Tag: europe
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Portu-gone
Well, it’s time to say goodbye to Portugal and their comically affordable healthcare, their cod-scented grocery stores, and their counterintuitive, rectangular toilets (apparently “a round peg in a square hole” is not so much a metaphor there as it is literal, potty training instructions). And yet, I am admittedly melancholy (as well as 4 mini-bottles…
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Planes, Trains & Automobiles
Since this Iberian odyssey began, we’ve 1) mastered the multi-headed hydra that is the train nexus out of Porto (first class definitely ain’t the worst class), 2) blew most of our tip budget on Ubers and Taxis (where we were exposed to enough saucy, traffic-induced Portuguese to make a Tourette’s sufferer take pause), 3) cursed…
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So SATA to see you go.
There are basically two airlines that fly between the Azores and the mainland on a regular basis. One is TAP, a Brazilian carrier that we have actually flown before in another hemisphere and is memorable because passengers clap each time the plane lands (“Yay, the pilot didn’t kill us!). The other is SATA, which is…
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Signs
When we woke up this morning, the weather had finally cleared, and a rainbow seemed to be emanating from the Catholic Church in town. Patty thought it might be a sign to try and go back to the volcano at Sete Cidades and atone for all the “taking of the Lord’s name in vain” that…
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Portuguese Pot Pourri
Since we’re still basking in the afterglow of yesterday’s spa treatment (and metabolizing the mimosas), I thought I’d take the time to clear out some digital miscellany from the trip. But first, Happy Birthday to our good friend, Jill, who is back in the states. Although it is her big day here in the time…
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World Tour(ettes)
Growing up, I had an uncle with Tourette’s Syndrome. Sadly, however, it wasn’t the hilarious kind that made him spew the most inappropriate of words during the most appropriate of situations. Uncle Ron just made a repeated, disgusting nasal “honk” that forced you to involuntarily flinch in fear of being hit by the loogie that…
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Amster-damned!
I don’t trust the Dutch, mainly because they are so hard to pin down. Just when I think I understand the difference between Holland, The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, it blows up into a Flemish fuck-all. (Oh, and you can throw “The Hague” in there too, which sounds like the name of an aging, Euro-discotheque…