Mari Carmen was the fantastic director at my school who took me in like a daughter. I am forever indebted for her and her family's hospitality and care.
Above: Across the border in Portugal. A couple of times she took me us to get coffee and pastries in Moncao, just a twenty minute trip from Ponteareas.
When my parents came, she fixed an amazing paella. Don't you love those blue glasses on the table?!
Jamón, jamón!
Going away dinner. Some of my favorite people. Beautiful, smart, fun. Welcomed us with open arms. I couldn't be more thankful.
Super cool coffee shop in Vigo. Loved the decor.
Cris! Almost-twin modernita glasses requires a photo.
During my last few months in Spain there was a protest/revolt/don't know what to call it, demanding that Spain function in a more "real" democracy. Maybe kind of like our Occupy, but more oriented towards government than Wall Street. It started in Madrid in the main plaza there, but many of the smaller cities held their own sit-ins. Ourense had their own at our Praza Maior.
I was wandering my city one of the last days there to do some last minute documenting, of a city I now dearly miss. I snapped a few photos of the movement. A lady passing by saw me and asked what I was going to with it. I said I was just taking pictures to remember my year in Spain. I don't think she got it. She pushed it further asking what I was really going to do with it and I gathered that she thought I was some kind of journalist. Flattered though I was, I assured her that I had no intentions to do anything with the photo other than document my surroundings. She told me I should send it to "someone in my country." I asked her what I would even say with the photo to which she remarked, "Tell them we don't have a real democracy in Spain." Then she proceeded to share her passion for her Galician homeland with me. It turned out to be an enriching conversation. However, I still left laughing thinking about how anyone with a camera who looks foreign can be made to look a little more powerful, like they're going to tell a story with it. I honestly never got a full grasp on the movement and have no political comments to make on it, and think it wise to not form strong political feelings about a country's system when I'm not actually a citizen and could probably never understand their sentiments fully as I'm not subject to their laws, taxes, and systems. I was impressed by the participants' willingness to step up for something they want to see changed.
A recent article in the NY Times about the 45 places to go in 2012 had me interested--I'm always curious about how they pick the places for those kind of articles. I arrived at a paragraph on one of the places in Italy that it recommended as an alternative to Cinque Terre while two of the five villages recover from massive mudslides that were devastating to the town centers. I had no clue! How did I miss that in the news?! After some googling (it's 2012, that can be a verb, right?), I found photos that confirmed it. I have no connection to Cinque Terre aside from two short visits, but was still saddened to think about such a gem under mud. Hopefully the recovery will be quick. I was thankful to have seen it before the destruction. A few years ago as a backpacking student I spent time hiking between the villages. This time I was with my family in a rented car which made for a different experience. The road into town is chock-full of elbow turns and going like 10 mph. Sorry, like, 20 kph...when in Rome...We stayed in Vernazza and only visited this one of the five villages. I had hoped for a boat ride to the other villages but the seas were really rough that day so no boats were running. We decided spending our time would be best spent by staying in Vernazza and enjoying Mediterranean rays. There's something about the ocean that gets me. I know I'm not alone as it is the topic of many historical writings from the first time people began to write. So I'm not saying I have a special lure to the sea. Just one that changes something in my attitude like in so many people. Something about being on the edge of land is fantastic. You look out and the horizon is so promising. It's a reminder that there is a whole world out there and you're at the edge looking out. It's so deep and mysterious, as all you can see is the surface of the water. It brings unique smells that complete the ambiance. It provides food and a medium for transportation. After dinner one night we walked up a hilltop and looked out. The sea more calmly surged below, the lights of the town twinkled; I could hear music, the clanking of restaurants cleaning dishes off of the patios, people chatting. I treasure the memory.
Left: 2007. Right: 2011.
It's hard to get the idea from the two pictures above, but this was a scene where we, and many others around, stood mesmerized watching these young boys play in the rough seas. The gist of it is that there was a sea wall that was maybe 5-6 feet above water level. But with the ebbing and flowing of the sea, the waves would crash over the wall. The boys had figured out that if they just bobbed out the in the water (usually well-below the wall), eventually a wave big enough would intermittently come and be so big that they could ride it over the wall and it was set them own perfectly on their feet on top of the wall. Though risky, it looked fun.
Our hotel room itself was nothing special, though it did have a balcony with a great view. However, the breakfast room was so lovely with flower petals everywhere and these were our lovely cappuccinos.
The beauty of technology is that plans can be made somewhat last minute very easily. I waited until we got to Tuscany to get winery suggestions because I figured the locals could give better recommendations than random online searches. This meant with a handy iTouch and wifi in every hotel, we could make plans up to the last minute. We found the perfect vineyard to visit in Montalcino. Stopped in Montepuciano for a memorable cappuccino (oh the coffee! one of the main things I miss from Spain and Italy!). Headed over to Cortona to soak in the inspiration for Under the Tuscan. A bit cliché, but it is shamelessly one of my favorite flicks. We had rented a car, and my poor, good-sport dad humored my mom and I by driving up and down this curvy, one-lane wide hillside, in a stick-shift car, looking for the house used in the movie. Sadly after several turn-arounds and ups-and-downs we agreed to abandon the mission as it felt like the price of expiring patience wasn't the price to pay for a quick glimpse at a house. Tourist-laden it may be, but there's something magical about Tuscany. Something that connects culture and nature. Hearty work with pristine art. Knowledge revolution with an almost moral commitment to enjoying la dolce vita. Traditional cuisine with a passion hard to fully absorb without actually being Tuscan.
You know it's good bread when it comes just stacked in bins.
A dip down to Siena with my parents was next on the agenda. It was a three day stay that was a much needed time to sit and pause. To breathe a little. Thankfully our little bed and breakfast on the outskirts had a backyard a tables and chairs and great view of Tuscan hills. The place was quaint and cozy and had the perfectly sweet mannered owner who was so fun to get to know.
Our awesome breakfast at the bed and breakfast.
Siena Cathedral. The striped tower intrigued me, especially since the stripe spacing gradated (not a good depiction here).
Full red moon one night.
I studied for one month in Florence in college. It was my first time to Europe and I remember the giddy emotions I had before embarking. I just kept thinking, "This is real. There is a place across the world where I will land in a plane tomorrow and it is real! It's not just in books or on websites! I will be right in the middle of those things I've seen in pictures." Indeed it was an incredibly formative summer and I think time abroad should be a near-requirement for all college students. We didn't stay long there with my parents but I did at least want them to see the things that meant so much to me that summer: our apartment, where we would sketch with our class, where we got gelato, where we had the best blueberry steak in the world, even down to the exact same Simon and Garfunkel cover band that played in the piazza.
After Turkey, I flew to meet my parents in Rome for their first trip to Europe. We had a blast! It was also the first time I had ever repeat-visited a city in Europe (aside from those around us in Spain). It was interesting to see it differently on a second voyage. I mean, it's Rome. Not sure there is much new I can add to the conversation that other people haven't said better. So for now I'll just stick to pictures.
This is the street with our apartment. This was also the first time I had used a rent-by-owner apartment site. The one we found was perfect! Cheap, convenient and with the cutest, peppiest owner. When we came wandering down the street with luggage, there she was in the top window, calling to us with a "Yoohoo! Just come to the top floor!" She then gave us her own run down of things to do. You can't beat getting a true Roman to tell you about their own city.
Arch of Constantine, built to commemorate the legalization of Christianity by Emperor Constantine.
Piazza Navona
St. Peter's Basilica
Peter and Paul's jail cell (where it is traditionally said that they were, though not at the same time).
After the our lovely brunch and riding around Istanbul (again, I thought I had seen my last day every time we entered that traffic), we got on a ferry for Big Island. I think the ferries were definitely one of my favorite parts of the city—you're in this booming metropolis, yet boat travel is normal and convenient. There are several islands in the Bosporus that are a quick boat ride away and common vacation spots.
There are no cars on the island, making the only mode of transportation horses and carriages, which we gladly rented to take us up the mountain! It was a little lopsided, but a fun adventure.
It was hard to get any good photos because of the moving carriage and rain, but one some-what example of the architecture of all of the gorgeous vacation homes on the island. We stopped for a tea at this restaurant halfway up the hill to the top of the island. From there we could watch the boats out in the water waiting their turn to go through the straight.
We then walked up a really long hill to get to a restaurant at the top and to soak in almost tear-bringing beautiful view, with complete, absolute silence. A perfect respite from the throbbing energy of the city.
Armenian Christians used to live on the island (I guess still do) and built this lovely church.
I think if I could choose any vacation home in the world, this would rank very highly! On the other side of the island from Istanbul, where I honestly have not clue how they got to it. There had be roads, but none were visible from the top. You have a city of 15 million a 30 minute boat ride away, and then you could be here without anything but the sea in sight.
Our dinner of kebab and the typical Turkish salad that is so delicious: tomatoes, onions, parsley, oil and vinegar.
After a nice day of seclusion, quietness, nature, sunset, and a car-free island, we returned to the bottom to catch the ferry back and found that globalization reaches to even these far corners:
I was really grateful to be in Istanbul with a friend because we stayed with her cousin and the cousin's husband. They lived on the Asian side of Istanbul. A lot of tourists don't make it over to the other side of the bridge because most of the sights are on the European side of Istanbul. We ferried across after some sightseeing, then caught this insanely crazy mini-bus. They have these little van-like buses where you stand and they have a set route, but no set stops. It's really convenient, but you are constantly stopping as people flag it down and request stops to get off. They accelerate super intensely from stop to stop and weave in and out of traffic. I said a pre-death prayer or two. Thankfully we arrived safely in an insane frenetic mixture of people going every which way. There were some elections coming up so there were campaigners and people singing in groups in all of the public spaces.
This is the bridge that crosses the Bosporus: Europe on the left, Asia on the right. Incredible.
We ate brunch at this incredible restaurant on the Bosporus with a great view of the water and city. The spread of food options was phenomenal. They even had a huge chunk of honeycomb you could slice off with a wire.
Istanbul was once Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire and where emperor Constantine legalized Christianity. The Hagia Sophia is a marvelous basilica. It was the largest in the world for almost 1,000 years. It was built between 532 and 537, but in 1453 was converted to a mosque. In 1935 Ataturk declared it a national museum where one can now see the layers of Christian and Islamic art. Like many things in European sights, it was amazing to finally see something I had only learned about in books in art history. The dome of the church with its flooding streams of light left such an impression on me from just the photo in my textbook. To see it first hand was such a completion of appreciation. It indeed, as my old textbook claimed, appeared that the dome was floating on top of the church because of all of the windows. This structure made it a revolutionary work of architecture.
I wanted to so much to know how to cook with all of this!
Buket was making fun of me for taking so many pictures of the markets because it's just food. But for me, it was so much of what I had imagined in my head about Turkey.
I thought this little man was so interesting selling his paintings:
One of my favorite things about going to Istanbul was that we took a ferry there! It was such a dramatic entrance to the city bustling with 15 million people. It was beautiful to approach it from this wide panoramic view and just get closer and closer to it. We took it because it was actually the most practical way, as the boat is faster from Bursa to Istanbul than road travel. I think the birds circling overhead made it all the more exotic with their calls going out over the city combined with the calls to prayer weaving sound bites over the city. The city was overwhelming, but in a good way. Absolute sensory overload. Being with a Turkish person , however, made it manageable and navigable.
I don't know why, but I absolutely found this building intriguing. The architecture in Turkey was not at all what I was expecting. The endless streets of apartment buildings were, but this more wooden, craftsman style home was not what I anticipated to be typical Turkish.
We started out sight-seeing at the Sultan Ahmen, the main mosque in Istanbul. Because in Islamic art it is forbidden to make images of humans, they have developed intricate, breathtakingly beautiful tile pattern designs. The entire place looked like one seamless quilt design.
And just as Rome has its street photo-poser gladiators, this area comes with its own Sultan photo-posers. I had to work hard to discreetly take this photo because I thought it was hilarious.
We stopped for a delicious kebab lunch to re-energize and at this fantastic, subtly sweet dessert made with semolina wheat and maybe some sugar water ahd honey(?). They just make a huge chunk of it and cut off portions:
Buket took me to the main mosque in the center of Bursa. This was my first time in a predominantly Muslim country so many of the routines and traditions were interesting and fun to see since it is so foreign to my own culture. The call to prayer goes out over the city five times a day and is quite a site to watch people mobilize to head to their mosque and pray and go through the washing ritual in the fountains outside before entering. The whole thing is carpeted so when you enter, they give you a little plastic bag for your shoes. The patterns of carpet and tiles reflected amazing craftsmanship.
The main mosques are used to tourists so before you can go in, they provide you with a skirt to cover your legs, and a scarf to cover your hair and shoulders. Ergo, we look like weirdos:
We went to Bursa's famous silk market and then stopped in its plaza for a taste of super strong Turkish coffee. I just thought espresso was strong.
Cool little hipster coffee shop in the city center. As a friend recently commented about a different scenario, but still applies here, "It felt like you put on Instagram lenses when you walked in."
Wow, look at this type! Not sure what it says, but I think it might be a monument Ataturk (Mustafa Kemal), the man to lead Turkey into modernity by defeating the Ottomans and declaring it a republic. He even made them all switch from writing in their traditional script to the Roman letters we use. I can't imagine the response Americans would have if we were all of a sudden made to adopt a new alphabet by mandate. But they did, and have fully made their way into the modern world of commerce and industry. A great book about modern Turkish history is Birds Without Wings if you're looking for a savory novel.
Seafood district in Bursa:
Awesome market in the city center:
The vendors were nice and let me sample stuff. There were foods I had never tried nor seen. Below are some dates (I guess we have them in America, but I've never eaten a fresh one not in a fruit cake or something).
I've sung a song about going around the mulberry bush since I was a child, but I've never actually seen one. They were tasty little things, kind of like a raspberry, only softer, sweeter, and a lighter taste.
There were artichoke hearts floating in parsley water at many of the stands. And super cheap! They looked delicious.
Buket's favorite kebab restaurant with their unique style kebabs:
(those should be Turkish i's with no dots on them in the title)...The first place Buket took me to in Bursa (I was really impressed with her ability to drive in Turkey--traffic is insanity), was Cumalikizik, an Ottoman village from the 1300's. The unique thing about this place is that it has been inhabited since then in the same buildings. Of course other cities are just as old, but stuff is usually torn down to build new development. These have been lived in for 700 years! The streets were narrow cobblestone corridors, hard enough to walk on, much less pull these horse/donkey-drawn carts up and down them like I watched an older man maneuver. When we entered the village there were a few tables set up with the locals selling some jewelry, honey, and other food products. In that sense it was there for tourists, but it didn't feel like a tourist trap destination. People were just going about their daily lives. One little girl did stop to offer us a well-rehearsed rattle-off-her-tongue history of the village in exchange for Buket's lira or two.
We stopped in a restaurant that the owner was very proud to show off. He showed us the upper rooms and insisted we take pictures of every corner.
Every house in Turkey had one of these solar-powered water heaters on the roof:
Buket's sweet-talked this lady at her door into letting us peek inside her courtyard so that she could show me the traditional setup of these houses. They all have a courtyard in the bottom where some of the living and working is done, but all of the rooms and actual living space is upstairs above this. I loved how it was built right into the rock on the ground.
After a day of the beach and Ephesus, we hopped on an overnight bus for Bursa, Buket's hometown. Right before boarding the bus at the station, Buket and I went around back to the public restrooms. As I exited, a man in a low-lit side room politely reminded me it was one lira for bathroom access. I paid him a lira then turned to leave. He said, "Sorry,..." and I thought, "What does he want now?!" When I turned around, I saw he was pointing to my dress and the fact it was tucked in my underwear. There I was in a country where some value conservativeness in your dressing so much so as to cover all but their eyes, and I'm walking around with my thigh hanging out of my dress. #Embarrassing. Buses in Turkey are a real treat. I was anticipating the normal, mundane, no-leg-room routine, but was in for a surprise when I came to see that they are nicer than the mainstream airlines. They were spacious, clean, and organized. Each seat had it's own touch screen in front of it with a slue of movie and music options. They periodically came down the isle serving tea and cookies. We got on the bus about 9:00 pm and around 1:00 am stopped at a mega-gas station with a cafeteria. At that point we're in the middle of nowhere and the first thing I hear getting off the bus is John Denver's "Country Roads Take Me Home" sounding from the radio outside. Simple flickers of home hints are always sweet. We arrived to Buket's home around 3:00 am and her mom was already prepared with a fresh bowl of fruit for us, the first of much generous hospitality.
The next morning her mom made one of the most incredible breakfasts I have ever seen. I LOVE breakfast and always missed them in Spain. Breakfast is not a very big meal of the day there, maybe just a few cookies, bread, or cereal. This one in Turkey was like a Thanksgiving style breakfast, and what made it even more special was that her family's business is fruit farming so they have miles of orchards that provided the fresh cherries and various fruits we ate. In the schmorgesborg were flaky bread pastries wrapped around spinach and feta, the traditional Turkish sarma of grape leaves wrapped around rice and minced meat, boiled eggs, tomatoes, cinnamon role-esque things with fresh clotted cream, various cheeses, olives, and baklava...yum, yuM, YUM! Obviously I was hurting afterwards. It was even more fun to sit at the table with her family, including uncle and grandmother, a neighbor, and a friend. I think Turkey is the country whose food I have enjoyed the most. Obviously the others in Europe throughout the year had really good meals I enjoyed, but I liked EVERYTHING I ate in Turkey, from the tree sap ice cream to the many kebabs. I think I am just always drawn to a diet with lots of cheese, onions, garlic, tomatoes, and spices.
A brief break from posting summer travel blog catch-ups to share this sweet necklace I just got from Faunhouse, newly opened boutique in Auburn, whose logo I designed you can see here. It was made by Mississippi designers called B & G.
Four years ago while in school, I met a dear friend from Turkey, Buket (Turkish for bouquet). We've kept in touch all these years and realized that this year she would be home for a visit while I was looking for something to do in between my brother leaving and my parents arriving. I flew from Stuttgart to Izmir and arrived around 10:30 at night only to find that my phone didn't work as I had hoped it would, and there were two terminals at the airport and I didn't know to which one she was coming to pick me up. After an hour of running around and arriving close to a breakdown I found her! Kuşadası is a coastal town so we headed straight for the waterfront to grab a late dinner. Hands-down, Turkey has the best food of any country I've been to. Every last thing I tasted was amazing. This night we had lamb kufta, with much more lamb to come on the trip...yum!
Buket and her friend had been at this resort on the Mediterranean for a few days and I showed up for one night. One huge perk in Turkey was that everything was really cheap, so this place was a deal and included free drinks and huge buffet meals.
More deliciousness with lamb meat.
I found it very interesting that the trees in the cemeteries in Turkey are painted white a high as you can reach and they are left to be grown over, not well kept like in America. Not a bad thing, just an intriguing cultural difference.
They had rented a car which was very handy as it allowed us to be on our own schedule. However, her friend who drove has lived in England the last seven years and we had to keep reminding her to get on the right side of the road. Made it out narrowly with my life. After a quick morning of sun tanning, we packed it up and drove about 45 minutes out to historical Ephesus. It's really hard to explain what it's like to walk around a place so ancient. Yes, it's in ruins, but from what's left you can tell it had to have been a spectacular city. The architecture and details were simply stunning. And the fact that it's up a long tree-lined road in the mountains with a view of the sea makes it all the more majestic. As it was June, I spent a lot of my time focusing on not passing out from the heat, but the rest was spent marveling at the ingenuity in building and planning, and trying to imagine the people who lived here 2,000 years ago.
This is the amphitheater where Paul gave a speech in Acts 19. I stood on the stage trying so hard to conjure the emotion of what it would have been like to see him speak. But alas, as in a lot of travel, sometimes that understanding and grasping can be a bit elusive.
Me, Sibel (Buket's childhood friend), and Buket. Why we're bending over like weirdos, I don't know. Sibel has lived in Englad for the last seven years and commented that I was the first person she had heard speaking English enthusiastically. I think it's an American thing-other people commented throughout the year that Katie and I were very expressive and enthusiastic and that they just weren't used to people showing so much emotion. Granted, Katie and I are pretty easily excited about things, but we concluded that it was even more over the top in Spain because we were afraid people wouldn't understand us/our excitement/our appreciation of something, so we over-expressed those emotions in hopes that they would get the point.
The famous library in Ephesus:
Public toilets from back in the day. The rich people used to send their servants down to sit on it to start heating up the seat.
Just outside of Ephesus is the house where Mary came to live out the rest of her life after Jesus ascended. I'm not sure how they know this, but nevertheless, it was cool to see.
Stuttgart was another car-themed leg of the trip so my brother could head to the Mercedes Museum — his main request when we were planning the trip. Sadly, the rain put a damper on a lot of our time in Stuttgart, but we still saw most of the city. I went to the art museum while he made his museum trip. It was under some exhibit shifting so there wasn't much. On the way out I asked the front desk lady if she knew of anywhere I could see some Bauhaus architecture (obviously I slacked in the research before getting there). She sent me to a jack pot! I took the metro to the outskirts; we actually went above ground for a while through the woods, which felt strange in a city. Constructed for the 1926-7 Stuttgart Werkbund Exhibition, the Weissenhofsiedlung (I'm glad this is a blog post because if I were actually talking about it, I would have no clue where to start on that word) was a complex of buildings that was the first one of its type to then be subsequently used as fully functional buildings on a long-term basis. Architects, many from the Bauhaus, were brought into work their magic. There was a fantastic explanation of everything in the Le Courbusier designed house, now museum. One part of the exhibit explained: "After WWI, during a period of exceptional economic and political insecurity, culture underwent a rapid upswing. The times were characterized by radicalism and avant-garde experiments." (Does this mean we'll see this in this politically and economically insecure time?! How exciting! Send thoughts my way if you see evidence).
I always love learning about Bauhaus era design and have found much inspiration from their firm dedication to their ideologies and how they opened up design to a whole new world of possibilities. I appreciate that my design education was immensely based on the curriculum setup by Bauhaus educators. Their graphic design and industrial design are things of beauty. And while it was cool to finally go in a Bauhaus style structure, I didn't love it like I expected to. I "get" that they were going for functionality and the ability to mass produce housing, but the house felt cold, stark, and in no way livable. Breaking with tradition is fantastic and cool to observe, but I think I much prefer to actually live in something a little cozier. Can modern be cozy?
