Tag Archives: travel

Here, there and everywhere

I have been on the move, so I haven’t had much time to write. I left Madrid on Friday the 23rd with my friend Consuelo (who I met while I was studying in Madrid). We drove about 3 hours to La Encina, where she was born, a tiny town of only 200 people near Salamanca and about 15 minutes from the border of Portugal.

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El Bodon

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El Bodon 40.487851, -6.575002
In El Bodon I was queen for a day, since it seems I was the first American who had ever graced this tiny town. The highlight of my visit was bingo outside of the town’s 2 bars, where once we’d finish one drink at one bar we’d go “uptown” about 10 paces to the town’s only other bar for another drink.

From La Encina, Consuelo and I toured the absolutely gorgeous medieval city of Ciudad Rodrigo.

In Ciudad Rodrigo: the outside of the…wait for it…Post office, of course!

I kept imagining that Senor Rodrigo was my distant relative and that maybe, just maybe, my ancestors founded the town.

From there, I bussed it to Porto, Portugal. I love port, so I figured I should go to the city that makes the stuff. Porto itself was stunning. Everywhere you turn are churches and buildings covered in TILE. And, those who know me, know that tiles are my weakness.

Yeah, when I say covered in tile, that is no exaggeration for effect.

I spent my first evening keeping flies from getting into my mouth, because I was awestruck by the architecture in Porto. Day 2, I basically drank myself through the day, touring 4 bodegas/caves where the wine that’s made from grapes grown in the Douro Valley (or the Rio Duero once it crosses into Spain) are aged in the caves along the river in Porto. Three tastings per bodegas at 3 euros each…I had to plan carefully to make sure I could make it up the Seattle-sized hills in the city, since, after drinking, gravity tends to pull the head sideways and down as opposed to the direction it’s supposed to go.

Aiming to stay upright after drinking Porto starting at 10am (oops! There’s a timechange from Spain to Portugal!)

Porto…it’s pretty and pretty steep

From there, another long two bus rides to visit my cousins in Viveiro, Galicia, a small city that’s a few towns from where my grandfather was born. The people here speak a dialect of Spanish that’s a combination of Portuguese and Spanish. It’s sing-songy and beautiful to listen to. My Spanish has (thank god) improved enough that I was also able to understand some of the gallego being spoken, in addition to Castellano (what they call Spanish in Spain).

I have an affinity for Galicia and I feel sometimes like the past lives through me. Seattle or Galicia?
Green year-round? Check.
Mountains? Check (though not as tall).
Surrounded by water? Check (the fishing boats come and go from here, where I am at the confluence between the Cantabrian Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.
Familiar flowers? Check. Buddleia, hydrangea, crocosmia, brugmansia, dahlias, rosemary, fennel, the list goes on and on!

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Viveiro

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Viveiro 43.634575, -7.589737
Viveiro itself is a pretty Spanish port town. There streets are cobblestone but it feels new and old at the same time. There are still some of the original entryways through the city walls that date from the 17th century.

Juan Carlos V doorway into Viveiro. No plague shall enter thru here!

It’s nice to be with family, that’s for sure. I wasn’t in town 10 minutes when my cousin Pedro Raul’s sarcasm and irony came out in joking around with me about my trip. My 2nd cousins look and sound exactly like my grandfather, father and brother, it’s obvious we’re family. The food here is heavenly too. Empanadas, pimientos al padron, chorizo, jamon serrano. It’s like I haven’t died, but I’m still living in heaven. Why, oh why can’t I eat this well back home?

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The Paella Incident

Hola from Madrid!
After three weeks near Murcia on the Neanderthal dig, I’m back in the big city and trying to regroup to start Part II of my adventure.

Part I in the tiny town of Dolores de Pacheco probably yielded the most fodder for fun. The last three nights, we finally all broke loose, along with the Perseid Meteor Shower. The night the meteors started falling, we all headed back to the cave at Cabezo Gordo, to listen to a local orchestra performing the music from E.T. It really was surreal. There, under the stars, not 100 feet from the cave where we spent our days excavating where the Neanderthals lived, was an orchestra of beautiful music! We knew the locals understood the significance of the location, when after the E.T. theme music finished, suddenly another tune began: the theme music for Indiana Jones, followed, amazingly, by the theme from the Flintstones! That modern stone age family could somehow be seen as the descendants of our Neanderthals, after all, and Indiana Jones, well, that’s what we were on, an archaeological adventure.

It turns out, an imprpomptu poll had been taken among the young women at one point: who was more handsome: Ryan Gosling or Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones IV. You guessed it: HF won.

That face could only beat Ryan Gosling in a group of wanna-be archaeologists.

The meteor shower was followed by a night of heavy drinking, which, you kind of need when you have 15 people crammed into a grammar school, living, eating and working together. The drinking actually spurred a great idea by me, one of the Spaniards and our lone Italian paleoanthropologist: we needed a party with a lot of sangria and some really good Spanish food, so, the planning began…and was then soon stalled by what will forever be remembered as the paella incident.

The core of our party was to be a traditional paella cooked by our Spanish planner. Things started to go awry when he found out we couldn’t have the party during the day when the comida or main meal is eaten. As for me, I always assumed the party would be at night. Who drinks during the day? Well, the Spaniards for one, but a party is a night-time thing in my book. Once he realized that we couldn’t have a party in the day, he told me he wouldn’t cook a paella. The only reason this concerned me is that I put my marketing chops to good use and completely sold everyone on paying a few euros to go toward food, including an authentic paella by an authentic Spaniard.

Then, things got out of hand. This Spaniard (who shall remain nameless) explained that he would NOT cook a paella at night, since it just. wasn’t. done. I argued that we were with a bunch of foreigners who didn’t care what was supposedly correct in Spain, that they just wanted his damn good paella. We argued, back and forth. Me being minimally persuasive due to the language barrier (trust me, it’ll take time before I can again argue in another language) and him insisting that paella was just not eaten at night. The rice is too heavy, and there is no WAY he was going to cook a paella at the wrong time of day.

No se come una paella por la noche!

To my utter surprise, he was so adamant about this, that he stormed out the room, slamming tables and doors as he went!

Paella was not had by all in the end, but I started drinking soon after the argument: 4 glasses of beer at dinner, a gin & tonic out later, followed by crema de orujo, a concoction similar to Bailey’s that’s from Galicia, where my grandfather is from.

The drink of the gods, from Galicia

I don’t know what’s in this stuff, but it is now a staple to my diet! Ahhh, forgetfulness and the ability to laugh followed soon thereafter.

How low can you go?

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