3:30pm, Florence

A quick note on the wonderful food we've been enjoying:

Sausage-dogs and beer in a Munich beer garden, refreshing and slightly gassy.

A lovely raclette (melted cheese on potatoes with pickles on the side) in Zurich.

Lots of fish dishes, especially involving anchovies (salty!) in Cinque Terre. Plus a specialty dish of "the Infernal Dormouses" -- actually baby octopi in a spicy garlic sauce.

Pizza, pastas and really wonderful wines in Pisa and Florence.

Ok, now I'm all hungry again... Must press on.
posted by Tom at 9:29 AM | link | (0) comments

Vernazza, Italy. 6:17pm.

An abbreviated travel post just to catch up to where we are today... We haven't had much time for diary entries so I'm composing on the spot.

Anyone who was at the wedding will be in no doubt how happy we were. It was truly a perfect day -- perfect weather, perfect music, perfect guest list -- and we could not possibly have been happier. We followed it up with an incredible view from the CN tower on the Sunday morning and a nice open house at our place Sunday afternoon, which hardly put a dent in the huge quantities of leftover gourmet food from the wedding reception.

Monday was pack-o-rama, which included a quick sprint down to MEC for a travel pack for Anne, an extra money belt, and a couple of other necessities. We stuffed ourselves full of as much of the leftover beef, curry and other delicacies as possible and were thus able to black out almost immediately upon takeoff without worrying about having to stomach airplane food. We both slept somewhat and arrived in Munich able to function, at least.

After a quick bus trip to the downtown station we had a nice wander through the pedestrian district and stopped in the outdoor market. We feasted on pork sandwiches and big steins of beer before heading back to the station for our train to Zurich.

The "cow hotel" in Zurich (Hotel Leoneck) was everything we expected and more.

On Wednesday morning we had a leisurely wander down to the train station, stopping at the Co-op to pick up a picnic lunch. Our Cisalpino train took us almost all the way to Vernazza, with only a four minute local train to finish the last couple of miles. Vernazza was as beautiful as I remembered it from the last trip but sadly packed with American tourists. Still, we had a nice roam around the harbour and an excellent seafood and pasta meal to introduce us to Italy.

Today we hiked from Vernazza to the far end of the Parc Nationale de Cinque Terra, the lovely little town of Riomaggiore. En route we stopped for panini in Corniglia, for gelato and a swim in Manarola, and a crepe and coffees in Riomaggiore, before catching the train back to Vernazza. Lesson learned for next time: as with the Go train in Toronto, you have to timestamp your ticket to make it valid -- we got caught (innocently of course) by the train inspector and had to pay a meagre 5 euro fine each.

Which brings us up to date except for some sad news about Hoover... We had a message to call her vet, Dr. Foster, who told us her cancer is the Bad Kind, which means it's going to come back. We're going to try chemotherapy to see if we can extend her life -- apparently cats deal very well with chemo and it has a good chance of putting the cancer into remission, for a while at least.

Ok, that's that -- going to check emails. Back in a couple of days!
posted by Tom at 12:17 PM | link | (0) comments

Married!

We had an ideal weekend, great weather, wonderful music, but the best thing of all was to have all of our friends and family together to share it all with. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for helping make this a truly perfect weekend.

And we're off!

My lovely bride and I are heading over the pond tomorrow, leaving our home in the safe hands of Meredith and Bernard. Italy, here we come!
posted by Tom at 10:15 PM | link | (0) comments