spring break adventures, part two: gelato and michelangelo

More train issues resulted in me not having any time to spend in Nice (quelle tragédie), so I will skip right on to Italia. First stop: Florence/Firenze.

Some of the city + the Arno + pretty mountains in the background

This city is so pretty. I am forever indebted to my mom for telling me to go here instead of Milan. The hostel I stayed at (The Archi Rossi, if anyone is planning a trip and wants a rec) was my favorite of the whole trip. The room I stayed in was huge and spacious, and they served free breakfast and dinner every day except Saturday.

I met lots of really cool people in the hostel, including a girl from Maryland who was studying abroad in Amsterdam for the semester, a guy named Kevin from Arizona who looked like a 90s boyband reject, and Lizzie, my new buddy who lives in Hammersmith and works for the BBC.

The Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore

The first morning I tagged along on the free tour that was set up by my hostel, and it was actually really informative. I love free tours because you actually learn shizz, but you don't have to skip lunch to pay for it! (Hey shuddup, I really had to watch my spending on these trips!)

The fake David they put up after they moved the real David inside to protect him

I spent most of the rest of the day wandering around, looking at the architecture and numerous pieces of art around the city. I had the best pizza I've ever eaten for lunch, and then went back to the hostel and had free pizza for dinner. I pretty much survived on a diet of pizza margherita in Italy.

The second day I crossed the river and walked up the hill to the Piazza del Michelangelo, because the view is incredible. It was a gorgeous day too and I spent most of the afternoon up there just reading and walking around and soaking in the Italian-ness.

Both nights I hung out with Lizzie and Kevin and a few other people (whose names I can't remember) in the common area of the hostel, drinking wine and limoncello and just chatting about random stuff. We also went to get gelato several times because, well, it's pretty much an orgasm in a waffle cone.

So yeah, like London, Paris and Barcelona before it, this city was one of my immediate loves. If I knew how to speak the language I could happily spend a very long time there.

so i think i can blog?

I have no excuse for the lack of posts. I suck. I swear I'll try to be back and blogging normally soon, but for now I just had to post this. I can't get over this dance. Best thing ever. It seriously gave me chills.

jandj 10 @ Yahoo! Video

The clearer (and shorter) version of the dance is here, but youtube wouldn't let me embed it.

Jason and Jeanine are my two favorites this season and I was so glad when they got paired. They are awesome together.

Mary Murphy is still freaking annoying though.

spring break adventures, part one: españa, te amo

It's been forever since I got back, so I figured I'd better just sit down and get this done. Two months after the fact...sorry about that, but exams have kind of been more on my mind than blogging. Apparently I fail at multitasking. Anyways I have a lot to talk about, so the recap will have to be split up into several entries.

On Tuesday the 14th of April I flew from London to Barcelona to start my two week backpacking adventure. I had to take the bus to the Plaça de Catalunya from the airport, and for the whole bus ride I was looking out the window with this huge grin on my face. It was cold and rainy in London but I was in Spain, with the sun shining on everything, giving it all a lovely orange glow. There were palm trees and Messi shirts everywhere. The latter mainly because it was the day of the second leg QF between Barcelona and Bayern Munich, which I watched with some locals while eating dinner. There was also a German couple there, who were sad about Munich losing so badly but were good sports about the whole thing.

La Rambla, where my hostel was located (well it was on a side street, but within walking distance).

I was lame and kind of forgot to take pictures of Barcelona. I was also only there for a day, so I didn't get to see much of the city beyond the Plaça Catalunya. What I did see was amazing though. I really want to go back to Barça for a longer amount of time soon.

The next day I took a train to Valencia, and on the way I sat across from a family from Virginia! The daughter was studying at Valencia University for the year and the parents had come to visit her for the week. Odd coincidence I thought at the time, but I actually met a bunch of people from VA over the next few weeks. Apparently we're all very worldly.

Valencia train station. I thought it was a pretty sweet building.

My hostel in Valencia was really great, with this huge kitchen area where everyone hung out and cooked dinner and drank together (a litre of sangria was 80 cents at the local shop). I talked Canadian politics with a girl from Ottowa and a couple from Quebec, which was pretty interesting because I know nothing about it.

The next day I went to La Ciudad de las Artes y de las Ciencias (the City of Arts and Sciences), which is a group of crazy looking futuristic buildings housing museums of...you guessed it...art and science. The science museum was pretty cool, but a lot of it was only in Spanish so I didn't understand much of it. I really need to learn how to say more than "I'm sorry, I don't speak Spanish", "Go Spain/Barcelona", "I love you", and "Where's the metro?".

As my friend said on facebook...this is not a building, it's a space ship.

I met up with fellow footie-lover Gina there, and we took a quick trip to the Mestalla. Doesn't look like much from the outside, but I hear that the inside is pretty awesome. Go here for proof.

Then we walked around the city some, ate delish paella, went to the very cool-looking silk exchange building, and took refuge under a building's overhang while it rained a lot. WTF, weather.
On my last day in town I took the metro down to the beach, because the weather was (finally) gorgeous. I didn't bring my towel or bathing suit with me, so I didn't actually sunbathe, but I did lay on the wall by the sand for ages.I also visited the local indoor market for lunch and to stock up on oranges...because what is a trip to Valencia without oranges?? I didn't take a picture of that but it was a really cool building. And I spoke Spanish to the girl at the fruit stand. Kind of.

Everyone heard/read my ranting about my stolen iPod, so I won't go back into that again, but here's the park where it happened. Not exactly the type of place you'd expect thieves to hang out, is it?Due to unforeseen train issues, I ended up going back to Barcelona for a night before traveling on to France, instead of taking an overnight train to Nice. Because I was effectively stranded there and my train didn't get in until midnight, I coudn't really be picky (i.e. money-conscious) about where I stayed and ended up at a hotel instead of a hostel. I didn't mind though, because it was the best night's sleep I had all trip.

Next up: Italia!

back...with pandas and new music.

Okay, I'm back in the blogging world. Or at least I hope to be. I have ridiculous amounts of travel recaps needing to be written, so I figure if I take myself off hiatus that will force me to stop neglecting them. Plus exams are over (woohoo!) so I should actually have time to write.

New song of the week is "The Boss Americana" by Albert Hammond, Jr. from 2008's release Como Te Llama. I'm always a little bit wary of members of a band putting out solo albums because most of the time the individual parts never quite measure up to the whole (just look at Carl Barat and Pete Doherty), but I just got this album a few days ago and I actually like it better than some of The Strokes' stuff.

The reason I got this (and lots of other stuff...about 2000 songs worth) is because my friend Phil came to visit this weekend. I love hanging out with him because while we have practically the exact same taste in music, we don't actually have a lot of the same music. His music library is filled with albums that I've had on my list for ages but never got around to getting (Belle and Sebastian, Arcade Fire, Pulp, early Ash and late Blur, The Zutons, The Hives, etc. etc.), and I have a ton of old school rock that he doesn't have (David Bowie, The Clash, The Kinks, The Velvet Underground, and so on). Ours is a synergistic relationship.

Friday night we went into London to meet up with a girl I met in Florence, who was hosting a "panda pub crawl". Why, you ask? (And many people did). Well, why the hell not?

We took pictures in the middle of the road like the Beatles.

We drank bamboo shooters.

We met a group of Freemasons.

And we hid from vultures.

It was by far the weirdest night I've had in a very long time. But it was totally fun. I also swear to Iker I saw Andrey Arshavin walking around Holborn. I'm so going to miss London.

so you may have noticed...

...that my blog has been a bit inactive lately. So I'm putting up a temporary

sign on my proverbial blog lawn.



Fear not, I will be back soon. Until then, enjoy some pretty pictures of José Nicholas Théodore.

album of the week: quicken the heart

This week's song of the week is a whole album. Shut up, it's my blog and I do what I want. (Well actually I was just going to pick a song off the album, but I couldn't find the one I wanted on the music playlist maker thing, so I settled for a medley sort of mashup of all the songs on the album. Deal with it.)

Maxïmo Park's third studio album was officially released on Monday (when I wanted to have this blog entry posted...ah well, such is life), although I've been listening to it on their myspace practically nonstop for about a week already. At first listen, I liked the album but not as much as the previous two. And then I remembered that I thought the same thing about the second album but it ended up really growing on me. I think maybe I just have to take some time to get used to new things.

Quicken the Heart has a very dreamy quality to it. Like Our Earthly Pleasures before it, it isn't as unfinished or unhinged sounding as their debut, although the first two tracks have traces of early Park in them. "Wraithlike" is slightly frantic (there are even sirens in the background) and you get a strange sense that the song is constantly trying to catch up with the beat. "The Penultimate Clinch" starts off somewhat uninspiring, but by the time the chorus comes around you're bopping around the room.

The third track is titled "The Kids Are Sick Again" and it's the first single released, and it's quite a bit more negative than their usual sound. It's about a never ending cycle of adolescent summers doing fuck all, basically. I can relate to "the comforting ache of the summer holidays / pointless days pining, afternoons whining", seeing as I really don't want to go back home when this term is over. This summer will be boring. But anyways...

"A Cloud of Mystery" hasn't really grabbed me yet. It's a decent song but not one of my favorites on the album. "Calm" and "In Another World (You Would've Found Yourself By Now)" are interesting to listen to back to back, because "Calm" starts out in a slow dreamy happy sort of mode and then turns darker, while "In Another World" is dark and sort of threatening at first but then a major chord kicks off the chorus and it's all happy and dancey. "You'll still end up on a revolving dance floor in the middle of the river" is one of my favorite moments on the album. And yes, that lyric sounds incredibly random, but the band said it's a reference to a weird night club in Newcastle that was on a boat on the Tyne.

"Let's Get Clinical" is a great song. Not a whole lot of symbolism here; just a lighthearted song about doing the dirty. I first heard a live version of this song on youtube and I was so excited to hear the official studio version, and at first I was a little bit disappointed because it was slower than I had imagined. However, I've grown to love it just as much. The next one, "Roller Disco Dreams", was the song that I wanted to use as the SOTW. It's a sad sort of regretful song about growing up, having adult relationships, and wanting to hang on to childhood. The soaring vocals at the chorus are fantastic, and "if it's a grower / why can't we take things slower?" is a sentiment that I think most people have felt at one time or another.

"Tanned" is another dreamy sort of song about happy lazy summer days. Nothing too earth shattering, but I do love the lyrical rhythm in the verses. "Questing, Not Coasting" is a slow song, but it's one of my favorites of the new bunch. The "Hey you, what's new?" part always makes me smile, and I love how it ends with the "thanks for coming by". This is another song with an emotive chorus that sort of soars above the rest of the song. Love it.

The last two songs "Overland, West of Suez" and "I Haven't Seen Her In Ages" aren't really the best songs, so the album kind of fizzes out rather than going out with a punch. That's not to say they're bad, and I'm sure in a few months I'll love them just as much as the rest, but that's just my first sort of impression.

However, I absolutely adore the bonus track "Lost Property". It sounds a bit quirky with just drums and a keyboard, and since there isn't much in the way of musical background the lyrics are free to take centre stage. And the lyrics in this song are some of the best of the whole album. "When I ask how are you / maybe I just mean how am I? / I line up my complaints / and cram them into my reply" is hilarious; we all know people like that, don't we? Also "take me to nostalgics anonymous" is a really strange thing to say, but it made me crack up when I heard it because it sounds so much like me. I'm always going on about one thing or another from the past and feeling all nostalgic.

So yeah...son of godzilla, that was a lot of waffling. I just get excited about new albums, kay? Don't judge. Overall verdict: I'm very satisfied with the release. It's put me in a very good mood, which I'm hoping will last through to the end of exams.

goalie love

I love Semyon Varlamov.

He just turned 21, he just recently got called up from the Hershey Bears, and he still doesn't speak any English. But he makes saves like this against one of the best players in the NHL:


Click the HD button. It's even better.

This probably isn't the most appropriate moment to post this, seeing as how the Capitals have just lost three playoff games in a row, but whatever. He is amazing and the losses weren't his fault. Game 6 is starting...um, now. It's in Pittsburgh, and if we lose this one we're out of the playoffs. I'm nervous.

Come on Varlamov & Co. Football has sucked this weekend. Don't lose and make me even sadder.

LATE NIGHT EDIT: We won!! 5-4 in overtime to force game 7 this Wednesday back in DC. Let's all hope it will turn out better than last year's series against the Flyers. Go Caps!