Holy Cow: A Tribute to Toronto’s Burger Week

The patty pandemonium has come to an end. Or has it just been kickstarted? The Grid’s wildly popular Burger Week (May 30-June 3) upped the carnivore ante by issuing a glossy map of 24 hamburger haunts in last Thursday’s hotly anticipated issue. Eighteen of the mapped restos were offering $5 burgs in the company of ”Platinum” (Barque Smokehouse) and “Black Tie” participants (ie: The Drake, Bestellen, Utopia, Brassai and e11even) who donated $5 from the sale of their upscale burgers to The Stop Community Food Centre. Today, (while I worked with a frown and missed the event) the propane paparazzi gathered at Artscape Wychwood Barns for slider samples and revelry with all the beefy contenders. Sigh.

However, I did my part in Burger Week and saddled up to my favourite go-to, The Burger Bar & Tequila Tavern on Augusta in Kensington Market. The $5 patty was dressed up for the cocktail party in Sriracha hot sauce and miso mayo. Wolfed back with a Nickel Brook spiced ale 8% cuvee and a pint of Sawdust City session beer, we heard angels sing on high.

As a loving tribute to burger week, here’s an uncensored and shameless look at some of the burgers that have made me blush as of late:

Gourmet Burger Company’s Aussie Burger: fried egg, pineapple, bacon, cheddar, GBC sauce, lettuce, tomato, 100% beef.

The Rectory Cafe (Ward’s Island): Ontario lamb with gorgonzola, brie and a generous smear of dijon.

The River Cafe, Calgary, Alberta: Olson’s Bison Burger. House-smoked bacon, brie, roasted potato.

Chez Victor, Quebec City: The Deer. Venison, brie, pears in a reduced red wine and rosemary jus, lettuce, maple mayo, mustard.

Gourmet Burger Company’s Mushroom Melt. Portabello and sauteed mushrooms, brie, mayo, lettuce, tomato. Heavy on the sweet potato frites.

Brazen Head, Liberty Village, Toronto. (Disclaimer: it’s no longer on the featured menu). Panko-crusted chicken breast with mango chutney and smoked bacon.

Phinley’s Diner & Dairy Bar, Stratford, Prince Edward Island: The Sticky Burger. Peanut butter and barbecue sauce with old cheddar and bacon–a surprisingly good marriage.

And, after this beef montage/homage, I bet $5 you’re thinking…I need a burger. Stat.

Find one in your radius and read everything burger in The Grid’s burgers-gone-wild feature. Most importantly, report back here!

Tell me what your latest and greatest burger love is.

In Lieu of Maternity Leave: Leaving the Country

When you are a massage therapist, you are bestowed with a lot of contemplative time (unfortunately accompanied by a pan flute soundtrack). Most often I have five to six hours of uninterrupted reflection a day as my hands navigate chronically irritated muscles, scar tissue, non-turning necks and stubborn low backs. In between hypertonic hamstrings and quads (and pan flute solos), my  mental auto-pilot finds comfortable cruising altitude in rehashing bits of the books I’m reading. Currently, I’m jumping between chapters of Ewan McGregor’s Long Way Round and the Frommer’s Iceland guide.

Long Way Round is the bromance McGregor wrote with fellow actor and road trip enthusiast, Charley Boorman. The motorbike fanciers took a dude trip on the backs of souped up BMW bikes from London to New York (part of a Bravo doc series in 2003). Yes, you can actually do this. It’s a mere short cut across Kazakhstan and Mongolia. Disclaimer: I’m not scheming a similar adventure (although if I did,  I would choose a BMX versus a BMW to retrace their route), but, I’m always hungry for sweaty and dusty travel memoirs. From my chaise lounge outpost in Belize I finished  Julie and Colin Angus’ Rowed Trip which chronicled the just-engaged couple’s macho and ambitious row and bike from Scotland to Syria, visiting their ancestral grounds. Before that I was flea-bitten and a little lonesome with Britta Das in Mongar, Bhutan in Buttertea at Sunrise, practically sipping the salty tea with my eyes trained on her ominous Himalayan backdrop. A few weeks ago I was hanging on to Thomas Kohnstaam’s backpack as he tromped and boozed his way through Brazil on assignment for Lonely Planet in Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?

Whether writers are sculling the edges of the Black Sea, detailing servo-booster brake and beefy Boxer engine performance off-road, emotionally excavating the isolation of monsoon season or staring at the weeping ceilings of some shit hostel with a crush of strung-out Aussies, I am there. Five pages into the Frommer’s guide,  I’m already in Iceland too (fast forward to September 2012). I make note of the Museum of Small Exhibits in Upper Eyjafjordur that exhibits master carpenter (and dare we say, hoarder?) Sverrir Hermannsson’s collections of cocktail napkins, tacks, fake teeth, hair elastics, waffle irons and (wait for it…) “pencil shavings in unbroken spirals.” There’s also a Museum of Sorcery and Witchcraft, Skogar Folk Museum (carved headboard and makeshift mousetrap artifacts) and of course, the Museum of the Phallus which must make every man so immensely proud of his member. There are 276 specimens on display, including last year’s donation from a 95-year-old Icelandic man, Pall Arason, whose legacy will remain erect.

I already have Kim signed up to try Icelandic classics like putrefied shark, sheep’s head jelly, cod chins and Brennivin (‘Black Death’)–a potent fermented potato mash and caraway seed hooch. Afternoons escape me as I read about the likes of the Vogafjos Cowshed Cafe in Bjarnarflag. The cafe looks directly into a milking shed (milking times are 7:30 am and 5:30pm). Warm milk is passed around and homemade mozza and feta is on the menu. “Bedrooms in old Icelandic turf farms were often placed directly over the cow stables for sharing body heat. Cow intimacy carries on at this cafe.” How great is that?

And this is how it happens. I’m massaging and traveling in my head and scheming about our next trip. The pan flute concerto is replaced by the hum of a bright and shiny revelation. The Employment Standards Act and Maternity Leave! I have zero interest in having a baby, but I like the 52 weeks off deal. In lieu of the baby part, I would like to take a baby trip. I’ve worked 600 insurable hours in 52 weeks and contribute to Employment Insurance. So, how can I sign up? I’d like 15 weeks of paid mat leave, and then would be more than happy to do the 35 week parental leave benefits. Even though it would be 55% of my average earning, it would still make for a nice weekly travel paycheque.

Better yet, I might be able to convince my employer for a “top-up” to 75% of my average pay with a guarantee that I’ll return to my job in a year. Selling points to Best Boss Ever: No future concern about needing random nights off for parent-teacher interviews, the school’s Christmas assembly, the spring performance of Macbeth or last minute can’t-come-in-today-due-to snotty noses, high fevers and snow days.

Disclaimer: I have nothing against spring performances of Macbeth, or smiley preggo moms. However, there must be some fairness here, to those who would like to skip maternity leave and leave the country instead. Because, if you do the math like me (and I skipped a few classes in my day), the average mother gets A LOT of holiday time. Generous companies that allow employees to accrue vacation time without a cap still rarely dish out more than 10 weeks holidays for 25+ years of service. Which means, a mother of one child is earning the vacation equivalent of someone who has worked at a company for, practically a lifetime. Said mother could work one year and qualify for 52 weeks off which would take the average non-mother entitled to the average 2 weeks vacation a year, a whopping 26 years of work. Two years of mat leave is 104 weeks off which equals 80 dog years and probably 230 years working for the same company (with no gold service pen).

Again, I do love mothers, but, I believe they are hogging vacay time with their womb staycations.

*Editor’s Note: By no means is this to be misconstrued as a desire for me to see firsthand the workload of the modern mother. I get it. It’s not the 52 week holiday package I would choose. And, this is also not a cry out for babysitting offers. I traded in my biological clock for a travel alarm clock long ago.

Central American Correspondent: Guest Blogger & My Kid Sister–Kiley Torti!

Kiley with a King penguin colony in Tierra Del Fuego, Chile

Oh, how I love to razz my sister about her angst-filled teenagehood. The days when she was so cross-armed miserable if there wasn’t a souvenir shop or outlet mall scheduled into our day. She HATED nature. Loathed it. Rolled her eyes at my mom’s carefully researched itinerary of everglades, whale-watching, breeding grounds and biosphere reserves. Often, Kiley and my dad shared company, generally on a park bench with a soft-serve ice cream cone. Licking each other’s wounds. The two of them would find non-nature activities while my brother Dax and I took enormous delight in tromping through the woods and swamps with Mom.

Mark at Sorcerer Lodge (Golden, BC) being very fancy

Mid-January of this year, Kiley and her partner, Mark, began their intrepid four month trek across Central America. To clarify, Kiley now LOVES nature and practically resides in the belly of it, on Sulphur Mountain in Banff, Alberta. She has climbed countless peaks, traversed slush, snow and muck from Nepal to Argentina via trusty hiking boots, telemark skis, dogsled, yak (I think) and donkey (I think). She’s also submerged herself in surreal reefs from the Gold Coast in Australia to Maui and most recently, Utila, Honduras.

When she sent her latest colourful mass email from a Nicarguan outpost, I was so impressed by her writing chops that I insisted she be my guest blogger. Flattered, she only made me promise to severe spellchecking (Spanish keyboards aside). Here it is, with no editorial mark-up. (With full acceptance of the fact that now my dad will want a guest spot as well).

Hola Amigos,

Well, this is my 3rd attempt at sending a grand message. Spanish keyboards continue to be my enemy & I managed to delete the last draft a week ago – ugh. So it´s been over a month since my first email and oh the places we have been. We started our trip in the Bay Islands of Honduras. After diving in Roatan, we took a catamaran & sailed over to the smaller islands of Utila on the hunt for whale sharks. We were unsuccessful but swimming with wild dophins and a friendly sea turtle was a decent consolation prize!

Sea turtle drive-by

After more diving & beach time in Utila, we took a ferry to the mainland of Honduras & took a luxury overland bus to Copan Ruinas. Seriously – Greyhound Bus lines could learn some lessons. In addtion to the movies & meals, the 1st class section offered extra wide seats (only 3 across) with foot rests & the option to fully recline. It makes a 7-hr bus trip go by quickly.

Copan Ruinas is only 12km from the Guatemala border and is a colonial city complete with cobblestone streets and ballsy little tuk-tuks navigating the streets. It has UNESCO world heritage status as its claim to fame is the nearby ruins known as the ‘Paris of the Mayan civilization.’ Copan Ruinas is also home to a flock of wild scarlet macaws. We stopped here for a couple of days to explore the temples as well as to visit Macaw Mountain – a bird refuge. The highlight of the tour was being ¨accessorized¨ by 3 parrots, one in each hand and one on my shoulder singing in my ear! The toucans were a little more shy & there were lots of owls who made the tropical area home.

Our next bus leg was supposed to be 6 hours but it turned into a 9-hour epìc joourney due to road construction & an ill-advised passage through Guatemala City at night. We passed the border without problems but arrived at our next destination in the dark without a reservation (not recommended). Antigua, Guatemala is another colonial town and UNESCO world heritage site. It sits in the shadow of two massive volcanoes that have terrorized the population over the centuries with eruptions, landslides & earthquakes.

Most of the architecture here was built by the Spanish conquistadors in the 16th & 17th century. Few of the original structures have survived the onslaught of natural disasters but the ruins of the grand churches and courtyards have their own distinct beauty. The facades of the buildings are a brilliant array of colour – canteloupe orange, sunflower yellow, watermelon pink, a rich burgundy & azul blue. Sprays of pink and purple bougainvillea spill over the Spanish tile rooftops and almost every house, restaurant & cafe open up into a beautiful courtyard or rooftop terrace with water fountains, lush greenery and countless flowers blooming. It has the history and sophistication of many European towns & it’s a foodie’s delight! Fresh roasted coffee, exotic fruit smoothies (mango, passionfruit, pineapple) and organic salads -  Mark & I ate ourselves around the city. We ended up spending almost two weeks in Antigua mostly with a local family – part of a homestay  program with the language school. We had 8 days of morning lessons & are pretty pleased with our Spanglesh. Mark has been an enthusiastic student & wished me a ¨Happy Anus¨on my birthday & got bonus marks on his final presentation on exotic fruit by concluding with the statement ¨I like little boys.”  So we have a few things to work on….

We spent a Sunday watching the local pro soccer team crush the competition 4-0. The win meant lots of fireworks but this is an everyday occurence in Antigua. Any excuse for fireworks is used – birthdays, religious ceremonies, you name it. There also seems to be no rules on the time of day – early morning, midday, evening – it´s quite entertaining. We´ve also been enjoying the local mercados and the abundance of fresh produce. Brought down from the highlands in pick-up trucks and chicken buses, the produce is straight from the local farms. The flower vendors are also a sight to see – orchids, cala lilies, roses – the abundance & variety is astounding. Add the mountain people with their colourful dress & dark skin -  the country feels like one giant box of Crayolas.

We toured an organic macadamia nut farm where we indulged in sublime macadamia nut pancakes slathered in nut butter and travelled to the largest market in Central America – Chichicastenango. The market is an overload for your senses -  colors, sounds and smells. Artisans hawk their wares next to chickens, produce, shoe shine boys, second hand clothing, dried beans, roasted coffee and chocolate-covered bananas (for the equivalent of only 12 cents each – Mark bought 3 that day). We left with full bellies, heavy shopping bags and a slim wallet. In between Spanish lessons & touring the city, we took a 3-day side trip to the northern region of Peten – home of the Guatemala jungle & the legendary ruins of Tikal. Our jungle hut was visited by coatimundis by day & monkeys at night.

We climbed Temple IV at sunrise & watched the mists lift to reveal the tops of nearby temples and listened to the jungle explode with the sound of howler monkeys. At night we returned to watch sunset from the top of the Acropolis & had a fly-by of a pair of green parrots about 1m from our heads. The evening bat flight is another story.

Our last stop in Guatemala was 5 days in Lago Atitlan – a gorgeous lake created by the surrounding volcanoes and a number of Mayan villages sprinkling the shorelines. In addition to Spanish, there are over 24 dialects of the Mayan language so the charades continued as we interacted with the locals. There are roads that make their way through the steep mounatins but the main mode of transportation is water taxi. We stayed in a funky town called San Marcos that is linked mainly by narrow walking paths between gardens, stonewalls & tiny guesthouses. Again, we were thrilled to find some outstanding restaurants serving up organic food and live music. Our accommodations were magic – we stayed at a cool art hotel and then moved to another village to stay at the fabled Casa del Mundo, perched high on a cliff overlooking the lake. The water was perfect for swimming and kayaking.

We spent a morning walking to a nearby village known in the area for its extreme poverty. They don´t see many visitors & tourism dollars are non-existent. We donated a soccer ball that we brought from Canada to a local school & were almost attacked in appreciation by a sea of happy boys with toothy white grins. Kids here grow up playing on dirt fields full of rocks and devoid of grass. Slide tackles are sure to bring blood. A reminder that grass stains are a blessing! Balls are often well worn bladders stuffed with filling & wrapped with duct tape & twine. Despite such challenging conditions, the kids are way more skilled at age 8 than many of the adult players I know.

Vicarious shipwreck diving for non-divers

From Guatemala we caught a short hopper flight into Nicaragua and immediately took a shuttle from the capital city of Managua to the smaller colonial city of Granada (the oldest in Central America with established roots going back to 1524). We climbed the nearby Mombacho Volcano heckled by howler monekys along the way. We spent a day swimming in the volcanic cater lake of Laguna Apoyo and sampled mojitos on the lakeside of Lago Nicaragua – the largest lake in Central America and home to the world´s only freshwater sharks. We then travelled south and took a sketchy ferry boat  to spend a magical 5 days in Ometepe – an island formed by an land isthmus of two volcanoes in the middle of the lake. Some fellow travellers had recommended accommodation at an organic farm where we ended up with our own cabin in the jungle.

Nightime visitors included a very large tarantula and leafcutter ants that made piles of flower petals just inside our door. By day all the windows on our cabin opened fully to the great outdoors so we could watch the hummingbirds and butterflies. In the evenings, the bats took flight as we watched the sunset on the volcano from our front porch. The owners make their own bread & yogurt, gather fresh eggs from their chickens, roast their own coffee and grow their own fruit & veggies. Breakfast was a 3-course meal every day: whole wheat pancakes with bananas, tropical juice hand-squeezed that morning, pineapple & lime crepes, omeletes & gallo pinto (black beans and rice)- the list goes on. Tourism here is still quite new so infrastructure is a bit raw. We toured the waterfalls, beaches & freshwater swimming holes on bikes that required six tire patches & a brand new tire due to a blow-out on the rough roads.

Beneath the volcanoes the farmers grow coffee, bananas & tobacco. On the roadsides Brahman cows graze with their floppy ears, horses freely roam the beach and the pigs and chicken mingle with the monkeys and parrots. Truly a wild landscape.

After our fairy tale stay in Ometepe, we made our way to San Juan Del Sur, a legendary surf spot that was put on the map by the movie Endless Summer.  We have spent our last few days enjoying the beaches around town, playing in the surf and eating fish tacos & lobster. We are almost at the two month mark and are soon headed to Costa Rica to continue our forays into the jungle & on the beach. The adventure continues!

Ciao!

~ Kiley

A Beach Called Vicarious

And sometimes in February, you find yourself on a random Thursday night, trolling through old vacay photos, counting the sleeps until your  itinerary of concentrated beach naps, sizzling in the sun, recreational reading, swizzle-stick drinks and sunset observation.

We’ll be in Belize for the next three weeks and I thought you might enjoy a vicarious romp to the beaches that I often revisit in times of disenchantment, wind chill and ex-pat dreams. Come trip through Venezuela, Honduras, Luxor and Hurghada, the spots I find quickly in my wakeful dreams.

Margarita Island, Venezuela

My Bank of Sand Dollars, Venezuela

Sunset Duty. Very serious business, Venezuela.

Evening perch, with banana daiquiri and book, Media Luna Resort, Roatan, Honduras.

There are no bad seats in the house here. Save for a few palm frond obstructions. Roatan, Honduras.

Further proof that I was born in the wrong latitude lines. Roatan, Honduras.

Every night was a stunner. Roatan, Honduras.

I insisted that my sister stay at Media Luna two weeks ago. Or else. Did I steer her wrong?

All our days should end this spectacularly.

The Red Sea, Hurghada, Egypt

Banana Island, on the Nile, Luxor, Egypt

Tough day on the Nile, beer & sunsetting on a felucca.

“The best reason for having dreams is that in dreams, no reasons are necessary.” ~ Ashleigh Brilliant

English literature at its best.

Make life happen. Dream without borders.

This post is dedicated to Kay Lefevre, and she knows exactly why.

 

 

 

 

The Best Places I Slept This Year

Overheard conversations went something like this:

“It’s snowing, INSIDE our room!”

“Do you want to have the camel stew in our room, or on the terrace?”

“What if we put the roasted marshmallows between the peanut butter granola bars?”

 

The best hotels we slept in this year were as opposite as the temperatures and the landscapes we were in. From slipping into the sausage-casing-like sub-zero sleeping bags at the Hotel de Glace (Ice Hotel) in Quebec (indoor temp: -3 degrees Celsius) to feeling like we were in a rotisserie in the Siwa Oasis, Egypt (average daytime temperature in the desert? 46 degrees Celsius.)

Easily swinging between five star, no stars and shooting stars at our campsite on the shores of Lake Erie, these were the best sleeps we had this year.

 

Hotel de Glace, Quebec

How to build an ice hotel from scratch? Begin with 15,000 tons of snow and 500 tons of ice. Just 10 minutes from Quebec’s city centre, the Ice Hotel is like sleeping in a child’s dream. Each room features elaborate carvings and furniture sculpted from ice in the style of Dr. Seuss meets Edward Scissorhands.

After prowling around all 36 rooms (guests and the public are allowed to have a sneak peek during the day), choosing the premium suite with the fireplace was a brilliant move. The cheapest rooms are generic and budget-looking with no wall carvings or mood lighting. They look like amateur attempts at igloo building. Like ice hostels. For the extra dollars (really, how many times are you going to sleep in an ice hotel anyway?) go big.  If you want to go even bigger, there’s a premium deluxe theme suite with its own private hot tub. Now that’s red carpet. Bigger yet? Get married in the Ice Hotel’s wedding chapel–you’ll be guaranteed to have cold feet for sure.

The famed Ice Bar (one of two bars in the hotel) serves up Caribou (mulled red wine or port with whiskey and maple syrup) in a square glass fancily chiselled out of ice. This winter, the cavernous bar was transformed into a frozen underwater sanctuary with life-size whales, sharks and beady-eyed fish lurking overhead. The biodiversity theme stretched into the suites with elaborate feathers and frogs etched deep into the ice walls. Ambient uplighting and ice chandeliers added unexpected warmth to the frigid frontier. As though you were walking through the middle of fallen aurora borealis.

I thought we might perish in the night due to hypothermia, but, staying submerged in the “Nordic Relaxation Area” of steaming outdoor hot tubs and a sauna that looked like a giant whiskey barrel was a savvy survival tactic. The Celsius Pavilion also offered a warmer clime to regain feeling in numb feet, and to cradle wine without mitts by the fire.

And yes, the bed is made of ice! Buried in furs and hides and thermal sleeping bags with a real fire at the foot of your bed, you’ll barely take notice. Maybe, in the morning, when snow is gently falling inside the room through the small fireplace flue opening, you will remember that you’re sleeping in an igloo.

For the anxious:  When you book a night at the Hotel de Glace, you also have full access to a room at the Sheraton Four Points (a 10 minute shuttle from the Ice Hotel).  Guests check in at the Sheraton first as access to your room at the Ice Hotel isn’t an option until 9pm (after you have taken the strict and comical orientation of How to Survive the Night and More Importantly, How to Get Into Your Sleeping Bag).  One New York couple opted to take the 24-hour shuttle back to the Sheraton, finding the -3 temperatures a bit too disturbing. Others simply crashed out on the couches in the Celsius. Cheaters.

*The Sheraton is rather remote, so you will be forced into eating at the semi-posh hotel resto, Le Dijon, unless you order in from the slim selection of pizza & chicken wing joints or taxi into “town.” The French Onion soup is warming but not enough. And the scallops come in a shot glass with a blade of grass. Not really, but, close.

You can also place delivery orders from the Ice Hotel, and the Celsius Pavilion has a snack bar leaning more towards sugary fare and the likes of hot cocoa. Better yet, pack your own snacks and booze. And Hot Shots for your boots. And Fireball whiskey.

The 2012 theme is Northern Quebec and First Nations North. Open January 6^th—March 25^th, 2012.

Cha-ching: Room rates begin at $200/person including use of sleeping bag, welcome cocktail and breakfast at Le Dijon

http://julestorti.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/the-cold-shoulder-a-night-at-the-ice-hotel-in-quebec/

http://www.hoteldeglace-canada.com/reservation.php?action=promo

 

Al Babenshal, Siwa Oasis, Egypt

There was no need for a bell hop. We had a donkey named Ali Baba!

Our accommodations at the Al-Babenshal were suitable for the likes of William and Kate. The hotel is attached to the 13^th-century Shali fortress with traditional wooden shuttered windows and exposed palm-log supports. The light fixtures are carved from salt blocks and give the room, a true respite, a buttery glow. Now, this is romantic!

Getting there is a battle, as is leaving Siwa. By that I mean, once you find yourself in the cool wonder of the lodge, you begin re-thinking your itinerary, scheming how you might be able to stay longer. The bus from Cairo is a 10-hour nightmare, sardined into a bus that was colder than the inside of the Ice Hotel. The bus  driver stops at military check-points, for seemingly hourly mint tea and other unknown reasons.

But, back to Al Babenshal. The breakfast is one to linger over. The sour-sweet two-punch of lime juice, kicker coffee, eggs that have never arrived faster or fluffier and pita bread with fig preserves is satiating and greed-inducing.

At night, dinner is served on the terrace (daytime temps would leave Canadian skin sizzling like back bacon). We ordered the much-talked about camel stew with slight reservations, but, it seemed necessary and worldly of us.

The stew was the most sensational thing I’ve eaten. Exhausted and delirious from our midday trek into the dunes, sand sauna bath and hot spring immersion, that night on the terrace illuminated the rest of our stay in Egypt.

The Al-Babenshal staff are attentive and kindly allowed us to dominate their computer at reception to send hurried “we are alive” message back home. The room was bigger than my entire apartment with a sexy shower, a day bed, an adobe-style hearth and many vantage points to watch the slow movement of the world outside. In front of the hotel, whole chickens are roasted in old oil drums. The smell of fire and smoking chicken is intoxicating, and so was the fig moonshine we discovered.

Unfortunately the hotel doesn’t have its own web presence. It’s listed in Lonely Planet, and we were able to book it via expedia. If we were to return to Egypt? We would go directly to Siwa Oasis and spend our nights at Al Babenshal. Maybe even ask for jobs in the kitchen.

*Donkey tours of Siwa can be arranged simply by walking outside the hotel. There are several hot and cold springs nearby. Do find someone to take you to see the sunrise on the salt lakes. This image will never leave your soul.

Cha-ching: $130 US for two nights, $7 for fig moonshine

 

The Gladstone Hotel, Toronto

You don’t need to sleep in an igloo or in a hotel attached to a 13^th century desert fortress to be wowed and spoiled though. Located on the hipster haven stretch of Toronto’s Queen West, the Gladstone proved to be an indulgent spontaneous romp, just 15 minutes from my Annex apartment. It’s accessible by subway even!

Built in 1889, it’s Toronto’s oldest continuously operating hotel.  In 2005, social and urban visionary, Christina Zeidler, eager to keep the bones of the Victorian hotel intact, enlisted a wolf pack of local artists to re-design the 37 rooms.  They are a mash-up of vibrant palettes, faux-fur textures, dream sequences, nostalgia and romance.

There’s an iPod docking station, complimentary fitness facility use at 99 Sudbury, locally sourced snacks, wi-fi, cable, sleek flat screens, functioning windows, high ceilings and exposed brick. The classic rooms ($165, shower-only, no bathtub) are a tight 170 square feet (unless you top out with the suites at $375-$475 per night).

Check out the Trading Post (our spot– “rural vs. urban luxury”) and for a lark, the Teen Queen: “Think purple gingham, wild horses, crimped hair, frosted lipstick, Teen Beat posters and unicorn love.” It’s a kitschy scream.

The hotel has two green roofs, a zero plastic water bottle policy and uses 90% non-toxic cleaners. The amenities include Tic-Tac-sized soap bars that look like tiny pieces of art in themselves sourced from a local farmer in Prince Edward County. Coffee is delivered to your door in the morning at the time you request. Lazy sleep-ins are permitted, and you need only slide down the wooden banister or take the old-school hand-operated Otis elevator for a pint and live music. Huge hang-over helper breakfasts are dished out downstairs too. Or, hold out for the noon bacon & cheddar burger, as it should be.

The Gladstone Melody Bar and Ballroom is an also an attractive venue that hosts live comedy, weddings, karaoke,burlesque, indie film screenings, art exhibits and deep chats with authors.

It’s local, zany and Toronto rite of passage.

Cha-ching: $160+/night plus champagne to set the mood

http://www.gladstonehotel.com

 

Media Luna Resort and Spa, Roatan, Honduras

Sometimes throwing caution (and money) to the wind can also net you a remarkable surprise. Travellers seeking the healing powers of sea salt and fiery sunsets in Roatan, Honduras can opt for the Roatan Roulette.  If you are indecisive or generally feeling Switzerland on where to stay on the island, the roulette is a cool way to have the decision made for you. The all-inclusive properties range from 3 to 4 star: Henry Morgan Hotel and Beach Resort, Paradise Beach Club, Infinity Bay Spa & Beach Resort, Mayan Princess, Las Sirenas Hotel and Condo, or the new darling, Media Luna Resort and Spa.

When you book the roulette, you pay a set price and find out three days before departure where you’ll be setting up beach base camp.

The Media Luna property was an automatic additional $250 more than the others, and its isolation, swank cabanas and intimate feel were largely seductive. I didn’t want rum-soaked nights (rum-soaked days were okay) or the thumpa-thumpa-thumpa of ratty discos or activity-centric staff pulling me off my chaise lounge.

I wanted a long pier, grilled seafood as many times a day as possible, uninterrupted recreational reading, remotely cold beer, a killer view and a stunning room. This is exactly what I got.

I hoped for Media Luna Eco Lodge and the roulette spun in my favour.

There are 126 bungalows with private decks, sleek open concept glass showers, bidets and billowing canopy poster beds. It’s high romance and the best retreat for those who are happy to close the door on nightlife. The decks and Adirondack chairs along the beachfront property that overhang the surf are necessary mooring points.

*The resort is remote and taxis are prohibitive in cost. Rental cars are available, mostly standard—but the landscape is winding and hilly. The “beach” is not one that you’ll stroll along hand-in-hand. Roatan was famous with pirates who loved to hide their ships in its coves. The inlet at Media Luna allows for accessible and incredible snorkeling around the rocky perch, but not romantic sunset walks. Whale shark watching tours, diving, scuba lessons, snorkel equipment rental and other day trips can be arranged directly at the hotel through the Sunwing rep. Of special note: they sell postcards at the airport but no stamps.

Cha-ching: $1,411 (travel time: last week of February), $20 for beers and lobster quesadillas in the West End

http://julestorti.wordpress.com/tag/roatan/

Long Point Provincial Park, Turtle Dunes Campground, Long Point, Ontario

And, there’s something to be said for the restorative fulfillment of camping in the sand dunes on the shores of Lake Erie. Yes, I love five stars but I also love five billion stars above my head.

Firewood, a pack of wieners, a cooler of beer, some marshmallows and insect repellant have the makings of a spontaneous weekend. Far from the grinding construction and hum of the city, falling to sleep amongst tall stands of trembling aspens strips away all that clutter we carry in our working minds. Waking to chatty songbirds, reeling seagulls and climbing a dune to watch the whitecaps push in is a very spoiled way to enjoy your first cup of coffee.

Long Point is a 40km sandpit that is like a birder’s cocaine. Recognized as a biosphere reserve by United Nations, the dunes are my top camping spot—and a favoured stop-over for migratory birds as well.

There are 256 campsites (75 with electrical hook-up if that’s the way you roll). Fifty-two sites in Firefly are pull-through if you have something to pull-through, like a sleek Airstream I guess. There’s a Laundromat, park store (firewood, marshmallows, fly swatters, ice), canoe and bike rentals, and surprisingly hot showers.

I won’t divulge our Best Kept Secret location, but, you can find your own. The Ontario Parks site allows you to virtually explore the campground and specifics of the site like whether it’s shady or windy. There are also thumbnail pictures of the sites. Many of the Long Point sites closest to the beach are in the sand which makes for a sandy tent and car, but, is our favoured choice.

*Due to devastating beetle infestations, you are no longer allowed to bring in outside firewood. The park store has an ample supply but, the supply we bought was wet. We smoked out our neighbours for three hours until brilliantly trading half a bag of marshmallows for half a pre-fab sawdust fire log that helped kick-start our lame non-fire.

Further advice: Stop at the Burning Kiln Winery (http://www.burningkilnwinery.ca/) on your way through Norfolk County and buy a bottle of Strip Room. Pairing roasted marshmallows properly is a very serious thing.

Cha-ching: $26-35/night for non-electric sites, $25 for bottle of Burning Kiln wine, $25 in marshmallows, wood & wieners

https://reservations.ontarioparks.com/LongPoint/TurtleDunes?Map

 

So, where will you sleep first?

Task Uncommitted

In case you are just tuning in: I’m taking a travel writing course through Matador U, a new media school for writers, photographers and filmmakers. This week’s assignment zoomed in on social media platforms and our connections to them. We were asked to find and critique five blogs in a geographical area of interest to us. What appeals? Visuals? Design? Content? Navigability? How would we make the blog better?

After this comb over, we were asked to check the Alexa rating of each, which is a web information system that identifies internet traffic stats and metrics. The site where you can find out that .000043 of global internet users visit your blog. Wow!

The final task involved setting up a Twitter account and an additional profile on another platform such as Stumbleupon, Digg or Reddit (insert groan and nauseating feeling of hypertonic trapezius muscles here).

So…

Five Blogs

Having just pounced upon expedia.ca sell-off flights to Belize for February, investigating blogs with a bull’s eye on manatees, quetzels, cashew wine, Ambergris and Caye Caulker seemed obvious. Finding five Belize blogs wasn’t an issue. Google matches revealed a strong presence of blogging expats, some even hawking promotional blog fan t-shirts and hats. However, the format, granny-friendly font and garage-sale advert clutter of most Belize blog pages led me elsewhere.

I decided to examine the blogs that I am already attracted and dedicated to.

Clearly, the strength of a blog’s writing is the magnetic force for me. The content can range from surviving the Burning Man Festival, Oregon’s best microbrews to chimp rescue stories to how to make sushi rolls out of mac n’ cheese. Similar to my writing force field, I read in the same manner. All over the map.

What I know for sure?

I refuse to read white script on black background, or blogs that have been brushed with too much Hollywood (flashing widgets, WIN THIS! and running scripts). I find danger in too many hyperlinks within the text. Like a magpie that spies something shiny, I too have been known to fly off, distracted, clicking a hyperlink to another page, never to return again. (Which means you are NOT allowed to divert from my page to discover my go-to blogs below. An alarm will sound.)

What appeals?

Clean lines. White space. Simplicity. Seductive, high resolution photos and engaging writing that meshes with my interests, or musings that spark interest, unplanned longer runs in the rain, another glass of wine, deeper conversation and restless sleeps.

Writers that mesh and spark:

Andrew Westoll

An automatic network emerges among those who have worked with primates. I was initially virtually introduced to Andrew via a friend in Suriname who thought we might like to share and compare our Jane Goodal-esque love and chimp sanctuary volunteer experiences. His body of work is humble and honest, showcasing the grit of a writer’s life and hope in chimpanzee crusades. A former primatologist, sometimes CBC Radio One science columnist, sometimes vodka expert, the author of The Riverbones and The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary writes intelligently here:

http://www.andrewwestoll.com/    Alexa: 13,226,465

Brene Brown–Ordinary Courage

With a PhD tucked up her sleeve, the University of Houston Research Professor poses big questions about vulnerability, courage and authenticity in a smart and accessible way. She made her rounds on Facebook in a viral way with her TED video (Ideas Worth Spreading) on the power of vulnerability. She captivates and enlarges a sentence in a remarkable way. And, I might just copycat her sidebar that spotlights what she’s listening to and what’s on her nightstand. It makes Brene Brown a little more 3D to me.

http://www.ordinarycourage.com/    Alexa: 256,306

Ryan Coelho

We were both shortlisted for a prized travel writer internship position with G Adventures in Toronto and I admired his rock solid empowerment and personal brand from the get go. He is a former aerospace engineer turned brand & marketing strategist and leadership coach. I gravitate towards his writing because he adheres to his blog mantra when he posts: Dream. Explore. Discover. Inspire.  He is also consistent with his brand via Facebook and Twitter and has a graphically tidy and splashy site:

http://ryancoelho.com/    Alexa:  7,379,662

A Bus Called Forward

A mutual friend in Mexico thought Keph (Matador U alumni) and I would get on like a house on fire with our shared passions. He thought our writing had a similar slant and groove. I was flattered and became hooked on A Bus Called Forward. Keph’s photos will transport you to everywhere she has been in a blink and her succinct words fill in the textures, temperature and tastes.

“When she was 28 years old and I was only 5, my mother bought a renovated 1950s school bus and named it Forward. We left Toronto in the spring, driving westward towards the Pacific. Her incomprehensible plan was to drive to New Zealand but Forward blew a radiator hose in the mountains in the interior of British Columbia. Ever pragmatic, my mother sold the bus for $500 and a wheelbarrow, and started a garden. I haven’t stopped moving, but my mother’s still there, still gardening.”

http://www.abuscalledforward.com/   Alexa: 4,315,987

Julia Dimon: The Travel Junkie

A few years ago I was velcroed to an OLN (Outdoor Life Network) program called Word Travels that followed two scrappy travel writers pitching and landing gigs as fast as their planes around the world. Firecracker co-host Julia Dimon has visited 80 countires on all 7 continents. She is hopeful, insightful and a writing dynamo. Her site is glossy, enviable and the ultimate time-sucker. In a good way.

http://juliadimon.com/julia/blog.php  Alexa: 4,611,331

 

About the Alexa Ratings

My blog currently perches at 3,206,262 in worldwide blog rankings. Is this good? How many jellybeans in the jar does that equal? This does not change my life in any way. Do I really care that 3.55% of visitors keyed in “he farted in a hermetically sealed suit” and were led to my blog? Did I ever mention farting in a hermetically sealed suit? Should I take note that high impact search queries were tagged on the following terms: cat crap coffee, chips with gravy, bug bite soup, rotten confessions, Czech beer and chocolate covered marshmallows?

The Alexa rating serves a purpose to someone, but, it won’t influence my writing enough to narrow my niche to farts and marshmallows.

About Twitter, Stumbleupon, Digg, Reddit

I just can’t. I can’t be responsible for another social platform. I feel like I’m trying to barf up content in too many places already. Facebook obligations alone have angry “friends” upset with my lack of communication (interpreted as “ignored”). I drop off the face of Facebook for a few days to enjoy life as it was before the Techno Whore Wave of the 2000’s and I am berated. I can barely remain verbally active on Twitter. I refuse to Tweetchat or Twitpic. I don’t want to Stumbleupon anything else, there are enough viral videos and cuddly kittens and tsunami dog love stories on Facebook.

If shunning more social media platforms will be the detriment of my writing career, I’m okay with that. I’m not Twitter-friendly enough because I don’t have a cell phone. And I don’t have one for a reason. I would disconnect my home phone if I could. I never check my home phone messages when I’m at work, or away—mostly because I don’t know how to, but also because I don’t need to. I’m not that important, and socialites have to move in mysterious ways sometimes.

So what?

Social media is an accessory, not a necessity in my life. It has its place like shortbread for breakfast, Kobe beef and champagne. I can’t do it all the time. I will commit to my blog, the established blog writers that stretch my static thoughts, to intermittent Twittering and near-daily smartass Facebook updates.

That’s it.

The Year of My Content

Cat crap coffee.

Worms and lime Jell-o.

Eggy burps and frog legs.

Boy/goat oral sex.

Derriere facials.

These are actual “search terms” that people have used, and in turn, have been directed to my blog because of. I will blame (and credit) my Africa posts for the landslide of readers wanting to learn more about parasites, diarrhoea, gin and snake bite remedies.

It’s been a year. A whole long-winded year of blogging. Rona Maynard, former editor of Chatelaine insisted I get my act together last April and take my Facebook community stage performance to a wider audience.  And what does she know? Well, when it comes to anything literary, writerly or necessary, she would be the woman I would choose to represent me for the Double Jeopardy question in any of those categories.  So I did.

“You really MUST have a blog (I say for the hundred and 99^th time).”

–Rona Maynard, April 25^th, 2009

Rona had been following my colourful (profanity-laden) posts of life in Uganda, when I volunteered with the Jane Goodall Institute. The graphic tales of nearly being shot, shitting my pants, mystery bites, eating termites with piss-warm beer  aged my parents about 20 years.

My blog evolved into an uncensored postcard. We all know letter carriers read our postcards—and with a blog, I was posting postcards to the world, essentially. Now I get immediate disclaimers from my parents and close friends: “Do NOT put that in your blog!” They’ve learned that if there’s no disclaimer, the material is fair game.

Last week, when my brother and I were particularly smiley from drinking old-fashioned whiskeys, we had a revelation. The blog had evolved into another purpose—it was my data bank–the hard drive of my mind! Dax and I were trying to remember my mother’s famous quote about boredom. We struggled for a good five minutes, trying to assist each other’s memory. Dax finally wisely said, “Oh, just look it up on your blog tomorrow.”

(And I did. I knew exactly where to find it. My mother had said, “Only boring people get bored.”)

Writing a weekly blog is self-indulgent. I get to explore all my passions without worrying about parameters (with only my fear of being boring in mind). Readers can tune in or be turned off in mere sentences. I’ve written about many controversial topics (Chaz Bono and her “gender variance”, the bushmeat trade in the Congo, Abbotsford gangs). I’ve detailed the side effects (read: toilet visits) of living in Africa and what happens when one eats fly-infested meat that has been hanging in the equatorial sun for hours.  

Ikia

There have been posts that I’ve written with tears running down to my collarbones from start to finish (when Mila was dying of cancer). In the Congo, I funnelled rage and sadness into a post about Ikia, the chimpanzee who died in our arms 12 hours after arriving at the sanctuary because of governmental delays.

With my writing, I’ve convinced more people NOT to go to Africa than I have convinced to go. All that was raw, unsettling, dusty and disturbing, I included.  A foodie review of pan-fried goat testicles and crispy frog legs didn’t come across as I intended. I thought I was living high off the hog in the Congo. Or, high off the goat, at least. Noelle from P.E.I. thought otherwise: “You scare the shit out of me, yet make me laugh at the same time. As much as I love Africa and dream about going, the more I read your stories the more I think….yeah, I’ll stick with my Animal Kingdom.  You’re brave and you do belong to Africa.”

The year in review saw posts from Uganda, Kenya, Banff, the Congo (pit stop in Zimbabwe), Amsterdam, British Columbia, Toronto, Nashville, Venezuela and the dozens of places my restless mind travelled to in between. There were tributes to my nearest and dearest, nostalgic excerpts from the diary of my 13-year-old self (that was an out loud love letter to my grade 8 fiancee, Robert LeBovic), fried grasshoppers, Thai cooking classes, bitching about moving across Canada, corrupt Congolese police tales, musings on love,  lost in translation stories, half-marathons…sigh, there was a lot.

I woke up in so many beds, under so many mosquito nets and starry hemispheres, after so much gin and tonic with four Q-tips worth of safari dust in my ears. I packed up a life in BC and unpacked one in Toronto. I quit jobs, found new ones, had fecal-oral contamination, went piranha fishing, had Banff ticks that I flew home to Abbotsford with via Westjet, itched for nearly six months due to something else, and fell in love with the charms of Nashville and the chimps of the Congo.

And you followed me, like shadows, to the corners of the earth, and the corners of my mind. Which puts me in an odd place at times. Is there any mystery left to me? I’ve put it all out there. Strangers know me better than my non-blog reading co-workers. Is this a good or a bad thing?

I’ve spent tonight reading through 60+ of my favourite glowing comments that I’ve saved in my inbox in response to the blog. If I include one, I have to include them all. If  I quote my mom, then I have to have a dad quote, and then I’ll feel awkward and like I’m playing favourites if I don’t include Dax and Kiley. Then there’s Suzanne, and her sister Jo, Kay, Connie, Heidi, Kelly W. Leslie, Wendy G., Mag, Jann, Kristyn, Jules (not me), Wendy M., Rona (of course!), Rodney, Sass, David, Carol, Karen, Carol (another one, I’m not repeating myself), Kim & Kim (not together), Steph, Lynne (and Al who gets the postings read to him by Lynne on drives up to the houseboat)…I’m forgetting important people here—Farrah, Kaitlin, Chantal, Martine, Pamela, Toni, Nunavut Michelle, Karen of way west Queen west (the Nunavut of Toronto), Karin, Martha, Kathleen, Babysnooks, the ever-breeding Twitter population, Andie, my Body Blitz fan club, Rose, Nancy, Corie, Denny, Jennifer Aniston (oh, are you still paying attention?)…

Thank you to all my dedicated and drop-in readers for your rallying cries, support, chides, type-o alerts and genuine blog love. And a special thank you to my parents for not cutting me off the Christmas card list for all the Torti secrets that I have spilled.

The moments we most remember when we look back are the ones that made us feel more deeply than usual. Feel pain, feel elation, feel despair.  There’s a Feist song I like that says, “I feel it all, I feel it all…..my wings are wide, my wings are wide.” So great.—Staci Frenes

And so another year begins, with wings as wide as an albatross (that’s a 2.4 meter wingspan).

 Join me?

Dream On

Bently having a cat nap

It happens every night, like clockwork. Because, it is clockwork. I have the circadian rhythm of a vampire who had an affair with a night owl.

I should be a bartender, or a shift worker of some sort. I feel like I am just waking up around dusk. It’s something that I have fought against my whole life. And each night, with total surprise, I look at the microwave (because that’s my clock) and am shocked to see that it’s 3:30 a.m.—or worse. I want to punch myself in the face when I realize it’s later than 4:30, because that is beyond the point of no return.

Mikai dreaming of far off jungles

Legend has it that I loved to sleep-in even as a young child circa the era of wearing pajama bottoms with built-in slippers (awful idea, it was like sleeping inside a warm fart). My parents would gradually panic as the clock neared 9 am—surely as a normal, healthy child I would want to be awake and watching The Jetsons and The Flinstones with a bowl of soggy Froot Loops. Nah.

Not even cartoons enticed me.

In grade 8 I had mononucleosis, the “Kissing Disease,” which I will blame on Rodney Burden. Maybe Robert LeBovic. I slept for the entire month of June. I vaguely remember being shuttled back and forth to all three grandmothers (one was great), where I would sleep until it was time to be picked up again by my parents. I could barely eat one quarter of Nan’s lovingly prepared sailboat sandwiches (peanut butter sandwich, Wonder Bread, cut into a neat foursome, lined up like sailboats on a plate). Sleeping was the only thing I could accomplish without prompting.

I slept for another month in high school somewhere around grade 12, when I came down with the dreaded kissing disease again (Chris Kempster? Greg Box?). Apparently I needed to find a new business venture. The after-school kissing booth was cramping my style and wakefulness.

I can’t blame kissing anymore. Unless one can get mono from kissing their pillow and various dogs in Riverdale park. I think I am just a good sleeper and should accept it already. I don’t stay up until 4:30 am because I have insomnia—far from it. I stay up because it feels wrong to only be awake for nine hours a day.

My 'office' at Body Blitz

Maybe it’s a job-hazard. I listen to gentle waves crashing and chirping birds all day, ad nauseum.  I work in a dimly lit room and lull people to sleep on a daily basis. I listen to clients snore while whales talk to each other on some Solitudes CD.

My mother always told me I was “sleeping my life away.” Ha! I am quick to repeat the line when she fades away at 8 pm and vanishes to the bedroom (already sleepwalking). I know her ritual. Mom fluffs her side of the King bed for her and the two cats, Chloe and Izzy. She creates the barricade of pillows to prevent disruption from my dad sleeping beside her, and after reading one page of her 500-page novel on the holocaust (that she’s been reading for the last year), she falls asleep. I’ve called home near her ‘curfew’ and my mother suddenly disappears from the upstairs phone line as though she has been kidnapped.

“I guess we’ve lost Mom,” my dad says when there is no response to a direct question to her.

When my dad tucks into bed, after watching Sportsline, the cats are ready to begin their Indy 500 drag races around the master bedroom. My dad has been scolded on more than one occasion by my mother for waking the cats during the day. They will be curled up like shrimps in the sun and my dad will poke at them.

“Larry, leave them alone.”

“No, they wake me up at night, so if they are awake during the day, they will sleep better at night.”

I laugh (now) to think back to that dreaded last week of August before school began. My dad would make Kiley, Dax and I “train our bodies.” We actually had to train ourselves to sleep that last week of the summer so we would be properly prepared for our scholastic schedule come September. Ugh. The torture! What my dad may or may not know is that as soon as he went to bed, we smuggled cans of Coke and bags of chips into the basement where we would watch City TV’s Late Late Night Movie (at such a low decibel we could barely hear the movie over the crunch of the potato chips). We were training our bodies to be more versatile and spontaneous.

Just weeks ago, at Kim and Steph’s house, I found my all-nighter competition in Kim. Steph and Lynne had casually “gone to the bathroom” shortly after midnight and did magical segues into bed. Steph came into the kitchen around 6 am. “You two are still awake? It’s 6 am!” I told Steph we were waiting for the fire to die out. Nobody told me it was a gas fireplace.

When I do choose to sleep, it’s instantaneous. I have to set an alarm if I need to wake up before 12. And if I have any kind of engagement that requires me to be somewhere before 10 am, I dream awful dreams that I am far, far away from where I’m supposed to be. I’m in Africa instead of at the dentist office around the corner on Parliament street. I toss and turn and chase the minutes on the alarm clock. The fear of having to wake up at a specific hour gives me a whole new sleep neurosis.

I’ve often thought that I might be narcoleptic. I could drink a Jet Fuel double-shot mochachino or a Red Bull (with or without vodka) and fall asleep and be dreaming within 10 minutes flat. I go for a reflexology treatment and have to be rudely awakened at the end with an aggressive shoulder shake. On my last visit, Fanny drilled me above my  left heel and when I went white-knuckled with pain she questioned me: “Insomnia?”

No, not insomnia. I did have it once for a solid five months. It was heartbreak-induced, and even then, if I cried long and hard enough I would eventually yawn and fall asleep, bored with my own melancholy and Oscar-worthy tears over unrequited love.

When I do take myself to bed, finally, as the early birds (the ones who get the worms) start churling and cheeping, I find myself in a land of fantastic dreams. I sleep for 10-12 hours and wonder how I don’t emerge with bedsores.

And here I am, once again. It’s after midnight and I’m thinking of a toasted pita with gouda and sundried tomatoes, some hot peppers. I’ve poured some more gewürztraminer in my glass and am finding comfort in the still of the night.

I need to embrace this.

I was the kid who read books under the bed covers with a flashlight until the batteries died.

I pulled all-nighters for every exam I ever wrote (reading Macbeth and The Great Gatsby in alternating chapters one year).

I love New Year’s Eve and the magic that midnight brings on December 31^st.

I am a night owl. I am a good, successful sleeper.

I  will rest my case, and myself…shortly.

 The feeling of sleepiness when you are not in bed, and can’t get there, is the meanest feeling in the world.  ~Edgar Watson Howe