Some Pictures of Towns

Below are some pictures from Porto and Guimarães. Of course the pictures can't capture the atmosphere, but they do give a dim sense of the gorgeous visual cacophony. Porto, with its steep, narrow, winding cobbled streets and its soaring homes, with occasional hints of the courtyards and gardens hidden from the noise and grime of the streets, is one of my favorite cities to walk around in (and of course one can always stop for a glass of port and some briny cheese if one is fatigued). And Guimaraes, much the same but on a smaller scale, has one of the most beautiful town centers I've seen.

A street in Porto, in the Rebeira
Another street in the Ribeira (the Riverside)
The Ribeira seen from one of the many bridges.
The view from our attic window in Guimarães. The view was great, the smell (or rather the STENCH) of the room was not. With the rooftop doors open and the fan on, we were able to sleep. But it smelled like sewage and dead, rotten animals. Particularly one of the closets, although Ian said he looked and didn't see anything. Anyway. Pee-you.
The central square in Guimarães.

Another Picture Post

The truly peerless Pasteis de Belem. Warm custard tarts in a flaky, filo-type pastry, with cinnamon and powdered sugar to dust on top. We each had three, and then we took home a dozen, of which I had, like, another five. It's no secret why my pants aren't getting any looser.
C and me in this very cool toy at the playground (A commented: "Looks like they had the architect design this, instead of the parent."). It spins around pretty fluidly, and you feel like you're going to fall out, but you don't quite. When Ian tried to get out, though, he somehow got into a position where he was crouched, and running toward the edge, which of course was going to be endlessly just out of reach. I eventually came to his rescue and stopped the thing. Although it looks like you'll fall out onto asphalt, it's actually rubber mats.
Porto at night (or, actually, Vila Nova da Gaia, which is just across the Douro from Porto), from the balcony where we were enjoying one of many stops for ice creams and coffees.
Sand Angels.

Rainy Sunday

(written a couple days ago)

It’s raining right now, thick heavy drops dinging out of the sky into the gutters in a minor third bom bim bom bim bom as I lie in my bed. Behind the marimba dinging is the dull applause splatter of water on granite cobblestones, and the occasional bug-flying-into-the-side-of-the-tent sound of larger drops dripping onto lemon leaves in the garden. We won’t be going to the British Club today for a barbecue, and A is probably off the hook for cricket.

This is our first rain since leaving Scotland a month ago, and as such it’s more of a novelty than a disappointment. A says that the weather in Portugal, at least northern Portugal, has been ideal for growing this year—rain, then hot sun, then rain again. There was a lot of rain in the spring on the Alentejan grapes, though, too, and they of course prefer to be tortured by drought. It certainly has been ideal for keeping down the fires, though, which raged through the country all last summer.

We’re staying with our northern Portugal friends A&F, whose names are almost as similar to Lisbon A&F as their initials are which causes problems when I try to tell stories about them, except for the important fact that Northern A&F have two daughters, C&B. C is seven and I’ve met her several times (including in utero), and B is four and I’ve met her twice before (including, again, in utero). Both girls are gorgeous, and energetic, and very different from each other. Each is at an age when she is discovering her power over the other and so, while they get along pretty well most of the time, there are also frequent fracases.

Staying with A, F, C &B is always a pleasure. The food is good and plentiful, the bed is comfortable, there’s a piano for me to play and an accordion for Ian. We’re more or less adopted into the family for the time that we’re there, spending some time watching movies or drinking beers with A&F, and some time dressing dolls (me) or swinging (Ian) with the little girls. It feels a lot like another home away from home.

But, I have to say, it’s surprising how little kids can suck the energy right out of you. We love them, yes, but boy are they exhausting!

Cultural Experiences

We’re in Lisbon right now, capital of Portugal and home, for the next six months, of the President of the EU. We’re staying with our friends A&F, who are living in a lovely apartment with a view of the very Golden Gate-esque 25^th of April Bridge across the Tejo (Tagus), Lisbon’s river (Ian pointed out the other day that Portugal has a lot of streets and bridges and what not named after dates, and it’s true. In addition to 25^th of April Bridge, there’s also 1 of October Street and some other October date).

Here we were finally able to coordinate all the remaining pieces of Ian’s new application for residency in New Zealand (thank you, everyone, for all your help collecting and official-stamping and priority-mailing all sorts of documents from three households and several discrete storage spaces). For the last two days this has been our primary goal, and has encompassed everything from going to the post office to get certified copies of our passports, finding an internet café to print out pictures, scans, and a letter or two, buying a cell phone so that we can actually answer calls from the consulate, getting more passport photos done (and Ian getting a haircut before the photos . . . more on that haircut soon . . .), buying staples, going to the post office again to post the letter and finding we had to register it with a Portuguese address and so just buying the envelope and coming back to the apartment, then going back to the post office for the third time and finally getting everything sealed, paid, and mailed off.

On our way back to the apartment to pick up the address of the apartment, Ian’s hat blew off and in frustration he picked it up and flung it violently to the marble-paved sidewalk where, because of a trick of the wind and the slickness of the paving, it scuttled away up the hill from him as if it were running away. We laughed hysterically and were able to find the strength of mind to collect the address and get back to the post office without any more difficulty.

After the PO, though, we definitely needed some sustenance, so we went to the first available café, a little place right next door. It was about 4:00pm, so the lunch crowd was long gone and, in fact, the people there seemed to be regulars. We came in and I asked if they had sandwiches (sandes) or grilled sandwiches (tostas), yes they did, so we ordered tostas mixtas (grilled with ham and cheese) and sparkling mineral water and sat down.

There was a man at the table closest to the door, a little bit portly, maybe in his 60s, who appeared to be a little bit drunk, and perhaps a little bit the irritating soused neighborhood boor.

It soon became clear that he was indeed soused, but was evidently much beloved. About five minutes after we arrived, the first little old gray-haired Portuguese lady appeared outside in the street. When she tried the door, he held it closed and pretended not to notice her pounding and pushing on it. He eventually relented though, and she came in and sat down at his table, and ordered an ice cream cone.

Now, the ice cream cone was interesting in and of itself—it’s like a pre-packed ice cream cone that you’d get in any convenience store freezer, except that the cone part isn’t frozen, so it’s not soggy. So the proprietor (a young Indian woman—perhaps from Goa?) collected the cone and the frozen ice cream filling from the back room, then loaded the cone and the ice cream filling into a sort of drill press-type machine made specifically for this purpose, and pressed the ice cream filling through a star-shaped hole in its container into the cone, pulling down on a large handle to do so. I realize this isn’t that clear of a description, but it’s all you’re getting right now. Anyway, the little old lady settled in and really enjoyed her cone.

Over the next 40 minutes, another three little old ladies came into the café. Each was barred at the door, until the proprietor went over and, under the cover of clearing the table, stole the soused man’s cell phone and pretended to throw it away with the trash. One of the ladies didn’t stay, but the other two also ordered ice cream cones, which were pressed into the cones with the machine.

And our tostas were excellent—made in a sandwich toasting machine, but then buttered on the outsides before they were served. And then we also had a large piece of an excellent flan.

There are these little cafés all over Portugal—they each have a lager on tap, a few spirits, a sandwich or two, a couple non-alcoholic beverages, a couple sweets, and coffee. At lunch they usually also serve two or three “pratos do dia”, or dishes of the day. Simple, tasty, friendly, charming.

The barber Ian saw yesterday was also a lovely cultural experience, although for very different reasons. When we asked F for a barber recommendation, she told us that A goes once a month to a man not far from the apartment, who’s elderly and inexpensive (only € 7—the cheapest haircut Ian’s had yet), and whom he refers to as “the Brazilian Butcher.”

Evidently, this old man tells A stories about how he murdered people in Brazil 60 years ago, while he’s cutting A’s hair or, more alarmingly, shaving his neck with a very, very sharp straight razor. And if you go for your cut after lunch, don’t expect it to be very symmetrical, because he tends to drink quite a bit. But € 7—who can beat it? So A goes back, once every 4 to 6 weeks.

When we went in, an attractive older man with a short cut and a tidy, silvery goatee, who looked like he’d be perfect on horseback in a movie set in colonial Brazil, was just getting his hair finished (including a quick snip-snip of the eyebrows). And while we waited, a college kid with studiously untidy hair came in and sat, too. I felt a bit out of place—it was obvious women did not spend much time there. But Ian doesn’t speak any Portuguese and I wanted to make sure he didn’t end up with a Vin Diesel. So I stayed.

When the elderly man got up to go and the Brazilian Butcher motioned Ian toward the chair, I said “Il não fala Português, mas eu falou um pouco.”

“Okay,” said the BB in enthusiastic Portuguese, “then let’s talk!” Which of course shut me up completely.

The BB pulled out his clippers questioningly and Ian nodded.

“Numero um,” he said carefully, sitting down.

“Il fala Português!” the BB said to me, and we all laughed.

The cut proceeded swiftly and well after that. We were asked if we were German and said no, American. The BB then told us that he’d been in the Marines (presumably Brazilian Marines) for ten years, and had traveled all over the US when they did training with US Marines. He told us he was 80, and when I said that was impossible, he explained that the secret to long life was good wine (we were there before lunch, fortunately).

Somewhere along the time he picked up the straight razor to shave Ian’s neck and shape the back of his hair (perfectly, I might add), he started saying something about “boosh”, and “embraço”. I got the verb pretty quickly—something about hugging—but it took me a bit for “boosh,” until someone—Ian perhaps? Explained that he was talking about Bush. I can only assume, given his descriptions of multiple past murders, that he was wanting to hug Bush with his razor in hand. Anyway, he went on to tell us that first of all, the US was the source of the Atomic Bomb and the Bush Bomb—both of which were pretty much equally bad, of course—then he said, much more seriously now—that Bush is the most hated leader in the world right now. I said “Em o país também. Finalmente.” And the young kid cracked up, and the BB cracked up too. After a sobering discussion of just how much longer Bush will be in office, Ian was finally done, with military precision, and we took our leave.

My Portuguese skills are far from perfect, and I seem to be able to produce a lot more words and, evidently, sensical sentences, than I can understand (at least judging by the rapid responses I get). But I am understanding a lot, and it’s a great pleasure to be able to do so. Everyone in Portugal speaks English; at least everyone younger than 50, so the easy thing to do would, of course, be to just speak English. And I admit, when we got to the complicated part of buying the cell phone yesterday, I did ask if the salesman spoke English. I even know how to say in Portuguese “it would be much faster in English,” in a self-deprecating way, when I get a bit stuck. But I try not to give into the temptation too often.

More Pictures of the Atlantic Coast

Be sure to scroll down--there are a couple new entries, too, below the pics!The long cave tunnel to our beach.
Me, a cow, and our car, which has stopped whining.
A typical scene of the big waves and rocky shore.
Porto Covo's fishing port. Those boats are pretty small, considering the size of the waves.
Looking through some windows in an old fort, probably about 500 years old. There's a similar fort in Mombasa, also Portuguese, from about the same time period. The one in Mombasa definitely had some bad, post-slavery energy, though, and this one just felt old.

Arachnophobia

Within five minutes of arriving here ten days ago A, the mother of Ian's former office mate A and one of our hosts, took off one of her sandals and smashed a spider inside near the door, and quickly cleaned it away. “I hope you are not afraid of spiders,” she said, somewhat embarrassedly. “There are some.”

Although having a serious arachnophobe friend has rubbed off on me a little, I'm not generally that afraid of spiders, although admittedly I'm not particularly fond of the large, hairy-legged ones we get in our houses in the Northwest come fall. So I've more or less kept my eyes open here, since the element of surprise is a bad element when spiders are involved. There was one big spider in the kitchen the other evening which Ian smashed with the lid of the garbage can (my hero), and another one in a bedroom we're not using, so I pretended it was just a shadow. And then I assumed that, since we'd been here a week and a half already, the spiders had probably cleared out.

So this afternoon I was sitting on the couch feeling sad and missing our friends. I had just written my blog entry about how much fun it was to host some people, and then a Dave Matthews song came on the iPod and I suddenly felt very, very homesick for people, and I admit I sniffled a little and cried a tear or two. Ian was sitting on the bean bag on the floor watching me and looking a little sad himself. I reached up behind me to the windowsill and grabbed the roll of TP we've been using as Kleenex and pulled it into my lap, and at the same time pulled the huge spider that had been lodging there into my lap as well, where it crouched on the pocket of my shorts, inches from the hem of my very loose shirt, up which it would undoubtedly have scampered for cover if I hadn't shrieked and leapt up from the couch, batting frantically at my front. “What? WHAT?” Ian screamed, levitating up from the beanbag on the floor as I leapt across the living room and behind him, clutching at his arm.
“Spider . . .” I choked out, “big spider, on my pocket!”
“Where did it go?!”
“I think under the rug!”
Ian, my knight in a strange outfit of patchwork Hawaiian print swim trunks, short-sleeved tan and blue plaid button-down shirt and grass-green sweater, came to my rescue and walked carefully all over the rug, while I laughed hysterically. He then slowly peeled it back and saw that yes, indeed, he had been successful in slaying my dragon.

And then he took this picture of it.

On the Road Again

Ian and I are leaving Porto Cǒvo tomorrow for Evora, a walled Roman town in the central Alentejo (the region where we've been). It's been a well-appreciated gift, this eleven nights, for free, at a little country house on the Atlantic coast. We did laundry not only when it was needed but also when we felt like it (that is, when I felt like it. I'm a pretty liberated woman in lots of ways, but I trust very few people to do my laundry the way I like it.). We shopped at a supermarket—the same one more than once! We eased into a comfortable schedule of breakfast outside, a stroll around the country or the shore, work for Ian and whatever I felt like for me (the aforementioned laundry, or reading, or writing, or riding), lunch, an afternoon nap, another stroll, dinner, and a stroll to town to make use of the WiFi in the main square.

But the most appreciated benefit of being in a home for awhile was that we were actually able to have guests, instead of just being guests! My friends A&F, from Lisbon, came down for the weekend and joined us in our leisurely lifestyle, and gave us a much-needed infusion of conversation topics. They're European, our age, and have traveled a lot and lived all over the world, and even though I see them on average once every three years and this was Ian's first time meeting them, we all got along immediately. The great thing about keeping in touch with people all over the world, of course, is that you have an excuse to visit them (we'll spend four days at their home next week). The thing that sucks is that I know all my friends would love each other . . . but it's so hard to get everyone together! I'll just have to make it a goal sometime in the future—Internation House Party at the Taylor's. Has a nice ring to it.

In addition to the Buffet de Gelato, there are a few other things we've enjoyed about being back in Portugal and here in particular. One is, of course, the bafflingly cheap wine. I bought two bottles of red at the supermarket the other day, both from the Alentejo, both very drinkable, for €1.39 each (which is around $1.95 each). We've got a herd of cows just outside our house, and their bells in the afternoons are a charmingly musical accompaniment to Ian's snores (ha ha—no, when he snores, I poke him until he stops). Two nights ago, one night after full moon, we took a late stroll along the beaches. The tide was out, so we felt our way along the dark, wet tunnel to our little private beach and splashed around for a few minutes, then climbed back up over the bluffs and down onto Praia Grande, the big beach. We went around one headland, between the cliffs and a wet pile of boulders glistening in the lights reflected from Porto Cǒvo and from Sines up to the north. I convinced Ian that we should return on the water side of the boulders, where I thought I could tell, from the splash of the waves, that it was shallow enough to make it even though the tide had turned. “We're either going to get very wet or dashed on the rocks,” Ian informed me, making it clear that those were our only two options and neither was a very good one, but he started off gamely enough anyway. About midway along the boulders we decided it was, in fact, too dark and too deep and the danger of dashing too great, so Ian turned and started over the top of the boulders. We were, of course, barefoot, and I'm sure I stepped on any number of things I wouldn't have considered touching with my bare foot if I could see them. In fact, I stopped in the middle and, balancing precariously on the dark, rough, and mysteriously slimy rocks, put my shoes on. But nevertheless, we made it, and had a good time.

Unlike Portugal's leeward coast, in the Algarve in the south, the Atlantic coast is pretty empty. There are no major resorts, and certainly no golf courses. The Lonely Planet calls the Alentejo “Portugal's poorest region,” which it is, sure, but only because it's primarily agricultural; not because the people are in poverty as we've come to think of it in the US. It is much more our speed than the flashy Algarve, and most of the tourists we've seen here have been Portuguese, which makes me feel more like a local than a traveler, somehow.

We'll be sad to go, but I know that the Capela dos Ossos in Evora will make up for a lot.

Dangerous

On Marques de Pombal Square is a shop called “Buffet de Gelato”. Ian asked me several times before we left Italy if there was gelato in Portugal, and I said yes, although I couldn't remember for sure if or where I'd seen it. The Ola ice cream sign is everywhere, so you can always get a Magnum bar (the best is Triple Chocolate, which has chocolate ice cream surrounded by chocolate fudge and then a chocolate shell on that . . . although, come to think of it, Caramel, with caramel ice cream and a caramel layer instead of the fudge, is also pretty good) or a Solero bar, which is sorbet around vanilla ice cream (and popular with my mother, whose favorite old-time frozen treat is the Creamsickle). Anyway, I figured even if we couldn't find gelato, per se, we'd have plenty of options for frozen treats.

But, I was pleased to be proven to be not a liar the first afternoon when we walked into Porto Covo and saw the Buffet de Gelato sign. Nevertheless, it was several days before we made it back to town at an appropriate time for ice cream (you see, it's a lot colder here than it was in Italy, so not every time is, in fact, ice cream time.).

Last night, we arrived in the square and realized that our favorite internet bench was directly in the path of the golden setting sun. Furthermore, Buffet de Gelato was open; we saw a family enter as we approached. Also, it was close enough to our bench that we thought maybe the WiFi would work on its patio (it didn't).
So we walked in, and it turns out that Buffet de Gelato means just that—it's a BUFFET of GELATO. Herein lies the danger.

Everything in Buffet de Gelato is self-serve. Of the, oh, 2 dozen or so flavors available, I think we tried 7 between us (small balls! small balls!). I had chocolato, After Eight, and amendoa. Ian had melone, pistachio, doce de arroz (sweet of rice), and something Iglesia, or Ingles, or something like that (meaning either “church”, or “English”), which tasted like spumoni (I liked it; he didn't). There were also several syrups, including forest fruits, coconut sweet, apple sweet, cherry, strawberry, mango, lemon, mint, and probably some others; and other toppings, including jimmies and chocolate flakes and a variety of pralines (cashew, almond, pine nut, walnut, hazelnut), and then hot syrups too, like chocolate and caramel and whatnot (by the time we got to the hot toppings we were suffering from a bit of overload).

I have no idea what toppings Ian used, because it was all I could do to focus on my own. But I had coconut sweet, a candied cherry (which tasted bitter it was so chock full of chemicals), praline almonds, some cherry syrup which was deliciously full of crushed cherries, some hot chocolate sauce, and some mint syrup. The mint syrup was where the system broke down for me—where having all that choice, and all that self-determination became a bit of a problem. I have no idea what it was made of, but it was viscous and clear and turquoise and looked (and tasted, a little) like I'd put mouthwash on my ice cream. But fortunately I didn't use much, and everything else was dangerously tasty.

It's a good thing the ice cream place closes before sunset, because using the internet looking directly into the sun didn't work very well for us and so tonight we've come back too late for the Buffet de Gelato.

PS—Ian points out that his last gelato in Amalfi was Limoncello, which is almost lemone, but better because there's booze in it.

A few more pictures . . .

Dinner in our yard in the lovely borrowed beach house in Porto Covo.
Our first night here, an accordionist played in the square and people danced.
Sunset on the shore.
The bull of our local herd, with a fly toupee.

Pics from the South

The site of the wedding, at Hotel Caruso. Totally a fairytale setting.
Us, and the Mediterranean behind us.
A grape patch in Ravello.
Mt. Vesuvius, as seen from the freeway. Standing on the freeway. (note: it seems to be a site of disasters)
Me emailing my grandmother in the Marques de Pombal Square in Porto Covo.

Automoveis

Our little car here in Portugal is an Opel Corsa. It has four doors and is a stick shift. It doesn't feel as sturdy as the Ford Focus we had in Scotland (which was, truthfully, quite a fine car). It doesn't have quite the balls that the Focus had, and the shifter feels just a bit like a toy shifter to me. It's silver, so it blends into a crowd and, since I hadn't until this afternoon bothered to memorize even a little bit of the license plate (what I've learned since is the memorable letters BM, which appear somewhere in the middle of the plate), I tend to approach it surreptitiously, as if I'm about to get caught doing something I shouldn't.

The most notable thing about our Corsa, however, is that it whines. It whines when you turn it off and open the door, no matter how many times you turn the lights and the radio off. It whines, and then just to prove that it's not going to behave the way you expect, it puts its windows up and down (granted, when you're pushing the button. But nevertheless. With the engine off and the door open and the key out of the ignition, in gear or not, parking brake set or not.). It does not, however, lock when you push the button on the remote, asking it to lock. Once in awhile, for some reason, it decides to cooperate and, when you turn it off and remove the key and open the door, it doesn't whine. On those rare times when it doesn't whine, it also deigns to lock when you push the button on the remote (it does lock when you turn the key in the door, reluctantly, and with a great show of irritation.).

For some reason, it whines less with Ian than it does with me. Only once have I opened the driver's door to tractable silence, but almost every other time Ian drives it sits quietly for him and gamely locks all its doors when asked, even from several feet away.

In general, whining doesn't faze me (try it—you'll see). But my fear with the Corsa is that it's whining because I've left something on, or worse, something has been left on without my knowledge, and the battery will go dead while we sleep the sleep of the just. This is not a hugely big deal. One of the last things pointed out to me when I picked up the Corsa was the number to call for roadside (or, I'm assuming, driveway) assistance (an aside: roadside assistance has become the focus of some attention in Portugal recently, and it is now required by law to wear a fluorescent green vest whenever you're outside of your ailing car on the side of a road. There's one in the glove box of the Corsa.). The problem is, of course, that there's not a phone at the beach house, and we haven't been able to get a SIM card for Ian's phone that will work in Portugal. He has one from T-Mobile UK, which would work in a pinch, except that it's prepay and it's run out of money, and we can't “top-up” online without having a credit card registered in the UK. We can walk in to Porto Covo and use the payphone on the square, but it's pretty far in an emergency.

So far though, the whining seems to be just whining, and nothing that's going to require us to use roadside assistance or the fluorescent green vest. I think I forgot to include this when I wrote about Naples and Italy, but it's notable that, when we went to board the bus from Amalfi to Naples, there was some manner of grease monkey poking around the driver's seat with the driver hovering nearby. From what we could tell, it seemed to be a small matter of a warning light or a warning buzzer that was irritating the driver (to be fair, the driver did seem to be concerned that the warning was doing just that: warning. Hence, perhaps, the angry cellphone call just before we pulled over?). The grease monkey poked around for a couple minutes and evidently got the annoying warning to stop; the bus driver shrugged and yelled “Napoli!” out the door, we boarded, and an hour later we were standing by the side of the freeway with the bus on fire.

The India of Europe

"I read somewhere," Ian murmured in my ear as we stared out the window of our Naples public bus on the chaos in Garibaldi Square, "that Italy is the India of Europe. And I think I see why."

Neither one of us has been to India, so we can't really say, but Naples is certainly chaotic in an order of magnitude larger than anywhere else we've been, or are likely to be, in Europe. Start with our drive from the airport to our hotel--getting on the freeway, the taxi driver calmly and confidently passed another car on the on-ramp, with inches to spare between the other car and the guard rail.

The next morning, the man at the reception desk at our hotel told us that the easiest way to the train station was to catch a bus a couple blocks away. He said it would be 1 Euro . . . and he maybe also said it would take 90 minutes. Of course, I had chosen this hotel online because it claimed to be close to the airport (it was 30 minutes, and considering the airport is basically in the center of town this wasn't, in fact, close) and the train station, and they also had a shuttle to the train station (the man at the reception looked blank when I asked about the train station, before remembering the bus). We walked to the bus along garbage-strew, grafittied streets that smelled and looked much like Nairobi. The bus stop was easy to spot, however, and someone was already waiting for it, so that seemed like a good sign. When it eventually came, we found the process of paying for our rides to be a bit opaque. After a couple of stops, I got up and went to the driver with our two Euro coins, and asked if I could pay him. He shrugged non-committally, and so I left and lurched back to Ian, still holding the coins.

Sometime later, as we approached the center of town, we came upon a march or demonstration blocking several streets, and piles and piles of trash everywhere else, as if there'd been a garbage truck derby sometime overnight. The driver went, evidently, off course, because suddenly people were standing up, distressed, and pushing the stop button time and time again.

About 20 minutes later we made our way another block or two to Garibaldi Square, where most of the rest of the people got off huffily. Ian and I could see, eventually, though the chaos, the train station across the square, separated from us by about 20 or 30 lanes of traffic that clearly was dying to careen about the huge roundabout recklessly, but couldn't because of the volume of cars. A couple police officers waved their hands around ineffectually, "directing traffic." We conferred briefly, and decided we had a much better chance of arriving at the train station alive if we stayed in the bus.

30 minutes later we arrived at the train station (never having paid for our bus ride) and then we had the pleasure of trying to find train tickets to Amalfi. I'd read somewhere that the best way to get to Ravello, which was our ultimate destination, was to take the train from Naples to Amalfi and then take the local bus up the hill to Ravello. We tried several times to buy tickets to Amalfi, and were eventually put on a train to Salerno, and told we would transfer there to Amalfi. It turned out, of course, that the reason we couldn't get a train directly to Amalfi from Naples is that there isn't one. That is, Amalfi doesn't have a train at all.

In Salerno, we found a bus ticket office, and they sent us out to an island in front of the train station. "You can buy the tickets on the bus," we think they said. Things were looking bleak indeed, though, as bus after bus wasn't the one we wanted, and the drivers looked dismissively at us in the way of people who are bored with you because you clearly have no idea what you're doing, until Ian pointed out that we hadn't had any food, or more to the point, any coffee yet that day and dragged me back into the station to a cafe where I broke my fast with an excellent spicy salami sandwich and a cappucino.

It turns out you can't buy tickets on the bus; fortunately, no one ever asked for ours so it didn't matter, and about an hour and a windy, windy, sick-making narrow, cliff-top road later, we had arrived in Amalfi. We had time to get our first of several gelatos (Malaga for me, limon for Ian) before another sick-making ride up to Ravello.

Ravello was gorgeous, and hot, and steep, and friendly, and the wedding we attended was like a fairytale with friends and family from the US and Taiwan and a lot of excellent food on two warm nights at clifftops on the Amalfi Coast, and then we headed back to Naples.

Someone at a tourist information booth in Amalfi said that there was a bus every afternoon at 3 from Amalfi to Naples, so we decided to do that rather than go to Salerno and take the train back and retrace our steps. Of course, when we actually arrived from Ravello to Amafi, nowhere could we see any sign (posted, that is) of a bus to Naples in the afternoon. It was the first day of the new posted bus schedule, so we weren't terribly surprised to see that the tourist office info was out of date.

So we had our last of several gelatos (I had Melone and Schiocolato, Ian maybe had Lemone again), and decided to take the bus to Salerno and then try to get a bus to the airport from there (we had seen one on our way to Ravello, so it seemed not completely unlikely that we could catch one ourselves). Around 3pm we wandered over to the bus stop, and saw, of course, a bus to Naples. So we got on.

Things were fairly uneventful, aside from the glorious, soaring, sick-making clifftop roads along the Amalfi Coast, until we were about level with Pompei, just southeast of Naples. And then, on the motorway, the bus caught fire. We noticed at first that the bus driver was talking frantically on his phone, then we noticed that people were looking out the rear window. Then suddenly things smelled very, very hot, and the bus was pulling over on a flyover on the motorway and everyone was pushing (and I mean really pushing) in a panic to get off.

We all made it off safely, smelling of burnt brakes or clutch or whatever it was, and I started to laugh. Of course, because this is the way of this sort of world, the driver was able to contact another bus going the same way and within ten minutes we were picked up and on our way back to Garibaldi Square.

Back at the train station, we asked at information for the best way to get to the airport and were given the name of a bus, and told to pay onboard. At the bus stop we could see that two different buses went to the airport, so we got on the first one. Which was, of course, another city bus that you had to buy tickets for somewhere else. Which only one person, of all the other riders on the bus, did. There was a lovely middle-aged Italian woman who got on with her suitcase when we did, who was clearly uncomfortable with the idea of a free ride (we, at this point, had realized no one paid), and she went around to every other passenger on the bus and asked if she could buy a ticket. Mostly they looked baffled--like why would she want to?--but some also looked amused. And then we arrived at the airport, and checked in, and took our cribbage to the outside deck of the business lounge, and breathed big sighs of relief.

Since we were only in Italy for 3 nights, for an event that was very well-organized, we hadn't bothered to buy a guidebook, or even a map, or even look at a map of any part of the area we were going to be in (aside from the partial map of the Amalfi Coast included in the invitations). And it was fun--to find our way around by feel, and by instinct, and by luck. Naples is a crazy, crazy place--it's as if, being in Italy, the EU decided it must not need money or programs or assistance of any kind, and as a result it's the most 3rd world city, by far, of any I've ever seen in Europe, even including Athens. It was the perfect adventure for the middle of our, really, remarkably staid and safe summer of nomadism. But I can't say I really recommend it.

Never Enough Time, Too Much Time

There are so many things I want to say here about the experiences we've been having, the foods we've been eating, the people we've met for the first time or again, the places we've seen for the first time or again, rental cars, airport lounges, briny grilled fish, surprise breakfast buffets, strange clinical modern libraries, ice cream. But there never seems to be enough time, when we finally find a computer to use.

The last few days have been hard for me. We're almost to the middle of our trip, so we've done the exciting "oh we're on vacation!" part, and now we're looking more seriously at what it means to be nomadic for several months, particularly when you were pretty well established in the material world before you became nomadic.

There are so many things I'm missing, first and foremost being my community. I miss my friends, I miss my family, I miss my dog. I miss being able to call people up at 4pm and have them show up for dinner, or cook me dinner, for 6pm the same night. I miss the cameraderie of a group of people who know each other so well that they can completely transform a backyard from a wild weed heap to a slate-paved oasis in a few hours--without swearing at each other. I've met great people here, and even seen members of that home community, but I also miss the home context--I miss having a home that I don't have to vacate by 10 am, even on weekends.

I miss having my computer. Ian and I discussed before we left what we were going to carry with us in the way of communication devices, and decided on his two computers. I would be able to use whichever one he wasn't using. This worked only moderately well--I missed my own computer, because a personal computer is, to me, very personal. But then his older computer (5 years old!) died about 10 days ago. And so now we only have one, and he has to use it for work that he's legitimately doing, and so if I am going to have uninterrupted computer time it means we spend twice as much time apart during the days, and one of us works at a time when we'd rather be taking in the sights of this amazing world we live in.

Here is another thing I'm struggling with--Ian has a purpose to his days, a known purpose, and one which he is fulfilling. I don't have a specific purpose, and by leaving my computer behind, I basically discounted all that I do with it, not all of which is simply filler for vacant hours. With my computer, I could be writing more regularly in a way that didn't give me carpal tunnel, in a way where I, more or less, can get my thoughts out as I have them. Writing longhand hurts, and is slow. And so I get frustrated, and instead of anything meaningful, I do the laundry (oh, to completely redo my whole wardrobe, and I'm only halfway done with it!), and feel like I'm missing out on something.

I realize that this is partly just that we're tired. One doesn't really understand how exhausting endless travel can be until one tries it. And we've been on the road for awhile, particularly the last week. We're just beginning 10 days in once place, though, in our own little (borrowed) house with a kitchen and a washing machine and no check-out time (I'm sure, soon enough, I'll be resenting the fact that I have to make my own bed and wash my own towels, as is human nature), in a Portuguese community where I can practice my language skills and, probably, do some more riding (there seems to be a stable just down the road). But I've found that thinking, as I maybe would have in the past, "halfway done and then we're home!" doesn't actually help all that much, because we don't know where we'll be going in another two months.

We have no idea at all.

Another Appreciated Delay

In addition to getting a couple extra hours' sleep on an overnight train, it's good to have your travel delayed when
1. You're kept in Hampstead eating rich, buttery, mushroom and ham and cheese crepes on the street until just over 2 hours before your flight from Gatwick, and you still need to haul your bags to Victoria Station and leave them in Left Luggage (because you only need a small amount of warm-weather clothes for the wedding in Italy and really, 4 months' worth of stuff is heavy).
2. It's at least 20 minutes (probably more) to Victoria Station from Hampstead.
3. It's at least 30 minutes to Gatwick from Victoria, once you've left your luggage, and boarded the train.
4. You've technically checked in, but you don't have your boarding passes and you do have to check a bag, because it has liquids and the ever-important but dangerous Swiss Army knife in it.
5. You still have to go through security.
And the you arrive at the airport, breathless, a little sweaty, and find that not only is your flight delayed, but your airline miles had actually bought you a business class ticket and you can spend your extra 1 1/2 hours unwinding in the BA lounge! Where (and yes, D, this is awesome) you can pour your own drinks--and not just wine. I had a Jack and Sprite.)

Hey folks--we're off to Portugal tonight (in yet another fancy BA lounge using the free internet), and will presumably be having regular internet access for about the next two weeks. I intend to post lots of new stories!

In London

Generally when a trip takes 1 1/2 hours more than expected you don't consider it a boon, but in this case our overnight sleeper train arrived in Euston station from Aberdeen at 9:00am instead of 7:30 and we were grateful. Sleeping on a train does have its charms (although those don't include the shunting around from track to track in the middle of the night, banging into, evidently, other trains as well as tanks and mountain sides and any number of other large immovable objects), and the Caledonian Sleeper is no exception. We had our own teeny cabin complete with two bunks, four pillows, four blankets, and four fresh clean sheets, two towels and a sink. We also each had a teeny toiletry kit of toothpaste (somehow formulated to be particularly foamy but not particularly minty), disposable toothbrush, floss-pick, and tiny bit of water and plastic straw for rinsing. As you might imagine, there really wasn't all that much room left for us with all those luxuries, and particularly not for our giant, giant bags. Once we were safely in our beds, bags piled onto the floor and perched precariously on the shelves over our feet, we didn't even attempt a midnight trip to the loo.

And now here we are in London, staying with friends at the Quaker Meeting House (she's the Quaker in Residence in a lovely, light-filled basement apartment--sounds like a contradiction in terms but I swear it's true) in Hampstead.

I realize there are lots of things to see in London that I've never seen (the Docklands for instance--would that be interesting? I don't even know.), but I've been to London so many times that I forget that I don't know the city intimately, inside and out. And so instead of sightseeing we accomplish things--for example, Ian dropped off a pair of shoes at a cobbler to be stretched. And I saw a Neurolink specialist/Osteopath for a tune-up (he said my energy was very healthy and was impressed that I had no lurking viruses or bacteria or fungus after all the planes I've been on recently).
Today we're getting passport photos and Monday we're seeing other doctors for Ian's new application for a New Zealand visa--this application for residency directly.

We're also having dinner with friends, doing our laundry, and appreciating the use of a living room and WiFi, all at the same time.

I must apologize for a gap in our photos for the time being--Ian's older laptop decided it was tired of being lugged around and gave up the ghost a couple days ago. Most of our pics so far have been backed up in several places . . . but not the 200 most recently loaded up there. Which means that there's no more Edinburgh, and nothing else until Orkney. Pics would've included Highland cattle and calves, steep hill-sides with tea-colored streams racing and crashing down them, me talking on a cell phone to my mother standing at the base of a ruined castle in Tongue, and lots and lots (and lots) of sheep in green fields. And maybe an oreo cow or two, and maybe even a mime cow.

One thing I forgot to mention before when I talked about the Old Pulteney distillery tour--I'm going to grow some barley on Orcas, and see about making some. Of course, I shouldn't probably post this in a public forum. (While I'm typing away here Ian is hanging out the laundry--good man.)

Scotland Pics

It rains fast and furiously in Edinburgh.
And then it stops. Really a gorgeous city.
A loch.
A closed "road".
Many of the highways go through range land.

The End of the Information Superhighway

Regular readers will notice that I’ve been pretty quiet lately. Some have emailed me privately, concerned that perhaps my idyllic summer of nomadism with my lovely (I mean dashing) husband hasn’t, in fact, been so idyllic, but that’s not the case at all. The case is that internet outside Edinburgh is, simply, difficult to come by. We have had some access—most public libraries allow visitors to use the internet, but it’s generally only for 30 minutes, which is barely enough time to complete the necessities and unfortunately there have been more pressing commitments than this blog . Occasionally a coin-op system is available, but those don’t allow more than one window to be opened at a time (!), and are very expensive. Finally, this afternoon, we pulled into a tiny coastal town, Findhorn, on the east coast of Scotland, somewhere a bit north of Aberdeen, and happened upon one of the charming small hotels we’ve become so enamored of (rooms, dining room for guests where breakfast is served, restaurant, and pub), and saw that it had WiFi! Turns out the bartender plays a lot of World of Warcraft, and so he understands the addiction to instant international feedback.

So I’ll give you a list of places we’ve stayed, and some highlights from each. We’ve traveled anti-clockwise around almost the entire country of Scotland, skipping the Borders and heading northwest from Edinburgh.

Our first night we spent in Kinlochleven, which boasts the world’s largest indoor ice climbing wall. We didn’t visit it. Loch Leven is a sea loch, so has a tide. It looks like a lake, though, so the tide surprised us (not in any serious way, like stranding us on an island or anything), as did the shellfish farms. Scotland also farms a lot of Atlantic salmon (at least this is where it’s from, unlike the Atlantic salmon farms in Chile. But I digress onto a soapbox I’m not really all that stable on).

The next night we stayed in Plockton, a small village near Kyle of Lochalsh, where the ten-years-old-but-still-reviled-bridge connects mainland Scotland with the Isle of Skye (which, incidentally, was supposed to get a new [old] Gaelic name as of 1 June . . . but everyone still calls it Skye). Plockton has a castle nearby that we walked to, which also evidently has its own railway station.

Nights 3 and 4 we were in Kinlochbervie, one of the most important North Sea fishing ports in Europe. Every few days big fishing boats come in and deposit their catches into a huge warehouse and giant lorries carry everything off to the continent (on the one lane roads). As our hotel owner said, “the boat that’s in harbour right now has been doing some deep sea fishing. There’s probably lots of squidgy things that we don’t eat. Those’ll go off to France or Spain.” Sure enough, when we toured the huge crates of ice and fish, we saw some things that I, at least, would categorize as “squidgy”. We also saw a Greenland Halibut bigger than either of us.

Night 5 was in Tongue. I believe they have a pageant there, every year crowning a “Tongue Queen.” In the hotel bar, where we enjoyed a tasty lunch and a coal fire, we saw posted a photo of three blonde girls wearing T-shirts saying “I love Tongue.” It was a lovely place.

I should point out that the roads we were driving on (well, I was driving on because it would’ve cost $280 to add Ian as a driver . . . or, I suppose . . . to add me as a driver but I really like driving and, um, I know how to get my way), pretty much between Plockton and Scrabster where we left the mainland, were generally one lane with “passing places.” This works surprisingly well. I imagined myself, gibbering and chewing my fingernails to bits, just parked in one of the passing places, deciding never to go on, after a close shave with a caravan (RV), but I never did have the close shave, and gibbering isn’t my style. So I drove along as quickly as ever any Scot did, and enjoyed myself immensely.

After Tongue we drove to Scrabster and caught a car ferry to Orkney.

Orkney was fantastic. It made me question whether or not we really want to move to Orcas someday, or if we’d rather just move to Orkney. Our first night we attended the open rehearsal of the Orkney Accordion and Fiddle Club. Ian was, of course, in heaven. But I was too--the kind of heaven where you're just so thrilled that something so awesome exists that you find yourself tearing up, just at the fact of the thing. Of course most of the members were ancient, but there were at least a couple musicians of each instrument below 50. Ian noticed in particular the difference between having a national music and not—of the 15 or so people present, all of them knew all the songs they played for 2 and ½ hours. One person would call out a song and say “oh, in D and G”, play a few bars, and the rest would join in. It was really cool, and not something we'd expect to see, even on Orcas.

Orkney has a dairy that makes ice cream, lots of sheep and cows, and about the densest Neolithic ruins of anyplace on earth. Everywhere you look are 5,000-year-old settlements (it was warmer then and things grew a bit better and didn’t ice up so much in the winter), standing stones, chambered cairns, and regular grass-covered mounds that no one can be bothered to excavate. I went for a horseback ride with a girl who’d grown up on Orkney and she speculated that farmers uncovered things all the time while tilling their fields and just covered them back up again because it’s such a bother to have an antiquity on one’s land.

We stopped one afternoon at a place called The Wool Shed, and bought some yarn from the woman who runs it, yarn from North Ronaldsay sheep (one of the outer islands), which feed almost exclusively on seaweed (I'm not sure what this does to the wool, but it evidently gives the meat an interesting color and texture). Neither of us had brought any knitting needles, but I at least was itching for a project (in Tongue we'd watched the ridiculously bad "Slap Her She's French" and I'd really missed having something meaningful to do, because clearly turning off the TV wasn't an option), and the lady offered to give us some needles that would work with her wool. "I suppose it's a bit morbid," she said, "but not really. It's just that, whenever anyone dies around here, their children give me their knitting needles. They assume that, since I knit, I can use them, I guess. It's really rather sweet."

We spent three nights in Stromness, on Mainland (what “Orcadians” call the largest island in the archipelago), at the Orca Hotel (we couldn’t resist), then two nights at the Pierowall Hotel on the more remote island of Westray, staying in one of those charming hotels with all the different rooms to eat in and the rooms to sleep in upstairs. One of my favorite things about the Pierowall hotel was the “snug,” a sort of parlour behind the pub downstairs, where we lounged on overstuffed leather couches and I beat Ian at cribbage while we sipped Highland Park 12 Year single malt scotch (made in Kirkwall, on Mainland).

We tore ourselves reluctantly away from Orkney and came back to the rest of Scotland, where we visited John O’ Groats, a tourist trap and one end of the End to End cycle route, then stopped by the Old Pulteney distillery in Wick, where the samples at the end of the tour were generous indeed.

Last night we stayed in the lovely town of Helmsdale (I keep wanting to say “Helm’s Deep”), which looked like any little inland river valley town until you saw the sea, and tonight we’re here in Findhorn using the internet.

I have to say, having looked up all the hyperlinks for all these places, it does seem that the Information Superhighway didn’t end before it got to Scotland . . . but all the same, it’s not all that accessible to visitors.

So I’m almost at the end of the second pint (that’s an imperial pint, you realize) of whatever strong tasty ale it was, and I can’t remember right now if there was anything else specific I wanted to write about. So I’ll stop for the time being, post this entry, and get some pictures up. We’re only in Scotland two more nights, then on an overnight train, then three nights in London, three in Italy, one in London, and an unknown number in Portugal. Maybe we’ll have ale breakfast tomorrow, which would allow me to add more stories . . . but that would probably be a bad idea. Kippers, porridge, mushrooms, tomato, etc etc seems like quite enough. Cheers!

Fast Scotland Grab Bag

Okay, I've got six minutes left at the library here in Kirkwall, Orkney, Scotland, so I'll just do some quick impressions.

1. Landscape in the Highlands? Surprisingly much like Greece. Rocky, some shocking hills, hardly any trees. A tendency toward sheep more than goats, but still a lot of bleating. Everyone's lambed recently, so there are lots of little snowballs all over the green hills (okay, yeah, that's not like Greece).
2. I love driving on the left! It brings back all the thrill of first learning how to drive. And shifting with the left hand is fun, too!
3. Frequently, I just drive in the middle because the roads are--literally--one lane. And this is major highways. There are frequent "passing places". I love this.
4. Tea-colored lochs everywhere. Beautiful. And tea-colored streams and little waterfalls everywhere.
5. Porridge. YUM.
6. Sausage and bacon and egg and beans and tomato andmushrooms and hash browns and cereal and tea and grapefruit--for breakfast!

Scotland!

Just a quick note to let you know I've re-arrived safely in Europe, caught up with Ian, and we're in beautiful Edinburgh, about to head out and see the sights. More soon!

Ian Withdrawal

I'm in Phoenix now, for my annual Memorial Day Weekend with my college girlfriends. Yes, that's Phoenix USA. Ian's in Oxford. Yes, that's Oxford England. I realize that it might be a little crazy to leave a 4-month-long European tour for a long weekend in Phoenix, but this is, like, the 14th or 15th year in a row that we girls have done this weekend getaway together, and *I* wasn't going to be the one to break the trend.

It was weird, though, taking off from Heathrow without Ian, after having been tied so closely for the past several weeks. I could almost feel the pull--a mixture of anxiety and excitement--tugging at my heart, as we passed up over Scotland on the way to Iceland, Greenland, and the frozen (still, thank goodness) north.

I'm so lucky--there's no one else I know with whom I could even consider spending four months on the road--no one who makes me laugh so often and so freely; no one who can diffuse my irritations so successfully (as I hope I successfully diffuse his); no one whose habits so comfortably meld with mine. It never once occurred to him to ask that I not take this trip, leaving him, the more social one, alone in a youth hostel with a bunch of strangers on this holiday weekend; it never once occurred to him to even suggest that it wasn't the best possible thing for me to do for both of us. I often find myself looking at him sideways as we tramp along, awed at my good fortune.

Regardless of our perfection as mates, it's useful sometimes to have separate experiences (helps with dinnertime conversation), and we've both been looking forward to this weekend of individual pursuits.

As our plane turned back south at Edmonton, I realized that the pain of our strange-feeling separation had drifted away and I was only looking forward to seeing my dear friends. But I'll be glad to be back with Ian on Tuesday.

Me, Entertained

Slight Change of Plans

We're on the ferry to Athens, but all the folks who are taking up all the hotel rooms in town for the football tournament are also taking up space on the ferry. So it's noisy and smoky, but, weirdness of weirdnesses, it has WiFi. So we're not sleeping, but we're entertained.

Last Night In Greece

Which we're going to spend on a ferry (9:00pm-1:00am more or less), on a bus (1:00am-2:00am), and in a 24-hour hotel bar at the Airport Sofitel (2:00am-6:30am), because there's a huge football tournament going on in Athens for the next three days and there are no rooms to be had in the entire city. No rooms. And we have to be there, because our flight back to London takes off at 8:15 tomorrow morning.

We're hoping to be able to collapse into sleep the moment the ferry pulls away from the dock here in Ermopolis (which is, by the way, a gorgeous Venetian-era city curved around a long bay) on Syros, and get our almost 4 hours before having to navigate our way around Piraeus in the middle of the night to find the airport bus. Quote from the Lonely Planet Guidebook: "Whatever you do, don't sleep out in Piraeus. It's by far the worst place in Greece to do this."

We plan to keep moving, so at least we have the appearance of wakefulness, even if we're asleep on our feet.

Feels Like Home

Norah Jones was even playing down the quay the first night we were here.

Amorgos is a supremely comfortable place for me to be. Is this some past-life familiarity showing itself? Or the fact that I've been here three times in the past ten years, so I've built up quite a bit of this-life familiarity? Maybe, but more than either of those things, I think it has to do with real life sticking around while I'm here.

Greece has a well-deserved reputation for being an idyll, what with the fresh foods (not to mention the olive oil and baclava), sun, clear blue waters, glowing architecture and friendly people. Our time on Folegandros completely lived up to Greece's reputation. Not a single thing marred our week (Ian would say with the exception of a couple mosquitoes, but they bit him and not me, and this is my blog). Here on Amorgos, though, we've gotten lost, it poured down rain for a day, we've had colds, there wasn't any hot water in the shower (it's solar heated and did I mention it poured down rain for a day?), and the power went out. And yet, after we're done emailing at the internet cafe, as we belly up to the bar to pay, the proprietor pulls out a plastic water bottle of liqueur that his dad made (raki flavored with honey and cinnamon) and pours us each a small shot. Or we hike for several hours across the top of the island and down to the other port and then, pleasantly tired, we have a couple Fantas, play some Euchre, then after awhile order some creamy-smoky melitzanosalata (an eggplant dip), all while sitting on a covered terrace looking out over the harbor. It costs us about $10 for our afternoon. "Yasas," we say to the little old men and ladies we pass on our hikes, and they break into smiles. "Yasu, yasu!" they say back. "Kalimera!"

Amorgos feels like home because I live when I'm here. I'm not just experiencing the pleasures of vacation; I'm also experiencing the inconveniences and irritations of everyday life, along with everyone else. And I love it.

Amorgos: Love it, Hate it, Love it

This is a long one, folks, so grab a cup of coffee (not Greek--you'll be done in 17 seconds) and get comfortable!

Ten years ago on Amorgos I had my first experience with the relativity of hell. I have been fortunate in this lifetime to not have experienced real hell—awful, mind-soul-body-searing Dante’s Inferno-style hell—so I can say with breezy assurance that true hell is all about perspective.

Ten years ago, I arrived here on a late boat in late September and was met on the quay by the typically bewildering crowd of domatia owners. One caught my attention more closely, offering a room for the low low price of whatever number of drachmas it was that equaled $10.60 per night in 1997. “How close is it,” I asked warily. I’d been taken pretty far from the ferry on a couple other islands (once balanced unsteadily with my ponderous pack on the rear of a sputtering scooter) and I was tired of lugging my bag back to boats. “Only 50 meters,” she said. I didn’t believe her for an instant, but was too tired to extricate myself from our tacit agreement and find a different place, so I fuffed and resettled my bag, and plodded into a narrow alley after her.

“Here we are,” she said, two moments later at a gated courtyard. She held the gate for me, then opened the door to a room, took my passport (collateral for my rent) and left me.

I dropped my bag right inside the door and went to look in wonder at my palace.

I was in a tiny room with a single bed and an antique desk, maybe six feet by ten feet in size. A second door led out the back corner, and I went through that into a broad hallway, where a large refrigerator sat silently, cord unplugged and dangling from its handle, and from which three more doors exited! Through the door on the left I found two more beds, a wardrobe, and large windows that I ignored for the moment. Through the next door to the right was the bathroom, one of the largest and most commodious I’ve seen in Greece (which meant it was about 6’X6’). And through the final door, past the fridge, I found a little kitchen with a burner, a table and chairs, and a sparse but nevertheless complete stock of utensils and dishes. My own little apartment! Heaven! Ferries to and from Amorgos were relatively infrequent so my choices were to say two days or a week. I decided to stay a week.

The next day, I opened my bedroom windows onto a vacant lot and left them open until after dark, and that’s when the heaven became hell. As I snuggled into bed, pleasantly exhausted after a day of hiking the old donkey roads of the island, I heard it. EeeeEEEeeeeeeEEEEEEeeeee. The insistent, orbiting whine of a hungry mosquito. I batted blindly around in the dark and the whining stopped. Well, okay! That was lucky! I drifted off. EEEeeeeeeEEEEEeeeeEEEeeEeeEEEEEEeeeee. Whack! I slammed awake, shot on the light, and peered around the room. There—I saw it! I climbed on the bed, and after flailing about only a short time, managed to kill the bugger. As I knew it would be from the itch on my thumb, it was already bloody. I snuggled back into bed with satisfaction, read a few minutes to calm down again, and turned out the light.

EEEEeeeeeeEEeeeeEEEEeeeeE. On with the light, up I jumped. This time I saw TWO of the devils, hovering up near the ceiling, driving me mad. I got one, jumped around on the bed and furniture for awhile, and eventually, almost sobbing with exhaustion and relief, got the other. I collapsed into bed again and turned out the light.

EEEeeeeeeEeeEeEEEEeeeeeEEEEEEeeeeEEEEe. Almost screeching with frustration, I slapped the light back on. Two more, diving and swooping up the wall behind me. I gave up and buried my head in my blankets. I origamied a long, narrow, tortuous path for air through the sheets around my mouth, and finally fell asleep. For ever after, I only opened the window during the day, and closed it many hours before I expected to be in bed.

The next day I decided to buy some food at the local grocery store so I wouldn’t have to eat out all the time, and in the spirit of curiosity, I opened the fridge. A wall of stench slammed me in the face and I slammed the door. What the hell was that? I wondered as, gagging, I opened all the windows in the place (noting with relief that it was still daylight and so I was presumably still safe from the Midnight Whining Marauders), and plugged in the fridge, assuming that extra cold things couldn’t smell quite so bad as clearly long-forgotten warm things.

I went about my day, letting the fridge cool down, and the memory of ugh rotting something recede a little from my mind. When I opened the fridge again later in the day, I used the technique of nose closing I’d learned as a young child using pit toilets on boat trips in the San Juan Islands (you close your nose at the back of your mouth, at the soft palate, and only breathe through your throat, thus saving yourself from smelling the awful pit toilet smells . . . it’s a technique also employed when using a Neti pot), the combination of cold and nasal acrobatics allowed me to investigate the situation. Yep, in the bottom drawer, someone had left, at some point, a plastic bag with some kind of meat in it . . . and it had rotted. Hoo boy had it rotted. I slammed the door again and retreated outside where I gulped in clean, oregano and bougainvillea-scented air and came up with a battle plan.

I went back inside and grabbed an extra plastic bag, then girded myself, armed my nose, and in one motion flung open the door, whipped open the drawer, pulled out the rot and twisted it into the new plastic bag, slammed the door, and raced outside where I deposited my prize into a garbage can in the courtyard.

This, I realized, was hell. Here I was in this paradise—the absolute perfect place, a $10-per-night apartment of my own with separate rooms and a kitchen and a comfortable bathroom and even the floor tiles that I liked best (a composite of some sort of green cement and all different colors of stones, shaved off and polished so you could see into the hearts of the pebbles) . . . but as soon as I was lulled into enjoying it SNAP! A mosquito was screeching in my ear and biting my eyelid, making me look like I’d been in a brawl, or an appliance, louring and grunting in the hall, was attacking me with poisonous gases.

Still, the steep, stark hillsides topped with craggy boulders, the peekaboo beaches, and the teeny sylvan glades where surreptitious springs drip quietly into mossy, frog-filled pools are addicting, and three years ago when Ian and I came to Greece together for the first time, I insisted we come here.

During our trip last time the hell was a bit more prosaic than ogre refrigerators (I don’t remember a problem with the mosquitos, either . . . but then Dimitri’s Palace isn’t quite the Shangri-La that my first place was . . . so the torture of what might have been wouldn’t have been so great anyway). Instead, it was merely a bad map. Or, rather, a map that was evidently optimistic about what it called a “trail.” It wasn’t that bad, though; after wandering around a bit in the rather thorny underbrush and following a goat track that showed very clearly that goats are a lot shorted than humans, we did eventually come out on a road near which two friendly donkeys were penned and wowie, do we love the donkeys! I leaned over to scratch one on the forehead between her inquisitive ears and she immediately went lop-eared with pleasure, her eyes half-closed, leaning into my hand. So, a bit of hell for the scratched ankles, a bit of heaven scratching the donkey.

All told, Amorgos was our favorite island from the six we saw in 2004, and so here we are again.

And, again, our hell was really due to a bad map, or, to be generous, to our insistence on following “Category 4 (thin dashed line)” trails, which include “footpaths whose course is less obvious, or in places difficult. These routes are aimed at more experienced walkers.”

Category 4 seems to, rather than show trails, suggest directions one might walk. The directions aren’t suggested with any clarity, though, so you may—no, you are likely to—find yourselves in a similar predicament to ours.

We decided we wanted a fairly easy time of it a couple evenings ago (both of us recovering from colds), so we chose to walk out to the lighthouse we’d seen upon entering the harbor on the Milk Run Skopelitis, which is on Cape Profiti Ilia. Of course, there is also a church, the Profitis Ilias Church. The map suggested that the walk might take around one hour, and a two-hour round trip struck us as perfectly reasonably given the states of our healths.

Of course we got lost soon after leaving the paved road at the end of town, but we don’t turn back, oh no, so we kept going, over rocks and under thorns, stubbing our toes and getting scratched and irritable, arguing about what, exactly, constitutes a “stock breeding yard” or a “lime kiln”. We did make it to the point, and enjoyed touring the church and the old lighthouse, and marvelling, yet again, at the precipitous places sheep seem to like to hang out. We enjoyed a snack of fig and sunflower seed bar, studied our map and the surrounding area, and determined that our route home would be much easier.

And for awhile it was. We finally found something that looked very like “old stock breeding yards”, and skirted it as per directions. And kept skirting. And kept skirting, and eventually decided that the directions must have meant, although they did not say, and of course it wasn’t clear from the trail itself, that we should’ve skirted to the west and not the east. Well, we weren’t going to back track, particularly when it wasn’t entirely clear that we should, so we went on, letting ourselves through a gate (which we carefully closed again), and marching down a long field next to a rusty old fence. “At least we’re both up to date on our tetnus shots,” I remarked to Ian.

The field went over a slight hill, and we thought we were in the clear . . . but no, at the bottom of the field was a gully, and in the gully was another fence. And the fences were designed to keep goats out, and I’ve already hinted that we’re a lot less athletic than goats. Back up the field we went until we came to a rudimentary gate (a slightly less tied-down section of rusty fencing) and squoze through. We continued downhill in the direction of home . . . and came to another fence. This fence had a gate into the yard of something that looked like a house, which may or may not have been in use. We tried to skirt it, but that was clearly not going to get us anywhere. We returned to the gate and hurried through, tying it carefully. Okay, well, a house must be outside the seemingly endless fences!

No. Even though we couldn’t see fence from there, we hiked up three or four crumbling terraces and found more fence at the top. This fence we managed to climb over, in a slightly bent-down place that seemed to have been used for that purpose before.

This continued for, I kid you not, at least the next half-hour. Every time we thought we were out, we saw another fence. Eventually we came to a place where we could see, far below us, the end of the cement road we’d walked on at the beginning of our two-hour round trip, 3 ½ hours before.
“We have to just go down,” said Ian, as we scanned the steep terraced hillside, looking for anything clearer than a goat track. I just grunted in agreement. I’d already started swearing at the fences, and at Amorgos, and at the map, but not at Ian. I followed him as he angled steeply down, until he pulled up short at the top of a cliff-face/pile of boulders maybe 50 feet high, at the bottom of which lay our destination.

“I think we just have to do it,” Ian said. “It doesn’t look that hard.”

I tightened my day pack on my back and noted to myself that while I was a good rock climber, I was wearing sandals that weren’t terribly tight, not rock climbing shoes, and the day pack would definitely change my center of gravity. And I was recovering from a cold—at the stuffed ears/runny nose stage. In other words, self, no heroics. A part of my brain was grimly amused that I’d reached a point in my tether, almost to the end perhaps, where it seemed reasonable to climb down a cliffside to get over a fence.

As you know, we made it down safely, and were actually quite proud of ourselves. And, in our last days here, we’ve agreed to not go beyond “Category 2 (line of long dashes)”, which “corresponds to wide and very clear footpaths that have been purposely laid. On the whole, these are the most commonly used footpaths.”

And of course we’ll be coming back to Amorgos in the future.

Strange Fruit

Does anyone know what these are? They taste a bit like kiwifruit, and have a similar texture to their flesh . . .