touristic plug for madrid....

(Click on title to read full story- this is NOT mine, but from an article entitled, "Open All Hours")

'I do not believe anyone likes [Madrid] much when he first goes there. It has none of the look that you expect of Spain...Yet when you get to know it, it is the most Spanish of all cities, the best to live in, the finest people, the finest climate.' - Ernest Hemingway

ALL Europe's capital cities, Madrid is the one that most resembles a lover scorned. It is the only significant European city never to have hosted the Olympic Games; its most recent bid was rebuffed in July last year. Madrid also has no great monuments, no Eiffel Tower, no Colosseum, no internationally recognised landmark that resonates with those dreaming of the places that we must see before we die.

To add insult to obscurity, if the world knows any Spanish city, it is Barcelona, Madrid's eternal rival in everything from politics to football. Add in a climate that is one of Europe's most extreme - Madrid is Europe's highest capital city, which ensures harsh, biting winters and fiercely hot summers - and Madrid's resume begins to look a little thin.

But to paraphrase US president John F. Kennedy's famous comment about New York, most cities may be nouns but Madrid is definitely the most active of verbs.

What Madrid possesses is an energy that no city, not even Barcelona, can muster. It is a city where traffic jams at 3am are not unusual. Madrid also has more bars than any other city in the world - seven for every 100 inhabitants - and most of them are full most nights of the week.

Madrid is still a city that sleeps late, gets about its business in daylight hours, takes a long lunch, has a siesta and then gears up for the night ahead. But lest you think that nighttime activities are only for the hedonistic young, ponder this: Madrid's bars at 1am are as filled with octogenarians and young children as with the city's young and energetic. To emerge on to the streets of central Madrid around midnight and be enveloped by the buzz of happy crowds of people may not be the Eiffel Tower, but it may be something even better - an opportunity for the traveller to become an instant local, a madrileno, at once surrounded by and an integral part of something special.

Art.....

In true Madrid fashion, there is even a story that somehow manages to combine Madrid's reputation for raucous energy with the sophistication of high art. A few years ago, the Museo del Prado organised a special exhibition of Velazquez. It lasted for months, but madrilenos, being madrilenos, tended to leave their visit to the last moment. Not just the last day, but the last evening of the last day.

The doors shut, as scheduled, at 9pm, only for those inside to be assailed by an angry mob pounding on the doors, chanting "we want to come in". The museum's authorities bowed to the pressure - perhaps being locals themselves, they understood the need for flexibility - and reopened the doors, not closing them again until after midnight.

Only in Madrid could an exhibition of 17th-century paintings cause a near riot.
Only in Madrid would people see viewing great works of art at midnight as an entirely normal requirement. But therein lies the essence of Madrid - its marriage between irresistible clamour and accessible sophistication.

(Click on title to read full story)

10,000

Wow.
Someone unknown from Hudson, New York was the 10,000 visitor to this page. 
If I knew who you were, I'd send you a prize.
I saw the counter at 9.999 and tried to get a friend to click on it
but MSN was buggered and they never received the message.
Then you clicked.
Mazeltov and many happy returns
Write me if you'd like the prize
...or even if you don't
I'd send you a virtual handshake 
or
Tip of the hat 

first dates to write home about....

I have a big imagination and am not afraid to use it.

Best first dates?

hmmmm.....the first one to write home about was a 4 day road trip from Dallas, TX to the coast of Virginia. I was 20. We drove 19 hours straight until we hit the coast at which point I parked, got out of the car, stripped to my underwear and dove into the ocean. I remember coming into Memphis, with the glass pyramid shining like a diamond with the sunrise like an incredibly detailed Chinese silk that had the most remarkable quality: every time I thought "Wow, this is the most beautiful sunrise I've ever seen," it would be as if someone shook the silk and then it would become10 times more beautiful. I looked over at the beautiful stranger that I had met once for coffee before getting into his car...his Indiana Jones style adventurer hat pulled down over his eyes and thought..."who is he?? Should I wake him up to see this wonder?" (I didn't- in the end I thought it was best spent in my own company) In four days we only paused twice to really sleep- in a mountain bed and breakfast in Virginia and in a gorgeous forest somewhere I've forgotten. Four days...Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia...the Olympic Village before the Olympics, Louisiana...coffee with chicory and beignets for breakfast, an afternoon walking in a hot rain in the French Quarter of New Orleans then an all night drive back to Dallas. The relationship? Um, the good thing is that it ended...but that first date...THAT was something to remember.

Next best (chronologically speaking)? We met by accident one night in Kuala Lumpur and after two months speaking on the internet, we met for our first date...two weeks in India and Kashmir. We saw the Taj Mahal, rode elephants and camels, saw former glories of Maharajahs of old, saw temples and mosques, trekked in the Himalayas with gypsies, stayed in houseboats in the mountains...it was perfect. Our second date? Well, Thailand was grand but we said our goodbyes halfway through...we never even made it to Cambodia, let alone Vietnam. I didn't even have the will to finish the holiday and hopped the first plane back to London- two weeks later I'd moved here to Madrid. He's gone back to Colombia.

Future first? Hmmm....inch allah (God willing) my Easter week holiday will be a first date...nothing says romance to an adventurer like a good Tuareg or Berber camel trek into the Sahara (Morocco). Alternately, I have an Egyptian friend looking into tours there....then of course there's the allure of Algeria or Tunisia... I've never been to Africa at all, you see. Nothing makes a first date like a big first, and I've only got Africa and the Arctics that I haven't yet stepped one foot on.

Best/worst break up line ever?

"Um...I've been thinking. Maybe we should see other countries."  (Ok, that was mine....I've felt guilty over that one for the last 8 years. I left him 4 days into a month long trip...I had to though. It was either that or )

It's a dangerous business, going out your door. You step into the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to. -the Hobbit

 

i'm beautiful

I'm beautiful.

I'm 28, have more wrinkles than ever before in my life, have a couple of extra kilos that are bugging me and the guys here are innocent (or bad mannered enough) to say, "Oh, you're fat now." (I'm not- translated that means I'm not as thin as I was when I came and instead of a completely flat stomach, I have one that bulges slightly when I eat or drink), I'm blond - a color which I'm not fond of but am left with no choice since the ocean takes dye out within a week and the sun takes my red. I have more freckles than I've had in my whole life. I don't wear makeup anymore because there is no point in the tropics...and yes, I'm beautiful.

Such a simple statement and yet it's so much harder than "I'm sorry" (long claimed to be the hardest words). I have a very long history of believing myself to be unattractive to, at best, "ok". I have known for a long time that my beauty was within, and the more people knew me, the more they actually thought me attractive. Mrs. Roosevelt always wore a smile because, "I'm not an attractive woman, but people always remember you as beautiful if you smile." These words have been my greatest allies for years.

Here I am, at 28. With realistic faults at every turn...but I'm beautiful.

Everywhere I have been in the world, from the glaciers and rugged wilderness of Alaska to the jungles of Borneo or even the centuries of man made beauty that is Barcelona...I have been surrounded by so much beauty that sometimes I have wondered if one day I would simply dissolve into the wind because I had reached the quota of beauty and happiness that one could experience in one lifetime. Every sensation, every shade of blue, the way that the waves have a different voice every night, the countless stars in the sky, the way the sun rises differently in every country I've been too...my senses are never dulled to these amazing gifts. Then, tonight, as I was walking under the millions of stars with the wind schaffing my dress against my calves, the well-worn wood of the jetty beneath my feet, funny pipe-shaped fish playing in the current of the lagoon, the waves pounding with frustration, and then the sand soft and silky beneath my feet...it suddenly came to me. "I am part of this. I am part of this creation. I am a part of all of this incredible beauty. No more, no less."

I am beautiful, and so are you. How could we not be?

Note: I originally published this in March 2005. I just thought it was worth republishing.  We all need reminding from time to time.
 

the first step

I did something big today. 
Ok, it wasn't big in an overwhelming sense of the word, 
but it was big for me.  
I'm nervous about talking on the phone to people that I don't know. 
I was nervous about placing an ad to meet musicians online
I decided that I want to sing.
I want to find a band and sing.
...to at least try
....and I did it. 
I did all of it.  
I even just made the phone call to the guy 
with an interesting answer to my ad
...that's talking to a stranger on the phone in SPANISH 
(in person it's not a problem, but on the phone is scary).  
I did it.  
I'm making the changes that I want to make to my life.
I'm facing my last fears.
it's just the first step
I haven't realised this dream
but...
I'm doing it.
I'm doing it.
I'm
doing
it.