My landlady is coming in a few minutes, and I’m dreading her visit. She wants to “see” what things she left in the apartment. “A whole wardrobe full and then some.” I want to say, “Please don’t buy anything else. I think your apartment can be considered ‘beyond furnished’ already.”
But I will try to smile as she pokes through my drawers and makes loud, unfiltered remarks. Maybe I will soothe my shattered calm with chocolate once she is gone.
The other day, I had a thought: Would it work best to be mentally present in only one world at a time? My feet are inevitably in two worlds right now, but does my mind have to be?
Yesterday, I was mentally in the States, shopping online for wedding paraphernalia, acting on a few decisions, buying a wedding gift for a friend, laughing with my bridesmaids about imaginary wedding disasters, and the like. When I needed a break from the screen, I returned to Spain, chatting with a shopkeeper, going for a walk, etc.
Today, I stayed in Spain, bouncing along on the bus to a meeting, setting up final healthcare appointments, and whatnot.
Now I am waiting for my landlady to come peer in my cabinets. Once she leaves, I have a handful of other projects I’d like to get to… after my chocolate, of course.
I’m not feeling particularly inspired to write on my blog. I asked J if he had any inspiration for me. He suggested that I write about Ecclesiastes, but only because he’s preaching through Ecclesiastes right now and that’s what’s on his brain.
I don’t have anything “ecclesiastical” to enlighten you with, but I remembered a poem I wrote many years ago. You may read it if you promise not to analyze it much; I think the only value I had in mind when I wrote it was face value.
"Vanity" The sun races across the sky Another day; another try. The wind circles as it blows Terrific sound; nowhere to go. All day trickling streams will stray To oceans same as yesterday. What’s the purpose to be me In light of so much vanity?
…
Well, since I copied and pasted this poem, my landlady swept in, summer dress billowing behind her. She snooped in the cupboards, teetered on a stool while trying to fix a blind that was broken long before I moved in, told me her moderately-unrealistic dreams for the apartment, and took the last payment of rent that I will give her.
I’m glad that’s done. I found that her presence eerily echoed the words of my poem. I could unpack that a little more, but right now, I feel depleted in a way that not even chocolate will alleviate.
I’m packing my bags. Well, to be honest, I’ve been packing for a while now, trying to make every kilo count down to the last gram.
Mom told me the Amazon packages she’s piling on my desk in Illinois make her think of Mr. Grabbit. Toothbrushes, shoes, supplements, etc. Things I won’t have to bring with me.
I’m planning to wear multiple outfits to give myself several sets of clothes for the trip. “I might look homeless when you pick me up at the airport,” I tell J. The layers of clothing, the bulging pockets I stitched to the inside of my jacket, and the supermarket bag I’m planning to use as a carry-on might make me a key candidate for surveillance. Especially since I’m clambering into Chicago the weekend before the Democratic National Convention.
Time is winding down. Less than two more days now. My to-do list is moderate, all things considered. I put “mop the floor” at the top. The dirt on the bottoms of my feet comes off in rolls when I rub my feet together.
Below are a few snippets of summer life here that happen through the giddiness of preparing to see my family, friends, and J…
I love the extra wiggle room of a summer schedule. While most people choose not to cook or bake this time of year, I’ve tried North African bread, North African lentils, brownies with peanut butter and almond flour, and crackers with ground sunflower seeds. I’ve also attempted couscous twice and decided that “moderately close” is as good as it’s going to get for now. Puttering in my kitchen is delightful without the breath of a dozen other tasks at my neck.
I’ve been studying language at the local library. The walk across town in the afternoon sunshine is oppressive, but it doesn’t eclipse the joy of descending to the cool library basement. The summer crowd is sparse and the quiet is so thick it almost hurts until the ink chamber inside a pen rattles as someone write a note or careful feet tick down the stairs. I don’t use the library resources other than the air conditioning and the atmosphere, but it’s always worth it.
Summer has also been a good time to meet up with the friends who remain in Spain, to spend time in their worlds or let them be a part of mine. Maybe it’s English class or breakfast together. Or my little neighbor boys come up for a visit with their mommy to play with Legos, make the floor sticky with melon juice, and watch cookies bake with great anticipation.
While the cookies are still in the oven, I give them a drink of water which they drink with too-long straws. “Do you want one?” I ask the oldest boy, offering a container of dates I have on the counter.
“No,” he says. “I want chocolate cookies.” And he returns to watch them through the oven door, content to wait.
There have been meetings, appointments, and the like. This week is also my week to work ahead on office manager responsibilities in an attempt to keep my absence from being too obvious.
I guess you might say that I’m planning to be distracted for the next few weeks. 😉 Until another day, then…
I had never used the BlaBlaCar app before. Surely a carpooling app couldn’t be as pain-free as it looked. But it was! J and I arrived at the Málaga Costa del Sol airport in plenty of time. We checked in and zipped through security and border control before parking ourselves just inside of the international gate area to people-watch.
We were some of the last passengers to board our flight. Why rush to constrain yourself to a seat that’s already reserved for you? Our 15 euro flight got us to North Africa safely. After we landed, J and I stayed in our seats rather than smashing ourselves against the other passengers in the aisle. We didn’t even stand up, necks bent at unnatural angles under the overhead bins. (Why do we do this?!)
A man who had been watching us announced to the other passengers: “These are the most intelligent people on here! They waited to get on the plane until the last and they are waiting to get off the plane too!”
As we waited in the customs line, I couldn’t wait and asked J, “What do you think of North Africa so far?” Wisely, he returned that he wasn’t sure if his first impressions were accurate and that he’d rather wait to give them.
We stepped out of the airport and were spat into North African culture where overly helpful taxi drivers swarmed. After hemming and hawing, we agreed to a ride for 150 dirham, 50 dirham less than the initial asking price.
Once we had been deposited in our friends’ neighborhood, I asked the neighborhood guard where the Americans lived. He pointed me to a black gate and told me how many stories up. Americans in that part of the world don’t have much anonymity, and that is what I had been counting on.
We joined the family, catching up on life, hanging out with the children, and feasting on a giant stir-fry for supper.
The next day was our day to tour the city. It was my chance to show J the world that had been mine for 16 months. We passed my old language school and I recalled the hours I had spent exhausting my sweat and tears while learning Arabic. We dropped by my old neighborhood too, even popping in at the little store around the corner to say hello and buy a Snicker bar just because. (We also forgot about that Snicker bar until it became a squished pile in the bottom of our warm and sweaty backpack.)
From there, we snagged a taxi to the old city. I could already feel myself shriveling into a prune. The weather was hotter than I had expected and much drier than either of us were used to. We couldn’t keep up with our water intake.
We descended into the heart of the old city to the renowned tanneries, avoiding anyone who was too helpful. In fact, over the course of the day we managed to disappoint a lot of hopeful shopkeepers, browsing rather than buying. At the tanneries, we stood at the lookout and peered down on all of the action. There was so much to watch at once. J shooed away an over-eager tour guide, preferring to figure things out on his own.
We hunted for a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, but the only one I remembered wasn’t serving lunch yet. So we bought street food instead: neems (fried spring rolls), briouats (a triangular, chicken filled pastry), kalinte (chickpea flan) sprinkled with cumin and red pepper, and olives with lemon and parsley.
We looked for a place to eat our collection, and finally found a sunny spot along the ledge of a fence. But first on our menu was activated charcoal. Three pills before and three after a meal. With street food on a warm day, I got pretty bossy about following the instructions. We took our time, munching and tossing olive pits at the trunk of a scrawny tree in the sidewalk. Even there in that scorching African sunbeam, our repast was delicious.
From my time of living in the city, I had fond memories of climbing up the side of a hill to a set of ancient tombs that overlooked the city. But how to get there? We stopped to ask directions. The shopkeeper gave us some of his life story for free as well as detailed directions, which I promptly forgot by trying to retain everything he said. No matter. We still had Google maps and what was left of my memory. We wound our way up the hill, admired the tombs and the view and then parked ourselves in the shade until my fantasy about a tall glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice overpowered the lure of a shady spot.
We spent a chunk of the afternoon perched on a restaurant’s third story, sipping orange juice, eating tagine, and watching people swirling in and out of the city gate below. Once we had cooled off, we meandered back to our friends’ house, with one last stop to buy an ear of roasted street corn.
The next morning, we envisioned ourselves arriving at the international church on time. Instead, with all of the careful packing that went into the morning–the gifts for a friend’s family, the trusty charcoal, and the Imodium, just in case–I managed to forget my wallet. My wallet which held our only local currency.
“I’m sorry. We don’t have money,” I told the taxi driver. “Take us back to the house.” Obligingly, he made a loop at the next roundabout and waited outside while I dashed up the flights of stairs to retrieve my wallet. Any dreams of arriving at church on time were crushed.
Although the fellowship had changed since I had been there last, it was still charged with a buzzing energy of brothers and sisters in Christ uniting after a long week. After the service, I was able to reconnect with a few acquaintances before we were on our way to visit Chaimae and her family.
I was surprised by how Chaimae’s family remained unchanged. Throughout the day, most of the family dropped by, delighted to meet J and practice their English. They fed us breakfast and then fed us several courses of lunch a few hours later. That afternoon, J got a very long look into North African culture.
Our time in the city was drawing to a close. The next morning we breakfasted on eggs and khlea, a cured beef that tastes like a barn. I hung out in the egg section, but J preferred the barny beef. The guy has an inexcusably tolerant palate.
As we left the city, I looked out the bus window, wondering if I was saying goodbye forever. I felt nostalgic but realized I no longer had a lingering sense of belonging.
This summer, I was encouraged to add recreational activities to my regular schedule. “What do I enjoy doing?” I asked myself. My default pleasure activity has always been reading, any free time passing with my nose in a book. But surely that wasn’t all I enjoyed.
Then I remembered that I like puttering around in the kitchen when I have purpose but no pressure. The remembrance felt like walking into the embrace of a dear friend, so when I returned to Spain, I determined to make time for recreational cooking.
Roughly every other weekend, but sometimes in another available time here or there, I plan a time for recreational cooking. I call it a “foodie night,” but mostly just to myself because, truth be told, I’m not a foodie; I just like trying a new recipe now and then without the pressure of it needing to turn out.
The foodie night process starts long before the evening I get to try out a new recipe. It starts with ideas–maybe an ingredient I see that I didn’t know I could get here in Spain, or something someone else mentions they made. Then I hunt down a recipe, gather ingredients from hither and yon around town (and invent substitutions for those I can’t find). And maybe the recipe requires a little prep beforehand. At last, foodie night arrives, and I pull out my collection of ingredients, turn on some music, and take my time.
Here’s what I’ve made so far:
Miso soup ⭐
Spring rolls with shrimp, cucumber, carrot, and mint dipped in peanut sauce ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Miso soup again ⭐
Gelatin gummies ⭐
100% Rye bread, recipe #1 ⭐
Sugar-free chocolate mousse ⭐⭐⭐⭐
100% Rye bread again, recipe #2 ⭐⭐
100% Rye bread for the third time, recipe #3 ⭐⭐
Perhaps the stars say it all. They surely tell you that you’re glad you weren’t around to taste test!
I decided that miso is an acquired taste that I don’t feel like acquiring. Or maybe I chose the wrong recipes to try. Who knows? The only thing the spring rolls were missing was more shrimp. My tight-wad amount of shrimp was masked by the show-stealing peanut sauce. The gelatin gummies were a nice thought, but just tasted like bland finger Jell-O. And then began the rye bread saga. The flavor was right every time…but I was always disappointed by the incredible density that made it more chewy than pleasurable. The last loaf puffed promisingly in the oven, but collapsed when I removed it. The chocolate mousse was a modest success, but only with myself since I didn’t share it with anyone.
Although many of these attempts didn’t turn out like I had envisioned, it doesn’t really matter. The joy of the process was exactly what I had envisioned.
Leaving Illinois–leaving family, friends, and church community–was hard as usual. Well, maybe even harder than usual. I flip on the electric kettle and wait at the counter’s edge while my Barry’s tea bag floats atop the milk in the bottom of my favorite mug. I’m back in Spain and life in the States feels far away. “Well, here I am. Alone again.”
My bags are unpacked. My house is relatively clean except the random projects strewn around the living room. I live downtown and it just feels so quiet.
Then again…
A neighbor (and her irritating dog) dropped by because I’d promised her chocolate for watching my apartment while I was gone. She apologized over and over again for killing my plants and insisted I take the remaining straggler with me before she killed that one too.
Another neighbor (a new one) dropped by to ask if my apartment was for rent. Umm…
Yet another neighbor dropped by to ask if I could pick up her daughter from school. She caught me during a salad laden with chia seeds. While we were chatting, I felt a seed swelling between my front teeth. I couldn’t subtly pry it out with my tongue, so there it stayed and I punctuated the conversation with seedy smiles.
My neighbor boy dropped by to visit, strewing cookie crumbs across the floor as he made his rounds, examining everything new in the house. “What did you miss most?” his mom asked him. “Her or her toys?” He grinned and looked away. But he pointed at me.
As I was out and about this morning, I decided to make a list of the things I like about being back in Spain. The cons can go without mention this time.
The sunshine!
The accessibility to quality food, especially fresh produce.
Knowing my way around stores.
Having sales tax included in the price.
Living downtown where neighbors pop in and out and almost everything I need is within walking distance.
Good ol’ Spanish directness. (Yes, this can get annoying too, but I’m choosing the positive side today.) This morning, as I was standing at the hardware store counter, another customer plunked a packet of screws on the counter and said they were the wrong size. “How do we know you didn’t take some out?” asked the clerk, eyes narrowing. “There’s a screw of a different class.” Indeed, on a bed of bland screws was a gold-colored one. Where had it come from? There would be no getting around the fact that the package had been tampered with. I felt a giggle bubbling up but tried to swallow it down. Even in customer service, there were no niceties. No frills or lace bordering this conversation.
Amazon packages that arrive rápidamente with or without Prime.
Fast internet.
Cheap phone plans.
The reminder that God is here too.
The variety of people–colors, ages, personalities, nationalities–all piled into my neighborhood.
The late schedule. When I roll out of bed at 8:00, the streets are still pretty quiet, as if I’m not the only one reluctant to get started on the day.
My apartment. Knowing my kitchen–what utensils and pots and pans I have and what is in my fridge because I’m the one who put it there.
That’s all for now. See? I’m already feeling less alone and more… I don’t know… ready.
As I sit down to write, I realize that it’s been a while since I wrote part 1 and even longer since I was actually in Alaska. But I’m here today at last. 🙂
Moving on…
The bulk of the touristing happened in the first couple of days while the sun was shining. The week’s forecast was glum, and it wasn’t far off the mark. We spent days and partial days running errands or just at home, organizing for the beginning of the school year.
We did have an exciting incident involving a broken down refrigerated truck, laden with ice cream and Texas toast and Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches. Free while supplies lasted. That night, we put the kids to bed and then curled up on the couches with popcorn. There were more long talks throughout the next couple of days.
On Sunday morning, I overheard my friend tell her husband that someone had brought them some moose. “How nice. Mousse,” I thought, visions of chocolate fluff dancing in my head. “Yum.” It wasn’t until they were digging around in the cooler that it dawned on me that I was in Alaska, for goodness’ sakes, and this wasn’t chocolate.
I got to taste that moose for supper one night with a bit of barbecue sauce drizzled on top beside a slab of perfect flaky grilled salmon.
One evening, we went flying just as the sun was thinking about setting. As my friend’s husband, the pilot, explained everything to me, I nodded and smiled and wondered why he was being so informative…until I realized that he was asking me to lift the thing off the ground. Gasp.
We managed to stay alive in spite of that, and soon were gliding over mountains with no roads and no people. It was strange to peek into such an untouched land, to let our eyes adjust to seeing tiny black dots which, as we drew closer, became black bears, bull moose, or caribou camouflaged on the rocky mountainside. We watched a black bear lope along the side of a mountain as our shadow chased him. And we flew over a blue glacier snuggled into the mountains.
It was stunning.
Until it wasn’t and I was holding a little baggie to my mouth. But let’s skip over that part because it’s hardly the part I remember. When I look back, I see the magical moments of glimpsing hidden bits of creation. It was that same night on our way home from the airport that we saw a moose soaking a swamp beside the road and a black bear gallop across the road in front of us.
On my very last day, it rained. But we bravely started the several hour drive to Homer, a fishing town. The boys were excited. My friend and I spent the hours talking… when we weren’t passing out PBJs and carrots and water bottles and wiping sticky fingers or settling arguments. 🙂 We also were busy doubting our decision all of the way to Homer. The clouds hung low and wet, and with clouds, there would be no scenery. Without scenery, Homer was a waste of time, my friend said.
But as we approached the Homer Spit, it began to clear. And it was perfect. We saw a puffin, a sea otter, starfish, jellyfish, and the boys even saw a seal. We walked along the beach and soaked in the scenery. And just before we left, we got we walked along the docks where fishing boats bobbed gently in the water. The cool air was fresh with just enough of a fishy tang to remind you that you weren’t dreaming.
We grabbed one last chai on our way out.
I left that evening, but with a heap of good memories. I wish I could bottle up the beauty of that week to take it with me to Spain. Then whenever I needed some beauty in the middle of my city life, I could uncap the bottle and sip a bit of Alaskan scenery.
Our goal to leave at 9:30 got us out the door by a remarkable 10:30. We were planning to mosey over to Interlaken to find those stunning picturesque spots that end up on everybody’s Instagram feed. Instead, the closer we got to Interlaken, the closer we also got to Schilthorn, and the closer we got to Schilthorn, the more excited my brother-in-law got about taking the cable car up the mountain.
It was the perfect day for it, or the perfect morning at least. One glance at the forecast told us that it was now or never.
So we left Interlaken without any of those Instagram-worthy photos. (It’s just as well; none of us have Instagram anyway.) Oh, but first we stopped for a short fuel stop which turned into a loooong bathroom break. My sister, nephew and I waited in the rental car as the minutes streeeeeetched on. “Should I go check on them?” I asked. But we decided to stick together, just in case. The three of them finally emerged with a reconciliatory bag of clementines and cherry tomatoes. It turns out that they had been waiting outside of a locked bathroom door with nobody inside, until someone had enough mercy to give them the key.
We bought our cable car tickets at the bottom of the mountain. “Let’s go,” Dad said weakly and we began to question whether or not this was the best idea. Heights are–eh–not Dad’s thing, and riding a bulky cable car up the mountain on a skinny piece of wire was particularly frightening. But, in the end, we were all game enough to get on board… although, the incentive may have been partially due to choosing the lesser evil– “Stay at the bottom and watch my family plummet to a certain death or plummet along with them?”)
So up we went, Dad relating a story of a cable car crash he had seen recently on YouTube.
It was a blast. No plunging or swaying. As we glided up the mountain to 9,744 feet, the view was progressively more breathtaking. At the top, my sister and I went outside for a stroll and came in stiff from the icy wind. But oh the view!
We climbed a final set of stairs to Piz Gloria, the rotating restaurant at the tippy top of the mountain. The outer ring of the restaurant makes a complete circle every 45 minutes. Initially, we almost left Dad behind when his chair leg stuck to the immobile wall and kept him in place. He waved at us. “Well, goodbye!”
“Bye, Dad! See you in 45 minutes!”
Before and after lunch, my brother-in-law kept checking our oxygen levels. He claimed I was turning purple. I wasn’t the only one who got a headache before it was all said and done.
On our way back down the mountain, we discussed what rating we would give our day. Dad gave it a 9, but only after our feet were on solid ground again. Still, I would give him a 10 for conquering his fear of heights!
We got home, tired. “Well, no wonder,” said Mom. “We scaled a mountain!”
The next morning was our earliest yet… which wouldn’t break any records except our own.
My Swiss friend came to spend the day with us. It was rainy and muddy, a perfect day to spend tracking down a bit of Anabaptist history. Due to complications with the directions, we were late for our tour, practically unacceptable for the Swiss. I guess we got away with it since we were American. Our tour guide was kneading dough when we arrived. My sister wanted to roll her eyes, assuming it was an act to replay Anabaptist history. It turns out that our guide was simply working on lunch so we saved the eye-rolling and sat back to enjoy the tour.
She gave us a long bit of history and showed us around her house which was built in the 1600s with a hideout for persecuted Anabaptists. It was a fascinating peek into our heritage.
My friend took us to a Mom ‘n’ Pop style Swiss restaurant where we ordered rosti and Rivella (a resourceful soda made from leftover whey). It was glorious to have an interpreter rather than just offering blank, ignorant smiles. The food was yummy and [relatively] inexpensive. My nephew took it upon himself to charm the other restaurant patrons and spent most of the time turned around completely in his seat.
Later, we discovered that the restaurant claims to be the oldest restaurant in Switzerland, dating back to 1356!
My friend had warned us not to order dessert because she had something else in mind–a visit to the local Kambly cookie factory. There, we shamelessly helped ourselves to the samples–the only free thing we had found in Switzerland so far!–but then walked out with arms laden with purchased cookies. It turns out Kambly knows what it’s doing after all! One of the favorites was a chocolate merengue that managed to be both fudgy and crisp as it silently melted in our mouths.
Our last adventure was a local store which was really quite large and overwhelming. We bought chocolate and groceries mostly. And then topped off the evening with creamy Swiss ice cream which may have ruined our Prairie Farms palates forever.
Hello, everyone! It’s been a few weeks. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I have…mostly because the nudge to update has been less of a nudge and more of an ominous cloud above my week that I. Just. Can’t. Quite. Get. To.
But now it’s Sunday and I have a quiet morning before our afternoon church service. So here I am, pecking away on my phone because I’ve been staring at my computer screen far too many hours this week and the idea of voluntarily sitting down in front of it again threatens my emotional stability.
First, the reason I have fallen a bit behind in writing:
FAMILY!
Yes, my parents, sister, brother-in-law, and nephew came for a visit! Well, to be more accurate, we met up in Zurich and after a luscious week in Switzerland, came back to Spain for them to get a taste of my life.
This post is a bit of an introduction to our time together. We’ll see how wordy I get along the way. I was tempted to copy and paste the online journal we created for this trip, but as I read through it, I realized just how much it was not written for public consumption. *slight blush*
We met up on March 7 after we had all missed a night of sleep and felt covered in layers of trip grime gleaned from public restrooms and random people coughing on us. I arrived a while before my family since my flight from Madrid was more on time than their flight from London.
While I waited, I was startled by how much the people looked like me. Or I looked like them. I’m not sure which. As would soon be discovered, this caused some confusion because “Guten tag” can only go so far.
After the joyous reunion with my family, we were more than ready to leave the airport. But first, our reserved rental vehicle was a 5-seater for 6 of us. And then there were seatbelt issues that kept the car dinging at us as we wandered through the labriynth of airport traffic and had to pay 12 CHF for even daring to be there at all.
But as we left Zurich, the scenery continued to improve and so did our moods. Dad and I made the first shopping trip while everyone else snoozed in the van. Dad made a beeline for the meat and cheese and looked disgruntled whenever I dropped vegetables into our shopping basket. We may have spend a considerable amount of time in the chocolate aisle, but it was nothing compared to the time it took us to find a simple tube of mayo.
As we wound up into the mountains, we kept exclaiming over the stunning scenery…and the lack of guard rails on the narrow roads. Forget hairpin curves; winding up to the farm where we stayed was hairpinning all of the way! (My poor brother-in-law was very patient with the other 4 gasping drivers in the car with him.)
From the outside, our Airbnb looked a little dumpy. Mud. Dogs. Random farm equipment. (All of which we would eventually realize is part of small farm life in the Bern area.) But once we were inside, our place was warm, clean, and welcoming. The hostess had left us a loaf of fresh bread, homemade butter, cheese and jam.
We made ourselves at home.
Our first full day in Switzerland was rainy. We didn’t get a whole lot accomplished since it took considerable effort to drag everyone out of the house by 1 p.m. (Which means I don’t have to try to make a long story short for blogging purposes–the long story is short!)
We puttered along, “oh my”ing at the incredible scenery. We also snickered at the “ausfahrt” (exit) signs all along the way. My Swiss friend sent a message to welcome us to Switzerland.
“It’s so beautiful up here in the mountains!” I wrote back.
She laughed when she responded in a voice message. “These are the hills.”
We drove to Gruyère where we strolled around around the free part of a cheese factory and then feasted on cheese fondue until I wondered if I’d ever want to eat cheese again. Our waitress spoke English, which was helpful. She also spoke Spanish, which was fun.
Side note: The prices took us a while to get used to. Visiting Switzerland isn’t for the empty-of-pocket. Even though we had tried to prepare ourselves, at least one of us would often sigh or grumble.
We sipped hot chocolate from a shop across the the street from the cheese factory as we wandered back to our van. We tried to get a peek at the local castle, but we would have had to park and walk through the rain to even see it. So we started for home.
That was pretty much our day besides a quick Aldi stop and two liters of fresh milk on our doorstep when we got back to our Airbnb.
I’ll write more another day. We really did do more than eat cheese and chocolate, although those two reasons alone are enough to warrant a trip to Switzerland!
Have you ever been to Switzerland? What sorts of things did you do?
You may be tired of hearing about Ireland. I was only there a few days, after all. I suppose I could be succinct, but where’s the fun in that?
Friday morning we rolled out of bed at 4:45. We had packed our lunches the night before, so it didn’t take us long to get out the door and to the bus stop. Some of the grief from our place of residence had been eased by sleep. We were determined to love the day.
We had booked a day tour from Dublin (east coast) to the Cliffs of Moher and Galway (west coast). Our guide gave us a fascinating peek into Ireland’s history and culture as our coach bumbled out of Dublin. Then it was time to sit back and enjoy the scenery as the sun rose over the Irish countryside. Mists came up from the green rolling land, promising that fairies and leprechauns were real after all. It was breathtaking, but only one small part of a breathtaking day.
The weather was perfect: a mixture of sun and clouds and a constant but empty threat of rain. And the cliffs–Oh, the cliffs! No wonder the place was full of tourists with their cameras. My heart wanted to stop at the wild beauty of the place. (And having a cardiac arrest at the Cliffs of Moher would not have been so bad, really. Rather romantic.)
As we wandered up and down the marked trails, soaking it in, I couldn’t shake the sensation that I had stepped into a very beautiful photo.
We traveled through the Burren, our driver skillfully maneuvering the mammoth tour coach down skinny roads next to steep drop offs. We made a brief stop for photos in the National Park where craggy rocks dropped off into the ocean in impressive cliffs.
Our guide gave us another fascinating history lesson before we stopped at the Kilmacduagh Abbey ruins. I wanted an hour or two to roam, not 10 minutes.
Our last stop was Galway, an outstanding city on the west coast. Our guide told us just to go and enjoy the city without trying to see too much. That’s the best way to experience Galway, he said. He also gave us a list of restaurants, recommending the famous Galway fish and chips.
My friend bought us dinner at McDonagh’s for an early birthday gift–smoked fish and chips and fresh oysters. The last time I had tried oysters, I had wanted to gag. But that was in rural Illinois, about as far from the ocean as you can get. Would I gag this time? I was nervous as I squeezed lemon on my oyster. To make it worse, the place was packed even at this odd hour and we were sitting elbow to elbow with strangers.
But I didn’t gag. The smooth oyster that slipped from its shell into my mouth was fresh, clean, and sweet. I eyed the leftover oyster on the plate until my friend generously gave in.
While my friend did a little shopping in an Aran Island wool shop, I sat outside to listen to buskers who looked like brothers. They seemed to enjoy my enjoyment of their harmony, maybe especially when I dropped coins in their guitar case.
The entire evening felt enchanted. I slipped a few euros in my pocket and we wandered the streets of downtown Galway, stopping to listen to almost every street musician, even the dude singing “Galway Girl.” The way the Irish value the arts is something one can sense, even in a brief interaction with the culture, such as I had.
And, wouldn’t you know, we found another Butlers and strolled back to the bus, hot chocolates and truffles in hand. Darkness fell as we rode back across the island to Dublin. It was a day that made be believe I wanted to stay in Ireland forever.
Well, except the dirty little cottage that we had to return to.
I awoke from a deep sleep to a hand grabbing my shoulder and someone gasping, “It’s you!” It was the middle of night. It was also the middle of my friend’s disturbing dream. She was comforted to know that I was not a mustached stranger and promptly fell back asleep. But the interaction left me staring at the dark ceiling, my heart pumping.
Morning came soon enough. We made ourselves tea with the electric kettle in our room and took our time getting out the door. Why rush? While planning our trip, we had both decided we’d rather see less at a leisurely pace than see everything and fully experience nothing.
We gathered a few recommendations from our host and then made our way downtown, where we dropped off our luggage (we had rented a different airbnb for the following nights) and crossed the scenic Ha’Penny Bridge.
Our host had recommended Keoghs for an Irish breakfast. We gladly took his suggestion. I am not a bread person, but I spent the rest of the trip trying to track down more of this bread to eat with those thick slabs of creamy Irish butter. And the greens that garnished the breakfast? Peas!
We walked through St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin’s former execution site, which is now a lovely park full of Dubliners out for a bit of green during their lunch break. We paused before a gruesome monument commemorating the Great Famine of the mid-1800s. A North African family stopped us to ask directions. “¿Habláis español?” they asked and were shocked when we ended up speaking in Arabic instead.
We booked a tour to see the Book of Kells at Trinity College. The Book of Kells is a stunning copy of the four Gospels in Latin, supposed to have been copied by monks around 800 A.D. We only saw one open page, highly protected. Apparently, how long each page is exposed to light is carefully monitored. In the Long Room, a room of one of the world’s most stunning libraries, my friend and I pulled out our audio tour earbuds and sat on the wooden benches to drink in the odor of old books and to feel the smallness of us in a great big world of knowledge.
Then we remembered our luggage and began to consider what would happen if the 5:30 closing happened before we were able to retrieve it. So we meandered through downtown, with only a pitstop at Butlers Chocolate Café, another of our host’s recommendations. We carefully selected our hot chocolate and the little chocolate that came with it, wrapped in a small paper baggie. I have never had such amazing hot chocolate. Never. We moaned our way through our creamy cups, enough-rich and not-too-sweet but just-sweet-enough. We lingered long enough that we had to rush to retrieve our luggage before the storage center closed for the evening.
From there we went to our new airbnb, the “Country Cottage Oasis,” which will require a blog post all of its own…
My Thoughts From Afar | 