It’s been a while because, well it’s always been a while since posting.

I started writing this in Washington DC, having arrived here via Montreal and Quebec City, but due to limited time had to finish it back home. More on that in a minute.

Still coming to terms with the turning-30 thing. I barely feel like I should go out of the house on my own, let alone do adulty things like pay bills, do jury service and travel – again more on that in a minute. My twenties have been a life study in not managing to catch up to everyone around me and not-quite getting a career, or proper “life”, going…

I really thought that by 30, that moment where things “began” would have happened a long time ago, but one small thing leads to yet another small thing and now here we are. I tried to write but was rarely inspired in the way which someone needs to be in order to be on the same calibre as the people they look up to. I tried other things, as documented in previous posts, but they also came to nothing, as if they never happened in the first place. This was seriously beginning to get me down, and was doing weird things to my brain. So after a while, I needed to make a change, if not by way of career, volunteering or otherwise, all of which I’ve tried and has ultimately not come to anything. The one thing left to do that I could think of was to go travelling.

I’m not a secret millionaire so obviously I wanted to do as much as manageable, and having been to Europe a few times I wanted to revisit an old friend – America – and try a new area along the way: Quebec, or French Canada. Something about the area fascinates me, so away I went to see the place.

It was absolutely freezing when I got into Montreal, which would set the tone for the rest of the time here. I knew the place was renowned for its bitterly cold winter season but this was coming into spring… still, I did what was available to do off-season. This involved: electric bike riding, cat-cafe visiting, museum-visiting, biodome-visiting, vegan food eating (Montreal is surprisingly good vegan food wise, even if sandwiches were mostly the order of the day for the purposes of convenience), trapeze-trying (utterly terrifying experience but since it’s the HQ of the Cirque de Soleil (and there were few outdoor activities available to do) it had to be done, and, rather more than I expected, cathedral visiting. And of course, photo-taking.

Montreal skyline

Iron book and Montreal skyline

Old Port (Vieux Port) of Montreal

Me on an electric bike (aka DRIVING)

The squirrels came close

Biosphere

Toy exhibit at art gallery

Trapeze lesson…

O’Canada

Cathedrale de Notre Dame

“Metropolitain”

Museum of Fine Arts Montreal

Montreal city centre

Cafe Venosa “Cat Cafe”

One vegan sandwich of many

The dragon bowl at Montreal’s “first vegan place”

*****

Then I headed deeper into French Canadian territory, taking the train from Montreal to Quebec City, and that’s where the cold really struck with a vengeance. It was between -5 and -10 the whole time, so I dread to think what winter must be like there. Winter had not only come but was not budging…

Quebec City is a beautiful place, very European (now being a cliche thing to say), but with the tiny cobbled streets, the museums, cathedrals, cafes and all the French speaking, it really didn’t feel much like North America. Quebec City, it has to be said, is terrible for vegans but there was an awsome and unexpected little store where I basically got all the supplies I would need for my stay. Other unexpected delights included: a church/library, a film set hidden within the old city,,Montmorency Falls which is narrower but higher than Niagara Falls, and rather more encased in ice, and a rather charming if imposing cathedral where people left “evidence” of their former ailments, and tokens of gratitude, to St Anne de Beaupre, who was meant to be particularly good at granting miracles, which was nice to see. Also, stumbling across Quebec’s Literary and Historical Society (one of the oldest in North America, if not *the*) was a pleasant surprise, if only so that I could pore over a bit of (English language!) Emily Dickinson and modern Canadian poetry before closing time and with nothing but places open around the city where I have no business being, not being a Francophone. But on account of the cold, and huge lack of a vegan scene, I only scheduled a couple of days there and was looking forward to heading to Washington DC…

This is the minimum preparation required for going outside…

Chateau Frontenac

Chateau Frontenac at twilight

Very steep staircase

Old Quebec City

A certain familiar corner of Old Quebec City. Guess where.

The Literary and Historical Society of Quebec

A church-turned-library in Quebec

Montmorency Falls

Montmorency Falls

Montmorency Falls

The “miracle display” of the cathedral of St Anne de Beaupre

Cathedral of St Anne de Beaupre

Cathedrale of St Anne de Beaupre

Christmas is coming because Christmas is always here…

Vegan food in Quebec – quelle surprise!

A nice superfood salad on a freezing day…

Nice antidote to touring in the outskirts of Quebec City

*****

Right now what to say about Washington DC which isn’t a cliche… not a lot probably. Maybe one thing. When I scheduled the trip to coincide with the gorgeous and ethereal “cherry blossom season” of early spring – along with the decent temperature at that time – I didn’t expect the weather system to be completely whacked out of shape, resulting in a cold spell – actually make that freezing – which followed me down from Quebec province. This meant that the cherry blossoms which I was hoping to see enshrouding the city were, apparently, “long gone”, but I was there and had three days to spend seeing the place. So I took the standard touristy tour of the city, seeing the main sites including The White House, the Capitol, the National Archives, the (barren) Tidal Basin, etc. which was all done whilst trying to maintain a core body temperature. The following day I ventured out on my own, trying to cover what I had not already seen, but which was do-able given the annoying inconsistency of the wifi, the transport system (not a walking city), and that led to gems such as the International Spy Museum and a couple examples of the Smithsonian Institute, namely the Museum of Natural History and the Museum of American History. Places like the FBI building and the Pentagon I already saw in passing (good luck trying to get inside) would’ve been interesting too, and having found out about the Masonic Lodge cluster around the city during my stay, made me want to bookmark that for next time, or at least some investigative reading in the meantime. All of these places which I did manage to see were intriguing and quirky in their own little ways, if depressingly overcrowded (and the Library of Congress is closed on Sundays – IMO this is simply Not On) – but simply trying to imagine what these places would be like, all on their own, made me desperate to see them, one day, at the lowest season possible…

The White House

The Capitol

The Washington Monument

Me outside the Smithsonian

Cherry blossoms

Cherry blossoms at tidal basin

Cherry blossoms at tidal basin almost gone…

Gone

Arlington National Cemetery

Art piece at park in Washington

Art piece at park in Washington

Art piece at park in Washington

… Art piece at park in Washington

Me and the National Archives

Spy Museum exhibit 1

Spy Museum exhibit 2

Spy Museum exhibit 3

Spy Museum exhibit 4 – the worst one

“Magic Lantern Show”

Smithsonian

Library of Congress

National Archives

Washington Monument and Smithsonian

Library of Congress

Me vowing to return

Having spent some time debating whether to stay on and spend more time there, or call it a day and have another go another day another time, I opted for the latter and hope that a day will come where the things which I wanted to see and do, which the weather and season failed to enable, will do so next time.

In the next post I’ll outline one particular experience which is unlikely to be repeated ever again, but which, for posterity, I took it upon myself to sample, record, and present here. Three words: vegan fine dining.

I began writing about my trip to Prague, which took place in October/November 2015 as part of another post but it turned out to be much longer and more rambly than I thought it would be so I’ve given the whole tale its own place here:

Going to Prague was yet another case of me “needing something to happen” in the aftermath of my finishing uni and not quite managing to either get a proper job or write or otherwise be productive. Much in the spirit of my very sudden solo trip to Italy a year and a half previously, I booked a hostel (sharing a room with strangers unnerved me but I thought it would be an “experience”, one of those “things to do before you’re 30”) and a seat on a plane, looked up the vegan options in the area, and once again basked in a sense of “what the hell did I just do”? The hostel was lovely, it had a ginger cat roaming around the lounge which was enough to make me feel at home but my initial concerns about sharing a room with strangers turned out to be founded, and then some.

My sole bastion of personal space

Ignoring this awkward form of accommodation for the time being, I took to the city, primarily walking, absorbing the history and culture of the place, taking photos (most of which are in the photography page so as not to clutter the post here) and trying vegan cuisine, Prague-style:

Memorial at the top of Wenceslas Square

Just before the main bridge in Prague

Of course, anyone can take pictures of Prague, and far better than I, so I did one thing in particular to make the trip stand out in personal way. I did this by making Halloween a memorable day: I took a day trip to Kutna Hora, a small town an hour’s drive outside of Prague, famous for its skeleton ossiary. The sheer quantity of skeletons was unsettling, although these were donated by the former owners of the skeletons (at least I think – and certainly hope – so)…  skeleton-decorating, and golden foliage everywhere, certainly made the day memorable:

Macabre interior design of the Ossiary in Kutna Hora

Cemetery with golden foliage in Kutna Hora

Vineyard in Kutna Hora which produces mulled wine and sells it right there…

A dog on the roof in Kutna Hora, possibly waiting politely for us to walk on by before howling at the moon

And of course, there was the food – the raw vegan food to be precise. Although Halloween in Prague may not sound like the ideal time to go raw, enough of the handful of vegan places in the city were raw that I thought it a good opportunity to give it a go. I don’t want to be a food-snap-bore so here are a few of the dishes which I found to be outstanding:

Bread and beetroot pate with pesto swirl and coulis-type thing

Raw veggie burger with salad and more of the best pesto I’ve ever tried – ALL VEGAN!

I tried Loving Hut for the first time while here, which was well overdue. Cheap and healthy vegan cuisine, readily available throughout Prague!

Having temporarily forgotten about the “hostel situation”, I returned on all Hallow’s Eve to what I can only imagine was an epic party taking place in the lounge, at least from the noise. Having all of the awkwardness of no privacy which comes from hostel-staying, and none of the fun, drove me to vacate the place for a hotel with a private room, thereby confirming my initial concern that I am not, and never will be, a hostel person. This may complicate any future travelling (and make it a lot more expensive) but there you go…

The other reason I wanted to go to Prague was one word, or rather, one person: Kafka. Having spent some time studying and writing essays on Kafka at uni, the seed of the Kafka-esque was planted a whole ago and so I couldn’t not commemorate the trip with at least one Kafka memento:

Kafka

A Kafka statue – I’m not even sure if this is meant to be in any way “kafka-esque”

Prague is utterly steeped in both medieval and modern history, and much of it is right out in the open for all to see. One thing I felt compelled to see was the Jewish cemetery, which served as a resting place for literally thousands of Jewish people during the time when they densely inhabited the area. During World War II it was purposely set aside to be a “museum of an extinct race”, which ironically is the reason it still exists today, which made the visit all the more sombre but well worth seeing:

Outside of the Jewish cemetery

Jewish cemetery

Prayers in the gaps of the stone

The very last place I went to see in Prague was the Speculum Alchemiae museum which is dedicated to the potions and concoctions people back in the day used to make for all sorts of ailments: poor health, bad luck, lacklustre love life…

“You got a problem – we got a solution!”

Thus concluded another instance of travelling solo. I’m really not sure I’m the ideal lone explorer of old-time legends, intrepidly marching forth into the unknown armed only with a backpack and a decent camera, but a time comes, every so often, when you just have to make yourself do something, if only to make rambly posts like these.

I’m already starting to have a “notion” for another mini-venture, that’s how bad it’s getting.

At long last I am able to bring you the second half of the tale of my trip to Italy, because the illustrating photos finally managed to upload after a few weeks, so better get it down before it gets any more patchy in my memory… After a day in Venice (really needed more time there), I caught a train to Florence, propelled along by a highly efficient Italian rail service and some good tunes from Spotify – my Kindle was broken, most likely from over-use 😦

When I got to Florence, two things immediately struck me. Firstly, it was WAY more tourist-dense than I was expecting. I thought I had come during the “off-season”, my primary reason for coming at the time, but apparently I was wrong. This would cast a bit of a shadow over the trip for me, but I was determined to take full advantage of being in such a stunning place.

And the second thing… it was stunning. Coming out of every narrow alleyway (not quite as narrow as Venice) you would happen upon some amazing standing testament to the Renaissance – Florence being the cradle of the Renaissance, it was quite fitting. I didn’t even try to capture how impressive the architecture was there, because I couldn’t do it justice, plus everything was surrounded by hawkers of cheap tourist memorabilia…

Besides taking it all in, on the first full day, in a bid to break the solitude I went on a bike ride with the Tuscany Bike Tours company for the best part of a Sunday. We got a ride from the guys running the tour to the “typical Tuscan countryside”, where we were shown a pre-medieval castle where the regional wine is made. We got to sample said wine in the courtyard before the ride…

After some briefing, we got going, and what a welcome contrast to the throngs of the city it turned out to be. Good company, but just the right amount of it, and the sun came out to say hello, which lent an idyllic touch to the day.

After that, I was on my own again… having seriously underestimated how expensive Italy alone would be, this would rule out further travel for the time being, so I just decided to soak in this quintessentially Italian place.

I’ll include this photo just to prove that it was actually Florence I was in

For a lone vegan, there was a double challenge to finding an eating solution which didn’t just involve snaffling fruit in my hostel room like a squirrel after hibernation, but I was lucky to find a couple of vegan-friendly joints just round the corner from where I was staying. They were VERY busy but if I hung around long enough at least I didn’t starve…

Brac Libreria di Arte Contemporanea

(I don’t do food selfies, sorry. But I’m sure you can imagine what vegan Italian cuisine looks like. So above, here’s the place setting for a cool wee cafe I chanced upon…)

But the thing about Florence, and probably all of Italy, is that its essence is found in being in company. Couples, friends, groups, were everywhere.  There were probably the odd lone stragglers but they did a good job blending in. Essentially, the place was made for “amici” and “amore”.

I picked up upon a curious aspect of the city. Not only is it famous for Renaissance art and architecture, but it has something of a modern art scene, in the form of street ornaments and graffiti. There were mosaics dotted around the place like this one,

and something of a guerrilla feel-good campaign going on,

The graffiti was far more prolific in Venice, but that alone would take up a whole essay-size article. The time I spent in Florence was both too much and too little. But I wanted to see Italy (and very clumsily practice the language) and Italy I got to see, and Italy I will definitely be returning to in the future.

I would return Venice for one final evening before flying home, almost broke and still travel-hungry, and make one last bid to fit in with the locals before making a firm point to take up Italian lessons again. I hung my socks out to dry on the balcony,

as the example was perfectly set for me from the beginning:

  Now to start saving and planning all over again…