Explaining my photos, episode 1

When I go on trips, I like to take pictures not only of monuments and pretty things but also of things I find odd or amusing. I have a lot of photos in my Flickr that I end up having to explain to people, often ending with a "you had to be there" of some sort.

So, in an attempt to produce blog content, I thought I would do a few posts explaining some of the more interesting photos in my Flickr. I'll start with a few weird pics from Spain.

El Corte Inglés is Spain's largest department store, with huge stores all over Spain. They have everything you could think of in their main stores, and lots of smaller boutiques specializing in things like travel, autos, books, electronics, etc. Whenever I talked about bringing stuff to Spain, my friends told me, "don't worry, if you need [pajamas/towels/ballgowns/food] you can pick it up at the Corte Inglés."

In Sol, a very touristy area of Madrid, there were some areas where you could find a Corte Inglés on every corner. Some of their shops sold souvenirs, and had signs in many languages directing you to the aforementioned souvenirs. As you can see, this store had souvenirs on the 7st floor. I found this funny because the "st" is more the exception than the rule, so they really shouldn't have made this mistake - especially for a gigantic national conglomerate!

The pharmacy across the street from my hotel had this ad, telling you to use authentic snail slime globules (I can't think of the proper word in English). For what, I do not know.

A liquor store not too far from my hotel sold this wine called "Mi vino" (My wine). It reminded me of the generic vodka that they used to have at the grocery store in Oxford.

What trip to Spain would be complete without a picture of the Ham Museum???

A store called "Jesus and Buddha," in (I think) the Chueca neighborhood of Madrid. It just sounded like the beginning of a weird joke to me. (I have no idea what they sold - I didn't go in.)

And on a related note, I saw this sign in a lot of Metro stops. I think this particular one was at Embajadores, where I got off for El Rastro. It's an ad for a store that sells tarot cards and all kinds of stuff for rituals and the like. I found it interesting because when I did my first Master's and wrote my thesis on Hispanic magazine ads, I found a lot of ads in big Hispanic magazines for this type of stuff - it was actually one of the more popular advertised products. Seeing these huge ads, right there with ads for stores and cell phones and consulting companies, made me think that this type of thing might be a big deal.

Well, that was fun. More photo excitement soon!

Google Chrome

I have a love/hate relationship with a lot of things: professors, jobs, snack foods, this year's presidential candidates. My newest love/hate relationship is with Google Chrome.

As a former educational technologist, I enjoy trying out the latest software. I downloaded Chrome when it came out last week, and for the first few days, I loved it. It was so fast! So easy to use! It didn't crash!

But as time went on, I wasn't so impressed. Some things made it sort of sluggish, like Flash- or JavaScript-heavy pages. And sometimes I couldn't get pages to load at all, and couldn't find any option to make the page load - like when you try to open up a page in Firefox and it asks you if you want to download whatever ActiveX controls it needs to make the page work.

Perhaps I should have waited a few weeks for the browser to get more "settled" and for the surge of new users to calm down. I always wonder if the bugs that come up in a new application like that come from having more users than anticipated.

Anyone else try it yet? What do you think?

Feed me!

Hey kids -

Any chance I could convince you to switch from whatever RSS feed you may be using to this one?

Cheers!

The Spain (and Portugal!) Chronicles - Day 12

On Saturday, our last day, we did the activity I was looking forward to the most but we had the least time to do: we went to Portugal.

As I mentioned previously, we had planned on going to Portugal earlier in the week but were unable to rent a car. Not only were most cars rented for the vacation season, but Justin and I are both automatic drivers and Enrique can’t drive at all, which limited our car choices a bit. What made things even trickier was that Justin’s and my flight left Vigo at 5, not at 7 as we had originally thought. So our day would have to be a bit tightly packed.
Anyway. We were able to get transportation that day because Enrique’s mother drove us. (She offered to lend us her car earlier in the week, but again, Justin and I are automatic drivers.) We only had time for one stop in Portugal: Valença, a walled town just over the border of Spain.

Valença is famous for its fortress (mostly protecting it from the city of Tui in Spain), and the big things to see are inside the walls. We spent a few hours there walking around, looking at the shops that sold beautiful tiles, ceramics and linens, and practicing our nonexistent Portuguese. It was really cool to stand in one country and look over the river to another. (In fact, since we returned to Oxford that night, we were actually in three countries in one day!) We also bought some postcards and last-minute souvenirs, which was not easy because I was out of Euro cash and did not want to get more on the last day.

After Valença, we crossed the International Bridge (designed by Gustave Eiffel – yes, that Eiffel) into Tui. We tried to get into the cathedral, but it was closed, which surprised us. We wandered around a bit but didn’t have much time, so we went for an early lunch and called it a day. (I can’t remember the name of the place where we had lunch, except that it was impossible to pronounce!) We did tapas, and I was pleasantly surprised for two reasons: they had croquettes that I liked (usually I think they have no taste) and the octopus wasn’t too bad (I think it was grilled instead of boiled – I’m never a fan of boiled stuff).

After lunch we went back to collect our luggage and to head to the airport. I didn’t fly in to this airport, so I was surprised to see how tiny it really was. (Even though we were there a few days earlier to pick up the boys, I couldn’t tell how small it was after security.) It only had 6 gates, maybe 5 check-in desks, and very few international destinations. Also, there were no coffee shops/restaurants/etc. after security – you just get through the security line and boom, there’s the teeny gate. So, we said our goodbyes kinda quickly – you know how it is at the airport when you have a car parked outside – and got ready for our flight. It was kinda funny because Justin and I were the only non-EU people on the flight, so for once the line was very short and easy once we got through customs back at Gatwick!

After waiting forever for luggage and forever for the bus, we made it back into Oxford rather late. Justin and I met up with Darcy, Justin’s girlfriend, who had Chinese food for us at Hertford when we got there. I got back to Catz around 10:30 pm and called it a night.

So this ends the Great Spain/Portugal Adventure. As always, you can check out all of the glorious photos on my Flickr. Thanks for reading!

The Spain Chronicles - Day 11

I’ll be honest. Although it has been a long time since I’ve been on a beautiful beach, this wasn’t my favoritest day of the trip. I had been up for hours the night before, with the oily Spanish food finally catching up with me. Once in a while I have a day where my stomach is killing me on and off all day – one moment I’ll feel fine, the next I’m doubled over and can’t breathe. That day was like that for me.

We got up earlyish and headed down to the port, stopping for breakfast on the way. We had to take a ferry to get to the island, so we got on at about 9:45ish (I think) and got there at about 10:30ish.

The boys had made plans to hike up the mountain to look at the views from there. For some reason they assumed that the hike would be too hard for me, so I was not invited to attend. I should have been my usual stubborn self and gone with them, but I was (a) still feeling like crap and (b) carrying a massive beach bag. (I never actually found out why the hike was so hard. If it was merely lots of uphill walking, I could have done it no problem. If it involved things like upper body strength and ledges, I would have been in trouble.) So I went and chilled on the beach while they did their male bonding.

I usually love to take pictures of beaches, but I couldn’t really do it that day. No, it wasn’t because of the weather, nor a problem with my camera.....

.....it was a nude beach. *blush*

I didn’t have a problem with it, but it shocked me a bit because I didn’t expect it. We don’t exactly have nude beaches in New England, and I’m already shocked with the people who show up in skimpy bathing suits there. I guess the Mediterraneans have a lot more self-confidence, as there were people of all shapes and sizes going either topless or full-out nude. Anyway, I took a few carefully-arranged (i.e. with no people in them) photos, read trashy Spanish magazines and baked in the sun, stopping only for a trip back to the bar to get some bottled water. It was actually quite nice: the beach wasn’t *too* full and the weather was lovely. I think people were put off by the recent rain and didn’t want to make the trip out that day.

Here is one of my carefully arranged photos, which I love because I think the shade of blue in the sky is amazing:


The boys finished their hike after about 2 hours. When they got back they were hungry, so I hiked back up to the bar to meet them. They gave me lots of flack for not going with them, but I wasn’t really bothered – they were the ones who told me not to go anyway! ;) After we ate we went back to the nude beach, which Justin hadn’t seen yet.

We all napped for a bit on the beach, and then Justin and I took a short walk on the beach and went swimming. Enrique thought we were crazy for doing this, so he worked on a rigorous tanning routine. Even though I was wet and sandy for the rest of the day, it was lots of fun – I haven’t been swimming in an ocean in years!

Around 4:30ish, we started to head back to the bar area for drinks and to get ready to go. (Our return ferry was at 6 pm.) We had some drinks and then chilled for a bit on the main beach, which was not fully nude but had some toplessness going on. By then we were all a bit sunburned and ready to head back.

Here we are, ready to head back:


When we got back to Vigo, Enrique’s sister Maruxa had invited us for drinks at her place – she doesn’t live too far from the port. Maruxa and her boyfriend Carlos are very nice, so it was a lot of fun. Carlos is in a band (it’s called Portrait – go check ‘em out!), so we got the added bonus of hearing him rehearse when one of his bandmates came over. He gave me and Justin copies of the band’s first album, which is awesome.

At about 8ish Maruxa had to go, so we headed back to Enrique’s house, making a quick side trip to the Corte Inglés. Since we were all sunburned and sandy (poor Maruxa – I wonder how much sand she had in her house after we left), we had to shower before we could even think about dinner. Dinner that night was squid with rice, which was a bit tough to eat after not feeling so hot. Fortunately it was pretty good, and I didn’t have to eat the pieces that actually looked like squid – only the rings.

After dinner we decided to head out for ice cream. It was fun because we got to have a nice walk through Vigo, and it wasn’t hot or crowded since it was so late at night. On the way to the ice cream parlor we ran into a bunch of Enrique’s friends, including Jacobo, who lived and worked in Oxford for a while. We ended up getting back pretty late, and for the first time in a while, I slept really well. Why does it always happen that I sleep the very best on the last night of my travels?

Coming up next: A few hours in Portugal before heading home.

PS - Sorry if this post sounds whiny. At this point, I probably was a bit whiny - it was the longest vacationesque trip I had done in years.