Wednesday, August 7, 2013

What Happens In Europe (doesn't stay in Europe)

I  wear a funny hat on the beach. It is black, decidedly shapeless, and has the word Bali sewn in white thread on the brim. The kind of hat you would be embarrassed of if even your mother was wearing it. Greg insists on staying a minimum of 20 meters ahead of me when I am sporting this floppy, tied-with-a-string-beneath-my-chin lid. I usually spin it so Bali is on the back. The hat blocks the sun. I am 50, and wrinkling. 'Nuff said.

This is our final full day in the Algarve ... the edenistically beautiful stretch of beach towns along Portugal's southwest coast. Not far from here, the great Portugese explorers set sail during the Age of Discovery. Yesterday I saw the church where Vasco da Gama stopped to pray before he hoisted the sails. (No gift shop; this pleased me.) I also went to the end of the world, Cabo de  Sao Vicente ... as far west as a body can venture on this great continent without falling 75 metres -- almost straight down -- into the stewing Atlantic. I hiked there with a 62 year old Dane. Sigrun. She has lived here 13 years. I learned a lot from her, including how to crack almonds with rocks. The 30 kilometre hike -- over challenging, bum-scooting, cliff-climbing, sun-searing, bramble-scratching, shepherd's-dog-dangerous and nudist-bedecked secret beach terrain (oh, hi Greg!), took 8 hours. It was my longest hike ever. Also my best.

We are in Salema. A true fishing village, still, and barely. Tomorrow it is back to Lisbon, then back to Canada, after six weeks (and five countries) in Europe.

Much has happened during this partially Rick Steves-inspired, partial home and car exchange holiday. I write from the very balcony of the very apartment -- with a glorious sea view -- of the one-and-the-same A Mare guest house Steves champions in his book-tv show-DVD empire. Steves is a Demi-god here. There's a photo of him standing beside our favourite local grocer (Romeu)
 in the store where we buy late-night snacks. Everyone knows of Steves. Countless thousands of his aficionados arrive here every year, guidebooks kept to the page with their thumbs.

What have we covered, Steves' style? Colmar, in France's Alsace region. We even stood before the recommended Isenheim altarpiece ("Crucifixion") by Matthias Grunewald in the Unterlinden Museum. I was expecting to "break down and sob with those in the painting," but did not. I was also terribly conscious that Greg was not enjoying himself. I took a photo of him, standing before a religious painting. Something famous as all get out. He looked as if he were truly captivated, but I knew the truth."If I were to name this photograph of you," I said, "I would call it 'I don't give a fuck.'"

We did "Petite France," in Strasbourg, but only on our second trip to that fabled and fought over city. The first time, en route back to our home base in the ancient village of Phaffans, France from Baden-Baden (that story is for another time), via the Black Forest (again, another time), and Freiburg, Germany (we almost had a head-on with a tram, trying as we were to avoid hitting cyclists ... but we loved you, Freiburg!) we got so terribly lost for several hours looking for our B and B (on Rue de Bitche), I ended up in tears and Greg was positively flammable.

It was bad-bad; at one point we invited a stranger into our car and showed him the address. He got us to the correct address ... in the wrong freaking town! We decided that Strasbourg didn't like us much. Nay, she REVILED us. I don't think Greg and I spoke to each other for three days after that navigator vs. driver brouhaha. It took us three weeks to muster the nerve to return. This time, my Swiss sister-in-law, Susannah, and niece Kyara came with. And Susannah drove us in HER car, not our traded-for Cadillac.

We hit Steves' recommended Equisheim and Riquewihr villages on Alsace's Route du Vin, and partook in the various samples of white wines produced in small, family operations. We also enjoyed several of our own discoveries in this medieval string of bergs skirted in vineyards, namely the storybook town of Bergheim. You can't believe that a village can be this pretty. Or that people live here --  REAL people, not characters out of a Hans Christian Andersson tale.
Not Hansel and Gretel. Not gingerbread people.

Castles? Mais oui. Taking yet another page out of Rick Steves' advice,  we hiked up to a grand-daddy:  Haut-Koenigsbourg. It crowns the Stophanberch mountain, encompasses 1.5 hectares, and was first mentioned in the 12th century. You can see this son of a gun for miles. The castle brochure says "the present Haut-Koeningsbourg is typical of the architecture of the castles of the 15th and 16th centuries in the south of the Rhine basin." It was a lot of walking. A load of photos. I should have worn better footwear; flip flop hell.

We were in Switzerland. We flew to Prague. (Now that I have been there, I prefer to call it Praha.) Five-out-of-five-star Prague -- I mean Praha --deserves its own essay, and I am recording this on an IPad with one finger while the wind whips hair into my eyes, so she will wait.

Cesky Krumlov, sorry, you will have your hour another time, too.

But I will share this. Final hour in Praha, Greg and I leave the excellent Hotel Tyl and rush with our bags down the steps to the I.P. Pavlova metro. We have this city's metro and bus systems all figured out (take that, Strasbourg!), and, as is too often the case, you untangle the knots of a city's public transportation systems and voila: it's time to go.

So there we are, proceeding to the gate with our tickets in hand, when I stop at the sight of a sort-of-familiar-looking man coming toward us. "Greg," I say, "that's Rick Steves." Without even a "No! Are you sure?", Greg about-faces, scrambles after the tall, blonde stranger, and asks: "Excuse me, are you Rick Steves?" "Yes I am," RS replies, and he looked genuinely pleased to be interrupted on his own way -- with his Prague/Praha guide, whom I also recognized from TV -- to buying tickets.

We chatted. He was kind. Friendly. Said his grandparents homesteaded near Edmonton! I told him our travel motto was: What would Rick Steves do?Fortunately, I thought to take photos. Unfortunately, and quite idiotically, I have no way to get them on my blog whilst traveling. Later.

We forgot to tell him that we would soon be in Paris, and we would follow his advice there, as well. We neglected to share that we were going to Salema, in the Algarve, and staying at A Mare!

We parted ways, got on our metro, our bus, our plane back to Basel, and into our exchanged car ( left in longish-term airport parking) back to the Phaffans house. "Did that really happen?" I asked Greg again and again. I was in a state of semi-shock. So was he. Rick Freaking Steves. Got to love it.

But that's not all, folks. I could also tell you about the sex club in Paris; the gypsies that tried scamming us at every turn and eventually had us yelling "Nyet!" in their faces whenever they dropped a gold ring in front of us; the bar-hopping night in Praha; or the wild "arrest" in Portugal (Greg and moi in a paddy wagon with five cops, sirens blazing as they transported us suspected criminals from Estoril, Portugal, to Lisbon. Normally Forty minutes by train, they hightailed it -- barely missing cars, loudspeaker warning people to get out of the way, and those ear drum shattering sirens going off like a WW2 air raid the entire way -- in a third of that time. They had Greg for about 3.5 hours, me for 2.) "And don't lie to us!" the only English-speaking cop said as we were eventually transferred from the paddy wagon into a police car, "Or you will spend the night in jail!"

I could tell you, but I'd really rather you buy the book of travel essays I am compiling. Adventure has a way of finding some people ; I am ever surprised.

Now back to Salema. When we arrived here, via Lagos, we stepped off the bus into the sunlight and sea breeze, and an elderly, well-tanned Portugese woman immediately assailed us. "Rooms? Zimmer? Sleeps?" We thanked her and wished her a bom dia, but we already had our (Rick Steves-made-famous) accommodation lined up, a few hops (uphill) from the idyllically-aquamarine ocean.

This morning I woke at 4:00, as I have been most mornings here. Too damn excited about this "pinch me" locale to sleep. I hiked when the sun rose. I found the ruins of a home in the countryside -- picture a crumbling stone house, a few centuries old, with evidence (bottles, old couch, toilet paper) of recent human life -- that gave me the heebie geebies. Even the trees around that shack screamed "Blair Witch". I went in. I am still here to write about it (with one finger).

Then the beach, the silly hat, the last-day washing-of-clothes-in-the-sink. (Oh more, of course, but Greg is waiting to check a hockey blog, and this is HIS IPad.) I started walking up to our pension -- with the balcony, and an ocean view even when I am standing at the sink scrubbing 5-days-worth of panties (lost my bathing suit bottoms in Lisbon, have been wearing panties in public all week) -- and the señora from Day One was sitting on a bench in the shade. Oh, but she's a quick one.

"Rooms? Zimmer? Sleeps?"

Maybe next time, Misses. Maybe next time.


Sent from my iPad

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