Lifeisgrand

Azores 2024 - Goodbye Green Island, We Will Return Soon

2024-04-13T06:05:00.003-04:00

Our last morning. The flight leaves shortly before 5 pm so we still have half a day before we need to be at the airport. Ana and I take a final morning walk and have coffee at Sunset Beach. We talk about the trip, the things we loved, all the new discoveries, the crazy weather (from hurricane storms to sunstroke), the incredible people, all that is new, all that is old, and what role this island will play in our own future. Because it will play a role. This island is a special place for us.

About half the family shows up to say goodbye yet again. We pull out the leftover pizza and cheese and bread and all have lunch together. The conversation turns to menopause (as it seems to frequently with Ana) and she explains menopausal rage. I add my own explanation, using the Incredible Hulk as the most appropriate comparison.

“You guys know Marvel? You know the big green guy?” I ask.

“Yeah,” says Paulo. “Shrek.”

“No man, the other big green guy. The Hulk. He gets even madder than Shrek. That’s what menopause rage is like.”

“Oh,” Paulo says thoughtfully.

“But really, menopause is far, far worse for the man than the woman,” I say.

“That is total bullshit,” storms Ana as her face starts turning green.

“See,” I say pointing to her. “Rage.”

Natercia brought a bottle of strawberry infused sparkling wine and pours everybody out a measure. Paul delivers a classic toast:

“May our wives never become widows.”

After another round of goodbye hugs we are off for the airport. Natercia and Paulo accompany us in their car to help transport some of the luggage. After a quick stop for gas, then returning the rental car, Ana and I meet them and John and Maria in the terminal. We have a chat then say the final, final goodbyes. Ana is crying as she hugs Natercia. Natercia’s worn a different pair of fancy shoes today so I take a photo of those before hugging her, and she appreciates that.

We are going to really miss these guys.

I gaze out the airplane window as we take off. It is windy and feel like the plane is going to be blown sideways, but it takes off and we rise into the air. The plan takes a turn west and I watch as the island becomes smaller. I scan the ocean for whale activity, but see only the white flashes of cresting waves, and soon we reach the cloud line and everything turns grey. I don't know when we will next return, but I am sure it will not be six years from now, and Ana and I may well be in a different phase of our lives when we do.

At 10:00 pm on a cool Saturday evening, we step into our Paris home and hug our beautiful daughter Stella who has made it through two weeks on her own. Magnus is in Toronto and we'll be happy to see him next weekend. We really missed both of them.

And thus ends our 2024 trip to the Azores.

Azores 2024 - Lagoa do Fogo Crater Lake, Tea Plantation, Toenail Cleaning, and the Big Goodbye (with Pizza)

2024-04-12T06:05:00.000-04:00

This is our last full day on the island. After two days mostly on our own, we take John and Maria on a day trip, but not before a big breakfast of eggs, fried blood sausage (morcela), fresh bread, and cheese. Ana and I had bought a full ball of Terra Nostra cheese on sale for eight euro a week ago and we’ve barely eaten half of it, despite picking away at it every day.

It is again a glorious day and as we’re driving I look up to see that there are no clouds at Lagoa do Fogo (Lake of Fire) which is volcano crater lake that seems to be perpetually wrapped in thick cloud cover, so we’ve only ever seen it once many years ago, on a semi clear day. I spin the car around and head south up the hill. We take a long series of switchbacks, passing by the Caldeira Velha thermal pools, then we reach the upper parking lot and walk up to the viewpoint. The view is simply awe-inspiring. The glassy and greenish-blue water, green foliage, black volcanic rock, and the artful meandering of the edges of the ancient volcano. There is a short hike or a long hike you can take from here down to the lake and around it, but we just take a few photos and enjoy the sight for a while as John and Maria are way past the point of hiking up and down hills. We feel exceptionally lucky to have found a clear day for this.

We drive back down the volcano and east to Cha Gorreana – one of the two tea plantations on the island, and take a short tour. There are loads of tourists here and the entire complex has been rebuilt and expanded since we were here many years ago. Despite the potential Perfect Storm of a lame tourist experience, this is not what you get here. First, it is free. You can walk around the factory on your own or wait for one of the guides who lead free tours. There is also a long walking trail that takes you up and down the hills where the tea grows – also free. The tea is free, you simply grab a cup and fill it up with any of the three tea varieties they produce here. There is a gift shop and the prices are reasonable. I pick up a bottle of passion-fruit flavoured gin for the same price it costs in the grocery store. Lastly, there is a café so we grab a snack and a beer, both very cheap. This is the thing that still surprises me – how you DO NOT get ripped off in the Azores. Usually these tourist places are dreadful and you come out feeling like you’ve been assaulted. Not here. A coffee costs a euro no matter where you get it, from the local old man’s café to the busiest tourist sites on the island. Same as beer. The cheapest half litre of beer I’ve seen is 1.80 while the most expensive is 3.00, but generally they cost about 2.30. You don’t need to even look at the price of these things because they are always reasonable.

We stop at the Continental supermarket in Ribera Grande on the way back to pick up a ball of cheese to take home, plus some beer for tonight’s pizza party (Ana and Natercia had cooked up a plan to have everybody over for dinner tonight to say goodbye). John and Maria are ready for lunch so we drive to the Beach restaurant at Populo. It is packed full of “heavitos”, which is a term we learned in Dominican Republic and refers to the well dressed, young, rich, beautiful locals who tend to get their way because their parents own all the companies and land. Now I don’t know if everybody in the restaurant are heavitos, or if it even works like that here, but they sure are young and beautiful and well dressed. Anyway, we have to wait a while for a table, and when we finally do get seated, the server completely ignores us for 30 minutes, so we leave. Hey, we can live with one bad experience in two weeks. It’s too bad because this is one of our favourite restaurants on the island.

Instead, we go to the Ondas do Mar restaurant, a place John remembers from when he and Maria traveled here with Ana’s brother Mark and his wife Stella many years ago. At first glance, it looked terrible. A big restaurant with dozens of tables and a rapidly cooling buffet line. Tourist trap, set up to receive busloads of touristos. But the location is amazing – right at the water’s edge, within view of a natural ocean pool.

We sit down at a table outside and the server brings over menus. The prices are crazy high and there is stuff on here we haven’t seen anywhere else, like lobster meals for 130 euro. But I notice they have a “fried chicharros” option for ten euro which both John and I get. The meal arrives - there are at least a dozen perfectly fried little fishies, plus fresh steamed vegetables on the side. It is absolutely amazing. Both Maria and Ana find a local dish too and love it. The half litres of beer are 2.10. Our last lunch turns out to be incredible as we eat together to the sounds and sights of the ocean. There is also a beautifully built walking path so Ana and I take John and Maria back home then return, first for a swim in the amazing natural ocean pool, then take a long walk on the path along the ocean. It is a perfect afternoon and the sun beats down on my already burned face, impregnating me with even more vitamin D.

Along the path we see a very strange thing. A tall man is sitting on a concrete bench with one of his bare feet out and a smaller man wearing what looks like a municipal worker vest has a pocket knife and is cleaning out the big guy’s toenails. We walk right by them and they don’t seem shy at all; the big guy smiles at me and waves. The little guy doesn’t even notice us as he’s hunched over, working that toe jam out of the tight spots. So I don’t know if you can just ask the municipal workers to help you out with little jobs like this, or if these guys had a special deal or what. When we are returning along the path a while later they are still there but just wrapping up. The big guy’s feet look fabulous and the little guy looks proud of his work. As we pass them, they both get up and head down the path together happily, side by side, looking much like the Azorean version of Archie and Jughead.

This is our last night in São Miguel and once again the whole family turns out. We have six huge pizzas from two different places plus an assortment of snacks and drinks. The family gathers every Friday night at Tio Manuel's house. The girls first give the house a good cleaning and then they sit down and eat together - everybody brings a dish or two of food. It's so inspiring to see the strength of this family and how they get along, support each other, and have such a fun time. We are lucky to be part of it.

Francesco and Cidalia also stop by and we have a great visit with everybody. I, however, am feeling the after-effects of the abundance of sunshine and think I’ve picked up a bit of sunstroke, so every once in a while I sneak upstairs and lay on the bed for a while. I make it to the end of the night and we all say goodbye to everybody. Tio Luis gives me a huge hug and his smiling face just warms my heart every time I see it. Natercia has worn a pair of fabulous shoes so gets herself and Ana positioned on the chair so I can take a photo of them, focused of course on the shoes.

It’s been a great trip and this family is simply the best.

Azores 2024 - Popping Man-of-Wars, Ocean Swim, Beach Nap

2024-04-11T05:41:00.000-04:00

This may be the most beautiful morning of the trip. I am up early and out for a long walk under clear skies, a slight breeze, and 18 degrees of glorious sunshine. The bushes and rock walls are literally writhing with thousand of lizards, coaxed out of their winter dormancy by the heat. I find a coastal path which leads to Sunset Beach, then to Populo Beach, and here I play a game of “pop the blue bottles”. The Portuguese Man-of-War is this amazing creature (actually four creatures in one) that often washes up on beaches at high tide. It travels through the ocean by inflating a sack with gas and using it like a sail as it floats across the surface with its tentacles reaching down into the water, sometimes at an incredible length of 50 metres. Today there are dozens of these guys on the beach and the organic “pop” they make when you step on them with your shoe is immensely satisfying, so I step them all, being careful not to get any on my bare skin as they leave a nasty sting. The quantity of these blue terrors makes me rethink swimming in the ocean here, as I’ve been stung by them before and it is incredibly painful.

After breakfast, Ana and I drive into Ponta Delgada and I set myself up at a snack bar with my laptop to do some writing while Ana shops for gifts for the kids. There are three cruise ships in port today and many more tourists around than we’ve seen so far. I eavesdrop on my coffee-drinking neighbours as I write and most of them are American or English.

We walk down to the Portas do Mar area and I get changed into my swimsuit and take a glorious ocean swim. There are many people here today, locals pulled from their winter slumber into a preview of the summer season ahead. The Azoreans have built so many amazing natural ocean pools that you are never far away from one on this island, and they are always free. The water is chilly but manageable and I float around in the ocean for a while as Ana soaks up the sunshine. I wish I had brought along my goggles so I could see what ocean creatures are swimming around down there, but I wasn’t sure if I’ve even get a chance for a swim on this trip.

We hang around downtown for a while longer then drive back to Sunset Beach for a long and easy lunch at the seaside restaurant. The black sand beach beckons us over so I lay out the small towel we had brought, and my shirt, then we both lay down and instantly fall asleep to the music of the surf and the seabirds. The full sun does a number on me and when I look in the mirror back at the house, a red-faced vacationer stares back at me. After a long sunless winter, I don’t mind some colour.

With John and Maria we make our final trip over to Ana Margarida’s house for a visit, then we walk over to Tia Ana’s house to go through all her possessions which are stored in the garage. Tia Ana asked us to go through everything, take what the family in Canada might want, then donate or dispose of the rest. We take a whole box full of photos, some blankets, and a small amount of jewelry, all to be distributed to the family in Canada. We say our goodbye’s to this wonderful lady and thank her again for taking such good care of our aunt.

Azores 2024 - Villa Franca, Jungle Walk, Povoação, Lighthouse Thigh Burner

2024-04-10T10:45:00.000-04:00

After yesterday’s full day of administration, Ana and I wanted to make the most of today and do an island circuit. We left the house earlier than normal and drove east to the village of Villa Franca – another of our favourite places on the island. We drove through the winding streets down into the marina and went for a walk. The marina is small but perfectly sheltered on all sides and was all local boats with the exception of maybe one or two. We have coffee on the patio of the marina snack bar, enjoying the 19 degree weather, and read through a local newspaper that has a story about a new 101 room Hilton hotel opening in Lagoa – their first in the Azores.

From here we take the twisty road to Furnas and before long find ourselves in the clouds once again. We arrive at the caldeiras and pay three euro to get in. This is the place where the ponds boil and sulphureous steam rises from the earth. There are also holes in the ground where pots of food are lowered then covered and left to steam and boil for hours, producing the “cozido” stew that Furnas is known for. Is it good? Well, it is certainly unique, and if you like a sulphureous flavouring to your meat and potato stew, you’d love it.

Incredibly, a new privately owned nature park called Parque da Grená has opened since our last visit six years ago. We pay the comparably steep ten-euro entrance fee and step into another world. Waterfalls, ancient forests, jungle stairs and bridges, spectacular vistas, mansion ruins, hot tubs – this is an amazing place and well worth the admission. We spent two hours hiking and exploring and leave mesmerized.

Another drive along impossibly winding roads leads us to the town of Povoação, another of our favourite towns on the island. The centre is surrounded by tall cliffs and feels as if it’s been cut into a mountain. There is a small, well protected marina here too with mostly commercial boats. We walk around the town, admiring the elaborate patterns and images built into the cobblestoned streets and pedestrian walkways (the best on the island in my opinion), but are then saddened to find that the small municipal zoo has closed and the animals are gone. There used to be monkeys here as well as peacocks and many other birds. Not sure what happened there.

After a delicious lunch at one of the restaurants in the main square, we continue our drive heading east then turn northwards as we reach the easternmost end of the island. We stop at two of the incredible miradours (lookout points) to see the mind-bending views over the island and out to sea. There is hardly a breath of wind today so the ocean looks far happier than it has in recent days.

We continue along to the Farol do Amel – a lighthouse on the easternmost point of Sao Miguel and park in the small parking lot. There is a sign warning visitors not to take their vehicles down the steep road leading to the lighthouse, but it says nothing about the heart attack you are sure to experience if you try doing it on foot. Ana and I start our walk down the impossibly steep paved road and start getting a little worried when we see the people hiking back up – all of whom have red faces, are dripping sweat, and are sucking breath greedily. At one point the road is so steep that I can hardly believe that anybody would be able to get a car down and back up unless it was a 4x4. I check online later and find that it is a 500 metre walk and the grade is over 20% in places. We walk together until we can see the lighthouse then Ana decides to start making her way back up. I walk down the remaining hundred metres or so to the lighthouse which is interesting, and has a great view to a waterfall spilling over a cliff, but I’m not sure if it was worth it, especially since the lighthouse was closed and you couldn’t go in. The walk back up is an absolute killer and it feels like my heart is going to burst out of my chest by the time I catch back up to Ana. We crawl back to the car and collapse into our seats and take a break before continuing on to the town of Nordeste.

Nordeste is a very small town but we stop for a coffee and a look around, then continue up and around the coastline, then drive westward across the top of the island and stop at two more viewpoints along the way. The scenery is stunning and the gardens built around the viewpoints make you feel as if you are a character in a fairy tale.

We finish off the day with a great evening at home as Natercia stops by to join us for dinner and to eat up the leftover food from John’s party.

Azores 2024 - Tourism on the Island

2024-04-09T05:45:00.002-04:00

Today was all administration. We dropped Maria off at her oldest sister’s house for a visit then went back and picked up the men and went to the bank to finish straightening out our account, which took over two hours. Went back to get Maria then drove to downtown Ponta Delgada to meet with a lawyer and review Tia Ana’s situation with her will, mental state, house, property, and caregiver Ana Margarida. From there we drove to Pico da Pedra and visited with Tia Ana at the care home where she lives. Finally, we completed our family dining tour (on day 12) and had dinner with Manuela and Antonio at their home in Sao Vicente and saw the lush and fruitful lemon tree in their garden. Here, we are eight parts family, and two parts tourist. This is why we love it here.

So today I will instead write about tourism. Sao Miguel’s quest to expand tourism on the island really began in 2008, when the Portas Do Mar cruise ship terminal was unveiled. It was a daring and bold project from a small island nation in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. I remember being in the small shopping centre downtown during one of our visits leading up to this date. There, they had a scale model of what the complex was going to look like. The marina area was under construction and the entire harbour was an unrecognizable mess of barges, concrete, machinery, and workers. The model blew my mind. It just didn’t seem possible that such a small place would be able to visualize, design, execute, and support this massive facility. And it wasn’t just a cruise ship terminal – they also built a huge new 670 slip marina, a walkable jetty (full of restaurants, cafes, shops, and even a bowling alley), two swimming pools – one natural ocean pool integrated into the boardwalk, open year-round, and free to anybody, and one a paid swimming complex with multiple pools. Beyond this they also built an outdoor theatre and an incredible underground parking garage that integrates seamlessly into the waterfront, running along the entire span of the curved Avenida, providing 344 perfectly disguised parking spots, and multiple stairwell exits that pop you up right in the middle of the incredible waterfront. The audacity of the project still amazes every time we visit and the design is masterful, appropriate, durable, graceful, and honours both the ocean and the land.

It is now sixteen years later. What has been the result of this bold experiment in tourism? It took a long time to get going. Remember, before this, the main tourism here was Azorean ex-patriates returning to visit their families, and a few early movers, mainly German, with most living near the western end of the island in Mosteiros. During our first visit after Portas do Marhad opened I remember checking the cruise ship schedule and there was typically about one arrival per week or fewer. And I think it was like that for a long time. But this week, there is one arriving nearly every day, and there will be three ships in port this coming Thursday. This has driven a huge number of tourists to the island, but these visitors only stop for about eight hours or so. I suspect though that many of these people return on their own for future trips after getting a glimpse of this wonders here.

Another change that happened around 2015 was the liberalization of the airline industry. The carrier monopoly was broken up and low cost airlines like Ryanair and EasyJet could now fly here, bringing a whole new tourist demographic to the island.

In 2023 in the Azores, there were 3.8 million overnight stays and 1.2 million visitors, a massive increase from the previous year and far, far more than what they had in 2008 and before. This mirrors the significant increases in tourism in Portugal as a whole including continental Portugal and Madeira. I think it’s fair to say the experiment has succeeded in attracting many tourists to the archipelago.

I’ve asked many of the cousins what they think of this increase in tourism and how it’s impacted their lives. Overall, most seem to think it’s a good thing, but haven’t seen any direct benefits because of it. They are willing to share and show off their beautiful islands. One of the cousins does have strong concerns about it, not against the tourists themselves, but because the benefits are being realized by few instead of many.

As for us, I was expecting the worse, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by what I’ve seen. Outside of the main tourist areas, you don’t see that many visitors. But the prime sites are busy, especially Sete Cidades and Furnas and I suspect locals probably avoid these places now during peak tourist season. We are here in mid-April so I can only assume it is much, much busier in the summer, and I expect the tourism will continue to grow here. Fortunately, the pleasures of the island are found in small places, just as much as in the popular sites, and there is so much to explore and experience that I feel there is room to grow without it ruining what’s here.

Everywhere I look here, I see opportunity. Tourists arrive with pockets full of money and the locals who embrace it and look for ways to provide them with unique experiences and products will prosper. The problem is, the locals are not used to doing this, so it takes a person with entrepreneurial spirit, a risk-taker, and I fear many of these people will come from outside the Azores – returning ex-patriates, folks from the continent, or other parts of Europe. For example, there is now a craft brewery on the island, run by an Azorean couple who left here in 1998 to live in the US and recently returned to start this business after seeing the potential with non-Azorean eyes.

My hope is that some of the cousins here will find a way to harness the tourism potential and prosper. It will not be easy, but it is possible. And they deserve it.

Azores 2024 - Morning Walk, Visiting the Farm, Sofia and Tiago

2024-04-08T08:33:00.001-04:00

I’m up at 8, but feel a little groggy from yesterday’s activities so I go downstairs and have a coffee with John, who instantly tells me that yesterday was the first time in his life he’s ever drank wine at seven in the morning.

After breakfast Ana and I take a long meandering walk down to the ocean and along the coastline to the row of restaurants and snack bars in front of the beach Prai Populo. We have a slow coffee and watch all the action in front of us: surfers and boogie borders trying to catch a wave, municipal works cutting grass and trimming dead leaves off palm trees, a driver in a “Sao Miguel Fruiteria” delivery van unloading boxes of bananas, oranges, papayas, and apples, joggers running back and forth along the pathway, and several stray cats prowling the premises looking for scraps of food. Mondays on vacation are really something special, being able to fully enjoy not being at work.

We wander back home and run into Tia Genoveva along the way, who is out for her own huge morning walk, but without Tio Luis as his legs were hurting from all the dancing yesterday. We gather up the Gang of Grey back at the house and drive to Cidalia and Francesco’s home, which is just down the street in the Socas neighbourhood, where Paulo and Natercia live. We first met them the last time we were here and had an incredible meal and afternoon at their house, and here we are again. After a slow and magnificent lunch of baked fish, cod casserole, fried chicken, quiche, fresh bread, wine, and Francesco’s homebrew made with cinnamon and honey, I’m ready for a nap but instead they take us on a tour of their farm. We walk down into the main property across the street from their home, passing pasture land and happy cows then arrive at a long line of greenhouses which are full of new plantings, but also grown tomato and cucumber plants. From here we continue walking into another property, all of which are bordered by ten foot high ancient stone fences. Here, their son Dario is building a new home for him and his partner. It is a concrete house and they take us through every room. I don’t remember ever seeing this kind of construction before – it’s fascination. Concrete is far less forgiving than wooden 2x4s and drywall so you better figure out exactly where you want your switches, plugs, and lights because you’re aren’t moving them later.

Just when I thought our short lunch visit was complete, we’re taken back to the house for more drinks, freshly baked bread, and fresh Sao Jorge cheese. We’re now into our seventh hour of lunch and have just one more thing to do before we move onto the next party. Francisco takes us behind their house and down a hill into the huge fruit orchard we didn’t know existed. Our target is the avocado tree, which is hung heavy with hundreds of avocados, so we pick the “low hanging fruit” (do any of the idiots in the business world ever get to actually see low hanging fruit, or just talk about it during Powerpoint presentations?) then start exploring ways to get the higher ones. I find a long stick and start jumping up and beating the fruit until they drop, and I get about eight of them using that method. Francisco has climbed up a rock and yanks down on a branch so I can reach a few more. Ana’s been shaking branches which has shaken a few more loose. They are all extremely hard and will take days to ripen, but they send us off with a big bag full, along with some black heart fruit and a bunch of cucumbers. It’s been a glorious afternoon.

From here we drive into Ponta Delgada and barely manage to squeak through an impossibly narrow street, with both mirrors tucked in and spotters measuring the remaining centimeters on either side of the car, before reaching Ana’s cousin Sofia’s place. We’re welcomed in by her husband Tiago and daughter Matilde and they tour us through their incredibly cozy and cute apartment and the surprisingly large outdoor space and garden out back. Every house here seems to have a garden, and that’s the first place they take you to when you visit. I love it.

Of course, there’s a huge spread of food on the table so we eat again. Blood sausage, chorizo, Azorean pineapple, chocolate covered cream balls, cupcakes, crackers, chocolate cake, nuts, and I can’t even remember what else. We have a great visit, but the oldies are fading fast. Manuel is falling asleep sitting up. John has developed a neck cramp and is scowling. Maria quietly sits in her chair, struggling to keep awake. Before leaving, we offer them our house and hospitality if they even find a way to visit Canada, and I hope they do someday. We say our goodbyes and are back home in about twelve minutes – nothing is far here.

Azores 2024 - Dinner for Breakfast, John’s 80th, Dancing with Tio Luis

2024-04-07T08:20:00.003-04:00

The rain and wind returned and pelted the bedroom window all night. We are up at 5:30 to get ready for a very special breakfast, at Restaurant Faria in Ribera Grande, but we have to get there by 7am otherwise we won’t get a table. Paulo Fernando, Natercia, Leonor, and their neighbour Francisco meet us at home and we follow them in total darkness to the restaurant (Tio Manuel and Maria opt out so it’s just the three of us).

We’ve been here once before and I’ve been looking forward to a return visit ever since. The restaurant is already full and we get one of the last tables. There are about four or five choices for breakfast. I have the beef stew, as do a few of the others. John and Leonor have octopus stew. Paulo Fernando has a dish called doblema, which is a stew of cow stomach and beans. Ana sticks with bread and cheese and a coffee while the rest of us drink red wine, which is served in half litre glasses called quartelos. I’m sure most people have eaten breakfast for dinner (eggs, bacon, toast) but you haven’t lived until you’ve tried dinner for breakfast at Restaurant Faria. The origin of this meal is very old and legend has it that this proprietor (or probably his father or grandfather or perhaps further back) began serving hearty meals to the fishermen who would be out on the ocean fishing all night and back early in the morning tired and hungry, and not looking just for a light snack. I don’t see any fishermen in here this morning, but there is a group or two of late-night partygoers who are at the end of a big night, while most are just tables of locals enjoying a special Sunday breakfast.

The food is hearty and delicious and served with big baskets of bread to mop up the sauce. Our server comes around with a huge stainless steel jug and tops up everybody’s wine. I stop after a glass and a half so I don’t get too plastered to drive. It’s a great start to the day for John as today is his 80th birthday and he’s enjoying the first morning drinking session of his life. He leans over to me at least three times during the meal and says, “This is the first day of my life I’ve ever drank wine at seven in the morning.” Francisco stands up and leads off the Portuguese happy birthday song, with everybody joining in except for me because I don’t know the words, so I just hum along.

Shortly after this, a guy at a table just over from us starts choking and his buddies all drag him out to resuscitate him. Paulo Fernando looks over to the abandoned table and says, “Let’s go grab their food,” and walks over, then just takes a photo of us and returns.

We finish our meals and step outside into the day. Next stop is an espresso at a gas station down the road. Of course it’s not a normal gas station – inside are espresso machines, a display with fresh baked goods, racks of wine, and a nice seating area. We sit there for a very long time visiting. Francisco and his wife Cidalia are a lovely couple and live just down the street from Paulo and Natercia. He asks us to join them for lunch at their house tomorrow which we gladly accept.

After our long coffee we drive back to the house and start getting things ready for the birthday party we’re throwing for John. By 1:30 the house is full of people, food is on the table, drinks are in hand, and it’s loud as hell. We had picked up a huge bag of these little baby chorizos in Feteiras yesterday so we cooked those with the wood fire bbq outside. Ana made a squash and apple casserole and a big salad and the rest we ordered from a local place – grilled chickens, French fries, fish fillets. I think we have about 22 people in all and everybody digs in for a long loud lunch.

The wine and beer melt down inhibitions and I find myself dancing with Tio Luis in the kitchen to a slow Bryan Adams song. Paulo saves us from further embarrassment and puts on “Summer of ‘69” which gets everybody going and a full dance party ensues. It’s a lively bunch today. New people arrive sporadically, including Cidalia and Francisco, and some other friends we hadn’t met before.

“You probably want to go sit by Cidalia so you can speak English, hey Kris?” asks Natercia from across the table. She can barely see me through the fog of Portuguese conversation.

“Oh no,” I say. “I prefer speaking Portuguese. Your dad and I have been staying up late, spending hours speaking Portuguese together.” She looks at me incredulously. She doesn’t believe me. “Go ahead and ask him,” I say, pointing in his direction.

Natercia gets his attention and rattles off the question in machine gun Portuguese. Tio Manuel looks over at me, sees my enthusiastic nodding, then tells her that yes, we sure have been speaking a lot of Portuguese together and I’m getting pretty good (or something like that; I can barely understand any of it, but by the look on Natercia’s face I know Tio Manuel’s backing me up). I might be able to bluff my way through this language after all.

I can tell John’s having a good time. He’s taken each person aside and told them how this was the first time in his life he’d ever drank wine at seven in the morning. He’ll get some good traction out of that story back in Canada too, which is good as he needs some new material. I think he especially likes when the girls bring out a gigantic birthday cake and everybody sings the song then he vigorously blows out the two candles without any accidental release of dental plates or posterior wind.

Sunday Funday starts winding down around 8pm and by 9 we’ve somehow already moved onto the next party – just a block down the street at Carmelia and Pedro’s house. The deeply ingrained hospitable nature of the Azoreans means you have to be careful with your jokes. After we walk in, and after a full day of gluttonous eating and drinking, I say in Portuguese, “I’m really hungry. Do you have anything to eat?” Our hosts fly into action and before I can say anything there’re dishes of food and bottles of beer on the table and we’re forced to eat again. Even after I tell her I was joking, and that Portuguese people can’t take a joke, Carmelia packs up a plastic container of soup for me to take home. Portuguese people can’t take a joke…but it usually works out in my favour.

Azores 2024 - Exploring Feteiras, Sausage Factory, Sunshine

2024-04-06T08:01:00.001-04:00

The weather has turned and the sun has appeared. It’s only 13 degrees when I leave at 7:30 for a walk, but it’s bright and beautiful. I walk for ninety minutes, down ancient pathways to the water and along the coastal road, dipping down dead-end streets to get to the rocky coastline and admire the ocean without getting blown off my feet and covered in salty spray. I walk west and pass by Sunset Beach and its beach volleyball nets and oceanside restaurant, then through a beautiful public park with a full basketball court, playgrounds, and public seating. I continue along the expansive Populo Beach and the ocean here is peppered with surfers and paddleboarders, riding the swells which are consistent and decent, likely a spillover from the previous days of vicious south winds. There are a series of restaurants and snack bars across from here, and several are already open, serving morning espressos and pastries to the many patrons enjoying this beautiful day.

I return to the house, have breakfast with Ana, then we take off for Feteiras to have another look at our land, a better look around the town, and to see if we can meet any of the neighbours. The town itself hangs off a steep hill and consists of one main road that runs parallel to the coastline for two kilometres with a few cross-streets left and right. There are a few small “old man” cafes (open to the public, but really a place for local men to smoke, drink coffee and moonshine and talk football) along the road, the town church in the main square, a small grocery store which also has a nice café and snack bar, and a Salsicor sausage factory and butcher shop. We drive slowly by these places then park near our lot, which is on the western end of town. Ana rings the bell at our neighbour’s house, and a young lady who introduces herself at Bianca appears. They have a long chat and she tells Ana all about the town, the area, and how there are always realtors sniffing around trying to find out who owns our lot. She tells us it was the municipality who cut down all the cane and bamboo on our lot and cleaned it up as people has started dumping junk in there. They exchange contact details and we’re thrilled to have finally met somebody here.

We walk over to the Salsicor factory to investigate the butcher shop. We’ve tried to do this in the past but never been able to find it, but today we do and it’s fantastic – they have a bunch of frozen seafood, meats, and other stuff plus a butcher counter where I see all sorts of cuts of beef and pork, plus a bunch of different kinds of sausages. We pick up a big bag of mini-chorizos which will be perfect for the birthday party we’re hosting for John tomorrow.

From here we drive the couple hundred metres up to the highway to check out the grocery store we didn’t know was there. It’s called Casa Cheia and has a good grocery selection plus a small bakery and deli counter, and also several rows of hardware and dollar-store type items. There’s also a gas station next door. After these discoveries I am feeling much more optimistic about Feteiras and I like it much more than I did yesterday.

We return to Livramento at one to pick up the folks and drive to Ana Margarida and her husband Pedro’s house. She had arranged to pick Tia Ana up from the care home and bring her back so we could visit with her again. Ana doesn’t remember seeing us the week before, but is not as totally surprised as she was the first time so I think there is a glimmer of memory. We have a long visit and long, delicious lunch and don’t leave until after six, then from here we head over to Paulo Fernando and Natercia’s house for more food and drinking.

This vacation stuff is exhausting.

Azores 2024 - Church Donations, Wrassling Street People, Partying with Tio Luis

2024-04-05T07:35:00.002-04:00

The weather this morning is fucking atrocious. Last night it felt like the wind and rain was going to smash through our bedroom window. Now, as I sit typing on the laptop, the rain has turned to hail and is pelting the window and roof. No walk this morning and there’s been talk of heading to the shopping mall with Ana’s folks.

After shivering through breakfast we pack John and Maria into the car and head to the Parque Atlantico mall. There, I set myself up with the laptop in the food court and have 90 minutes of joyous, solitary writing while the rest of them browse the retail delights. Normally I can’t pass within a hundred feet of mall food courts, but this one doesn’t have that sickening smell the ones back home do, which I’ve always suspected comes from Subway. The place fills in as noon approaches and soon it is packed. I notice that most people are eating the American fast food junk like KFC, Burger King, and McDonalds, all of which are here, instead of the more traditional Portuguese ones. God help their waistlines and arteries.

Ana learns from her mom that one of her Portuguese neighbours had given her twenty bucks and asked her to donate it to a church in downtown Ponta Delgada. Back when Maria and John lived here as teenagers, we are told, people went to this church with donations and gave them to these nuns who lived here, then in exchange they would get a small medallion. Maria tells us this story.

“And you think that fifty years later, it still works like that?” Ana asks.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Maria says. But she knows. Somehow.

Because the weather is still bad, but improving, we take on the donation mission and drive downtown and have a hell of a time finding parking near the huge downtown church, which is the one we assumed we were going to and nobody in the car said anything different. We finally snag a spot, then walk with John and Maria to the Igreja Matriz de São Sebastião, a magnificent architectural wonder right in the heart of the city.

“This isn’t the right church,” says John shaking his head.

“What? What do you mean?” asks Ana, confused. “This is the big church downtown.”

“Nope. Not this one. It’s a different one,” says John.

“Well why didn’t you say something before? How far is it?”

“Muito longe,” says Maria, pointing far off into the western horizon.

“Can we walk there?” I ask.

“Nahhhhhhh, nao e possivel,” says Maria, shaking her head and abandoning the plan.

“Well let’s try, we have nothing else to do,” says Ana.

We begin walking west along the beautiful walkways, intricately patterned with black and white cobblestone. It has stopped raining and is now just windy, but not awful. After walking two short blocks we see another church.

“There it is,” says John, pointing. “That one!”

Ana and I look at each other and shake our heads. I guess things always seemed a bit further when you were thirteen years old. We walk up to the front doors of the church. There are two young guys there holding out plastic cups, asking for money. They looked completely drugged out so we shuffle past them and go inside. There are a number of people there praying and John interrupts one of them in his booming deaf-man voice and asks where the donations are made nowadays. She points out where to go and we leave, hurrying past the street dudes again, avoiding eye contact. As we are walking up the street, John’s hat is flipped off from the wind and blown beneath a car. One of the druggies and I lock eyes, then look to the car. It’s a race. I race over to one side, he goes to the other, then we are both prone on our stomachs reaching beneath the car for the hat. I know if he gets it first we’ll have to pay him, and I’ll be in big trouble with Ana if I give money to a druggie. Just as he gets a finger on the brim, I hook the back of it and pull it towards me, success! This jolt of happiness is quickly replaced with a sense of dread, wondering what wrestling a mentally ill and drug addicted, poverty-stricken young man in front of the holiest church in the land will do to my karma count, but I’m thinking the donation to the nuns might even things out.

John and I catch up to the ladies at a side door to the church. They are standing in front of a weird wooden roller thing built into the stone church wall. Ana says, “Kris we can’t reach the rope – ring the bell.” I look to where she’s pointing and see a rope dangling from an ancient bell. I walk over, grab the rope and yank it, which produces a mighty ring. Nothing much happens, so I ring it again. Suddenly, the wooden dumbwaiter starts to move. I walk over to take a closer look and arrive just in time to see a twenty-dollar bill on a plate sliding across the concrete mantle and disappearing into the church wall. There is a pause. Then the wooden dumbwaiter rotates again, exposing another plate with a religious booklet, a wooden rosary, and a keychain. Maria pockets the goodies in safekeeping for her friend. Ana tosses a euro tenner on the plate and waits a moment, then the wooden thing spins again. Seconds later, a plate appears with just a rosary, and Ana snatches it up. Our karma count is reset.

Once again, we’re proven wrong by Maria, and fifty years later the only thing that’s changed with the donation system is you can no longer see the nuns. And the prizes seem a bit better.

After a nice café lunch of cod and chips, the folks decide to take the bus back to Livramento, leaving Ana and I to browse around the city for a couple of hours. She browses some shops, we go for coffee and snacks, then I go on a wild and uncharacteristic shopping spree at the Peter’s Café Sport shop near the marina. I buy a sweatshirt, tshirt, hat, and coffee cup, all branded with the sperm whale logo. If you are a sailor you probably already know about Peter’s Café Sport, but if not, pop it into Google for an interesting read.

It's Friday night and of course there’s a party to go to. Tio Luis and his wife Genoveva are celebrating their grand-daughter Iris’s 18 birthday and we got a golden ticket. One thing about Azoreans – they are consistent. Whenever you visit an Azorean’s house, they will first take you straight back to their garden to show it off. That’s just what they do. It doesn’t matter if they have just a few tomato plants, or a grape vine canopy over their patio, or, in Tio Luis’s case, a sprawling garden with kale, rosemary, lemons, oranges, onions, carrots, coriander, tangerines, dill, grapes, plums, potatoes, parsley, yams, bananas, and three goddamn coffee trees from which they make their own coffee. The garden is always the first place you visit. After that you get to see their house, meet their wife, and sample two or three varieties of the home brew they have displayed proudly on the hutch.

The party is epic. Though the main floor of their house is fairly small, they still manage to seat thirty people at multiple tables. Ana and I ask to get reassigned from the table with her parents and Manuel (who we’ve been spending 24 hours per day with) to the so called “young table” with a bunch of cousins who are mostly either pushing fifty or already there, plus a few in their twenties. They are all a hell of a lot of fun.

It is a long and leisurely dinner and I’m positioned by the fridge so every thirty seconds or so I do my bartender duty and retrieve beers or wine. It’s mostly a barrage of Portuguese but a few of the cousins do speak English, or at least some English, sometimes reluctantly, so communication is fun and an odd mix of both languages.

We leave sometime after midnight, but the fun continues, as the young kids have started up a big game of soccer in the backyard. It was a great party.

Azores 2024 - Natercia’s Magnificent Signature, Azorean Pizza, Prawns in Caloura

2024-04-04T06:27:00.002-04:00

The post-dinner conversation last night turned into an hours-long screaming match (as usual) and at one point Paulo thought the neighbour was going to call the cops. What was it about? Well, it was about Natercia’s name. After our experience at the bank with Ana’s surname I was curious if the people here had similar issues, as I know from experience that the Portuguese like to play fast and loose with names. In Canada it’s traditionally been quite simple – you get a first name, middle name, and last name. Everybody in the family has the same last name, which comes in quite handy for grouping and organization. “Hey, the Olsons are coming over tonight,” a neighbour might say, and the other neighbour he’s speaking to would know precisely who and how many would turn up. In recent times, this has changed with the many divorces and mixed families, plus the trend of women sometimes keeping their maiden names or hyphenating them with their husband’s surname. This has always struck me as odd, as I assume this privilege to be time fenced into one generation, two at most. For example, if Ana and I had gone double barreled and named our daughter Stella Borges-Olson, then she married a guy whose parents had done the same and named him Philip Hogsworth-Stroumboulopoulos, and the new couple wanted to keep up the tradition, then their daughter would be named Matilda Borges-Olson-Hogsworth- Stroumboulopoulos. And imagine what a tongue tangle it would be for their children if she married Thomas Aberdeen-Philippot-Sagittarious-Mikelstein. This system seems excessively wordy and impractical, but turns out I was wrong. Completely wrong.

Natercia’s full name is Natercia da Conceição Alves de Medeiros Cabral da Silva. At first I didn’t believe her, even after she told me it takes her about 90 seconds to sign her name. I even asked to her to pull out her Portuguese citizenship card for proof, and sure enough, there it was, in glorious size two New Roman font. The name is a combination of given names and surnames of her mom and dad, plus her husband’s surname, then instead of using dashes they put a bunch of “da’s” and “de’s” between the names. It’s a classy name and has a nice flow and rhythm to it unlike the hyphenated monstrosities mentioned above.

Strangely though, her three siblings all got slightly different versions. Her older sisters Carmelia and Manuela had an “Oliviera” slipped in there which was her mom’s maiden name, and technically correct, but they dropped this for her older brother Rue, apparently due to some meddling from a godmother, which seems a common occurrence. Whenever things go wrong in Portuguese family, there is always a godmother involved. When Natercia came around, the godmother must not have caught wind of it, so her parents wanted to fix the error and put the “Oliviera” back in there, but they didn’t want Rue to feel singled out so they dropped it for her too, which meant she got a shorter name than she should have.

To further complicate matters, Tio Manuel’s original surname was Cabrinha, which means “little goat” and unsurprisingly drew some ridicule from the kids on the playground. So his parents changed the surname of the new babies they were blessed with to Medeiros, which was grandma’s surname. Strangely, Ana’s uncle Joe, who is Tio Manuel’s younger brother, was always called “Joe Cabrinha” despite his surname being Medeiros. See, it’s complicated.

After rigorously documenting this whole complicated naming system on a sheet of looseleaf, I ask Natercia why she doesn’t add “da Oliviera” and “de Cabrinha” to her name just to fill it out a bit. She’s not sure if I’m serious.

This morning, I take a long, long early solo walk through winding streets, down urban trails, and to the rocky coastline where I’m nearly blown over by the strong winds, then work my way back up through a series of neighbourhoods, and to the Pingo Doce where I pick up fresh bread for breakfast.

John and Maria join us for a visit to the nearby ceramic factory and we see the staff at work crafting clay pots and bowls, painting, baking, and selling. From here we drive down to one of our favourite places on the island – the natural pools of Rosario. The place is in chaos. The strong south wind is pushing massive waves that crash and foam violently, turning the black lava stone landscape white. On calm days, in the summer, this place is magical. I am hoping that we get some calm weather next week so I can get into the water. I will not leave here without an ocean swim.

We have lunch at home then Ana and I go back out to tour the Observatorio Vulcanologico e Geotermico dos Acores – the Volcano museum, a place we have driven by a hundred times and always wondered about. We arrive just in time for a tour and are pleasantly surprised with what we find – an entertaining scientist guide who takes us through a series of exhibits, videos, and experiments.

From here we drive east and worm our way down into the port of Caloura, which has a lovely seaside restaurant in the shadows of the nearby towering cliffs. We take a walk out to the end of the pier then return to the restaurant and share a plate of giant prawns bathed in garlic and oil. We hadn’t planned on coming here, but it seems on this island you can get in a car and drive in any direction and soon come across something interesting, unique, enjoyable, wonderful, or amazing.

We make one last stop at Charlena’s and share a medium pizza and drinks. The pizza is delicious. I’m excited to see the first item on their pizza menu was one that included chorizo and pineapple. I feel like taking a picture and sending it to our Italian exchange student Dom who has an inexplicable hatred for pineapple on pizza. But I think he and his Italian brethren are fighting a losing battle.

Back at the house we have a quick chat with the folks. There seems to be some sort of religious discussion going on and Tio Manuel cracks Ana up with something he says, which she translates for me. He said he hasn’t been to church in a while and hasn’t noticed any significant reduction in his fortunes. I guess that settles the religion issue. I still give baby Jesus a little high five before going to bed.

Azores 2024 – Thermal Spas, Jurassic Gardens, Azorean Name Games

2024-04-03T14:39:00.002-04:00

Wednesday is the best day for work. After Ana makes an appointment for next week with a lawyer to sort out some guardianship issues with her aunt, we gather up the Gang of Greys and drive over to the bank in Lagoa to see if we can get some things sorted on our account. When we bought the land here twenty years ago we opened a bank account with Tio Manuel and made him procurador which is sort of like a power of attorney, so that he could pay the annual taxes on our land for us. He is now 86 years old and still in damn fine shape, but it seems prudent to get a backup in place, so we’re adding Ana’s cousin Carmelia to the various documents.

Of course, it’s a mess. The Portuguese citizenship card that we tried to get a few days ago is going to require a code to be mailed to Canada, then we need to take that to the Portugal consulate in Toronto to pick up Ana’s new card. Unfortunately, that card is needed for pretty much any administrative government function so our helper at the bank is flummoxed, despite providing old passports, old citizenship cards, new passports and reams of other official documentation, the problems seems to be that Ana’s surname is “Borges” on some of them, and “Olson” on the others. We’re going to have Stella scan in our Portuguese marriage registration and email that to her to see if it makes a difference. All we are trying to do is get access to internet banking so we can pay the yearly taxes ourselves online and not have to bother the island folk.

Ana and I leave the three of them on a street corner to loiter around Lagoa and we head east for Furnas – the boiling, sulphury, steamy town towards the east end of the island, and closer to inferno than any other village. Furnas has been a tourist draw for over two hundred years, promising the gift of health from luxurious plunges into the warm, mineral-rich brown waters.

The road into Furnas takes you up high into the hills which, today, is above the cloud line so it’s a slow, curvy, and risky ride as the visibility is down to a few dozen metres. We drop out of the clouds as we are just entering Furnas valley and the view down into the town is beautiful. The town is busy with tourists but we manage to find a parking spot and pay the ten euro fee to get into the Terra Nostra gardens and park. Here, is a giant thermal pool with chocolate milk waters and a few hundred people soaking and lounging. We pass on the swim and instead wander the expansive gardens which are even larger and more impressive than the ones we visited in Ponta Delgada a few days ago. There are surprisingly few people there and the scenery is otherworldly; a bamboo forest, animal figures carved from trees and grown over with vines and moss, bubbling ponds, warm and winding streams, Jurassic trees, exotic flower gardens, singing frogs, chubby orange Koi cruising through channels.

We check out the restaurant in the attached Terra Nostra hotel, but after seeing servers wearing white gloves and buttoned-up ivory jackets, we veer left into the nearby 3 Bicas Snack Bar and have a lovely lunch and beers for eighteen euro.

After a bit of horsing around with online tickets, two-factor authentication, and phone apps (for some reason they do not accept payments on site anymore, so if you don’t have a phone you better find somewhere else to go), we finally get into the Poça da Dona Beija thermal spas. This place is hard to describe, but it feels like you’ve dropped into a jungle oasis. Four different pools, flowing over with steaming 39 degree water, all connected by a warm river running down what looks like an ancient cobbled riverbed, with flowers and shrubs and trees encircling the spas. There are a lot of people here – more than last time we visited, but it’s manageable and still somehow feels peaceful. We soak in the various pools for over an hour.

We take a different route back home, along the north coast, and after passing the two tea plantations on the island, stop at a miradour (viewpoint) to admire the ocean vistas and try not to get blown over the edge by the crazy winds. A little tourist gift shop has opened here since we last visited and I find an Azores shirt I like. We ask the man working there how much it is, bracing for his answer.

“Ten euro,” he says.

“Ten?” I ask Ana, surprised.

“Only ten?” she asks him.

“Yes, but it’s low season. In high season I crank the price up to twelve-fifty,” he said, both proud and slightly embarrassed at the same time.

“Why not charge twenty euro?” Ana asks. “People will pay it.”

“Oh no. I couldn’t do that,” he replies, now fully embarrassed with the thought of ripping people off.

And that, is exactly the reason tourists fall in love with this place. People here are decent. They are hospitable and willing to share their country and look to just make a living, not fleece visitors. I happily buy the shirt.

Back at home base, the folks have cooked up a magnificent tuna dinner and Paulo Fernando, Natercia, and Leonor arrive at the house around 7:30 to join us. As expected, it turns into a late night with a lot of yelling, screaming, laughing, and drinking, and I make a remarkable discovery, which I will explain tomorrow.

Azores 2024 – Grey Parade, Cow Jam, Lando Calrissian

2024-04-02T14:31:00.003-04:00

I’m happy to learn that this is still the land of the lost radio song. They have a surprising number of FM radio stations for such a small island, and most of them play English songs, but songs that have been mostly forgotten by the rest of the world. Maybe they get a great deal on them? Yesterday I heard that song “Hazard” by Richard Marx. This morning I heard “Sign Your Name” by Terence Trent D’Arby. I’m sure Roch Voisine and Wang Chung can’t be too far off. Listening to the radio here is like thrifting – once in a while you get a real gem, but it’s mainly junk.

We finally got our bed rigged up just right. I think the mattress on this bed is a vintage 60’s model that was a big step up from the duck feathers and straw they used to shove into burlap sacks to sleep on. She’s firm she is, but lava rock firm, and I haven’t been drinking enough to knock myself into a motionless stupor so my rolling around has been bruising my bony hips. Yesterday Ana’s mom found some extra blankets so now it’s much better and I’m back to rolling around pain-free.

After a big breakfast we gather up the Grey Parade and all five of us take off in the car to explore. We take the side roads up and across the middle of the island. The scenery is beautiful – rolling green hills, small stands of forest, stone fences, pasture lands, and cows – so many cows. At one point in the road we have to stop as a large village of cows is coming at us three astride, taking up the whole road. These classic black and white beauties pass by us gracefully, and acknowledge our presence with a slight nod and wink.

As we drive westward the road starts ascending and soon we are in thick cloud cover and in the Freguesia of Sete Cidades (Seven Cities, but I’ve only ever been able to count one or two of them). We stop at a viewpoint along with a bunch of tourists who are wandering down a path towards a barely visible aqueduct, getting soaked and nearly blown over from the crazy strong wind. At any moment I expect Lando Calrissian to come blasting out of the fog in his Twin Pod Cloud Car. When that doesn’t happen, we continue along the road first higher, then down a series of switchbacks into the valley of Sete Cidades which is famous for its two joined lakes; one green and one blue, at least on sunny days, which rarely happen here, so usually they are both grey, like they are today.

This is the most popular tourist destination on the island, but I’ve never really understood why. There’s just not that much here. It pretty, I suppose, and they have built more since the last time we were here – now there is a tourist restaurant alongside the shoreline of one of the lakes, plus a whole lineup of ATVs and side-by-sides which simply make me shudder with the thought of tourists ripping around on them up and down the streets and through the fields scaring the milk out of all the nice cows.

We stop for a coffee and a piss then move along to the Ponta da Ferraria thermal spa on the south-west and take a walk along the black lava stone pathways to look at the natural warm pool, which is currently a foamy froth of wind-swept surf, far too rough to risk a dip. I think Tio Manuel is really enjoying the day as he’s mentioned that it’s been decades since he’s visited some of these places. And the three of them in the back seat haven’t stopped talking once so they are definitely not getting bored.

Next stop is the town of Mosteiros, the western-most village on the island. It is famous for its series of natural ocean pools you can swim in, but today its more of a Perfect Storm scenario so there’s not much swimming going on. We go to the restaurant Brisa do Mar and have an excellent seafood lunch with beer and wine. This is the place we always lunch at in Mosteiros and it does not disappoint. Our server is the same lady who was working here when we first visited twenty years ago.

From here we drive north around the corner of the island then east and make a few stops to check out the vistas, and one at a small restaurant in Capelas where we sit on the outside patio, have coffee, and watch the endless sequence of 2000’s era music videos on the MTV playing on the large panel. Something about The Ketchup Song just makes me unbelievably happy. I need to learn that dance so I can break it out at the next family party.

As I sip my decaffeinated espresso, I can see that Ana and her mom are getting on each other’s nerves. They have this exchange.

“Is there a bathroom here?” Maria asks.

“Mom, it’s a restaurant. Of course there’s a bathroom here,” Ana replies.

“What if I can’t find it?” Maria says, hinting that perhaps Ana could guide her in.

“God Mom, everybody in there speaks Portuguese! I’m sure they’d be happy to help,” Ana says, standing her ground.

“We’ll see,” Maria says as she purses her lips and squints her eyes, slowly nodding at Ana as she rises. “We’ll see.”

It is definitely time to go. We cruise back home, drop off the folks, then Ana and I finish up the day with a few chores, including ordering a bunch of food for John’s 80th birthday party which we’re hosting at Tio Manuel’s house this coming Sunday.

Azores 2024 – Baby Jesus, Botanical Gardens, and Local Sailors

2024-04-01T17:48:00.003-04:00

Religion here in the islands is a big deal. Catholicism is woven into the fabric of everything – how they build, how they spend their time, how they talk. Every little town has its own roster of religious festivals and you can hit up a reli-fest every single weekend of the year if you don’t mind doing a bit of island driving. There are religious icons everywhere you look – carved into stone buildings, arranged into the cobblestoned sidewalks, depicted on tile murals on peoples’ homes, the white and black lavastone steeples of churches grasping for the sky, saintly air fresheners hanging from rear view mirrors in cars, rosaries and crosses hanging from peoples’ necks, and biblical street names carved into the classy stone markers on every corner. Tio Manuel has a baby Jesus mannequin on the bureau in the living room. I give him a little high five every morning when I come down to boil water and it makes me feel pretty good. I’m sure he’s been lying there for 50 years. In the bedroom Ana and I are using, there’s a glass globe with Joseph and Mary and a little kid who I assume is Jesus. I keep thinking a parrot on Joseph’s shoulder and a mini eye patch would be pretty funny but I don’t dare just in case I get busted and am not invited back.

The weather this morning is awful. The wind has shifted to the south which means our side of the island is now getting the shit-kicking. We decide it’s a good day for administration so we’re out the door by 9 and head to Ponta Delgada to get some documents required for the land we own here and to get Ana’s Portuguese citizenship card renewed. The citizenship place is at the Parque Atlantico shopping mall so after we’re done Ana hits the stores while I sit in a coffee shop with a book and read for an hour.

Sometime after noon the rain stops and the sun comes out, completely transforming the day. We go to the Jose Do Canto Botanical Garden and I enjoy it so much it makes me wonder if I still am a hard drinking, hard partying, bad-assed, youthful, rebel motherfucker. Besides the thousands of exotic plants and trees there are a bunch of roosters, chickens, and cute little chicks running around that almost make me feel weepy. Before I completely surrender to old age we crawl to the top of the chapel situated at the edge of the property and get into the bell chamber and I chime the bells just to see if that starts some shit.

We drive down to the main Avenida in the city and go for lunch at a café in Portas do Mar – the cruise ship terminal. There’s a cruise ship in port – a big one – so we’re surprised the restaurants here are so quiet. Mind you, we are having lunch at 2:30 so that might explain it. We’re finding the prices here are still good, and some things are downright cheap. Our lunch is 30 euro, but that includes beers and huge meals. The odd time we go out for lunch in Canada these days has been costing us north of $60 after all the wretched taxes and tips. Restaurant prices here are definitely less than home, grocery store prices are the same or less, gas is 40% more, and admission fees (when they do charge admission) are still very low. Maybe things go up in the summer when most tourists visit, but to me it feels like things here really haven’t changed much in six years.

Beside the cruise ship terminal is a huge marina and we stop by the marina office to check out prices and find those too are still cheap. Residents can rent a yearly slip for about a thousand euro. For non-locals it’s over four grand, but that’s still cheap. The monthly non-local rate is only five hundred euro which seems like a bargain to me. While in the office, we meet one crew who are just leaving for Spain and had come from Martinique a few days before. It took them 26 days, which was about 8 days longer than normal due to weak winds. They expect the trip to Spain to take eight days and have no hesitation leaving in 45 kph winds and a boiling sea state. That seems scary as hell to me, but I think that once you’ve got some ocean experience under your belt you know what you and your boat can handle.

We also meet a Dutch sailor that sailed into Sao Miguel two and a half years ago with a busted engine and had the bowsprit of his boat knocked off when the coast guard was trying to tow him in and instead plowed his boat right into a concrete dock. After weeks of more frustration and disaster trying to sort everything out, he discovered he loved the island and decided to stay and get his residency. Marcel’s his name and I expect we just may run into him again and maybe get a tour of his boat and the inside scoop on living in a marina in Ponta Delgada.

During the drive back to Tio Manuel’s we pass several beaches, all of which have people out enjoying the late afternoon and swimming, playing volleyball, having drinks, or just sitting in the sand. Amazing the difference a few hours makes on the islands.

We consume leftovers for dinner and are joined by Pedro, Carmelia, and Bella. And just when I am thinking the night is over, Bella takes us out to her boyfriend Carlos’s pizzeria restaurant for coffee and we get to meet his lovely mom who spins up the magic pizzas in the back room. We make a date to return Thursday for dinner.

Azores 2024 – Tia Ana, Exponential Portuguese Loudness, Crazy Cousins

2024-03-31T17:36:00.003-04:00

It’s Easter Sunday. The clouds have parted and the sun is out after two days of rain. John and I go for a walk in the neighbourhood. The houses here are unique, often attached to each other, and despite most of them being very, very old, they look modern. Many have huge stone fences built around the properties and an incredible variety of trees popping up above them. One house has an enormous cactus sprouting up among a sprawling plantation of banana trees. They can grow nearly anything on this island. We stop at the corner grocery store (Pingo Doce) and I buy a beautiful loaf of warm artisan bread for one euro forty and a bunch of Portuguese buns for twenty-two cents each. Breakfast is served.

Ana had contacted her aunt Ana’s caregiver friend (Ana Margarida) and arranged for us to visit them at her home this morning. But first we drive to the Parque Atlantico, a shopping mall, and buy Tio Manuel a new microwave as his cacked out yesterday.

By 11:30 we are at Ana Margarida’s home and are welcomed in by her husband as the two Anas are still at church, but they arrive soon afterwards. Tia Ana’s had a rough go of things. Her and her husband Joe were never able to have children and she would have been a perfect mom. Her husband became an invalid and she was his caregiver for many years and rarely left the house. He passed away and she only had a few years of relative freedom until she started developing dementia and has gone downhill rapidly in the past couple of years. Ana and her aunt are very close so it’s been tough on her hearing about this decline, and now about to see it in person.

Tia Ana slowly, ever so slowly enters the room with the help of a walker and sees us all sitting there but doesn’t recognize anybody. John begins talking to his little sister and after a few minutes it finally clicks and she remembers and gives him a huge hug. Same thing happens with Ana’s mom and Ana. Everybody is crying. She doesn’t remember me until I start speaking to her in English then she remembers right away and hugs me. It’s heartbreaking to see her like this. We stayed with her at her house on previous visits to the Azores and got to know her so well. She deserved so much more in her life but her religious faith has enabled her to bear these crosses. And she’s lucky to have such a good friend in Ana Margarida who has been supporting her and taking care of her for many years.

Before leaving we make plans to see her again during the week and next weekend. Ana Margarida’s husband tells us that after an hour or so she probably won’t remember our visit. But that’s okay.

We get back to Tio Manuel’s house for 1pm and things are really happening. The cousins have been to Sete Cidades to pick up a massive amount of cooked food, and people are arriving rapidly – similar crew as Friday night, but this time the cousins’ partners are also here. The cupboard has been emptied of dishes, and chairs and tables have been improvised to accommodate everybody. It’s not just a lot of people in a small house - remember, this is a house full of Portuguese people, and even worse, Portuguese Island People who are even louder than the continental ones, and worse than that, Rapidly Deafening Old Portuguese Island People who can’t hear shit, so everybody screams all the louder to make sure they get their point across. The noise level is deafening.

The aluminum trays are uncovered to reveal the food – pork slices, beef slices, spiced chicken, potatoes, stewed octopus with octopus-marinated potatoes, Portuguese bread stuffing, and a bunch of other stuff I didn’t bother leaving any room on my plate for. Because it’s Easter there’s also chocolate eggs, chocolate rabbits, Ferrero Rocher chocolates, plus a bunch of desserts – flan, rice pudding, two kinds of cake, and a whipped cream jelly roll thing. We dive in and eat merrily.

As we’re eating, I think of something I want to ask Tio Manuel in Portuguese. I craft it over and over in my head until I’m sure it’s right. I know it will really impress all the cousins. So I wait for a break in the conversation to deliver my awesome question.

Here’s a tip if you plan on spending any significant periods of time with Portuguese people: don’t wait for a break in the conversation. You’ll be waiting a long time. You will probably be waiting forever because there’s never a break in the conversation. It doesn’t happen. In fact, there’s never just one conversation; there’re a whole bunch going on at the same time. Sometimes one of them will be having two simultaneous conversations, then those two people are also having multiple conversations and this results in exponential loudness and confusion. You know how cell phone signals are everywhere, bouncing from phone to tower to phone, through people, buildings, and animals, and these millions of signals somehow miraculously make it to the right phone and everybody understands each other? That’s what Portuguese parties are like, but instead of silent radio signals it’s loud voices. I’ve thought about this a lot, and I think the Portuguese all inherited the same genetic mutation where they can breathe through their ears, because they never seem to stop for a breath.

Anyway, Ana ends up asking Tio Manuel the exact same question I was going to ask so I give up after that and instead just focus on eating and drinking as much as possible.

At some point I realize that cousin Tony had disappeared with all the kids and I find out he’s taken them over to the park to play soccer. So Ana, her cousin Carmelia, and I walk over to see what’s going on, and to enjoy the beautiful sunshine that’s flooding the island.

We find them and join in for a rollicking game of Keep-Up-The-Volleyball with all the junior cousins and some other neighbourhood kids they picked up along the way. I manage to keep my Easter dinner down where it belongs despite the jumping and stretching and am feeling a lot better than I would have collapsing on the couch and watching the Portuguese Ten Commandments on tv.

We return to the house for more desserts and drinking and eventually the crowd slowly starts thinning out. Around 9:30 the older contingent started comparing the back cremes they use for the aches and pains, then all of a sudden everybody’s whipping off clothes showing off scabs, rashes, discolorations, and all manner of skin abnormalities and I’m sitting there pie-eyed thinking, Goddamn everybody’s getting old – this sure as shit never used to happen around here. By 10pm only Paulo and Natercia are left and Natercia’s on a roll. We’ve been playing music real loud on the portable speaker and dancing and laughing, and Tio Manuel signals it’s time for everybody to leave when he flicks on the tv and tunes it into the Lisbon Weather Channel. He even turns up the volume, but it can’t overpower the speaker so we ignore the signal and carry on and Natercia even gets him dancing, sort of, for a brief moment.

I must tell you about Natercia. She’s crazy. In the best way possible. In my family, on the Olson side, we have Cousin Nicole who’s crazy and awesome. Natercia is the Azorean version of Nicole. And Nicole is the Canadian version of Natercia. If I ever managed to get the two of them together, I think the universe would experience a cataclysmic event, and it would totally kick ass. And Natercia’s husband Paulo Fernando is the chillest dude imaginable…just like Nicole’s beau Mark.

Natercia tells a story about her last trip to Canada, which was a long time ago, but it comes out fresh. It’s delivered in rapid fire Portuguese and animated pantomime and takes about 40 minutes. I can pick out bits and pieces, and there’s parts there about somebody trying to buy her fancy shoes at the airport for two hundred bucks, and some other part where she slipped on ice and faceplanted at Walmart, then she switches to English to explain the valuable items she brought home to the Azores from Canada – eighty cakes of Irish Spring soap, fourteen blocks of marble cheese, four enormous bottles of Sam’s Club pickles, and two jars of multi-coloured jalapeno rings. She’s crazy.

Azores 2024 - A Triumphant Return to My Village

2024-03-30T07:04:00.000-04:00

The time difference is just three hours but it still messes you up a bit. We went to bed last night around 10 and didn’t have any cheater naps during the day, and woke up at 8am feeling reset and ready to go.

Remember that “death row” dinner I wrote about yesterday? Well today I have my first of many death row breakfasts. Breakfasts in the Azores are simple and they are the greatest. After picking up fresh warm buns from the local grocery store you slice one open, spread some butter made from the milk of happy cows, then put in a slice of ham and piece of fresh cheese, also made from the milk of happy cows. You also have yourself one or two mini bananas, pulled from one of the banana trees in your backyard or your neighbour’s backyard. You can accompany that with hot coffee, or perhaps a tall glass of milk, made from – you guessed it – happy cows.

It is again rainy, cloudy, and windy and the winter season is not quite ready to fully release its hold on the island, so we grab John and Maria and go for a car ride. First stop is the farmer’s market downtown where we pick up a bunch of vegetables then head upstairs to the fish market, where there’s only one stall still open. The fishmonger had a cross section of a huge tuna and slices off a quarter of it then places the long and deep red slab on the chopping block. He slides his blade slowly up the slab until we say stop and he cuts there. He weighs it and tells us it will be seventeen euro, and there’s likely two kilos there. He cuts them up into steaks and puts them in a bag with ice. Ana passes him a twenty, which he receives with his scaly and bloody hands then offers to throw in four calvalhos (sort of like mackeral…they might actually be mackeral) to bring the total up to an even twenty euro. I expect every customer evens up to avoid a pile of fishy euro coin in the pocket.

It's been at least two hours since we’ve eaten so we stop at a waterfront café on the Avenida for a light snack. The Pink Queen of Bifana, as she calls herself, rewards us with four tall milky coffees (called galao) and pork sandwiches and we sit there for a good long while envying our own current situation in life. To me, not a thing has changed since we were last here six years ago. There are still just a handful of tourists walking around and I recognize many of the stores.

We get back in the car and drive west through the rest of Ponta Delgada and up the coast to Feteiras so we can check on our property. We bought a building lot here nearly twenty years ago so you could say this is my home village, and I have Ana take a photo of me in front of the FETEIRAS sign to celebrate my homecoming. Our original plan was to buy the lot then in twenty years after Feteiras had developed and was full of trendy restaurants, cool bars, and diversions of all types, we’d build a house. Well, Feteiras hasn’t changed at all in twenty years. The only difference is that our lot is the only one remaining empty of the six that were sold by the previous owner of the land.

Last time we were here the lot was overgrown with bamboo and there were some stalks of it reaching up and over the neighbouring houses. Sometime in the interim, the village must have sent some of their boys down with machetes and chainsaws and they cleaned it up completely. That was nice of them. We admire our lot for a while then drive down the impossibly steep road nearby to the coast. Here, we are surprised to see a number of vehicles and tourists taking selfies over the punishingly rough waters and the black volcanic landscape. There used to be a pool here many years before but it had been completely destroyed during one particularly nasty storm. That was the other thing we had hoped may have developed over the years, but nope. Sowe’re not sure what we’re going to do with the land. The ocean views are simply stunning from here and it could be a magnificent place. But we don’t plan on ever living here full time, we don’t love the town, and we certainly don’t want the hassle of managing a rental property. I dream that the extended periods of time we do spend here on the future could instead be on our sailboat in the marina, which offer 360 degree ocean views and walking access to everything. Of course, we’d need to actually sail the boat here, but that’s a larger discussion. So we may sell the land. We’ll see.

We drive back towards Ponta Delgada then turn north and cross the ten kilometres across the island to Ribera Grande on the north shore which is being pounded by huge waves and a watery gale from the north. Ana has an address of a care facility where we think her aunt Ana is at. We find it in the inner recesses of Ribera Grande and wander around inside but can’t find her. One of the workers makes a call for us and confirms she is living in their other facility in a different town. Because it’s getting on in the day we decide to abandon the plan and come back in a day or two.

On the way home we stop at the supermarket and pick up some food. I stand mesmerized in the wine aisle and am faced with a tough decision. The five litre boxes of wine come in many varieties and prices. I go with the high roller option and grab a box for eleven euro instead of the cheap-assed six euro plonk. I will be told later by Paul that this wine is good for only two things: cooking Wednesday food or cleaning power tools. He underestimates the simplicity of my palate.

We have a quiet dinner of leftovers and my freshly procured Cardboardeax. Delicious. Natercia arrives some while later and entertains us with an hour of stories then she is off like a flash and I am out like a light.

Azores 2024 – An Easter Visit to the Green Island

2024-03-29T06:10:00.003-04:00

Arriving to the Azores feels like coming home. It has been a shameful six years since we last visited and six of Ana’s aunts, uncles, and cousins are here at the airport to greet us after our mostly sleepless overnight flight from Toronto. They all look exactly the same – even younger, maybe. It’s the clean island living.

Ana’s folks John and Maria have joined us on the trip for their final visit to the Azores (they say) but I don’t believe it. John will be turning 80 next week and Maria hit that marker recently, but they still have plenty of gas left in the tank.

Ana follows some Azores ex-patriate forums on social media,and according to those the whole place has gone to hell. Skyrocketing prices, swarms of tourists, congestion in the streets. But I see none of that during the short drive from the airport to her uncle Manuel’s house in Livramento, where we’ll be staying. Mind you, it is Good Friday, so maybe not the best day to judge; especially as the weather is awful and the wind and rain shakes and pelts the Dacia Duster rental vehicle as we drive.

The Azores is a very special place for us. My first trip here was in 2003 with Ana, a few years after we met and I have been intrigued and in love with the islands ever since then. Back in those days, the only tourists here were ex-patriate Azoreans from Ontario, Massachusetts, and California returning to visit their families, plus the odd German wearing hiking books. After that first trip I fully expected the islands would be quickly discovered and ruined by mass tourism…but they weren’t – even after a massive and modern cruise ship terminal was built in the 2010’s. Only in recent years has the world finally awoken to the charms of Portugal and its islands.

Before I begin, I must explain the family tree. We are staying with Ana’s mom’s oldest brother Manuel. His wife Alda passed away many years ago and three of his children live nearby – Manuela with her husband Antonio and kids Fernando and Raquel; Carmelia with her husband Pedro and their children Bella, Sofia and Sofia’s daughter Matilde; Natercia with her husband Paulo Fernando and their daughter Leonore, and Manuel’s son Rue lives in Sweden with his twin boys Hans and Frans (that’s not actually right but Manuel couldn’t quite remember their Swedish names so let’s go with that). Maria’s youngest brother Luis and his wife Genoveva are also part of the wolf pack and they have an armada of kids and grandkids.

We get seated at the kitchen table and Ana’s cousin Natercia pulls out the blood pressure monitor and starts checking everybody’s number. How things have changed. Back in the day the first thing offered to us on our visits were shots of moonshine, bottles of cold Sagres beer, and pastries. I think it’s all for show anyway, because after we’re all checked and results recorded and compared and I’m anointed the winner with the lowest pressure score, we tie into a smashing breakfast spread of fresh buns, ham, cheese, fresh Azorean milk from happy cows, homemade grape chutney jam, mini bananas, and coffee, then followed up with samples of various home brewed and some store-bought liquors of varied intensities. Other cousins begin appearing and it is soon a beehive of activity and an enthusiastic discussion breaks out concerning dinner plans for the following weekend. There is finger pointing, yelling, arguing, second-guessing, triple-checking, lobbying, more yelling then finally I ask Ana what Tio Luis had just said and she reported, “shove the meat in the hole”. I thought the discussion had moved onto something more interesting than meal prep, but turns out they were debating making a cozida (Azorean meat and potato stew)with the help of the underground volcanic cooking tubes at the town of Furnas. But this promising plan ended up being scuttled and moved to mid-week to avoid weekend congestion, leaving us with no dinner plans for next weekend. I’m sure it will all work itself out.

The topic turns to another intriguing hole; this one the dreaded bottomless pit that Ana’s mom has been telling us about for years. Legend has it that the villagers of Livramento discovered this fissure in the earth after one of the senior pastors, probably named Joe, disappeared without a trace, and so did his cow. It’s pretty hard to disappear completely on this small island and good luck hiding a cow for any length of time. The hole was discovered and was proven to be an excellent portal for disposal of trash or any other unsightly, unwanted goods or people. Now we’ve never seen this hole, and I’ve always thought that Maria was maybe just making it up. So we ask Tio Luis about and he doesn’t just confirm its existence, he tells us that one time they rigged up a shaky, homemade man-basket and took a few hundred feet of rope, draped it over a big tree limb, then lowered their brother Tony into the hole to see if he could find the bottom. Well, he must have run into something supernatural down there because when they pulled him out he was scared shirtless and had become completely magnetized. It worked out well for him though, because as a carpenter, from that time forward, he was able to just stick tools to his legs and arms instead of wearing one of those uncomfortable leather tool pouches. And he never dropped a screw or nail again.

We beg Luis to take us to see the hole, right then, but he tells us that it had been sealed with concrete after some baby skeletons were supposedly discovered inside. Cousin Paulo’s never heard of this hole so Luis gives him directions and he pulls up Google Earth on his phone but can find no sign of fissures or concrete plugs; just a big dirt field. The whole story is real suspect, but what’s life without a bit of mystery I suppose.

Cousin Pedro appears with a huge tub filled with little chicharro fish (Two euro per kilo from the market, caught yesterday), enough to feed a frigate of sailors, and the whole house erupts in lunch preparation activities. Ana is flouring fish, Paulo is shredding cod pieces, Natercia and her sisters Carmelia and Manuela are slicing potatoes and veggies, Antonio is arranging plates and cutlery, Pedro has fired up four frying stations and is cooking fish, I’m washing a never-ending parade of dishes, John’s keeping everybody supplied with fresh beer, and Manuel and Maria are directing traffic and yelling stuff at people – everybody gets a job. Pedro goes to adjust the tablecloth and discovers that Tio Manuel has, in good bachelor fashion, been using curtains for this purpose. He quietly folds up the curtain and slides it into a drawer.

I duck out to the grocery store to pick up two more cases of 250 millilitre mini-Sagres and mini-Super Bock beers just to make sure we don’t run out. Paulo then shoves me into his car and says we’re going lemon shopping. Well, the best lemon shopping in the island turns out to be in his backyard so we go there and he picks a bunch of fresh bright orange coloured lemons off the tree while I play with his cute little dog, who I think is named Pincher and he doesn’t bite me or piss on my leg so I bond with him immediately.

When we return we find out Natercia’s tested everybody’s blood pressure again. The all day drinking has brought everybody’s down by double digits so that proves once and for all that drinking alcohol is good for you. So all you “sober-curious” messiahs can just shut yer traps.

The lunch is beyond incredible. The little fishies are fried crisp and you can eat them head, tail, spine and all. The cod dish made with French fries, eggs, peppers, fried onion, and olives is heavenly. There are boiled and salted new potatoes (which have all been sliced just partway through), fresh vegetables, and many bottles of red wine. Natercia demonstrates the proper technique for eating the new potatoes, which involves dropping a small spoon of pepper sauce into the gash then eating it like a sandwich. The thought of hot pepper in the gash makes me giggle a bit and this turns into a table-wide dirty joke with the help of Paulo. Ana explains to everybody the concept of a “death row dinner” and claims this exact meal as her preferred choice, if she ever finds herself in that unfortunate situation (and I’m assuming me, dead). We sit for a very long time eating, drinking, story-telling, and laughing. This is what we came for. This is why we’re here.

Paulo shows me this nifty trick for opening beer bottles – it’s a genius innovation and does not require one’s teeth nor eyes socket but I’m not going to reveal it here. Instead, have me over sometime and make sure you have bottled beer. Hand me one and I will maintain eye contact with you while I deftly remove the cap and you’ll have no idea how I did it. See, life is better with a bit of mystery.

Instead of music, the Azoreans play Portuguese variety shows to provide background noise in their homes. They are just awful. It’s usually middle-aged women with pancake-batter makeup in unflattering, tight gowns surfing the rolls and their balding male cousins in ill-fitting suits singing overly dramatic ballads with tons of vibrato and hand flailing, with hordes of deranged families gathered round clapping and cheering, probably because it’s a free event and there was nothing else going on that day. Today’s variety show is from Lisbon and it’s still going hours into our own party.

While we drink and goof around in the kitchen, all the younger kids loaf in the living room glued to their phones, exactly the same as what the device-addicted youth do in Canada, making me briefly sad. So I liven things up by going out there and speaking English with them every once in a while which makes them uncomfortable as hell and me laugh a bit.

Time takes on weird dimensions and all of a sudden it’s nighttime and we’re eating Calde Verde soup which has been bubbling on the stove all day and is frighteningly good with its flavourful green strings of kale, liquified potatoes, and chunks of chorizo. Manuela suddenly appears with Pedro and they are carrying this big charcoal grill through the house I think all the booze and food is making me see things, so I follow behind them and watch as they position it at the back of the house in the attached cooking area which has the fryers, stone oven, propane supplies, and a bunch of other stuff. Apparently at some point during the day I had innocently asked somebody about how the oven worked and they interpreted this as disappointment that there was no charcoal barbeque for our cooking needs.

I drink a few more shots with Natercia and Paulo and after they shove off, Ana and I trudge upstairs and collapse in bed after a seemingly ordinary, yet magically wonderful opening day with our beautiful and crazy Azorean family.

Domenico, the Italian Basement Dweller

2024-03-15T06:18:00.011-04:00

Domenico the Italian lives in our basement.

Or I should say used to live in our basement as our strapping Italian exchange student moved out last weekend. Since early December Dom has been our adopted child and it's been a delight having him live with us for this short but memorable time. Especially since Magnus moved to Toronto in January, freeing a family slot.

Dom is from a town called Torre del Greco, located in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, close to the large city of Naples. How can I describe Dom? For a 17-year-old Italian Mamma's Boy (all Italian males are mamma's boys, no matter their age), he is mature beyond his years with an overwhelming sense of confidence and an incredible sense of humour. He has thick, black hair which he fluffs religiously every morning to precise specifications and an inventory of cologne that would make Hugo Boss envious. When we first applied for the honor of hosting a Rotary International student, we expected English instruction to be one of our core responsibilities. Uh uh, not so. Dom's English was excellent when he arrived and even better by the time he left. His vocabulary was impressive, and not just limited to stuff he'd picked up from Marvel movies. He knew the word "narc". He knew the word "vociferous". He even knew the word "menopause" and its worst symptoms, which he saw on display in our household daily and nightly.

We gave Dom our basement and within hours he had exploded all over it, making it his own. He had a pretty sweet setup down there - his own bathroom and shower, the nicest in the house. A full sized fridge full of premium beer and non-premium soft drinks. A washer and dryer (but banned from use, like everybody else in the house not named Ana). My kick ass 1980's stereo and a five channel surround sound home theatre system. My two guitars and small, but impressive collection of Bolivian charangos. A cold room full of my father-in-law's home made Portuguese jungle juice wine, guaranteed to paralyze your brain cells and activate your bowels. Yeah, he was rocking in the free world down there. The first thing he did was to hang this giant Italian flag over the glass door. I thought it was to provide himself with privacy, but I soon learned it was not that at all. It was a daily reminder to us that he is from the greatest country in the world, from whence comes the greatest (insert any word here) in the world. And who were we to doubt it? Especially as he was living with us through the worst season of the Canadian year when the imported Mexican vegetables are completely tasteless and we are left eating white-limbed potatoes six times a week.

I expected we'd quickly tag him with a good nickname. The Dom-inator, The Italian Stallion, Rom Com Dom, Dom the Bomb - these were the obvious ones, but none of them stuck to his olive oil aura. So it was just Dom. Or "Domenico", when I had to occasionally yell it into the basement as he was running late in the morning.

The three months went by quickly. We were not able to do a winter fly and flop this year, but he won the consolation prize - a trip to the Ottawa region to my brother's place for New Year's. And for the first time in collective memory, the place was not buried in dozens of feet of snow. In fact, there was hardly any. But we had a great time and he loved the city and my brother's fairy tale gingerbread mansion over on the "dark side" (Quebec). He didn't see much for snow until January when had a snowstorm in Brantford under mild temperatures producing ideal conditions for snow packing, so Stella and I treated him to an old fashioned snowball fight. He had no snow skills whatsoever so we totally destroyed him. I connected with at least two shots in the groin and one on the forehead and Stella treated him to a snowy face wash. He seemed to enjoy it.

Dom was easy to have around. One thing did perplex me, though. We do a lot of cooking during the winter, and I'm not afraid to say that our kitchen produces some ass-popping good meals. Rib-eye steaks, beef stew, pork tenderloin, grilled salmon, slow-smoked ribs, roasted chicken, chicken biryani, Chinese stir frys, custom chili dogs, homemade bread, vegetables of all varieties. He was always satisfied, but never seemed overly impressed. Until, that is, Ana brought home a bag of Food Basic's cheapest frozen garlic bread as filler food one Wednesday night. Eight of them were placed on a sheet then after five minutes per side under the broiler they were tossed unceremoniously on the table beside the chicken tenders and microwaved brown beans. Dom's lovely blue eyes began to sparkle as he had his first bite. He was in heaven. The two slice quota per family member was obliterated as he tore into them like an Italian Cookie Monster. He told us with a straight face that this was the greatest food he'd eaten in Canada. Our cheeks burned red with the backhander compliment. And it didn't stop there. Ana brought home raisin bread one day. The expression on his face after taking a bite of extra-buttered raisin bread toast was one of great joy and unbelievable pleasure. Then, the ultimate discovery. And I'll say, I shouldn't have been too surprised, but I thought maybe it would be different with an Italian. Every international person we've ever introduced this dish to has fallen in love with it. What is this magical dish, you ask?

Kraft Dinner. And in Dom's case, Kraft Dinner with Chopped Up Hot Dogs.

Yes, all pasta he'd eaten in Canada up until his moment had been bunk. Dog food. Rat bait. But Kraft Dinner? Life changing. Awe inspiring.

There was only one thing he would not eat no matter how hard I lobbied. And this one food was Hawaiian Pizza. That Canadian-created gourmet pie with the ham niblets and fresh canned pineapple that is oh, so delicious. He would not touch it. My brother made his trademarked, gourmet pizzas one night during our stay there for New Year's. He cranked out a couple of Hawaiians and offered a slice to Dom. He just shook his head and winced, as if struck by a poison dart.

"What's wrong with him?" Marty asked me.

"Something serious," I said. "He thinks pineapple shouldn't go on pizza."

"Well what the fuck else are you going to put it on?" Marty asked.

"Yeah," I said. "You're right. There's nothing else it can go on. Dom, just eat the pizza. You'll love it."

"If it eat pineapple pizza, they won't let me back into Italy," he said, stone-faced.

"Why not?" Marty asked.

"You can't put pineapple on pizza. It's wrong. It's barbaric."

"Says who?"

"Everybody. And my mom. She won't let me back in the house if I eat pineapple pizza. And my dad, he would disown me."

"That's bullshit," I said. "Call them right now and we'll find out."

Dom called them up on Facetime. We all got to meet his mom and dad. They were lovely. Until Dom brought up the pizza question. Then they turned sour.

Despite not knowing a word of English, his mom mustered, "If...my...son...eats...pineapple ....pizza...he can't....come...home."

We knew when we were beat. Marty gave him a few slices of the Meat Lovers Special and the whole conversation ended right there and we never spoke of it again.

For one of our last weekends together, we took Dom to Cleveland, along with our friends Dave and Kira who would be Dom's final host family, and Magnus and Stella, packing the van to capacity.

We had an amazing time. We drove through snow squalls on the way to Detroit then had our van ripped apart at the border, where the guards even opened a bag of sealed popcorn to look for concealed drugs or Mexicans then spilled innocent kernels all over the seats while we waited patiently inside for the stone-faced agents of law to issue Dom a visitor visa. We saw an incredible Battle of the Bands competition at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We visited two amazing art galleries. We had a rollicking foosball tournament. We played blackjack. Magnus got his ear pierced at a grisly tattoo joint. We ate out in restaurants. We went for a morning polar dip in the chilly waters of Lake Erie. And we ate fresh Krispy Kreme doughnuts. It was a magical weekend.

But now, it's back to just Ana, Stella, and I as Dom has moved on. The garlic breads have been piling up in the freezer because nobody's eating them. The raisin bread has gone stale. The Kraft Dinner...well, the Kraft Dinner's fine and we're still eating that.

Fortunately, we'll still be seeing Dom as we visit Dave and Kira often, and we're finally heading into spring and summer which opens up plenty of opportunities for boating adventures and we hope he will join us.

It has been a pleasure hosting this fine young man and we look forward to see where his future takes him. We know it will be somewhere great.

Denouement

I could not contain my excitement when this popped up in the news. I have been using it to torment Dom, sometimes daily. This pizza joint will be our first stop in Naples when we someday soon visit Dom and his family in Italy!

France 2023 - Analysis of a Trip

2023-10-29T06:25:00.001-04:00

The closer we get to Canada, the more things start to break down. Maybe it’s just the current state of the travel experience or airports or something else. Things don’t work, we get overcharged for baggage, we get emails from the airline company with incorrect information, and people (Canadians) cut into lines in front of us and everybody else. As a grand finale, the two bottles of duty-free rum I buy on the flight are improperly packaged and I’m sent back by security to check them in, which I do in my small backpack. Then somebody in the depths of Montreal security or baggage handling steals them and I pick up an empty bag in Toronto and nobody there seems able or willing to do anything about it. I know, first world problems. But we made it home safe and sound.

During this trip, Ana and I talked about what we missed from home. My immediate answer was always “Stella and Magnus”, but now that we are home I have a chance to think more about this, as I always do when we return from travel to other countries. We have a great life in Paris, Ontario. It is safe, uncrowded, we live in a big house with a big yard, we have a beautiful boat, and we have the greatest of friends. We both like our jobs and earn decent money and live close to family members on both sides. I really have no complaints. Except when we visit Europe and see the efficiency with which they do things – the transportation, city design, road design, immaculate public spaces. There are no ugly parking garages – these are built underground where they are easy to access and you don’t waste valuable space. There’s also their appreciation for languages, culture and history. And they never leave the house looking anything less than fabulous. We went grocery shopping today and there was a lady there wearing what looked like a two piece housecoat and furry slippers. Others wore filthy pants, baseball caps turned backwards, and sweat pants. You just don’t see this in Europe. People take care in their appearance. It matters to them.

This does not come without a cost though. Taxes in Europe are generally much higher than here. People live in tiny homes and don’t generally have much space to themselves. Many don’t have vehicles. The public realm necessarily plays a much larger role in people’s lives.

I always like to do a little post trip analysis on the finances to know what our daily spending was like. Excluding flights the trip cost us about $160 per person per day which covered all expenses. Oh, and with the help of the Health app on Ana's phone, I know that we walked for an average of 10 kilometers per day.

Thank-you France for treating us so well, sharing your country with us, and being such a great host!

I will finish with some thoughts on Europe versus Canada using my rose coloured glasses, fresh off an amazing trip where we experienced all of the wonders and few of the everyday nuisances.

Europe is shared spaces; Canada is private property.

Europe is user pays; Canada is nobody pays while everybody pays.

Europe builds things to last; Canada takes the lowest bidder.

Europe preserves the past; Canada rips out and rebuilds

Europe is small and dense; Canada is massive and sparse

Europe celebrates languages; Canada wars over them

France 2023 - A Roman Amphitheater, a Kind Pitbull, and our Final Night in France

2023-10-27T05:47:00.004-04:00

Nimes central station is where we find ourselves shortly after our 9am car rental return. Our train to Paris departs shortly before 2pm so we have five carefree, unplanned hours to enjoy.

Our first stop is to visit the Roman amphitheater in the centre of town, built in the year 100 and somehow still standing. The audio guide we are given after buying tickets provides a surprisingly interesting and entertaining story of the arena and what life was like for the gladiators and the crowds who came to watch them fight. It's not hard to imagine as we sit on the rock seats at the top of the arena looking down – the blood soaked sand of the arena floor that had be turned frequently during event days to reduce the smell, the lions and bears chained to posts and fighting each other, the human prisoners chained to the same posts and executed by letting the animals eat them alive, then finally the highly trained gladiators themselves clashing, rarely to the death, typically until one was injured and could not continue. It is awesome.

The arena now is under a long process of rehabilitation to ensure it will stand for another millennium. Surprisingly, this ancient structure is used frequently for events such as concerts, bullfights, and the annual Great Roman Days in May where the glory days of Rome are reenacted. Sometime in the future, we will attend an event here.

We spend the rest of our time walking the town. Nimes is a beautiful place, with so many of the things we’ve loved in other towns we’ve visited during this trip, but with a few ancient Roman structures added in for good measure. We sit for a long while in one of the squares enjoying a coffee, the sunshine, and our last few moments in this incredible part of the world.

The high speed TGV train rockets us northward across France and we arrive at the Charles de Gaulle station in Paris then have a hell of a time trying to find our way out of the station to the taxi area, walking in loops and circles until we finally find somebody to point us in the right direction. It then takes about five tries to get an Uber driver to actually find us, but finally a fine gent from Mali collects us and drives us the short distance to our Air B&B, and we have an interesting conversation with him using our limited French, his limited English, and the help of Google Translate.

We are dropped off in front of our home for the night. It is raining heavily outside, very dark, and there is nobody around. We push through a large steel exterior door to gain access to a small courtyard and apartment access. It’s completely dark inside but I can feel a small creature pawing at my legs, so I reach down and put my hand on the unmistakable muscled head of a pit bull. Fortunately he is the happiest pit bull we’ve ever met and he sticks to us like glue and nearly sneaks into the apartment behind us but I manage to push him out and shut the door. Sorry fella.

After dumping our gear we head back out to the neighbourhood in search of food. We don’t have to go far – there are three restaurants on our block, and each of them looks to be completely devoid of customers. We decide on the Lebanese restaurant and are served a delicious meal of garlicy wonders. The waiter spends a lot of time visiting with us and explains the schools are on a two week “Halloween break” which he claims is the reason why the restaurants are so slow. I just can’t help myself and I look up school breaks in France and discover that they get five holiday breaks per year, each approximately two weeks long (All Saints, Christmas, Winter, Spring, Summer), except for the summer break which is eight weeks. These Europeans drive me crazy! With a lax schedule like that they still manage to come out speaking multiple languages, with art and music training, a deep appreciation for history, and are superior at math and science. I wonder if this has something to do with it?

We return to the apartment and do some final packing adjustments to our bags. Tomorrow, we leave for home.

France 2023 - Exploring Marseille and Cassis

2023-10-26T19:37:00.000-04:00

Our hotel doesn’t have much for early breakfast, but we did spot a snack bar across the street yesterday so we walk over there and are the only customers at Snack Time by Lou Lou. The man working greets us warmly in French, then switches to patchy English when he hears our French skills; nevertheless, we have a lovely conversation. After a 7 euro meal of croissants, coffee, and a breakfast sandwich we get in the car and point south to Marseille, which is a mere thirty minute drive.

Our first stop is at the Basilica which is a church and complex built at the top of the highest point of the city, and is the most visited attraction. We should have left a bit earlier as it is packed with tourists, the most we’ve seen anywhere on this trip by far. This is the type of thing we really try to avoid when traveling, and we were expecting that by the end of October things would be quiet. But not here. We have a quick look around and snap some photos of the impressive vistas, then Ana picks up a religious figurine from the gift shop for her mom and we get the hell out of there.

Down in the old port we find a massive marina with hundreds of boats and thousands of tourists. The place does have a cool vibe but the sheer quantity of tourists is a little off-putting and we can’t really understand why there are so many here compared to the other places we’ve visited in France.

We walk the old town, have bagels and fries for lunch, take a short ferry ride across the marina, then drive east to the town of Cassis. The last thing on my checklist is to swim in the Mediterranean, and this is my final chance as we leave for Paris tomorrow.

Cassis itself is quite nice and the view is spectacular as it is nested at the base of steep cliffs and has a cute marina. Fortunately, I am in luck as there is also a rocky beach with dangerous looking breaking waves presenting just enough element of risk. Ana patiently waits for me while I navigate my way into the ocean between massive waves and get out there for a quick dip then almost get pummeled on my way back in. Despite this, I am very satisfied with my swim.

We finish our day once again in Aix at the Irish Pub and I do something I never do while traveling – order the same dish twice. It is, of course, excellent and Ana’s fish in chips are equally good. For this last night in the south we take our time, watch people, watch some of the soccer on the pub tv, talk about our trip and enjoy these last moments in a country we’ve really fallen in love with.

France 2023 - Antibes, Helicopter Rides, and Medieval Torture in Aix-en-Provence

2023-10-25T19:25:00.001-04:00

We pack up our stuff and say goodbye to Nice after an incredible three days. Our only plan is that we need be back in Provence tonight as we’ve booked a hotel in the town of Aix-en-Provence for the next two nights.

Heading southwest on the coastal road takes to the city of Antibes, of which we know nothing about, so we head to the port area and find a parking spot from where we can see an enormous mural on the side of a building, and we linger for a while to admire it. Past here are a series of marine stores, more than we’ve ever seen in one location before, but this all makes sense after we walk another block and find a gigantic marina, called Port Vauban – the largest marina in Europe, with space for some 2000 boats. Here, there is not just one Russian oligarch yacht; there is a whole neighbourhood of them. Besides these, there are all sizes, types, and makes of boats and along the harbour wall is a series of large signs explaining the history and evolution of the port.

Oh, and there’s a helicopter swinging people around by a rope. At first we think the helicopter is dropping a dummy down on a line then going for a joyride, but then we notice the dummies are waving their arms and legs. We walk to beach adjacent to the marina and see a lineup of people wearing uniforms, each taking a turn to put on a harness and get hauled up on a rope to a chopper then swung around the bay in a loop and then let back down to the ground. It must be safety or rescue training and it looks like a hell of a lot of fun.

The old town of Antibes is, of course, beautiful and full of shops, restaurants, cafes, and lots of people. The nautical theme is pervasive here and we see a lot of ocean themed items for sale and shops catering to yachts. After a big walk around and coffee in one of the many squares, we stop at the Professional Yachting Association office and have a long chat with a new fellow there about the professional yacht crew career option. During a visit to Cambodia we met a South African couple that worked on superyachts and we’ve been enamoured with the idea ever since. All I need now is a medical co-conspirator who can provide documentation to my employer that I have succumbed to a barely diagnosable yet believably serious ailment for which I will need extended leave.

The fastest way to Aix-en-Provence (or Aix for short, pronounced as simply “X”) from here is on the magnificent A8 toll road so we get on it, prepare a stack of euro coins and a credit card, and start driving. We could have gone further along the coastal road and visited more towns such as Cannes and St. Tropez, but we decide to save that for a future trip.

We check in at our hotel then take the 30 minute walk into the town center, which is full of chic young people being fancy. We are told it’s a university town, but one that’s clearly for people with money because these students are all wearing designer clothing, eating expensive meals, drinking pints, and having a rather great time.

Ana hits the shops while I walk over to the Granet museum (featuring paintings of dead fish, severed John the Baptist heads, and some nice medieval torture pieces), then the Jean Planque museum with more modern pieces, both of which I very much enjoyed.

We meet at 6pm and find a table at the Irish Bar. I know what you’re thinking. We’ll be eating Guinness and kidney pie or greasy fish and chips or some other dreadful food. But, as we’ve found, it’s really tough to find a bad meal in France and I eat the most amazing ribs of my life, prepared in a very unusual way. It didn’t even look like ribs, but the texture was right and the flavour was incredible. Ana’s meal too was delicious. By the time we leave it has gotten quite chilly and is raining a bit but we decide to walk anyway for some post dinner exercise and it’s all going great until Ana spots another rat on the street, then she starts moving so fast that I can barely keep up with her.

France 2023 - A Quick Trip to Italy and Monaco

2023-10-24T19:18:00.000-04:00

We are in the car and headed east just as the sun is peeking up from the ocean, giving us enough light to enjoy the spectacular views from the high road cut into the mountain sides. We are driving along the French coastline, the Cote d'Azur, towards Italy and we pass by towns below us - Beaulieu-sur-Mer, Eze, Cap d’Ail. Soon, a coastal city appears and we see skyscrapers, tall hotels, densely packed apartment buildings, and roads somehow weaving through at all - Monaco. We continue along the winding road and pass through beautiful Menton, which sits right on the eastern French border, then we drive through a set of tunnels and bam, everything changes! The French radio stations we were just listening to seem to have all instantly vanished. And now I can practically feel the hands and fingers reaching out from the stereo, waving in front of my face, as the announcers pepper us with rapid fire Italian. It is pleasantly jarring.

We drive into Ventimiglia and it looks different than the French towns - it's a little more beaten up, the people don't look quite as fancy, and we don't see any ancient buildings. It takes forever to find parking and we finally score a spot in what feels like the edge of town. It is raining quite heavily so we pull out our umbrellas and walk back along the coastal road towards the center of town. We pass an old Italian man who says “Buongiorno!" and we reply with the same. The shop windows display Limoncello and Martini instead of Pastis and red wine. Signs are in Italian. But the density of cars and buildings is the same.

An Italian café awaits us. We sit down and order an americano and a cappuccino. The drinks appear almost instantly and they are delicious. Makes me wonder what all the hubbub is with baristas in Canada, seems like the Europeans can foam milk in their sleep. We watch the Italians coming and going as the town slowly comes to life. Ana checks out a few shops and reports that stuff looks to be generally a bit cheaper here than in France. I step into a tobacco shop and note you can get a pack of smokes for five euro, which may help explain the proliferation of smokers we’ve noticed here and in France.

Because distances are short, we dip into Italy a bit further, to the larger town of Sanremo, and find a parking spot near the city centre. There we browse a market and I’m tempted to buy an enormous brick of Parmesan cheese for ten euro but I change my mind as I don’t want to commit to babysitting fromage for the rest of the trip. A street vendor see Ana browsing purses and descends on her with a huge bag of knock-offs and they do battle. He doesn’t stand a chance – she knows her prices and he’s asking way too much.

The restaurants are all opening for lunch and we decide on a small one in a narrow walking street with only a couple of outside tables. The chef appears and explains each item on the day’s menu with care and detail. I decide on the rabbit ravioli with mushroom sauce and Ana goes for the truffle tagliolini. The food is delicious and the red wine she suggested (actually, insisted on) goes perfectly with my dish. This is Ana and my first lunch in an actual Italian restaurant and I hope there are more to come in our future.

On the way back to the car, a small boat docked in the marine catches my eye. It has a fancy colourful sign like an ice cream shop, but when I get closer I see they sell fish cones. Their most popular appears looks to be the sardine cone, which looks just like it sounds. Hey, I like sardines and I like cones, but that combo just doesn’t sound that great. Thankfully the boat is deserted so I’m not forced to try it.

With our Italian sojourn complete, I point the car back towards France and we drive to Menton. Along the coastal road are a series of gorgeous buildings painted pastel yellow, orange, and pink. If I were to translate the palette of my most amazing dreams to reality, this is what it would look like. Ana and I walk through the narrow and hilly passageways of the old town, mesmerized by the antiquity of it all, the colours, the cobblestones, and wonder what it’s like to live here, in this medieval setting, with Amazon delivery. We visit the Basilique a Sainte-Michel and are stunned by the ancient beauty of it, so much so that we sit in a pew for a while to take it in. I don’t remember ever being inside a church this beautiful.

After cruising the fancy shops for a while and realizing this town’s specialty must be lemons (lemon soap, lemon deodorant, lemon gelato) we decide this stop must include a food break so we grab a table at the Chez Lina Snack Pizzeria and order a chorizo and jalapeño flat bread. It is deliciously spicy and cut into perfect rectangles to make it easy to share. A pack of near-elderly Americans sitting next to us have brought their corn hole game on extended vacation and they toss bean bags around on the boulevard. They are joined at their table by a few other English speakers - this must be the local ex-pat hangout.

The day is winding down but we have one more stop to make. Monaco is a tiny, two square kilometer city-state and hangs off a tip of the French coastline. It has been politically independent in various forms for hundreds of years and is a famous tax haven as it levies no personal income tax on citizens. Because of its unique properties, Monaco lands on the “number 1” list in many areas:

- highest number of millionaires and billionaires per capita in the world

- second smallest sovereign state in the world

- most densely populated sovereign state in the world

- world’s shortest coastline

- highest GDP per capita of any country

- world’s lowest poverty rate

- world’s most expensive property

- has the world's most difficult Formula One racetrack

When Ana and I first met she gave me a small world Atlas in which we made a list of the places we’d like to visit together. At the top of the list was “South of France” and Monaco was always discussed as the one place in that region we needed to visit. And here we are. Deep underground in a parking garage changing clothes in our rental car. I couldn’t even get my pants off while sitting in the driver’s seat so I jump out of the car to switch into my fancy red slacks, hardly mindful of the cameras everywhere. Ana hides at the back of the car with the trunk open so nobody can see her change. High class, all the way.

The cool evening air smells of money and status and we walk right through it, towards the Monte Carlo Casino but are sidelined by the luxury shopping area next to it. Every single luxury brand I have ever heard of (and many I have not) has a classy storefront here. Ana may have wet her pants a little bit as she stood there dumbfounded, surveying the scene in front of her. The classy people walking around proudly carrying designer bags, the luxury Italian and French shops, the glass and steel condo towers, the expensive vehicles passing by. She admitted to me that this place makes the rich areas of New York look like homeless shelters in comparison.

We stride into the immaculate casino then stride right back out when we realize it costs 18 euro just to get onto the gaming floor and we weren’t planning on doing any gambling anyway. Ana finds a Zara store and buys a belt, just so she has something to show for this Monaco visit. I have a feeling she will treasure it, always. As I wait for her I see a fancy lady with pumped up lips, jacked up breasts, stretched out face, and fifty grand worth of clothing yelling at her phone for somebody to get his ass over here and pick her up. A short while later a sheepish man arrives in a sports car and whisks her back to Never Never Land.

There isn’t much else to do here besides walk around, so we do just that. The streets are surprisingly quiet. We even have trouble finding a place for a drink as nearly everything is closed except for the casinos and hotels. The waiter at Nona Maria brings two beers for us and we sit at a bistro table on the sidewalk looking and listening. An electric garbage truck passes by and the workers toss in bags from the street. One of the men at the table near us tells his friends how he met both Putin and Trump in Russia. This is an unusual place.

I drive our Peugeot back to Nice like I’m James Bond on the run from a villain. And still, suicidal French motorcyclists are passing me on the left and right. It’s a fun end to an extraordinary day. It’s not often that dawn to dusk affords you sufficient time to visit three countries.

France 2023 - A Fine Day in Nice

2023-10-23T18:57:00.000-04:00

The pullout couch bed is surprisingly comfortable and we wake up not early but not late either. Last night we picked up a few food items from the Intermarche grocery store across the street so we enjoy a leisurely breakfast on our small balcony then walk into the port area.

After browsing around in a marine supply shop (force of habit) we hike up the Colline du Chateau which provides a magnificent vista over the city and harbour. Our question of how these boats manage to stern into such narrow slips is answered when we watch dock staff in two separate boats tow and push a sailboat all the way across the entire marina and expertly shoehorn it in between two other boats.

We walk down the massive promenade into Nice's old city. It is magnificent. Architectural wonders at every turn, narrow streets lined with interesting shops and the regular assortment of cafes and restaurants full of chic Europeans drinking their little coffees, smoking, chatting with friends, and making full use of these incredible public spaces designed hundreds of years ago for just this.

As we're walking down one street we're rattled by the noise of an explosion. Everybody around us jumps, startled, then looks around momentarily, and immediately gets back to what they were doing. I have no idea what it was. Strangely, a block later we are passed by half a dozen French soldiers in full fatigue uniforms carrying assault rifles, but they were in no hurry, so I assume it's just a coincidence.

The long strip where we ate last night has been transformed into a massive goods market with everything from nautical antiques to records to soap. I take a pass on the market and instead walk down to ocean and lay down on the beach, which is a thick blanket of stones instead of sand. I look for shapes in the clouds for a while then when that gets tiresome I pull out my Boredom Solution Machine and make smart assed comments on others' social media posts.

We randomly select one of the hundred restaurants and sit down for lunch. Ana has a Nicoise salad for lunch to see if it's any better here in the dish's origin city. It is indeed good, but it seems there's only so much you can do with tuna, tomatoes, lettuce, olives, eggs, and oil all mixed together.

We decide on a post-lunch half-marathon and walk and walk and walk, taking a break only to visit the beach and dip our hands into the Mediterranean Sea for the first time. We come across a memorial to the 86 people who were killed (and 434 injured) in a terrorist attack here in 2016 where they were run down on the promenade by a angry young man in a van. It's impossible for me to imagine the horror of that day as I look out to the promenade today and see families walking together, couples in love, people walking their dogs. So much can change in a moment.

We finally return to the apartment around 6 or 7pm and can't bear the thought of leaving again for dinner so we instead make breakfast for dinner and enjoy bacon, eggs, cheese, baguette, and juice then watch a movie and get to bed early. Tomorrow is going to be a huge day.

France 2023 - Arles, Frejus, Nice, and a Rat

2023-10-22T02:40:00.003-04:00

By 9am Michael and Anna have us to central Nimes where we will pick up our rental car and head east across the south of France. We hug each other and hold it a little longer than usual - we feel close to them and have had so many laughs and fun times over the past days. We are sad to leave. But within a week we will once again be within a 90 minute drive of each other, so I know we'll see them again soon.

The rental car is a 2008 Peugeot. But it wasn't manufactured in 2008 - it's brand new - but I wonder who on earth came up with that idea for a model name. Maybe they released it in 2006 and it seemed brilliant at the time. It's a comfy four door model with space in the hatch for all of our luggage. We were scared we'd be driving around France in a soup can on wheels, but this one is a beauty.

Our first stop is Arles, which is another medieval Roman town, and we walk towards the centre after parking. A stone wishing well full of fish and coins is alongside the stairs leading up to a walking street.

"Let's make a wish," Ana says and tosses in a couple of coins. She then continues walking up the stairs as I remain well-side, throwing coppers.

"What are you doing? Do you need that many wishes?" she says looking down at me.

"Nah, I'm good. I'm making wishes for you instead, one for each of your menopause symptoms that I wish to go away," I say as I flip in another five eurocent coin. "So far I've got hot flashes, uncontrollable rage, night sweats, depression, muscle pain, joint ache, insomnia....hey, could you loan me a few more coins?

We continue into the centre and find a colossal coliseum. We've just walked into gladiator times and if I close my eyes I can hear the thunderous cheers of the gathered crowd, the roar from the lions, and the clashing of steel sword on shield. After walking the circumference we continue along a narrow street and grab croissants and coffee from a small bakery where we practice our French (we've lost our human translators...) with a lovely Lebanese boy and his father. In an ancient building just off the main squares is a free photography exhibition so we browse through and enjoy interesting prints of bulls, boobs, and old men.

Back on the toll motorway I am once again impressed by French sensibility. The toll road is expensive, but the three lane roadway is immaculate and the posted speed limit for most parts is 130 kph, or 110 if the weather is poor. This makes sense as the road is designed to handle these speeds. Compare this to the stupidity in Ontario. The 407 toll road is an immaculate three lane roadway. The posted speed limit is 100 kph at all times. People typically drive from 120-130 and simply take the chance on getting a speeding ticket, which the police often do at random times. This is such stupidity. We set our speed limits artificially low on nearly every roadway in Canada - roads that were designed to handle higher speeds. Everybody speeds, because your senses are telling you to go faster. Why do we do this? Why can't we get something as simple as speed limits right? Even worse, we design roads in residential neighbourhood far too wide, which induces high speeds. The residential and urban roads in France are tiny - you wouldn't dream of driving fast so they don't even need to post speed limits. Every single posted speed limit I've seen in France has made perfect sense to me.

Our next stop is Frejus, a town that's barely mentioned in the two guidebooks we have, but it's coastal and looks to have a sizeable marina. Well, the marina is big and it's awesome. The docks are open so we wander up and down, getting an up close view of the many boats. I'm intrigued by what's called the Mediterranean docking system where there are no finger piers so everybody backs in and use aft gangplanks to reach the dock. The front of the boat is held in place by lines that are anchored to the seabed and inflatable fenders between all the boats keep them locked together in place.

We enjoy a nice lunch at a dockside restaurant, noticing that everybody here is French and we haven't heard any other languages being spoken. I imagine us sailing our boat to the Mediterranean and docking here for a few nights. It's possible.

It's just getting dark when we reach our final destination - Nice. And yes, it is nice. Our Air B&B is small and efficient with its pull out couch, balcony just large enough for two people and a small bistro table, and a miniature kitchen that has everything we need for light meals (breakfast).

It's time to do some evening exploring. The city is alive with lights and people. We walk past admiring the yachts docked in the marina. I look up Kaiser, a massive motor yacht docked with uniformed crew still busy cleaning. It's a luxury charter vessel, owned by a Russian oligarch and it rents for just over half a million euro per week (plus expenses) for you and 11 of your closest henchmen.

Our walk takes us past the marina and we find a massive rock mountain with a war memorial carved into it, brilliantly lighted, overlooking the sea. From here we see the main centre of Nice - a long stretch of lighted wonders along a wide pedestrian walkway and a beach. The view is simply stunning, unreal, magical. We walk down the hill and into the frenzy and find thousands of cool people, most of them young, walking the boardwalk and, one street in, packed into the patios of the outdoor restaurants.

Now, if you were to sit down at a restaurant called "Mama Mia's" on the main tourist street, with dozens of other tourists, in any other city or country in the world, the food would be CRAP. I know. We've done this a few times. It usually sucks, but you're just there for the atmosphere so you don't mind too much, you tolerate the food, and just focus on the place. We order a pizza to share, and it's simply delicious. It seems nearly impossible to find a bad meal here, which is a real testament to the French dedication to quality. We enjoy our pizza, our drinks, and watch the fine looking French folks passing back and forth. This is a great place.

At whatever time it is, we walk back to our apartment and Ana spots a rat along the way which sends her into terror spasms. I try to get close to it so I can give it a little pat on the head but no dice, he's already slipped down into the spacious sewers.

Tomorrow, we explore Nice in the daylight.

France 2023 - Bullfights and Ramparts

2023-10-21T02:05:00.001-04:00

Before we arrived in France, I was curious if Michael and Anna had been learning any French. I didn't remember them ever mentioning it before, so I had assumed they were getting by with hand signals, a smile, and translation apps where required. What they've actually been doing is intensive Duolingo daily training, speaking to people as much as possible, and immersing themselves in the local community and culture. We were both very impressed with their language skills. Neither Ana nor I speak French, but I do know most of the words commonly found on the French side of cereal boxes. It is a little embarrassing being Canadian and not speaking French, but I'll blame Quebec politics for that and their perpetual assaults on the English language and English speaking Canadians. Language in Canada is a war, not a celebration and it's a shame. Spending this time in France has reintroduced me to a beautiful language spoken by kind and helpful people and I hope to improve on my ability to speak it in the future. Oh, one note to Quebec - in France their stop signs say "Stop" and not "Arret", so that visitors can understand them. It's what good hosts do.

Aigues-Mortes is our destination for today and is a seaside walled city know primarily for its pink salt marshes. You may well have consumed salt that was produced here.

We pull the VW into a sea of cars parked in a field and see a big stadium set up outside the city walls. There's definitely something going on here today. As we walk towards the city entrance we hear the crackle of voice on a loudspeaker mentioning the word "taureau" which can only mean a bullfight! Michael and Anna tell us that this region of France is also known for its cowboy/bullfighting/horse culture.

Surprisingly, I'm able to slip between the bars of the steel gate into the rodeo circle. Inside is a centre area encircled by a steel fence with two separate piles of stacked up hay bales - refuge for the dozens of blue-jean wearing teenagers mulling around. Around the outside are wooden barriers with bleacher seats built on top of those. There is maybe twenty feet between the fence and exterior creating an open path around the track where one could race go-karts, but in this case I'm imagining a thousand pound bull running here, stomping teenagers or flipping them into the bleachers. This is going to be fun.

There's not much going on here yet so we walk into the town. The walls are massive and the town walls look to be perfectly rectangular with huge turrets on each corner. The perimeter probably runs a mile or so and it looks like you can walk the entire span on the ramparts.

We turn our attention to the town and begin our wanderings. We find ancient buildings, narrow passageways, and dozens and dozens of shops, restaurants, bars, and cafes. I buy a lovely white long-sleeved shirt and a small bag of nougat, which not only tastes good but is also one of my favourite words. Ana picks up a scarf and some jewelry. We meet up with Anna and Michael for our 12:30 lunch reservation in the main town square which is jammed with people. There is a marching band playing Spanish sounding songs as revelers flush with wine and beer watch on. A band fires up on a stage and their ambitious setlist far surpasses the vocal ability of the singer, but she gives it her best. A crew of local hooligans swarm a few tables near the front of the stage and have brought their own bottles of Coke and rum and are mixing thick ones as they light off brightly coloured smoke bombs near the stage, obscuring everything and creating a horrible stink. We drink pastis and wine and eat shrimp, bull stew, bull fillet, oysters, soup, and fish as we enjoy the festival atmosphere. We see a single man with a bottle of champagne, dining on the seafood feast for two, piled high on a platter with crab, shrimp, fish, and oysters and we speculate on his story. Inheritance? Recent divorce? Rich bachelor? Or did he perhaps steal one of the An(n)s's credit cards an hour ago? In any case, he enjoys his lunch as do we.

We buy our tickets for the rampart tour and climb the stairs. From here we can see the pink sea marshes in the distance with mountains of fine white salt piled up on the shoreline near the production facility. There are information displays in the various towers we pass through and we learn the history of this structure. Construction began in 1272 and the walls have stood since then. The ground on which we walk has a small drainage channel carved into it and I imagine what what have flowed through these in the middle ages - blood, piss, shit, and rainwater to wash it all out and down to the ground. We soon reach the part of the wall looking down on the bullfighting ground and each claim a gap in the rampart for optimal viewing.

In a stroke of luck, the event starts shortly after our arrival and a bull is set free in the stadium. He is pissed off! He gallops several loops around the outside track, taking runs at the people who taunt him by running close to him and trying to grab one of ribbons attached to his horns. He gets close a couple of times but the experienced kids always manage to leap onto the bleachers and hoist themselves up, just out of his reach. With no success on the outside track, the bull leaps the fence and lands in the inside area then chases a teenager around until he jumps to the safety of the hay bales. Not so fast kid - the bull rams himself into the stack and sends kids flying. A gasp erupts from the crowd, then cheering. Soon, that bull tires and another one is sent out in his place. He is bigger and meaner and is looking for somebody to stomp. He does the cartoon bull move where he lowers his head and drags his front hooves through the dust, snorting and grunting. One ambitious bullfighter runs across the field, hoping to snag a ribbon, but he trips and the bull tries to spear him with his horns, but misses and instead just tramples him, earning a loud reaction from the crowd. I'm not sure if they are cheering for the kids or the bull, but I'm for the bull mashing up his aggravators.

This is great fun and we look at each other across the rampart gaps frequently, laughing, in awe of what we're seeing. We see several more close calls, another successful ribbon snag, and one final teen stomping then decide to move on and complete the circumnavigation of the mighty wall.

Back at Chateau Olson, apero is served on the back deck and we are bathed in the orange glow of the setting sun which creates a beautiful hue on the stone walls. Michael sends up his drone and catches a magnificent panorama of us and our French habitation.

We enjoy a simple and delicious dinner of burgers and coleslaw then move into the fireplace room for a final magical evening with our hosts. Anna and I play a game of chess. We all snack. The conversation flows as we laugh and joke. Ana tells us of the recent migration of American ex-pats to the Azores and how they can't find anywhere to get their eyelashes done. Fools! Portuguese ladies spent most of their waking hours removing hair from their faces, not adding to it, as any man married to a sumptuous southern European beauty can attest to.

Our last evening with Anna and Michael is perfect and caps off an amazing five days with them. Tomorrow, we begin phase 3 of the trip - driving a rental car across the south of France. I wonder what will happen next?