An ode to the city

Last year we moved to a small Northern Italian town surrounded by corn fields and rice paddies. Natural parks and rivers are minutes away. The population is just under 8,000 and everyone seems to know us. Feels like Stars Hollow sometimes. We can walk our kids to school and the cats roam freely around the block. Well, except for poor pudgy Sausage who got stuck in the fence the other day. We had to call the vet and fireman to set her free. It was quite the event in town!

I really do love it here and it’s a great place for my kids to grow up in BUT sometimes I get an itching for concrete and traffic that just overcomes me and I have to rush to Milan to get my fix. I guess you can say I’m a city girl at heart.

I was born in downtown Toronto and spent my first months of life there. Maybe I breathed in too many exhaust fumes back then that did something to my developing baby brain. Whatever it was, I think I’ve always felt an inexplicable connection to big cities. We later moved to the burbs where I spent most of my formative years but every time we would make our annual summer trek to the Ex, the sight of the CN Tower and skyscrapers fascinated me to no end. When I was a teenager, I would skip class just to walk down Yonge Street, “the longest street in the world” or hang out at the Eaton Centre, even if there was a perfectly fine mall nearby. And when I was old enough to travel on my own, I never felt more alive than when I was walking down the streets of Montreal, Mumbai, Paris, Madrid, New York, Rome and Poughkeepsie (ok, I’ve never actually been to Poughkeepsie but a girl can dream, can’t she?).

Some people go to the country to “recharge their batteries”. I go to the city to get my fill of energy. There’s something about the lights, the crowds, the colours, the anonymity, the hustle and bustle that make me feel at one with the universe. Yeah I know, I’m nuts!

In less than a week I’ll be in la ville lumière, Paris. Can’t wait!!! I’ll be posting lots of pictures and stories from there when I get back. Another place I’d love to visit again but won’t for a while is New York. For me, it is THE city par excellence. I love it and keep trying to find ways to get transferred there. For now, I dream and make do with looking at some of the best pictures of NYC I’ve ever seen on Blogjem. Frances’ photos make you feel as if you were really in Times Square or Central Park. And her black and white pics are spectacular.

She’s also the brains behind She Who Blogs, a collection of posts from female bloggers that I am proud to be a part of.

Finally, my ode to the city cannot be complete without a bit of music. Here’s the Jam, featuring the sexy-ugly Paul Weller, with “In the City”:

So, what’s your favourite city?  Where would you live if you had the chance?