Until Next Time, England

Well, I'm back home now. Happy Canada Day.

Being back here has its merits (fresh air, mountains, forests, ocean, and especially the total absence of chavs) but I miss all of my international friends. I didn't make a post regarding the final trip to London we all went to and I probably should have, but I'll put the photos on this entry. I suppose I will see everyone again next time I decide to make a venture out to Europe and make a tour of all the countries I didn't see, but that's probably a while off. Bhutan looms ever closer as the next undertaking of Colin Groves and unfortunately the border of Europe and Asia is nowhere near Bhutan. France, sadly, is much farther away. But here are the photos from times when I was too lazy to put stuff down. Pay special attention to the video of Anton from Bulgaria being assembled into a pose with action-pose-performer-with-sunglasses in London. Stay tuned for the Bhutan blog.

On Early Morning Phone Calls

I didn't get called for work today. As the morning progressed, waiting for the phone to ring, I noticed huge fluctuations in my enthusiasm to receive a call from the teaching agency. I've summarised my typical morning into a graph that shows how this call can make or break my day:

Tuscany

TIME TO BLOG!

Italy was definitely far superior to England in pretty much every way. Maybe it was the hot weather. Actually yes, the hot weather definitely accounted for the vast majority of this. The effects of England's foul winter (see photo to the right) were partially undone with the warm breezy climate and Renaissance architecture. A piece of my cold, bitter soul was thawed in the vibrance of the Tuscan atmosphere. I could go on but it would be a bit much. In summary, Italy is generally warmer than England. The beers are definitely nothing special though, to be fair. See Belgium.

I was travelling with Lucie and Gabriela the Czechs and Vika the Latvian. They were good company. Trying to read a novel in Czech out loud entertained both me and the girls for a good few minutes. They have syllables that only mythical creatures or people with severe palate deformities can pronounce. Imagine rolling a J, and while doing that, spewing blood from the roof of your mouth like some sort of spiny desert lizard, and you get an idea of what some of these noises sound like. Also, more or less every second letter has an accent on it.

We stayed in a hostel in Pisa which was lovely; we saw the leaning tower from our balcony as we ate our brekkies. There was a massive thunderstorm the first day, but the next day in Florence was balmy and hot. The statue of David is by far the most impressive thing I have ever seen to date, I was stunned at a) how large the statue actually is and b) the detail on that thing. It was a work of art, so to speak. Important landmark to the Renaissance, too, from what I've gathered.

We got an excellent view of the Alps on the way back, to boot. AND this time, I didn't get robbed. Total holiday satisfaction = 100%. My camera had an irritating piece of grit stuck in the lens so the majority of the photos are Gabriela's, but her camera is better than mine so it's no big deal.

Belgium

So, seeing as Beljen and Priscilla decided to visit me in Vancouver last summer, I returned the favour this April and visited them. YES. First time to continental Europe. Very exciting.

Once I'd left Edinburgh I arrived in the Charleroi airport and headed straight to Liège to stay with Beljen's family. In order of sightseeing tours, I went to Brussels with Beljen's sister Emily, Bruges, Durbuy (allegedly "the smallest city in the world" but I don't know how anyone can prove such a claim), and Liège with Priscilla. There are so many photos and I don't want to post all of them so I've filtered them as best as I can.

Belgian beer is so, so good. Tripel Karmeliet is a clean, sweet, delicious one and probably my favourite of the bunch.. Chimay Blue was flavourful and satisfying and even more so when you discover that it's 9% alcohol by volume. I enjoyed drinking Leffe because it was fun to say the name in a dirty French accent. And Kwak was definitely worth trying because of the completely ludicrous vessel it was served in.

The overall impression of Belgium is pretty much what I expected: pleasant, but not particularly exciting. Being in a foreign European country was pretty great, but getting robbed in the streets of Liège was decidedly not. Bruges and Brussels were very similar experiences and I feel I will get the landmarks mixed up unless I divide the photos into folders by city on my computer. Anyway.. here are the photos.