Travelling Light

During our recent trip to Europe, sixteen days or so (I say "or so" because with 12 hour flights and many time zone changes it's hard to keep track of what day it is) our itinerary was as follows:

4 air flights
6 train rides
2 countries
3 cities
6 hotels

Plus numerous taxis and physical luggage lugging(is that where the word comes from?)

I can tell you that I was in trouble before we even left our apartment in Manila.

I have never travelled light. As a matter of fact, I think the last time I did was that notorious trip to the south of Spain I wrote about earlier. However, a few years ago, on my first trip to Australia, on a dare, I travelled with carry-on only and it worked out just fine. Question: "What do you do about shopping when you have no luggage". Answer: "Jewelery!"

However I regressed big time on this trip. First of all, I was an "accompanying spouse" on the Bank's annual meeting and I was led to understand that there were a lot of different social events I was supposed to attend. Multiple receptions, luncheons - semi-formal stuff. Then of course, there was the spousal program which included tours of places like Toledo, a mediaeval, cobblestone town built on a hill - lots of walking (read comfortable shoes and attire). Then we were tacking on vacation time, so casual wardrobe required. Then just before we left, the weather forecast for both Spain and Netherlands was spring weather, 19-20 degrees C. so out comes the old Canadian spring wardrobe.

Well, the best laid plans...

So there I was, in Manila, struggling to get this suitcase closed, jammed to capacity or beyond, with a ton of clothes - something for every event, shoes to match, oh, let's just put a few more things in, in case I get bored with the selection, oh and how about another bag, oh, did I mention shoes... Weighed a ton.

I had a back ache by our first stop - Amsterdam. In Amsterdam they have a fantastic train system that takes you directly from the airport to downtown. Easy, efficient, comfortable (hear that Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver??).

That is, unless you are lugging around what I was. The next day, unknown to us, it just happened to be the Queen's Birthday, when everything in Amsterdam shuts down and the entire place becomes a street festival. The streets are completely closed to traffic. Meaning no taxis from hotel to train station. More walking and lugging.

When we got to Madrid and I got into the program there, I realized that I really didn't HAVE to attend most of these annual meeting social events and blew them off. So at least half of these carefully chosen, bulky outfits never even got worn (plus the matching shoes, did I mention the shoes?) Also, to make matters worse, I was so suffering the back wrench, that I had to miss the spousal program trip to Segovia, and a few other things, as I had to take it easy.

TAKE IT EASY??? There I am in Europe, where the thing I love to do most is WALK, and I'm forced to "take it easy" because of a f*@$%!g suitcase?

Oh, and the final kicker is that the weather changed. Instead of that mild 19-20 degrees C, a little heat wave descended, and we were up to 26 degrees+ and almost nothing in that bag was at all appropriate.

Here is the charming canal house hotel we stayed in Amsterdam. A three floor walkup. Yes, no elevator for the luggage challenged.

They say that one gets "older and wiser". I have long maintained that I have been only getting older and stupider.

So here's the thing. I'm reforming. I intend to make an art form of travelling light. On my next trip, to British Columbia in July, I will be a changed woman. Just watch me (and my BC friends and family can bear witness). And, for the next annual meeting next spring, I intend to spend a month there (Bali). I will travel with one small suitcase. (But there I'll have to have a big empty one for the shopping!!!).

Here's two more delights from Amsterdam. A great bar we found right on the canal where we watched the amazing canal boat life, and you gotta love a town that names its streets like this!



Here's my web help on my luggage rehab program. Top photo courtesy of The Art and Science of Travelling Light.

"Fine" Art

When I was in grade 9 at a private girls’ school in Montreal, they did their level best to civilize us. One of our classes was art history but I’m afraid that when the lights went out for the slide shows, spitball wars broke out between several of the more incorrigible young ladies, myself included. Thus, alas, my career as an art connoisseur was short lived. On our recent European adventure in those cities known for some brilliant museums, I decided to go and see what all the fuss was about.


In Madrid, I went to the Museo Lazaro Galdiano, one of the smaller museums. This was a private collection of a guy who lived in the early part of the 20th century which is now housed in what used to be his own mansion. It is very clearly now a museum but what’s interesting is that each of the rooms has an explanatory panel along with an old picture of what the room looked like when it was a private residence. He and his wife not only collected paintings but all kinds of other things – ceramics, textiles, silver, weapons, mostly Spanish, but if not, things that had some connection to Spain. Apparently there are over 15,000 pieces of art and a library of 20,000 books. I like these smaller museums where you practically have the place to yourself.

There was a lot of art from the 15th and 16th century, real dark stuff (literally, it was much later that the painting technology allowed for brighter colours) and after spending quite some time looking them over I was ready to flee with a bad case of the screaming heebie jeebies. Heavily religious imagery including canvas after canvas of bleeding Christs. Aside from dark somber portraits of bigwigs which was likely the artists’ bread and butter, just about everything was religious in nature. (I would have known that had I been paying attention in class).

There was so much more to the museum than painting, however, and it was great to see how this man and his wife went about collecting all those different things that meant so much to them through their years together. How nice that the collection remains intact and in their own home, long after they've gone.

Back to the paintings. There was one I liked, that seemed different from the rest. It was also painted later (1771) than those earlier doom and gloom pics. Yes, it was a dead Christ, but we are spared the blood and darkness, and instead, saw a magnificent and lifelike body cradled gently by angels about to take him away. It was brilliant. The amazing torso, the use of shadow around the faces, the light and colour, the portrayal of the tenderness of angels. It stopped me in my tracks. Talent. This happened to be by Goya.

Which led me to the Prado Museum (I kept threatening to go to the PradA, but that’s another story) where there was a huge Goya exhibit. We were in Spain May 1st and 2nd which were public holidays. May 2nd marked the 200th anniversary of an event where the citizens in Madrid rose up against the French occupiers, which was followed the next day by some pretty severe retaliation by the French. Both events are represented in two famous Goya paintings, which were displayed side by side in this exhibit.

The exhibition’s theme was Goya’s images of war and there were many of his pen and charcoal drawings which reminded me of war photojournalism. I guess back then this was how it was captured in pre-camera days and Goya pulled no punches about the atrocity and brutality that was going on. I was impressed and quite moved.

So the next stop on the art tour was in Amsterdam at the Van Gogh Museum. Van Gogh decided that he was going to be a great artist and talked his brother into supporting him. During his lifetime he didn’t sell anything and when his brother died six months after he did, the sister-in-law inherited the paintings and set out upon a brilliant marketing campaign to persuade everyone that he was indeed a great artist. Successful obviously. Here there is a Museum with his name on it and it and many other museums across the world make millions and millions out of cards, calendars and coffee mugs with sunflowers on them.

Did I mention that he was a whack job to boot? He tried to talk Paul Gauguin of Tahiti fame (or infamy), to come and live with him where they would have each other, think great thoughts, talk great ideas and paint great things. Old Paul went for a visit and after being cooped up in the house in rainy season listening to Van Gogh babble on and on, he finally split. That’s when Van Gogh cut his ear off.

OK, well everybody has a few problems, and indeed he was a soul in great distress, but maybe he should have seen if he had any talent before making the decision to become a great artist. What shite! The only painting I thought had any integrity was this one…

Headed for the museum’s exit, greatly disappointed, there was another temporary exhibit on in the next wing. What the heck, we’ve already spent 10 euros to get into the building – so off to an exhibit of the work of John Everett Millais, an English artist of the 19th century. I’d never heard of him (must have been engrossed in the spit ball wars).

Well this was more like it. I wandered around entranced and happy - loved it all. This painting is of Ophelia. I was so impressed with the entire exhibition I came back the next day for another look. I couldn't drag myself away. There weren't many people in the exhibit as everyone was upstairs looking at V.G., so there was time to get up close and personal with the paintings. Amazing. Genius. He paints women in an amazing way. Obviously loves them (had a huge love affair with the wife of his best friend - who happened to be a major art critic, which could have been a career limiting move, but they subsequently married and he also had several daughters). The velvet of the gowns on the paintings is so real you feel you could stroke it. The light and colour of the outdoor scenes is almost better than a photograph if that makes any sense.

The Bridesmaid

I bought the exhibition catalogue and as I now leaf through it and see the images of those so brilliant paintings I spent time with, I recognize that those images on paper in the book are only pale shadows of the brilliance of those canvasses I stood before. Those paper images only serve as a memory prompt to relive that feeling of awe, in front of the work of this guy who could capture nature, beauty and emotion with a paintbrush. So how good is that to have had the opportunity to see this in person?

I think I'm finally starting to understand what the fuss is all about.

All Tapa'd Out

We spent a little over two weeks in Madrid, Barcelona and Amsterdam. We were in Spain for about 10 days which was huge fun. Madrid is gorgeous and very different from Barcelona which has its own charms. The wine is great and the tapas, well the tapas…Initially embraced with enthusiasm, after 10 days of it we went screaming off to Amsterdam in search of vegetables as we faced impending scurvy (our first meal in Amsterdam was in a vegetarian restaurant). No matter what you call it, bar food is still bar food.

We were in Madrid for the Annual Meeting, but once that was over we moved from the big hotel scene to some smaller and way more fun places to stay. In Barcelona we scored a two bedroom apartment (yay, my own dressing room!) in Born, an old part of town, where we did the local neighbourhood thing. Wine store on that side, chocolate store on the other and bars and restaurants everywhere. Plus, I got to indulge in my favourite pastime - spying in people's windows. In these dense streets you really get a sense of urban European life on top of each other –night voices up the air shaft, party people on the streets late late late. In Spain everything is late. If you go to a restaurant for dinner at 9:00 you are likely the first people there, and when we were leaving for the airport on our last morning there, at 6:30 a.m. on a Sunday, there were lots of people on the streets just leaving the clubs. I kept asking Spaniards I met when they sleep but never really got an answer. Perhaps they don’t.

The street theatre in both cities was lots of fun. You hear lots of music from street musicians and the mime human statues are very inventive. When you put money in their bowls they shift position. But the best thing is always sitting on a sidewalk café with a glass of vino (and a tapa) and watching the street life.






This was not my first trip to Spain although my first to Madrid and Barcelona. A gazillion years ago I spent two weeks in the Costa del Sol in the south with two girlfriends, sisters. We visited Torremolinos (which was exactly like the Monty Python travel agent sketch), Marbella (which is beautiful and where Omar Sharif played backgammon in the Marbella Club) and Soto Grande (where a friend’s mother kindly lent us her upscale condo, which was completely lost on three girls out to have a good time. After two days of reading the phone book, we left.)

We headed to a town called Nerja. Actually we were heading to Barcelona but we never did make it. We never made it past Nerja, as we were, shall we say, waylaid by its charms. One (of many) incident sticks in my mind and I have told this story many times.

On the beach in Nerja was a bar called Ayo’s Beach Bar. Ayo was a wild looking kind of guy with long flowing hair, married to a statuesque blonde from Sweden or somewhere. On his beach he used to make paella over a wood fire in the biggest paella pan I’ve ever seen. This particular day I decided to try some for lunch. It was great, but a little while after eating it I didn’t feel so great and felt the need to lie down on the beach for a siesta.

Now, in defence of Ayo’s paella, I must explain the kind of lives we were living. We cut a swathe through the south of Spain on one phrase alone – vino blanco seco frio por favor. My gal pals had a dozen or so years on me yet I couldn’t keep up with them. I’d wake up around 10:30 in the morning in time to see them returning from the market, bright eyed and bushy tailed, unpacking food and more bottles of wine and about ready for their first drink of the day. So perhaps it was the paella on that particular day, or perhaps it was the aftermath of the prior night’s shenanigans.

Anyway, the girls decided to rent a paddle boat for an hour as I settled on to my blanket for some shut eye. Off they went. Meanwhile, Paco, the beach boy, put his blanket down on the sand beside mine and lay down for his siesta. I use the term “beach boy” a little loosely. Paco was about 75, a slight, wizened man whose job, as far as I could tell, was to put chairs out on the beach for the beach goers.

So there I was, sleeping with Paco, on the beach on the Mediterranean in the south of Spain. I slept, soundly. When I woke up I had a sense that I had been asleep for quite some time, several hours perhaps, although I didn’t wear a watch. Paco was long gone. No sign of the girls. I sat up on the sand and peered up and down the beach, then out in the sea. No sign of them or their paddle boat. Nothing for me to do but wait. Another hour passed by, and I was starting to get really concerned when I spotted them out on the water in the paddle boat. I watched as they took the boat back to where they got it and walked toward me along the beach. Well walked, sort of. One of the sisters had her arm across the shoulder of the other sister who was propping her up. Together they wove their bikinied bodies in my direction. I watched their progress, astonished. How could two gals go out in a paddle boat in the middle of the Mediterranean and return drunker than when they left?

Well…there were these fisherman…

Apparently they had run out of cigarettes (we all smoked back then) and had paddled over to a fishing boat to bum a smoke (no doubt scaring all the fish away), then as the pack was being handed to them they dropped it into the sea, and then ended up sharing the fishermen’s bottles of vino tinto. Much later on, back on dry land with me, when they sobered up they shook their heads at their foolishness, but hey, foolish was the name of the game back then.

Memories of that early trip were much on my mind as we traveled in the more northern part of the country this month. Laugh out loud memories. Yesterday, the strangest thing happened. I was catching the last part of a TV show on Discovery Travel and Living about the south of Spain. At the very end of the show, they were listing the five best things about it. I nearly fell off my chair as Ayo’s Paella on the Beach was listed as #4. Thirty years later, he’s still there??!! This world keeps getting smaller and smaller.