My Own Back Yard

It’s been over two weeks since I returned home from my European vacation. Some things became abundantly clear very quickly. Afternoon visits to taverns to drink red wine could no longer be thought of as tapas research. Flashing my Chicago Pass to get on the subway no longer signified an entré into a subterranean adventure but rather was just a commute.

John and I came back to Chicago during a bit of a blizzard (ah, the joys of January in the Midwest), but neither winter weather nor jet lag nor playing catch-up on projects loomed large as homecoming challenges. The enemy now was boredom. Or maybe a better term would be loss of juice.

When you’re in a new place, everything seems new – and exciting. While on vacation, everything was oddly interesting. I noticed my concentration amped up whenever I studied a menu at a new restaurant. I’d make mental notes during a walk whenever I passed a place I wanted to come back to before I zipped my suitcase for another rail excursion to our next destination.

I am not sure if I felt more energy because everything I saw or did was set in new surroundings or because I was very aware of the temporal nature of things while traveling. When I had only two days to enjoy the alleyways and Christmas decorations of Sevilla, I wanted to pay extra attention to each banner of the baby Jesus I saw hanging over a courtyard balcony. I never seemed to forget the fact that I may never walk the same path again.

Back home, I seemed to be overwhelmed by a feeling of “sameness.” In the first few days after coming home, I wrote in my journal and for my blog, and I briefed my friends on trip highlights. Then I resumed routines. I returned to every other day health club visits, networking for project work, paying bills. Oh hell, I thought, will nothing feel new again?

Then, last week, after I locked the back door of my building and headed towards my garage, I noticed a little garden statue of a bunny rabbit standing next to a splash of snow that hadn’t yet melted during the latest January thaw. I realized I never noticed it before even though I must have walked the route a couple dozen times since moving in.

The bunny statue was funny in its pose; sort of mischievous looking. It was simultaneously hard to miss, as an immoveable cement form with unnaturally perked up ears, and well-camouflaged in color, perfectly blending in with shades of winter leaves and dead grass. No, I kept thinking, I had never noticed Mr. Rabbit before.

And I started to laugh. Was it placed in the back yard to scare off wandering critters? As some sort of decoration? Were there other stone bunnies or birds lurking behind patches of weeds waiting to be discovered?

And what about me; being so completely surprised by seeing something in my own backyard that I had not seen before. A good reminder this was, in the form of an inexpensive eight inch tall cement rabbit, prompting me to remember that the newness of something has less to do with being in a foreign city or seldom frequented neighborhood as it does with me seeing things with fresh and open eyes.

Seeing a bunny statue in your own backyard – despite the heavy expectation of sameness – is no small thing.

Midnight in Paris

John and I have been back from our European adventure for four days now. On our first night back, we devoured a dinner of steak and fresh broccoli, red meat and green vegetables seeming to be one of the few food cravings we could not satisfy in Spain or France. We’ve gotten our bodies re-acclimated to operating on the correct time zone (i.e. we’re falling asleep at night and actually waking up in the morning), and we’ve paid those bills that we knew would come due within days of our return (thanks to Outlook alarms).

We also made time to sort through our snapshots and post them on online galleries in order to share them with our friends. This was a magical process in itself.

I remember when I was a kid, how after a vacation we would drop off rolls of film from our instamatic at our local Walgreens where they would send them out to a processor for development. It would take about a week before we could actually see any glossies. Perhaps weeks later, we would invite relatives or friends over for dinner to see our vacation book; a padded vinyl-covered album that contained our photos. Because of development costs, we didn’t take more photos than what we thought would turn out. We pretty much put every image we took in “the book.”

John and I probably took hundreds of photos in our 18 days abroad and yet, it didn’t feel like our intention to build an image library for memories interfered with our being present to what we were experiencing in any moment. We had fun when we would retreat to our hotel for the evening and download images from the last day or two onto his laptop. We deleted a few pics during these reviews but saved the task of serious editing for our return. Yesterday, we posted separate collections from each place we visited to run as slide shows on Kodak’s site.

There were three stages to this activity, each, involving the mind and heart, contained their own special pleasures.

First, we went through a selection process. Fortunately, John and I agreed on most choices. We wanted to have some tourist shots, some record of our visits to important attractions, but we mostly took street shots. When compiling our collection, we looked for shots that captured what we were feeling where the shot was taken, or we looked for something that conveyed a sense of uniqueness about a place. We tried to choose pictures that conveyed what it was like to find a UPS truck in Barcelona’s Ciutat Vella (Old City) or see our reflection in a bookstore window on Paris’ left bank. We wanted to include shots that represented other places like it, a sort of best of approach, and avoid just putting out everything we took. We wanted to choose the best five, not twenty-five, pictures of the hanging hams in Spain’s delicatessens and tapas bars and the most Parisian looking images of sidewalk café chairs arranged for people-watching.

Then we went on to the task of captioning and, cum cartoonists for the New Yorker, had fun trying to compose wry observations for some of our pictures. We included small notes on location so that we could remember where we saw something, but most of our verbiage reflected our personal sense of humor. For a photo of two waiters smoking on break just outside an upscale Paris café, we added the comment, “At these prices they should be working.” For a picture of me in a garden copping the pose of a nearby sculpture of a nude woman, hands clasped seductively behind her head, back arched, we wrote, “Statue imitating Deb.”

The last stage of creating our online image albums was re-living. We must have viewed each shot several times, individually and then as part of a slideshow, before we decided to share the Kodak link with our friends. Each image seemed to tap into a well of experiences. When we remembered each place, we remembered how we felt at the time. We recalled whether we arrived somewhere on foot or by Metro, if we were hungry or whether we snagged a croissant or crepe on the way, if we got lost that morning or if we felt in flow, if we thought something was funny, how the air smelled, and sometimes we actually seemed to hear whatever music might have been playing when we were in a scene. We delighted in each private slideshow. After all, although we wanted to share our pictures, the process of creating roadmaps to our best memories, we understood, is really for us.

Using images to trigger a felt experience and actually re-live that moment is no small thing.

A Room of One's Own

When we arrived in Aix-en-Provence, after changing trains several times since we left Barcelona in the morning, it was already dark. We picked up our rent-a-car, woke up the GPS system, and read then re-read the directions sent to us for finding our way to the tennis club where we would meet John’s friend Sharon who was in town for her eldest son’s weekly tennis lesson. Our plan was to meet her at the Country Club of Aix then drive behind her through the Luberon hills to her home just outside the picturesque village of Lourmarin. John had known Sharon since childhood and the chance to spend some time with her family in such a setting, her home for the past fifteen years, we knew, was a special opportunity.

With a few minor glitches (like we couldn’t find the country club so we ended up meeting Sharon and Joseph near the fountain in the center of town), we wended our way, caravan style, to their home, a drive that even at a brisk pace took almost fifty minutes. Finding the small unmarked road that led to their driveway would have been impossible without a guide. John and I were very grateful when we slipped from the night’s blackness into their house for a welcome dinner with Sharon, husband Olivier (who grew up Lourmarin) and sons Joseph and Ellison.

When we woke up in the morning, John and I could look directly out the glass doors of our lower level bedroom and see hills and trees, maybe linden, patches of lavender and wisps of clouds. The morning light that penetrates the air of Provence is somehow different than it is in other places. I guess Van Gogh and Cezanne came here to paint because of the light. It was easy to see that this is a special place.

Time seemed to move slower too. I don’t know if this was because we were weary travelers happy to pour a bowl of cereal around a kitchen table for breakfast instead of downing an espresso at a bakery/café close to a hotel, or if it was because we were out in the country (you couldn’t see a neighbor’s house from most of Sharon’s windows), or because we were in Provence, and, well – that’s just the way time works in Provence. Maybe I just like to think the latter.

Using Sharon and Olivier’s home as a base, we did some exploring during our two-day visit. In Avignon, we toured the Palais de Papes (which served as the home of the popes during the 1300s) and the Pont D’Avignon (the bridge made famous in a classic nursery rhyme). We drove through the cliffside village of Bonnieux and lunched on real French omelets in Gordes, an enchanting village a stone’s throw from the 8th century Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Chaffre. We snapped lots of photos of Roussillon, a little town of practically all orange-ish colored buildings, so decorated with pigments from the nearby ochre quarry. We were nearly knocked over by the Mistral wind, a meteorological phenomena in southern France that, swirling at over 50 miles per hour, can lift a Renault off its tires.

Many images from our two-day visit floods my mind as being quintessentially Provence, but my favorite experience was completely outside of the guidebooks.

Behind their house, Olivier built Sharon a little workshop; a shed of sorts, with a sink and electricity, and shelves for storage. Sharon had taken up decorative glass arts some years ago and equipping her workshop with ovens and molds and hand-torches became an adventure in itself. Searching online for sources of colored glass rods and how-to tips from different masters became an ongoing preoccupation. And in between acquiring new skills and techniques, Sharon made glass beads and vibrantly colored glass panels which she formed for mobiles or other objects. She showed John and me how she worked with rods that filled long plastic tubes which she stored under her worktable. We saw how shards from experiments were saved, possibly to become the body of her next creation.

I was delighted to be welcomed into this space. Careful not to knock over any work in process, I saw how Sharon could escape from time, (although time in Provence might seem to move more slowly than in other places, it is still TIME), and move to a space without time.

Having a room of one’s one, a place to creatively express yourself, and finding inspiration in another’s retreat, is no small thing.

Map It

One of the first things John and I have done as we have reached each new destination on our trip is get a couple maps. Generally, we’d look for a walking map of Centro, as they called it in Spain, or Center Ville, as they called it in France. In Madrid, Barcelona, and Paris, we’d also pick up Metro maps to see how the different lines in each metro area’s underground transport system connected. As travelers, we had a simple philosophy for getting around: Get a hotel near Centro; walk when you can (i.e. almost always because you don’t want to miss some perfect tavern or café); and if your morning walk landed you in a faraway part of town, take the tube home.

John seemed to look forward to the map ritual. I think it grounded him and prepared him for adventure. By the end of our two or three days in a location, the colorful “plans” would practically be disintegrating from being folded and unfolded so many times. For the most part, as long as there appeared to be a reasonable route between where we where and where we called home base for our short stay, all was right with the world. When the maps lacked detail, or did not cover a portion of the city where we wanted to visit, John’s generally upbeat mood could turn sour and, even though I was less avid a map reader, my confidence about getting around without a good command of the language would buckle.

We rented cars for seeing the white (hilltop) towns of Andalusia and the Luberon area of Provence. For these excursions, we opted to get GPS systems. Programmed to deliver instructions in British accented vs. American English, we nicknamed our disembodied voice Emily. At times, she was our best friend (like when she led us back to the highway from the top of a narrow cliff-hugging road), and at other times she was our worst enemy. On the way to Arco de Frontera, she sent us in a loop several times, instructing us to turn left when she meant right, then, after the system could tell we were heading in the wrong direction having us backtrack and make the same mistake. It took us several loops to recognize she had a bug in her program.

Of course, maps couldn’t tell you everything you wanted to know about a city. After we checked into the San Gil, our hotel in Seville, we decided to walk to Centro, check out the monster cathedral (the third largest in all of Europe) and scope out places to spend New Year’s Eve. Unfortunately, we chose a route to town center where we saw nothing but a few old churches, forgettable tapas bars and colorful banners of the baby Jesus hanging from balconies. As it turned out, if we simply went a different route, we would have wandered down the Alameda de Hercules and experienced a wonderland of streetlife.

On our second day in Seville, we walked towards Centro following the narrowest, meandering set of roads. One street in Santa Cruz, still open to car traffic, was so narrow, a well-dressed businesswoman got out of her late-model German car to move café tables and chairs closer to the buildings on either side so she could pass.

And I had to marvel at the situation. Most of these tiny streets were actually on our map. These were the very alleyways legendary Don Juan, ‘The Seducer of Seville,” took refuge in as he dashed from one liaison to another. Yes, most of them were on our map. And our map allowed us to navigate a path to Palacio Lebrija or the Catedral back to the San Gil. I wanted to say, “Thank you, thank you, thank you” to all the cartographers who ever lived. Their nitpicking personalities probably drove their mates crazy, but they sure made my life easier. Maps, I had to conclude, were blessings of the highest magnitude.

Seeing where you are on your path is no small thing.

Advice to a Traveler

I wanted to visit Granada during John’s and my European adventure because I wanted to see the Alhambra. How could you go to Spain, I thought, and not see the most wondrous palace of Moorish kings? My Rick Steves guidebooks and TripAdvisor (Internet) research, bubbled over with details about the site; its history, tour options, and literary references. What else would Granada have to offer? Additional research, and the enthusiastic endorsement of Lorena, our hotel clerk, got me hooked on the idea of visiting the Hammams de al Andalus, banos arabes, the Arab Baths.

“Muy bueno. Muy tranquilidad,” Lorena gushed and smiled.

While Granada had a population of several hundred thousand, it had an almost small town feel about it. You could get from anywhere to anywhere, except the Sacramonte gypsy area, on foot. There were two main boulevards which were lined with shops (shopping more than soccer, I concluded, had to be considered the national sport as we’d see whole families out shopping together until very late at night). There were several main squares, usually marked by a church or a government building of some kind, and there was a web of winding and narrow alleys which seemed to be full of more shops and tabernas, small restaurants that featured delightfully cheap wine and free appetizers, tapas.

While we had a great introduction to eating tapas and the late night culture of Spain during our two days in Madrid, we understood that how people ate and socialized said a lot about a place, and we were eager to continue our education on Spain in Granada. After giving ourselves a little walking tour of Centro, the city center, after taking pictures of the church from every possible angle, eyeing the motorcycles and scooters parked at every plaza (square), and wondering how so many people seemed to eat at outdoor cafes even though the temperature was only in the fifties, we started checking out Granada’s tapas faire.

In general, we nixed what looked like tourist haunts along Calle Navas, nicknamed Tapas Street, and tended to rely on the vibes we got when we passed a place. We had some hits and some misses using this method. We had some excellent olives and mancheco cheese at one place and were barely spoken to at another. Their bartenders were as cold and unresponsive to us as the sardines overflowing the bowl in the display case behind their bar.

After our initial walk through town, we made our way to the Hammams de Andalus to reserve a two-hour time slot for our baths and massage. We followed modest but well-placed signs through the stone streets and steps of the Albayzin, the millennium old Moorish quarter. The bath experience, we later discovered, was largely an authentic experience, perhaps one upper class Moors enjoyed centuries ago.

For the “bath,” thirty people at a time would enjoy taking dips in three pools of different temperatures. In between dips, we were able to sip hot herb tea. The marketing and reservation system couldn’t have been more modern. I first learned about the hammams in Granada through the Internet. Their web site was quite sophisticated, their patrons represented quite an eclectic mix of ages and nationalities, and they took payment through every kind of credit card imaginable.

After taking our reservations, we began making small talk with Andre, one of the managers. It turned out that he was from Portugal. His English was very good. We asked him how long he had been living in town and whether he had ever been to the States. Then we asked him the question that was probably the biggest one on our minds.

“Where would you recommend we go for tapas?”

He smiled then began an explanation that somehow seemed to have penetrated my foreign tourist, overloaded brain. I found myself coming back to his advice, like a mantra, several times since.

“So many places are good. I don’t know that I could recommend THE place, but I have found that the best tapas bars have these four things. There should be some kind of crowd. You should be able to see some dirt on the floor. There should be a ham hanging from the ceiling, and there should be a saint, a picture of a saint, on the wall.”

The next day, following our tour of the Alhambra, we wandered past the Plaza Nueva and decided we wanted some red wine and tapas. We looked into the window at the Gran Taberna. Let’s see. The place looked busy, clean but with evidence of a steady flow of customers. Several smoked and cured pig legs hung from the ceiling and damn if we didn’t see a picture of a saint on the wall near the door. We ended up spending several hours there, enjoying the low prices on rioja and excellent tasting plates. We felt very fortunate. As tourists, our time was limited and this turned out to be the perfect place for a few hours.

Simple and honest advice given to a traveler is very welcome. It represents a special kind of generosity and creates a real bond of giving and receiving that is no small thing.