Summer - Part 1 (Egypt)

So, I had July and August off of work this summer, which was both awesome and slightly less than awesome. I had an incredible summer, and will probably (hopefully) not have a real summer vacation like that again for a long time. There was, however, one major downside, and that was along with not working, I didn't get paid. Ouch. Thankfully, I have wonderful parents and extended family, who were very generous hosts this summer.

Here's how it all went down:

I had flights booked to Egypt for July 5th, after my last day of work on June 30th. However, with the death of my grandfather in June, I missed a week of work to go back to London for the funeral (for more about this, read my post here.) I returned to Florence on the 30th and worked on July 1st and Monday July 2nd. That night I went to Viareggio, a coastal town, for the night, with some friends. We stayed in a lovely hotel, had a delicious lobster dinner, and then hung out by the pool on Tuesday. On Wednesday I ran final errands, packed, and worked a little bit, before leaving for Sharm on Thursday.

The pool of our lovely hotel in Viareggio

 I made it to Sharm Thursday evening, but unfortunately my bag did not. This caused a lot of concern to me, as the other people who flew from Rome through Cairo to Sharm all got their luggage, but mine for some reason didn't make it. I had put my Olympic tickets in that bag, as well as birthday presents for mum and dad, plus all the clothes for the next six weeks. Thankfully my bag came a couple of days later.

The Four Seasons Sharm el Sheikh

Since the hotel had a low occupancy rate, I was fortunate enough to have a hotel room to myself - last time in Sharm I stayed in a rollaway bed in my parent's place. It was super nice and luxurious - the payoff for visiting Egypt during the hottest time of the year, I guess :)

My room!

I basically spent my entire time there in the water, or more specifically, under the water. I was there for 11 full days, and in that time I completed 17 dives, and did my Advanced Open Water certification. It was FANTASTIC!!!  I absolutely love diving, and can't wait to plan my next trip somewhere. It definitely helps that the staff of the Sinai Blues are all terrific. They have excellent guides and great receptionist staff (one in specific!!) - definitely made the whole thing awesome. I saw two sea turtles, many tuna, shrimp (on the night dive), lots of eels, and gorgeous coral. Oh, and two white tip reef sharks and two hammerhead sharks.  Yeah, it was a great time!

It's funny now to think about how much I did NOT want to learn how to dive. I did my certification Christmas 2010, as a present from my parents when I went to visit them in Egypt. They had told me before I went out that the certification would be my present, and I tried to be grateful, but I was not. I had had one previous experience trying to Scuba in Mexico, and it hadn't gone well. I had been really nervous, and I had problems equalizing my ears, so I spent the hour in a little wooden boat while Mum, Dad, Sarah and Claire dived. So I was under the impression that I had tried it, hadn't liked it, and didn't need to try it again. I was nervous the entire time leading up to my trip, which was compounded by the fact that this was the time when a shark was attacking swimmers in the Red Sea. After the fourth attack the beaches were closed and I thought I was safe - closed beaches = no diving for Victoria, right?

Wrong. I got to Sharm to find out that the beaches were closed to swimmers and to snorkelers, but open for divers. Oh yipee is what I said, but not at all what I felt. I went for the first day with a giant lump in my stomach. I did the theory part well enough - I much prefer books and learning to new and scary things. We got into the pool just before lunch, to try out the equipment and swim around getting used to it. Well, I got into the pool, went down to the bottom (maybe 4 feet deep, maybe) and I panicked. I stood straight up, convinced that I couldn't possibly breathe. My instructor calmed me down, and told me that I should give it a try until the lunch break - if I didn't want to come back after that, I didn't need to. So, I decided I would continue until lunch, and then tell my mum that I was done. Hey, I had given it a shot, and that was all that could be asked, right? Well, it's clear that my instructor was smart, by the time lunch came around I had just spent about 40 minutes completely underwater, and was feeling fine. Needless to say, I completed the course and Scuba diving is still the coolest thing I have ever done in my life. 

I still have problems clearing my ears sometimes, generally it takes me a lot longer than most to do so, and so I descend much more slowly. And being diabetic is something I need to take into account, but most of the time it's fine if I plan carefully before, during and after. In fact, there was only one time the whole trip where I couldn't dive because of diabetes. And then I still got a cool boat ride where we saw lots of dolphins swimming, and I got to snorkel around - which, is nowhere near as cool as diving, I now realize. 

The beach of the hotel

So now I've done deep dives, a night dive, I've had another navigation dive, and I've dived with sharks!! I can dive to 30 meters now, which is super cool. I'm hoping to go down to Sicily sometime next Spring to dive there. 

I did spend most of my time either diving, or preparing to dive. But I did get away from the beach long enough to a) lay by the pool, and b) eat!! 

At a seafood dinner!

I had such a lovely, relaxing time hanging out with my parents. I met more of their friends, read some books, and played games (my favorite pastimes)!  I also got a notation in my passport for buying alcohol - strange!  You cannot bring alcohol into Egypt if you fly through Cairo, but, if you do fly through Cairo, you have 48 hours after your flight lands to go to a duty free store and buy alcohol or tobacco. Some friends of my parents got married this September, and so I went to duty free to buy alcohol for them with my passport. It is bizarre. Now next to my Egyptian visa I have a notation that says that I purchased three units of alcohol. Weird, right?

Four Seasons always has the most gorgeous centerpieces

Oh, also, my insulin pump broke halfway through my trip. I was laying out by the pool one afternoon with mum, reading, and it was so f-ing hot. I decided to jump in really quickly, just to cool down. I normally take my pump off before I go in the water, but this time I left it clipped to my bikini. It is supposed to be waterproof, but this definitely wasn't. I got out less than five minutes after getting in, and there was water in the screen. It then stopped working completely. I hoped it would dry out, but it did not. I was on Skype with Animas, the pump company that day, and after lots of conversations and explanations, a new pump was dispatched to England (the postal service in Egypt is unreliable, and I was soon going to be in England anyway). So I had an unexpected pumping break, and went back to daily injections for five days. I actually appreciated the break, as I had been getting a little frustrated with always being tethered to a machine, and always getting caught up in tubing at night. I follow diabetes blogs online, and had just read about two people who switched back to daily injections and thought that maybe it would work for me. Boy, was I wrong.  I LOVE MY PUMP! It is the best treatment plan for me, and I really, really did not like having to give injections every time I ate, or was out of range. For all that I don't like about the pump, it is better than anything else out there right now. (I'm still waiting on that artificial pancreas to be invented)

In the private dining room of Bella Vista, with some of my parents' friends

Small bumps and bruises aside, it was a lovely, wonderful time. I was there for mum's birthday, got to see both parents working, took three Nia classes, and just relaxed. I don't know if I'll make it back to Egypt before my parents leave, so it was nice to be there in July.

Next up: England and the Olympics!!

Summer Session

 Our program has three terms - Fall, Spring, and then an abbreviated six-week Summer Session. It was a very different, but really fun term. Because the students are only in Italy for six weeks, a majority of them travel every single weekend. They don't have classes after lunch, so they also do many half-day trips in the afternoons. We did our Opening Tour in Rome, same as for Spring Semester, and it was nice to be back in Rome. (That was my third trip in a year, fourth overall).

Inside the Colosseum - my first visit inside

We did many of the same trips - a walking tour of Rome, a tour of the Vatican museums, and a tour of the Villa Borghese (one of my favorite museums). I also went on two optional tours - one to the Colosseum, which I had been to the outside of twice before, but never actually inside. It was really cool to walk around inside, but it's also cool to see just from the outside. What is most striking to me is just that millions of people have stood where I stood, at different points throughout history, with such a vast variety of things going on in their worlds. Wow.

Fede, Linda, Shelley, me and James at a delicious dinner in Rome

The other optional tour that I did was a Jesuit tour of Rome, led by the Dean of our program. It was cool to see the insides of some really gorgeous churches, although I had to leave the tour a little early to find something sugary when my blood sugar dropped. Damn diabetes. 

We did Tuesday evening barbecues for the students during the summer, as they don't get dinners provided. It was a really fun weekly event, and nice to spend some time outdoors, with American-ish food!

I did not go on any other trips with the school during the Summer Session - it's a smaller group of students, so the trips were staffed by Shelley and Linda. However, James and I did lead a group of students and a faculty member on a day trip to the Cinque Terre. That was a really fun, beautiful, and tiring day! 

The beach at Monterosso - the only town with a real beach

We met at the train station at 9am and took the train to Monterosso, which is the most western town. There we had a delicious seafood lunch, and then we hiked the trail to Vernazza. All five of the towns are built into the cliffs along the coast, and are connected by trains, but also by hiking trails. Unfortunately, last October there were really serious floods, and now only the one trail is open. Our school is actually doing a service trip to the Cinque Terre this month to help in the rebuilding process. 

View of Monterosso from the trail

Hiking the trail

It was a really hot day and the hike was hilly and it took us about an hour and a half. Absolutely stunning views though - well worth it! The first thing we did when we arrived in Vernazza was to take off our socks and shoes and wade in the Mediterranean.  

View of Vernazza from the trail

 In Vernazza we got gelato and walked around, before hoping on the train to take us to the next three towns. We were pressed for time, as we needed to make sure we got a train back to Florence that night. So we didn't actually go into Corniglia as it invovled a hike up a hill (or lots of stairs) and so we saw it from afar and then went to Manarola and Riomaggiore.

The streets of Manarola

Both of these two towns were absolutely lovely, and we all had a great time wandering through the streets and looking at the views. They really are indescribable. There's a "love walk" between these two towns, that we did, and while many couples have written their names on the walls, so have lots of other tourists - it was fun to spot previous students' names up on the wall :)

Looking out onto Riomaggiore 

We caught the train home, which broke down along the way, causing us to only just make the last train from Pisa to Florence. The day was hot and long, but really, really awesome.

Claire Visits

On Saturday, April 28th, I had my first overseas visitor to my apartment - Thank You Claire Frost!! Claire arrived on Saturday afternoon and left on Thursday morning, so it was a short, but awesome visit. We spent the weekend catching up and hanging out, and then went out for dinner Sunday night with Shelley and Linda and sat outdoors at a restaurant in Piazza Santa Croce, it was a nice meal, not the best, but so lovely to have Claire around.

On Monday I worked in the morning, Claire joined us around 1pm, and we went to lunch with some of my colleagues at Ristorante Accademia, a favourite lunch spot of ours. When we got there, they were unusually busy, and we had to wait for a table, so the owner sent us next door, to where he had just bought a little coffee shop. We had complimentary glasses of Prosecco while we waited for our table. yay! That afternoon Claire and I wandered around downtown Florence, did some shopping, then some grocery shopping, and we made dinner that night and then went out for Notte Bianca. . . .

Getting ready to leave the building - it's going to be a fun night!

Super Cool!

Notte Bianca is a somewhat new tradition in Florence, but it is AWESOME. Basically it is an all-night party in the streets. May 1st is a national holiday, so there was no work on Tuesday, which made for a lot of people on the streets.

It's sort of hard to see, but people are wearing the same light-up bow headbands we got in China!

Claire and I wandered around a lot, going to different piazzas, before ending up in Piazza Santo Spirito, which is a really cool neighborhood on the other side of the Arno. It is close to where my friend Emily lives (she calls it her piazza), and we met up with her and her boyfriend there. Claire and I had a really fun time people watching, meeting random strangers, and maybe drinking a bit too much (it was rough getting up the next day).

With Emily!

With the Ponte Vecchio in the background, at the end of our night

Tuesday we slept in and had a very, very slow morning/early afternoon. Our plan was to go to Bologna, where Claire had lived for her year in Italy. We didn't make it to the train station until around 4pm, due to an excessive night before. One thing we hadn't planned on was how many people came to Florence for Notte Bianca - all of the fast trains to Bologna were sold out all day. We took the slow train, which wasn't so bad, and arrived in Bologna with time to walk around, reminisce, and have a delicious dinner.

I had been to Bologna before, when I visited Claire when she lived here, and it was nice to go back. It is such a lovely place, way less touristy than Florence. Also, it was a good place to be in the rain, because of all of the covered walkways. We went to the alimentari (mini convenience store type place) that was where Claire used to go all the time, and the man who runs it remembered her from three years ago! It was super cute! We then went to a little restaurant - where Claire briefly worked as a waitress, and had delicious tortellini al brodo, before rushing back to the train station to find out our train was an hour delayed - oh Italy!

Wednesday I had taken the day off of work, and had booked a private tour of Tuscany for us. It was an awesome, beautiful day. Monica Iris was our guide, and she has done tours for students and their families from Gonzaga for years, so I decided it would be a nice way to see the area. She picked us up in her car from my front door, and away we went.

It was an absolutely beautiful day, thankfully, and we had a brilliant time. We drove through the Tuscan hills, stopping in little towns to try different things. We stopped at this woman's house who Monica knows, who makes her own olive oil. The 90 year old woman gave us tablespoons of olive oil to try, which was a weird thing to get down by itself. But we bought oil!

We stopped in another little town for coffee, and then drove on to this really cool butcher shop, where we got to try delicious cheeses and hams. Driving through the countryside was so picturesque, it really made me appreciate living in Italy, and also how important it is to see green and nature (there's not a lot of that in Florence)

We stopped at another little butcher shop, where we sampled more goodies and bought some spices. Then we were off to a little winery for a tasting. We also bought some bottles there. 

Finally, we went for a walk through San Gimignano, which is a really old, historic walled city in Tuscany. It was nice, although more touristy than the rest of our day. However, they have a gelateria there that has won awards for its chocolate gelato, and we tried that and it was fantastic. I'm not really a fan of chocolate ice cream, but this was incredible!

It was a really nice way to end the visit with Claire, and exploring Tuscany was something that neither of us had done before, so it was good to be able to see something new. That night we made dinner and hung out at home, and then the next morning it was up and off to the train station so that Claire could go to Rome to make her flight to Egypt to visit with our parents. 

Edward Frost

On October 27, 1930 my Grandad was born, and on June 19th he passed away.

Grandad was married to my Nanny, Vera, and they had three children - my Uncle Gary, my dad, and my Uncle Steve. Grandad was in the hospitality industry, managing many restaurants over the years and working for a company that provided catering for the Wimbledon Tennis Championships and for the some of the Queen's Buckingham Palace summer garden parties. Grandad is a big part of the reason that my dad got into cooking, as dad used to work for in his restaurants as a teenager.

My dad gave the eulogy at his funeral, and I learned some new things about Grandad. I didn't know that he had started as a greengrocer, and that he then bought and ran a café and petrol (gas) station. I knew that he had been in the army, but only just learned that he served in Egypt. It's nice to know that although Grandad isn't around anymore, there are still people who knew him and can pass along his stories.

My earliest memory of Grandad is not too clear - we stayed at their house in Chiswick while Sarah, Claire and I had chicken pox. I remember him telling us not to scratch, but at the age of 4, I am pretty sure I did not listen.

After Grandad retired, he and Nanny moved to Fuengirola, Spain and had a house with a pool, really close to the beach. We used to go visit them in the summers - spending all our time swimming in the pool or at the beach (with really, really hot sand). We went to see monkeys somewhere at some point, but that was quite a while ago.

Everybody with the hats from our Christmas crackers!

They eventually moved back to England, but thankfully they missed the warm weather, and once we moved to Nevis, they started a tradition of spending every Christmas with us. They would come for a long time, usually 6-8 weeks, and until my parents moved to Egypt, they came out every year for about 14 years.

Grandad used to fall asleep in the living room, all the time!

So my Christmas memories are really full of Grandad - him and mum cooking in the kitchen, our annual Christmas beach walk, working on the jigsaw puzzles we have out, games nights with family friends, . . .  the list could go on and on.

At one point my friend Kate called my house looking for me and Grandad answered, and the way he said "Victoria" was somehow quite funny, and has been referenced by Kate many times over the years.

Aside from his (allegedly) funny intonations, Grandad was just a funny man - he had a great sense of humor, one that he definitely passed on to my dad. They both used to joke about sneaking into the cinema without paying by "walking in backwards". This is a little embarassing, but for years, I really thought that Grandad was saying that people used to sneak in by literally walking in backwards to a movie theatre - and I could never quite work out how that worked . . .   :)

Grandad was a great grandfather, father, husband and man.  He had a great work ethic and was a great host; he was funny, kind, warm and lovely. I will miss him so much, but am happy that he is no longer sick and suffering.

Ireland Part 2: Northern Ireland Adventures

The first part of my Ireland adventures can be read about here. 

Tuesday we left Dublin and drove up to Belfast. We stopped along the way at a monastery where we got to look at some very large, and very old, Celtic crosses. 

Our tour guide told us that they have the scenes carved into them to be used as religious education to people; priests could tell people of important stories in Christianity by using the carvings. 

We got to Belfast and had time for a quick bite to eat before heading on our "Black Taxi" tour. Walter, our black taxi tour driver actually came with us on our bus, instead of all of us piling into a number of taxis. Walter was the perfect guide for this tour, he was entertaining and provided insight into "The Troubles". He also had a great voice and accent that the students loved! The Black Taxi tour took us through some very Catholic (nationalist) and Protestant (unionist) neighborhoods where we had the opportunity to stop and look at the murals that have been painted. 

These murals are on the sides of houses and buildings throughout Belfast (and in Derry, a town we visited on Thursday). They are created to remember 'heroes' from both sides of the The Troubles and to remember key events or tragedies. It was really interesting to see these as we drove through the city. Here are some of them:

With all of the tension happening so recently, it seems interesting to me to have constant visual (and visceral) reminders all over the place. Additionally, the different neighborhoods are separated by giant "peace walls" with wire at the top and gates with guard booths.  While the gates were open with free passage while we were there, I couldn't help but feel the presence of conflict. Not all over the place, by any means, but definitely in some areas. 

We also took a trip down to the dockyards where we saw where the Titanic was built (it is 100 years since it's tragic voyage this month). They have a built a new Titanic museum there, which unfortunately wasn't open when we were there. Also along the way we passed this store:

That night I went out to dinner with my uncle Paul, his wife Andrena and my cousins Hannah and Daniel!!!  It was so great to see them, and we had a lovely dinner at this really cool, funky restaurant and then went back to the house for coffee. The last time I had seen them was when they came to Clearwater, Florida for a summer holiday four years ago. Hannah is now 18 and that's pretty crazy to me! I really liked getting to see them and catch up. Unfortunately, I forgot to take my camera with me to dinner. 

Wednesday was a day spent around Belfast. Uncle Paul had arranged for us to have a tour of Stormont, which is the parliament building of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Oh my goodness, it is a beautiful and impressive building! 

We all had to pass through security first and received these cool badges that we had to hand over upon entering the building:

Our time at Stormont included a presentation of background history about Northern Ireland politics and the political system followed by a Q&A session with five representatives from five of the major political parties. We ended with a tour of the building and we actually got to go into the legislative assembly room, sit in the chairs that the MLA's sit in, and have a mock debate and vote. It was awesome!!

I really didn't know anything about the political system in Northern Ireland and we learned a lot. It was really cool to get to meet people from the different parties, some were MLA (Members of the Legislative Assembly) and the others were staffers. It was especially interesting to hear about how they all manage (or attempt) to work together despite their differences. And to hear their perspectives on a united Ireland. One of our students asked someone from the Alliance Party if Ireland would even want Northern Ireland back, to which he replied that in the current economic situation, Ireland absolutely could not afford to. I thought that was interesting, and wonder what the nationalists think of this, as they all seemed to be of the opinion that every Irish person cannot wait to have a united Ireland. I really enjoyed this part of the trip.

That afternoon we went to a teacher's college in Belfast where we learned about the education system. Again, it was a really interesting insight into how other countries run, and it shows that it's not just the U.S. with a messed up education system that places ridiculously high value on test scores. 

That evening Shelley, Linda and I did some shopping before meeting up with Paul, Hannah, and Hannah's boyfriend for dinner and then drinks. We had drinks in this really cool bar that used to be a bank called Cafe Vaudeville and it was really awesome. Not too many people there on a Wednesday night, but it was really fun, and I just couldn't get over the architecture of the place.  This time I did bring my camera, and so here's a picture with Hannah and Paul:

Thursday was our last full day in Ireland and we made the most of it! After breakfast in the hotel we piled into our bus and headed off for the day. Our first stop was the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge. It is exactly what it sounds like, a rope bridge that connects the land to a tiny little rock island that fisherman used to cross daily to collect their haul. It has since been fortified, but it was still scarier crossing it than I had anticipated.

That's the little island

The rope bridge!

It was such a gorgeous day, we were so lucky with the weather!!

After the rope bridge we went on to the Giant's Causeway. For those of you who haven't been here, it's an absolute must-see!  A volcano erupted but the lava interacted with the cold water and it quickly solidified into extremely regularly-shaped pieces OR if you'd prefer, a giant built a bridge over to Scotland to fight with another giant, but one giant got so scared that he tore up the bridge, scattering the pieces to where they are now (still not sure which one's the true story . . . )

So very uniform in shape!

Katie gives the place a thumbs up

"Giant or Volcano?" I wonder.

It was so cool and beautiful, and so, so nice to be outside in nature. We had a wonderful climb around the rocks, then a nice, albeit hurried, lunch in a pub before climbing back onto the bus and heading for London-Derry. Here we had a walking tour that went along the city wall. The focus again was on the conflict between nationalists and unionists and we saw some more murals. We also learned a lot more about Bloody Sunday. 

Another mural

The sign upon entering the nationalist part of the city.

All in all, it was really interesting to visit a place that has so recently experienced serious conflict. Everyone has opinions on it and everywhere we went we were reminded of it. It's impressive to see that the political system is up and running, and that the two major parties are working together (for the most part) even across such a wide divide of opinion. After hearing about The Troubles it was really a great experience to come and actually see Northern Ireland. 

That night was super exciting as we got to go see The Hunger Games in theaters. It can out on the Friday, but a couple of movie theaters did advance screenings, and so many of us went that night. It was really fun to be in a real cinema with popcorn, and without subtitles! We had been hoping it would work out to see the movie, because for some reason it doesn't come out in Italy until May. It was a fun way to cap off the trip. 

Friday was spent traveling, and it was a very full day. We left for the airport at 5:10am and I walked into my apartment 14 hours later. During our travels we took a taxi, plane to Heathrow, train to Paddington, subway to Victoria, train to Gatwick, plane to Pisa, bus to Florence train station, and then a taxi home!! It was a long day, and I really appreciated having Saturday and Sunday to recuperate and unpack. 

I loved going to Ireland and to Northern Ireland, and am so glad I got to go on this trip. We had a great group of students and it was a good sized group. I learnt a lot more than I had expected, saw so many beautiful sights, and got a fix of English language and amenities! Best of all, I got to see some family :)