Lorraine region, so the announcers and the crowd were very excited. You could feel the excitement and the tension building as he got closer and closer to the finish line, but the rest of the pack got closer and closer to him. Finally, when he was 900m meters from the finish line, most of the excitement drained away as he wiped out in a tough turn. One of my professors said he was going to lose anyway, so it was probably better for him to go down that way.

I got to see Lance Armstrong, I think. He was more of a yellow blur than anything else. If he hadn’t had the yellow jersey at the time, I don’t think I would have recognized him.

After the riders went by, we took a half hour to get through the crowd and back to the train station, just making it in time for the next train back to Metz.

So this weekend I went to Barcelona with Nicki, where we met up with Nich and Vickie. We took a night train to Port Bou (on the French-Spanish border), and then took a local train to Barcelona. The night train was pretty nice. I’d had the brilliant idea of buying a sleeping bag that I could use as a pillow on the train, so I slept pretty well on the train. That is, until 7:00 am, when the kids in the compartment woke up and started walking way too much. An hour later, when we were almost in Port Bou, their dad finally told them to go outside. Sigh. Once we got into Port Bou, we waited around for an hour, and then hopped onto an absolutely packed train to Barcelona. The train was pretty much a glorified subway, and there were so many people on it that the seats and all of the aisles were full.

We got off at the wrong station in Barcelona, but it turned out to actually be closer to our hostel than the one we planned to get off at. It ended up being only a few minutes by subway from our hostel, not that I would have minded a longer ride because the subways in Barcelona are actually air-conditioned. When we got off the subway, we ran into some girls from McGill who were going to the same hostel as some as our friends. I don’t think I’ve had a single weekend in Europe without talking to some Canadians.

Nicki and I checked into the hostel, where we discovered that Spanish is pretty much useless in Barcelona because everyone says they only understand Catalan. Nich walked into the hostel just after we checkied in, which was some pretty amazing timing. After he got settled in, we decided to go to the beach. We walked to the beach, and ran into some people from GTL who had a way better hostel than us. It was called Seapoint, it was right on the beach, and it had a bar downstairs. It was cloudy and windy, so we ended up sitting on the terrace of Seapoint drinking some incredibly strong Sangrias.

After we got tired of the Sangrias, we headed back to the hostel to get changed for the evening and then went to the Chris Columbus statue (apparently the Catalans claim he was Catalan instead of Genoan) to meet up with a bunch of other GTL people for dinner. We went to a place called, I think, Ciberon. We all got Paella, and everyone but me got a ton of Sangrias. The Paella was delicious, and there was a live band that was pretty good. It was pretty much a perfect evening. Good food, good company, good music, and a nice view of the sea. The waiter gave me the bill at the end of the evening. I kind of gulped when I saw the total (over 200 euros), but considering that that was for 10 people and the food was incredibly good and plentiful, that wasn’t bad at all.

After dinner, Nicki and I went to meet up with Vickie, who had just taken a train all the way from the Czech republic to meet up with us. Then, we went to a club called Fiesta, which felt pretty much like being in a club in the US, except that the crowd was way younger (like some people who were obviously under 18).

On Saturday, we hit up the beach. On our way to the beach, Nich and I were looking for some cheap food. We finally gave and and grabbed sandwiches, only to find out that half a block later there was a place offering what looked like really good Paella for only 5 euros. Sigh. The beach was pretty nice. The water could have been a bit warmer, and we could have done with fewer people walking along Shouting “Hola. Acqua. Fanta. Cerveza” or offering us messages. We did see one cool vendor who ran around with a tray of donuts on his head while playing a triangle and singing donut songs. We stayed at the beach for most of the afternoon. I kind of got burnt.

After the beach, we went back to the hostel to get changed, where Nich met a girl called Penny who went to school somewhere in DC. We ended up going to dinner with her. The place we went was really nice. They had good food, but the waiter was unhappy that we weren’t spending a lot of money, which is understandable. Of course, he probably shouldn’t have said it to his manager while standing right in front of us and assuming none of us could understand. After dinner, we grabbed some ice cream, some aloe for my sunburn, and then headed out to find a really good bar Nich had heard of. We never found it, so I ended up heading back to the hostel because my sunburn was really started to get to me.

I woke up nice and early Sunday morning to the loudest snoring I’ve heard in my life. There was a big Spanish guy in the next bed over who I swear had sleep apnea, because he would snore incredibly loudly and every 30 minutes or so it sounded like he would choke a bit, after which he’d shift around and start snoring again. To top it all off, he was wearing nothing but bikini briefs.

Most of Sunday was spent doing tourist type stuff. We checked out one of the main parks. We went to the Picasso museum, which was pretty cool. On the way there, we ran into some kind of public performance in Placa San Jaume. We weren’t sure exactly what it was, because it was all in Catalan, but it involved a princess, a giant preying mantis, and a caped guy on stilts.

After the Picasso museum, we went to the Sagrada Familia. It was really cool, because it’s a giant basilica that’s still under construction. It kind of gives you an idea of what people felt like while all the great Gothic cathedrals were being built. Some of those took hundreds of years to build. The Sagrada Familia has only been under construction for around a hundred years, so it’s still pretty young. The church was amazing, even considering that it was a giant construction site. I can’t imagine what it’d be like to go to mass there once the construction is complete. We walked all the way up one of the towers (and they’re really high–lots of steps), which was pretty terrifying at some points because there are decent-sized windows all the way up the tower without bars that really drive home just how high you are.

Once we got down from the Sagrada Familia, we grabbed a snack from a local vendor and then headed back to the hostel to get ready for dinner. We ended up running into some other GTL people on the way to dinner, and they showed us this really good and cheap restaurant they’d found. The place had a great Paella and Sangria deal, so we naturally did that.

Monday was the Fourth of July, which I celebrated on trains. I pretty much spent the whole day getting back to Metz.

The weather forecast in Barcelona:
Friday: Partly Cloudly, High of 28, low of 23
Saturday: Mostly Sunny, High of 29, low of 23
Sunday: Sunny, High of 30, low of 23
Monday: Mostly Sunny, High of 30, low of 24
And almost no chance of rain for the whole weekend. Looks like there’ll be some quality beach time 8-).

We had a giant storm yesterday. And this wasn’t one of those wussy little storms like you get almost every day in Atlanta. This was a serious storm, with gale-force winds. The winds knocked over trees all over the Technopole. Someone’s bicycle actually blew away in the wind. Someone else tried to go outside during it, and actually got knocked over by the wind. The flags in front of the building got torn up. The water was blowing sideways and the wind was strong enough that it was forcing the water in through the doors of the GTL building. It was the worst storm since 1999 according to the locals, making it the worst storm of the millenium! Anyway, the nice thing is that it brought an end to the hot and humid weather that we’d had for like 2 weeks straight (apparently the worst June in recent memory), so the beach will feel like a real break instead of more of the same weather we have in Metz.