You Can’t Have It Both Ways

About an hour ago an email arrived from my brother, who was due to leave the house for Sweden in an hour, detailing a bill I’d just received there for mowing on Orcas Island. Ian and I had discussed mowing with our southern neighbor before we left town in April, and asked that, when she had her piece mowed, she get in touch with us because maybe we’d have the guy mow ours as well. I’m not sure if we detailed with her exactly which part of our land we wanted to have mowed; it probably didn’t occur to us to worry about it, because all evidence pointed only to the southern parts having been mowed for, oh, at least 10 years.

Unfortunately, we should’ve been more detailed. The bill includes not only mowing the southern part, but also north pasture, which we’d decided to leave fallow for the next few years, and chipping all the young Douglas firs and alders in the middle of it. This is what makes me sad. I had been planning on cutting our first Christmas tree from that herd of firs, and I was also rejoicing that, in 20 or 30 years, we’d actually have some trees in addition to 30 acres of grassland. Not only that; mowing all that rough pasture and chipping all those trees was expensive, to the tune of a shocking number of nights on the road, even in Sweden.

No one’s to blame, of course. Our neighbor to the south honestly thought she knew what we wanted, and the man who did the mowing did the best he could. I suppose our laissez-faire attitude about land being able to take care of itself was to blame as much as anything, so we’ll pay the bill, meet the mower, and make sure we speak to him directly in the future.

Besides, trees grow back, and some number of years from now when we do have a house there and need a Christmas tree, it may not be the soaring 8 feet I was hoping for, but we’ll probably be able to find something to put on a tabletop.

But there you have it—a nomadic life may seem like a life of freedom, but there are costs to being an adult and owning things. Not only financial costs, but many, many niggling little details of bills and issues and whatnot, the large majority of which my brother has dealt with directly in order to make our lives easier.

Thank you, Deane, so much.

When It All Comes Together

note: since writing this, we've moved to the library next door, where the wireless is free. Very posh.

We’re in Pärnu, Estonia right now, sitting in a Tex-Mex Restaurant and killing time before our ferry out to the little island of Kihnu. We came up on a bus from Riga this morning, which left at the ungodly hour of 8:30 am (what will we do when we’re back in the real world of schedules and early morning work times? Well, at least what will Ian do?). We were the last people to arrive at the bus, around 8 minutes before it left. We found two seats together, though, and since the final destination was Tallinn, it’s probably good that our bags were the last ones thrown into the hold. It was a double-decker bus, and I have to say, I slept through most of the 3 ½ hour trip. I’m sure this was self-defense, because I didn’t actually get sick. One great joy was that we actually stopped at the border, and they actually took our passports and stamped them! I don’t think this happens much in the EU anymore; between Portugal and Spain, for example, there’s only a derelict checkpoint building that clearly hasn’t been manned in years. Even though both Latvia and Estonia are members of the EU, since they border Russia and Belarus, it seems they may have border crossings between them for many more years. Portugal, of course, only borders Spain, and much as they complain about each other, they trust each other to come and go benignly.

When we arrived here at noon, we didn’t have tickets on the ferry which leaves at 6:15pm and arrives on the island at 9:00pm; we didn’t have a place to stay on the island and we were hoping to stay 3 nights on a busy weekend in August; we didn’t have any Estonian cash; our backpacks were very big and heavy; and we didn’t have tickets back to Riga on Tuesday. And we don’t speak a word of Estonian.

But now we’re all set—got some cash; bags are in Left Luggage until 5:15; we’ll buy tickets on the ferry; helpful tourist offices here and on Kihnu hooked us up with a room and a ride from the boat (our cell isn’t working well again, and charged us £2 for the dropped call to Kihnu’s tourist office and the only pay phones in Pärnu are at the post office and only take cards which you buy there so we still have 450 Estonian Kr. with which to make more calls . . . from the post office . . . ); we’ve bought tickets back to Riga on the much more civilized 12:05pm return bus; thank you in Estonian is tänan. Anyway, it’s all very exciting to be in a completely new place. And, while Tex-Mex theoretically isn’t Estonian food, I can say with assurance that it’s also not Tex-Mex.

Riga Photos

Rowing on the canal through Old Town Riga

Rowing is serious business.

Borat was here.

Tomorrow--on to Kihnu, Estonia!

Two Current Favorite Songs

Stop This Train, by John Mayer (Continuum)
Us, by Regina Spektor (Soviet Kitsch)

The Backpack’s Back

When we came in this afternoon from our meanderings around the giant (5 WWII blimp hangars-worth!) market, Ian’s bag was sitting inside the door against the textured orange and gold wall of our room. We didn’t notice it at first, since it’s become so much a part of our environment. That didn’t take away from our excitement, though, when we did notice it. We had replaced only a couple essentials—some conditioner for me, and a UK to EU plug adaptor for us both (I walked unerringly to both an electronics store and the Body Shop in two different malls, neither of which I’d been to before. Shopping has become second nature, I tell you).

I have to say, though, if my bag had been lost, and not ever returned, I would not have been able to bring myself to replace my clothing here. Latvia has been free from the Soviet Union since 1992, I believe, and 15 years have brought big changes. But it seems that freedom has not brought taste, at least not yet. Traditional dress is long gone, and Soviet scarcity is over, and now it’s as if the joy of consumption has taken over completely and the Latvians just don’t have any filters. If something exists, it's for sale. I’m sure this will all even out too soon (I know, I know, I can't have it both ways), now that they’ve joined the EU and are working toward adopting the Euro as their currency. In the next ten years, they’ll probably be wearing generic clothes from H&M and Zara like everyone else in Europe. And that will be sad, in a way, but much better too, in a way. At the moment, pretty much anything goes, and anything is usually disturbingly shiny.

We’re Not in Southern Europe Anymore

It was abundantly clear this morning at breakfast that we were not in Portugal where all one has is a slice of white toast and a milky coffee, nor in Greece with the yoghurt and fruits. Our offerings were closer to what we got in Scotland, and even more like what I remember from Poland ten years ago. In other words, breakfast included quite a bit of fish. Not just the lox we’re used to having for brunch back in the US, but pickled herring and pickled salmon, and maybe even more fish. I’d only been awake 20 minutes, so I tried not to look too closely. Also available was cheese, ham, mustard, sliced tomato and cucumber, and a shredded onion and cucumber salad in a light oil and vinegar dressing (which is what I had). If you wanted to be boring and not so savory you could have pourable yoghurt, milk and cereal, or teeny croissants and jam. Ian had pickled herring.

Dining while on the road for so long has its drawbacks. For one thing, Americans seem to be the only people who regularly take partially eaten dinners away from restaurants (to molder in their fridges, mostly, instead of moldering in the dumpster behind the restaurant). In Portugal, for instance, if you rashly order an entire plate of Migas do Alentejo and your husband orders an entire other meal, and you can only eat 1/3 of it even though it was really, really tasty, and you ask if there’s a box so you can take leftovers home, they look sorrowfully at you (are they sorry you couldn’t eat the terra cotta roofing tile full of 3 kilos of cornmeal and pork fried together, or sorry to disappoint you in your strange request?) and tell you no. For the most part, we got around this by either eating too much (hence the current size of my thighs), only ordering one main dish between the two of us, or frequently some combination of the two.

There are also other dangers of dining out in foreign countries, including ordering something that ends up being tripe or octopus stew because you forgot the words or, even, the words weren’t included in the description of the meal. And there’s the endless issue of how and when to pay your bill. Obviously, you learn very early not to sit and wait for anyone to bring it. They don’t. They’ll hold onto it for hours, long after they’ve determined that you don’t want coffee or dessert or anything else. If you’re us, you learn, eventually, after 3 months and about 200 meals out, to ask for the bill when you tell them you don’t want dessert. Once you have the bill though, then what? They’re not all that quick to come back and see if you need change or the credit card machine (an exception is London, where they check back, and bring a wireless credit card machine to the table, which is impressively handy).

An added insecurity for me is that it takes us so little time to complete a meal. Ian, for one, is an Indy 500 eater. I eat much more slowly (we counted the average number of chews we each perform per bite and I was 54 and he was 7), but much of the speed or slowness of a meal depends on conversation, and since we have spent almost literally the past 2,208 hours together, we don’t have that much more to say to each other over lunch. Besides that, when you’re not traveling, restaurant meals tend to have a bit of ceremony about them, but since we are traveling, and for so long, they’ve become pretty mundane (aside from all the neuroses I’ve detailed here). So each time we go to ask for a bill I wonder if the server is looking at us askance for our uncouth speed. I admit, I have comforted myself more than once with the thought that we’ll never be back in that restaurant again, so our embarrassment ends when we walk out the door.

I realize that this is irrational behavior. Nevertheless, tonight’s dining experience was a relief and joy.

We ate at a Latvian buffet, which is probably related in origin to the Swedish smorgasbord. It was in a kitschy wooden “traditional” house with multiple rooms, artisan decorations, and lots of good foods. The offerings included a cold soup and a hot soup, several prepared salads drowned in sour cream (I had tomato and cucumber and avoided the pink beets), a salad bar, prepared dishes of deep fried garlic bread (a personal favorite), several hot dishes including fish and sausages (many also drowned in sour cream), a huge vat of fries, steamed vegetables, a juice bar, a dessert bar, bottled beer or beer on tap, teas, coffees, water, etc. We could meander around bumping gently into each other with our trays, choosing exactly what we liked the looks of, in exactly what quantities we wanted, and then we paid before sitting down. And then, joy of joys, when we were done we could simply get up and leave.

The Evidence

The crowds in Arlanda

Ian showing off his new "backpack"

Ian wearing one of his new T-shirts and brushing his hair with his new collapsible brush (for the full effect, it would've been necessary to post all 13 pictures Ian took of himself brushing his hair and wearing his new T-shirt, while I was writing a post. This is just the last one.)

In Latvia

We're here in Riga, comfortably ensconced in our hotel room at the Baltpark (breakfast included!), which is decorated in a pseudo-Chinese style, I would say. Very red and gold and textured. We're back to being 10 hours away from Seattle, so think about that if you're trying to call us.

Our trip here was lengthy, and relatively uneventful. We took a bus then the Tube to Heathrow and waited in a line to drop off our bags (once we'd checked in) that would undoubtedly have been included in the Inferno if Dante were to write it today, but still made it to our flight on time. And then the flight was late, but only 30 minutes (whereas our flight to Lisbon earlier in the summer took off at the time it was supposed to be landing). We still had enough time in Stockholm to enter the country, collect our bags, then walk the mile and a half through eerily empty Arlanda (we were, literally, one of three flights taking off from the 56 gates in terminal five) to check in at the opposite end of the opposite end of the airport for our flight to here, even notwithstanding this flight was late too. Ian had to check his rucksack in at a different counter than me because of the straps . . . and herein lies the event. When we made it through customs (last in line, somehow) here in Riga, my bag was waiting for us, but his was not.

The lady at lost luggage was very helpful, and very organized, and although there was no sign of the lost bag in the system (i.e. it certainly didn't board the plane in Stockholm . . . because there was so much traffic, I'm sure. It must just have gotten lost in the shuffle.), she promised to find it and deliver it to our hotel. And she handed us two night packs as a consolation prize, each of which has a large T-shirt in it, so Ian now has 3 times as many as before, which is nice, actually.

The only thing we're really missing is our power adapters . . . I've got some 55 minutes left on my computer, but Ian's down to a mere 7.

But, warnings from the Lonely Planet proved, at least for us, unfounded--the taxi driver immediately turned the meter on upon entering and we had a wild ride (not a CHANCE I am renting a car here) in the 11:30pm ends-of-sunset-and-full-moon light into town, without being cheated.

Overall, thumbs up on Latvia so far.

Buses Done Right

I hate taking the bus. In part this is because, in Seattle, the bus comes about once every half hour, and from where I lived, I could be downtown in 1/3 the time it took for me to wait for the next bus. Also, I tend to get motion sickness on buses. I don’t know why, but I have to steel myself for the experience every time I go. Our three days in Italy and the winding, sheer-drop roads of the Amalfi coast were difficult for me (and the bus catching fire on the motorway didn't really instill confidence in me, either). Pretty much as soon as I sit down on a bus I start to feel ill. Clearly there is something psychological about this, because the seats aren’t necessarily less comfortable, nor the motion necessarily more pronounced, than many of the trains I ride. But psychological or not, it’s difficult.

One of the joys of London is the Underground. Trains are fun, and the Tube goes everywhere. You can ride the Tube for hours, for days even, and continue to see new places. Or maybe not, because it’s mostly underground. But you’ll be in new places.

Ian, being the clever, technology-oriented guy that he is, insisted we buy transit passes last time we were in London. I have no idea why they’re called this, but we each bought Oystercards, and they’ve helped to entirely change the way I feel about buses, as it turns out.

They’re an excellent deal, first of all. A one-day travelcard for the Tube costs something like £6, but if you have an Oystercard, you only pay up to £4.50 per day, and it’s good on buses too. And then, suddenly, here we were in a far reach of Islington and the closest Tube station is a 30-minute walk away—completely negating my previous statement that everywhere in London is on the Tube.

I’m not against walking 30 minutes—in fact, I frequently enjoy it, and London is a place I walk a lot. But London is, just by the sheer scale of it, a place most people end up having to walk regardless, and so it’s nice to be able to go around the corner and pop on the #38 bus to the Angel Tube station.

The recent floods have messed up the Tube tubes, too, and have shorted out signals and whatnot, so buses have been all the more necessary for getting around. Ian mentioned the other day that no matter what the scale of your map is, London is so huge that you find yourself walking 3 or 4 times as long as you’d thought, so a bus is frequently welcome—and welcomingly frequent. During the day, most routes seem to run in 8-10 minute intervals (more often during rush hours). Buses run all night, in 20-30 minute intervals from midnight to 4:00am. So you know you can catch one when you need it.

And finally, London buses are just fun. Many of them, even most, really are still double-decker buses. And the thrill of sitting flush up against the windscreen on the upper deck definitely makes up for, and even distracts from, any feelings of motion-sickness.

But the Oystercard, the transit pass, is the icing on the cake. All you need to do is swipe it over the reader and continue on your merry way. No need to search for an unknown amount of change or worry about whether you pay at the beginning or the end of the trip. Buses are clean, buses are fun, buses are convenient. I could become a convert.

Just a Friendly Dinner Party

We’re in London right now, staying with our friends J&C in their lovely garden flat. They have full exclusive use of the garden, and turned the mud pit they inherited back in February into a sylvan glade in the middle of Islington. They have resident squirrels, of course (all called Roscoe, because it’s a bit difficult to distinguish between them, much like the squirrels all called Gerard who lived in the garden of our friends G&A in Ann Arbor, who are now our friends in Härnösand, Sweden, and so more about them in the near future), and a visiting black and while cat called Penelope, and even a raggedy little fox called Felix. We attempted to stay with them when we were first in London last June but they were having an unfortunate infestation of bedbugs (picked up in San Francisco, so beware if you’re visiting the Bay Area, because they are the second case we’ve heard of). Our vagabond life this summer would be paradise for bed bugs, so we didn’t even come to the apartment to visit, but rather made them meet us on the neutral territory of Hampstead Heath.

Anyway, bedbugs have been successfully eradicated, so here we are, eating tasty home-cooked food—pasta and veggies and beans our first night, brownies that Ian made for dessert the second night, crepes with Greek yoghurt and apricots and bananas or raspberry jam for breakfast yesterday morning, and so far the piéce de resistance: last night’s dinner of chicken fajitas.

J grew up in Arizona cooking Southwest food, so even in London the fajitas were pretty authentic, and the company—us, them, and five others of their friends—made us feel right at home, as if we, too, had just stopped by for dinner. The generosity of our friends on this trip has been so appreciated—it really makes a huge difference to feel so welcomed and so at home all over this continent. And our clothes have stayed pretty clean.

That’s How They Getcha

note: 2nd post today! Be sure to read on . . .

We’ve just arrived back in London today, and our summer seems to be over. There’s been a lot of rain here recently (including right now)—not sure if any of you Americans have heard this on the news, but it’s actually been pretty serious here in the UK. Lots of people without water (the great irony of floods, but, as with Katrina back home, beer tankers have been coming to the rescue and delivering emergency H2O), transportation messed up (Heathrow and the Tube), and various other issues. Welcome to Prime Ministerhood, Gordon Brown.

So, as usual, we purchased a case of port in Porto. Not only is it a family tradition now; it’s really, really good. I’m not sure if I mentioned that Ian and I sampled some other 20-year tawnies the day that we bought ours—I’m pleased to report that Calém is, in both our opinions, still the best (and no, not because the name sort of resembles mine). It’s always an issue transporting the port, though. It’s heavy, and evidently no one in Portugal will ship alcohol privately to the States (since each state has its own liquor importation laws, customs and tariffs and whatnot are complicated, so Portugal just doesn’t play). We can’t carry it on to planes either, not anymore, so we purchased a new bag (a bright orange roller), and thought that three checked bags between the two of us would be more or less manageable to get out of Portugal, and ultimately back to the US (we’re staying with friends in London right now, and will again at the end of August, so Big Orange will stay here while we continue our journeys. We’re not going to be popping on and off of buses and trains with giant rucksacks, heavy computer bags, and a large orange roller suitcase carrying twelve bottles of port. That’s just ridiculous.).

Anyway, first stop at the airport this morning was the car rental agency to drop off our car. This one, too, was an Opel Corsa, and brand-spanking-new. I think it had 26 kms on it when we picked it up. It had an even more useless engine, though, than the last one. On the motorway, we could more or less almost maintain 100 kph (speed limit was 120) going up a slight incline, if we downshifted to 4^th and floored it. More or less. But back to my story.

I reserved the car online, and we got a pretty good deal for it—€236 or something for 9 days—and then when we picked it up, evidently the rate had changed, and they dropped the total cost down to €226. That’s at least one lunch, so we didn’t argue (okay, anyone who argues with a multinational corporation about a €10 discount is crazy, anyway).

Sometime while we were in Trás os Montes, my credit card stopped working. When I called to find out why, it seemed that the rental car company had, instead of charging me €226, charged me about €1,000 instead. That looked suspicious, so VISA had put a hold on my account. I did not authorize them to pay the charge, figuring it would all get worked out when I returned the car.

So this morning at the agency I waited patiently while they checked me in on the computer, then found my initial paperwork and perused that, then looked over everything again (seriously, it was a 20 minute process), then finally went into the back. I assumed they would come back with some notice that I hadn’t paid, but no. The agent handed me €6, said “Obrigado,” and sent me on my way.

So, it would seem that, instead of paying €226 for our 9-day rental, we actually got paid €6. Okay . . . (note: since writing this, I've accessed my CC records and they did, in fact, charge me for the car. Still, a discount of €16 is nothing to thumb your nose at.)

So off to the terminal to check in for our flight, on TAP. We handed over our two rucksacks, then started to haul Big Orange onto the scale.

“Oh no,” said the agent. “Is that yours too?”

“Yes . . .”

“Because you’re only allowed 20 kgs each on this flight.”

“Can we pay for the extra bag?” asked Ian.

“Yes,” said Claudia, our agent, “but I’m afraid it’s very expensive. It’s €50 per 5 kgs over the total.”

“What?” we gasped, shocked. “FIFTY EUROS for every extra five kilos?!?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” she replied. “That would be about €360 for this extra bag.”

I explained that it was port, and we couldn’t send it, and we couldn’t carry it on, so what should we do? Our tickets, both of them together, had cost less than €200. Could we just buy another plane ticket, and its attendant 20 kg, and call it good? But of course we couldn’t—tickets purchased one hour before the flight are much more expensive.

“You could try air cargo,” Claudia suggested. “You can walk there—it’s not far. I’ll check in all three bags just in case, but as cargo it will probably arrive sometime today, and it will probably be cheaper. Try it, and come back to see me and let me know if it works. But see me only, okay?”

So, off we went to air cargo, which is in the old terminal of Porto’s airport, from which I actually flew several times 10 years ago. We were able to send Big Orange to London (Heathrow instead of Gatwick, where we were flying, and so obviously not on our same plane), arriving this evening, for only €93, which, if you divide by two and add it to the tickets we’d already purchased, really didn’t end up being that much more. Our toiletries are in Big Orange, but I think we’ll live without them tonight and go collect them in the morning. I'd like to note that our flight from Porto to London wasn't even 1/5 full, so it definitely wasn't a space or weight issue. On the other hand, they clearly weren't making much money on our flight.

Back in the fancy new terminal, we waved at Claudia We made it! from across a crowd of new checker-inners, and negotiated security and passport control with a minimum of fuss.

The only bad part of the journey (as opposed to the cargo part, which was a somewhat bemusing novelty and, ultimately, only a bit irritating) was landing at Gatwick, where there were still rainstorms, and after descending for some unknown amount of altitude through choppy, gray clouds, we put the landing gear down, saw some green pastures near below us, and suddenly did one of those reverse descents (read: very labored and speedy ascents) back up into the misty turbulent closeness. We bumped around for another 15 minutes before attempting to land again (Ian and I tried to distract ourselves with Tintin and the Broken Ear, in Portuguese, with nominal success). This time we came down completely, but several times we wondered if one of the turbulent drops was going to slam us into the ground just a little too hard for the landing gear to handle.

Five days here, then off to Latvia! The adventure continues . . .

The Internet: Our Succor, Our Downfall

Note: As my friend Chiara might put it, Bragança’s Cyber Center found out I was going to break up with it and broke up with me first. I attempted to send this post the morning I picked up our car, but alas failed.

The first day we were in Bragança, we discovered the modern (and modernly architected) Mercado Municipal and our favorite part of it: the Cyber Center. As you know, the WiFi there wasn’t compatible with my computer, but the cord plugging me directly into their network functioned just fine. Anyway, we went every day, and even when we agreed, more or less, that one hour would be enough, we usually stayed two or three.

Well, last night, this inability to control ourselves in the virtual world took its toll.

There’s a parking garage under the Mercado Municipal. The first day we paused as we entered and took a ticket. We discussed whether or not to leave it on the dash or take it with us when we went upstairs; I eventually saw that it said to take it, not leave it in the car. When it came time to leave, we looked around, and realized that the exit gate was open. Then we realized that the entrance gate was open as well, and that evidently all that had led us to take a ticket was our inability to pass a button without pushing it.

Ever after, we entered without taking a ticket.

Last night, several days after our first visit, I noticed that the “Caixa para pagar (box for payment)” wasn’t there under its sign on the wall. Even though there were several signs detailing how much you were to pay for the privilege of parking a mere elevator’s ride from the Cyber Center, there didn’t seem to be any way to do so. Anyway, up we merrily went and spent probably two hours futzing around.

When we were finally done, and, at 9:00pm, starting to get hungry for dinner (I tell you, we have embraced the European eating habits) we went to the elevator to go back down to our car. Even though the elevator was clearly visible on our floor, the door just cracked, it didn’t work.

“I’m not actually sure I’d want to get in it, even if the doors did open,” I said to Ian after we’d pushed the button several times. “But there are some stairs that I saw back this way.”

We took the stairs down, two floors, all the way to the parking garage, and when we arrived there we found—yes, you’re very smart, and you guessed correctly—the garage was closed. Our car was locked in.

In Seattle, when garages are locked at night, either the door will open from the inside when you’re driving out (the Cost Plus garage is an example of this—if you wait until after the attendants go home, you don’t have to pay), or there’s an emergency after hours number you can call that will get your car out (although you have to pay a fine). We looked everywhere; nothing.

I had dimly remembered that the garage was open until 22:00 hours . . . but I had remembered wrong. It was only open until 20:30, and we would’ve made it if we hadn’t been obsessed with gmail and latviarooms.com. We went back upstairs (fortunately the interior fire doors weren’t locked) and the attendant at the Cyber Center directed us to a taxi rank, and we made our way back to our village by taxi (only €10, including tip).

The driver picked me up this morning and brought me back to the Mercado. It seems that our car wasn’t, in fact, ticketed, and so, after all, no fine!

Unless, of course, you count the €20 taxi fare. I couldn’t tell if the driver was amused, or sorry for us.

Anyway, endless adventures.

By the way, the hotel/salsicharia/restaurant complex where we’ve been staying has been great, even including the weird kitchen. For dinner tonight we had three different sausages and prosciutto, cheese, bread, and a sort of rabbit risotto, and a bottle of excellent red wine. Dessert was homemade blackberry ice cream and samples of different homemade liqueurs—cherry, raspberry, and orange. Yum!

Note About the Kitchen

I realized making sandwiches yesterday that the problem isn't that the cabinets are only two feet above the countertops, but rather that they are the exact same depth as the counter tops. Really, it's very strange.

Art or Life?

Horse Pics

The horses coming in from turnout.

Huna leading the pack (she was a bit chunky).

Boy Do I Love the Horses

Horse riding on vacation is a bit strange. I’ve now ridden five times, and aside from the first time, each experience has evidently been a bit of a surprise to the people offering it. When we were in Naxos, where I first rode, every time we turned a corner we came upon a sign posted for Naxos Horse Riding. They were stuck on phone booths, which made sense, and on the side of the thousand-year-old Kastro, which didn’t so much. And when I called to book, Iris Neuberger (or whatever her last name was), being German, was very organized and business-like, as was the entire experience.

Ever since Naxos, even though people have advertised, or posted a big sign next to their farms, or been listed in the Lonely Planet, they’ve been surprised, and even a little bemused, when I’ve called to ride. My calls, in English or Portuguese, go something like this:

Them: “Hello?”

Me: “Is this the horse riding?”

Them: “Yes . . .”

Me: “Um, I’d like to go riding.”

Them: “Okay . . .”

Me: “Um, how about tomorrow?”

Them: “How many people?”

Me: “Well, just me.”

Them: “Okay. How long have you ridden?”

Me: “About 30 years.”

Them: “Okay.”

Me: “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow, say, 3 pm?”

Them: “Okay, 3pm. (click)”

Me: Okay . . .

In Orkney, the girl who guided me was great—I liked her a lot—but she had just started guiding (although she rode well) and didn’t know where the trails went (although I enjoyed just being out on a horse . . . in the thick, trail-obscuring mist).

In Porto Côvo, since we were there 11 days, I thought I would ride twice. The first time, I had the above conversation, only they asked me to call back the next day to set a time (to weed out the people who weren’t, in fact, that serious about it?). The guide I had was a Belgian girl, from the Flemish part of Belgium, who spoke Portuguese and Flemish and English. The second time I tried to ride, I was given a number to call and was told, again, to call the next day to schedule . . . only after that, no one ever answered any of the phones again, so I only rode the once.

In Évora, of course, it was all organized by the Dutch owner of the house and I had that great experience riding through the Alentejo for a couple hours.

Horse riding in Montesinho Park is listed as an activity in the Lonely Planet. They say that there are stables in França, and you have to book through one of the park offices, either in Bragança, or Vinhais (a city on the western edge of the park). When I asked at the park office in Bragança, the ranger lady looked a bit confused, then said I’d have to go directly to the Centro Hipico in França. I asked if she had a phone number for the center (if they’re supposed to be making reservations for riding . . . ), and she did eventually dig one up. Nevertheless, Ian and I felt it would be easier to just go directly to the Centro Hipico.

We stopped a few days ago, on our way to the aborted fly walk. A groom named Mario was doing some horse care when we arrived—bringing in four horses who were in turnout, and letting out two young stallions (separately), changing bedding, feeding, grooming. He invited me to groom one of the horses, a lovely and sweet Lusitano named Huna (Oona), who clearly loved being scraped and polished. Fun for me, less work for him—a perfect setup.

After I’d had enough of horse-pampering, Mario found us the phone number of the center and the cell number of a guy named Paolo, who was in charge while the other manager, someone who spoke English, was in England, at Exmoor, either at a show or buying horses or something. My Portuguese isn’t that good at speed.

Later that afternoon I called the center and asked for Paolo; no, he wasn’t in yet. Later yet I called again, half-expecting a repeat of the Porto Côvo no-one-answers-the-phone-ever-again situation, but I managed to reach Paolo, and he invited me to ride today, from 4 to 5.

Okay.

So when I arrived today, it turned out that none of the horses have shoes, so they couldn’t be ridden on the gravel roads running through the park. Instead, I would be able to ride in the small round arena, and in one of the pastures, if that would be okay. Since riding was what I wanted to do, and trail riding wasn’t absolutely necessary, I said sure, that would be fine.

Paolo handed me a helmet and put me on Huna, and then let me go to have my fun. And you know, it was great!

I’ve never yet had enough time in my riding lesson schedule to come up with a day for hacking (riding without an instructor—a practice session where you work, on your own, on things you’ve been learning in lessons), but when I start up lessons again I’m definitely going to make time for a hack. Huna and I circled around the arena for awhile, practicing sitting trot and leg yields and bending and cantering each direction (she preferred cantering left), then we went out into the pasture and tooled around there, doing extended trots and more cantering, and practicing turning away from the barn even though she didn’t want to. There were a few jumps set up, and I was tempted to do a couple, but decided that new horse, wrong boots (i.e. a pair of Puma sneakers—bright red, really cute), new field, and permanent jumps (they were made out of logs, not bars that can just be kicked away) were enough reasons for discretion to win. I rode a little over an hour, loving it the whole time, and at the end Paolo apologized to me for me having to work on the horse (because, I guess, she wanted to go back to her stall?). Anyway, absolutely no apology necessary. Huna and I each got some schooling, and I got some time in the saddle, and it all reminded me, yet again, that I love riding. I drove home listening to Free to Be You and Me, and grinning the whole time.

And Ian got some good work done.

Some Pics of Northeast Portugal

Me crossing the river in Chaves. I love these "bridges", and they're very popular out here.
Ian caught up with me.
On the road to Gimonde, where we're staying.
The ridiculous kitchen.
Beautiful bridge in the middle of our walk today. Some flies, but not too many.

The Kindness of Strangers

It seems that my last two posts were a little crabby, so let me take a moment to write about something a lot sweeter.

We're staying in a refurbished house on the edge of the Parque Natural de Montesinhos, complete with a shared kitchen (of a weird, weird, inconvenient design--the cabinets come down to about two feet over the counters, so when you're doing anything with your hands--cutting, stirring a boiling pot--you can't see anything but the blank white cabinet door in front of your nose and so you feel a bit like the hands in one of those old skits from camp where you're the hands feeding someone else's face cereal or brushing someone else's teeth. But, of course, you have the knives and the boiling. But I wasn't going to complain . . . that's right . . . ), so it's pretty convenient. We had dinner last night with two other guests, or, at least, we all ate at the same time, although two different dinners. But afterwards we shared their port and our port, and talked long into the late evening (almost midnight, which would be late night in other parts of the world but is evening in Iberia).

There is also a restaurant, in the next building over, owned by the same folks who run the inn. We ate there our first two nights, and enjoyed it very much. The woman who served us is very sweet, and spoke to me in Portuguese, and asked if we wanted the TV on (we said no, because we have no resistance whatsoever and it's nice to at least look at each other once in awhile while eating, and taste the food), and served us only one Javali (wild pig) dinner instead of two, which meant that we only had a little left over, which she wrapped for us to take home.

On Friday we went again and had goat, which was also good, and potatoes and salad and a cornmeal pudding with amazing fig compote for dessert, and some local walnut liqueur. We were the only people in the restaurant when we arrived, but it was only 8:30 so this didn't strike us as particularly odd. Also, she put us in a different room than the first night, but we assumed it was because the room didn't have a TV, and we hadn't wanted to watch it (other people came in after us the first night and turned on the TV). Anyway, it all seemed like a perfectly normal dining experience. She wrapped our extra meat for us to take home--I explained that I'd used the Javali in sandwiches and would do the same with the Cabrito--and we left.

The next morning, yesterday, when I opened the Cabrito to make the sandwiches, I saw that she had put in extra meat. She was afraid that what we'd had left wouldn't have been enough to feed us, so she gave us more. Very, very sweet.

Then, last night at dinner when we were talking with our fellow guests, I told the story of the extra meat.

"But the restaurant wasn't open last night," said the man.

"What?" said we.

"It's closed on Friday nights," he said. "We went over to get a coffee after dinner and it was definitely closed."

So there you have it. The restaurant was closed, but without hesitation the lady gave us a lovely dinner anyway, and not only that, extra food so we could have a lovely lunch the next day.

The world is a wonderful place, flies and all.

Honey

I used to think that mosquitoes were the worst insect scourge in the world, but in the absence of mosquitoes, flies will do quite well. They seem to love me, these flies, no matter how much I swear and wave my arms around and stomp and behave like vinegar. They were so bad on our walk yesterday that, in a very un-Mathewson show of defeat, I agreed to turn back before we'd even gone 1/3 of the 8 kilometers. This is practically unheard of--Mathewsons, as you know, never stop doing something they want to do, even if they're exhausted and sweaty and looking like Pig-Pen (which Ian didn't deny, when I asked. In fact, he said "yes, you do!"). IRRITATING.

We had some in our room, too, for about 24 hours. It's not so bad at night, when they sleep too, but they wake up with the sun (read: a couple hours earlier than I want to) and find any bit of exposed flesh that they can, and perch there with their shit feet. They even flew up my little breathing tunnel when I covered my head with the sheet. DISGUSTING. And we couldn't find a flyswatter anywhere.

Anyway, after our aborted walk yesterday, I went home, rage in my heart, and with a brochure for the park, killed every last one of the two flies in our room (there had been three, but Ian had managed to catch one in one hand in a weird pseudo-Karate Kid move. But, I tell you, they seem like hundreds when they're flying into your nose and landing on your lips). And they haven't been back since.

New Technology=New Frustrations

Here we are in beautiful Bragança, in far northeastern Portugal in the mountains, in an area where several times on the “highway” we passed people going to or from fields on horse-drawn carts. We’re sitting in the CyberCenter, looking out over steep, golden-and-green hills and an ancient city with a medieval stone fortress at the center, which is still inhabited. Idyllic, no? No. Of course, for some reason, I couldn’t get the WiFi to work on my computer (this is almost unheard of for me—my computer has the best, in general, antenna of any laptop I’ve encountered. Perhaps the antenna is too good—I think maybe the signal was being crossed by another signal, but who knows. Certainly not me.), and then the Cat5 cable didn’t work for awhile, and so I’ve spent at least 30 minutes treading water. Or not even that, because at least when you’re treading water you’re getting some exercise.

ANYway. Enough complaining. It’s working now, so I’ll be able to tell you that we’re staying on the edge of the Parque Natural de Montezinhos, where we’re going to go hiking over the next several days when we’re not working, and maybe see wild boar (which we know from dinner last night is quite tasty), and maybe start to work off all the sausage we’ve eaten in the last month or so.

Someone told my Porto friend F that Portugal is either up to the minute, or medieval. It’s really true.