“You are so lucky, kid,” I told my youngest sister Meg as we stood in St. Peter’s Square, the basilica looming over us. “You will never see it like this ever again.” It was January, 2022. By this point, we’d taken COVID tests in three different countries. In the coming days, we’d stand in an…
Category: Travels
Lunches, Liquor and Other Rabbit Holes
“I just finished my small lunch,” Ricardo said. I knew what he meant. He had just finished his almeurzo. If you look up the English translation, it will say, “lunch.” But in Valencia, Spain (where Ricardo lives), it is definitely not lunch. Almuerzo consists of a small sandwich accompanied by a glass of wine or…
License to Drive (Part 2)
I looked at the street sign and realized I had no idea what it meant. An orange oval lay on its side attached to the horizontal orange line below it. This structure hovered over a black axle with a wheel on either side. Below all of this were three squiggly black lines. I was certain…
License to Drive (Part 1)
I am proficient enough in Spanish to read posters on the streets and emails confirming appointments. But I am certainly not proficient enough to navigate the questions asked on the Spanish driving test. So I took the test in English. And I’m not sure that was any easier. It seems they’ve used Google translate. The…
Learning Spanish: An Update
Yesterday Michael and I hosted Thanksgiving dinner for 18 guests, all but two of whom were native Spanish speakers. And the two who were not native? They’re pretty much fluent. And guess what? I was able to follow nearly every conversation. Whether we were talking about the differences between buying a home in Spain versus…
Thanksgiving Compromises
“She’s bringing potato smoothies?” Michael asked. “Smoothies? Where did she say that?” I asked while scrolling through the messages in our Thanksgiving 2023 WhatsApp group. “Patatas batidos,” Michael said. “I looked it up — it means potato smoothies.” “But did you read what she wrote right after that?” I translated it for Michael. “She says…
Walking Into the Unknown (aka the Camino Invierno)
In Spain, there exists a monthly magazine about the Camino de Santiago. The articles are beyond my level of Spanish comprehension, but the charts and graphs. . . those I can follow. This is how I learned that 438,000 people walked into Santiago de Compostela last year. Seventy-three percent of them arrived via the two…
A Camino Fail
Blog posts written about my first walk on the Camino de Santiago: 32 Blog posts written about my second walk on the Camino de Santiago: 0 —— My second Camino was a disaster. The route I chose was not well marked. Not that I would have seen the trail markers–it was raining so hard I…
Unplanned
“You should join us for Tuesday night dinners,” he said. “This Tuesday?” I asked. “Any Tuesday. Just show up at my place and they’ll be food and people.” “I’ll have to check my calendar and get back to you,” I said. “You don’t have to tell me if you’re coming or not. You can just…
If They Build It. . .
I have recently acquired a fear of blind curves. More specifically: blind curves in Spain. In the US, such road hazards are preceded by one or more signs: an image of a curvy road, the words “blind curve ahead,” or an encouragement to beep one’s horn to alert oncoming traffic of your impending arrival. Unfortunately,…
RenaissanceRebecca 