Thank God January is almost over. It's my least favorite month. January is long and cold and doesn't even have the decency to be followed by Spring. This year has been a bad one too. Cold and gray. No redeeming qualities like bright blue skies over pristine white snow, not even a HOLIDAY! Anywho... Elena is my yoga instructor and she's just what a yoga instructor should be. She's calm and calming. She's very knowledgable having trained for years in the far east. She is a lovely, gentle woman. Her classes are very informative, as much theory as practice. But there is one minor issue. We begin each session with a quiet moment and a prayer for someone to whom we would like to dedicate our "energy". Fine, whatever. BUT THEN. Every week, no exceptions, she chooses a person or persons, (admittedly in dire need of our prayers), and she goes into horrid detail about what they suffered, which I gotta say, sorta spoils the moment! Instead of saying, "Let's send our prayers to the people of Ukraine", she'll say, "to the poor torn and bloodied bodies of the children crushed under the bombed school on Tuesday." or "to the three women raped, beaten and left for dead in an Afghan field" or "to the young people tortured and brutally killed for protesting in Iran." Man, what a downer. Sort of makes practicing yoga in the war, safe comfort of our home seem a little decadent. Last Thursday, my market with MIL day, I had to wait a while at our favorite vegetable stand as evidently I was there at "prime-time". While waiting and chatting, a man beside me mentioned my accent and asked where I was from. When I said The States, he said he had a relative in New York. Well EVERY Italian has a relative in New York so I wasn't particularly interested but out of courtesy said, "Oh yes?". He said "Yes, Giuliani." "Giuliani? THE Giuliani?" "Yes, he's my father's cousin." I told him I wouldn't spread that around. Who woulda thunk it! Of course the term "cousin" here is used rather loosely. May very well be a cousin 5 times removed. Over the past few years I've done some translating and given pronounciation help to my neighbor Diego, the B film actor. His wife, who is a children's performer, has also had me read aloud and translate some books in English. This morning I spent and hour doing the audio for an online ad for a hypnotist, a friend. The ad is both in English and Italian and he wanted the Italian to have a strong English or American accent. I may be offended but I haven't decided yet. xxoo me

Seasons Greetings!

Ain't that pretty? We went for a stroll in the center of Torino the other evening to see the Christmas lights. They were few and far between compared to past years. Communities are tightening their belts with the energy prices as high as they are. Street lights come on an hour later and are off an hour earlier. All public building thermostats are kept at a balmy 64 degrees. Public workers tried striking but they were up against national regulations so it was a no-go from day 1. We are all waiting in fear for our monthly electricty bills. Here at home we keep the heat down under 68, only use the washing machine, vacuum and iron after 7pm when costs are down. I'm using the oven very little. But no complaints. No one is shooting missiles at our homes and I'm not sleeping in the basement.

The daughter is here through the holidays. Sunday we visited a lovely town about an hour and a half north of here called Candelo. It sits within spitting distance of the mountains but strangely is on the edge of Italy's rice growing region. It is from here that the best risotto rices come. The town has a walled medieval center with it's original tiny buildings used as studios and shops for artists and crafters, restaurants and bars. Every Christmas they hold a Christmas fair with food stalls and activities for children. It was very pretty but packed. The older I get the less tolerant I am of crowds. Especially crowds of children. Especially crowds of tired, whiny children. Italian children seem to be particularly whiny. div class="separator" style="clear: both;">

Whoa. I just realized I haven't written anything in 9 months and really, there's not much to report. How sad! Anywho. This is a special post as it's directed at my friend D who will shortly be moving to Portugal. I have just returned from a week visit there and told her I'd give her my opinion. So here goes. The Good the Bad and the Ugly. Plus a little more.

The good: The people are lovely. They're friendly and helpful and do they all really speak English? Amazing! UNLIKE Italians who work in shops and restaurants, they seemed pleased to see us and tried their utter best to work with our (GP's) basic Portuguese. The daughter and I stuck to English. In Italy the concept that the customer is always right has never really sunk in. Shopkeepers in Italy treat you with indifference at best and contempt at worst depending on the type of shop. The only place I've encountered worse customer service is in Paris where shopkeepers blatantly glare and snarl. There's also quite a bit of smirking in those French shops. They do like a smirk. Enough of that. The countryside in Northern Portugal, where we traveled, is beautiful. Hill after hill covered by olive or orange groves or piney forest. In fact I don't think there's a square inch in the country that's flat. Even the cities are all up hill and down, mostly up it seems, and we got quite the workout every day. (So is that good or bad?) The city centers have some fabulous architecture and many buildings are sided with the famous, colorful Portuguese tiles. The food was good, the prices for said food were terrific. There is a wonderful bakery on every fricking block! Thank God for the hills.

The bad: I haven't seen that much traffic since Marrakesh and I live in ITALY. Just the number of cars on the roads at all hours is astounding. Consequently the air quality is pretty damned bad in urban areas. Even by the sea. Fortunately though the Portuguese are much more polite than Italian drivers and more flexible than American drivers so there is no road rage or contant honking of horns. Another issue is how rundown it is. The cities looked like Italy in the '80s before the economic boom. Grand buildings are falling in upon themselves. There is so much that needs to be cleaned or painted or repaired. It just looks grubby. Though that is mostly in urban areas. The smaller towns were in better shape. And there was surprisingly little litter compared to here. And this leads me to...

Porto's waterfront is vibrant and colorful. The bridge is a walking (yikes) rail bridge crossing the river.

The UGLY. Man did they do a poor job of urban planning when the cities grew after the war. If it wasn't built over a hundred years ago or in the past 10 (even that's iffy), it's (as they say in Boothbay Harbor parlance) SDU. Some Damn Ugly. The resdential areas outside of the centers are blocks after blocks of big plain BLOCKS. These expanses of apartment buildings have no saving graces. And there are hundreds of them.

And now the other stuff. We played tourists and visited Sintra with it's castle and palace. We braved a ferocious rain and wind storm off the atlantic to see the "World's Biggest Waves". We went to Obidos, a charming little walled town where we ate the best dinner of our trip. We went to Tomar for it's history of the Knight's Templar. We saw the Sanctuary of Bon Jesus in Braga and walked up it's gabillion steps. We started in Lisbon and ended in Porto. It was a quick spin through, apart from Lisbon, an area we'd never visited. A good time was had by all!

xx me