Tomorrow is a holiday and I am totally psyched for a day off of work so I can navigate the Spanish system on Spanish time.
It means instead of leaving for work on the American base in the dark (7:15 am), working until 4 pm or later, driving back to my Spanish neighborhood, waiting an hour or two for Spanish businesses to open from afternoon siesta, or worse, waiting until local restaurants open for dinner (8 pm or so), I am not a slave to American hours and can live for a day like a Spaniard.
Instead of being impatient and rushing through lunch because I have to go back to work during my 40 minute lunch break (and I don't think in over a year, I have ever actually eaten lunch away from work for that reason), I can leisurely sit in a cafe, people watch, sit endlessly until I tell the waiter I am ready for the bill, and realize 2+ hours have slipped away. If I don't want to do lunch around 2 pm like the locals, I can do a large breakfast around 10 am, walk through the local farmer's market around noon, choosing some fresh cut flowers on the way, water my plants, walk the dog, pick out something for dinner, and have spent the same amount of time I would have at work.
I am also excited about going to the Spanish post office on Spanish time, instead of trying to squeeze it in on American time, and having my husband with me. The two of us make one decent Spanish speaker---he's better at listening, I'm better at speaking, which is sort of how our 26 year marriage has been, come to think about it.
The reason I need to go to the Spanish post office is this: LISBON.
Over Christmas break, we decided for just the two of us to take a quick 3 day trip. There are options---so many places in Spain and even Morocco are easily traveled via train or car. We are always looking for quick trips for when friends and family come to visit, and we are lucky enough to live somewhere that has many, many options. After some research and asking around, we decided on Lisbon.
Lisbon is about 5 hours away via car and is somewhere neither of us had ever been. Our last overnight trip was Paris. Our last big overnight trip before that had been to Madrid.
Both are amazing cities, and both set the bar high. Going into this trip, I didn't realize how much Lisbon was going to suffer from mere comparison.
I read blogs and travel sites, watched travel shows, read up on the cuisine, the culture, the language. I had a list of possible places to see and a very tentative itinerary.
This, I was to find out, was a big mistake.
I'm not going to slag on what is some of my friends' favorite European capital, but I will just say we left feeling like we completely missed something. Over-planning instead of going with the flow was a big part of the problem. But there were other factors.
The cuisine was great. We liked the fresh seafood (which we get plentiful here) and decent beer (which we don't have in Andalusia). We stayed in a nice hotel that had a really great fado show. Fado is Portuguese folk singing, accompanied with stringed instruments and hand clapping, a perfect combo of emotion, rhythm, and melody, and it was definitely the highlight of the trip.
Those two things, however, really didn't fill 3 days.
There are city squares, much like Madrid, and wide, tree lined boulevards, much like New Orleans. Crazy hills like Seattle, with cable cars, like San Francisco. There are also beautiful tiled buildings and amazing cobblestone streets.
However, I can't really say any of those things (or the sum of them) gave this city a distinct personality. Was I trying too hard to make it into a big event instead of a quick get-away?
Unlike any of those cities, things are far-flug and spread apart, but because of the holiday season, trying to get anywhere on the cable car was out. Lines were long, driving was a little (a lot) hectic, parking was expensive, and together it just really annoyed me.
Leaving our hotel and being constantly hassled to eat at a restaurant by aggressive waiters, hassled everywhere we went to buy drugs (You want cocaine? I can get you hash!), and hassled for change more than once by someone who followed me into a store helped taint the experience even more.
Despite getting an early start, the lines to almost everywhere were really long, the weather was cold and windy, so being impatient (those American tendencies die hard), we skipped out on most of my to-do list.
After a few frustrating days of asking ourselves, "What did we miss? What are we doing wrong?" we left, paid our overpriced parking, paid our overpriced toll fees (altogether well over $200), but I did have consolation---I found a pair of Birkenstocks I really liked on sale for a great price. There are no Birkenstock stores around here, so I was happy with my consolation prize.
The morning after we got back home, I pulled them out of the bag, went to put them on, and realized, mierda, they gave me 2 left shoes.
TWO LEFT SHOES, Y'ALL.
How does this even happen?
I think of these shoes as the perfect metaphor for how I feel right now about Lisbon. They have so much potential to be awesome, but they are just not quite right.
So now, instead of the store mailing me the right shoe I paid for, I have to mail THEM one of the left shoes and wait for THEM to mail ME the shoe that I technically paid for. The U.S. Postal service is a nightmare to navigate when trying to send packages internationally, so we will navigate the equally frustrating (but hopefully cheaper, at least) Spanish system.
Again with the hassle!
My husband, feeling the seething and frustration coming from me, took to making jokes about my two left feet and even called me My Left Foot, after that movie which has absolutely nothing to do with the current situation, making me even more angry.
He's lucky I didn't clobber him with a perfectly new and probably never-to-be-worn left Birkenstock.
I think I will stick to Southern Portugal---I did like Albufeira and want to try it again----but for five hour drives, there are many, many other places I'd like to go, and it will take a whole lot more than two matching shoes to make Lisbon worth it again.
It means instead of leaving for work on the American base in the dark (7:15 am), working until 4 pm or later, driving back to my Spanish neighborhood, waiting an hour or two for Spanish businesses to open from afternoon siesta, or worse, waiting until local restaurants open for dinner (8 pm or so), I am not a slave to American hours and can live for a day like a Spaniard.
Instead of being impatient and rushing through lunch because I have to go back to work during my 40 minute lunch break (and I don't think in over a year, I have ever actually eaten lunch away from work for that reason), I can leisurely sit in a cafe, people watch, sit endlessly until I tell the waiter I am ready for the bill, and realize 2+ hours have slipped away. If I don't want to do lunch around 2 pm like the locals, I can do a large breakfast around 10 am, walk through the local farmer's market around noon, choosing some fresh cut flowers on the way, water my plants, walk the dog, pick out something for dinner, and have spent the same amount of time I would have at work.
I am also excited about going to the Spanish post office on Spanish time, instead of trying to squeeze it in on American time, and having my husband with me. The two of us make one decent Spanish speaker---he's better at listening, I'm better at speaking, which is sort of how our 26 year marriage has been, come to think about it.
The reason I need to go to the Spanish post office is this: LISBON.
 |
| rooftops |
 |
| Santa Justa lift, Christmas trees, nighttime streets, doll hospital |
Over Christmas break, we decided for just the two of us to take a quick 3 day trip. There are options---so many places in Spain and even Morocco are easily traveled via train or car. We are always looking for quick trips for when friends and family come to visit, and we are lucky enough to live somewhere that has many, many options. After some research and asking around, we decided on Lisbon.
Lisbon is about 5 hours away via car and is somewhere neither of us had ever been. Our last overnight trip was Paris. Our last big overnight trip before that had been to Madrid.
Both are amazing cities, and both set the bar high. Going into this trip, I didn't realize how much Lisbon was going to suffer from mere comparison.
I read blogs and travel sites, watched travel shows, read up on the cuisine, the culture, the language. I had a list of possible places to see and a very tentative itinerary.
This, I was to find out, was a big mistake.
I'm not going to slag on what is some of my friends' favorite European capital, but I will just say we left feeling like we completely missed something. Over-planning instead of going with the flow was a big part of the problem. But there were other factors.
The cuisine was great. We liked the fresh seafood (which we get plentiful here) and decent beer (which we don't have in Andalusia). We stayed in a nice hotel that had a really great fado show. Fado is Portuguese folk singing, accompanied with stringed instruments and hand clapping, a perfect combo of emotion, rhythm, and melody, and it was definitely the highlight of the trip.
 |
| Monument of the Discoveries |
 |
| cobblestones, alcoves, Christmas decorations, fresh seafood, Santa Justa lift |
There are city squares, much like Madrid, and wide, tree lined boulevards, much like New Orleans. Crazy hills like Seattle, with cable cars, like San Francisco. There are also beautiful tiled buildings and amazing cobblestone streets.
However, I can't really say any of those things (or the sum of them) gave this city a distinct personality. Was I trying too hard to make it into a big event instead of a quick get-away?
Unlike any of those cities, things are far-flug and spread apart, but because of the holiday season, trying to get anywhere on the cable car was out. Lines were long, driving was a little (a lot) hectic, parking was expensive, and together it just really annoyed me.
Leaving our hotel and being constantly hassled to eat at a restaurant by aggressive waiters, hassled everywhere we went to buy drugs (You want cocaine? I can get you hash!), and hassled for change more than once by someone who followed me into a store helped taint the experience even more.
Despite getting an early start, the lines to almost everywhere were really long, the weather was cold and windy, so being impatient (those American tendencies die hard), we skipped out on most of my to-do list.
After a few frustrating days of asking ourselves, "What did we miss? What are we doing wrong?" we left, paid our overpriced parking, paid our overpriced toll fees (altogether well over $200), but I did have consolation---I found a pair of Birkenstocks I really liked on sale for a great price. There are no Birkenstock stores around here, so I was happy with my consolation prize.
The morning after we got back home, I pulled them out of the bag, went to put them on, and realized, mierda, they gave me 2 left shoes.
TWO LEFT SHOES, Y'ALL.
How does this even happen?
I think of these shoes as the perfect metaphor for how I feel right now about Lisbon. They have so much potential to be awesome, but they are just not quite right.
So now, instead of the store mailing me the right shoe I paid for, I have to mail THEM one of the left shoes and wait for THEM to mail ME the shoe that I technically paid for. The U.S. Postal service is a nightmare to navigate when trying to send packages internationally, so we will navigate the equally frustrating (but hopefully cheaper, at least) Spanish system.
Again with the hassle!
My husband, feeling the seething and frustration coming from me, took to making jokes about my two left feet and even called me My Left Foot, after that movie which has absolutely nothing to do with the current situation, making me even more angry.
He's lucky I didn't clobber him with a perfectly new and probably never-to-be-worn left Birkenstock.
I think I will stick to Southern Portugal---I did like Albufeira and want to try it again----but for five hour drives, there are many, many other places I'd like to go, and it will take a whole lot more than two matching shoes to make Lisbon worth it again.
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