it's 40k kilometers around the world's circumference
Although we don’t find Hugh Grant or Julia Roberts walking the streets of Notting Hill, we do find a rose petal latte at Farm Girl café that is unique, delicious, and beautiful.
On Saturday morning, there is an outdoor market lining Portobello Street. We stroll up and down and around the block, soaking up the pastel painted houses, antique pop-up shops, coffee cafes and pastry shops. It all makes for a beautiful morning.
The wedding is the main reason for this European adventure. One of my closest friends from grad school is getting married in London. It is an Indian wedding complete with many days of festivities, lots of delicious Indian food, beautiful flowers, British hats, big red buses, afternoon tea, and a grand finale in London’s Natural History Museum. The wedding is spectacular. Each venue is beautiful. Catching up with old friends is long overdue and feels great. The bride looks radiant. Each event features her in a new sari or dress. We felt so happy and honored to be able to celebrate with the very happy couple.
We remember first hearing of the famous Globe Theater back in middle school while reading Shakespeare and learning how it was first performed. Watching The Taming of the Shrew did not disappoint. The cast was spectacular. Their over-exaggerated expressions, the silly props and costumes, and the playfulness the actors and actresses have with each other on stage make the event wonderfully entertaining. Even when I mishear a line or don’t always understand Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter, the acting makes the scene come alive, and I feel as though I understand it all.
Accompanied by one of Lindsey’s friends, we watch standing near the front stage left. The open air theatre provides a fun appreciation for sunset as the first half of the play goes on. The many levels in the theatre, all of which don’t extend far back at all, make the theatre seem very intimate, which is aided by the actors engaging folks standing in the first row to help participate in their jokes and puns. Watching this Shakespearean comedy at the Globe Theatre is definitely one of our London highlights.
Annecy is built alongside a beautiful lake, and to appreciate this lake, we cycle around it and paraglide over it. Atop our rented orange cruisers, Lindsey and I take to the lake’s bike path. The path is crowded with other cyclists, walkers, runners, and rollerbladers. The sun comes in and out of the clouds, making it really quite warm. We stop frequently for pictures, cherries, and the occasional dip in the lake. We end the ride hungry and sweaty, and ready to find a hearty sandwich made of mostly baguette.
The following day, we soak up the same view from a few thousand feet in the air tied to a parachute (and also tied to someone who knows what he’s doing). This paragliding route is so popular that there is an air traffic control person on take-off and landing. I calm myself a little by estimating how many gliders there must be every year, and decide that it has got to be safe. But still with a lot of adrenaline, I run off the equivalent of an alpine black-diamond ski slope. Shortly after, my heart rate slows just a touch as I settle into my seat, but given my intense fear of heights, I never totally calm until landing. The rush of air around us, the view of the lake below, being at the same level as the alpine peaks, and sharing this rush together makes for an amazing 30 minutes!
After a wonderful weekend in Princeton, meeting my newest nephew for the first time and celebrating a milestone birthday for my pops, we continue eastward to France. We arrive just after noon, rent a cherry red Fiat 500, somehow figure out how to escape Charles De Gaulle airport, and start heading towards Annecy in Southeastern France.
With some French tunes playing through Spotify’s French Café Lounge playlist, we are getting ourselves in the spirit. Along the way, we have planned to enjoy the French country, the terroir of some of the most valuable and delicious wine in the world. Driving through Burgundy, we find ourselves in Vezelay. Vezelay is a small hilltop town around since ancient times, and its famous Romanesque Basilica of St. Magdelene has made it a UNESCO World Heritage site.
We wander through town, step into the main church to warm choir music, and sit down to enjoy a meal outside of an enchanting green-painted restaurant. We quickly learn that the menu isn’t too helpful without an English speaking waiter, thus we wait a bit for someone to come by. Although the meal is complete with some salad, well-prepared fish, and wine, we are easily most thrilled by the cheese plate.
Waimea Canyon was a bit of an afterthought. We’d heard it can get cloudy and wanted to use the morning before the wedding to see if the fog would cooperate. The other couples we’re staying with weren’t as interested in an early morning, so Andrew and I were left by ourselves and out the door by 7:00am.
As luck would have it, we stumble upon a chalkboard sign outside of an old warehouse en-route for coffee. Dark Roost is a small trailer humorously situated inside a oversized warehouse. We order lattes and listen to the Hawaiian roaster cooly tell us the story of how they came to be. Inspired, we buy a mug. Obviously.
The Canyon itself is very beautiful. We give each lookout the appropriate amount of oohs-and-ahhs before proceeding to the next. A Hawaiian guide shares some history. (Add facts about the wettest place on earth, Grand Canyon etc.)
Satisfied, Andrew and I lace up our sneakers and grab our backpack of Cliff bars and water to start our canyon hike. We’d found a quick out-and-back the night before, figuring we’d have only a few hours before the wedding. The eucalyptus dense woods smell of Tiger Balm and the single-track trail reminds me of training in Vermont. Unlike our hike along the Napali Coast, the ground is dry and the elevation gain minimal. We respond energetically with a pace that feels like we’re skipping through the woods.
An hour in, the trees clear, leaving us with the most breathtaking view of Waimea. We at once want to slowly appreciate the beauty surrounding us and excitedly race to see it all, as if beauty like this can’t possibly stay.
Together, we let the trail lead us the top of the falls marking the end of the hike before turning back to prepare for Drew & Kara’s wedding.
We wake up for an early easy hike to some nearby tide pools named Queen’s Bath in Princeville. We get to the trail right when they “open”, although there really isn’t any opening and closing of the baths (or the hike). We are back in the mud and immediately reminded of our Hanakapi’ai falls hike, except this time we’re in our bathing suits and sandals.
The trail isn’t obvious as the mud has washed much of the easy trail indicators away, and we end up on an old trail. We assume it can’t be too hard, so we forge onwards. We find small ropes down a cliff side, and we’re happy there’s at least something to hold on to as we slip down the muddy hillside. We are grateful for every tree root that we can use for support as we repel down. Although this make it seem like a controlled decent, I feel it was probably anything but.
By the bottom, due to a healthy fear of heights and a fair amount of exertion, I’m in a full sweat. It takes a little time to calm my heart rate, after which a dip in one of the tide pools is exactly what’s needed. The crashing waves along the side of the tide pool, the fish swimming through the perfectly clear water, and refreshing temperature of the tide pool made it all seem a little more worthwhile.
Lindsey and I arrive on the nature-filled island of Kauai late from a flight delay, find our airbnb apartment that we’ll be staying in for the first half of the week, venture out to a local grocery store to procure some necessities, and head to bed setting a much-too-early alarm for our first day on vacation.
Day one is spent with Napali Kayak, who claims to “challenge your body, blow your mind, and feed your soul”. We arrive at 6am to meet our guides, get our life jackets, and sign our lives away (in case anything bad happens). After some safety instruction and some group bonding, we hit the seas starting from Ha’ena State park for our 17-mile adventure of the Napali coast. 17 miles is no joke, but we are grateful that the wind is pushing us along today.
Soon into our journey, before we even hit the Hanakapi’ai beach, we are already greeted by two giant sea turtles, who apparently have some pretty ghastly breath – it smells a bit like sulphuric seaweed. Along the journey we paddle in and out of coastal caves – the Waiwaipuhi Cave and the Waihuakua Cave to name a couple. On our way into one, we pass under a waterfall, which brings us good luck… and cools us off. The topography of these cliffs and caves and beaches is other worldly. One cave we venture into called Koa Mano has an open ceiling after its initial entrance. We get out swim, climb on rocks, and just rest in this small haven from the large waves of the open sea.
Speaking of large waves, occasionally some pretty large swells rolled underneath us. The waves could be large enough that you could be right next to another kayak but not see them because they were at the bottom of a wave that we were behind. I’m glad that I had a full dosage of motion-sickness medicine first thing in the morning, and even still, I occasionally feel a little wobbly. The waves can be frightening from a distance but we also must be thankful as they often give us a nice push in the right direction. A couple kayaks flip, but I’m proud to say that Lindsey and I only swim in the water when we choose to.
We lunch at Miloli’I Beach and finish at Polihale State Park. Polihale State park is 17 miles from our starting point, but about 90 miles (150 minutes) from our start via the road. If the roundish island of Kauai were a clock, we begin our trip at almost 12 o’clock, we end our trip at around 11 o’clock. The trick is that that road that circles the island only includes 55 minutes of the hour and has a break in it between those two points. Thus, when we get picked up by the van at the end of our journey, we need to go counter-clockwise all the way back around the island to the start. This seems inefficient, but it was a nice way to see the whole island on our first day.
After arriving home after this long day and nursing a couple missed sunscreen spots, we quickly find ourselves very tired from a long week of work and a day of travel. We crash early, get over 11 hours sleep, and reset for another big day two.
We begin the evening that is to end the year with a dinner at our Airbnb complete with prosciutto, cheese, bread, and wine. The perfect and simple Italian dinner. But before it gets too late, we head out to the center of town to the Piazza San Carlo.
There is live music on a large stage at one end of the piazza. There are people selling silly, light-up, new years themed hats. A couple of the bars around the piazza are open, but much too crowded to consider entering. Groups of people are sending up flying lanterns. The music shifts from folk to pop to opera and back again. The crowd continues to file into the piazza.
New Years Eve in Torino from Andrew Stein on Vimeo.
As the midnight hour draws near, people start pulling out their plastic cups and bottles of champagne. Others prepare their sparklers and fireworks. And others just keep watch of the time as if the entire crowd isn’t about to countdown from 10.
The part of this scene that we weren’t quite prepared for was the shock waves sent through the piazza from the fireworks. It is almost as if bombs are going off all around us. It might seem safer if the fireworks weren’t being thrown into the air haphazardly by crowd members, but as a result, there is almost a chaos that breaks out at midnight. Fireworks, sparklers, and music all combine for a crazy finish to New Years.
