the busy heart

I'm way behind, yo. We've been to Cinque Terre, now we're in Rome. We fly back to Paris tomorrow and then home to Boston the day after that. I've gotta say, we've had a lovely lovely trip, but we're SO glad to be heading home. Here's my advice: if you make it to Italy, the place to go is Cinque Terre. It was probably our favorite place throughout the whole trip. It's an area along the Northern coast, a series of five colorful little fishing villages. We went swimming in the Ligurian sea (which is very very salty, it seems to me), ate the best food of the trip (bruschetta, foccacia, pesto, pine nut gelato, chili pepper herb tea, etc), took a boat to a few other towns, lounged on the beach in fancy beach chairs and read books. A man walked down the beach carrying a big basket full of huge tropical leaves and chunks of fresh coconut shouting, "Coco, bella coco!" Oh how I loved that man. And each little town had a few friendly kitties lou...

Okay, I did. Okay, I bought three pairs--one hip, pink (ish), pretty, heeled item (you'll see, once I'm back to real Internet access); one pair of shockingly comfy blue sandals that Sam had a crush on; one pair of more conservative, lovely deja-esque mary jane-ish dark brown ones. We were in that store for about ten years, Sam trying to convince me to get all three, me squealing at the impracticality of it all, but not being able to put any of them back. And the Italian woman who runs the place mounting in irritation. In the end, they were a steal--much less than I would have paid in the states. And they'll make perfect school shoes. Plus, I'm in love them. It was the kind of purchase you take out of the bag and box as soon as you get home, even though it's too rainy for leather shoes, but you just have to look at them again, to hold them and snuggle them to your face. One other happy thing before we do laundry: We ate dinner at a little place overlooking the ...

So I got sick. Real sick. I'm feeling better enough now to be out and about, but yesterday I slept and slept. I'm pretty sure I was feverish and my throat closed and ached; my nose hated me. Sam spent the morning tracking down vitamin C and orange juice in little Italian pharmacies where they luckily understood the phrase "wife sick" and were willing to help. I finished reading Poisonwood Bible (which I adored until the last 100 pages or so) and read all of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (which I absolutely did enjoy--quick and delightful, if full of some unrealisticly lovely dialogue). I can also recommend The Cellist of Sarajevo , mostly. I found it to be rather, slightly, oh, dramatically written? May I say that when it was about such a terrible event? I think I can. I was in a swoon for it for many many pages, but then it seemed the characters thought thoughts that were too similar, ultimately too simple or something. Nevermind. I'll do...

Okay, so much to say, but the clock's a'ticking at the old Internet Train Cafe, and so I must be brief. -David is one sexy beast. -Uffizi Gallery gives you the history of art in under 2 hours, but by the end you want to kill yourself. -Pizza is yummy, even without cheese. -I bought a black leather purse, thinking I would be practical because I don't have one, then remembered I DOOOO have one. I should have bought the pink one after all. -Lemon gelato. Pistachio gelato. Coconut gelato. Chocolate gelato. Minty chocolate gelato. -Sam stepped in a big pile of crap. I tried to say, lookout lookout! But he didn't know what to look out for. Next time, we have a code word. -I have a fierce cold and sore throat. I blame this on the gelato. -Italian people hate me. I can't speak Italian, so they either look at me like I'm a moron or ignore me. It's depressing. -The truth: we wish we could say we were enjoying Florence more. It is damn crowded and damn hot and ...

Florence, to be precise. It's magic. But we don't have internet at our place this time, so posts will probably be sparse. Here's what I think so far: *It's a bit warm here. What I mean to say: Good golly it's hot. *There are people on little scooters (mopeds? vespas?) everywhere. And not just hip young teenagers, but middle-aged men and women, business people in suits, and the young folk. *I just ate a pizza at a place called MaMMaMia. Among more traditional veggie toppings, it had thinly sliced zuchinni and carrots (!) on it. Sam was afraid of the carrots but they came out all roasty and sweet. Yummmmmm. *Time for gelato. Caio. P.S. Thank you for sweet comments on my last post. I was afraid to say it. You made me glad I did.

A few notes on London. Last night we had dinner at Wagamama with John, Karla, and Chris Bennion. (John was/is my mentor professor at BYU/life.) It was lovely to see them. I don't even know how to say how lovely it was. Sam made John laugh. That was what I hoped would happen. And it made me happy. I talked with Karla as we walked up to Kensington Gardens to see a performance of Peter Pan. They built this special venue for it that consisted of a big cone-shaped white tent, with a theater in-the-round inside. I can't say it was stellar acting, but I enjoyed myself thoroughly. It's hard to explain this part, but they did stuff with projecting up on the top of the tent, so when Wendy, Peter, Tink and crew took off to fly to Neverland, not only were they were really suspended in the air, but it looked like they were flying over London--THE London, with parks and the National Gallery and St Paul's, etc. I couldn't catch my breath during that part; I felt like I would weep...

Short Post Today. We heard that taking the bus might take hours and hours, so we opted to stay around here. Here being the same neighborhood as the BYU London Centre, near Kensington Gardens. I know and love this area already, so I really adored showing Sam my favorite places: Embassy Row, the Round Pond in Hyde Park, Bayswater and Queensway and Whiteley's, etc. It was low-key. We read books and strolled about, and, and, the highlight: Eating a light lunch at the Orangery Restaurant at Kensington Palace. I'm pretty sure this is the most beautiful place I've ever eaten a meal. It's at least in the top ten. When you walk in, it looks like this. Those are small orange trees on each side, and a display of all of their lovely sweets. We started off with tea. This is what our table looked like. Isn't it perfect? We had our own mini orange tree. (Although ours didn't have any oranges. bummer.) It made me feel princessy. I ordered the Tulsi Mint tea, which ...