Just a little catch up...

Not much has been going on here lately. At least not since the excitement of meeting Randygirl and B. We spent the week in the sun.. wake up, do our chores, pack a lunch and the car, lather on the sunscreen and head to the beach. Thankfully, it's only 5 minutes from here. We find the same spot each day - just away from the stairs down to the beach - so there aren't as many people. It's amazing how many people walk, like, five steps and then throw down their stuff. Then they are stuck with people trudging by all day, as well as the multitudes of families with kids.. And this isn't even a busy part of the beach! LOL I remember the days I could lay out endlessly... slap on a bit of baby oil and never get burned... or just lay out there all day peacefully, not even reading a book. Now I go bonkers. I have started bringing an umbrella down with us, a small one, and after about 30 minutes, I put the umbrella up and pretty soon I have a towel spread over my legs and there isn't one bit of me in the sun even though I'm at the beach! I still get tan, even with 45 SPF (must be cheap stuff), and even end up a little crispy some days. I try really hard these days NOT to get crispy. But sometimes it happens. Anyhoo, besides the beach..... well, not a lot doing. We met some people at a local irish pub and tonight we are invited to meet up with them at a local Jazz music in the Park sort of deal. So we are going and looking forward to it. We certainly didn't expect to meet anyone here... my typical experience in CA is that people are kind of flaky when it comes to making plans (have you noticed that R?), that it always makes me want to make more of an effort. But these people have been really welcoming and I have to admit, I'm surprised. Hopefully this weekend I will get to meet Anonymous G and Randygirl for a lunch or chat session.. Still waiting to hear on that. And E, when should we book our flights? I think it's winter there now? Should we wait for better weather? :)))

I hope you are all doing well. I will be heading to Seattle next week to look at houses so I may or may not be online. RG, hopefully you and I will be able to meet up as well!!!

Hi. My name is A and I'm an....

alcoholic.... Just kidding... (although I'm not sure that R and her B would agree! LOL)

Seriously. We had them over for dinner last night as they were down in So Cal and I proceeded to drink far more wine than a person needs to! LOL I think the rule is when you are meeting people, you should retain some sort of sense of reality in the evening, but my hosting skills went out the window at about 11pm, methinks! (Sorry R and B!)

But I know M and I had a great time laughing and chatting with them and it's wonderful to now put a face with a name I have known online for a while. They are a lovely couple and it's lovely to see them 'in love'. Yay!! It was fun.

A little bit about my trip.

Italy was lovely. We really had a great time. It's one of those places where, if you had moved apart from your loved one because of work commitments, time commitments, family commitments, whatever, this place would bring you back together. It would make you sigh with contentment and wonder why you hadn't done it sooner.

Now, granted, there were a few disappointing tidbits. The food in that region of Italy wasn't that great. Maybe because it was a touristy area? I don't know. I usually love pesto sauce but it just wasn't interesting. I make a great caprese salad (you know the one - slices of tomato, buffalo mozzarella and basil drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar) and we got a half-hearted excuse (just some tomato slices with the mozzarella - uninspired I have to say). We just weren't impressed. And the amount of tourists!!! My gosh. The trains between the five towns were absolutely black with people during the week and worse on the weekends. Insanity!

Miraculously, we had no problem finding a room. A nice quiet place, really clean and not too pricey. We stayed in Manar0la, which of the 5 down the coast is the fourth down. The first day we arrived, dropped our stuff off, it started raining. We dove into this funky wine bar - tiny room with exposed stone walls, picnic type benches and tables with lots of people filling the seats. We got a 'pitcher' of wine (a cool ceramic pitcher like you'd get in mexico) for 8 euro and some bruschetta and we thought we'd hit the jackpot. It was a great place with great atmosphere. It didn't rain long and so we wandered out to the cliffs to take a little hike. Lovely scenery, ocean right beneath us, sunset right in front of us. What more could you ask for?

Over the course of the week, we found out that if we took hikes, we wouldn't have to contend with any crowds. Because the towns are very compact near the lower part of the hill, by the ocean (ok, not technically an ocean but a sea - sorry about that), if you walked up the hill, you essentially walked to the 'parking lot' for the town (there were no cars allowed in the town), then past that and into the hills. Very few people on the trails. We were to see why later.. If you saw the photos in the last post, the trails were exposed and with great views. Some people just don't like that! LOL

We did about 3 hikes ranging from 30 minutes to 6 hours.. The hike to Porto Venere was tough but lovely.. coming into town at the end was stunning. We took the boat back to our base in Riomaggiore (we had moved by then) and it was just another interesting way to see the coast. I highly recommend this area if you get to Italy, although there are so many great places in Italy, you really can't go wrong.

The 6th day dawned cloudy so we hopped the train back to Milan. The train takes you through a number of tunnels and at one point we came out of a dark tunnel and the sky was black (it was maybe 1pm in the afternoon). We and the other 4 people in our car looked at each other in shock and it wasn't long before the most fantastic thunder/lightning storm took place outside the train. You couldn't even tell it was still daylight. We decided to head back to Milan, stay with my brother that night and then head out of town again in the morning.

Our final day dawned bright and sunny and we boarded the train to Lake Como, to the north of Milan. We really lucked out because the rain had cleared off the pollution and the place was stunning. There were a few photos on my link that I posted. The area is well populated but not oppressively so. We took a water taxi around, just stopping at various stops and looking around. It was a hot day so it felt good on the water. Afterwards we wandered around the town of Como, which is pretty cool. There is a good 10 blocks of pedestrian walkways - no cars - with shops lining the walkway and churches tucked into random corners. We almost didn't see that part of Como, as we had no idea it was there. We were heading back the train and took a wrong turn and happened upon this great part of town! Score!

Anyhow, that's about it. It was a lovely trip, already seems off in the distance and it was only a few weeks ago! Hard to imagine.. Anyhow, we are here in San D1ego now and still waiting for the sun to shine... June gloom it certainly is! Anonymous G and Randy, I hope we can meet up while I'm down here. RG, looking forward to meeting you up north!

Argh!!!

I have two posts in draft and I'm dawdling with them. One of them is a post of my trip and the other a particular issue that I had on my trip. It's hard to separate the two but eventually I will finish them..

The other day I accidently wiped out my iPod. Sigh. Tomorrow we leave for 6 weeks and I'm now trying to squeeze some music onto it. My friend bought the new Coldplay while she was here, as well as Modest Mouse and Franz Ferdinand, so I even get a little new music to listen too. That almost makes up for the fact that I have to re-do my whole iPod. LOL

We've planned two weeks in Seattle to look around for houses and just basically goof off. The rest of the time we'll be in So. Cal. If anyone located in these two places would like to meet for coffee or something????

Talk to you on the flipside.

Book tag thingy

My friend left here today, so I can finish the 3 posts sitting in draft finally. We had a great time but I'm behind and just now catching up with everyone's posts.

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The instructions are very simple, answer the 4 questions and tag 5 new
people on your blog. That's it - enjoy!

1. Total number of books I've owned: I've owned books at various times in my life but certainly not many... maybe at the height of it, a few hundred. But I've moved and travelled and saved money to travel so I've started checking books out from the library again. Currently, boxed up in Oceanside, I probably have 100 books.

2. The last book I bought: I haven't purchased a book in over 2 years. Or more. Maybe The Four Agreements? by Don Miguel Ruiz

3. The Last Book I read: The Forest People. by Colin Turnbull. My dad left it here when he was visiting and because he told me to read 'The Catcher in the Rye' ages ago and I loved it, I thought I'd give it a go. It's about him living with the Pygmies in the Belgian Congo back in the 50s. It was quite good.

4. 5 books that mean something to me: (been thinking on this a few days, not really in order)
a. Altas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. (it's a favorite but not because I necessarily believed in her theories, just a good story on a number of levels)
b. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
c. The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho
d. The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
e. The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

I know there are probably others but without having them in front of me, I'm not that good at remembering. These are the ones that I've read time and again. If you'd said Favorite Authors, I could've answered that one so much easier!!

5. Tag 5 people and request they fill this out on their journals: I don't think I know 5 people that read my blog. And since I received this from one person that does, that leaves one less. LOL I think I can tag Joe.