Vodka Shots and Headshots- A Weekend in Baltimore

I haven't been to Baltimore in years, so I wasn't sure what my aunt and uncle would want to do when I visited last weekend.  When I was little we would go to a lot of museums in the city and I still like to do that, but this time my aunt wanted to go to a Christmas tree festival and my uncle, an avid gun collector (I say collector instead of enthusiast since he loves historical guns so I feel like the hobby for him is more than just "let's shoot stuff") had plans to go to the gun range.  I chose to go to the gun range with him since I had shot a rifle as a kid (back before Columbine when they offered shooting as a camp activity) and was actually pretty decent.  Also, as an avid gamer who prefers shooters, I was ready to get my Max Payne on.  This time we would be shooting my uncle's 9mm and a revolver, which I had no experience with.  The 9mm scared me a bit to be honest, it's a very heavy gun with a harsh kickback and the used bullet shells fly back at your face, I really did not like that.  The revolver I quite enjoyed, it was so 1940's film noir, I kept pretending I was assassinating an ex lover in a red evening dress :P  it was also lightweight and the used bullets stayed in the chamber, nothing flying back at your face.  The range didn't allow photo taking inside so I just took some empty shells for souvenirs as well as my target.  They also had a strict "no headshots" policy which I umm...did not stick to.  Whoops!  In my defense, my uncle said I was a natural and just have built in great aim!

My mom modeling my uncle's WW2 gun

After shooting, my uncle took me on a drive around this awesome abandoned industrial area that he explained used to be booming in the 70's and 80's.  I have a weird fascination for all things abandoned, it just calls to some part of my brain, I'm intrigued at how an area or building can be so in use and then be completely left as if it never existed.

Down the Rabbit Hole...

Saturday night my mom and aunt decide to stay in and relax and my uncle and I went out for drinks.  We went to a small restaurant in Elicott City called The Rumor Mill which makes artisan vodkas in bizarre flavors and offers very unique foods.  I ended up just getting some vodka cranberries bc I can't really do straight vodka, even flavored, and they don't offer regular drinks like margaritas.  For food we got a plate of cilantro beef with cucumber, a plate of Brie with different marmalade toppings like bacon marmalade, peach, pesto, and fig.  I also got a bowl of pumpkin soup with coconut juice which was really nice!  For dessert my uncle and his friend got ice cream and we were given complementary strawberry canolis which I had

 Modular Surrealist glasses= love

Late night in Elicott City

Our final day we went for lunch at a diner near my aunt and uncle's house and on the way I saw this awesome statue looming ahead and of course got excited because of how weird it was 

Getting closer I realized the king statue was actually for the "Enchanted Forest" amusement park (which is now a shopping center) and had a little moment since this amusement park was used in the John Waters film "CryBaby" which is one of my favorite films!  I knew I couldn't leave Baltimore without stumbling upon something John Waters!

 

Off to Baltimore!

 Next weekend I'll be in Baltimore after Thanksgiving visiting my aunt and uncle.  I've been there quite a few times but it's been a while since my last visit so I'm excited!  Above is a photo from last year of me with Mr Baltimore himself, John Waters

Travels with Grandma

Cleaning out the house for my recent move, I found tons of random things that my grandmother saved.  Among them, I found one of her old travel journals.  She never really understood the concept of a travel journal, so a lot of the comments are trivial things like what she had for breakfast or what she thought about other people she was with (ever the sassy one, my grandma), but I still find them fun to browse through.  She ends every entry with what she had to drink for the night and where, which is perhaps where I get my love of nightlife!

I also found these random stickers from various Polish hotels.  Holy 1970's Batman! 

P'tit Peu de Paris...

Birthday gifts from my friend

Vintage Vault- Chesterfield Shipment

From 1944 RCA pamphlet 

Sailing with the Suggestion Armada

I recently found this in my grandma's old RCA magazine/pamphlet and thought it was weird.  I couldn't find any information on it other than that it's from 1944.  "The Suggestion Armada" sounds more like an Improv group or an innuendo than an army thing.  Oh the innocence of the 40's

Vintage Vault- Postcards from Japan

Kyoto, 1946.  Photo by my grandfather 

Roman Ramblings- Piazza Navona

 A little known fact about me is that Rome is my favorite city (city, not place. My favorite place is Sicily).  It's a place I know very well, and always enjoy revisiting no matter how many times I've been there.  Rome is a great city to explore alone as well since the street plan is really simple and efficient.  Most if the city is a traditional Roman grid plan, so it's easy to follow a map an find what you're looking for.  In cities like Paris or Dublin with winding streets that branch off at weird angles I always have trouble finding things.

My favorite area of Rome is Piazza Navona.  During the day it's very cheesy with tourists crowding around the Four Rivers fountain and grabbing gelato or browsing trinket stands, but at night I find it to be entirely different. The main area will still have some tourists at night and the restaurants surrounding the piazza are perhaps a bit less authentic than you might be looking for, but if you venture onto the surrounding streets, you'll find the energy that makes me love the area.  

Parallel to the actual piazza is Via Santa Maria dell'Anima, which is a small street that houses all types of different bars and bizarre shops selling candy, toys, novelties etc.  Via dell'Anima has just about every bar you could want, and sometimes I even forget that I'm in Rome when I explore this street.  There's many different areas for nightlife in Rome and each of them offer different types of vibes but Navona has the most variety for the types of places that I like. Yes Testaccio has more clubs, there's chic places like La Maison (I wasn't a fan) by the Spanish Steps, there's more low key pubs over in Palatino, but Navona has the vibrancy.  I always feel like I'm in a carnival land or something.  One night in an Irish Pub there (and several rounds of cocktails in) I actually forgot that I was in Italy since it seems so bizarre to find an Irish pub there and then step outside back into the balmy air and see the warm stone colors all around you. 

The above card photos show one of my favorite souvenirs from my travels in Rome.  I actually keep this card in my wallet till this day because it's just so silly and makes me happy.  If you read it you can see that the club theme is "Screw Global Recession" and one of the available drinks is the "Jager Obama Bomb".  This for me sums up why I love Piazza Navona, it's just such an odd little area!

The piazza is just across the street from Campo de Fiori which I also like but not as much as Navona.  I always recommend this area to people when they ask me where to stay in Rome.  This is where I prefer to stay and aside from being in the area itself, you're really close to everything and just about as ideally central as you can get, which makes most of the sites easily within walking distance.  Oddly, I have no photos of Piazza Navona!  That's due to the fact that every time I'm there I'm having way too much fun (and too many drinks) to be thinking about taking pictures!

Sicilia

I have many favorite cities and places, but without a doubt, Sicily is my number one.  The island holds a lot of personal history for me, including being the setting for my first love, and it was there that I discovered my real passion for travel.  Sicily is a magical place, it's so different from anywhere else with it's mix of European Baroque and ancient Arab style.  Palermo is like a Fairytale for me, a beautiful crumbling jewel in the Italian crown.  The old palaces with their damaged facades, the palm trees, the markets, it all makes me feel like I've gone to a different, lost world.  The other vibe that Palermo gives me is that of being at the end of the line, the very end of Europe.  You can actually feel that there, it gives you the clear sense of being at at the South Pole of the continent, with the whole new adventure of Africa looming ahead.  I adore Palermo and I'm so thankful that I can now consider it home along with New York.  People can have their own opinions on what makes someone "from" a place, but for me Sicily gave me my first series of big adventures in my life, and though I was not there from childhood (I was 16 when I was there), I still consider myself to have grown up there, because I did.  Almost everything changed for me in Palermo, I went through a lot of big life events during my time there and for me that's what "growing up" is, having experiences etc, and I feel like that was definitely the point in my life where I drew a dividing line of before and after.  Everything now is after Sicily for me.  With all that being said, and after having lived there (with the boyfriend at the time), this is my Sicily guide.  

I lived in Santa Flavia which is a suburb of Palermo, and also spent a lot of time in Torre Artale which is pretty much a suburb of Santa Flavia.  It was about a 20 minute drive into the actual city, and 10/15 minutes from Bagheria.  I still miss that house, it had amazing views of the sea since it was up on a mountain and had an amazing smell that I just refer to as "Sicily" even today when I did things that smell like it.  I can best describe it as a mixture of spicy cologne and fresh towels, as weird as that sounds!

 

 Views from home

One of my favorite areas in Palermo (and perhaps in the world) is Mondello.  I have never seen a more gorgeous beach in my entire life.  The view is unbelievable, the water clear, and the vibe is a mixture of the California and Portugal costs.  There's a fun, arcadey type aspect to the area that feels very American or British (think Blackpool) to me, and the restaurants feel very Portuguese coastal town.  Mix those elements in with the Sicilian mountains and you have Mondello.

Mondello

The other beach I frequented was Sant Elia.  Sant Elia is less touristy, and smaller, mostly a local crowd.  It's farther from the center of Palermo so if you're in the city it makes more sense to go to Mondello, they have a bus that goes there erc.  As far as I know you need to drive to Sant Elia, it's kind of in a random spot, but it's a gorgeous beach lined with little fishing boats and nets and watched over by a large tower house. 

Sant'Elia

Views of Palermo suburbs, Santa Flavia to the right

 Ocean views from Santa Flavia

Palermo itself is such a bizarre city, and that's why I love it.  Down one street you might find 18th century palazzos or statues and down another even older Arab buildings.  You can't really peg the city to any style other than it's own, it's just a gorgeous historical mixture of everything capped with a tiara of Palm trees. 

On the subject of the sketchiness of Palermo, yes, it does have a bit of a shady factor but I don't think it's what has come to be accepted.  There are many gypsies around the main tourist sites to watch out for, and there is a pretty high rate of unemployment and poverty but I don't think it's dangerous.  It's more just shady in the sense of being in disrepair.  The buildings need to be tended to, a lot is abandoned, etc, but to me that's cosmetic stuff, it doesn't actually affect anything else but the rowdy character of the city.  The only mafia things I know of in Sicily are monuments or tombs to dead leaders (you can see one off the highway leading into the city), I don't know of any current activity.  The mafia today is mostly based in Naples.

 Four Corners

 Fountain of Shame

Cathedral

Montreale

Side trips

Sicily is pretty small, you can drive from one side to the other in 2 hours, so there are many side trips to do from Palermo.  To the south is Agrigento, home to a colony of amazing Greek ruins (also the HOTTEST place I have ever been in my life, like center of the sun hot with no shade to be found, be prepared), to the East is Taormina, an ancient Roman vacation favorite which is still home to an amphitheater overlooking the sea from high up on a hill.  Taormina also has loads of small alley type streets with pastries shops, major fashion houses like Versace, and little boutiques.  They have a large market for Sicilian pottery there too.  I like Taormina, I think it's charming but I much prefer Palermo.  Without offense to anyone Taormina is a little "older crowd" for me.  My mother would LOVE it.  Me, I prefer the beach and bars of Palermo to the pastry shops and wine bars on the East coast.

 From Taormina it's an easy trip to Mount Etna, the volcano.  The late eruption was in 2001, but it continuously smokes.  Etna was pretty boring to me, it was freezing cold and I did not have a jacket with me, and there isn't much to do if you don't want to actually climb the volcano. If you don't climb it, there's a souvenir shop as a food court.  That's it.  It just wasn't for me

Mt Etna

 

When it comes to Sicily, I'm very much a Palermo girl.  The city just fits my personality perfectly, a little but classy Baroque, a little bit of Mediterranean beach and spice, a mixed historical and cultural background, and a warm lust for life.

I've dressed Alice in Dolce and Gabbana because they are Sicilian and understand what the island is about.  Lace is a huge industry in Sicily, which is why they incorporate it into many of their designs.  Their pieces are also classically Italian and sexy, the Dolce woman is unafraid of vibrant color or print, and embellishes herself with statement jewelry.  The clothing is Sicily embodied, classical shapes and structures sometimes drawn from historical inspiration and adorned with Byzantine gold and jewels.  I love how well the essence of Sicily is captured  in their designs, and if you want to get a feel for the Sicilian vibe, slip into one of their outfits.