Bubbles

Yesterday was pretty rad.  I got up early, got clean and pretty, and wandered out to find an infamous flea market.  Once there I realized that there was pretty much no way for me to buy anything.  All I had was a little bit of change and a ten euro note.  Hard to haggle when you don´t share a language and can´t count out exactly what you want to pay.  So I just browsed.  After some time, I got tired of holding my  wrap around dress closed every time the wind picked up, and it was time for lunch, so I headed back to the flat.  That and my victory curl wasn´t obeying me very well.  The combination of no curling iron and no hair product made for a very floppy curl that just wanted to unwind itself.  Nothing undoes a good outfit faster than always self-consciously fixing it.

Side note:
I have a book from the 50s on how to have poise and confidence.  In one section the author is talking about how she has a friend who is a wonderful professor, but who doesn´t take time with her outfits.  She wears navy tights with a black dress, for example.  And as a result, she never feels quite comfortable when dressing up.  You can´t take shortcuts.  I think it´s important to figure out how nice you want to look, then do it all the way.  That´s not to say, as the book states, that one should wear  heels and an evening gown to the grocery store, but if one wants to wear a house dress, one doesn´t pair it with rubber boots.  The outfit must fit the situation.  It´s true that I feel most confident when what I am wearing fits with what I am doing.  Yesterday my outfit of a black skirt paired with walking shoes, a red t-shirt and Per´s bailout bag made me blend into the crowds both around tourists and local shoppers.  At least I didn´t stand out blaringly as being American and therefore and easy mark.

My new gps device needs to find satelites before it can give me any maps.  It told me to find an area away from tall buildings.  Here.  That was a special little challenge.  I grabbed my paper map and headed up the mountain.  I finally emerged at an overlook where I could see the Atlantic, a lovely suspension bridge, and gigantic cross.  The gps finally figured out that I wasn´t on Lombard street anymore, and cleverly told me how to walk to Jorge´s castle.  It was spitting distance, but I still feel much more confident about driving 200 km north into unknown territory with the machine´s help.

Castelo de Sao Jorge was super fun.  It´s the most castley castle I have been to!  The fortress at Pus Mountain in Sweden was cool, and the Tower of London was cool, but this one was way better.  I will post pictures when I get home just to prove that I am not over-selling it.  They had a museum with archeological finds from the past two thousand plus years.  One display was of animal bone fragments.  I was really bad at guessing what bones they were part of.  I think I got four out of twelve.  Not stellar for someone who constructed a skeleton.  I guess some actual book learning could help in that deparment.

After the castle I wandered over to a health food store, buying some roasted chestnuts from a street vendor on the way.  I got a block of six dollar tofu and almost got some vegan cheese but didn´t have enough money on me.  I love trying fake cheeses.  They are usually terrible, but it´s interesting to see how different companies interpret cheesieness.

I only interacted with a few people today.  Wandering through the alleys, twice there were bubbles floating down from top floor windows.  One boy caught me watching, giggled, and disappeared inside.  Another time I was getting ready to make a left down a particularly narrow pathway when one of three old men sitting at a table playing dominoes, rattled off some quick warning with a shake of the finger and a point to the nose.  I thought that was very nice.  I don´t need to smell bum pee mixed with fish guts.  I am okay without that.

The day of walking and looking and learning really wore me out.  My stomach hurt pretty much the whole day, so I know that didn´t help.  I had tried to massage it earlier in the day but it hurt too much to even touch.  Oddly my digestion is fine, so I won´t complain.  I called it an early night, watched a movie.  I drifted to sleep lulled by a melatonin and some port, listening  to the sounds of people enjoying their Saturday night.