An analog life: Working through the 2007 backlog

Happy new year!
Hope 2008 is great so far, even though it's a crap time of year. Our 2008 had a bumpy start, what with Jeff coming down with norovirus (which is epidemic here at the moment) before the jet lag even had time to wear off. Despite the gloomy predictions of every pharmacist I came into contact with, I have so far (touch wood) managed to evade it, and Jeff has more or less made a full recovery, thankfully. But work has been brutal. And we have had some truly nasty days, during which I was hit with WALLS of water splashed up by speeding trucks every time I left the flat. Indeed, my January had been all doom and gloom until, on my way home from work after the third ten-hour workday this week and feeling mightily sorry for myself, I saw a beaming ray of hope. Across the street, next to the lacklustre Co-op grocery store, they are putting in ... a Starbucks! Oh happy day! I may have jumped up and clicked my heels with joy. The cafe's evening hours will likely be nonexistent - it is Oxford, after all - but I am very much looking forward to recreating my Toronto morning routine of picking up a chai latte and walking to work. On the very same day, in a cosmic convergence of what I like to think of as good karma, Jeff's parents informed me that they had found a much lamented mitten, which I had given up as lost forever. (Seriously - I've had those mitts forever and they are the best, cosiest mittens in the world.) Tonight I survived my first football match in at least two months without injury despite muscular atrophy and the extra baggage I brought back from home (around my middle). So things are looking up indeed!

I've realized I never posted any photos from our trip to Portugal in December. We had a really nice time, though were typically overambitious and spent less time relaxing than we'd planned. We had a lovely hotel in a great location (which I care more and more about the older I get), gorgeous weather, and lots to explore. It's pretty easy to get around, people were friendly, and when we were in the Bairro Alto they thought I looked young enough to be interested in purchasing recreational drugs. That always wins me over. (Though I am guessing they just hit up anyone who looks like a tourist, just like in Amsterdam.) The night we arrived, we joined a queue for taxis at the airport. All the taxis were posh shiny new white Mercedes, so we were excited until we counted back and realised that the single, solitary battered 1980s-vintage taxi was the one we would be getting. With the axe-murderer-looking driver. Everyone around us in the queue gave us pitying looks. Remember those kiddie amusement park rides with lots of little cars shaped like different animals, but always one or two that were just plain boring old benches? And you stood in line waiting, hoping for a unicorn, but realising you'd be getting the bench? That's what it was like. We warily got into the car with the completely silent axe-murderer, who gave us inscrutable looks in the rearview mirror and was a terrifyingly reckless driver, and we bounced around on seats with no shocks but lots of uncomfortable metal springs and things sticking up. Then that warbly 'Are You Going To San Francisco?' song incongruously came on the radio. Now every time I am in a Tim Horton's (or some such place) and that song is played, I will immediately be transported to Portugal in December, hurtling down boulevards lined with palm trees and crumbling pastel-stuccoed buildings, with the windows down, and wondering whether the driver was in fact taking us to our hotel or to some back alley to rob and kill us, because we honestly wouldn't have known better. (He didn't, obviously, though we later discovered that he had totally ripped us off on the cab fare.) That's the best thing about travelling, those weird incongruities.
Lisbon was lovely. Normally the lack of a Starbucks wouldn't be a plus, but it was refreshing to be in a place that felt like someplace different. No chain cafes and restaurants - only little local places with remarkably homogenous menus. Lots of people out and about in squares and on patios. An atmospheric faded, crumbling elegance. Sun shining off intricately tiled sidewalks (the sidewalks amazed me - so much work! you don't get that in a country that gets a hard frost) and intricately tiled buildings. When we took the train out to Sintra, though, I was surprised by the endless dense swaths of apartment buildings that stretched almost all the way there. Paris is like that too, and, I suspect, lots of other European cities what with borders opening within Europe and with former colonies. The city centre is kind of sanitized and touristy, and generally only the affluent live there, but there are miles and miles and miles of high-density and often pretty grim apartment blocks spreading out in all directions. Europe is at a really interesting point in time, I think.
I'm sure while we were there I had a million things I wanted to write about, but that holiday feels a bit like ancient history now. So I'll just bang up a few photos ...

Lisbon from the top of the Elevador da Santa Justa