I rolled into Bruxelles at about 4:00pm on Sunday afternoon. It was eerily quiet. The place was completely dead. That is, except for the tourist industry, which was alive and pulsing in the city center. After dropping my massive bag off at the hostel, I walked the 15 minutes into town in search of moules frites. Really, this was the main reason I had come to Belgium. Chocolate and waffles aside, I was craving frites and shellfish. I guess they knew I was coming. Along the Rue de Bouchers, it was impossible to find a restaurant that DIDN’T serve moules frites. This gave me pause. In the same way that ordering paella in Valencia proved to be treacherous, it seemed that moules frites at any one of these establishments could prove potentially hazardous to my health. The air was really thick, and the clouds low and ominous. I was lucky to be standing near a sturdy awning when the storm hit. It was a quick but fierce burst, complete with thunder, lightning and the whole bit.

Once the rain cleared, it was only a matter of minutes before the tourists reappeared. The restaurants along Rue de Bouchers quickly shook out their awnings and continued their business. I ended up at a rather dodgy Greek pita place, eating non-descript meat and frites. Not really a step up from moules frites, but gamey beast was seeming better than sketchy shellfish at that point, and I was starving. Back at the hostel I met up with two kind ladies from the Midwest, who were also traveling to Amsterdam the following day. We hit it off and ended up journeying north together, stopping first for a tour of a traditional Lambic brewery, a visit to the local junk market and a pause for frites.

Or, as we say in Carcassonne, je te veux. It’s cheesy, but I really do. I had forgotten just how much there is to see and do in Paris. And apparently the city implemented regulations about cleaning up after your dog since my last visit, so now you don’t have to look at your feet all the time and can focus on enjoying your surroundings.

After finding a hostel in the Latin Quarter, I walked through Les Halles, past the Pompidou up through the Marais and over to the Bastille where I found another street market to shop at. A note about the market culture in France: I love it. It’s great to be able to get fresh produce and groceries in this way. I like that the vendor is much more invested in the goods he/she is selling than your average grocery store clerk. As such I found myself seeking out markets for the atmosphere. It was a great way to practice speaking French while also getting good things to eat.

One could say that my stay in Paris was defined by trips to markets (I visited at least six). In between, I went to the Louvre and photographed people in front of the pyramid. Also had a picnic (of market purchases) under the Tour Eiffel. Went back again at night and saw them light it up, but I didn’t bother trying to go up (maybe I suffer a bit from the ’seen one, seen them all’ sort of syndrome, or maybe it’s more of the, ‘a tower is a tower is a tower’ kind of sentiment..). Photographed tourists at the Arc de Triomphe. Walked through some alleys in Ste. Germaine de Pres, and visited Mariage Freres. If you like tea, it’s worth the visit. (Don’t know if there is such thing as tea tourism, but with the existence of this shop there may well be now.)

On Friday evening I went to the Louvre. It’s troubling how much that museum and its wayfinding are dedicated to the Mona Lisa. The moment you walk in the door, there are signs directing you to her. Nevermind the rest of their extensive collection, the rare and unusual bits of Greek and Egyptian antiquity, the extensive halls of sculpture, paintings and prints. In the two hours I was there, I saw less than one quarter of their displays. I can’t even imagine how large their collection is. (Oh, you’ve only got 35,000 works of art? Pshaaw..) But the visitors came en masse, and they filed like lemmings toward display room no. 06. In that room, strings of queue tape separated visitors from the painting. Flashbulbs sparked every few seconds (apparently they put her behind UV protected glass) as new admits struggled to find a spot where they could shoot or be shot with her. I took full advantage of this, of course. The tourists were much more fascinating than the painting. My inner ethnographer was working overtime. Time and again I overheard the same remarks from those around me. ‘I don’t understand what all the fuss is about.’ ‘It’s a lot smaller than I expected.’ ‘Why is this painting so famous?’ Even I can answer that one. Because we want it to be that way.

After a while, I moved on. Using my trusty plan of the museum I worked my way through several chambers and in the general direction of the Venus de Milo. Having just re-watched the Simpsons episode where Homer is accused of sexually harassing the babysitter, I felt compelled to witness the real version to see if it lived up to its gummi counterpart. I guess one could qualify this as its own sort of pilgrimmage..? Then I got interminably lost (surprise, surprise) until the museum shut down and everyone was shuttled out by security. I can only imagine what it would be like on your first day of work in this place. It’s a fucking maze in there.

I finally made it to the Centre Pompidou, exactly two years after the exhibition I was a part of and did not get to witness. A little anticlimactic, actually. The place seems kind of run down, and of the exhibitions I was allowed to see without paying more (too cheap), everything was sort of ho-hum. The contemporary stuff in the permanent collection provoked little more than head-scratching from me. But the view out the piping was great.

My le Robert et Collins dictionaire came in really handy. Definitely a worthwhile purchase, as I was rockin’ the French. So much so, that I found myself buying more and more things at the market, just because it was fun to practice. This is how I ended up with two bottles of wine, a box of macarons, a box of chocolates, three figs, two chunks of cheese, a baguette, and several packages of tea. And how I ended up with the mean hangover that required sitting in a cafe drinking a cafe au lait and eating pain au chocolat until mid-afternoon the day I was supposed to leave for Brussels. For the record, I love that the French eat chocolate for breakfast.

Toulouse.. meh. Wasn’t a big fan of the place. Not going to bother mentioning it. There was poo all over the ground, and sketchy people abound. Anyway, I stopped there for the afternoon before catching the night train to Paris. There are certain times in life when I am so happy to be smaller than the average bear. Riding the night train is one of them. I curled up on my recliner chair (still too cheap to pay for the sleeper) with my night goggles and my headphones as earplugs, and 7 hours later arrived at Gare du Nord. It took a while to find a hostel (I did not prepare well for this part of the trip), but once that was settled I headed off to do some work.

I got lost again (in some suburb called Castlenaudry which, coincidentally, is the birthplace of cassoulet), but I’ll spare you the details.

I arrived in Carcassonne at 9:00AM and immediately fell in love with the city. It was relatively quiet and the shops were just starting to open. Walking over the drawbridge, across the moat and through the cobbled streets was like passing into a fairytale. Apparently everyone else thinks so too. I realized soon enough that if you leave the Cité Medievale by 10AM and return after dusk, Carcassonne is a magical place. At any other time the streets of the walled city are so congested with tourists that you can’t walk through it (no joke.). The hostel I stayed at is located within the Cité Medievale, around the corner from the castle. Convenient, and a nice contrast to the place in Nice. It was raining, and as I arrived at the hostel a small crowd of tourists had already gathered outside the gates of the castle, waiting for it to open.

They stormed the castle just as I was leaving for the farmers market. By the time I returned, the city was a totally different place, more like a theme park than a historical site (note the placement of the carousel just outside the city walls..). I guess Carcassonne was added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1997. It’s elevated status put it on the radar of guidebooks, tour bus operators and travel agents, and for better or worse brought the hoards of people looking to partake in the embodied fairytale experience. UNESCO’s well-meaning mission to preserve and protect the cultural heritage of sites such as Carcassonne seems to simultaneously be bringing about their degradation by the masses. This duality was a hot topic at the Things that Move conference I attended in Leeds in July. Fascinating business, these dualities.

I had a good stroll, sans backpack (which by then was pretty damn heavy due to my hoarding tendencies), practiced my French at the market (it’s improving!), purchased a fine lunch of sausage, cheese, tomato, olives, peach and bread to eat later, and then made my way back to the Cité. Once confronted with the mid-day reality of the place, I retreated to the hostel to do my laundry and wait for the masses to leave.

While waiting for my clothing to dry, I encountered a mixed band of Quebecers, Canadians, a Chilean and a fellow American in the hostel bar, all seated at a round table with a deck of cards. Not surprisingly, it was the American who was orchestrating some drinking games. Several hours and several beers later, we were all fast friends. Conversation took place in a mixture of broken French and English, with a few bridges who could translate between the two. Eventually, the whole lot of us marched over to a restaurant a few blocks away, gorged ourselves on cassoulet and other regional cuisine, and finished off the evening with more beers.

At half past midnight, a few of us went for a walk to see the city at night. It was then that I decided that I was going to wake up and see the sun rise over the city. And I did. At 5:30AM I hauled myself out of my bunk and went out into the streets. It was hauntingly quiet, except for the noise of the street cleaners who were preparing the cobblestones for the coming day’s traffic. Too spooked to leave the confines of the city, I sat on the outer wall and watched the sun come up over the town below.

Later in the day I did the tour of the castle like everybody else before finding my way to Toulouse to catch the night train to Paris.

The coast was packed. Browned bodies lined the shores of the Mediterranean like seals. I arrived in Nice on a Saturday morning, and (not surprisingly at this point) got lost while trying to find my hostel. I made the mistake of trusting Lonely Planet’s writers in their ‘top pick’ hostel. Not that the service was bad. In fact, it was excellent, and the amenities were good too (free internet access, big kitchen blasting Bryan Adams ballads..). They had to do something to compensate for the fact that they were located two miles north of town atop a frustratingly steep hill. I spent more time waiting for buses than I did seeing things. And the whole place was like a transplanted frat party. I’m too old for this shit.

I’ve noticed that the French way of doing things often involves a complete disregard for efficiency or common sense. For example, the ticket kiosks at the Gare Nice Ville were an exercise in absolute futility. They neither accepted bills or credit cards without a smart chip, rendering them almost useless (and yes, causing me to miss yet another train). That aside, Nice was a decent hub. Took the train out to Antibes, Cannes, and Juan les Pins. Got some sun. The Mediterranean is like a giant bathtub. So calm and nice. Due to another series of blunders, I ended up in St. Raphael, waiting for a later train to Marseille. It was hot, so I did what had to be done. The threat of terrorism has rendered many of the manual consigné machines useless, and there was no official baggage check at the train station. After paying a random employee at the bus station to watch my bag for three hours (because this is a much safer alternative..), I changed into my bathing suit in one of those coin-op bathrooms and headed for the beach. Passed the restaurant where I spent my 21st birthday. It seemed that all of France had gone on holiday there. It was impossible to find a spot on the beach.

Had been trying desperately to get into my book The Tourist by Dean MacCannell, but finding it really difficult to focus on tourism theory while on the go. My eyes would wander down the page while my brain was somewhere else completely. Eventually, I fell asleep in the sun and missed the train to Marseille, meaning that I had to take yet another night train to Carcassonne. Balls. In all, the Cote d’Azur was less relaxing than I had hoped for, but I did come away with a good tan.

It’s worth stopping for a moment to discuss the whole mugging thing, which is still pretty surreal in my mind, and definitely affected the way that I traveled for the remainder of my journey. I never had any weird flashbacks or nightmares about it. But it was definitely on my mind. And my anxiety manifest itself in me being insecure about being alone and in a strange loneliness that would creep up from time to time. I found that I was constantly seeking out the company of others. I love the freedom and the self reflection that comes with traveling alone. And I lost some of that. I guess that’s really all I have to say about it. He’ll get his.

I made the transition from Italy into France. This also meant having to make the mental transition from Italian to French. It definitely took some time, and I found myself being embarrassed to try and speak. Does anybody else have this problem, or is it just me and some weird perfectionist tendency?

The transition itself was rather rough. After waiting for six grueling hours at the Pisa train station, being more than a little sketched out by the amount of weirdos who looked interested in either me or my stuff, trying to convince myself I was just paranoid after the mugging and writing postcards frantically to use up my Italian stamps and to occupy my mind, I boarded the night train to Nice, my ticket to the Cote d’Azur and the beach!

I was (of course) too cheap to book a sleeper car, so I found myself in a crowded compartment with five others, all trying to sleep upright in the most uncomfortable of quarters. There was little joy in any part of this journey. The air conditioner was blasting cold air into the chamber all night, the seats did not recline at all, unless you folded them down completely into a giant flat bed of sorts, which required a sort of closeness of body that nobody was willing to breach. A Korean couple talked through four hours of the trip, making it impossible for anyone else to sleep, and when they left the train there was much cheering.

In the hallway, sketchy dudes who did not have reservations tried to sleep upright on little fold down bench seats. I guess I did not have it that bad in comparison. But when I initially boarded the train, and each time I tried to find my way to the bathroom, their eyes would fixate on me in a way that made my skin crawl. I spent the majority of the night clutching my valuables in a death grip, wishing I had worn socks, cursing the talking couple in my mind and huddling under the little blue paper blanket that the Pisa cathedral had made me wear to cover my bare shoulders (to make myself presentable to God). Bless my United Airlines ‘night goggles’, a relic of a former night flight that I had been smart enough to stash in my carry-on. The lights in the cabin would not turn off completely, but with the night goggles on, it was pitch black, even if frigid and sketchy.

When the sun came up I was none the wiser, but the others started moving about, and once I peeled off the eye covering, we were riding along the Mediterranean. Next thing, we were passing through Monte Carlo, the height of affluence. But by then most of the sketchy dudes had deplaned elsewhere.. and it was just blue and sunny. Sleepless and dazed, I entered the next phase of my trip.

After two days in Firenze, too few gelatos (alas, I did not break my record of five cones in one day), I made the voyage to Pisa with my newfound Aussie friend, Jay. We met in Venezia at the hostel, drinking boxed wine and laughing into the wee hours of the morning in the courtyard. When it came up that we would both be in Firenze at the same time, we made plans to meet. I’m still amazed at the camaraderie that occurs between fellow travelers. I guess it’s obvious that solo people stuck into similar situations will naturally gravitate toward one another. But I am astounded that I have found so many like-minded travelers. Given the plethora of assholes that exist out there, it blows my mind that I could have met so many fantastic people in such a short amount of time. Maybe the assholes stayed home. Or in another hostel..?

We were greeted by a thunderstorm of epic proportions. As a kid I remember learning in science class that the proximity of a thunderstorm can be measured by the time interval between the lightening and the thunder. That day there was no interval—they were right on top of each other. Jay and I ducked into a cafe right outside the train station and weathered the storm (no pun intended) over a macchiato. The rain came down in sheets, cascading off the sides of buses and flooding the storm drains. I thought for sure that the day was ruined and that I would not be able to do my project at the tower. Even if the rain cleared up (which it did after two hours), surely there would be no tourists at the site.

I was wrong. Once the sun came out, we wandered over to the site of the tower. Frankly we could have gotten there without a map and with our eyes closed. All you had to do was follow the steady stream of people marching in the same direction, as it was difficult to go anywhere but with the current. The main drag between the train station and the Leaning Tower has been taken over by shops and vendors that cater to tourists. The ‘menu turistici’ was a local establishment on restaurant menus, offering discounted prices for the ’special’ visitor (although any astute individual would recognize this as the Italian way of giving tourists the finger using dishes that rival Chef Boyardee for quality).

The field of tourists beneath the tower is just astounding. We were surrounded by an army of people all waiting to pose for photos, their arms outstretched, propping the tower up for posterity. It was like a rite of passage in a way. In another context this performance would have felt ridiculous and alienating. But here in Pisa it was commonplace and expected, and both young and old were getting caught up in the moment. I, of course, took quick advantage of this phenomenon for my project. Beneath our feet was a perforated rubber matting through which the grass grows to preserve it amongst all the foot traffic. The sun was scorching by then, and it was difficult to even imagine that a thunderstorm had taken place there that same day. By afternoon, every last trace of water had evaporated. We quickly learned that in order to actually climb the tower, you had to battle a long line, high ticket prices, and wait times of up to an hour. In lieu of that, Jay and I got some lunch and then took a nap in the shade of the tower. Even the guidebooks will tell you that Pisa can be ‘done’ in one day. We went, we saw, we napped.

As it turns out, Donatello’s David is in the process of being restored in a public setting. It was interesting that this meticulous act, which normally takes place behind closed doors, was now being made available to tourists. The restoratrice, the highly skilled sculpture doctor of sorts, had made judgements about what care the sculpture needed and had tagged each and every scratch and nick and flaw on the sculpture. She was sitting behind a little enclosed fence in the Barguello <sp?>, and tourists passing through the museum could stop to see the progress (if it could really be seen at all). The whole act was also being filmed in real time.

 My understanding of the situation is that this particular David normally sits up high on the side of a building, so it is unusual to be able to see it so close now. After hundreds of years of being exposed to the elements, including the blood shed from those who were hanged off the side of the building by the.. Medici’s? (can’t quite remember who now..), it was time for a little sprucing up.

When Doug and I were in DC at the Natural History Museum, we saw an area of the museum where you could watch the archaeologists at work in a little vitrine-like lab. But they were totally encased in glass and inaccessible to the public (and there were signs on the glass requesting that you not knock to try to get their attention). Interestingly, the restoration in the Barguello was totally open air, and you could reach over the fence and interact with the restoratrice (although she had a helper guy there to field questions from interested individuals so she could do her work). The lack of a real barrier made the whole experience seem so much more raw and live.

 And I know that were I not with Giorgio, I would not have known about the restoration or probably have seen it. There was practically nobody in the Barguello (they were all waiting outside the Uffizi, most likely). The narrative of Firenze has been so curated by the guidebooks, that it’s so easy to miss something as phenomenal as this while trying to do everything that Fodor, Frommer, Lonely Planet, Let’s Go et al. are telling you to do. I have found myself guilty of this on numerous parts of this trip. Sometimes, in a desire to find something good to eat (and after eating nasty seafood on more than one occasion), I would look to the guide for a recommendation, and then spend hours trying to navigate my way to an obscure destination when I could easily have just popped into a cafe on the corner that may have been equal in quality and value. It was like gambling, and it’s unclear to what degree I did or didn’t come out on top in following the book versus trusting my gut.

Ran through the streets of Venice, dodging tourists to catch my train to Firenze. Got lost, again, trying to find the hostel. Italy is insanely expensive compared to the way I remembered it. Photographed tourists at the Duomo, and had a good stroll around the city. Met the most wonderful little old Italian man, Giorgio, who gave me a personal tour of the city.

I did not know that Michelangelo’s David used to be outside, before they moved it into the Galleria. In the space where it used to sit there is a replica. This is fascinating to me, as tourists were still swarming the replica to pose for pictures, despite its inauthenticity. Made me think of the fact that there are about five copies of Marcel Duchamp’s urinal, and it is dubious if the original still even exists. But despite our desire to see the ‘real thing,’ in Firenze it was OK to make do with a copy.