3. Mamma mia, I'm Italian!

hello again!

pardon the delay in posting. i currently have no easily accessible internet*, but today in my 5 minutes sitting outside of the one place we reliably get wifi, i received a correspondence from my beloved mommy requesting evidence of our continued health and well-being, and maybe some recounting of adventures, in the form of a blerg post. so here it is.

skeleton of the trip (informative but kinda boring):

- i flew to dc from seattle where i met up with all my cousins etc on my dad's side and (after a day or two of touristing) we drove to the outer banks in north carolina for an awesome week of boogie boarding, swimming, wild horses, head/handstands,** games, and mysterious midgets who appear in the night.

- drove back to dc (took twice as long because of traffic - 9 hours of hair wraps, flow, and good conversation with steph and the rest of the pattons)

- another day in dc including a free wine and cheese tasting, prosecco with grammy, and ely teaching me how to make stop motion videos

- 2 days in nyc! i stayed with liz, saw sleep no more, went to the met with claudia, and snuck into an exclusive bar to find ilana, who i unfortunately did not see

- flew to london to meet jerface. saw yelp london, climbed, and was rendered unable to eat bananas for a while.

- train to edinburgh: land of humongous baked potatoes, rain, and SHEEP. oh and castles, haggis, highland cows, and more of my roots than i expected.

- bus/plane/plane/taxi/train to the motherland (italy): land of tan people, speedos, and MORE GELATO THAN YOUR BODY HAS ROOM FOR!

we were going to go on to menton, france, on sunday but instead we are staying here in the cinque terre (specifically riomaggiore) for an extra few days before heading on to banyuls sur mer, france, and then barcelona, and then back to london. after a recovery day or two in london i fly back to nyc for one night and then off to see juje at emu for a weekend, before returning to seattle to begin my real life adventures. because, as my Facebook album title asserts: "this is not real life."

...yes mommy, speaking of Facebook, i have been taking more pictures!

and now for the more important list...

cats:

- Ginger! the dc constantines' cat. she slept with me!

- edinburgh: one at the bottom of calton hill

- some town in scotland: in the bookstore, liked jer better than me

- the count for riomaggiore thus far is 7, i believe. obviously the best place yet.

More to come, including stories (sorry this is listy and boring, that's how it feels in my post-sugar-high brain right now). i love you all and if you are currently seeking suggestions for where to propose, hit me up, we found some good ones here in riomaggiore.

love, Clare

* and two really good books to devour, great weather, the ocean like 2 blocks away, 2-euro gelato half that far, and one of my favorite people to exasperate. (#humblebrag)***

** learning how to do this has been one of my new year's resolutions since sophomore year of college, and i never made any significant progress until that week. thanks to sam, livvy, steph, and sophia for the lessons!

*** this is ironic. i hate hashtags.

2. good morning edinburgh, or, I JUST RODE THE KNIGHT BUS! seriously guys, my life is harry potter right now.

from wednesday morning:

helloooooo,

i am writing to you right now at edinburgh airport, 6:08 am. D: i've been up since 4 (when i woke up 15 minutes before the alarm panicking that we had overslept and missed our flight), and i've had my first yogurt since i left london, although i have not yet been able to eat a banana*.

that's about all the mental functioning i am capable of right now, so i will leave off for now. my scottish quarter (which i am now much more connected to) says, "och, ye muckle braeket haever!"**

*bananas, which have been my comfort food for the past 6 months or so, were recently tainted in my mind by 2 unfortunate factors: 1, my beloved aunt warning me that they "back you up" even time she saw me eating one (i.e., at least once a day), and 2, during the 24 hour period including my nyc-london flight i ate about 4 bananas and then was embroiled in a stunning display of digestive pyrotechnics, which if anything proved that bananas have the exact opposite effect of that postulated by my auntie. so, you want a banana?

**bit of scottish the tour guide taught us yesterday, spelled sort of phonetically, meaning something along the lines of "och, you great stupid-looking nonsense-speaker." braw, isn't it?

1. dear europe, I'm BAAAAAACK!

hello party people,

now that i am doing fun things again in a more anonymous environment (i.e. foreign lands where i am just another silly american) and also in an environment in which i have a convenient excuse for the situations i get into (i.e. the fact that i am just another silly american navigating these here foreign wilds), i have decided to blerg again. whee!

right now i am on a train, which i am reasonably sure is traveling through the scottish countryside, having recently left the english countryside for this new land where the sheep look cleaner and probably have funnier accents. Nothing of particular note has happened so far today, aside from the fact that we took a double-decker bus to Kings Cross (where we of course took a harry potter picture, much to Jer's chagrin (he was bribed)), and i have been pretending i'm on my way to hogwarts ever since. however that fantasy shall soon have to end.

good news on the home front, for at least a brief period of time jer's fridge had some food in it, and nobody got folded up in the murphy bed, although i did nearly concuss him when i accidentally dropped a board on him from a great height due to some poor cabinet design (not my fault!).

exciting thing! while walking back from climbing yesterday jer spotted David Grohl (lead singer of the Foo Fighters who apparently has his picture on reddit a lot) being cute with his fam-bam in Covent Garden. Now, bear in mind, this celebrity sighting occurred approximately 2 hours after i inquired whether he had seen any famous people yet in london, to which he responded, "uh, NO" *eyeroll/you-ignorant-tourist face*. So i felt very validated.

i shall conclude by telling you all that we made it successfully to edinburgh and our hotel is literally right next to the train station and also on the Royal Mile which is cool but there is a big festival going on right now so it is rather busy.

ALSO i saw the birthplace of harry potter! this is a Big Deal (duh). it is a cafe called the Elephant House, apparently.

anyway, more to come as interwebz continue to become available.

all my love,

clarebear

0. HELLO WORLD, in which I remember to 0-index!

Yup, THERE'S MOAR. Did you think that just because I am* back in the land of actually fast fast food and gloriously few ?!#@&?! * umbrellaz, the fascinating, universally relevant events of my exciting life would be over? WRONG. They are just beginning. In a mere 7 months, I will be released from my sanctuary/holding pen of higher education and unleashed upon the world, where I will wreak havoc and make mischief until I enter The Workforce (wooooo!).

So, this blergging will continue, as will my adventures, and all I ask in return for humbly* lighting up your life is that you write/email/call/skype/skywrite me about your adventures, and if we're in the same place come play with me!

LOVE from Paris but not for long! (not long the Paris part I mean, because of course me love you longtime)

CLARE

p.s. my apologies for the cheesy picture. my choices were narrowed down to this, some robot/spaceship pattern that looked like my onesie, and a picture of the moon that was awesome but kind of distracting. and this one reminds me of the Olympic Peninsula.

* by "am" I mean "soon will be" if you are reading this before December 12, 2011--mark your calendars!

* to any small children, I apologize for failing to control my fiery hatred of the dumbest invention ever and of being ripped off by Monoprix when reluctantly purchasing one.

* this is irony, because as we have previously discussed, blogging is inherently hubristic.