Never Leave Your Wingman's Excellent European Adventure - Part 5 - Mediterranean & Nice

Hi, everyone! Thanks for joining me on my adventurous trip to Europe this summer. I had a ton of fun... and I didn't even plan to go to Europe! It was all my author's idea (see my first blog), but am I ever glad she decided to take me along. Man, oh man, I had a blast!

When we last spoke...er... when I last wrote, my publishers Deana and Al and I were in the town of Riomaggiore, Italy and we saw the Mediterranean Sea for the first time. We headed further west after that and saw a number of interesting sights the next day - still in Italy.

A helicopter was dousing a forest fire by filling the bucket with sea water.

It was neat to see this and be reminded of those who fight forest fires at home. My publishers said they saw this same process used in northern Saskatchewan, with the cold northern lake water being used to fill the bucket. 

 That night, we stayed at a beautiful little hotel in the community of San Bartolomeo, Italy. This was the view from our room's balcony. Pretty nice, huh? That's the Mediterranean in the distance.

We got a chuckle out of the size of their room key fobs.

They don't want anyone to walk away with a key in their pocket, I guess. Our key was attached to one of the heavy bells above, so we gladly left it behind when we went for a walk.

And this is what we saw on our walk in town:

Pretty flowers.

A plum tree.

A grapefruit tree.

And a baffling collection of signs. 

How does anyone know which way they're supposed to go? You'd have to stop your vehicle, get out, walk up to the signs and then spend 10 minutes reading them all to figure out where you're supposed to go. We saw this type of signage a few times in Europe. There must be a trick to it that we don't know about.

Um.... we saw a table with a wine bottle on it ... sitting in the street. It is supposed to draw attention to the restaurant, I guess... And it apparently worked - my author and I stopped and looked, didn't we? She even took its picture. What a unique and effective marketing ploy.

I wonder if I would attract attention in Canada if I just sat on a table in the street in downtown Regina. Hmmm...

So that's it for our time in Italy.

Next stop - Nice, France!

I know!

This was one of my favouritest days so far.

Sun,

sand,

and sea.

What could be better? I know my subject, seven-time cancer survivor Dionne Warner, loves the beach, and I thought of her the whole time I was basking in the sun and sand and sea in Nice. Ahhh... it was so good.

Yes, I loved it. There were people parasailing, swimming and sunbathing... 

...and going to the bathroom. Uh huh, this is a public toilet. Interesting design, I thought. Beats the heck out of our boring blue Porta Potties at home. 

And all this action was being overseen by this handsome young lifeguard. 

While he was watching them, I was watching him.

What? I'm a book! I can look if I want. Sheesh.

And these are police officers - assigned to beach duty obviously.

I wonder who he's calling... his beach baby, maybe.

Come on - that's funny. It isn't?
Oh, alright. Moving on...

Here's an interesting method of transportation for tourists. Just hop in the back and have the driver take you for a ride. 

And speaking of riding... the people of Nice are crazy when it comes to their driving and parking. We had some trouble figuring out if people were coming or going, and there was barely any room for cars to go down some streets. We often wondered how drivers were going to get out of their parking spots if they wanted to leave before the cars on either side of them. And how did they get in there in the first place? Maybe it's better not to know sometimes.

Here's one of the tiny walking-only streets between buildings.

And we enjoyed seeing the sidewalk cafe chairs facing the street for better people-watching. Here's Publisher Al pretending to pose for a serious photo when we were actually taking a photo of the cafe seats. 

And check out the skateboarder - with grey hair. That was a surprise...as were these things:

A super-busy butcher shop.

Prickly pears in a street market.

This happy dude and his saxophone. (The one on the right, silly.) Don't ask me who he is. Publisher Al thought he'd be friendly, though, and give the guy a High Five.

Little ornaments called 'French Kiss'. Come to your own conclusion on that one...

And this little ducky.

The European hotels we were in did not have facecloths and my publishers and I missed those handy little cloths, so we went looking to buy one. The closest we could find in the places we shopped was this little ducky. He worked okay but he scared me a couple times in the middle of the night. Those little eyes are kind of beady ... and those lips... Don't get me started on those lips.

My most favourite surprise was this. though...

ANGEL WINGS! On the shirt of a woman who was sitting on a Nice sidewalk. 

The wings, of course, reminded me of my Dionne, so I was super glad when Publisher Al saw them and showed them to me and Author Deana. 

Here's beautiful Dionne in 2001 after making a snow angel in Saskatchewan...

...and here she is in 2010, enjoying the sun, sand and sea of Turks and Caicos - with a sunscreen angel on her back. Ah, yes. She loves angels and we love her.

Until next time, friends. We hope you have a wonderful day and that angels are indeed with you on your journey.

Take care. We'll see you soon!

Never Leave Your Wingman's Excellent European Adventure - Part 4 - Italy

You're back! Great! Thank you for following along with me, the Never Leave Your Wingman book, as I share my photos from my wonderful summer adventure in Europe!
(If you didn't read Part 1 , Part 2, or Part 3, these are the links for those posts.)

This kind of feels like you and I are in the Sisterhood of the Travelling Book club together. Pretty neat, huh? And speaking of the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants movie - the parts of it that were filmed in Greece, anyway - well... hang on for a few minutes. I'll come back to that.

So the last time I blogged, my publishers and I were in Pisa, Italy and I was holding up the Leaning Tower, remember? Well, there was one other interesting place that we discovered in Pisa. And you'll probably be surprised to see what it was.

That's right - a McDonalds restaurant!  'And Here's The Party!' says the sign.

The folks at this restaurant had a hilarious sense of humour, and we had quite a few chuckles while eating our nutritious fast-food lunch. (Oh come on, somebody had a salad there some day.) 

Anyway, here are some of the signs we saw inside this McDonalds restaurant:

In case you can't quite make out this sign leading to the washrooms, here it is close up:

Hilarious, right? I wanted to cut that part of the door out and bring it home to share with my friends... but it wouldn't have fit in my travel bag and the airline would have charged me for extra baggage, so this photo will have to do.

While we were driving from Pisa to our next stop on our trip, we saw some really pretty fields. While Saskatchewan and Canada's other Prairie provinces often have bright yellow fields of canola in the late summer, here in Italy and other parts of Europe, we enjoyed this scene of bright yellow sunflowers.

My author Deana snapped a whole pile of photos of these fields. This is one of my favourites.

Did you know that in Europe, the semi trucks don't have solid side panels like our trucks do here in Canada? We found it strange to watch the canvas sides of the big trucks flapping with the wind. That can't be too aerodynamic, can it?

Here's Publisher Al driving us (himself, me and my author Deana, of course) to our next destination. 

Psst... that's the Mediterranean Sea in the background.

OH MY GOSH! I am SOOOO excited that we can see it!!

But wait. Before we could get into our next accommodation that afternoon, we had to park our rental vehicle... at the top of the huge hill leading into that town that you saw in the above photo. So this was the home for our VW vehicle - in a tiny (by Canadian standards) parking stall with its own pull-down door in a parking garage. Let's just say we've had more fun parking in other places.

Then we began the walk downhill....

...and further downhill....

...and still further downhilll....

...for about 20 minutes - not including the rests to catch our breath .... 

...to get to our room (up on the right-hand middle level of those buildings), at the seaside edge of the village of Riomaggiore. This is a working fishing village and is one of five towns close together in the Cinque Terre region of Italy which are popular with young tourists - "because young tourists still have good, strong legs that can handle the 45-degree hills," my publishers said. (Can you tell that my publishers are old and were a little cranky after going up and down this main-street hill that goes from one end of town to the other a couple times? Plus, it was only the day after they had climbed the 395,000 steps (or something like that) up to the top of the Duomo in Florence, too - so maybe they had a tiny reason to be a little tired and unhappy about more climbing.

 Anyway, my publishers and I took it fairly easy in Riomaggiore for the rest of the day. We just relaxed and enjoyed the views. 

Here are some photos of what we saw...

The view from our front walkway.

This village really reminded me of the rocky Greek village in the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants movie - except we didn't have a donkey to take us up the hills. Oh, wait. I hear my author calling out to me. "A donkey! That would have been perfect!" (As if she just thought of this herself. 

Silly author. Where would they have parked the donkeys?) 

These pretty flowers were blooming from a vine growing on the rock wall in front of our room.

Cool, huh?

In front and below our room, a bunch of Italian men noisily worked together to build this.... this... I don't even know what it was. A pier perhaps? Anyway, they had a little trouble deciding who would give the orders and who would follow them, and we thoroughly enjoyed watching this process. We also giggled a little when the group took a break to share some bubbly. Only in Europe. 

This very secure (not) closure on the gas cupboard was a little unsettling for us. Our room was just behind this wall. Yeah, a little unsettling.

Now this photo... this is a different story. What? Were you actually looking at the big red boaty thing. Pshaw. The legs. Check out the legs under the red thing! Well worth watching as they rounded the corner and wandered up the stairs. Wooeeee! I LIKE ITALY!!! (And don't get me started on his teeny tiny swimsuit...)

This cracked me up. When you gotta go, the Mediterranean Sea is as good a place as any, I guess.

The sea offers many pretty sights... In daylight...

...And the early evening.

So goodnight for now ... from the northwest corner of Italy. 

I'll see you soon for my next update. It's going to be awesome... just you wait!

Never Leave Your Wingman's Excellent European Adventure - Part 3 - Florence & Pisa

Hello there! Are you ready for another adventure? I sure was this summer when my publishers took me to Europe with them. After visiting Austria (read my blog - Part 1), then Venice and Rome (here's my blog - Part 2), I couldn't imagine what my publishers had in store for me next.

Well, it was pretty neat. Come along... you'll see.

Florence, Italy was the next destination during our European adventure of a lifetime. 

This was some of the furniture in our room in Florence. Talk about old-school. Actually, it was probably 100 years old or more. (Oh, not the TV. That is definitely newer than 100 years, silly.) 

Florence is where we first started seeing a lot of bicycles during our European adventure. I am having a little rest here on a window ledge as we walked toward the main downtown area. See that light-coloured dome way back there in the centre of photo? I'll tell you about that in a minute.

So I looked to my left and this is what I saw... a Canadian flag. In Florence, Italy! Cool. The building is a Four Seasons Hotel. Who would have guessed that? Certainly not me.

So here it is... the biggest deal in the historic centre of Florence.

The Duomo of Florence (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore) is the main church of Florence. This impressive Gothic-style church with the red brick dome was built starting in the 13th century and the dome was added in the 15th century. The Duomo offers a stunning view of the entire city... if you're brave enough to climb the 463 steps up to the top of the dome.

Yes, I said 463 steps. Uphill. All the way.

Well, my publishers are not exactly what I'd call 'brave' all the time, and they weren't planning on climbing the 463 steps up to the top of the dome. They tell me they aren't particularly fond of closed-in stairwells that have very little air flow and even less head room (my publisher Al is tall) ... But my publishers aren't very bright sometimes. 

On this particular day in Florence, they went ahead and bought a ticket for the 'cupola' of the Duomo without realizing that the word 'cupola' actually means 'dome'. Duh. I repeat - Not very bright.

So you should have seen their faces when they rounded the corner going into the church and were told to keep on moving... and they found themselves having to immediately climb stairs instead of just walking around to look at the interior of the church from the ground floor. Yikes!

They climbed and climbed... and stopped for a few seconds about a third of the way up to catch their breath at a small landing. Then they climbed some more. At what felt like 3,000 steps already (it was only about halfway up, but no one was actually counting) they arrived at a walkway along the interior of the dome and saw this...

...the incredible artwork inside the dome, painted in 1572-1579.

Absolutely beautiful.

Then some more climbing, and they finally arrived at what's called the 'lantern' that wraps around on the outside of the top of the dome.

This was the view when they reached the top outside of the dome. Worth the climb. In every way. 

Going down the stairs was way easier than climbing up... 

...but still creepy in tight quarters, and Al still had to watch his head. He's much taller than this guy who was ahead of my publishers as they went down the steps - all 463 of them - or did I say that already?

So that was an adventure that made us laugh and laugh....

Oh, I almost forgot... 

LOOK AT THIS BUG!

Outside the Duomo, this young man picked up a ginormous bug. A locust, we're guessing, 'cause that's what hangs around those parts of the world. And we thought our Saskatchewan grasshoppers were big. Ha! Not even close.

This little angel was just too cute to ignore. We love angels because... well, we do. 

And they remind us of all the Earth Angels who pray for, love and support our special eight-time cancer survivor Dionne Warner. We love those wings.

This was the first and best gelato we had in Europe. Homemade and super tasty. The servings were awesomely huge, too.

Europe isn't all fun and tourism, you know. These were some of the sights we enjoyed on our walk back to our room one evening. Interesting statues in a garden and beautiful flowers.

So how do you like this statue of Michelangelo's David? We were pretty excited to see it. We couldn't show you all of David ... because I'm a family book, you know. Gotta keep it PG.

This isn't the real statue of David. It's a beautiful replica, in the Palazzo della Signoria in Florence. The real statue is in a museum in Florence, but this one is sitting where the real statue originally sat, and we were impressed. 

This isn't the real Mona Lisa painting either, but it's also pretty cool. Created by this artist right in front of our eyes... with chalk... on the sidewalk. I wonder how long his artwork lasts before it gets wiped away. I'm glad I'm made of something more long-lasting than chalk. So people can read me for years and years to come.

  

Now here's a sight we don't see every day (or any day) in Saskatchewan. A wild boar's head hanging on a hook in a downtown restaurant. We kind of had to cover our eyes while we ate this European-style pizza...

This public telephone was not only a sight we haven't seen for years in Saskatchewan but the design was cool, too. We had to take a photo and show you.

We really liked Florence, but it was time to move on, so we travelled west to this place...

...Pisa, Italy!

Oh my gosh! It was so cool to hold up this Leaning Tower.

I am just a little book, so it was hard work to do all that holding - with a little help from Publisher Al, of course.

Oh, there you go. That's more like it. And if you look way into the background at the base of the tower, you'll see how tall this eight-storey leaning tower really is. It's quite the engineering marvel.

So that's it for this part of our journey. Stay tuned for our next stop...

Hint: It involves some beautiful blue water.