Watching all of the outsiders.
It's raining! That's post-worthy all by itself, that it is raining and it sounds and smells and cools (just a little) like rain. I don't even care about the red on the radar, is how miserably dry it's been. I would, as I wrote to my grandparents this afternoon, give my ponytail for a week of gentle precipitation - only I don't know to whom. If I were pagan I would not have this problem, I feel. I'd lop off the hair and burn it, Legend of the Bluebonnet-style, and my people would be saved. We're not quite to the point of experimental sacrifices in Marietta, but I remain delighted. Such is the importance of context.
The weather in Iceland was rainy and cool, and yet I was not pleased. That's the difference between rain you look at and rain you have to walk in, particularly rain accompanied by forty-degree weather and howling winds. Iceland is essentially a moor, only with volcanoes, so you have to start by combining Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre and, I don't know, some Dickens - any passage where a desperate waif is about to perish - and then stir in the jet lag and a pinch of Loki and make everything very expensive. Iceland is like that. It is beautiful, and wild, which makes for difficult vacationing. I wanted to dress in wool and stalk about and bluster right back at the wind. I wanted to make tea with geyser water and declaim boldly from the platform at Thingvallir… but there were always people and it wasn't my place. Thus I went with the only other option left by bad weather: I was cautious and a little fussy and I ate some very nice sandwiches. The good news is that I took some pictures, which I have tricked Flickr into linking in this very entry.
Gullfoss Overloook
Originally uploaded by byelka58
We went also to Paris, where the weather was quite nice and the bakeries still more plentiful. We walked a great deal, from highlight to highlight, and our hotel, once we found it, was marvelously situated between the Invalides and the Eiffel Tower. I've never traveled in Europe with family before, and it turns out to require a bit of an adjustment. I actually went places I could recognize. I didn't keep a journal at all, though I usually keep compulsive handwritten notes. I took a lot more pictures, thanks to my mom's digital camera, and ate more meals, thanks to her desire to… eat regular meals. By far the strangest part, though, was the talking. I make it a habit, bordering on a point of honor, not to talk in foreign countries. It's not being ashamed of being American - nothing I say or don't say could hide that, anyway - so much as a desire to look, and listen, and not be seen or heard. If you can't speak the language anyway, you might as well wear your invisible safari hat, is my opinion. Yet there I was with other people, other people who spoke. Out loud, sometimes even to me. Disturbing.
Still, it was nice to have people (if we're being honest) to force me to visit places that interest me: we climbed to the roof of Notre Dame (and accosted Giada De Laurentiis while waiting in line), and went down into the archaeological museum under the square in front of it, went inside the Louvre, and various other things experience tells me I would not have been able to do without assistance. You know me: I am not a person who risks things, like human contact or adventures. I'm cunning with a Metro map and a Latinist's grasp of roots, though. So I think my traveling companions were, on the balance, probably okay with having me there, judgmental silence aside.
I haven't composed much to share with you, but I did want to have an excuse to post the link to the photographs. By all means have a click. I would love to field questions, if you have them, or just comments about the pictures. In return I can teach you the bits of Icelandic I've learned so far from "reading" Hobbitinn, which of course I purchased first thing. Later I bought some wool, too, but let's not lose sight of what's important.
The weather in Iceland was rainy and cool, and yet I was not pleased. That's the difference between rain you look at and rain you have to walk in, particularly rain accompanied by forty-degree weather and howling winds. Iceland is essentially a moor, only with volcanoes, so you have to start by combining Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre and, I don't know, some Dickens - any passage where a desperate waif is about to perish - and then stir in the jet lag and a pinch of Loki and make everything very expensive. Iceland is like that. It is beautiful, and wild, which makes for difficult vacationing. I wanted to dress in wool and stalk about and bluster right back at the wind. I wanted to make tea with geyser water and declaim boldly from the platform at Thingvallir… but there were always people and it wasn't my place. Thus I went with the only other option left by bad weather: I was cautious and a little fussy and I ate some very nice sandwiches. The good news is that I took some pictures, which I have tricked Flickr into linking in this very entry.
Gullfoss Overloook
Originally uploaded by byelka58
We went also to Paris, where the weather was quite nice and the bakeries still more plentiful. We walked a great deal, from highlight to highlight, and our hotel, once we found it, was marvelously situated between the Invalides and the Eiffel Tower. I've never traveled in Europe with family before, and it turns out to require a bit of an adjustment. I actually went places I could recognize. I didn't keep a journal at all, though I usually keep compulsive handwritten notes. I took a lot more pictures, thanks to my mom's digital camera, and ate more meals, thanks to her desire to… eat regular meals. By far the strangest part, though, was the talking. I make it a habit, bordering on a point of honor, not to talk in foreign countries. It's not being ashamed of being American - nothing I say or don't say could hide that, anyway - so much as a desire to look, and listen, and not be seen or heard. If you can't speak the language anyway, you might as well wear your invisible safari hat, is my opinion. Yet there I was with other people, other people who spoke. Out loud, sometimes even to me. Disturbing.
Still, it was nice to have people (if we're being honest) to force me to visit places that interest me: we climbed to the roof of Notre Dame (and accosted Giada De Laurentiis while waiting in line), and went down into the archaeological museum under the square in front of it, went inside the Louvre, and various other things experience tells me I would not have been able to do without assistance. You know me: I am not a person who risks things, like human contact or adventures. I'm cunning with a Metro map and a Latinist's grasp of roots, though. So I think my traveling companions were, on the balance, probably okay with having me there, judgmental silence aside.
I haven't composed much to share with you, but I did want to have an excuse to post the link to the photographs. By all means have a click. I would love to field questions, if you have them, or just comments about the pictures. In return I can teach you the bits of Icelandic I've learned so far from "reading" Hobbitinn, which of course I purchased first thing. Later I bought some wool, too, but let's not lose sight of what's important.