It is cool here in Toronto.  A welcome change from Athens, Madrid and Paris.

The markets were cool yesterday too.  The Dow rose 70 points.  Nothing to get excited about, one way or another.

We are sitting in the bar at the Hazelton Hotel. We always thought of Canadians as being a bit more reserved and conservative (socially, not necessarily politically) than their neighbors to the south.

Well, not in this hotel! It is more like Dallas than what we recall from our summers in Nova Scotia.

People dressed in the latest gaudy fashions, loud hip-ish music, trendy design, women who appear to have had extensive body work done… and on the TV screen above the bar is a recurring ad from a zombie law firm advertising for personal injury cases!

We floated our way through Europe's wine country, foggily trying to keep track of what we what we were seeing.

We surveyed the Greek front with a pitcher of red wine on a blue paper tablecloth. Greek wine is as mysterious to us as Greek finance — both can make you a little light-headed.  The wine served in the street restaurants of Athens is cheap and plentiful.

In Madrid, our host insisted on a classic Rioja — a rich, complex vintage. Madrid is a cleaner, more modern, and more sophisticated city than Athens.  The wine is similarly more advanced and reliable.

And in France, a Bordeaux — a St. Emilion or a St. Estephe — usually anchors our red-checkered tablecloth. After the Rioja, and months of drinking Malbec in Argentina, the French wines seem to lack character. They are like the French themselves – subtle and clever.

In Greece, we were there for a financial system meltdown.  It didn't oblige us.  The scheduled breakdown didn't happen when it supposed to; the can got booted down the road.

Even after 2 weeks of closed banks and widespread expectation of a financial crack-up, we saw no sign of panic. Instead, the Greeks were prepared. Bloomberg explained how: