Today I enjoyed another great lunch at Cafe Ciao in Sorrento. It didn't approach my earlier experience there, which is logged in my sense memory a the most amazing meal I've ever had.

Yesterday was perhaps the dullest, most pretentious port I've ever been bored by. Beautiful, yes, but no more so than many less "chi-chi" destinations we've sailed to. Poltu Quato, Sardegna. Don't bother.

Before that, it was a day in Pisa. You'd think the Pizza there would be better, but we were short on time and had to eat reheated kiosk pizzas from a cart in the shadow of the leaning tower... an experience, but not a culinary one. We were all making fun of the fact that absolutely every one of the hundreds upon hundreds of people around were taking some kind of picture from a distance that made it look like they were holding up the tower. We, of course, would never do such a preposterously cliche thing.

It wasn't five minutes before we all had several pictures of ourselves doing the preposterously cliche thing.

Went back to Marseilles before that, which... well, see earlier writings on how Northern Spain and Southern France are while Souuthern Spain and Northern France are .

Of course, Nothern France IS still France.

Has a two Starbucks in one day fix in Barcelona. When I first arrived in Europe, I would've naively said to my new self "You're in Europe and you're going to Starbucks? Gad, man! How pedestrian!"

And then the current me would punch the other me in the face and take his lunch money to buy another frappucino.

Italy, though. Italy will do just fine. The food alone will keep me happy. Did I mention I tried Andalusian coffee in ... um... Cadiz, I think? Wow.

I have local coffee everywhere I go. You're welcome, kidneys.

For those of you who read this and I have either not responded to an e-mail or just not written you... or worse, if I haven't heard from YOU in a bit... Again I put out the call to help me feel a little less disconnected from home. Walt, for example, I don't have your cell # or any IMs here, so e-mail me again!!!

Anyway, must dash. Working on video demos and teaching myself advanced d-video editing.