I recently went on an excursion throughout England, Italy and Switzerland and created a travel journal to document the experience (the format is a nod to Elizabeth Gilbert's travel book and bestseller "Eat, Pray, Love"). It is chronological from bottom to top, and is actually not quite done! At present, the journal is sans Switzerland. Nonetheless, I feel it is an interesting read. Thanks! And remember, read it from BOTTOM to TOP. :)

For all of the shortcomings and frustrations that I briefly had with it, Italy has a plethora of redeeming qualities that more than make up for any temper flare of mine.

It's Italy, for starters.

And somewhere in between gasping at Michaelangelo's David, squinting against the sun's glint off of the top of the Duomo, listening to a fountain trickling in Lucca, flexing my toes in the cool grass underfoot, and walking through a square in Firenze with people not bustling past each other, blinders on, but slowing down to relish in the moment, to talk and listen to one another, it hit me: I want to be Italian. Oh, god I want to be Italian. They are such a beautiful people.

So whenever we cross the street (hopefully to a Gelateria), I say in my most convincing Italian, Attraversiamo, ("let's cross over") hoping that a native passersby will mistake me, if only briefly, for an Italian girl. A strange, red-haired genetic miracle of an Italian girl.

Maybe her mom is Irish and her dad is Italian...

There is graffiti everywhere here. Vibrant, loud, colorful, proud: everything about it screams Italian.

Some of it is beautiful, like the huge bluebird with graceful, upward sloping wings in the train station.

Some of it carries messages that reflect signature Italian bursts of passion: "TI AMO", "Yankee Go Home".

And some of it just seems like Italiandictionary.com led the artist a bit astray in the translation. Nonetheless, ancient walls boldly proclaim in running black spray lines: "Humen want" and, the one that made me laugh out loud, "CANNABIS!"

Today we took the train out of Florence, into the beautiful Italian countryside and onwards to the self-proclaimed "City of Opera and Olive Oil", Lucca.

We passed seas of sunflowers, olive trees, hay bales, vineyards, and rows and rows of cornfields. Everything was bathed in and backlit by the afternoon sun, illuminating corn stalks, with husks thick like tamales, to the shade that Green was always supposed to be. Everywhere you looked, there were trellises overgrown with twisting, climbing vines.

As soon as we got off the train and into the square to examine the map, there was a loud noise. There must've been about eight or nine of them- a group of Italian boys, that is, singing their own triumphant, raucous version of the Popeye the Sailor Man theme song: in Italian, extra gusto, and complete with an exaggerated falsetto "Toot toot!" at the end. So this was Lucca.

And if heaven isn't exactly like Lucca, I don't even want to go there. We spent the day biking around, three bikes, four people, my mom and I riding ahead while my dad laughed and shouted "Ciao, bella!" behind us, trying to take a video and balance the tandem bike he and Riley were sharing. Our day spent in Lucca was perfect. Even still, my memories of that day, biking all together in the sun, are dreamy; shrouded in mist, and everything in sun-dappled slow-motion.

The sounds here are nice, except for when you have the misfortune of being on a platform at the station when a train comes screeching in. The noise that reverberates from wall to wall is somewhere between Psycho's shrill violin theme and a thousand soprano harpies getting their hair pulled.

Otherwise, it's pretty pleasant: birds, the rollicking, playful rhythm of spoken Italian, accordion and flute players in the square, James Browns' "I Feel Good" as a shop owner blasts it into the street while his customers mill around and try to haggle, the brring! brring! of bicycle bells as they whiz past.

And the weather? It is, for lack of a better word (and for the sake of simplicity), hot. Regardless of where you are, it makes you want to sit down on the curb, scrape your hair back, fan your face and smooth ice cubes over your wrists and neck.

Today I laid down in the shade of the leaning Tower and Pisa and cried.

Not of happiness, not of joy that I was in Italy, or of gratefulness to be spending time with my family in a place that offered so much beauty, but of a deep, wrenching melancholy that slid past my temples in quick tears and clung to my hair like tiny jewels.

Wait, let me back up a bit. The frustration had started when we couldn't get into the Tower as soon as we'd have liked to, and thus had two hours to kill amid hoardes of tourists all trying to get that token "Look! I'm holding up the fucking leaning Tower of Pisa!" shot. Yes, we were tourists too, but we just weren't that obnoxious. None of us could really bring ourselves to want that shot. We had too much respect for the history and grandeur of that Tower to debase it like so many shameless others. Who even started that craze, anyways? So, even though none of us were really hungry, we decided to get something to eat.

There was a cafe in a tour book we thought we'd try (the first and last time we would consult that book again for Italian cuisine pointers). We'd been given the wrong directions by a local shopkeeper who was clearly resentful of our utter American-ness, my father's bashful initial inquiry, "Do you speak English?" and his later request for the quickest route to the cafe. This guy was pissed before we even got in there, and four Americans darkening his doorstep was the last thing he needed.

Instead of giving us a direct route (which we later learned was literally a short, straight line about a block away), we got the run-around and ended up walking for a long, long time, lengthened severely, (if not literally than in my mind), by the rising temperature and my family's collective lack of knowledge about the Italian language. We all argued for what seemed like the whole way there, throughout a lunch of shitty pizza and mediocre paninis at some God-awful cafe that damn tour book had recommended, and during my First Gelato, which I was too bitter to fully enjoy at the time (but would later look back on as a holy experience).

It seemed like the heat had doubled while we sat down to eat, and the Italian version of the Mean Girls clique was watching us finish our lunch with smoldering anorexic distaste. Street vendors straight from Kenya hawked their knockoff Gucci wares, preying upon anyone stupid or naive enough to be allured in by the fake bags, watches and sunglasses. We were due at the Tower of Pisa in 10 minutes.

Cut to my crying scene in the shade. I was frustrated: with my family, with the heat, with the "Go Home Yankee" attitude so many Italians were proud to adopt and boast. I was missing my friends. I was really missing Shane. I was trying to stave off dehydration and a pounding headache. I was tired.

It was in that moment that I remember hating George W. Bush, passionately, deeply and with every ounce of my being. This blatant hatred of all Americans was his fault, wasn't it? And for a minute that was as fleeting as it was meaningful, I saw America through the rest of the world's eyes. I was disgusted with us, too, confirmed solidly by a pair of fat, loud Texans that waddled past.

I just wanted Italy to like me. All of my basic tactics were backfiring and blowing up in my face. I found myself backpaddling, retracing and dwelling upon small interactions and brief Italian/English conversations I'd had. It was all just one big, cringe-worthy awkward moment. Was it something I said? Nope, it was just my nationality.

My family is nice. We were courteous everywhere we went. And yet, we got treated like garbage. I wanted to shout, "But we're not like the bad stereotypes you know of! We're different! Give us a chance!"

Wiping my tears off with the backs of my hands and massaging my temples in sheer exhaustion, I remember asking of my mom, mid-sob: "Doesn't...doesn't basic human courtesy transcend all this shit?"

I need some gelato.

There is something to be said for the gelato here. There is a lot to be said for the gelato here.

It is breakfast food. It is dinner food. It is because-it's-2:00-in-the-afternoon food. It lures you in from underneath its glass case, looking temptingly cool and refreshing in the Florence heat. After your first bite of the lusciousness that is Italian gelato, it's all over. In the sweltering heat, it's like eating cold, flavored air, or diving into a swimming pool for a brief second. It's like eating heaven with a miniature plastic spoon. And then, just like that, you're hooked. Lassoed in and tightly-bound for life.

Some people crave nicotine. I crave gelato morning, noon and night.

I've experienced Gelato withdrawals, Gelato Envy, and what Riley justifies his messy, ravenous slurping tendencies and resulting sticky hands as-- Gelato Fingers, in the space of three days.

Between the four members of my family, we've tried over 20 delicious flavors. Here they are; try not to drool.

Pear
Chocolate Orange
Fudge
Coconut
Banana
Nutella
Mint Chocolate
Hazelnut
Mint
Melon
Mango
Rum Raisin
Peanut
Lemon
Raspberry
Creme Caramel
Peach
Chocolate
Vanilla
Cookies
Ricotta, and so many more...

"Is there going to be gelato on the train?"
- Riley Rowe

In Manchester. The only things to eat and drink in this apartment are cranberry juice, orange juice, "summerfruit" juice (what the hell...?), vodka, and donuts.

Our next-door neighbor is a Krispy Kreme employee. He leaves us boxes upon boxes of donuts on the doorstep and back porch. We have yet to see him, let alone meet him. Hence, he has earned a nickname: the Donut Fairy. Even when we know his real name, he will still be the DF. There are three boxes of half-eaten Krispy Kreme donuts floating around the kitchen counter at present, next to the microwave and the empty booze bottles.

We think he has wings made out of sugar.

Tonight we felt like Indian food, so we went to the absolutely undeniable Mecca, the divine eye of the naan and jasmine rice storm: The Curry Mile. Our cab driver Saif recommended just the place. The curries were savory and spicy, the naan came in huge, crisp, floppy ovals peppered with exotic tastes, the dips were tangy, minty, sweet, sour, and the rounds of Cobra lager we ordered with everything made it all go down easy, made the conversation spill forth and trip over itself with funny stories and accents shared.

And that was just the beginning. We trekked down to a corner cafe and met some people. From there, we caught a cab to The Attic, a thumping, bass-heavy nightclub, to catch (what else?) but a stereotypical British phenomenon known as a Drum and Bass show.

Things start to get blurry here.

You had to walk up a wrought-iron spiral staircase to get in to the second story club. From there, you were a hand-stamp away from a DJ on stage spinning Cut Chemist, DJ Shadow and the like to heavy, heavy droning bass-laden beats, a full bar, and the company of loads and loads of drunk people swaying and dancing to the beat. After downing eight or nine rum and cokes in fairly rapid succession, I got really into it. Drum and bass, man. Feel the rhythm. I accidentally knocked over Kaz's drink while I was dancing. That should've been an indicator to stop drinking, right? But the rounds just kept coming; they were cheap and fast.

I barely remember catching that taxi home, or what was said. My head was still drunk and swimming with throbbing bass beats when I finally managed to stumble upstairs, slip out of my dress and into bed.

When I woke up the next afternoon, I was greeted with a hangover and the remembrance of one single, solitary quote from the night prior:

"I want to get two M's tattooed on my ass, so when I bend over it says MOM."
- My Cousin Richard

So after passing through Birmingham (with local inflection pronounced Bur-ming-um), I am now in Manchester, a mishmash of college town/New York vibes, and the unofficial music capital of England.

So it's only fitting that we drive hours away to go see a punk show in Sheffield.

We went to a venue called the Casbah (probably not the one The Clash intended to rock, but no matter) to go see a band called H20. After £11 exchanged hands with the ticket taker, we were in. The ceiling was an anarchy-inducing maroon and the walls were licorice black. People's t-shirts carried poignant messages like, "Passion before Fashion" and "Is money your God?" Posters on the wall endorsed The Sex Pistols, The Who, bands called Stone Sour and The Cute Lepers, and breast cancer awareness. 

As I watched the singer strut back and forth stage, screaming his plight about corruption and the Man (punctuating his rage every so often with a well-placed "Oi!") I was filled with a sense of deep, resounding tranquility.

I am none of this, I revel. I don't abhorr societal norms, I don't feel like plunging a safety pin through my eyebrow or wearing a patch-splattered jean jacket will shout my distaste at everything, I'm not struggling hard to swim upstream.

And so, while the be-mohawked guy next to me nursed back a beer, clenching his jaw and nodding with steeley-eyed approval, I smiled to myself a tiny smile, and with a sigh, I radiated my inner tranquility outwards as my freckles glowed neon under the blacklight.

 England is so beautiful when you get out of the city.

The rustling, rolling golden fields' colors intensify and play off of the cerulean shades in the wide-open expanse of sky. Pausing to look up is consenting to be enveloped in sensation not unlike being inside a huge unevenly-dyed pastel egg, or a fantastic blue marble in which all of the swirling blues collide and melt into each other brilliantly.

Today this vast blue dome is dotted with looming grey clouds, heavy with rain. The clouds here are absolutely incomparable to any other clouds-- they're wispy and light, like air and whipped cream blended with a fast and careless whisk and splashed upwards. And even though the clouds overhead today threaten to spill forth torrents of sleet and rain, they retain a strange sort of innocence, like they're sighing, Sorry I'm here, I'm just doing my job. It's almost as if you could reach up, pull one down and eat it like cotton candy.

The sun is setting but it'll remain light here for hours, as nightfall hangs in a sort of stilted twilight limbo before it finally gets dark at 10. A fluid stream of lucid thoughts has been winding its way around the circumference of my mind in lazy circles today, like a slow moving river, or honey melting off of a spoon. The thoughts ebb and flow into flickering silver threads, divide into flowing rivulets and rivers, swell into deep oceans, settle into still lakes. They are about everything and nothing. 

The moon has settled into its place in the East now and has been blurred over by a thin fog, like someone licked their finger and, with the sound of Windex on glass, rubbed it over the moon to soften its sharp edges.

I'm still gobsmacked (new slang!) about how new and old everything is here.

We visited the Tower of London today, a magnificently foreboding brick masterpiece nestled into a city of high-rises and slick yuppies. 

In the US, it seems like the old and antiquated is swallowed up and replaced by the new and high-tech, like a Discovery channel time-elapse of an anthill being built, torn down and rebuilt, or flowers bursting into life over and over. Here, they build around and incorporate the old into everything. Whether it's out of respect or laziness, I just don't know. In any case, the juxtaposition is jarring: Anne Boleyn was beheaded a couple blocks away from a Starbucks. A beautiful old church down the street has been divvied up and converted into an apartment complex. And the crown jewels reside within 5 minutes of a Pizza Hut.

For dinner we went to Ye Olde Chesire Cheese, an incredibly crowded back-alley hole in the wall. The interior of this Fleet Street pub was composed of dark, creaky wood, and sawdust was scattered on the floor, a throwback to when the 'Cheese was built (sorry, re-built after a great fire in 1667.) Even though the Rowe's have held the tradition of visiting the Chesire for four generations back, this building has seen much more: Kings, Queens, said great fires, the Black Plague, and the company of, get this-- Charles Dickens and Winston Churchill.

We went to rainy, rainy Cambridge today. After about 2 hours of being wet, you slip into a sort-of rain-soaked delirium, where everything is funny and keeps getting funnier. The real party begins when you lose feeling in your fingers and toes.

The day did have some figurative bright moments though, like walking through a huge church (that took over 60 years to build), admiring the way the light streams in through the stained glass to throw rainbows on the floor, or watching a Crew team glide along the surface of a dark, glassy river.

My favorite thing about walking around a busy town when it's pissing down rain and kicking up wind, though, is what happens to the umbrellas. A particularly strong gust of wind turns all of the umbrellas inside-out, and for a brief second, before people yank the offending corners down again, it looks like everybody is carrying huge paper flowers to some gigantic, far-off bouquet. Even though most of the people are frowning or grimacing against the gust.

The second half of ze day, when the Rain Insanity had tightened its grip on my soggy brain full-tilt, I came to the realization that I could speak French if I wanted to. Oui. So, riding home on the bus, I wrote "Londres" in the hot condensation on the window. London. And then for good measure, I slashed a line through the "L", making it a pound sign. £ondres.

Delirium!

It was 1588 this afternoon. At least, it was at Kentwell Hall, a manor house and it's surrounding expanse of acreage we visited today. Think Robin Hood's forest with a brick mansion and some pastures stuck in it.

There are 150+ actors/volunteers there who'll, for £15 (roughly $30), dress, speak, and re-enact just about anything a la 16th century mannerisms for you.

After talking to the blacksmith and ye olde local wenches, I noticed a peacock and a peahen. "The cock, ever he chases the fair hen," a passing lady serf said. Whatever.

I played paparazzi to these courting peacocks for a while, and upon looking up, discovered that all 10 members of my family and extended family were gone...something about trying to find the Ale House.

So, almost as a divine gift, I got to spend the day to myself. In 1588. I admired women weaving baskets in the sunlight and followed two little boys in britches for some time. Of all the actors, the peasant children proved the most convincing and into character. The two boys walked around, hitting sticks against trees, carrying on a little-boy conversation in 16th-century jargon of bugs and barnyard happenings like it was the most natural thing in the world. And for the afternoon, it was. Being alone, not having to allot and base my time around everyone in the family was beautiful.

Later, as I was reading through a German phrasebook in preparation for Switzerland, I came across two phrases that subsequently summed up my afternoon spent in the 16th century. The first: Ich bin ganz allein, I am quite alone.

And the second? Das Vergnugen ist auf meiner seite.

The pleasure is mine.

Ugh, jet lag.

Trying to wake up and be ready for the day at say, 9:00 or 10:00 here means that it's 2 or 3 AM in the US. Fuck.

We took a train into London this morning. I sat on the floor and tried to sleep against the wall, but it was cold and unyielding, like trying to hug a robot.

Fortunately, things picked up after a quick navigation of the underground subway system (aka the Tube) led us to the Natural History Museum (interesting, hot, full of rude school children) and then to the Palace Theatre, where we saw Spamalot, the musical rendition of Monty Python's Holy Grail (hilarious and...hilarious.)

But it was with dinner that came the greatest discovery of all: Banoffee Cake. It's like three of my favorite things-- fruit (bananas), sweets (toffee), and more sweets (cake), made love under a crashing waterfall in the hot, tropical rainforest to bring me this dessert.

I poised my fork mid-air, and after a quick objection, "Why don't they call it Tof-nana cake?" I dug into one of the best desserts I've ever had en todo mi vida.

The day's earlier stresses: jet lag, loud trains, rude school children, all melted away as I welcomed this delicious new discovery into my vocabulary and my stomach: Banoffee.

Today we set out to see the gardens at Beth Chatto, a location and experience renowned counties over, but found it closed due to fast wind, light but stinging rain and all-around shitty weather conditions.

So began the hunt for a cream tea, an English specialty in which you pile butter on top of jam on top of fresh clotted cream onto a scone. A drive through Thorpe-le-Soken led us to Frinton-on-Sea, where we found a teahouse. Ultimately, I opted for a slice of tangy from-scratch lemon cake and a Galaxy hot chocolate, while the radio rotated the perfect blend of lyrical oddities that illustrated precisely what I was feeling that day: The Smiths, Zero7, and lastly, Buddy Holly and the Crickets.

All of England seems to be a perplexing synthesis of new and old. Sometimes it works in an ironic sense, but other times, it's a complete slap to the face, like when you see a neon red ATM wedged into an ancient stone wall, or pass a cable TV antenna stuck onto a hundred-year-old brick manor.

British accents, on the other hand, are golden. A statement laced with a British accent sounds so much more compassionate and sincere than a sentence injected with an American twang. I would much rather be told I have cancer in a British accent than in one of the American persuasion.

A perfect example of the quaintness an accent holds presented itself tonight, when my little cousin Keiran looked up from hugging my dad and said, with only the sincerity a British accent can envelop, "Goodnight, Big Lump."

From the kitchen come the savory smells of Edna's cooking...

Sweet intertwines with salty. She's humming and singing some sort of old traditional song to herself. The notes rise and wobble like a newborn deer's first shaky steps, but over the sounds of spoon clinking against cup, the squeaky open and close of the oven, and the aroma of Shepherd's Pie wafting lazily towards my lavender room, it's lovely.

England is weird.

Road signs alert you of rumble strips (speed bumps), raisins are known affectionately as "sultanas", and intersections are called "pelican crossings" for reasons lost even on the locals. If making your way across the zebra stripes (crosswalk) or trying to locate the kitchen roll (paper towels) wasn't hard enough, Great Britain also has a sub-language of slippery slang here called Cockney.

So here are my favorite Cockney/British slang phrases thus far (aside from the obvious rumble strips-- or "tiddly rumble strips" as my Aunt calls them):
lush= good
savage= bad
mincers= means "eyes" (rhymes with "mince pies", which are round like eyes)
trouble and strife= means and rhymes with "wife"
apples and pears= stairs
plates of meat= feet
boat race= face

Also, "way". Or is it "weigh"? Anyways, its what boys shout out the car window at girls. As in, my introduction to the male population of England was a hoarde of boys in a van hooting and yelling "Waaaay!"

It's absolutely nonsensical, it's rubbish, it's England, I love it.

It's the 4th of July, and I'm in England.

Well this is awkward.

In other news, gypsies have stolen the metal slide from my little cousin Ryan's primary school, presumably for money.

Now. I hate it when an online journal is used just to catalouge the mundane monotonies of someone's life. But. I just don't want to forget this...

The hot steam from the white porcelain bathtub billowed up like a baby cloud, hovered thinly over the running water a second, and evaporated with the opening of a window. The walls, a fantastic shade of Robin's Egg, served as the perfect backdrop for the blush pink towels and the clean edges of the sloping sink and the white window ledge. The crisp natural light filtering in made my eyes electric blue, and for some reason, I felt like Alice in Wonderland.

It was, how you say, glorious.