There and Back Again

I am back home in Canada! I have lots to say, so let's get started.......

Two and a half weeks ago, my brother came to visit me in Dublin for 2 days. I gave him a quick tour of Dublin on his first day and we went to Glendalough on the second. Glendalough is supposed to be one of the prettiest places in Ireland, though I was not really impressed as it reminded me of Canada. Colin, Francois and I, took the bus there and did a 8km hike in which we saw ruins, a lake, a waterfall and bascially, lots of nature. This was also my last day in Ireland so I went to say goodbye to my adopted Irish family at work.

The next morning, Tuesday, June 24, Colin and I took an early flight from Dublin to Luton Airport in London. We were flying with Ryanair and were restricted to only 15kg each, after which, it's 15 Euros per kg over!! I was at 19kg even after I had already donated almost all my clothes to charity. So what did I do, I put on some more clothes (they weigh your luggage but not you!), stuffed my carry on to the max and carried one of my textbooks in my hand as reading material...in the end, I got it down to the alotted 15kg. After arriving in Luton, we took the train to Trina and Brian's place in Twickenham. The transportation is highway robbery in London....18 Pounds for a day pass from Luton...that's over 40CAD!!!! After dropping our things off at their place, I took Colin on a tour of London.

The next day, we woke up early to stand in line for tickets to Wimbledon. Each morning they sell about 6000 tickets to the event. They even had tickets for centre court and court 1 but those went to those who had camped out to get the tickets. We arrived around half 7 (7:30am) and were 3100 and 3101 in line. While we were in line, the CBC, a Canadian television channel, spotted the Canadian flag on my brother's backpack and asked us if we would do an interview for them. So, they followed us with a camera for 15minutes in our line and asked us various questions about the Canadian tennis players and our thoughts on Canada. I wonder if they ever aired that here?? We went to watch our boy Dancevic who unfortunatey lost his match. We then wandered the outside courts and watch some of the practice sessions. I saw James Blake, Andy Murry, Danella Huntakova, Aiy Suguyani and others that I can't remember right now.

On Tursday, June 26, Colin and I parted ways. He went to Rome and I went to my chiropractic conference in Rimini. Italy was hot, hot, hot! About 35 degrees and fairly humid. When I left Ireland, it was 12 degrees and raining! Rimini is a beach town and reminded be of the boardwalk in Atlantic City or Wasaga Beach...kinda sleezy. I didn't even get to the beach because of the long hours of the seminar. The seminar was inspiring and it was a great opportunity to network with European Chiropractors. I even ran into Heather who was 1 year below me at CMCC. She had just moved to the Netherlands and will be pracitcing there for the next two years...good luck Heather! On the Friday of the seminar, we all took a bus to a medevil castle in Garada, 1 hr outside of Rimini. It was a beautiful night with music and Italian food and drink. On Saturday evening, I left Rimini after the conference and went to Florence.

On Sunday morning, I wandered the streets of the pretty city of Florence while waiting to meet up with Colin. Florence was pretty small so I saw most of it within 3 hrs. There were 2 places I really wanted to see so I waited for Colin to see those but in the meantime, I went to the Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral, Piazze della Signeria, Santa Croce church, Ponte Vecchio, Pitti Palace, Santo Spirito church, Santa Maria Novella church, Medici Chpels, San Lorenzo Street market, etc. At half 12 (12:30pm), I went to pick up my brother form the train station. Since I saw him in London, Colin had travelled to Rome and Venice. We had a yummy pizza for lunch and went to climb the steps of the dome of the cathedral but it was close because it was a sunday! boo!! Next, we went to the Academy gallery to see Michelangelo's David. We waited outside in the sun for 1 hr to see the statue. It was bigger than I had imagined but I'm still not sure it was worth the wait...since I had already seen what I wanted to see in Florence, we decided to leave and go to Piza.

Once at Piza, we walked 45mins across town to see the leaning tower of Piza. Colin paid 15Euros to climb the tower but I was knackered and was content writing postcards and taking pictures of him while I waited. We then went back to the train station and caught a train to Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre is 5 villiages by the sea surrounded by moutains. It's a beautiful place...in fact, all of Italy blew my mind (excpet Rimini, of course). We stayed in Monterosso as it is the biggest of the 5 villages. The villages are connected by a trail though the moutains and by train. Colin had blisters and did not want to hike so we opted to rent a kayak instead. We kayaked through 3 of the cities before turning back! The view was amazing! We also took the train to the neighbouring city before packing up again and heading for Nice.

We took a 5hr train from Cinque Terre to Ventimilia, which is the edge of Italy. By then, it was 11pm at night and we had not booked accomodations in Nice. We were going to stay in Ventimilia but ran into 2 backpacking Amercans who had checked the hotel prices and said they were two expensive. We then all boarded the last train and got into Nice around 1am. The train ride to Nice was georgous at night. The next morning, I was on a mission for a pain au chocolait and find I did! We decided to take a train to Monte Carlo (20 mins away) before hitting the beaches in Nice.

Monaco is classy and you can definately tell that the residents are loaded!! We walked along the pire and there are yachts parked everywhere....huge yachts! And the cars that we saw!!! Since, we were both F1 fans, we found the famous hairpin and tunnel that belong to the yearly Monaco Grand Prix and took pictures there. We also went to the pebble beach. I am not a fan of this pebble beach business. It hurts your feet sooo much just getting to the water. The water is nice and cool but the pebbles...grrrrr.....we then returned to Nice and eplored the city a bit.

The next day, Thursday, we took a 2 hr train to Marseille. After helping me find my hostel, Colin left to catch a flight to Amsterdam and I explored Marseille. I met a couple Canadians and hung out with them for a few days. In Marseille, we visited the Vieux Port and the Notre Dame de la Guard. I was not overly impressed with Marseille. It was dirty and some of the people were pretty sketchy. I guess it doesn't help that the hostel was located in a bad part of town. One of the Canadians was almost robbed getting from the train station to the hostel which is only 50m apart!! My favourite part of Marseille would have to be the Notra Dame de la Guard, which is located on a great big hill. The view from above was magnificent and made the long climb worth it.

My flight from Marseille aiport was at 6:25am so I decided to sleep at the airport as there was no bus servie at 4am. Needless to say, I did not sleep much curled up on a hard metal chair. I was happy that I was not the only one to do this. I arrived in Eindhoven, Netherlands on Friday morning and took a train to Amsterdam. It was my 3rd time here so I had already seen most of the city by then. I had to go back only because my flight from from Amsterdam to Toronto. I relaxed for 2 days in Amsterdam and flew back to Toronto on Sunday. It's very disorienting to fly at 2pm in Amseterdam, be in a plane for 8 hours and arrive at 4pm in Toronto. I must say that KLM has a great in-flight food service. I was full the entire flight! And, when I asked for a vegetarian meal, they gave me 5 choices!!!! They even made me a special vegetarian snack! Irene met me at the airport and I was home!

I stayed in Toronto for 2 days and now am in Ottawa. I'll b heading back to Toronto at the end of the week to start m job hunt!

Wow, that took a while to write.....anyways, thanks for following my story the past year. To those I met in Ireland, thank you for the great adventures and memories. To my adopted family at Back to Health, you guys are great. Thanks for always looking out for me. To la clique francais et fanfan, merci pour toutes les races! Fanfan, you are awesome! To my old friends from Canada, see you soon!