Four Days of Drinking Sangria and Eating Tapas

As a last hurrah before heading back home I took a brief trip to Spain this past weekend. This had a nice sense of symmetry for me since my first trip outside of North America was to Spain when I was eleven. A pretty excellent note to end my year in Europe.

I spent a day in Madrid and two and a half days in a small (and gorgeous) town southwest of Madrid called Trujillo. The weather was super hot and sunny the entire time which allowed me to get one last taste of summer with some pool time and lots of hanging out in the shade and drinking cold beer. In fact, the majority of my trip involved drinking or eating, usually both. Basically, I'm obsessed with tapas. I mean, you order a drink (very cheap in Trujillo) and they just give you food. And I'm not just talking crisps or peanuts. I'm talking things like fried cuttlefish, pork in tomato sauce, and mini sandwiches of deliciousness. It's fantastic. Why don't we do this in the States? Seriously, someone get on making this happen.

In addition to the free food, there was much awesomeness to be had in actual meals as well. I'll just rattle off some examples here (non-foodies, feel free to skip ahead): cold melon soup with jamon iberico, churros, lots of grilled octopus, sea urchin, blood sausage on a baguette with caramelized onions, raw oysters, foie gras, chorizo, homemade fried sardines and empanadas, and excessive amounts of jamon iberico. I don't think I went more than one waking hour without eating. Plus there's the oddness of Spanish mealtimes--dinner starts around ten. It's kind of great, but also kind of exhausting. There were children out playing in the square at 1 AM and this is totally normal. I went to a club one night and it was just getting busy when I crawled home at 3:30 in the morning. I could get on board with the whole siesta thing though.

Outside of the whole culinary angle, Spain is a really interesting place. I didn't spend much time in Madrid but I enjoyed the Reina Sofia museum (some Dali, some Picasso, some Goya--no big deal) and I enjoyed wandering and finding cool neighbourhoods--the area near the university has some really cool little shops. When I travel, though, I almost always prefer to see the places that are more off the beaten track, like Trujillo. It's actually a pretty significant place; it has an impressive 10th-century castle and lots of well-preserved old fortresses and it was the birthplace of Pizarro. The town itself is on a hill so there are some amazing views of the surrounding countryside. It's got a great small-town vibe and I wish I spoke Spanish so I could have interacted more with the locals, some of whom were pretty interesting characters--like the bartender who looked a bit like a hobbit and insisted on refilling our drinks when we weren't looking and not charging us.

All in all, it was a highly enjoyable couple of days spent trying to deal with the intense heat beating down by walking very slowly through the town and stopping often for drinks. The in-ground pool overlooking the plains didn't hurt either. A lovely, leisurely end to my time in Europe (before the madness of packing that has consumed this week).

Love Letter to London (Alternative Title: I don't want to leave and you can't make me)

My time in London is, very sadly, nearing its end. I would love to stay but I currently don't have any job prospects here and as my lease is ending, staying doesn't make much sense. Sure, I could find a random job, but if I can get a position in my field back in the U.S. more easily, that is the grown-up decision I must make. And, on the positive side, it will be really nice to see my family and friends (I can't believe that I haven't been back to the States for almost nine months).

I will, however, desperately miss London. I find it difficult to explain when people ask me why I like this city so much. And I certainly don't disagree when people point out the negative things about London. But there is just something about it. Just the atmosphere, the feel of London. It's not for everyone, and that's cool. But for me, it has been pretty fantastic. I love the rain, and how September actually feels like fall, not the weird bipolar situation we have back in Rhode Island. I love walking the streets at Christmastime, with lights everywhere (and yes, picturing scenes from Love Actually). Sitting in the grass in the parks on those rare, wonderful summer days. I love the buskers playing music everywhere, sometimes brilliantly and sometimes not so good. I love the graffiti. I love the views in any weather while crossing Waterloo Bridge--Parliament, Big Ben, and the London Eye on one side, the Gherkin, St. Paul's, and the City on the other. I love the pubs and the old cobbled alleys hidden among the busy, modern streets. I love riding on the top level of double-decker buses. I love the bizarre people you see on the tube. I love the grand architecture of the buildings. I love the feeling that the Thames gives--like it's the city's pulse and the source of it all. And I love that I can feel thousands of years of history flowing by me just by taking a walk.

As much as I enjoy waxing poetic and probably sounding pretty pretentious, one of my favourite quotes about London comes from the brilliant Neil Gaiman. Fittingly, I first discovered him while here in London. As he writes in his book Neverwhere:

Three years in London had not changed Richard, although it had changed the way he perceived the city. Richard had originally imagined London as a gray city, even a black city, from pictures he had seen, and he was surprised to find it filled with color. It was a city of red brick and white stone, red buses and large black taxis, bright red mailboxes and green grassy parks and cemeteries.

It was a city in which the very old and the awkwardly new jostled each other, not uncomfortably, but without respect; a city of shops and offices and restaurants and homes, of parks and churches, of ignored monuments and remarkably unpalatial palaces; a city of hundreds of districts with strange names - Crouch End, Chalk Farm, Earl's Court, Marble Arch - and oddly distinct identities; a noisy, dirty, cheerful, troubled city, which fed on tourists, needed them as it despised them, in which the average speed of transportation through the city had not increased in three hundred years, following five hundred years of fitful road-widening and unskillful compromises between the needs of traffic, whether horse-drawn, or, more recently, motorized, and the need of pedestrians; a city inhabited by and teeming with people of every color and manner and kind.

This, in my humble opinion, describes London perfectly. It isn't sugarcoated. He doesn't gloss over the curious, confusing, and sometimes irritating aspects of the city, but it perfectly encapsulates the feeling of it. At the end of a year in this amazing, frustrating, ridiculous place, I would like to thank London for one of the craziest, best years of my life.


Ok, overly-sentimental post done.

Castles, Haggis, and Scotch

As my dissertation, and therefore my Master's degree, is now done and dusted, I felt the need to reward myself with a little mini-vacation to Edinburgh. I had heard from lots of people that it's a really cool city and I was not disappointed. I stayed at this enormous hostel right beneath the castle in a really old stone building. Lots of great social areas (key when staying in hostels), the highlight being the room with the record player and tons of old albums. My favourite was a collection of 'Bawdy Sing-alongs' from the 50s that I discovered with a group of people one night and that we proceeded to play on repeat and sing along to (obviously). Seriously, look up Oscar Brand's Bawdy Songs--it's brilliant, and only mildly disturbing.

This trip really solidified my deep and abiding love for hostels. I met new people from all over the world every night and it's just such an awesome atmosphere. It makes me quite sad that the U.S. lacks this whole hostel culture. I've never had a bad experience at a hostel and there's something just really fantastic about having a network of people from all over the world that you've bonded with.

Edinburgh itself was also great. It's already started to get cool up there and since I love autumn it was pretty much perfect. For the most part I just wandered the city--I was staying in the Old Town and there are tons of great little cobblestone alleys, old buildings, and cemeteries. Slightly morbid on that last one, but got some great photos (and saw Tom Riddell's grave, the one that inspired J.K. Rowling, for you fellow Harry Potter nerds). Of course I toured the castle (and saw fireworks set off over it one night) and climbed Arthur's Seat which was a great little hike and had unbelievable views. I was pretty out of breath by the time I reached the top, but then I felt completely put to shame by the 60-year-old men who I then saw literally sprinting up and down. Respect.

Other highlights of Edinburgh were, obviously, the food and drink. I had my fair share of haggis which was really good (but I'm probably not to be trusted on this one because I'll eat some pretty weird stuff). And then one night I treated myself to a mildly fancy dinner of mussels, fresh French bread, and an old-fashioned. Congratulations to me. Then, of course, there was the Scotch. Don't ask me all the different kinds I tried. I do remember that my favourite was called Kilchoman--a nice peaty Islay. It was further enhanced by the fact that I drank it while listening to traditional Scottish music in a pub with a bunch of awesome people. While we're on the topic of alcohol (I seem to get on this topic rather often), the beer in Scotland is also not too shabby. I enjoyed quite a few pints in little pubs. There is also a great brewery called Brewdog that also has a bar and some wicked good beer.

One of my other favourite discoveries was a little record/coffee shop right near Grassmarket. They play some great music and have fantastic coffee (mocha with chili-flavoured chocolate? yes, please). Just a great place to chill. Plus I found a copy of True Romance for £5--if you haven't seen this film, please do so immediately (it's not really as the title suggests). Another great spot was the Stockbridge Market where I found delicious craft beers that were aged in bourbon and rum barrels (Eden Brewery) and a bakery that made a pear, fennel, blue cheese, and candied walnut tart. Pretty damn good breakfast.

Moral of the story: Edinburgh (and Scotland in general) are awesome. And I'm going to continue to be in denial over the fact that I will likely be leaving the UK soon.