Tag: europe
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Leaving on a Jet Plane
This is the final blog post in this latest travel escapade as we begin the eighteen hour, ass-numbing series of connecting flights back to Chattanooga. Currently, we are sitting on a leg from Porto to Amsterdam dutifully lining our tray tables with KLM’s stingy allotment of South African wines and saying tchau to our last…
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Prós e Contras da Imigração
This one’s for you, Amy. It’s long, so that’s your fault too. Leaving your country for the unknown with little more than a taste for seafood and a tourist’s grasp of the language is an admittedly radical step at this stage of life, but it’s not something we’re doing in haste. Some of you know…
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Play a Trem Song*
If you are not a fan of traveling by foot, much of Europe is going to be inaccessible to you. Even with Uber and the fairly complete network of public transportation, entire neighborhoods of shops and cafes (and esteemed offices of the notary) can only be visited by a labyrinth of narrow streets and alleys.…
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Makin’ Copies
For a country that seemingly has a bidet in every restroom, the Portuguese weirdly embrace the excess of the other kind of paperwork. We had to get some documents notarized yesterday to begin establishing ourselves here. I was a notary in Michigan, so I thought I could use the banter of a fellow professional (wink,…
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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…
The Hillbilly Viking 