La Vie Niçoise

It's all been such a blur.

Sadly, I've been enjoying myself much too much to have the time to blog.
Happily, I've been enjoying myself MUCH too much.

From watching the beautiful, amber mediterranean sunset that made Cafe Del Mar famous, to experiencing the dangers of firecracker-happy spanish children in Barcelona, to breaking open and tasting fresh sea urchins off the rocky beaches of Corsica, to going from falling-into-the-street-bike-hopeless to biking down 100km/h highways..."night swimming"....

... to celebrating a FIFA Cup German victory over Argentina at the Berlin airport (german adults can get surprisingly fiesty), to jumping for joy with singing, insane Italian kids in front of St. Francis Basilica at midnight (post-semis in Assisi), to watching full grown Italian men happily falling to the ground in a joyous hugfest in the dirt of Circus Maximus (Rome, the night of the finale).

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This morning I said a teary goodbye to Kenzo as he entered the gates at Rome's Fiumicino airport. The guy at the desk tossed me a concerned "Oh don't cry!" as I waved through the security glass. But today's goodbye wasn't the goodbye I had expected when I first told myself "Why not".

This morning we didn't say au revoir, we said "A plus tard".

For those of you who don't know, I'm going back to work in Nice, France for another several months till Kenzo finishes his degree and comes to Canada.

However, I will be back in Vancouver on August 19 for a couple months before I fly back.

Yeah, this stuff happens, eh?

I'll probbly get more chances to post while I'm travelling by myself the next 2 weeks. Today I landed in Cyprus and got a ride from a kindly old Cyprusian(??) man to downtown and the warm beach. He got in a couple good firm pats on my thigh before I said "Hey that looks neat! Thanks!" and got out. Nice man anyway, though seeing the durex box in his glove compartment disturbed me some.