Yes, it's Nice.

We arrived in Nice on a sleeper car from Florence, we were very well-rested and in good spirits. We dropped our bags off at our hotel and hurried down to see one of the most famous beaches on the French Riviera. On the way to the Mediterranean Sea, we appreciated the classic architecture of the region, and marveled at the city that was home to such people as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jean Cocteau, Roman Polanski, Posh Spice and Sinbad. The beach itself was a bit short and rocky, and there were more tourist-traps than I expected... but the water was beautiful and there were plenty of topless women, but it wasn't quite what we expected. I'm sure things have changed since the time when Jacques Tati would visit, but images from films such as To Catch a Thief were always present in my mind. Maybe I should have called ahead to see if the entire main street had been dug up and would be under construction.

Friends of mine have told me that some of the more secluded spots near Nice are truer to the legacy of Nice itself, and someday I would like to get back there to see, but we had to pick up a car in Nice! That's right: a Peugot. There will be more on the car experience later, but we had an interesting first day with it in Nice. Driving in the south of France is madness, so we were happy to hear that our building had two private parking spaces available... we booked in for one of them and received a large keychain and instructions on how to get there. Once we had the car, we drove around the street and down the narrow alley, as indicated on the map. A door about as wide as a desk was ahead of us. We pressed the magic button we were given and the door opened. After flipping in our side-view mirrors, we fit into the elevator on the other side of the open doorway. Another press of the button closed the door behind us and sent the lift down one floor before another door opened. I felt like I was in one of those early PC games. I typed Look Key but that didn't work. The dungeon/parking lot was lightless except for our headlights. I kicked Dana out to search for a light switch or an oilfield to burn, and the room was illuminated... and smoky. The spot for the car was a double spot, and the other car had not pulled close enough to the wall for us to pull in beside him. We spent about 40 minutes trying to park, fuming and saying, "This will be funny someday." How sad we would have been if we knew it would only be slightly amusing one day. When we gave up and I held myself back from letting the air out of the Russo-German's tires, we found a comfortable spot at the train station. Ahhhh.

Nice photos.

Fore Hiring: Tranlationer of Français-anglais

As Dana and I prepared to get off our sleeper train from Florence, I noticed a peculiar sign in the hallway. "In the event of declenchment of audible alarm, avacuer the compartiment without precipitation and come into contact with the crew."

This could mean a few things...
- If you are no longer able to continue clenching the audible alarm, leave it in the apartment, but try not to rain, and find the crew.
- The German band Declenchment of Audible Alarm is coming, and it will be quite an event, so you'll have to leave this compartment... I hope it's not raining. The crew is lonely.
- Quit your crying! Get out of the compartment, and quit crying! The audible alarm is no longer clenched, contact the crew! Abandon ship!

Honestly, I'm not exactly sure what this is supposed to mean, but I guess they are instructions on what to do in case of an emergency. An alarm will sound (declench), evacuate the compartment to avoid getting wet from the sprinklers, and wait for the crew for instructions. Something like that. I have a feeling that they used Google Translate to generate the instructions in German, Italian and English, with a French base. I can see how this would cause some problems. Let's experiment, shall we?

Let's start with something I did today:
"Dwarbi drove from his future mother-in-law's house to his future sister-in-law's house. He and his fiance, Dana, stopped by a really great beer store to stock up on some rare brews. The rest of his Sunday will be spent sorting through photos and writing, before grilling up some dinner."

English to French:
"Dwarbi a conduit par la maison de sa future mère à la maison de sa future soeur. Lui et son fiancé, Dana, cessé par un magasin vraiment grand de bière pour stocker vers le haut sur un certain rare brasse. Le reste de son dimanche sera assortir dépensé par des photos et l'écriture, avant de griller vers le haut d'un certain dîner."

French to German:
"Dwarbi hat durch das Haus seiner künftigen Mutter nach dem Haus ihrer künftigen Schwester geführt. Ihn und sein fiancé, Dana, das durch einen wirklich großen Laden Bier aufgehört wurde, um nach oben auf einem bestimmten seltenen Brustschwimmen zu lagern. Der Rest seines Sonntags wird zusammenzustellen durch Photos ausgegeben und die Schrift, bevor man nach oben von einem gewissen Abendessen röstet."

German back to English:
"Dwarbi led by the house of its future nut/mother to the house of its future sister. It and its fiancé, Dana, which by a really large shop beer one stopped, in order to store upward on a certain rare breaststroke swimming. The remainder of its Sundays is spent to arrange by photos and the writing, before one roasts upward from a certain dinner."

Yeah, that could have been the problem.

Hitting the City

At the moment, Dana and I are staying in New Jersey, so trips to New York City are a treat. During my first visit, I found myself snapping photos as I had been during all over Europe. That didn't last too long, but I did get a couple of good snaps. Water towers and fire escapes really stood out to me... probably because they're not as common in Australia and Europe, or maybe they just don't have the same quality as NY water towers and fire escapes. Water towers and fire escapes. I just wanted to say it one more time. One more. Water towers and fire escapes. OK, now I'm done.

My first visit? A quick catch-up with Pabsy (he was too busy working on his film to spend time with me), a bite and beers with Nate and Rosemary, sleep, then a good, long brunch with Randy. The stops? An Australian pub first! Pierre and I enjoyed a Coopers best extra stout. For dinner I scarfed down Mexican food, which I really missed while in Oz. We swung by Collins Bar for a farewell beer then stayed up way too late in Nate's Hell's Kitchen apartment. Collins Bar is was a great old beer bar, demolished to make room for luxury apartments. When I was outside, I looked across the street, where construction is nearly complete on another high-rise of condos. After a moment I remembered that there used to be a really classy NY deli there. Gone.

Randy and I had a bite at a cafe near his place in Williamsburg. The food was so fresh that the sticker was still on Pants's sliced apple! The street art dotting Billyburg reminded me of one of the reasons I love NY so much.

Dana and I cruised back into the city later that week. We had some fantastic sushi and I finally gave Dana the engagement ring. We sent downtown to check out the new Blind Tiger Ale House. They moved to Bleeker Street after rent went up too high in their old location. (A Marc Jacobs moved in there, but now it's a Starbucks... classic.) The new spot has an unbelievable line-up of beer on tap beer, cask ale and gravity pump, not mention the bottle list. There was a Dogfish Head event on... and I stayed a bit too long!

NYC 1
NYC 2

Pat & Jen's

As I've been slowly catch up on Big Trip photos and blog entries, I've fallen behind in real time entries. Here are some photos from our first weekend home, when we were at Pat & Jens. We spent the days playing with Danny and Ciara and the nights catching up Survivor-style.

Now You See It, Now You Don't

As planned, I've switched hosting solutions. The DNS changes should be made today, which means that dwarbi.com and all things dwarbi.com-related will be up one minute, down the next, then back up, then down... for about 24-48 hours. Things should be stable be the end of the weekend.

Firenze!!! (Florence.)

Florence was our last stop in Italy. Briefly the capital of Italy, and home to countless artists, the city is full of sites to see. Consequently, this is the largest gallery of photos I've posted of the Big Trip!

I won't try to summarize the history of Florence. I'm not even going to tell you where to go if you decide to take a trip there. OK, OK, I'll do a little of both by explaining what we did while we were there.

Our visit began with lunch at Cibreo, where I had stuffed chicken neck for the first time ever! It's a traditional Florentine dish that comes with the head still attached. Fortunately for me, no other restaurant which we ate at in Florence had a dish on their menu that I had not had.

While traveling through other parts of Tuscany, we often read about Florence and even saw the impact it had on the history of other cities. Finally we were in the city that Montepulciano sided with against Siena. We visited Florence's spectacular Duomo, the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, which was finished, unlike Siena's Duomo, the expansion of which was halted after Florence trounced them. Like just about every church in Italy, you have to pay to get into the Duomo in Florence, but if you pay to climb the dome (separate fee and separate entrance from the main doors), then you can see the inside of the church, including the frightening pointy-penis-filled Last Judgement, on your way up to the top. Now that's a holy bargain! We also climbed to the top of the Campanile (bell tower) to get just about the same view of the Florence as we had from the tom of the Duomo, except with the Duomo in it.

Florence is like an outdoor museum, which is is great for me since I love statues. Dana was a bit disappointed, though... all of the paintings that they left outside were wet and covered in pigeon poop. Statues are rain-and-pigeon-resistant. In the Loggia dei Lanzi, an outdoor gallery in the Piazza della Signoria, I found some of the most incredible sculptures I have seen. Some of these were replicas, such as Michaelangelo's David, but others were the originals.Having artwork out in the open air has always been risky. It used to be a known hazard that when when, say, Siena sacked Florence, they would destroy the statue that had been made to commemorate the Florentine sacking of Siena. These days, statues out in the open are subject to destruction by common tourists, such as when three brain surgeons climbed the Fountain of Neptune in 2005, snapping off the god's hand and bending his phallic trident. Ouch. I think the Italians should get in on the game and commission a series of statues dedicated to the scorning of tourists. For example, a marble statue of a local running away with a tourist's camera, or a police officer intentionally giving bad direction to a family with four small children, in bronze.

During lunch at the Uffizi, I made a startling discovery: Italian birds are vicious! As I was taking a bite of my sandwich, a sparrow flew over and took a bite right out of it. He kept coming back as I tried to finish my meat and cheese on bread, so I had to swat wildly at the air and keep chewing to a minimum. I won. He ate no more.

The morning after our second night, Dana and I packed up our things and prepared to store our things for storage until our night train departed for Nice. I double-checked the train time and noticed something odd about the date of departure... it was the next day! Our host spoke nothing but Italian - the quick kind, too - but I managed to ask her if we could stay another night. I understood that she would check the books and let me know. When we did get back to me, she confirmed that I was asking to stay a forth night... I had already booked three nights! We unpacked and enjoyed an unscheduled day in Florence. The real drama would be the following night.

With our new day, we checked out the Boboli Gardens and the wonderful sculptures and pigeons that adorn it. I was a bit disappointed that we didn't book that Segue tour, but our one last great Italian meal was thoroughly enjoyed. Our hotel suited us for one more night. Florence isn't inexpensive, so we chose location over luxury. This was the site of the mosquito war. An extra star may have given us a private bathroom, but what we needed was air-conditioning.

Four pages of photos of Florence! See them all! Seriously, there are four pages, the Ponte Vecchio, plenty of fountains, funny little Italian cars, Dana and me sitting on long-female-legged barstools in an Australian pub.

Wish Me Luck!

Last night I had a dream that my brother came to visit me in Sydney. In the dream he was very adventurous (not so in reality), so we took an elevator up to the top floor of a very tall building to access the roof. Unfortunately, the only way to access the roof of this building is from the 5th floor. The elevators also go in circles on their way to the top, and the floors criss-cross from one level to another. The building doesn't exist in real life. We wanted to get to the roof so that we could base jump off of it, land in Sydney Harbour and wind up in the paper the next day. Unfortunately, I woke up before we managed to find our way through the labyrinth that leads to the top. After some thought, I took it as a sign to try get a new hosting service. Prohosting has been good to me since 2002, but there are just so many options out there offering far better deals! If the transfer goes well, then there will not be much down time, otherwise, I'll try to have the site repaired as quickly as possible.