"Movement is a fantastic privilege." – Pico Iyer
Since I was out of the country last fall, the autumn colors on campus took me completely aback this year. Every day I walk to class wide-eyed, as though the more I expand the surface area of my eyeballs, the better I can remember every leaf I see.
Few things are as becoming to UGA as fall. My school is beautiful.
Leaving the financial district of Toronto behind, a couple hundred turns of our spokes took us back a couple hundred years. The Distillery District is one of the best preserved examples of Victorian industrial architecture on the continent. Established in 1832, the old distillery stopped producing distilled products in 1990 and in 2001, the decision was made to transform it into a vibrant artistic and cultural center in Toronto.
And vibrant it was. We carted our bikes down the central lane, bordered by Ethiopian sculptures. Besides a plethora of restaurants, people wandered in and out of floors and floors of art galleries.
For the past two weeks, my family and I have been traipsing around Canada, poking our noses into the crannies of Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Quebec City. Of course, having the appetite for foreign lands that I do, I ate up every second. Toronto uses one of the creepier tourism slogans I’ve seen (hence the title). But the banners sporting that slogan didn’t deter my family from our visit. We arrived in Toronto around noon on a Saturday, and had scarcely dropped our belongings in the hotel when we set out on foot to meet our bike tour guide. If you have limited time to explore a city, I would recommend a bicycle tour in a heartbeat – especially if the city is as bike-friendly as Toronto. My family used Toronto Bicycle Tours for a four-hour tour of the city and could not have had a better time. Rick, our fabulously savvy tour guide, knew every in and out there was to know about the city, brimming with knowledge that I shall pepper throughout my anecdotes. 
Toronto’s skyline is marked my skyscrapers and mega-apartment complexes. The tall buildings are the darlings of Toronto’s financial district, which Rick took us through. Since it was Saturday, the financial district was deserted.
According to Rick, the old (and thereby pretty) parts of Toronto were demolished in the decades after World War II in order to give the city a fresh, modern face. Toronto, Toronto, what were you thinking? The buildings that escaped the modernizing witch hunt soften the spikes of the skyscrapers. In posts to come, I’ll spend more time on some individual areas (the Distillery District, Baldwin Street, Kensington Market, Casa Loma, etc.), but see the gallery at the top for some highlights of the tour.
July 4 is probably not the day you would pick to run a casual 10k. But at 7:30am in Atlanta, 60,000 people were doing just that.
The Peachtree Road Race has become something of a tradition in my family. My dad and I have been running it together since 2008. It follows Peachtree Street through the city of Atlanta, winding between buildings short and tall and streets lined with thousands of spectators (also short and tall), and finally ends in Piedmont Park.
Yesterday’s Peachtree Race was my fifth, and decidedly less painful than Peachtrees past. The weather? Superb. Curbside entertainment? Stellar. And the finish-line peaches? Absolutely savory.
We now interrupt this glorious account of European travels to bring you some red, white, and blue.
I went berry picking with a few of my friends and came back with two buckets and six stomachs brimming with berries. The strawberries burst with sunny sweetness, and rock the patriotism palate when you throw blueberries in the mix.
Here’s to food, friends, the Fourth of July, and the country I’m proud to call my home!
…is not Folgers in your cup; at least, not when you’re in Portugal and your hostel’s kitchen has mountains of coffee beans ready for the grinding. The food selection was otherwise spartan (artificial orange juice and foreign cocoa flakes), but hey, who needs food when you have coffee? (August 21, 2011. Porto, Portugal)
While we were sitting on the moss-encrusted banks of the Douro River, a man descended the wide wooden steps next to us, small dog tucked under his arm. He then proceeded to throw – no, hurl – the dog into the water. The four of us were aghast for only as much time as it took the dog to gather its wits, swim ashore, and bound up the steps. It seemed a matter of routine for this little guy.
Porto is renowned for its port wine. Above, barrels of wine age on anchored boats in the Douro River.
Molly On the Move 
