Catégorie : Travel

Quand on voyage pendant une bonne durée de temps, on passe immanquablement par plusieurs émotions et il y a toujours un moment où la fatigue se fait sentir et influence notre vision des choses. Nous sommes aujourd’hui à Florence sous la première pluie rencontrée depuis le début de notre voyage. Il y a beaucoup de touristes et la ville me parait un peu grise, dénuée des couleurs et de la splendeur auxquelles je m’attendais. Ça n’a probablement rien à voir avec Florence et c’est plutôt une question d’humeur, de nouvelles qui arrivent par courriel (je pense à toi, Beth) et d’autres nouvelles qui n’arrivent pas…

Je disais à Blork hier que les vacances d’une pigiste sont d’étranges choses. On force une pause artificielle dans un horaire de travail variable, ce qui veut dire qu’on doit soudainement se convaincre que c’est bien de flâner et de perdre son temps! En même temps, l’idée de retourner au travail ne nous horripile pas puisqu’en général les pigistes choisissent leur travail. Il est donc difficile de décrocher complètement et de ne pas se questionner sur les contrats à venir et sur notre futur.

Florence sera donc sous la pluie, si on en croit la météo. J’y reviendrai peut-être un jour et j’en aurai une toute autre impression, selon le temps, les nouvelles et… mes humeurs.

Monday morning. We’re still in Riomaggiore (our studio is way up on this hill) in the Cinque Terre area. The small window in front of my computer screen faces the sea. Not a rain drop in the 11 days we’ve been here. All the emails I get from back home tell me how bad the weather has been in Montreal since we left… Sounds like I got good timing, for once.

It’s nice to be outside of a city and even though there are quite a few tourists around, they are mostly the hiking type and the place doesn’t feel too crowded, especially at night. We’ve walked for eight hours a day since we’ve been in Italy but yesterday we took an official hike, climbing up a mountain which offered us a gorgeous view of the village and the sea below. We also got a good view of a man with his pants down and a woman working on him… They were blocking the trail and didn’t seem to realize that we were there, so as the polite Canadians that we are, we tried to make a little bit of noise and waited for them to notice us. They took their sweet ass time, so to speak, but finally stopped their business and walked back to their car (that section of the trail crossed a road). The man, who looked German, gave Blork a little sideway smile when we passed their car.

As we kept on walking the trail, Blork, being the good polite anglo that he is, wondered what the proper European etiquette was in such a situation. Should we have just walked by, acting like we didn’t know what was going on so they could keep at it? I told him I didn’t think Italian etiquette covered that issue but we could always ask the Pope next time we’re in Rome.

I fully deserved a gelato when we arrived to Venazza and I decided to try the pinolate flavor (pine nuts) which tasted like a milder version of coconut, without the overwhelming sweetness. Very nice. I really love pine nuts and there are a lot of dishes here that include them.

Today we’re taking it easy, walking along the sea to the next village, finding a nice spot to read a book and rest our feet. Tomorrow we’re taking a couple of trains to Florence (we have to decide if we want to stop in Pisa or not) and then we’re renting a car for the last section of the trip during which we will explore Tuscany, with a B&B in Cortona as our base until we head back for one last night in Rome. Then we take the plane back to Montreal, but that’s not for a little while so I better go enjoy the sun while it’s there…