Evidence that Sam has picked up on my neurotic need to be organized:
He eats his food from right to left; nice and neat, never in a rush. We’ve been trying to use his intelligence to our favour to teach him how to make us gin & tonics but he can never get it straight. Marc says it’s because he has no thumbs and can’t reach the freezer for the ice.
One of the best things about staying here in Dreamville (aka. Berkeley) is its proximity to überDreamville. Just a quick trip on public transit across the bay and we’re in within reach of the Ferry Building Market.
This is the market to end all markets; big, crowded on the weekends, expensive, touristy and overflowing with delicious, pretentious food- my favourite. First things first, though: if we were going to make a trip all the way across the Bay, we were going to first visit Marc’s all-time favourite coffee place, the Blue Bottle Company on Linden. A mere slip of a place, it serves coffee and espresso-coffees from freshly roasted and ground-to-order beans. We made quick work of finding it again and slurping down a delicious macchiato and cappuccino. (Sidebar: it turns out that there is a café 5 blocks from our house that sells this very coffee, about which we knew nothing until last weekend. We plan to be regulars.)
From there, it was a long-ish walk down Market street to the Ferry Building so we stopped, briefly, at Crate & Barrel – just briefly- just to see what they had on sale. An hour later, we continued the journey, with nothing to weigh us down but a mental list of all that we saw that we “needed”. Seriously considering starting an heirloom cast-iron frying pan.
Finally, there was the Ferry Building. We needed lunch, we needed oysters, and we needed to browse the food stalls and kitchen store. Lunch was most critical so we ate at the first place we saw that wasn’t – for the moment – overflowing with customers, Lulu Petite. Marc ordered a duck confit and arugula sandwich and I had a ham & provolone melt with truffled honey. We also had some sort of extravagent sparkling pomegranate juice and it was all extravegently delicious.
Next, we tried to visit Hog Island Oysters for a little oyster sampler but it was egregiously busy and there was a waiting list to sit at the bar, so we walked over to the seafood company and ate two each, raw, barenaked and juicy, from the kid selling them at the little table out front. Even that kid was busy, taking money in between his concentrated shucking.
The food stalls were a little too busy to peruse, even for us, so we instead inspected all of the products on offer at Sur La Table. Unfortunately, we could not justify buying all the things we wanted – what with the fact that we are leaving in a couple months – so settled for just an oven themometer and a promise to return if/when we can really do some damage.
We have arrived. Twenty two hours of driving landed us at the front door of our “home” in Berkeley for the next few months. The route was long and hot – especially the Nevada part. No matter how wide we opened the windows or how we rigged the towels to cast some shade into the rear of the car, Sammy was inconsolably hot.
The border crossing was entirely uneventful, unless you count all the whining in the back seat, and we merged easily off the highway and onto the freeway. It was immediately evident that we were in America because the CBC stopped working as soon as we were across; it was somewhat ironic that the hour before the border was spent listening The Current do an interview with Andrew Cohen about his new book on Canadian identity titled The Unfinished Canadian: The People We Are. On that topic, I might argue that there is nothing like a quick trip to the States to remind a person what it means to be Canadian. For example, after passing no less than three enormous, privately-owned American flags, we pulled into the Loaf ‘n Jug gas station in Great Falls where we filled up with gallons of gas and bought a small coffee that was 16 oz (473.17ml). The enormous trucks parked next to us had yellow ribbon stickers on them that read “Support Our Troops”. (In hindsight, I think that might have been just a Montana thing because we haven’t seen any of those on cars with California plates. I have seen a few “Impeach Bush” bumper stickers, though.) As we put The North miles behind us, more things reminded us of where we were, like, Jimboy’s Tacos, the motor homes pulling SUVs pulling boats, the cafe offering “homemade grub”, the 4x4s pulling 4x4s and, my favourite, a billboard that displayed nothing but a website: www.idontfeelsogood.com. Even if I overlook the poor grammar of the URL, I can’t miss that it is an ad for medical insurance.
Eventually, we made our way into the Bay area where even more local idiosyncrasies evidenced themselves. At the local Starbucks on “Gourmet Ghetto” next to the gourmet burger place and across the street from the gourmet take-out place, we saw a fluffy, white Pekingese dog slowly nudging his owner along the sidewalk, an old man with a gray beard wearing a cap and a red sweatshirt that said ‘Stanford Judo’ across the front. Besides the gourmet and/or organic and/or expensive everything, we’ve come across the All Souls Church that welcomes dog friends and the sign down the street that actually reads “Drug Free Zone”. (Did they mean drug free or free drugs?) One of the best things about Berkeley so far is the fantastic view we have over the bay of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge.
We’ve decided to postpone the reality of “earning an income” and “settling down” as long as we can and thus are taking to the road once more; 
only this time, we are traveling with suitcases, a car and a treat-riddled dog. Sam is disappointed at the prospect of leaving ‘Treatland’ – a.k.a. Mom & Dad’s house – but he is excited about seeing California because he’s a big fan of The O.C.
What better way to spend a summer than shopping at farmer’s markets, cooking our heads off, visiting Alcatraz, Golden Gate Park and Crate & Barrel, and touring Napa? Our travel extension will only allow a few more months of life at leisure but it will be a lovely, slow summer. We’ll actually be in Berkeley, across the bay from SF, in a sublet apartment 1.3 kilometers from the Starbucks.
Oh, the markets! When we were last in foodie heaven in 2005, we went to the Ferry Building Market on the advice of a magazine article. We were not disappointed and, indeed, probably could’ve spent the entire day there. I regret not having patronized the oyster bar (!!) but you can be sure I won’t miss it a second time. Can’t wait to get there and begin this food-centric episode of our travel.
An Observation: This whole travel thing really does get under one’s skin. If we weren’t carrying on to visit the homeland of security, I’d be getting pretty antsy.
A Creepy Discovery: go to Google.com, type in an address in San Francisco (eg. Ferry Building Marketplace) and hit enter. When the map appears, click on the ‘Street View’ button. They actually have street-level, 360º photos of some streets. At times, one can zoom in so far as to see furniture inside buildings.
Subtitle: What Happens When One is Merrily Unemployed
Facebook. Innocently, I accepted an invitation to become a member of Facebook, a phenomenon that I still don’t completely understand. People who would normally communicate with friends and family via phone, cell phone, email, text messaging, internet phone or even snail mail now have one more medium through which to connect. Facebook represents a new password to remember and another database where information quickly becomes stale and useless; it also seems to be the low-risk, photo-curious contact method of choice of high school friends and ex-es. It is undeniably silly and arguably quite pointless, and yet, I am drawn to it. Each day I witness the excitement of someone becoming friends with someone else and then updating their ‘status’. Riveting. If nothing else, I have some official proof of my friendships other than years of contact, support and shared interests.
Nigella Lawson. This TV food woman, rarely seen without a coy look on her face and a half-moon chopper in her hand (how does she use that unweildy thing?) has become a strange fixation for me. Despite her shameless use of creme fraiche and cheese, her cooking has a sneaky kind of appeal that hasn’t yet failed to inspire. It irks me that I like her; she is uncomfortably sweet and coquettish, like the cliche that is chocolate souffle. Last night I watched her make spaghetti carbonera, without apologizing for its richness and the addition of a half-pound of bacon, and then found myself making the same thing for dinner. I don’t even like spaghetti carbonera! How does she do that?
Grand Marnier. I’m not really a fan of orange-flavoured anything but it seems that Grand Marnier slipped through my net. Actually, I seem to recall it being the culprit behind one very un-memorable Christmas…. Upon our return to Canada, I found a bottle amongst our few remaining possessions and decided to give it a try when we ran out of port. It turns out that I sort of like GM and now, I can’t resist a wee, luxurious glass as a nightcap. When every day is a Saturday, this habit is of little consequence.
As a consequence of going through our photos in an exhausting effort to organize them, I couldn’t help but pick out a few as my favourites.
While it’s true that, during the long journey around the world, I missed some cushy things from North America (good showers, good coffee, English, an easy existence) I would be remiss not to mention the things I missed about Canada. I also think it’s fair to say that I’m not sure I would’ve ever really noticed these elements of Canadiana had I not been apart from them. (Hardly a new observation, I know; things are never clearer than when seen from afar.)
When I first started to remember to miss Canada, we were on a train in India listening, ironically, to an old broadcast of This American Life. The broadcast was titled “The Canadians That Walk Among Us” and chronicled the American surprise upon learning that some of the people residing there were actually Canadians. They seemed to blend so well into American culture (apparently), that you never could tell that a person was from Canada until another famous Canadian was brought up in conversation, at which point any Canadian would be compelled to identify the star as a compatriot. And we caught ourselves doing the same thing! Example:
“So the other day, I was listening to ‘Summer of ’69’ and… ”
“Canadian! Canadian! Bryan Adams- he’s Canadian! So am I. Just thought you should know, neither Bryan or I are American. Continue with your story.”
Anyway, as a segue in the broadcast, they played a jazz version of Hockey Night in Canada and it had been so long since I had heard that song, it very nearly brought a tear to my eye as I remembered the things I missed about home. Apart from HNC – which I really never watched as a faithful fan, it’s just a tune that is as much a part of my existence as the national anthem – I have to say that I really missed the diversity of this country. Now that I’m home, I appreciate much more that I can walk through a major city and see different races and hear several languages and eat sushi for lunch and palak paneer for supper. (And, really, Canada is hardly an example of an even mixture of races.) It’s such a relief to have variety again in cuisine and so… I don’t know… comforting to be part of a population composed of different heritages. Maybe the reason I’m comforted is because that’s what I’m familiar with; so many other places seem, to me, to have a homogenous population, relatively speaking. Funny the revelations that comparison brings about: though I can hardly say that I “know” another country, I feel like I now “know” Canada even better.
Otherwise, there were some little, stereotypical things about Canadian culture for which I pined: politeness, courtesy, personal space, the CBC, the cold, a self-deprecating humour that falls just short of being morose. On this train in India, where it first occurred to me that I could miss a country, Marc and I started talking about the things that were Canadian – not North American – that we missed. This eventually led to a discussion about the culture and we gave ourselves the challenge of defining what is to be Canadian without using the word “not”, as in “we’re not American” ; this is trickier to define without that element of comparison that seems to come so naturally. (Ask an American how they would define themselves and it certainly wouldn’t involve how they are not Canadian. Ha! Can you even imagine!) I wish that we had recorded our answers because I suspect our answers to that question would be different than before we left and certainly different if we weren’t half a world away struggling through a hot and crowded climate. Though I remember it involved hockey.
Oh, the guidebooks. All packed up now, dark inside a box and no longer useful.
Once, they were consulted hourly, hi-lited and dog-earred, carried at length through hot and rainy weather; now they wait patiently for us to regroup, replenish the resources and engineer the next voyage. I hope none of the pages we tore out went missing. I sure hope they aren’t painfully out of date by the time we need them again.
Days Spent on the Road: 361
Countries Visited: 26
Flights Taken: 26
Trains Ridden: 24
Best Bus Trip: It’s a tie between Taiwan (Taipei > Kaohsiung) and Argentina (Buenos Aires > Mendoza).
Worst Bus Trip: Udaipur > Jodhpur, only because someone in the sleeper berth above our seats threw up out the window and the sick came back inside the bus through my window. My hair, my shirt and one side of my face was covered in someone else’s curried sick. And we still had 5 hours of bumpy road ahead.
6 Favourite Countries
1. South Korea
2. Argentina
3. Vietnam
4. France
5. Russia
6. Turkey
2 Least Adorable Countries
1. India
2. Bolivia
Favourite Beach: Rai Leh Beach, Thailand
Deceased Leaders We Snubbed By Not Visiting Their Tombs: 3 (Mao, Lenin, Ho Chi Minh)
Bottles of Wine We Couldn’t Drink: 1
Weight lost: 15lbs.
Kimchi Burgers consumed: 5
Glaciers visited: 5
Point Furthest South We Visited: Ushuaia, Patagonia
Point Furthest North We Visited: St.Petersburg, Russia
Most dangerous drink: pisco in Chile
Least dangerous drink: soju in Korea
Most Expensive Drink: Mangosteen Martini, Tokyo, $21USD
Most Surreal and Beautiful Landscapes:
1. salt flats of Uyuni, Bolivia
2. waterfalls near Luang Prabang, Laos
3. countryside near Ulanbataar, Mongolia
4. Cappadoccia, Turkey 
5. 10,000 Steps, Junagadh, India 
Number of Rooms We Occupied Where the Only Contents Were a Bed, a Table and a Fan: 4
Number of Times We Couldn’t Identify the Meat We Were Eating: 2
Number of Times We Didn’t Know How To Eat What We Were Eating: at least 20
Where We Spent Janet’s 31st Birthday: Angkor Wat
Where We Spent Marc’s 33rd Birthday: Machu Picchu
Age of the Oldest Person We Met: >100 
Worst Traffic: Ahmedabad, India (got rear-ended in an auto-rickshaw here)
Best Breakfast Place: café in Vientiane, Laos
Most Disgusting Experience: the cockroach on the train in India that almost crawled across Marc’s face while he was sleeping.
Sketchiest Experience: in India, being told to get off at 4:00am at a truck-stop 18kms from our destination where the one and only hotel operator told us not to take an auto-rickshaw as we risked being driven out into the jungle and robbed.
Very Good Experience: travelling through the Central Highlands of Vietnam and along the Ho Chi Minh trail on motorcycles with our EasyRider guides.
Most Impressive Museum: Vasa Museum, Stockholm, Sweden
Prettiest Garden: Humble Administrator’s Garden, Suzhou, China
6 Biggest Cities Visited:
Mumbai (18 million)
Beijing (15.24 million)
Delhi (13.7 million)
Tokyo (12.54 million)
Istanbul (10.2 million)
Hong Kong (6.9 million)
4 Smallest Towns Visited:
El Chalten, Argentina (300)
Goreme, Turkey (5699)
Bolshoe Goloustnoe, Russia (10,000)
Uyuni, Bolivia (11,400)
Most Expensive City Visited: Tokyo
Most Expensive Country Visited: Russia
Longest Non-Stop Train Journey: 77 hours
Bottles of Chiggis Khan Vodka Consumed During Longest Non-Stop Train Journey: 3
Best Coffee In The World: Schuman & Clara, Gyeongju, South Korea
Distance Travelled Inside North Korea: 2 meters
Warmest Ocean for Swimming: Goa, India
Parks Visited Where The Main Feature Was Giant Phalluses: 2
Caves Slept In: 1
Cities Visited Which Refer To Themselves as “Venice of The East”: 4
Cities Visited with Canals: 6
Number of Leopards Spotted: 2
Rarest Species of Animal Seen: Condor
Most Common Species of Animal Seen: backpacking Australian
10 Things We Appreciated The Most Upon Returning Home
1. Sammy
2. our friends & family
3. jeans
4. kitchen
5. washing machine
6. DVR
7. big screen computer monitor
8. proper hamburgers
9. morning cappuccini
10. the luxury of being able to flush the toilet paper
10 Things We Miss The Most From The Road
1. no jobs
2. seeing something new every day
3. trying new food
4. learning bits of languages
5. meeting new people everyday
6. warm weather
7. cheap drinks
8. never having to clean the kitchen or bathroom
9. walking everywhere
10. the constant reminders of how lucky we are as Canadians
As the grand finale of our year-long journey, we could hardly have done better than a visit to Machu Picchu. What can I possibly say about this spectacular place without repeating what thousands of other visitors have already said? Beautiful, fascinating, an architectural wonder, blah, blah, blah. I’m not irreverant, but I can’t offer anything original.
However, I thought the resident llamas were a nice touch. Apparently, they were brought to site years ago by a production company that was filming an historical documentary and, when filming was over, they just left them there. They’ve been hanging around mowing the lawns ever since. Just in case one tires of photographically documenting every carved stone in the city, one can focus on these living local icons.
When we started this trip, we thought it would be interesting to have a theme. One of the suggestions was to make it a tour of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. How clever and cultured we would be! However, these are way more numerous than I thought (830 properties) and we seemed to follow that theme without even trying. Towards the end, it was like, “What, this is another World Heritage Site?” I don’t know what the criteria are for earning this designation but its seems that all you have to be is, a) older than 100 years and, b) on a tourist trail.
It turns out that it would’ve been more interesting to have adopted the theme of Seven Wonders, Old and New. Of course, we’d only have been able to visit the supposed locations of six of the Ancient Seven, but the ones that could be considered new would have been reasonably accessible. Indeed, it seems somewhat poignant that Machu Picchu was our final destination as it is in the running for the new “official” list of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World. Thus, it prompted the question of how many other Wonders have we visited in the past year; of the twenty contenders, we have explored eight: the Colosseum, the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China, Machu Picchu, the Taj Mahal, Angkor Wat, Hagia Sophia, and the Kremlin & St.Basil’s Cathedral. Only twelve more to go! Our path seems determined.