Portugal

After my trip to Italy I was a bit low on cash, and decided to spend the 4 day weekend in March in Madrid, laying low, and saving money. Then Greg and Laura mentioned they were driving to Lisbon and basically made it super hard to resist. It was a truly relaxing four days and it reminded me of the joys of road trips. No lines at the airport, no smashing everything into a 10 kilo suitcase, no putting all of your liquids into tiny bottles. Just pick up and go.

Portugal was exactly as I remembered it, like Spain, but greener, and the people are definitely more welcoming than in Madrid. You can ask for directions without getting glared at or waved away. The food left a bit to be desired though, as one meal I had consisted of a slab of lamb, white rice and french fries. No sauce. The Portuguese waiter spoke to us in English with a very proper British accent, and then looked at Laura with disgust when she asked for something on the menu "That is not Portuguese you are speaking, that is Spanish."

Driving Laura's car gave us the flexibility of going wherever we wanted without having to consult bus or train schedules. We were able to go see the Cabo da Roca (the Westernmost point of Continental Europe), Cabo da Inferno (a huge rock carved out by the sea), the colorful castle on the hill of Sintra, the Memorial del Descubrimiento in Belém (a huge white monument with all the discoverers, including Columbus), and Lisbon's trolley car and castle.

Although Portugal was lovely, one problem they have is their highway system. Whoever designed it must have attended the architectural design school from hell. At one point on the way to the airport to pick up Sandra, Laura's friend, we took a wrong turn (it was the GPS's fault) and ended up in the sketchiest neighborhood of Lisbon. We spent 45 minutes on a hill overlooking the freeway, but with no way to actually enter the freeway. Finally managing to find the freeway, we think we are home free. Nope. We accidentally get onto a 20 kilometer bridge with no way of turning around. The longest bridge I have ever seen. At the end of it, we think, ok, there must be a turn off ramp in order to turn around. Nope. We have to get onto another highway for a few kilometers before we could turn around to go BACK over the lovely bridge. Needless to say we were about an hour and a half late to pick up Sandra, a trip that was originally 30 minutes from our hostel.

But anyway, it was a great way to spend the weekend, watching Greg and Laura take an infinite amount of pictures on their fancy cameras, teaching Sandra about the joys of cooking with cilantro, and gorging myself on Portuguese pastries.


I have included some pictures of the trip.

1. Graffiti art in Lisbon (at the top)

2. View from the Castelo da Pena in Sintra (above right)

3. Memorial de Descubrimiento in Belém (with the 25 de abril bridge in the background) above far right

4. Waiting for the bus in Sintra (at right)

CAPEA

I was invited to a capea recently and my first thought was, I'm not really a fan of bull fights. After second thought, and Alena insisting that in capeas the bulls don't die, I thought, what the hell, and went. I am never one to shy away from trying something I have never done before (This is how I end up eating cow brains in México or on an island in Belize that is inhabited by a drug cartel). To preface this, a capea is to Spain what a weekend bbq and pickup baseball game is in to us in the States. You get a bunch of people on a greyhound bus and take them outside of the city, start the bbq (grocery store burgers on baguette bread, of course), open the free bar, and let out the bulls. It becomes a free for all of guys showing off their masculinity, but dressed in nice jeans, button-up shirts and loafers. I guess if you get knocked around by the bull you might as well look nice.

After a break of hamburgers and more sangría, Chio and I headed into the ring to check it out. We met Jaime, from Córdoba, who had been in there with the capote (the pink and yellow cape) from the beginning. He taught me how to hold the capote and how you drag it on the ground in front of the bull so he doesn't see your feet. Then they brought the cows out for a second round (since they were tired and were a lot tamer) and I decided to try my hand at it. Being one of the only Americans at the capea (there were five of us out of about 50 people) this brought on a ton of attention from everyone watching and chants of "la americana" followed suit, along with every guy in the ring telling me I have "cojones". In the end, Chio and I stayed there after the bus left to hang out with some of the people we met and for my valiant efforts in the ring they gave me a Spanish flag to take home. All in all it was definitely a cultural experience, and I found myself saying "only in Spain..." more than a few times during the course of the day.

Cinque Terre

This post is extremely outdated...

Last month Emily came to visit (yay!) and we made a 4 day trip into Cinque Terre, the five UNESCO-protected villages lining the Italian coast. What seemed like a quick trip into Italy ended up being quite the opposite. Getting to Vernazza, the town we stayed in, involved every mode of transportation except for maybe a mule...Leaving Madrid at 7am we took a subway, airplane, shuttle bus, and two trains, arriving at 9pm in Vernazza. I guess the time we arrived is a bit deceptive, since we had somewhat of a mishap in Génova. Trains in Italy are very cheap and usually pretty efficient, but are not well-marked at all. And apparently the board that lists all the train platforms don't always work very well. So instead of heading on a train to Vernazza from Génova, we boarded a train that was going in the opposite direction. We didn't notice this until I asked the woman next to me (I asked in a mix of Italian and Spanish) if we were heading to Vernazza, and she looks at me, puzzled, and shakes her head. Then she turns to another group of passengers and they all shake their heads, and soon enough the entire train car knows that the two American girls got on the wrong train. Fortunately, everyone on the train was extremely helpful, and the woman got off the train with us at the next stop and helped us get on the train going back to Génova. She explained everything to the train conductor, as well as everyone in the train, and we ended up not having to pay. This was with her speaking not a word of English, and me miming works or mixing Spanish with the 5 words I knew in Italian.

It was worth it though, as Vernazza ended up being gorgeous and the food amazing. We gorged ourselves on pesto genovese (since Genova is so close) with pasta shaped like a twisted toothpicks, grilled mozzarella and tomato panini, lots of gelato, limoncello, and the best tiramisú I have ever had. I think I gained about 5 kilos that weekend alone.

Our trip home was almost as eventful as our trip there. We ended up in the Milan airport waiting for our flight, but accidentally wrote down the wrong time. Thinking our flight was at 3pm we got to the airport at noon with plenty of time to spare. We get up to the counter to check in, and they send us away, we are too early. We come back again in an hour, and they look at us again, and say, you are too early. We look at the flight on the screen. Our plane leaves at 5:30pm. We have over 3 hours to kill at the airport. For some reason I always end up back in Milan, my least favorite city in Europe. But the important thing is, we made it (on a plane full of annoying Italian high school students heading to Madrid for the weekend). After leaving Vernazza at 6am we arrived back in Madrid at 10pm.

Aside from being able to take a break from the smog in Madrid and breathe fresh sea air, it was also nice to visit a place where people are super friendly and with chefs who know that cooking involves more than just frying something in olive oil or cooking it to death in tons of garlic. Can't wait to go back this summer.