Monday 13 December 2010

England before Christmas

So on December 1st Brian caught a flight from Malaga and landed at Newcastle airport in the middle of a blizzard. I guess his plane was one of only a few that actually got to land that night, most being diverted elsewhere. I met him with warm clothes and we took the train to my parents' place. He said it felt so good to be in a familiar town again, to be able to take a hot shower, get into clean clothes, and eat a real homemade English dinner. Since we arrived here we’ve kept a low profile. Most days Brian wakes up early, makes himself some coffee, and works on the book he's writing for a couple hours before I get up. He says it's nice to be making progress on it again. He ended up taking a longer hiatus from it than he had originally planned to, but up until the week before leaving Spain he never really had the motivation to write.

Every day we usually venture out at least briefly in the afternoon, unless the sidewalks are treacherously icy, which has happened a few times. We’ve also made a few longer journeys, motivated both by the need to do some Christmas shopping and to see the beautiful snowy countryside. There’s an inviting patch of winter woods close to my place that we’ve explored. And we’ve gone to Durham a couple times. We went there for the Christmas market and a carol service at the cathedral. Then we went on my birthday to do some shopping and to eat at a French cafĂ© by the bridge. We both like the feel of Durham, with its castle and cathedral perched over all those zig-zaggy medieval roads.

A few days ago we went to the Beamish museum for one of their Christmas events. Beamish is like a place I remember in New England called Sturbridge Village, where buildings and artefacts from a certain period of history have been collected in order to reconstruct a town. In this case, the period is around about 1910 or so. We took the wooden tram (which felt like riding in a boat) from the main entrance to the Edwardian town, where we sampled a pint of the local at a pub sitting beside a beautiful coal fire and saw a demonstration of candy making. At the candy shop we also had a sample of cinder toffee and some chocolates. One of our biggest highlights was the ride on a steam-powered carousel, which boasted an amazingly loud fairground organ complete with little wooden drummers.

In other news, we’ve heard back from more than a dozen farms in Italy that would like to host us during periods between February and the start of May. At the moment it looks like we’ll mainly be in Tuscany, because that’s where the best response is coming from. We’re excited as both of our top picks have sent us invitations.
on the carousel
he looks Canadian
the steam carousel at Beamish
another picture of the carousel

Saturday 11 December 2010

Last weeks in Totalan

His last two weeks in Totalan Brian spent alone, as I had to return to England for a doctor’s appointment. His days were spent picking olives, collecting and cutting firewood, and cooking (and eating). He also had the chance to go to a traditional festival in the little village, where he sampled some of the local sweet wines, which were a bit like sherry but lighter and fruitier, as well as some local cheeses made from sheep milk. He also hung out more with our hosts Geoff and Annie, who were definitely feeling sorry for him after I left. They had him over to their place for a nice meal of seafood and then he cooked some cajun-style food for them: shrimp etouffee, seafood jumbalya, and sweet potato cakes with Jack Daniels flambe. They were curious about this sort of food because they hadn’t ever heard of it, and were under the impression that the USA didn’t really have any cuisine of its own that was worth trying. Brian thought the food turned out well, though he had to improvise with ingredients a bit. It’s hard, for example, to find smoked sausage in that part of Spain, but he did find some beautiful okra, and the shrimp was wonderful. The last few days in Totalan were rainy and windy, and Brian mainly stayed inside by the fire, thinking about his time and looking forward to seeing me again :-) and being in a country that speaks his own language.

Thursday 9 December 2010

Totalan, Andalucia

At Casa Cabras we got back to basics in a renovated old farm house without electricity, hot water or a toilet!  Although this was hard at first we found that it gave us a much needed time of relaxation and reflection and a chance to reconnect with each other after the changes we’ve been through in the past 6 month.  We both felt very thankful to have this quiet time together and really enjoyed spending cosy nights by candlelight in front of the log fire.  In the mornings we spent our time harvesting olives, which are even now being turned into olive oil at the local olive mill.  In total we harvested around 170kg of olives between us and developed very strong hands in the process!  Our afternoons were spent harvesting vegetables for our meals and collecting and cutting firewood to keep us warm through the night.  The owners of the farm were very laid back and allowed us to take as many days off as we liked.  We took this opportunity to visit the nearby seaside town of El Palo and also visited the city of Malaga where we had lots of fun visiting the exotic tree park and the cathedral and where I had lots of fun showing Brian gifts he might like to buy me for my upcoming birthday :-)
the nearby village of Totalan from our house
Nepalese Bell Peppers grown in the garden
the Chameleon we found in an olive tree
picking olives