Casa Verde Colours - Kitchen

The kitchen is in decent shape at Casa Verde. The cabinets have a pale-brown-fake-wood-thing going on that looks clean and not horribly dated. Obviously it is not nearly as nice as the kitchen in the photo above; it doesn't have marble counter tops, in fact the counters are mottled red, black, and brown. I hope the red, which will be less prominent than is suggested above, gives the room a Spanish or Italian feel.

Travel Diary - Friday July 31, 2015

Date: Friday July 31, 2015
Theme/Title: Lots of Walking
Overview: Waited forever for cable car, eventually got on one and took a ride up one of San Francisco's many hills. Discovered another line up at Mama's restaurant and were too hungry to wait, Ended up in Little Italy and had brunch at an awesome Italian cafe, Cavalli Cafe. Walked through Chinatown, and made a quick stop to visit a fortune cookie factory. Took a free walking tour through the financial district focused on architecture. Did the sunset Alcatraz tour. Met up with F and his friends for dinner.
Woke-up: 7:00am
Transportation/Distance: Cable Car - 2km. Boat - 3km. Walking - 10km (added up)
Meals: Lots of Italian! Scrambled eggs and buffalo mozzarella for breakfast. Caprese salad for dinner. Canolli to finish off both meals.

Jail Cell Doors - Alcatraz

Photo by ME with my phone

Highlight of the Day: Alcatraz was incredible! At the end of our visit they did a demonstration of the doors opening and closing that was equal parts creepy and cool.
Lesson Learnt: How a cable car works (and that walking a few stops up from the start of the route will help skip the huge line up.)
Song of the Day: Tanti Auguri - The Happy Birthday Song sung by cute waiters in Italian to Monica, for her 'birthday'
Quote of the Day: "Can I be your personal attendant?" - Me asking Monica if I can join her on the accessibility train for the trip down the big hill at Alcatraz (she is still recovering from knee surgery.)
Night's Accommodation: Shared double room with Monica and F at The Clift (who's main floor turns into a night club on the weekends - there was a bouncer at the elevators.)

Guest Writer - A Swan On Saturday - Part I - Heather

I had been wanting to post about the Greek myth 'Leda and the Swan' for a long time. I especially wanted to discuss the amazingly creepy painting by Leonardo da Vinci. (Somehow he is able to make a swan look like a porn star!!) Then I realised, why should I write it when I'm friends with an expert on the subject!?! I asked Heather, fresh back from completing her MA in Greek and Roman Archaeology at Newcastle University in England, to write up a post. Please enjoy this first post in a three part series.

From Heather:

A Swan On Saturday - Part I - Introduction

Chris called me the other day to talk about this painting of Leda and the Swan by da Vinci. I had seen the painting before, and others like it. Leda and the Swan was a popular Greek myth for appropriation by Renaissance artists. Chris was surprised that da Vinci had managed to make the swan look so human, and, let’s face it, overtly sexual in nature.

I was reminded of a statue I saw when I was in Venice in March. It was Leda and the Swan, and the pose was so erotic that my friend and I actually had a lengthy discussion about it:

That statue, from the Venice Archaeological Museum, is actually a Roman copy of a Greek original. So da Vinci was in good tradition. Upon further perusal of Google Images, it has become clear that all Renaissance portrayals of Leda and the Swan are very sexual, in a way that a 21^st century audience can find disturbing because of its implications of bestiality. Clearly, the Greek, Roman and later Renaissance artists had no such qualms. In fact, they portray Leda and the Swan in a far more sexualized way than they were comfortable portraying an actual man and woman.

But wait! Who are Leda and the Swan, you say? Well, that’s the real reason that Chris was asking me about it, and that’s coming up in the next post!

LIVE UPDATE - # 10

I have joined the tour and so far it has been wonderful. The group has 11 people and a guide, who is a very nice French woman and has done the trip 5 times already. I am the youngest person in our group with most people around retirement age. There is a couple, two pairs of sisters, a mother - daughter pair, a lone Italian guy, my roommate, and I. My roommate and I will be paired up for the rest of trip. The guy, the daughter, my roommate, and I are younger than the rest, but we all get along. There are other Canadians, also Americans and British. Tonight some of us are going to see an acrobat show and tomorrow we have a trip out to the Great Wall. The train journey starts on Wednesday.

Venti

I have always had an issue with Starbucks. This may stem from the fact that I once worked at a Second Cup, their Canadian competitor, or that I have always found it ridiculous to pay more than $1.50 on coffee. (I say this mere hours after getting a Caramel Macchiato on campus to help me get through my late night essay writing, so I obviously still buy drinks at Starbucks occasionally and am quite a hypocrite.) I just feel that the whole thing feeds into this snobby rich yuppy lifestyle that I don't like. On a side note - Anne and Erin used to call it *$ in e-mail as a short form when we all worked together this past summer, so cute. Anyway, I saw a clip for the movie Role Models with Paul Rudd and it had a scene in a Starbucks that made me laugh--
Paul: A large black coffee.
Barista: Do you mean a venti?
Paul: I mean a large.
Barista: Venti is large.
Paul: No, venti is twenty. In fact, tall is large. Grande is spanish for large. Venti is twenty. It's the only one that DOESN'T mean large. It's also the only one that's Italian. Congratulations. You're stupid in three languages.

I Wish

I want to...
-be painted by Michelangelo
-play improve games with the cast and guests of Whose Line Is It Anyway?
-speak another language
-go to a Caribbean resort with all my friends, drink and swim in the ocean
-win an Olympic medal for Canada
-have my Grandma back, alive and healthy
-be young again and playing 'Kick The Can' with the neighborhood kids
-see Twelfth Night in the Elizabethan Court
-like and know wine
-go to a Harry Chapin concert with my parents
-see the Hanging Gardens of Babylon
-wake up everyday with someone I love, and who loves me back
-climb Mount Kilimanjaro
-swim in a bath house in ancient Rome
-live in the same city as my little brother

Pretty Picture

This Arthur Lemon painting, The Wooing of Daphnis, was show in one of my English lectures a while back. (It took a long time for the prof to get back to me as to the artist and title.) I think it is beautiful. First exhibited 1881, it shows the nymph Chloë and her Sicilian herdsman in the Italian countryside, blissfully in love. In Greek mythology, Daphnis was the inventor of pastoral poetry. The story revolves around two children who are found by shepherds, grow up together, and fall in love. The original story is from 2nd Century Greece, but it has many adaptations and inspired art in all mediums. These pastoral pieces of art all depict the life of shepherds in a highly idealised manner. The painting makes me want to be a shepherdess, wear a sexy flowing toga, and be in Italy in the spring time.