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October 22, 2006

Still Adjusting...

The two of us are still on Spain time -- we're going to bed early, eating at odd times, thinking in Spanish, and ignoring all sorts of obligations. To keep the vacation going a bit longer, we just constructed, as best we could, a Spanish dinner of tapas. Bread with tomato, bread with roasted red pepper and tuna, artichokes fried with garlic on top of some garlic-fried rice, etc.

At each house we stayed in, I asked for recipes for the lovely things that appeared on the table -- clams with garlic, oil, and parsely; pulpo (octopus) a la gallega; rosted red peppers stuffed with salt cod, etc. We also loaded up our suitcase (with lots of help from Adela (¡Gracias!)), with foodstuffs. With two Spanish cookbooks found in the airport, we can assemble a reasonable approximation of tapas, although we've still got lots to learn. I think I see a new direction for this blog.

In lieu of stories, take a look at the photos on Flickr. Since I left my camera battery charger in Madrid (our first stop), I took about a fifth of the photos I probably would have otherwise, but I'm trying not to think about that too much. We had a great time with old friends (new ones for Derek), ate fantastic food, saw some wonderful old places, slept in a castle by the sea within shouting distance of France, and (more on this later)... I found a fabulous yarn store in Barcelona.

Posted by csageday at 11:21 PM | Comments (0)

October 19, 2006

I'm Back

We're back. Trip was great, though a bit crazy/rushed. Left camera battery & charger in Madrid, so don't have a ton of photos, but have some. Ate lots of Spanish ham and fish. Spoke lots of Spanish. More soon.

Posted by csageday at 01:13 PM | Comments (0)

October 08, 2006

¡Buenas Tardes!

¡Hola desde España! Es much mas fácil escribir en español con una ordenador española.

Bueno, hemos llegando, cansadisimos, a Madrid esta mañana. Sara, our extremely gracious host here in Madrid, has been wonderful and treated us to a lovely breakfast of churros con chocolate y pan con tomate y jamon serrano esta mañana en su terraza preciosa. Después, fuimos al Rastro -- a very-crowded Sunday flea market, where we doggedly marched up and down hills, trying not to look too exhausted. Next, we went to the Prado for a quick walk around (Las Meninas!) before finally deciding that we needed a good long siesta if we were going to be functional for tapas y flamenco esta tarde.

I´m feeling much better after having slept for an hour and half. Tomorrow, if we´re feeling up to it, we might try for a day trip to Toledo -- vamos a ver. It´s wonderful to be back here and speaking Spanish (or trying to, anyway). ¡Hasta printo!

El horario, si te interesa:
- Madrid hasta martes (2 días más)
- Barcelona por tres días (hemos alquilado un apartemento)
- Vamos en coche a Zaragoza el día 13, donde tendrán una fiesta, y donde vamos a ver al jefe de School Year Abroad -- which has moved from Barcelona to Zaragoza (I went in Barcelona)
- We're driving for two days through either the pyrenees or La Rioja to get to our final destination, Santander. This is the only part we haven´t planned, but I´m hoping the book on Northern Spain we bought yesterday will help! There are lots of great places to stay, so it shouldn´t be a problem. I´m just hoping we can find the really good cheese places. We´ll probably spend a night in San Sebastian, too.

Posted by csageday at 12:55 PM | Comments (0)

October 05, 2006

Spain Spree

Remember that little spending spree at C.O. Bigelow that I mentioned? The one where I spent $12 on a piece of fabric for my hair? That was just the very tip of the iceberg. I have since swiped my credit card at far too many small, tastefully decorated Park Slope boutiques in exchange for questionable purchases wrapped in colorful tissue paper. I'm consoling myself by saying I'm supporting the local economy (choke).

I visited them ostensibly to buy gifts for my hosts. Instead, I spent untold amounts on clothes I'm not really sure I need or want but that I've spend twenty minutes discussing with the very attentive boutique staff.

It goes like this. I walk through the door, and friendly greetings are exchanged. An inquiry is made concerning my shopping needs. I say I'm just browsing. Then I find the most inexpensive item in the store (usually around $50) after combing through $267 cashmere hoodies and such, and am escorted to a fitting room. While trying on my chosen affordable item, which never works out, helpful salespeople offer to bring me items I might have missed.

Extremely cute tops and bottoms are handed to me in my tiny enclave. My alter ego -- a well-to-do, chic hotel-visiting, jet-setting European sophisticate -- takes over. She has an interest in such things and understands that one shouldn't be bothered by the concept of cost while considering the art of fashion. She tries them all on, nonchalantly chooses a few items, and hands my poor credit card over to the helpful handmaidens.

While I'd advise caution when entering any one-word boutiques in the Slope (loom, otto, bird, kiwi, etc), I do have to recommend one place: E Lingerie by Enelra (you can tell it's different just by the name: four words instead of one, and they use uppercase AND lowercase letters!). My money there was well spent, I think, and there's a good selection. It's on 5th Ave, just south of the Key Food parking lot.

Prepping for Spain is an adventure all to itself. I have an aversion to booking accommodations. Organization in the packing arena is not my forte (the shopping spree is my panickey response to the packing dilemma). I've decided to knit gifts, which means that I have engineered a little mini marathon of knitting for myself at the same time that I need to focus on other, more pressing matters. For the scarf, I'm just doing ribbing all the way. It shows off the yarn nicely. The pattern is thanks to Old Navy, where I saw a skinny scarf knit that way.

Our trip looks something like this.: Madrid (tapas!) -> Barcelona (nostalgia!) -> Zaragoza (festival!) -> ??(somewhere in the car on the way to the northern coast, hopefully involving cheese country)?? -> San Sebastian (seaside!) or Bilbao (shiny!) -> Santander (churros!). Sounds exhausting.

Posted by csageday at 02:38 AM | Comments (1)

October 03, 2006

Where the Wild Things Are

There is a bird in our apartment. The bird has been with us since yesterday. The bird is with us because our landlord has neglected, for a month, to do anything about the many holes we have in our apartment walls.

Having a bird in our apartment is all fine and good except that it also means we have bird shit in the apartment. On the walls, on our mail, and on the window. Derek came home yesterday to find a piles of ceiling debris on the hallway floor, and the aforementioned shit. Since no animal was in sight, we weren't exactly sure whether it was a bird, a bat or, god forbid, some four-legged creature that might attack us in the night (we had a very impertinent, candy-hoarding squirrel at our last place). After further inspection we settled on bird or bat and went to sleep hoping it wouldn't appear in the night and peck our eyes out.

This morning, Derek found the bird in the hallway again. It has since gone back into the ceiling in the kitchen, where it seems to be doing serious construction (inch-wide pieces of plaster fly out of the hole every once in a while and there's lots of scratching). It has only popped out once to look around, so I've seen it. Derek described it as "you know, just a bird", but it's kind of big bird -- with a long beak and gray and fascinating. I wish I hadn't left my bird guide upstate.

Must get to work -- we'll leave the windows partly open (even though it's supposed to rain), and see what happens. Hopefully we haven't landed ourselves a very messy roommate.

Posted by csageday at 09:13 AM | Comments (1)