Wandering the World
The Ground Beneath my Feet
This post is a part of a collaboration with Blog with Friends. Each month we choose a theme and everyone gives it their own special twist. This month's theme is "Mardi Gras" so stay reading until the end and you will find links for all kinds of lovely posts! Day One - The ArrivalToday I am Lanjaran, the other side of the mountain from Guejar Sierra. I am sitting alone in a chilly living room next to a wood stove I am unwilling to light because I will go to bed soon and I would hateto waste the wood. I chose this place because it wasn’t too expensive. Due to waiting until the last possible minute to book a place, my choices were limited on airbandb and when I looked at the hotel prices they were astronomical. The posting said I was renting a room in a house which I assumed would be inhabited by the owner. Upon arrival however I learned that I am the only guest at the moment and my host lives way high up in the mountains. This means I have the whole house to myself. Lovely! There is even a little shelf in the corner filled with English books. I have books on my ipad but I think I will take advantage of this opportunity to read “Sexing the Cherry”. Does this title mean that someone is going to lose their virginity, have sex with a cherry or try to figure out the gender of a cherry? I guess I will find out as I slip naked into the unbelievably cold, unfamiliar sheets downstairs as I have forgotten my pajamas. I have also forgotten the charger cable for my phone and I have extravagantly just talked to my friend for a half an hour running my batteries down to 15 percent. This means that I can no longer use the hotspot to connect my computer to the world wide web, leaving me on my own in a place where I know no one. This fills me with familiar comfort, this is how I used to travel way back in the day when phone calls were too expensive to make more than once a month and I had to send my correspondence by snail mail. I can’t check my email or facebook or watch a youtube video so, Sexing the Cherry, I am all yours tonight. A Little Bit of BackgroundSo, why is it that I have crawled out of my big cozy apartment with a spectacular lake view on the other side of the mountain and arrived here? My daughter, has had a terrible time finding close friends at school this year. In fact, as we were riding on the bus to get here, she told me that she had been unjustly accused of farting in class today. Apparently she had not farted but she didn’t think that it was a big deal that the boy next to her did. When the smell became apparent to those around them, they jumped on her for doing it and when she denied it, they just got more aggressive about it and even the teacher joined in. So, she wanted to visit her best friend who moved away from our little village last June meaning that they could no longer go to the little candy store by the church to buy sweeties or sit in the plaza munching on them for hours. I promised her we would go so, even though the forecast predicts rain all day tomorrow, here I am hoping to take some pictures and get to know a new place. Adventures sometimes come in small soggy packages. Day 2: A Thoroughly Wet ParadiseIt is a glorious morning!! Why? Because I just lit a fire in the wood stove on the first try. I grew up in the country and plenty of fires have been lit around me, but it has never been my job to light any of them. On the rare occasion I have found myself having to light a fire, I have struggled. I know the principal ideas, make sure you stack the wood with the smallest pieces on the bottom and in such a way that the air can get through to provide that essential oxygen; they have just never sprung to life for me like they did for other people. This one did though and I am expecting to reap the benefits any minute. It is a grey, soggy day, as expected, so I thought a nice cozy fire to start off with might be nice, especially because the stores aren’t open yet. I can’t get any food or replace that charger cable for the phone. I guess it is more quality time for me and “Sexing the Cherry”. So far, no sex and no cherries have made appearances in the book but I am only 20 pages in so there is still time. Mission Accomplished! I braved the wet and found both a bank, so I could get some cash out, and a charger cable in the third store I tried. I then got one arm completely soaked because my umbrella is a bit to small. I couldn’t find a cafe that looked inviting so I just stopped by the little food market across the street and got stuff to make a Spanish breakfast, namely bread, cheese and chorizo. I tried to take some pictures of the local castle that looks like it is out of Game of Thrones but the rain just wouldn’t let up so I just took pictures of raindrops on trees. After making and eating breakfast with hot tea, I started eyeing the beautiful big bathtub. Spanish bathtubs are long, like lay down flat with your legs all the way out long. The hot water in our house has to run all the way through the walls from the balcony all the way past 3 rooms to the bathroom and since the pipes are not insulated, by the time the water gets to the bathroom it is luke warm in the winters. In the summers it is scalding hot of course, but right now when the temperature in our house seems to be in the 40s (you can see your breath) so a really hot bath would be amazing. Anyway, I had this beautiful bath tub right in front of me so I fired up the hot water heater and drew a bath so hot it took my breath away as I sunk into it. Then, properly warmed up, I got some blankets and snuggled up to read more of Sexing the Cherry. I had just gotten up the part where the hero of the story meets all of the 12 dancing princesses except the one he was looking for (Still no sex and no cherries), when my friend called and we had a nice long, uninterrupted chat. Well, actually it was uninterrupted on my side, she had to go when her kids got up. Just as we were wrapping up our conversation, the rain stopped so I strapped on my boots again and headed out to take some pictures of that castle. I was almost there when it started to rain again and it really started coming down. I was determined to get to that castle though so I did and got really wet. Then I thought why not get a burger but all of the burger places were closed due to the rain so I stopped by the store again for lunch and decided to take the rest of the afternoon to relax and watch a movie of my choice. I rarely get to do that as the rest of my family has really strong opinions about what movies they want to see and I would rather just avoid any drama by letting them pick. The next day dawned beautifully without a single raindrop to be found. It was so beautiful I hated to climb into the bus to pick my daughter up. Luckily I got to the bus stop 40 minutes early so I got to finally take a decent picture of that castle before deciding that I should probably get to the bus stop early. Again I lucked out as the bus left 10 minutes before its scheduled departure. All through this cold soggy weekend away, I let the good times roll and I had a great time! *I didn't finish the book but it seemed wrong to lift it from the place so I am just going to have to find another copy of it somewhere to find out if it ever gets around to the sex or cherry parts. Life is what you make of it! Make sure you let the good times roll no matter what!! Now, for those promised posts by my blogging buddies, check them out!
2 Comments
2/11/2020 07:56:35 am
It's too bad you ended up there on such a rainy weekend, but I do think the rain added to the ambiance of those great pictures.
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Leave a Reply.Author: Kia DeCouNot all who wander are lost, well, maybe sometimes we are and that's OK. What we discover along the way is the whole point. Archives
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