Geysers, Hot Springs, Mud Pots, and Stupid Tourists

After a not-super night’s sleep, we got up a little late this morning, wandered to the lodge for breakfast (I had a shake, believe it or not…this diet is killin’ me), and hit the road to see more stuff.  First stop: Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.  But first, stop in a pullout and hop out of the truck to snap some bison.  And then onward…pictures of the falls, etc, then as we were exiting the upper falls parking lot to go to the Norris Geyser Basin, a delay.  A herd of bison crossing the road.  RIGHT in front of us.  Roll down the window, snappity-snap.  Baby bison are cute (and the size of a freaking pony).  And leet me tell you: they are acutely aware of the fact that nobody will hurt them.  Then amble.  They meander.  They stop to look at the tourists.  They move a few feet.  They smile for the cameras.  They are awesome!

But the BEST part of the day was going from basin to basin getting shots of geysers, mud pots, and those eerily-colored hot springs that I have only ever seen before in photography books.  My lord, the range of color is tremendous.  Porcelain blue, deep turquoise, crazy orange, intense greenish-yellow.  I think I took a hundred pictures of them.  And during one walk along a boardwalk rimmed by springs and signs warning people that they are HOT (Hello??!!  If it’s water and it’s boiling, it’s 212 degrees, you moron!), a tourist jumped off the boardwalk and went to put his hand in the spring.  Now, I never feel more American than when some crazy tourist decides to ignore every rule and defile MY country’s land.  As I was drawing breath to tell him to stop, six people in front of me, every one of them at least 6 feet tall, started yelling at him in Australian accents: “DO NOT TOUCH THAT!!!”  He looked at them, shook his head, and went back to his unlawful ways, at which point they all converged on that spot in the boardwalk.  Now, he was looking a bit guilty.  The woman he was with, who up to this point was pointing a camera at him and yammering at him in their native tongue and waving her hand as if saying, “No, a little to the left…no, get more in front of that geyser in the distance..” suddenly arose and, acting as though she’d never seen him before in her life, walked on without him.  Finding my voice, I looked at him, his beseeching gaze landing on me as if to say, “Holy shit; save me from the Aussie Amazons!” and I said, “You CANNOT be in there.  Come out of there.  Come out of there NOW!  GET OUT!”  Seeing he had no champion, he sheepishly climbed back onto the boardwalk.  When I saw him next, he was trying to take a picture of the woman who had rebuffed him earlier, and she was clearly not happy with his skills.  Maybe he just wanted to throw himself into the fiery cauldron; who knows.  But I do know that I LOVE my neighbors down under!!

More driving, more sightseeing, dinner at the Old Faithful Lodge (no, we didn't wait for it to erupt; we are going to see it at sunrise on Friday on our way out of the park), and now blog time and then bed.  I'M ON VACAYSHUNNNN!!

I'm Going to Jackson

We camped Sunday night just outside Jackson, Wyoming, in a campground with 350 sites (huge!).  It should have been uneventful, except that the weather forecast ended up being unreliable (what a surprise!) and it rained like the dickens much of the evening.  In addition to the rain, the blow-up bed that we were sleeping on in the tent lost most of its air overnight, and so I ended up waking up around 2 am and realized that I was sleeping pretty much on the (cold, cold) ground.  Not the most restful of nights.  Oh yeah, and I also had to pee but didn’t want to wander around in the dark.  So, I slept off and on until about 6:30 am and then decided to stumble to the restroom.  I walked into the restroom, straight into a cloud of hairspray.  Apparently, some women don’t like to go camping without their blow dryers and hairspray (I still can’t figure out where this woman and her two daughters washed their hair; there were no showers and no hot water!).  The good news is that all the blow drying heated the bathroom nicely.  The other good news is that it was all so ludicrous that my grouchiness dissolved.

Finished with my bathroom activities, I went back to the campsite.  By this point, my fingers were numb and my face was frozen (it was cold out!) and there was Ron, standing next to the camp stove, ready to make coffee and breakfast.  I said, “Would you like to just go into town for a nice, hot breakfast with lots of coffee to wash it down?”  He said, “Ummmmm….is this a hint?”  (Ron has learned to think carefully before answering my questions).  So, we got into the truck and decided to drive into town.  After one turn in the campground, Ron said, “Look to the left.  Moose!”  And sure enough, there they were.  At first I thought they were playing, and then I realized that the smaller (a male) thought he’d try to become amorous with the larger (a female).  She was having none of it.  In fact, she was bucking with an arched back and all four feet off the ground, the way I’d seen some horses do in rodeos.  Then, ears laid back against her neck, she trotted away.  Poor Bullwinkle, ever hopeful, ran after her.  All of this was happening in front of our truck.  So, I grabbed my camera and hopped out (MAN, those things are big when they are only a few feet away!) and snapped a couple pictures.  I also cried a little because, come on, how often do you get to see a failed moose courtship right in front of your nose?  Boy, am I happy I suggested going out for breakfast!!

So, we went out to a place that the locals frequent, had great breakfast, I bought the warmest hat EVER at the Pendleton store on the way out of town, and then we packed up the tent and the gear and we were off to Yellowstone.  On our way to our cabin (which is one of the cabins right next to Lake Yellowstone), Ron stopped the car and said, “There’s your elk..” and, sure enough, there were some elk just walking along the side of the road and occasionally rubbing against a tree or grazing.  The best thing was that they had the grace to do this right next to a pullout.  SO, out of the car I pop, shoot some pictures, back into the car, and on our way merrily.  Wow.  Not even checked in yet, and already I have moose and elk on my camera.  Lucky girl.

Rest of the evening was mostly normal; had dinner, offloaded pictures onto my laptop, gave Ron a short lesson in using Lightroom, the usual stuff.

But oh, the things I’ve seen.  I will never, ever forget those moose as long as I live (and no, I did not give them a muffin).

WWRD

I've been struggling a little lately, as I always seem to do this time of year.  I find myself looking at throngs of happy people, wondering, "Are they really that happy?  Or are a lot of them pretending?"

I spent a whole four bucks yesterday to indulge myself in a new shower gel, and as I was spending a bit of extra time in the shower this morning to enjoy the hot water and a new scent, I flashed back to late afternoons spent, as a child, watching Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin (the two original daytime chat shows) with my dad after he got home from work.  He would come home, pour himself a drink, make me a "highball" of a lot of 7-up and a splash of bourbon, and we'd go downstairs to sit and watch television, he in his chair and I on the couch.

OK, for those of you who are already judging the fact that I was drinking when I was 9, cut it the hell out.  It was one splash of bourbon.  I grew up in a house where drinking was not taboo.  My parents encouraged us (and were sad that we did not want) to drink wine with dinner.  I will also fast-forward to today and say that none of the three children in my family has a drinking problem, so you can stop thinking that it ruined me.  Other than an occasional glass of wine with dinner, I probably have two or three drinks a MONTH.  Why would I drink?  My dad is gone now, and so are Mike and Merv.

But, I digress...

There in my island cotton-scented reverie this morning, I thought, "Wow...what I wouldn't give to have one of those weekday afternoons back, watching tv with Dad.  I never really appreciated it."

Of course I didn't; I was NINE, for heaven's sake!  Nine-year-olds don't appreciate anything, nor are they really supposed to.  But 52-year-olds should.  I think that, possibly, the difference between my good days and my not-so-good days is my appreciation level.  On my good days, I revel in the small pleasures that come my way: seeing a cute post from an old friend on Facebook, writing a snippet of really good code for my client, laughing with abandon at something one of my kids says, or smelling island cotton shower gel.  Not so good days?  I recall the good things I did or had in the past, and wish I had them back.

WWRD?  

There are two camps of people in my life: those who are so glad that I will always have the wisdom and memories of Roy in my heart, and those who think I am "not over him."  To the former, I say thank you.  To the latter, I say that being "over" someone you still love dearly doesn't happen.  You see, when you break up with someone, you gradually stop loving him/her.  When someone you love dies, you never have to stop loving him.  It's AWESOME that you can love him forever!  And that doesn't mean I cannot love anyone else; who ever said that I have some sort of gas-tank-like heart that has a maximum capacity of 15.7 gallons of love?

But, I digress again...

Roy would tell me to get a clue.  He'd tell me to accept the memories as another thing to cherish, and not to let them become a sadness, but to inspire an additional happiness.  And then, he'd say, "Lighten up, Francis!" (And, if you have never seen the movie Stripes, go watch it.  NOW.  I can wait.)

My goal, then, will be to try to appreciate the little things now, instead of having to think about them twenty years from now in the shower and regret not appreciating them.  In fact, I think I should start by appreciating that I CAN take a shower; twenty years from now, I might have to be in one of those crazy walk-in baths that I see advertised on television.  Egads...

So, maybe those Christmas crowd people are simply smiling because it feels good to smile.  Maybe smiling and feeling good makes you a little happier, which encourages you to smile more.

And maybe this will be a happy holiday season, after all.

Perfection and Memories

Yesterday (Thursday), we went to the Gallerie with the sole purpose of seeing Michelangelo's David.  The statue was carved from fifteen feet of marble in the very beginning of the 16th century, and Michelangelo was actually the third artist to be contracted to do the creation.  David became the symbol for Florence, symbolizing the victory of the individual against corrupt leadership.

Regardless of the history, the statue is awe-inspiring and just plain beautiful.  I challenge anyone to stand in front of this chunk of marble perfection and not feel something (or a lot of somethings).  I don't know how Michelangelo accomplished it but he captured the smooth, muscled limbs and innocent  beauty that is so specific to a young man who has not really yet lost the look of youth.  I can't possibly explain it, but I know that it took my breath away. 

This morning, after going to have a cappuccino and pastry, we decided to go into the church in Santa Croce.  And there, the suprise.  Inside the church, first of all, was my favorite of all the ceilings I have seen.  Then, I realized that around the walls were various memorials, some including the actual graves (Enrico Fermi, Gallileo, et al).  But there, in front of me, was a huge memorial to Dante.  Now, I have never read Dante, but my dad was something of an expert on the subject, having earned a Master's degree in Italian from Berkeley.  Suddenly, I wondered: did my dad stand in this spot at some point in his life and look at this memorial?  And I found myself telling Sara that, because of Dante and Petrarc and Boccaccio (all great Italian writers of the early Renaissance and all Tuscan), it was the tuscan dialect that was adopted as the official Italian language.  As it turns out, Tuscan was also the dialect that had remained closest to the mother Latin.  My dad's lesson, learned at some point in my childhood while eating dinner, got passed along to the next generation, and in the most appropriate of all places.  Thanks, Babbo, for the lessons.

And the other goal for today?  Sara has officially decreed this the "Day of Gluttony."  Our last chance to have these pastries, that coffee, fresh mozarella and prosciutto pannini for 2.50... Tomorrow, it's onto a plane and back to reality.  

What I Know vs How I Feel

We've seen quite a bit of art in the last two days.  I know very, very little about art, so I can rarely look upon it with an educated eye, but I do love the feelings it evokes in me (sometimes).

Yesterday, we visited the museum at Il Duomo.  The quote of the day came from Sara who, when I marveled at the fact that there are so many 13th and 14th century busts and statues just out in the open, where everyone can touch them, retorted, "Bah.  Those things are a dime a dozen here."  Oh, how quickly we become spoiled by the multitude of centuries-old art around us!

Today, we went to the Uffizi and a couple science museums (which were awesome, but science isn't the subject of this posting).  The art at the Uffizi is astounding, and one of my favorite artists has numerous paintings there.  Botticelli was alive in the late 15th and early 16th century, and I have always loved his paintings.  I don't know exactly why, and I certainly cannot put it into words (because, as I admitted, I know little of art), but I do know that I want to climb into those paintings.  In the absence of being able to do that, I can say that Botticelli is one of the few artists who inspires me to sit and just stare.  Perhaps forever. 

I don't think I had ever put my finger on it, but I realize now that it's the softness , the roundness with which he paints women.  The muscled bodies of women in other paintings (heck, one in the Vatican was modeled after a man) are just not nearly as appealing.  Or, perhaps it reminds me of my dad telling me as a teenager that I was "bella grossa," and not fat, or how all of my Italian relatives always fed us to show how much they loved us.  Whatever the reason, those beautiful, soft women make me want to have coffee with them, and ask them whether they have any issues with their mothers-in-law, or if they have a really great recipe for chicken cacciatore.  And then, standing there, Sara once again put words to it.  She stared at a lovely Botticelli and said, "I like his ladies..."  Yep, Sara, I like his ladies, too.

The kids went to two more museums after lunch, but I wandered back towards the apartment.  On the way, I made a side trip back through the piazza near Santa Croce and found a gift for a girlfriend back home that was perfect.  Sometimes, the "aw heck, why go straight home?" moves are the best.  Home for lunch (which included prosciutto, of course - how will I live without having prosciutto every day after I get home?), then some time to sit out in the back garden, read a book, and watch the storm clouds gather.  By the time the lightning was flashing and the thunder booming, the kids came home and walked into the garden with a cup of gelato for me.  Then, a nap.

I could so get used to this....

Adventures in Siena?

Well, perhaps I should say adventures getting to and from Siena...

We got up a bit early yesterday and caught the bus to Siena.  It's only about 70 minutes away, and the bus was a double-decker (enclosed), so I trotted up to the top level because hey, I wanted to see it all!  The bus wound through the streets of Florence, then into the Tuscan countryside and through vineyards and trees.  So serene, so beautiful...but a bit of a winding road and I didn't even realize that, to varying degrees, everyone was getting a bit queasy except for two of us (Alec and me).

About 5 minutes from our destination, I noticed Andreas (Carina's son) getting really, really quiet....and then...  Poor Andreas.  Luckily, we were almost there, and when we got off the bus, Carina had to buy new clothes fo Andreas and for Per (who was sitting next to him).  While she shopped for the boys, Alec and Zeph and I had a slice of pizza.  Yum.  

Siena is a small, sleepy little town in the hills that is consistently about 10 degrees cooler than Florence in the summer and boasts a really cool little town square, churches (go figure), some really hilly streets, and twice a year the Palio.  The palio is a horse race that pits neighborhood against neighborhood (each of which has a flag with a different animal on it) for bragging rights.  The race takes place around the town square, with people standing around the edges, hanging out of windows, and watching from restaurant balconies, cheering on their homies.  We weren't there on a palio day, which was just fine for us.

I have to put a plug in here for Rick Steves.  That man's books have given us some really good tips, for places to eat, things to do, and time allotments for certain attractions.  Of course, it would still be nothing without Sara, tha amazing tour guide and Rick Steves apprentice.

We saw a church (of course) but this one had a twist.  As apparently is common here, the church was completely buried in a flood some centuries ago, and the resulting dirt that filled the church preserved it wonderfully.  A new church was built, and it was only in recent times that the old "underneath" church was discovered.  The wall frescos were preserved, and now are being slowly uncovered for all to see.  There is just nothing like this in the states, especially in the west, and I still find it completely fascinating.  

So, a trip to some hole-in-the-wall restaurant that boasts a menu with 50 different types of sandwiches (and the most awesome neon-lit bathroom that even had neon lights IN the toilet bowl, making the water an irridescent green), and a little stroll around the piazza, then back to the bus.  Confident that the bus ride back would be less eventful (since we would sit on the bottom deck AND had equipped ourselves with multiple plastic bags just in case), we trotted onto the bus.  Ten minutes into the ride, the bus stopped and we were told to disembark, and we then got onto another bus (apparently, ours was broken).  This would have been less uncomfortable if it wasn't in the middle of a drenching thunderstorm.  So, a little damp, we settled into bus number two.  Five minutes later, the driver pulled over to wipe the inside of the windshield because the defroster was apparently not working.  After two more such stops, he pulled over under an overpass and got on his phone.  Sara said, "Wo, that was the most angry 'pronto' I have heard..." as he got in touch with the bus depot and then yelled for a few minutes and hung up.  We sta for about twenty inutes, and then bus number THREE showed up.  More musical buses, and then luckily an uneventful trip the rest of the way back to Florence.

Sara went into the bus station (bless her heart) to see if we could get a refund, but apparently the policy only allows for a refund for missing a scheduled arrival by an hour or more, and we were only 50 minutes late.  Ah well, no worries.  We were home, and stopped for doner kebob on the way back to the apartment.  Life is good.

Another evening of cracking up and catching up with Carina's family, and now here it is Tuesday morning.  My three kids are cooking American breakfast for our Swedish guests before they go home to Sweden this afternoon, and then we might go to a museum this afternoon.  It's really up to Tour Guide Sara.  I love, love, love not being in charge.  LOVE it.

I am still plotting how I could come live here for a few months, maybe a few years from now.  Life's short.

But I would need air conditioning and mosquito netting...

Climbing and Playing and Walks (Oh, My!)

What the heck day is it again?  Oh yes, Sunday.

Yesterday, Sara and Zeph and Alec went to Cinque Terre and so Carina and her family and I slept in, and then walked across the river and up to the Piazzale Michelangelo, where there are amazing views of all of Florence.  Then we walked up, up, up even higher to the church of San Miniato.  I am still astounded every time I walk into a church here, to see paintings on the walls that are clearly centuries old.  It was a warm day and a good walk.  Then, we went back across the river at Ponte Vecchio.  That was a MOB scene!!  I think the fact that it was the weekend probably added to the crowds.  The kids had gelato, so they were happy.  Not much else to tell.  Oh wait, maybe there is.  On the way back, since I had my backpack with me, I stopped in to my new favorite leather store to see my new favorite Italian, Stefano.  I ended up buying the laptop bag that I have been coveting, so now I have my cool Italian leather bag to take home with me.  (And, my wallet is significantly lighter).

After the kids got back, we all spent some time with Emma's homework and got an hilarious lesson in Swedish.  My apologies to everyone Swedish who has ever lived, because I think we found new ways to mispronounce every word.  However, it created multiple opportunities for raucous laughter.  

Today (Sunday), I got up early enough to get respectably dressed and go to Mass.  Since there is a church about every two and a half blocks, I didn't ahve far to walk.  I sat in the back of the church, and actually understood some of the sermon.  I took it as a Sunday miracle.  

I do have one thing to say about the Catholic church, and I don't think it's specific to any continent: the few times I have been inside a church in recent years, the average age of the people there is pretty dang high.  Today, I think I may have been the youngest person there.  It's absolutely none of my business, because I am not a practicing Catholic, but they need to figure out how to bring younger people back into the fold, or in abut fifteen years there are going to be a whole lot of empty churches on a whole lot of Sundays.  (And even though I am not a practicing Catholic, something about the ritual of knowing what to say and when, when to stand or sit or kneel, even when everyone there is speaking a foreign language, makes me calmer.  Perhaps I should go more than once a year...)

Came home, ate amazing pastries for breakfast, and then we all (well, except Sara and Zeph, who decided to have a little day to themselves in Lucca) went to the da Vinci Museum.  This place is very small, but it has prototypes od all kinds of daVinci inventions, and many of them are hands-on.  It's set up very well, with a dosplay for each invention that has a replica of the original drawing, and then an explanation (in five languages!) of what the machine was meant to do, etc.  There was also a room with da Vinci's art (well, reproductions) and stories around each piece.  This guy was amazing.

Quote of the day from Emma (age 8), Carina's daughter.  "I am sad.  He was really smart, and it's too bad he is dead."  Well put, Emma.  If Leonardo were alive today, his head would probably explode with ideas.

And the end of the day??  Swedish pancake happiness.  Per made them for all of us, and we had pancakes, jam, and ice cream for dinner.  Now, we are all sitting around the table drinking, which is a very nice Sunday evening activity, while the two little ones are playing in the garden with the tortoise.

Life is good, indeed.

Ciao!
Giannina