Championing the makers, artists, and wanderers in all of us.
On our anniversary this year, we took Quijote for a picnic at The Farm at South Mountain.
We saw herbs in terra cotta pots on these stepped shelves that looked like little plant bleachers. Maybe they were cheering on the good weather!
I was skeptical about the palm tree on the Genoa travel poster and whether it could actually grow in a city that far north.
What I hadn’t realized is that Genoa is on the shores of Mediterranean — specifically, the Italian Riviera. This coastal region in Liguria also includes towns like Portofino and the Cinque Terre, and it has a climate warm enough to support palm trees, agaves, and sun-seeking tourists.
In fact, the Italian Riviera was already a tourist destination in 1884, when Claude Monet visited and painted scenes like the Palm Trees at Bordighera.
Now if the word “riviera” initially made you picture a river (same here), you weren’t completely wrong. The Italian word rivièra can actually refer to the shores of a river, lake, or, in this case, a sea.
Because there’s an Italian Riviera, English speakers called the Mediterranean coast on France’s side of the border the “French Riviera,” borrowing the Italian word again. Apparently, there’s also a (much) lesser-known English Riviera, which seems like a tourism-bureau invention.
And, yes, in Italy, you can just call the Italian Riviera the “Riviera.”
Photos via:
I’ll be linking up with Thursday Tree Love at Happiness and Food.
The sun was setting over a dusty rest stop off I-8 in southern Arizona.
We stood among the typical collection of bathroom buildings, empty picnic tables, and overflowing garbage cans, while the sky turned a brilliant gold. The color intensified, spreading upward from behind the silhouettes of jagged mountains before transforming into a fiery pink.
I think it’s easy to quickly dismiss a place or experience or a moment as being too ugly or just ordinary. But when you look past the obvious, you may be able to find what makes it special.
Because where you are is not as important as where you look.
It was just cool enough to sit on the porch awhile the morning I took September’s photo, and Quijote seemed to want a little extra sun.
The sky was mottled with little white clouds, like the edges of the approaching cloud bank had crumbled off ahead of it.
They reminded me of the bits of cream cheese you get when it’s too cold to spread properly. Or the pattern of paint after a timid first pass on a textured wall.
Later, the wind and air pressure and afternoon heat would work together to spread the storm clouds across the sky and cover it completely.
Both Phillip and I grew up in road-trip-taking families before the time of iPads or backseat DVD players.
Back in that age of analog entertainment, there were books and snacks and fighting with your sibling(s) and staring out the window.
We counted Volkswagen “slug” bugs, spotted the letters of the alphabet on road signs, looked for license plates from other states, and tried to get truckers to honk.
I didn’t think about this type of games not being universal until Phillip and I were driving our friends from China to go on their first camping trip and realized this was another new thing for them.
Of course, it makes sense that not everyone went on road trips as a kid, and, therefore didn’t play road trip games. I just hadn’t thought about it before.
What did you do on long trips growing up (whether you took a car, train, bus, etc.)? Did you play any games like these?