How we roll, Part 2

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NO8DO

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Last fall I decided to get a tattoo - not so much to express my individuality (as just about every other person has now done) but more to have the experience of getting needled as well as to see how having a permanent piece of portable art would make me feel. The problem was what to get. Tattoo shops are loaded with catalogs of both standard drawings and freelance work. The breadth of options is staggering if you only want something canned. My thoughts went in the other direction - I wanted something that meant something to me, characteristic of my life experience. So I thought about meaningful statements, written in Sanskrit or some other obscure language, or maybe something to do with a bicycle. Or maybe something Chinese. Or who knows, the only thing I did know was that I didn’t want a giant orange Japanese Koi wrapping around my biceps. One day it came to me. While wandering around Sevilla last year, we saw the same logo over and over, on anything that had to do with the m...
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Rain, then no rain, then sun, then rain, then no rain.

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We woke up to another rainy day this morning, so after breakfast rather than spend outside getting wet, we went to the Musée de la Civilisation de Québec, conveniently located directly across the street from our hotel. It’s housed in a modern stone and glass building, cleverly built to mimic the old Normandy-style buildings that surround it. Devoted to history of the province, there were two special exhibitions that made the visit quite worthwhile. We started with the Age of Discovery exhibit, jointly produced with the British Royal Museum of Natural History. Tons of examples of flora and fauna collected during the 18 th , 19 th and early 20 th century by European natural history scientists. Included was a 1 st edition copy of Darwin’s “Origin of the Species” and one of his original logbooks. Among the butterflies, fossils, skeletons and pressed botanicals were a Moa skeleton, a saber-toothed cat skeleton and an original Audubon plate. My favorite display was a stuffed Dodo,...
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One last day and a bit of travel

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After 2 days of gray skies, rain, and wind it was very nice to pull back the curtains and see a beautiful blue sky framed by the bright yellow leaves of the trees along the escarpment. Our hotel was only a block away from the cliffs that made Québec City a military stronghold and the view from our 7 th floor window of the trees in their early autumn finery providing a front-piece to the historical sites on the plains up above, greeted us each morning. One last breakfast in the hotel restaurant and we were back out on the cobblestones heading for a morning up above. Having a late flight (5:00PM) and arranging for a late check-out allowed us a lot of flexibility to visit the upper town - Haute Vieux Québec – it was almost like having another day.  We followed our now well-worn path back to Place Royal, past that most amazing trompe l’oeil ever, and once more by the Sun King in the snow globe. The biggest difference on this morning was that the streets were mobbed with people, no ...
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