Bottom line: Hearts should never be taken to a cheese grater.

"My Blueberry Nights"- directed by Wong Kar Wai, starring Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Rachel Weisz and a surprise casting of Norah Jones. (killer cast) Even though 90% of the time Natalie Portman's voice makes me want to gouge my eyes out, she did make quite an impressive and perfect southern gambling fool. I am not going to tell you anything about the film, other than to go see it because I didn't know anything about it before and it made it that much more enjoyable. Oh wait. I can't hold myself back, and all I have to say is keep all keys you have, whether they were lost and you found them, someone gave them to you or whatever the case maybe because rather than locking or closing a door forever, you may want to revisit that place, or the person again. At first I thought I was going to be having an ultra romantic, post-valentines day, evening with the Gorilla because we were the only people in the theatre but thank goodness three other people showed up or else a. I didn't know if they would still show the film for only two. b. my career as a world traveling art-directing writer photographer designer would be shot and all hopes of ever finding my one true husband would have gone out the window. The paparazzi might get a hold of this story and head lines would scream "Allison Isenberg goes to the movies with A GORILLA" and the rest would history. (random stream of thought...its getting late...give me a little credit) Anyhoo. I have never been more terrified in my entire life by a preview but before the film started a short clip of a human hand taking a human heart to a cheese grater appeared on the screen. For a minute this madness went on, I almost died and threw up all in one sitting. The punch line for the commercial was obviously in German and clearly I had no clue what it said. I just can't even imagine what they would say. I am not sure there is any analogy you could come up with that would be like taking your heart to a cheese grater. The Swiss are sure messed up. This morning we woke up around 9:30 a.m. to catch our free morning breakfast. I didn't think it was possible but the couple sitting in front of me brewed up the worlds most nauseating breakfast concoction that almost made me not want to eat anymore and that is really hard to do. Bread dipped in yogurt with cheese and bologna is not what I call a delicious breakfast. After the couple scarfed down their own prepared barf, the man, with his two hands did a magic trick and split an apple in half. It was incredible. I tried to repeat the same task and really hurt myself. Maybe I have to start eating yogurt-cheese-bologna toast to do that type of trick but it is really not worth killing my insides to do such a thing. We decided to make jelly sandwiches for lunch after looking into the huge holes in our wallets. We were going to go shnuggle back up in our warm beds after breakfast but we decided we didn't want to miss the Saturday morning market. Completely different from the one in Barcelona, and more similar to the farmers market back home, tents lined the river on the new and old side with little stands selling fruits and veggies, cheese and flowers. We taste tested real dried bananas without any added sugars. After being threatened to have my baby hands chopped off at the market back in Florence, I am a little terrified to sample anything. We went window shopping and found the Gorilla a new pari of glasses. She is now officially European. When then made our way to the Picasso museum but of course there was an adventure in trying to go. The first attempt, I was 2 francs short, so we had to go to an ATM but the first ATM would only let you with drawl 50 francs and not that I was worried I wouldn't be able to spend it all, I thought that I should really try to save my money when in less than 24 hours my dream world of 1 to 1.2 vanishes and my bank account has to start thinking in euros again. We went to another ATM and then back to the Picasso museum. Luckily the city is really small so it wasn't as big of a shlep as it sounds. The Picasso museum was not what I expected it to be like at all but rather than rooms filled with his work, it was more focused on the documentation of Piscasso's life in his studio with this wife, sitting around the time kitchen table with his children, and intimate shots with his dog, through the photographic lens of Picasso's good friend, David Douglas Duncan. The pictures truly made Picasso's life come to life. It was incredible. See photogs above. Both Pablo and his wife look like human paintings. They were just born such interesting and uniquely beautiful people. In every photo Duncan was able to capture the small details of their lives. I bought a poster. Inspired and in an artsy, self-reflecting mood, we bought a bag of chestnuts and sat along the water to watch the swans and geese make war with each other. This city is so magical. We headed back home for our jelly sandwiches and apples for lunch in the room and then made our way back to our new found hot spot (aka we came here yesterday) for coffee at a place called Sjug, or Hug located right on the lake. For dinner, we headed over to the new side of town for a delicious Asian delight and then came back to the hostel to soak up a little television. Not that I even want a television in my apartment and am actually pleased that we don't have one but tonight I was craving just a little trashy television. The Gorilla and I sat in front of the lobby television watching 101 hottest celebs in German for almost an hour. One thing I have yet to understand is how the German language has so many consonants in one word. In our hot chocolate yesterday, chocolate was spelled with an X. Pretending like we understood every word the dub-over voice was saying, we sat there until we decided that we should probably allow the man who was waiting in the lobby for us to finally leave so he could watch the show he wanted to. Early bed time because early bedtimes are just the greatest. Why not?