and the winner is...

Post plans

Overview of all coffees

Cofffffeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! With long days, unfortunate bedding, usual ~6 hours a night to sleep, and frequent flights and timezone changes, we have been drinking coffee all day every day. Now I know mom has drank coffee every morning for many decades, but I have mostly only drank morning coffee at work. I am not looking forward to developing a caffeine addiction... Tomorrow we'll be in the Philippines for our first day of 3.5 weeks and I'm told the quality of coffee will be much worse :(

So now that my European tour has come to an end, I can do an overview I think. Best coffees? Ischia, Italy had our best coffee to date, a couple different lattes, and they were just perfect. Perfect temperature, good taste, nice foam. A weird thing I've noticed is not one place we have gone to has done or tried any sort of latte foam art, I guess maybe that's just something done in North America. Most Cappuccinos seem to be 1 shot espresso with 4-6oz milk(foam) and it seems about 30% of the time they put chocolate on it. Lattes are almost always served in clear glasses, with cappuccinos its not as common to be in glass, but has happened. I've tried a couple straight espressos as well, though I'm not much of a fan. Overall I don't think I've experienced any bad espresso in Europe. Most of the difference in quality is coming from temperature and milk/foam quality.

Worst coffees? My unfortunate cappuccino in Sorrento was the worst by FAR, the last two lattes we had in London were way, way too hot, and today in Dubai we got 2 medium lattes from Seattle Best Coffee. They were 16oz and one was perfectly fine, the other was not much more than lukewarm... disappointing. Prices swing wildly from block to block almost everywhere we've been. It's understandable I suppose, the cafe across the street from the Vatican had 4 Euro espresso and the cafe 2 blocks away had .90 Euro espresso...all the way down to .70 at Burger King.

Final words? You are more likely to get consistently good coffee in Europe than back home, but getting a perfect coffee isn't something that happens any more often than at home. Compared to the whole of Italy, Francesco's is doing just fine.

The servers and waiters of Italy were an interesting variety of people. They ranged from some very funny, decent English speaking waiters, especially in Capri, to nice and enthusiastic waiters at our hotel in Sorrento with limited English ability, to indifferent waiters who take an eternity to bring the bill and speak no English. In Italy, outside every restaurant, there is a waiter who tries to seat everyone who walks by, showing menus, talking about good quality food, using flattery, or just being pushy and trying to bully you into stopping and sitting. I hadn't really experienced that before and it was pretty neat. I also noticed quite a few suits and uniforms on waiters that simply did not fit, suits with big Xs across the front from being too tight, or too big and baggy and extremely wrinkly.

Mom is the worst person to go grocery shopping with back at home; she constantly leaves her cart in the middle of aisles to check things out instead of aligning it along the side. She walks in front of moving carts, she stops to read signs and things as soon as she sees them rather than getting herself to a convenient position,and just in general doesn't maintain a great sphere of observation. From this experience I knew what to expect when it came to traveling and I am constantly having to move her out of the way of people, cars, and other things. She also has a lot of trouble with reading, understanding, and finding the right signage. I've decided to take control of most public transit(mostly subways/LRT).

Waiting for our tour group I decided to go to burger king, I got a double bacon cheese burger XL combo for 8.30 Euro, expensive, but not much more than any place we've been in Europe for food. Once we got farther away from tourists in Ischia we could get a pretty cheap meal, but the quality wasn't great.

Path of the Gods hike was pretty amazing, the path itself was really fun and the view incredible. Some time in the future I wouldn't mind doing it again and either doing the full hike, or even the 2000 step staircase at the end.

Our last night in Sorrento we ran into the same couple at our BnB that was at our first night BnB in Naples 6 days earlier. We had cursed them for being so loud late into the night, but on our 2nd meeting I stayed up with them til 1.30 am drinking and telling stories. It was nice to finally be able to talk to some people that weren't old (or mom):D

I'm mostly over my sickness - finally. I still have the occasional cough, but it is very minor and infrequent. Hurray 13 days of that is over, now lets not catch something else!

We've been walking for hours and hours a day, every day, often with many hills and steps. Yesterday in Rome was the worst,4-5 hours of walking around Rome, then 4 hours of standing and walking on marble floors through the Vatican. The floors in the Vatican are really killer and today my heels hurt a ton.

Rome was pretty incredible, with no real plan we headed out on my lead to wander the city. Every block is a different huge old ruin, really, really incredible. Churches, ruins, buildings so old it makes the 800 year old buildings next to them seem modern. We did a Vatican tour as well: sculptures, paintings, tapestries, maps, buildings materials were used from all around the world. Many foreign and old works recycled, their old symbolism and meaning tossed away by the church and then given new meaning. Funny to see Egyptian pillars, obelisks, sphinxes, lions, and all sorts of sculptures dating from before Christ - at the Vatican - given a Christian home and meaning. Thousands of works in the museum we saw only briefly - maybe a 1/3rd of what was in the main museum for the public. The Sistine Chapel and S.Peter Basilica as well were amazing. Hard to describe it all, and many many other people on the internet have done so, I won't even try.

I've gotten confirmation of my accommodation and what departments I'll be working in the hospital in Tanzania. Getting closer...

Our flight to Dubai was pretty amazing, we were on an Airbus A380, 10 seats across and 2 stories of seating makes this a massive aircraft. We were seated in the middle, middle section of 4 seats at the emergency exit, so we had a couple feet of leg room ending at the wall of the lavatory. A lot of extra leg room, but the occasional person crossing in front of us, and no place for our bags but atop. A man who got up to go to the bathroom collapsed immediately beside me in the aisle. I didn't notice as I was asleep, but the thud of him landing woke up mom who woke me up as the air attendants dealt with him. It was a neat experience as it felt exactly like a scenario out of school.

I will write more when we get to Manila.