Scotland VI: Glasgow, and Goodbye

I’ve been putting off writing about Glasgow, tried writing about it twice, but it's been hard to get my thoughts on (digital) paper. Glasgow was different from Edinburgh, different from the Heilan' towns we visited, and different from the German cities and towns I know so well. Aside from the lilt of Scottish accents, it had more the spirit of Berlin than its neighborly brother, Edinburgh.

Glaswegian humor: the government tried to make the Duke of Wellington less accessible
by putting him on a plinth. The cone re-appeared on his head the next day.

New Mexico Wanderings

After my weekend in Boston, the next stop on my trip was Albuquerque. I wasn't sure what to expect from New Mexico, except maybe to see some folks from Calvin while I was there, enjoy some sunshine, and and eat some chili. Over meals with friends, I had green an red chili in several forms (each of their suggestions was delicious!) and finally got my time in the sun on my last day, before flying out. 

Sunrise on a red snake

Wichita

After a couple hang-ups, work sent me out to Wichita to visit customers. The area has a surprising amount of aerospace companies, including Cessna, Spirit, their suppliers, McConnel Air Force Base... I visited one or two of those and explored Wichita for a day or two.

the Keeper of the Plains

Wieder in Wien

There are some lovely cities in Europe. Prague is romantic, Amsterdam is egalitarian with wild tourists, and Vienna is elegant. I miss it. Turns out, there was a way to get on a train in the Czech, give ourselves a couple hours' "layover" between trains in Vienna. So, we walked from the beautiful new Hauptbahnhof (main train station) into the city center. 

Fountain at the Oper (Opera house)

Stuttgart

I visited Stuttgart three years ago at about the same time of year. This time around we waited until the last day of our stay to go into the city because the Wine Festival started that day. While we did eventually spend a wonderful evening in the city center eating Maultaschen and chatting friends of our host, we had an entire afternoon to explore the city before everyone was off work.

Über Ulm

In German there is a "Zungenbrecher" (tongue-breaker) about a city in Baden-Würtemberg, Ulm. It goes like so: In Ulm, um Ulm, und um Ulm herum. Try saying that 5x fast! "It doesn't flow as well in English, "in Ulm, about Ulm and all around Ulm." On our third full day in Germany, we added a preposition; we went Über Ulm. The thing that the city is most famous for is its church tower, the tallest in the world (aside from the yet incomplete Sagrada Familia). On the recommendation of a friend's friend, we headed over to hike to the top.

Castles and churches in Esslingen

Monday was a holiday for us, but the rest of the world was back to work. Anne rode her bike to the office that morning so that we could use her car to go to Esslingen, a town only 20 minutes away by car but an hour away by train. Still unsure of what all the road signs meant, we jumped into the kiwi and went on an adventure.

The first day of summer (in Tacoma)

The local high school team was at the state meet in Tacoma this weekend. Sister #3 is a star runner, so we headed down to watch her run! After she PR'd by 2 seconds in the 800m, we had a few hours until the next event, so we took Sisters #4 and #5 and headed downtown for an adventure in the sunshine. 

leaning slightly left at the Glass Museum

Bishop Arts District (Dallas, TX)

The week after my Quebec trip, I immediately had another trip scheduled for a training in Dallas. Oofda. Nevertheless, I headed south in search of sunshine and coffee. While it turned out that Dallas is a coffee wasteland, there was sunshine and chaco weather!

Everything's bigger in Texas? 

Bluer than blue (Puno)

I woke up in a reclined armchair as we rolled down the pre-morning streets of Puno. We had driven through the night, finally coming down the hill to Lake Titicaca. Our hostel owner didn't have our room ready, but he offered us a spot to crash on the couch, a rather good breakfast, and a place on a tour that left at 8am.  We piled on all the warm cloths we had and sleepily walked  down the quay to the waiting lines of boats. Pulling out of the marina, we cut slowly into the bay.

Our first glimpse of the floating islands

The first stop was at one of the Uros floating islands. The islanders have lived for thousands of years on these structures made of blocks of reed root covered in reed bundles and topped by reed houses. Most of the men and boys were out fishing and harvesting reeds with long, scythe-like poles. The elected "mayor" of the island greeted us with the women and girls, who showed off their embroidery and method of island building.

After a ride  on  a long, low reed boat we re-boarded our motorboat and went to the long rocky island of Taquile. Here, the men wear black pants with billowing white shirts and black vests in the Spanish colonial style. These are belted with colourful woven sashes and "Inca" hats with patterns that indicate status. A bag of cocoa leaves is tucked into the sash. The leaves are traded with friends as a  form of greeting when they meet on the paths. The women wear tasseled shawls, colourful for the girls and black with bright tasseled for the married women.

Hiking up the island.
It was so cold, I wore  a touque I had bought as a gift!

Both the men and women of Taquile weave and knit. A market in the main  square  sells their wares. 

We broke for lunch at a house on  the south end of the island. Our view extended over the huge lake, south  towards the high  mountains of Bolivia. We were served a delicious quinoa soup and a trout or tortilla  (omlette) on rice. 

Bolivia's Cordierra Real mountains on  the horizon.
They are over 20,000 ft  tall

Our companions came from Slovakia, Germany, South  Africa, and Catalunia

Quinoa soup

We finally re-boarded our boat and bucked a rough  headwind on  a zig-zagging course  back to Puno. Several of us sat on the deck, trading travel stories  and  discussing Basque/Catalunian/Spanish politics. Those of us who  were staying at the same hostel resolved to meet for dinner, where we  enjoyed another few hours of conversation (with the obligatory questions  about why Americans love guns) and delicious  Alpaca and Cuy.

Barrios de Lima

Peru!! Jone and I are finally on our trip... And finally bought a camera cable so we can share more than just the photos from her phone. 

Photo by Jone

Poäng Chair Makeover

The Ikea Poäng chair is a classic piece of design that I have coveted for years. A high school friend had one in her living room that I claimed every time I was at her house. So as soon as I walked into my new apartment, I saw a perfect spot by the window for a perfect Poäng chair. I wasn't stoked about spending $150+ on a new chair with footstool, so my first stop was Craigslist. There it was: a brown laminated birch chair with  a footrest. A quick trip to Seattle, some dissassembly (it wouldn't fit in my Golf otherwise), a quick re-assembly, and it was mine. Well, sorta. The cusions, though in great condition, were a little... plain.

Okay, it's a rendering... I forgot to take before pictures!

Enter my creative, brilliant, can-do mother. Who is also master of the sewing machine. A bit of canvas, a few late nights, and here's what we came up with:

I'm looking forward to many weekend mornings curled up here with a good book :)

Granada

Our walk from the bus to White Nest hostel took us through the tiny, crooked streets of the Albacin (Moorish) neighborhood. The hostel is actually close to the bottom of the ravine that runs below the Alhambra. The stream at the bottom was a natural air conditioner- a welcome change after Sevilla. We wandered the streets on Saturday and shared a tortilla with ali-oli sauce and mojitos (hey, it was still hot out and we had had sangria the past 3 days!) at a great little cafe on a pedestrian street filled with bars.

Sunday we were up early and had hiked to the Alhambra by 8. We were with the first group in to the palaces at 830. I don't think that either of us were really ready for what we saw. The level of artistry and intricacy in the tile, stone, wood, and plaster work was stunning. We took a full three hours to wander the multiple palaces, the lush gardens, museum, and fortress. 
The sun was hot as we came back into town, and we were glad that we had done our major sightseeing so early. After a break at the hostel and lunch we wandered town again, stopping in shops, drinking espresso, and winding down to the river. Granada is at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains, which still had streaks of snow in July. The river itself was low but glacier blue. 

We spent an hour or two resting and then got dinner before the flamenco show. I stopped in a kebap stand and got pita falafel, while emily opted for shrimp at a cafe that we had stopped at earlier in the day. The only problem was that our waiter had thought she'd ordered razor clams. You should have seen the look on her face. Absolute horror. i think it was made up for when the shrimp finally came. 

The flamenco was at a place called El Chien Andalou, the Andalusian Dog. We were in a long, low, barrel vaulted basement packed with low stools and tables. We ended up sharing our table with an Italian lady (who also spoke Spanish and French), a French lady, and her two sons. The show began with a solo guitarist, added a singer, and then added a dancer. Linda warned me that flamenco was "soooo intense," and was she ever right! I wish i could have seen the lady's feet, because the rhythms coming from the floor and the guitar and the singer and the dancer's hands were captivating. Everything about it was captivating.

Sevilla days 3 - 3.5

artsy fartsy
the plan for day 3 in Sevilla was to fill up on art and see the northern part of the city center. We went through our usual routine of yogurt and fruitbat home followed by coffee/oj + croissant in a cafe, and then wandered over to the fine arts museum. It is in an old monestary and mostly 15th-18th century religious art that had been donated. I most enjoyed the display of 19th and 20th century paintings. Many were impressionist and either portraits or scenes from everyday life. 

The next stop was across the river at the ACCA, Andalusian Center for Contemporary Art. The trouble was that the building was not accurately positioned on our map, and we spent an extra mile in the sun trying to find it. There were a variety of fine and multimedia installations from international artists. We spent over an hour wandering through. 

The art centers had worked up quite the appetites in us, and we were on the far side of major construction from food. So we jumped on a bus (a/c!) and rode it all the way to Prado de San Sebastian on the south side of the city center. From there we walked through the university and found a sort of fast food/cafeteria place where we ordered fresh salads, mini-sandwiches, and lots of water. Emily found us a shaded route* all the way to the big wooden mushroom/tree sculpure, which we knew housed roman ruins. (there was a break for ice cream here when we got to the sculpture :-)
Thinking that we had just bought tickets to the exhibit, we stepped into an elevator... And rode to the walkway and viewing platform on top of the sculpture! We enjoyed the view of the city before riding back down and going in the correct door. 

Love these girls!

The roman city that was discovered while excavating the sculpture's foundation is very well displayed. Interactive displays next to each foundation gave a rendering of what it looked like and was used for. Our favorite part was probably the beautiful mosaics on the floors of several of the buildings. 
Having spanned Sevillan art from the 5th century to the 21st, we went on new quest for the medieval city walls. I was disappointed that i couldn't climb on then when we got tbere, but they were massive and a beautiful example of double wall defences. The low front wall was backed by a deep channel and then the higher wall which had supporting towers every 150-200 feet. 
We came back into downtown and walked through the long Hercules square. Legend says that the city was founded by the greek hero after he created the straight of Gibraltar, and the square has pillars topped by lions to honor him. We re-hydrated with OJ and trudged back home. 

As the weather cooled, we went out in search of dinner again and wound up at the same tapas bar as the first night. This time we knew better than to order 5 plates of food... Just tortilla with salmorejo sauce, a huge plate of jamon, a Spanish ratatouille with a quail egg cooked on top, and the usual bread. Plus a pitcher of sangria. 
Around 9 we wandered down to the river and spent a little of our travel money from Aunt Marilyn on renting sit on top kayaks for an hour. The river wasn't cold but still felt wonderful on our exhausted feet. We paddled up and half-floated back as the sun set over the city. We were lucky that Jone had her phone and got some pictures.

Our final morning was pretty relaxed. We dressed, packed, and walked with Jone to the bus station. We arrived with time for coffee and croissant, and then said our goodbyes as the airport bus pulled up. Somehow it seems easier to say goodbye after you've proven to yourself that it is really just "until next time."

Hasta la vista, Triana!

Em and i walked back to the hotel, grabbed our bags, checked out, walked to Fientorina Heladeria one last time (it was closed), got regular ice cream at a cafe, and got on our bus to Grenada...

* the reason for crooked streets in Moorish cities? They keep the sun out. It feels 10*cooler in the crevasses between the buildings!