Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth GilbertMy review
rating: 5 of 5 stars
View all my reviews.
21 September 2008
07 September 2008
The Art of Diverse Travelling
I accidentally learned that it's cool to travel in different ways. I was pretty sure that any methods besides a resort would pretty much suck, especially if it involved the outdoors; however, I really enjoyed the cabin in the woods on the mountain method. Truthfully, I was envisioning bears, bugs, poison ivy, and smokey campfires. I was proud to try and rough it with my Burt's Bee's lotions, cream, soap and shampoo, as well as natural makeup (lots of applications to last through the day), but I didn't pin a lot of hopes on it.
Instead, I learned a scientific method to identify trees, finding over 10 types of trees. Maybe not a lot in other people's perspective, but a possibly an entire forest for my perspective. The first question is if the leaves grow alternatively or opposite, and then you determine if the leaves or compound or simple. There's a whole slew of questions that follow, requiring the little book to be glued to my person. Unfortunately I had no time to investigate the identification of ferns, although I have a book for it now.
The mammal stalking didn't go as well, but I DID saw a wolf! Yes, you can laugh at me and explain it was a German Shepherd, but I SWEAR it was a wolf. I checked the mammal book and got a really good look at it. It loped, instead of ran like a dog, and it didn't really look like a dog...not really. Whether it was or not, I will always believe it was a wolf. It was an awesome moment. I also found that three miles hiking in the mountains is nothing to sniff at, and there is more than one kind of fungus. In fact, there's lots of very cool fungi, including massive orange ones that experienced several moments of camera glory.
I will admit that the best part of the trip was finding out that the nearby town of Lewisburg had a most excellent wine shoppe with a cellar full of wine for sale upwards to $500 a bottle. The front of his store had the 'cheap' wine that had no truely cheap or overly marketed wine (The wine 'Yellow Tail' comes to mind when I refer to overly marketed). He had a '93 Dom and several interesting Italian varietals with older vintages in his cellar. The town had lovely antique shoppes as well that I really thought were fun. A couple stores had stogy items, but the Catholic confessional was the best item in the town. Unfortunately it's not for sale as it's the antique dealer's "pride and joy", although I'm not sure what I would do with it anyway. The horse drawn hearse was pretty awesome too. Again, not sure what I would do with it, but talk about a conversation piece.
[in home with antique horse drawn hearse]
"Here, have a drink! I'm glad you could make it to my cocktail party."
...
"Oh, the carriage in the corner? Yeah, that's a horse drawn hearse. Picked it up over West Virginia."
Maybe not.
Anyway, it was cool. I saw a tonne of Halloween potential.
I accidentally learned that it's cool to travel in different ways. I was pretty sure that any methods besides a resort would pretty much suck, especially if it involved the outdoors; however, I really enjoyed the cabin in the woods on the mountain method. Truthfully, I was envisioning bears, bugs, poison ivy, and smokey campfires. I was proud to try and rough it with my Burt's Bee's lotions, cream, soap and shampoo, as well as natural makeup (lots of applications to last through the day), but I didn't pin a lot of hopes on it.
Instead, I learned a scientific method to identify trees, finding over 10 types of trees. Maybe not a lot in other people's perspective, but a possibly an entire forest for my perspective. The first question is if the leaves grow alternatively or opposite, and then you determine if the leaves or compound or simple. There's a whole slew of questions that follow, requiring the little book to be glued to my person. Unfortunately I had no time to investigate the identification of ferns, although I have a book for it now.
The mammal stalking didn't go as well, but I DID saw a wolf! Yes, you can laugh at me and explain it was a German Shepherd, but I SWEAR it was a wolf. I checked the mammal book and got a really good look at it. It loped, instead of ran like a dog, and it didn't really look like a dog...not really. Whether it was or not, I will always believe it was a wolf. It was an awesome moment. I also found that three miles hiking in the mountains is nothing to sniff at, and there is more than one kind of fungus. In fact, there's lots of very cool fungi, including massive orange ones that experienced several moments of camera glory.
I will admit that the best part of the trip was finding out that the nearby town of Lewisburg had a most excellent wine shoppe with a cellar full of wine for sale upwards to $500 a bottle. The front of his store had the 'cheap' wine that had no truely cheap or overly marketed wine (The wine 'Yellow Tail' comes to mind when I refer to overly marketed). He had a '93 Dom and several interesting Italian varietals with older vintages in his cellar. The town had lovely antique shoppes as well that I really thought were fun. A couple stores had stogy items, but the Catholic confessional was the best item in the town. Unfortunately it's not for sale as it's the antique dealer's "pride and joy", although I'm not sure what I would do with it anyway. The horse drawn hearse was pretty awesome too. Again, not sure what I would do with it, but talk about a conversation piece.
[in home with antique horse drawn hearse]
"Here, have a drink! I'm glad you could make it to my cocktail party."
...
"Oh, the carriage in the corner? Yeah, that's a horse drawn hearse. Picked it up over West Virginia."
Maybe not.
Anyway, it was cool. I saw a tonne of Halloween potential.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)