Somewhere New: Muir Woods

Muir Woods is just over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. The road down to the park is a winding ride on the side of the hill. Twisting deeming into the valley with every turn, I was transported in my mind back to France.

Every year the Beaujolais Nouveau is celebrated with a weekend of festivals and wine. The Gamay grapes of the valley have been fermenting for only a few weeks, their juices still young and thin. But, on the third thursday of Novemeber the corks are pulled from the budding bottles and the drinking and all our merriment commences. 

In 2009 I traveled to Beaujolais Village with two other language assistants to sample the year's celebrant. France, much like California I've learned, does not seek to cinch its landscapes with belts of tight, straight roads. The roads curve and flop and sometimes shrink as the landscape demands. 

For hours we snaked through the mountains to get to the valley and I thought I would go cross-eyed with dizziness before we ever got anywhere. 

The wine. It was, as I said, young. It was….well, underwhelming.

The fame of French wine was not a strong enough placebo to mask the sour swill.

It seemed to take hours to wind down to Muir Woods. My mind kept dancing between memory and the narrow road I was piloting. When the road finally flattened we were at the park entrance. The lot was full so we drove down to the next. Also full. We wound further out rolling the long stretch of cars parked along the road. Suffice it to say the Woods are well known and well visited here.

But the quiet you experience as you step into the shade of their trunks, the giant redwoods, strikes you. The redwoods we saw are babies compared to the famed redwoods of the North. But unlike that French letdown of a baby wine, we were not underwhelmed. 

We were so whelmed actually that we decided to take one of the trails and hike it to the "view" at the top. An hour into the hike we wondered if we should turn back. We hemmed and hawed and decided to push on. 

Finally we broke through the trees to the top. Things looked strangely familiar and strangely un-vista like. Is this it? We walked all this way and what do we get? A crumby top of the trees vista?

Another dirt path lead up to a road. We climbed. We cried. The "view" we had hiked to was the exact same view we had stopped the car to photograph on our way down the winding road into the valley. We had pretty much just hiked back to where our car could have been. Feeling betrayed by Muir Woods we took our snapshots and then stomped back down the way we came, bursting the bubble of a family who asked "Is it much further to the view?" Their two impatient children looked past the point of humoring their parents. 

Sometimes misadventures are the best kind of adventures and even though we felt silly for falling for the "Ocean View" trail's tricks we ultimately felt grateful to have spent so many hours in Muir Woods. 

Where to Eat Vegan: Pepples Donut Farm - Oakland, CA

The next morning we headed to Pepples Donut Farm. There's an obscure white sign hanging out front that says "Donut Farm" in what looks like black marker or slapdash black paint. A pink neon sign that reads "vegan" glows in the tinted window. 

Luckily the interior is nothing like the exterior. Brightly painted walls slat and vintage diner chairs bedeck this food stylist's dream space. The windows that, from the outside, look untrustworthy and unapproachable let in a gently filtered light. 

All this would be nothing of course without the main event - sickly, sweetly glazed donuts. The flavors ranged from Kefir Lime to Earl Grey to Coconut and everyones old favorite, Cinnamon Sugar. 

We ordered a box of donuts and some sandwiches to take on the road and puttering around the store. While deciding on our flavors a voice interjected into our process from behind.

"Oh you gotta try the coconut."

We turned to see a slimmed Missy Elliot look-alike. Her hair hung in long braids under a roomy, velvet newsboy cap. 

As we waited for our purchases I set up shots with the donuts, moving closer and further away, shifting things in and pushing things out of the frame methodically. 

"Put the green one on top. Yeah, like that," 

Missy smiled at me and I realized she'd been studying me as she sipped her coffee.

Pang lowered her camera and came over to eagerly insert herself into the developing exchange. We slid into chairs across from Missy. 

"My name is Heather," Missy said. 

"You girls partners?" Heather asked after Pang had explained our mission in California. In the moment that we found ourselves nodding and thinking "yep, we're business partners I suppose you could say," it seemed to dawn on us both that we had misinterpreted the question.

"Uh friends," Pang sheepishly corrected. 

Heather seemed unfazed by our momentary panic. "Oakland is where us girls can feel at home. They call this the town and San Francisco the city. About thirty years ago all us lesbians got kinda kicked out of the city so we came to the town."

A conversation from the night before came to mind: "You'd think San Francisco would be just generally queer friendly," Angie told us, "But actually the lesbians and gays don't seem to get along well. San Francisco is for the men."

Heather asked about our interest in vegan donuts and assured us that she was a well known regular in the shop. As we got up to leave, Pang snapped a quick portrait and almost as quickly as we met her we were walking out of her life. 

The brevity of happenstance friendships while traveling has always attracted me. The generosity of strangers to let other strangers into their lives, if only for a few minutes, is one of the those reaffirming life moments. 

A fresh box of donuts is a wonderful thing. Especially for a vegan who has given up many of those nostalgic foods.

Pepples definitely hit the spot but beware - if you don't eat sweets often getting a whole box for yourself is a dangerous move. While I found each flavor to be well rounded and delightful, ultimately it was too much sugar for me to eat all at once. 

Pang and I did balance our sweet with savory though and got iced coffee and sandwiches to go, which I would recommend!

603 San Pablo Avenue

Oakland, CA 94608

Tuesday - Friday 7:30am to 3pm for coffee and donuts

lunch from 10am-2pm

Saturday - Sunday 9am to 3pm for brunch

Stories from Puerto Rico: That Time We Almost Died

It was with sadness that we closed up the breezy beach house that had been our home for three days and packed our suitcases into the back of our ground-hugging rental car. We would miss the roaming beach dogs and the morning treasure hunts and even the underwater crunches we maladroitly performed for the saintly goal of "better fitting jeans."

But another adventure awaited us and we turned away from the coast and headed into the mountains towards Las Marias. From the coast you can see the rolling, gentle mountains of the interior of Puerto Rico, lush and green and almost doughy looking. Half an hour from the coast we started to climb. The road snaked and curled like smoke pouring off boiling coffee and we dutifully performed each switchback, Mom gradually falling into a pattern of pulling the wheel back and forth to accommodate the turns.

As we climbed higher the road rose up, leaving the earth ever further below us. Each side of the road dropped off into sliding green cliffs. We passed a vista and I pointed to what looked like giant green fingers. A curious tree had sprouted out branches in colossal clumps and it looked like many fingered hands dripping down over the jungle. "That's bamboo," Mom said, "looks like it's taken over a lot of the island."

No sooner had she spoken then she let out a gasp and slammed on the breaks as a lumbering dump truck came barreling around the corner we had just approached, sliding by us without so much as a wave or beep. "Oh my god," she said finally, eyes wide. We gingerly swung around the turn and were relieved to see an open stretch before the next turn.

But several turns later, with us still nervous and hanging more to the right than before, another dump truck popped out from the corner of the blind mountain road and scared us half to death. And so the journey continued, back and forth and back and forth and then a strained, white knuckled turn squeezing by another truck. But the mind and body are adaptable and even deathly fear can become predictable and rhythmic. As we climbed more and more we began to relax again, tensing with every precarious passing of a truck but then falling back into conversation.

And then my heart stopped.

There was nowhere to go, no shoulder to inch onto and it was barreling right for us. In my mind, in the flash of the moment, it felt like we had gotten to the end of the level. King Koopa, 5 times bigger than the minion trucks we had faced before, was staring us down and he was angry, and then the inevitable charge. But like I said, there was nowhere to go. Mom, already in the self-preserving habit of hugging the edge of the road, had done all she could do to protect us from the flattening and so we sat there. In the span of seconds since we had first spotted our fast rolling fate it was over. The monster, mere inches away, swept past us, rocking our tiny car and leaving us gasping.

"What happened?" Sydney asked, looking up from her book.

Somehow we had beaten the boss and as we regained composure and set off again we rolled into Las Marias. Like all the other tiny towns in Puerto Rico we drove through, Las Marias had a bar or two, a corner store and a school - which was always ringed with cars and women standing around in loose groups. Eventually we came to a driveway marked with a wooden sign on which was painted a bright infinity swirl. Relieved was an understatement for our emotions.

Mom stopped the car. "I can't see the driveway," she wined. It was true. The road below us dropped off so steeply that from the top where we sat there was no road to see. As she inched forward the car tilted down and to our relief the road was there to receive us. We shifted into a low gear and slowly rolled down the mountain towards a tiny concrete bridge. "I hope our little car can make it back up this driveway in a few days," I laughed nervously.

On the other side of the bridge we could see the road climb steeply again and disappear around a bend. Moving equally as slowly down that road was a large white pickup truck. Inching down the road that was little bigger than the car, when Mom spotted the truck headed to the same concrete bridge as us she let out an exasperated "Oh no...there is no way I'm backing up this driveway. They have to backup! This is crazy!"

Luckily the truck got to the bridge before us and pulled into a tucked away spot of land at the bottom and waited. As we approached Mark got out of the truck. "You made it!" he beamed at us, waving as we rolled down the window. Mom launched into her story about the evil truck drivers and the crazy curves of the mountain road and Mark smiled, nodding his head patiently. "Well you have another half mile of adventure ahead of you but you've almost made it."

From the passenger side of the truck a young man stepped out. With one hand he waved and with the other he clutched an ice pack to the soft fleshy skin under his eye. "This is Levi, we just have to run into town and get his eye looked at. Little scrape, just better to be safe than sorry." He waved us on and they got back into their truck, headed out towards town as we crossed the bridge and started climbing the last leg of our trip. We rounded the bend to see the great expanse of a banana farm down in the valley that belonged to a neighbor of Margo and Mark's.

We were so close that I was fidgeting with anticipation of being able to stretch out and walk around. But Puerto Rico has a thing for surprises around the bend. The car stopped again. This time Mom collapsed onto the wheel in pretended sobs and hysterics and wined "I don't wana! I don't wana!"

Ahead of us was a drainage ditch. The road plummeted down a foot or two into a crease that channeled rainwater off the roads and into the jungle and then rose back up to meet the road again. For a truck like Mark's it was little more than a pothole. For a tiny car sitting less than a foot off the ground it was a giant chasm to be perilously crossed. When Mom was finished with her theatrics I got out of the car and with much skepticism and secret cursing of Margo and Mark for not warning us, we managed to ease the car, one wheel at a time, through the ditch and onto the other side of the road with minimal scraping.

At this point in the story it should be obvious that the surprises come in multiples. No sooner had we bested the ditch and rolled off patting ourselves on the backs then we rolled up to the next one. And then another. And then another. Drainage on a mountain prone to mudslides is important you see.

Wearily we rolled up to the gatehouse and were greeted by an assortment of happy dogs and another workshare intern. We had finally reached The Farm as Margo called it and I for one was ready to embrace whatever situation was presented as long as it wasn't a car ride.

Our breezy beach house had been replaced with a breezy cabin and very quickly we were to learn what it meant to be "unplugged."

The Bioluminescent Lagoon of Fajardo - Journals of Puerto Rico

We went to bed at 9:30 every night. Every night except one. By the time we stumbled into bed at 12 am we were like transfixed zombies. Or maybe more like seasoned drug users just coming down from a trip, exhausted and still mumbling something about sparkles.

This night was Sunday night and we had just returned from a late night trip to Fajardo. There is a lagoon in Fajardo that is fed from a tiny stream bordered densely by mangrove trees.

Hector was our guide's name. Following him in our open kayaks we wound our way down the stream to the lagoon. Now a moonlit paddle through the mangroves is a fine way to spend the evening but we had come to Fajardo for more than just a paddle.

Just below the surface of the water live tiny microorganisms called Dinoflagellates. When the creatures are agitated they give off light and it was our desire to agitate them into a sparkling frenzy that brought us to Fajardo.

A van will drive you out to Fajardo past the suburbs and small towns on the coast. Rocky, our driver had that particular habit that I encounter so often in my Spanish speaking students of calling everyone "friend" and calling them "friend" often. "Ok friends," he would say at the beginning and end of every sentence - winning an amused chuckle from all the English speaking passengers.

After an hour or more of driving, we pulled up to a circular field of grass ringed by a dirt road and dotted with cars and motorbikes, all of which was hugged to the edge of the gently lapping waves of the ocean. Loud salsa music played from open air bars and the smell of greasy food beat out from the dozens of food carts and stands. Rocky told us this area is the neighborhood hangout for families. Indeed, along the shore many families were set up in the dark on blankets and chairs watching the faint glow of the Dinoflagellate as they tumbled on the tiny waves.

"Ok friends, the bathrooms are that way," Rocky said pointing to some squat buildings lit by harsh yellow bulbs in the middle of the grassy ring. Us girls scurried over to where he was pointing. As we approached a group of women were scurrying past us in the other direction, faces scrunched. "Bad?" we asked. "Terrible," they yelled over their shoulders.

Mom, ever brave and small of bladder, decided to be the judge but no sooner had she dissapeared around the corner, leaving Sydney and I standing outside, hips swayed to the side and arms folded, then she immediately swung back around the corner with the same pinched face as the ladies we had passed moments before. "That bad?" I said. Mom, already skirting her way back to the van nodded and said "Paint buckets. Overflowing paint buckets."

Luckily we had no more time to think about buckets and bladders because it was time to suit up and get into kayaks. The three of us were the only odd numbered group, all destined for two seater kayaks, standing around in the loose circle surrounding our guide. "You two ride together" Mom said, offering herself up to the unknown. After a quick paddling demo which looked very much like someone desperately trying to dance to a beat while crippled by cement laden hips, we all hopped into kayaks. Mom was partnered with Hector, our guide and was directed to the front of his kayak.

Tentatively we took our first tandem strokes and paddled over to Mom's kayak at the front of the line. Eyes wide and hands folded in her lap, Mom sat in Hector's kayak without a paddle. "Hey, why don't you have to paddle?" Sydney snapped. "Miss Pam is the princess tonight" Hector replied in what we would come to expect as his usual matter-of-fact zen responses.

"I'm the princess," Mom said, flashing a taunting full toothed grin at Sydney and I. With much grumbling from Sydney and much silent gloating from Mom we fell into the body of the snaking chain of boats starting off in the direction of the dark, wooded inlet.

The mangrove trees grow out of the water like hundred legged octopi, leaving their roots below to snatch feet and paddles alike while stretching their branches across the inlet to block out the moonlight. We entered the mangroves slowly, letting our eyes adjust to the dark and keeping one eye slightly above our heads to guard against rouge branches.

As Sydney and I struggled to weave the curving inlet and also watch for the glow below the surface of the water, Mom was getting her princess treatment at the head of the line.

"Miss Pam," Hector would say, "Do you see those fish over there? Watch." With that he would smack the side of the kayak with his paddle and the startled fish would shoot off in different directions agitating the Dinos in the process. "It was like a glowing star underwater," Mom told us later. "They would take off, zoom zoom zoom, and then leave glowing trails in different directions." Each zoom was punctuated by a crisp vertical slice in the air.

"Do it again!" Mom would say to Hector, playing the delighted but slightly impatient and sulky child character she has perfected and passed down to her daughters. "Be patient Miss Pam. We must wait for the fish," Hector would say in his practiced and perfected Buddha character. Every now and then we would hear Mom's ringing laughter from the front of the line and every now and then she would hear a curse or a "What the heck?" from her daughters a few boats back, twisted into the mangroves again. When Mom asked Hector how long he had been running this tour he smiled and said "It's my first day."

The closer the mangroves grew over the sky, the darker it got, the more the Dinos would glow. Each paddle was an explosion of light under the water. Sometimes they seemed green, sometimes blue or white. We dipped our hands in the water and wiggled our fingers. We splashed and smacked the water with our paddles and all the while the Dinos glowed.

Eventually the inlet opened to a wide lagoon and we all gathered our boats around Hector and Mom to listen to him explain the source of our glowing delight. "Look over there," he said "do you see that flashing red light atop the white light?" Our heads swiveled to the other end of the lagoon. Hector was revealing the source of the Dino's glow - we all waited silently. "That's a nuclear plant," he said.

Mom's laughter ran out and a few others joined in. Hector waited for the rest of the group to catch on and let out a delayed laugh before telling us about Dinoflagellates and their similarity to lightning bugs. The same chemical reaction occurs in their tiny bodies, but unlike fireflies they have no control of their glow.

He let us all paddle around and watch the glow. Sticking our hands into the water we picked up palmfuls of dark water and blew softly to watch it light up. As each Dino was agitated it would tumble in the cupped water revealing itself.

"Sparkles" Mom kept saying, running her fingers through the water and beaming into the dark.

"Girls, watch what I'm going to do," Hector said as he dipped the paddle deep into the water and then with one swift movement the paddle shot forward in an arc underwater - leaving a blue-green rainbow behind it. We all clapped and gasped."I could stay here all night," Mom confided in Hector, "I want to come back tomorrow!"

"Next time you come, Miss Pam, come during a rainstorm. You can't believe how beautiful it is when it rains." Floating in the lagoon, wide eyed and feet dipped over the edge to leave a trail of sparkles behind her, Mom really would have been happy to stay all night.

Hector, who paddled calmly, told Mom that the nine years of working this route, guiding tourists to this protected lagoon, had not changed or dulled his sense of awe and delight at seeing the Dinos glow. They chatted about their night jobs and their kids until we pulled back up on the shore, all tired and sore, save the princess.

"Hello friends," we heard from behind us signaling the end of our kayak adventure. As we shed our lifejackets and abandoned our kayaks, Mom, still glowing, went to thank Hector and surprised him with a hug before we piled into the van to drive back to San Juan. "Goodbye Miss Pam," Hector said to the princess.

Stories from Puerto Rico: Laguna del Condado

Mom's head popped up from where it had been pressed to the towel, laying snug against the hot sand.
"Raindrops," she said in her typical way of stating things with such simplicity and such awe in her voice that it's hard to think of her as your mother and not a surprised little girl. Her eye were wide and her mouth curved into a smile but you could see an annoyed roll starting to form on her forehead.
Sydney and I looked up lazily. One fat raindrop plopped onto my open book. As Mom went to put her head back down, perturbed frown still creasing her brow, the sky opened up and within second we were running, towels in hand, for the trees at the edge of the beach.
Many other sunbathers stood panting and laughing next to us under the trees. Many more children had chosen to stay on the beach, or had simply been left behind in the adults' crazed scramble for cover. Their laughter rang even louder than ours over the pounding rain as they ran around the beach. I watched them from under the partial cover of the trees and wondered who was sillier - the adults who ran from the rain or the children who were running in the rain.
As quickly as the rain began it was over and we slunk out from under the trees like children confronting their parents for the first time after misbehaving at school, eyes nervously turned to the clouds and shoulders hunched.
We rolled our towels back out onto the sand and laid down, each assuming their position again. Mom and Syndey on their stomachs, heads on their arms and me propped up on my elbows reading a copy of short stories by Anna Castilla. It seemed appropriate to be reading stories so heavily laced with Spanish words and musical latin overtones as Spanish speaking children ran giggling around me and the man with his ice cream pushcart rang his handbell saying words like "Pina" and "Coco" every so often. He hadn't moved from under the trees and his bell quickly fell into the background of my hearing again.
As I slipped back into my story another fat raindrop hit my open book. This time Mom's head didn't pop up. She simply let out an exasperated "Hey! How rude!" peeking out from under her arm with stormy eyes and a tired two year old's frown creasing her brow again.
This time we didn't wait, we gathered up our things and started walking toward the trees. The rain, not even having the courtesy to wait for our resigned walk of defeat, let loose a second time.
Mom had a habit of "speaking" for animals or inanimate objects and this situation was not an exception. Mom put on her best Spanish accent, because we all know the rain in Puerto Rico speaks English with a heavy Spanish accent, and said, "Stupid lady, I said you're done!" We laughed and washed the sand from our feet as we good-naturedly took the "rain's" advice and called it a day at the beach.
Half way across the bridge toward the hotel we looked back to catch the blue sky and puffy white clouds perched over the beach we had just left. No trace of rain clouds. Mom mumbled another "How rude" but this time only a smile played on her lips.

Murphy's Law of Lacey in Italyland Part 3

Is she still talking about this? Yes....

So where were we? Oh yes, I woke up too early to find that Ryan rolled against the suitcases and all the cushions had slipped out from under me.

The next morning we waited for Maxi to come back. The half dozen American girls who had slept in rooms, in comfy beds all night, started filtering out into the kitchen, chattering about their plans to visit the Vatican. Each of them was wearing practically identical dresses with ballerina flats, and all of them I'm sure, regretted not packing warmer clothes. At about 9 o'clock I decided to call Maxi as there was still no sign of him. He assured me he was on his way. When he gets to the hostel almost half an hour later he starts telling us about the great "penthouse" on the beach he has arranged for us. We tell him we dont really want to be on the beach because its outside of Rome but he assures us that there is a metro stop just a few blocks away and its a 20 minute ride into Rome.
We decided to be optimists, thinking it might be nice to be on the ocean and the place sounded nice. We made our way down the elevator with our giant bags and rolled out the door to his waiting van. He pulled open the trunk and told us to pile our things in. The trunk was already partly inhabited by baby toys, a car seat, and random magazines and coats. After a bit of quick geometry we realized there was no way all the bags were going to fit in the trunk so we shoved 3 of the suitcases in, and then piled the other suitcase and bags in the back seat with Jamie and Katie, while Ryan and I got the seat of honor up front. "Now you can say you've had a real Roman adventure" Maxi joked. "Is it always like this?" I asked. He laughed a bit sheepishly.

On the way he explained that the "penthouse" was actually his old apartment up until a month ago. "There will be a big party this weekend at the bars, there's lots of night life," he bragged. This actually soothed my worries a bit because I thought, well gee, he wouldn't live in a shithole would he? The closer we got to the "penthouse" the more sparse the bars, restaurants, grocery stores, and shopping centers got. Doubt started to creep back up, and then we pulled up to the "penthouse." A dingy looking apartment building facing a Guinness bar and....not much else.

Top floor, no elevator. We lugged our stuff up the stairs, Ryan coming back every other flight to carry mine, as my little arms were getting tired. We rolled through the door and.... well...it looked like some guys old apartment. No couch, no tv, no chairs, no nothing. Nothing on the walls, no blinds. A bunch of wires hanging off the wall where things had been plugged in. To our left, against the wall of the main room sat one uncomfortable looking bed. I walked down the hallway and peeked into the bedroom. Nothing. I glanced into the bathroom. No toilet paper, towels, soap. Right next to the bathroom was another bathroom...weird. Same story. I was pissed but managed to repress the urge to ask Maxi who the hell he thought he was. He had told us the day before that the place wasnt ready yet, which is why we had slept on a floor. Now he brings us out here and it still not ready?

He said  the cleaner would need to come and bring the other bed. We asked how soon that could happen. He said noon. It was 10 and as there was only one key we said we would wait until 12. We asked if there was a grocery store near by, as we hadn't had breakfast yet. He drew us a little map of a grocery store a few blocks away. He hurried out and the 4 of us decided to go try our luck with some food. We easily found the grocery store. We could see it from blocks away. We could see the heavy metal shutter doors pulled down over the windows and doorways. We stopped walking and turned around.

Back in the "penthouse" we kicked around the kitchen a bit. Moldy cheese in the stained, smelly fridge (not French moldy cheese mind you, rotting, going bad, dont eat it, moldy cheese). 2 sets of silverware and a pile of dirty plates in the sink. Festive glass pasta jars containing little handfuls of pasta sat next to the olive oil incrusted stove-top. A fine layer of grease coating everything. I pulled out my pistachios and we cracked shells until my tongue started to itch.

Exhausted still, because we had been sleeping on trains, planes and floors for the last 2 days, we all piled into one bed and took a nap. Periodically I would be woken up by the door to the porch being pushed by the wind and then falling back to the doorframe with a loud bang. The door wasn't actually held up on hinges...it was just sitting against the doorframe. I woke up at 1pm. No one had come. I called Maxi and his phone was off. I called again - same. I called him a third time and left him a not very nice message. While trying to control my voice and make coherent statements, I said something along the lines of "Maxi this is Lacey at the "penthouse" (i think he could here the quotes). Its 1pm and the cleaner has not come and frankly I think you should know that I am not at all satisfied with this place. There's one bed, there are no chairs, there is no toilet paper, the kitchen is filthy, and we didn't get breakfast this morning. It's just not acceptable. You told us the place would be ready today and its not, and plus we are out in the middle of nowhere and everything is closed. You need to call me back immediately."

I waited 20 minutes then called back. He picked up. Sounding sheepish as ever he said that the cleaner would be late and that we could leave the key under the mat and we could go into Rome for the day if we wanted. We went to Rome and immediately started looking for another hotel. We found a hotel through the Rick Steve's guide to Rome. The receptionist told Katie on the phone that they had rooms available for us, but the price she gave was well over what we had planned. Katie told the lady it would be too much and was ready to move on to the next hotel on the list when the woman said "well we can actually bring it down to X." Katie ran the number by us and we were still a little put off. Katie mentioned to the woman that we had found the hotel through the Rick Steve's guide (and the book said there would be a discount), presto chango - the price came down a bit more. We decided to take it.

We ran over to the new hotel to collect our keys and check the place out. Tiny little one hall hotel on the 4th floor of a giant building, minutes from the Trevi fountain and the train station, and pretty much just perfect. With that taken care of, all that was left was to collect our luggage from the "penthouse."

We rode the metro back out to the beach, joking the whole time about how we would get there and find either A: the key not under the mat OR B: all our stuff stolen. We didnt have much confidence in Maxi at this point you see. Luckily though when we got there our stuff was where we left it. In fact the apartment was how we left it. One bed, no toilet paper, no lights. We rummaged around in the dark, making sure we had all of our stuff and then sped out of the there as fast as we could, throwing the key back under the mat.

Hours later, back in the new nice hotel I got a call. "Hey it's Maxi, Im at the penthouse, where are you?" I didn't sugar coat it for him. We left, we weren't happy, we found a nice place, later jerk. He asked that we not write a bad review.

From this point things started to look up. We had rooms all to ourselves with nice hot showers, wifi, a breakfast buffet in the morning (composed entirely of desserts, no I'm not kidding) and we started to feel like the vacation was finally starting.

We decided to walk down to the Trevi Fountain to see it lit up at night and find a place to eat. On the way we passed the Triton Fountain and I tried to convince everyone it was the Trevi. Didn't work quite as well as when I told Ryan you could drink from the fountains. It was pretty late at this point and most of the restaurants were closing but one still seemed to be taking customers and the host ushered us into a tiny room packed with tables and candles, complete with a dj blasting old tunes. Perfect. Our first good meal in Italy, the comfort of knowing we could go back to a bed that night, and we could finally relax and enjoy ourselves.

But the story doesn't end there! Other mishaps were to be had. Stay tuned for the next installment!

Murphy's Law of Lacey in Italyland Part 2

So where did we leave off? Oh yeah - we headed out into the city for some dinner - leaving our suitcases in a pile in the kitchen.

We had picked a restaurant and chose the most direct route, then set out. Katie and Jamie came prepared with laminated colorful maps of the city. Ryan and I brought nothing. So we followed along like nonchalant children, enjoying the setting sun against the scattered ruins and statues, snapping pictures, catching up, while Katie and Jamie navigated us to the restaurant. Periodically the head of the line would stop to check a street sign and verify our position on the map. The periodic stops became more frequent and the nonchalant children began to wonder if they should offer to look at the map with the responsible map-bearer. We had missed our turn. Jamie had highlighted the route on the map but I suppose we were all feeling a little nonchalant and or fatigued. We ended up walking towards Firenze (according to the sign) and had to turn around. Then we came upon a huge ruin. This must be the Colosseum! No....I dont remember it looking like this. True its a greyish brown mass of building thats mostly all fallen to rubble but I do remember it being a bit more..... round...and surrounded by tourists. It was not the Colosseum. We walked a bit further and low and behold...the Colosseum! At this point we had given up on the fancy restaurant (I believe we had spent close to two hours walking kinda in a oblong? Am I exaggerating? In any case it felt long and we were already tired) so we decided to jump the metro at the Colosseum and go to the Spanish Steps where there were sure to be restaurants.

The sky an ever darkening blue when we got off the metro, we stumbled out in to the big square next to the Spanish Steps. Jamie had a place marked that we had found on the internet so we wound our way down the small streets towards our destination. I'd like to insert here that this area is IMO one of the prettiest of Rome. We found ourselves in a back alley street covered in ivy vines and romantic yellow street lights and stumbled upon the restaurant we were looking for. It looked perfect. Eclectic. Small intimate tables covered in bright red tablecloths with little white doilies topped with clear blue plates and art posters and mirrors everywehre and a wall made of horseshoes, plus several different cakes sitting up on the bar ready to be whisked out into the dining room to temp the patrons. We walked in and timidly held up 4 fingers. Reservations? Well..no we don't. All booked? Ugh.

We sadly walked back down the romantic alleyway. I had seen a street that looked bustling and foody, so we walked down that way and chose one of the first we came upon (our moral was a bit low at the point as was our energy). The waiter pointed us to a long table at the back of the restaurant and we took our seats and quickly decided on our meals. Then we waited. I was hungry and thus a little impatient but knew from experience that things in European restaurants just dont move that fast compared to American ones. It seems to me that Europeans spend 80 percent of the time talking and socializing and 20 percent of the time actually eating or dealing with the menu or check. Not so back in 'Merica. If I come to a restaurant I want food, and I want it fast.

Our orders we taken by a waiter who seemed a bit stiff and bored and without too much of a wait our food came out. An amazing meal would have lifted our spirits and prepared us for the night in the living room. Instead we got a mediocre tourist dinner (insert a comment made by Ryan about me being a food snob). Jamie's even had a bonus hair in it. We chowed it all in no more than 15 minutes and were ready for the bill. After waiting a bit I prodded Ryan into asking for the bill. Our waiter appeared again, making a bee-line for the kitchen and Ryan waved him down and asked if we could please have the check. The waiter scoffed, turned his head, and kept walking. You will have to ask Ryan for a recreation of this action. I didn't see it as well as he did. Suffice it to say it wasn't very polite or waiterly of him. He then proceeded to make us wait a good while before he brought it around. Grazie.

Walking back to the metro I could already feel the pressure mounting in me. Oh my god - I talked a bunch of my friends into the trip from hell. I was starting to feel pretty anxious and guilty. While I couldn't say that I was responsible for the things that had so far been going wrong - I did kinda feel responsible for the happiness of the group. The trip was my idea to begin with and as I had been living in Europe I was kinda supposed to be our resident "expert" and, regardless if it makes any sense or not, at the moment I feel like Europe is my home. And I'm kinda proud of it. I love it here. And I wanted them to love it. But Italy just wasn't selling it. I hoped things would be smoother for the rest of the trip.

Back at Alice in Wonderland we found a new group of poor tourists in the living room. We learned that they were waiting to be taken somewhere that night. No sign of Maxi. No sign of the beds he had promised. We resigned ourselves to the inevitable. As soon as the group in the living room left we pulled all the cushions off the chairs and couches and threw them on the floor. I pilfered the linen closet for sheets and towels. Ryan took advantage of the bathroom being open and hoped in the shower. Another group showed up of two travelers. Seems they were also staying the night. They pitched camp in the kitchen on small couches we had just derobed. We felt bad a gave some pillows back. As soon as Ryan got out of the shower it was siezed by the lucky group of American girls who DID get rooms. Poor Katie was determined to have her shower and sat up reading for a long long long time until finally she got her turn to take a shower. Exhausted Ryan and I awkwardly curled up on the cushions of the floor while Katie and Jamie shared the slouching couch. At 2 in the morning some American girl was still plugging away at the computer in the next room.

I woke up early the next morning, very briefly, when someone came in. The cushions had all slid out from under me during my sleep. Katie was perched precariously on the very edge of the couch while Jamie had sunk into the depths of the back of the couch. And, as usual, Ryan had rolled as far away from me as possible - which mind you wasn't very far this time as he was already sleeping up against the protective wall of suitcases we had erected the night before.

I couldn't wait to see what surprise "arrangements" Maxi had made for us, but as it was still too early to be up, I pulled some cushions under my sore limbs, scooted closer to Ryan (now he really couldn't get away) and went back to sleep.

Murphy's Law of Lacey in Italyland

This will be a several part series in which I describe the mishaps of my most recent adventure. I would like to preface this tirade by saying I had an awesome time on this trip. Traveling is stressful and requires much patience and planning and even with healthy doses of both, there is so much that can go wrong. I couldn't have picked better travel companions though - they each had their merits. Katie was the optimist of the group, putting a good light on it all. Plus we discovered a shared passion for the lesser-loved veggies - namely beets and brussels, a passion our boyfriends are strongly against sharing. Jamie was on top of all the reservation and booking and shared my opinion that only amazing food should be consumed while on vacation. And Ryan had the (difficult) job of keeping me in line every time I wanted to despair, feel guilty for Europe's downfalls, or crank.

So,on to the tirade. I just got back from Italy a few days ago where I spent a week and a half with my boyfriend and two of our friends, seeing the sights, eating great food, and....running into several ridiculous problems. While I am counting on my pictures to convey the positive aspects of the trip, a few words are required to express the lower points.

As the trip was approaching I started to set about packing. I had decided to send a large suitcase full of books and winter clothes back with Ryan because I was a total idiot and brought 3 large suitcases with me to France, and now that it's almost time to move home, I was starting to regret it. Thus, a large suitcase wass crammed. Getting it up to Paris on my own would be a hassel I knew (because contrary to what you might believe, my giant arm muscels are just for show) but it seemed like it would be worth it when come 6 weeks I only had 2 giant suitcases to wrassel by myself.

Arms acheing and legs bruised from constantly banging my bag against it going up and down strairs (elevators aren't in fashion here yet) I got to the airport in Paris with the bag intact and a duffel bag of clothes to wear in Italy. Surprise! Found out my duffel was too big (according to this airliner) to be a carryon so I had to check it. Well I was only allowed one piece of luggage and only up to 20kg. Both bags combined were 31kg. I" You will have to pay for the overage" the man said in crisp French. ""Ugh.....ok," I said in pitiful scraping the bottom of my bank account English.The man behind the counter gave me a sad little smile as he filled out the form for me to take to another desk. I watched as he wrote on the form in big bold letters 31KG.

Flustered and upset I made my way to the counter he had vaugely pointed out and in usual fashion I walked 10 feet, looked back to make sure he was no longer watching and then asked someone else where I should be going. I guiltily handed my form to the woman behind the counter (once I finally found it) and she started plugging away at her calculator. "Well Miss, you will have to pay per kilo over...so that makes.....620 euros. Will you be paying in cash?"

Yeah I pretty much died. My eyes filled up with tears (I can always count on those little pathetic beads of weakness to pearl up at the smallest sign of confrontation) and insisted that there must be a mistake while in my head I was wildly searching for an escape...could I just go out in the parking lot and burn the damn suitcase? She sighed and picked up the phone to call the man with the sad smile to verify the numbers. Putting down the phone she mumbled to herself , scribbling out the 620 and replacing it with a 220. "Voila." I still wanted to cry. I forked over the money, via bankcard, and dejectedly rolled my obese suitcase back to the man with the sad smile, and watched as it slowly rolled down the conveyor belt.

Fast Forward a bit. I got to Rome and easily found the others and we headed to the hostel. It was located in a seemlingly convenient part of the city and in really cool old building. The wooden door stretched up to the second floor and there was a beautiful hole in the sky courtyard in the middle of the building. The woman had said to take the elevator up to the top floor, the 5th. In front of us loomed the cage of an ancient elevator.

But for some reaons my eys followed the woman who had come in before us, who quickly ducked into a side door and disappeared into a small elevator. Lets follow her shall we? In any case I figured they went to the same place. Katie and I squeezed our bags into the tiny elevator and just managed to squish ourselves in next to it. I pushed the 5 button, remarking that there was also a 6 . She had said 5...but she had also said the top floor. We got off the elevator and waited around for Jamie and Ryan to repeate the same tetris adventure that is the european elevator. 5th floor. No signs for our hostel, cutely named Alice in Wonderland. So we started ringing doorbellls. I had that old childhood itch to run away (my poor neighbors in Gaithersburg) but I staid put and eventually a tiny, stooped Italian woman opened the door. I explained the situation, fighting the urge to speak loudly,. She spoke back to me in perfect (I can only assume) Italian. I realized this was going nowhere. She smiled and shut the door.

Ryan volunteered to run up to the 6th floor and scout. He yelled back down saying there was only one door and he could see a statue through the keyhole. He was convinced we had found it. Statue = Hotel Reception. The rest of us voiced our doubts, sighting for example, that the sign on the buzzer clearly said it was a doctors office, and that the woman had said it was on the 5th floor. Not wanting to disturb another old resident we opted to go back down and try the buzzer again and get the directions again.

Directions had. We tried the more obvious elevator. The one clearly visable when you walk in the big imposing front door, not the one hidden behind a side door. Success! I went up first with my bag to make sure. Stepping off the elevator I noticed the big sign on the door in front of me reading Alice in Wonderland and seconds later the door opened and a woman came out. "You already made a reservation yes?" she asked. "Yup" I repleid. "Do you have the confirmation." "I don't but Katie, who is coming up in the elevator, does." "Oh there are two of you" "No actually there are 4 of us and we reserved two rooms." Her face remained fairly blank through this entire exchange but her voice took on more and more of a stressed high pitched tone. The others arrived, one by one, and we handed over our booked confirmation. She lead us in, telling us to leave our bags in the hallway and wait in the living room. We sat at an empty table in the living room as the couch was already occupied by a bored looking couple. I noticed a pile of luggage heaped in a corner of the room.

My travel companions looked...well like they had been traveling. Rumpled and tired but putting forth an effort. We waited for a while, discussing our strange reception and remarking on the pile of abandoned luggage. Other groups filtered in from somewhere else in the apartment. They asked if we had a place to stay. Ugh....as far as we knew....

We waited some more. Pilfered some blood oranges from a bowl on the table. Waited. Talked with other people coming in and out. Finally Maxi, one of the owners, came to talk to us. Here's the scoop he gave us: hostels.com messed up...and maybe he was a little sloppy too. In short, there are no rooms for us. Nor are there rooms for the 5-6 other groups (that we saw) that also made reservations here.

"But I emailed you personally two days ago and you confirmed the booking" Jamie said. Maxi looked embarrassed. We quickly realized that there was nothing we could do about it. But smooth talking Maxi had it all under control. "I've got this great place I can take you to, but its not ready tonight, it will be ready for tomorrow. So....for tonight you can stay here (meaning the living room), no charge. We will set you up with some beds. and tomorrow I will take you to the other place.

Not ideal but what could we say? He gave us some towels and Jamie went to take a shower while the rest of us lounged on the freed up couch and contemplated a night in the living room. Jetlagged and red-eyed I could tell all Ryan wanted to do was take a nap, well and he said so several times, but since no one was interested in my idea (find out where the prostis hang out and rent a hotel for a few hours....what?) there was no napping to be had for any of us. So we consulted our list of vegetarian restaurants, put our luggage in the kitchen in a corner, and went out into the city to get dinner.