all these places

Antequera: el año nuevo.

I may not have spent New Year's Eve with old friends, reminiscing about the good old days in accordance with Auld Lang Syne, but I really didn't mind - I was in warm, beautiful Spain, I was doing good things for my body, and new friends are nice, too. [Dear old friends - I still miss you, though, don't think I don't!]

We first considered going out for dinner at another hotel or a restaurant in town, but we soon found out that we should've reserved a long time ago, and besides, it was all very expensive. So we stayed at our hotel for the special New Year's Eve menu there, keeping open the possibility of going out to the bars in town after midnight, which is the earliest the party would be starting, anyway [oh, Spain...you know how I know you're not Wisconsin?]. It was all very exciting, sitting in the same dining room as always, and yet eating things besides grilled vegetables and salmon - and drinking wine! It was like the gods' sweet nectar on the parched [well...wine-parched - we were drinking plenty of water there] deserts of our tongues.

We had each gotten a little tin foil package of twelve grapes with our dinner, so we then carried them over to the TV, where the Spanish equivalent of the Times Square ball was about to go down - grape counting! Once the clock strikes midnight, you have to eat one grape each second for the first twelve seconds - one for each month, I guess. I'm not really sure where/how this tradition started, but we're pretty sure the grape industry had something to do with it.

The idea of one grape per second sounds somewhat doable at first, but if you haven't had a lifetime of practice and there are seeds in the grapes...it's not that doable! By the time I had the first six in - not necessarily entirely swallowed - the twelfth second was fast approaching - so I just stuffed the last six into my mouth all at the same time. I had no other choice - I need that year of good luck! At least I did better than another member of our group, who also stuffed them all in her mouth at once but afterwards spit them all back out in a grape-y mess. We'll see how her year goes!

After the grape excitement, we had a couple more glasses of wine, hung out a little bit with some hotel guests from the Netherlands, and headed to bed around 2 a.m. - not the craziest New Year's Eve of my life, but crazy isn't really necessary for me anymore [oh man, I'm old and boring].

Our group - two Irish women, two English guys, and the stray US American - under the omnipresent hocks of Iberian ham.

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On January 1st, our usual schedule was eased up a bit [no yoga at 7:30 a.m., whew!] - we went for a reeeeeeally leisurely hike in a beautiful, foggy, forested area before going to a tapas bar in Antequera owned by the brother of one of our Spanish guides. Delicious tapas, desserts, moscatel...absolutely perfect way to spend the first day of the new year.

The nationwide smoking ban claimed its latest victim, Spain, on January 2nd, so we all made sure to appropriately celebrate the last day smoking was allowed in restaurants and bars. And don't worry, I was only posing - although I think I look ultra-classy holding a cigarette [because that's the point, right?], I still prefer healthy lungs to chic-yet-tarred ones.

Antequera: the Sampsons.

The first night in Antequera, Mel drove Ajay and me [that is correct grammar, don't you even start with me!] into town so I could buy some new running shoes. On the way, we drove past a place called Krasty Burger, complete with the likeness of a clown that looked an awful lot like one that some of us might know better as Krusty...but I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

As we were walking around town a little, my shiny new shoes in my hands, we ran into some costumed people advertising Krasty Burger. They looked an awful lot like characters from a show we might know as The Simpsons...but I'm sure that's just a coincidence, too.

Humer and Krasty - you can see Bert in the background.

Losa.

Roaming the streets.

Surrounding and terrorizing the fine citizens of Antequera.

I really wanted to eat there once - just to try it - but I could never find it again. Sad.

Antequera, Spain.

By the end of December 2010, I had been traveling for about nine months. During that time, I didn't have a lot of personal time or space, I wasn't always being as active as I would've liked [weather, work, and other activities got in the way of running], and I certainly wasn't eating particularly healthfully. So when I was figuring out what to do for New Year's, I decided to forego partying all night long with friends somewhere and instead head to Andalucía for a fitness vacation - nine days of doing good things for my body and relaxing.

The location was Antequera, a city of 45,000 between Granada [one of my most favorite cities in the wooooorld] and Málaga.

The white buildings of Antequera. In the background you can see the Peña de los Enamorados, which many people say looks like the face of a sleeping man. According to legend, at some point when the Moors ruled the area, two young star-crossed lovers [from different tribes, or one Muslim and one Christian, or...] were chased up there by the girl's father and his men before jumping off it to their death. Man...I don't get why people get so excited about love. It just seems so dangerous to the health.

The hotel, Finca Eslava [nothing to do with slaves, although the association helped me remember the name], is just outside of town and is well known in the area [and beyond - a lot of athletes from around the world go there to train] for its swimming pool and gym facilities. This is the view from my room, looking toward the gym and pool one evening.

Man, Spain sure is Catholic. Churches all over the place! This was some kind of cloister or something up on a hill, possibly with agave around it [we asked our guide to confirm, and he said, "I don't know...I'd just call that a cactus" - understandable, I wouldn't be able to identify most plants in Wisconsin, either].

More pictures from hikes, bike rides, and so on to come...

Aveiro: we wish you a merry codfish.

Muito muito obrigada to Miguel and his family for letting me celebrate Christmas Eve with them!

It was the warmest Christmas of my life - earlier in the day, we went to a café, and do you know what we did there? We sat outside! In the sun! And it was warm! On Christmas! Holy cow! [Or, I guess, holy baby? What with it being Jesus' birthday and all.]

Miguel's mom had cooked up a feast that included codfish. And I liked it! I'm clearly making progress on my "learn to at least tolerate fish" quest - and/or Miguel's mom is a miracle worker. A bit of both, I guess. And, as another guest put it, "Here, codfish isn't fish." It's pure Portuguese magic, is what it is.

Dinner finished up with bolo rei [king's cake], bolo rainha [queen's cake], tasty pumpkin-y things covered in cinnamon [yeah, you know what I mean], and more...mmmmm.

And thanks to the Simpsons movie being on, I didn't just spend the whole dinner staring vacantly at people, not understanding what they were saying! Success all around.

Later that night I Skyped with my parents and relatives and my parents' new cat, Boo Zazzles. Thanks, technology!

[Some more notes on holidays: Thanksgiving this year amounted to a drunk spelling bee with the University of East Anglia American studies kids. My first word was "judgment" - I spelled it "j-u-d-g-optional e-m-e-n-t," and the judge gave me a look, so I said, "Alright, no E," and then he approved. But really, it can be spelled with an E, and in fact, that spelling is "especially British" according to dictionary.com, so his look was quite unnecessary, thank you very much! They served up turkey sandwiches with a bit of stuffing and cranberry sauce, and that was the grand total of my Thanksgiving feast. I totally intended to try to make a pumpkin pie from scratch at some point, but then...I never did. People were encouraged to dress up as something to do with Thanksgiving, and one guy came as a pirate. Well, alright. I'm all for pirates, but I don't remember them helping to harvest the corn to earn their rightful place at the First Thanksgiving.

But! Ella, Charlie, Tina, and I did try to make egg nog. We were somewhat foiled because we acidentally got super duper heavy duty cream instead of just the regular kind, so it didn't really mix in well and there were bits of cream all over the place, but it still tasted fine - although not like the store-bought kind I'm used to. And it was the first time I had ever had liquor in egg nog. It was fine and all, but really, I like the taste of egg nog so much that I'd almost prefer to not have the booze tainting the pure, delicious, egg noggy joy.]

You know you've been traveling too long when...

...you dream that the tourist information desk is in your hotel room.

Lisbon: drinking in my childhood.

Although I was still waiting for my visa, I was getting restless and didn't want to impose on Ella anymore, so I headed back to Portugal for a bit. I spent most of my time kickin' it in Aveiro, but I also went down to Lisbon to explore for a couple days.

I spent a lot of the time just wandering around, kind of with a goal in mind but with no real urgency in reaching it. In my wandering, I found this abandoned, crumbled-down, graffiti'd plot in the middle of a normally built-up area.

Smoke break with a dog, near the castle [Castelo de São Jorge].

One of the days, I met up with Jorge and Nelson, two CouchSurfers I had hosted in Freiburg. After getting some authentic - and delicous - pastéis de Belém [pastries with the egg cream that's in pretty much every pastry in Portugal] in Belém [a city right next to Lisbon], we went back to Lisbon, where we went to the Pavilhão Chinês [Chinese Pavilion].

The Pavilhão Chinês felt a lot like my childhood turned into a bar. Since my mom was/is an antique dealer, my brother and I spent a lot of time in antique stores where she had a booth when we were kids. The stores were full of glass cabinets with old busts and figurines and toys...but don't worry, we didn't drink expensive beer in the stores back then.

I got a ride back to Aveiro with Jorge and his parents, who were heading to Braga for Christmas, and on the way we saw a FULL-ON DOUBLE RAINBOW. So intense. I decided not to actually yell that out, though, because his parents seemed nice and I didn't want to scare them.

Norwich: wrap-up.

Something I really had to get used to was everyone asking me, "You alright?" In the US, you usually ask that if you think someone might not be alright. In the UK, though, it's just a "hey, how's it going?" kind of greeting. It's said in that same greeting tone, too, but the words still, for half a second, always made me wonder whether I looked particularly sad or something.

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Now is the time for a humooooooooooongous shout out and thank you to Ella, who put me up - and put up with me - for two and a half whole months. And cooked incredibly delicious meals for me the whole time, too! She's a saint, a chef, and an amazing friend. Thank you!!!

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And then I think there were some other things I wanted to mention, but man, England was a long time ago. I don't remember those things anymore.

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And in closing...Fuggles Yard? Hahahaha. Oh, Brits and their words/names that sound funny. Another example: there's a town in Ireland [which, yes, is not part of Great Britain, but it is part of the British Isles and is therefore included in this edition of "Oh, Brits and their words/names that sound funny"] called Dingle. Dingle! Adorable/hilarious.

P.S. Extra credit: read the wikipedia article about terminology of the British Isles until your head hurts. I didn't get very far.

P.P.S. Fresh, new New York Times article about Norwich! It shouldn't make your head hurt.

Norwich: more music.

The Norwich Arts Centre is really great. Independent, supporting local culture, all that good hippie-meets-yuppie kind of stuff.

While there to see one of the comedians, I noticed a poster for Jenny and Johnny - that is, Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley and a few other projects and her boyfriend Johnathan Rice, who also, um, does some stuff.

Ella couldn't go, so I went alone, but it turns out reading a print version of the Onion in a country that doesn't have print versions of the Onion is a good conversation-starter. I felt a little bad for letting the guy down [who apparently had gone to uni in Seattle] when I told him I had brought it over from the US and they haven't started printing it in the UK or anything. They should look into it, though - I think it'd go over well.

The opening band, La Sera. Not bad, actually. I wanted to buy their album after the show, but they didn't have any CDs left.

Jenny. I may or may not have a girl crush.

Johnny.

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Remember that Danish death indie band we bumped into in the street? They had been booked by wombatwombat, which puts on shows at the Norwich Arts Centre every couple of months. They were celebrating their tenth anniversary in December, so we hit up their birthday party.

Brothers, an all-girl band from Norwich that Ella couldn't really get into, but I kind of liked - they reminded me a little bit of Le Tigre.

Bearsuit, also from Norwich, and great fun.

London: French Canadians and squirrels.

There's no way I could've spent two and a half months in England without spending any time in London, and Arcade Fire was going to be playing a show there. I bought two tickets off craigslist, asked for a concert buddy and overnight host on couchsurfing, and jumped on the train.

One of the towns between Norwich and London.

After walking through the German Christmas market, I met Harvey at the London Eye, where we caught the Thames Clipper and headed down the river to the O2 Arena. That's why I like meeting locals - I would've just taken the tube and missed out on a much better way to get to the concert.

Arcade Fire at the O2 Arena. Incredible energy, incredible concert. One of the percussionists was banging on a drum so hard he lost one drumstick and shortly thereafter the other one. Later in the show, he grabbed a drum and just ran around the stage banging on it. You don't do that if you're blasé about the music you're making. I love music made by musicians who love it.

More reasons to see a city with its locals: after the boat ride back from the concert, we got a bus to Harvey's place, and the bus went through a lot of the typical places in London - Piccadilly Circus and so on. Again, I would've just taken the tube and missed everything. And he lives by Abbey Road, and the next morning he made sure I walked over the famous zebra stripes on the way to the tube station.

He got on the tube, and I had breakfast at a café on Baker Street [the home of Sherlock Holmes] before wandering around with no particular destination and happening upon some snow-covered gardens in Regents Park.

Emo.

The animals in the park were far from suspicious of humans. I stopped to take a picture of a bridge and was suddenly surrounded by a swarm of pigeons, with this squirrel in the middle of it, sometimes even putting its front paws up on my leg.

Chubster.

I like Narnia, and I like Christmas lights, but I really don't think advertisements for the latest Narnia movie should be embedded in Christmas lights.

After a lot more wandering, including an afternoon at the movies [The Kids Are All Right] and stumbling onto the Nickelodeon UK offices, and before catching a train back to Norwich that evening, I met Yuliya for dinner. She was a Russian exchange student to my high school in 2000-2001, and we hadn't seen each other since then. Say what you will about facebook, but it's responsible for a lot of happy reconnections! We went to a Thai restaurant, and of course the music they're playing when we walk in is...a Portuguese fado?!? Hey, Portugal! Yeah, you! The world keeps giving me signs that you are totally going to let me into your country - why are you the only one who isn't getting it?!?