The post The Light in Andalusía first appeared on OliverTheWorld.
]]>El Gastor is the little white-washed pueblo even the Spaniards have never heard of. It sits huddled along the northern face of a dry, olive-tree freckled hillside, and leans heavily into the shade of the towering Tajo de Algarín during long, scorching summer afternoons. We, of course, happened upon the place in early November; at the precise moment the winter wind came blustering up from the throat of the Sierra de Grazalema, rattling the pines along her lime-stone ridges and sprinkling her peaks with an early dusting of snow. We were therefore grateful when the little home we found for ourselves was steeped in the hazy light of the afternoon sunshine that lay long and heavy on the town’s south-facing hillside.
Our rincón, a corner of earth and whitewashed clay, was at once beguiling and welcoming, like an old friend from a faraway land that we had taken great pains never to forget. Beneath Moroccan tin lanterns and colored glass, crimson tiles pointed the way inside. Past the doorway, Moorish arches and arabesques concealed all manners of treasure and memorabilia from various points of the world. Antique leather-bound books in a variety of languages tumbled from reclaimed bookcases and called out to be read again: Burgess, Borges, Beckett. Glazed tagines and hammered bronze trays that had once borne glasses of mint tea led the way to the pantry; strings of multicolored beads trailed from curtain rods, and ancient timber beams with delicately carved corbels framed the entrance to the sitting room where a potbellied stone warmed the walls from within. A stairway wound past false windows where wrought-iron lattice-works had been set inside. Facsimiles of 17th century naturalist engravings jostled for wall space with Parisian Belle Epoque postcards and Indian Shisha.
All at once, inside this home, my life as a traveler in composite rushed back and flooded me with memories faster than I could place them. An ornate haveli in the Rajasthan city of Bikaner; the old antebellum mansions lining New Orleans’ Garden District; the quiet riads and carmens of Granada’s Albaicin. Places that dwelled in the convoluted lining of my subconscious, perhaps even those I had never before even experienced, lived in this house as well: the souks and kasbahs of Morocco’s great cities and palmaraie, the savannahs and rift valleys of deepest Africa.
But what stopped my heart and then soothed it like a balm was the light, the buttery afternoon glaze that reflected off the reservoir in the valley below. It was here, throughout every long afternoon, that my eyes were drawn. The long, azure-blue fingers of the lake, fed by mountain streams, filtered through the gathering clouds that hemmed in the limestone backbone of the sierra and spilled across the troughs of valleys that bore a patchwork of olive trees right up to our door. The air of pines, the very breath of the pinsapo, emanated from deep within the forest for which Grazalema is famed. It mingled with the mineral atmosphere of the mountains and held itself apart from Andalusia’s brittle and dry surrounds.
As I chopped carrots and skinned potatoes for dinner, the light arranged itself westward in delicate rays that softly spotlit a small herd of goats on the chaparral of our hillside. Among the scrub grass and milkweed, the young bleated after their mothers as they, bells-to-throats, rambled along the hillside.
Just before dusk, Ryan and I tucked ourselves into the chairs on the stoop to watch the sunset. The light lifted higher and higher and blazed the reservoir a burnished gold in one final thrust before it retreated to the core of the sierra, westward. There it simmered long and red behind the mountains that flanked the pueblo of Zahara on the opposite side of the water.
Because the clouds forever held court in the microclimate of the national park (Grazalema receives the most rainfall anywhere in Spain), the sky was streaked an alternating red, pink and searing orange that, at perfect angles, cast the mountains into sharp relief. In this way, each evening’s spectacle carried on more than thirty minutes before being swallowed entirely by the mountains. The last of the light haunted the edges of the lake before it finally trailed away into night.
Once inside again, Ryan would revive the fire in our stove as the kids were chased in by the cold, eager for their supper. A stew simmered in the kitchen while something sweet baked in the oven. Our nighttime rustling had become a familiar ambient hum that we savored for the moment we called that hillside our home.
The post The Light in Andalusía first appeared on OliverTheWorld.
]]>The post Roads Less Traveled In the Algarve: Portugal’s Forgotten Costa Vicentina (PHOTO ESSAY) first appeared on OliverTheWorld.
]]>The Algarve is Portugal’s infamous bastion of summer tourism. Young Germans and Brits come in droves to places like Albufeira and Portimao to prop up the country’s stagnating economy with countless euros spent on over-priced one-star hotels, beachfront caipirinha shacks and rental sun loungers. As we hurried through the urban sprawl surrounding the booming Praia de Rocha, we counted more dodgy-looking joints advertising a full English breakfast than we did in any London suburb. After traveling for nearly a month in a country that we had already fallen in love with over and over again at every new turn, it was immediately evident that the 100 km stretch along Portugal’s southern coast was not for us.
Knowing this, how could the Algarve have held us in its thrall for the better part of the month of July? We discovered the answer to that question in the region’s often-overlooked western, Atlantic-facing frontier. Long the domain of migratory surfer types and naturalists, approximately 120 kilometers of lesser-developed coastline forms the protected Parque Natural do Sudoeste Alentejo e Costa Vicentina. Far from the arterial A2 that leads straight into the Algarve’s most hectic harbors, the N-120 is a simple two-lane road that rambles through cork oak forests and scrubland and occasionally branches off westward towards one secluded beach after another. It was here that we found our home among the cold waters and broad beaches of the Algarve’s forgotten coast.
Odeceixe Following the path of the Ribera de Seixe as it flowed through a valley to the sea, we found the Praia de Odeceixe. A gorgeous, little knob of sand was surrounded on one side by steep cliffs. Surveying it all from a lofty height was a small village consisting of little more than a few cafes, a surfboard rental outfit, and a few rented rooms.
The Beaches of Aljezur: For the better part of two weeks, the two beaches that branched off from the town of Aljezur; Praia de Monte Clerigo and Praia de Arrifana, formed our home base. An afternoon spent inquiring in pidgin Portuguese at a handful of restaurants finally bore fruit in Arrifana where a local family was game to rent the small apartment that sat above their little café for fifty euros a night. Despite it being a one bedroom where both kids shared a sofa bed in the living room, Charlie In the Chocolate Factory-style, it was perfect for us in every way.
From the terrace, sweeping views over Arrifana’s cove (complete with a token sea stack!!) were ours and ours alone. This particular beach was a gem: the teal-blue Atlantic swept over a crescent-shaped beach whose pale sand was cradled by stark, black sea-cliffs. Three marisquerias (specialty: monkfish rice) lined the dusty road that led from the hair-pin track winding down to the water to a decaying fort that had been built in the 17th century to repel Napoleon’s navy. In the evenings, we thwarted the local mosquitos with the grill smoke emanating from barbequed Dorado that had been caught off the coast. A five-minute walk down the road brought us to a enterprising fellow who made a summer-time job out of ferrying beachgoers down the cliff in his 4×4 in exchange for a small tip.
The famed right point break known to form off the beach’s northern end failed to materialize for us the entire time we were in residence, and we were referred to Monte Clérigo, which supposedly worked when Arrifana was off. We soon learned, however, that the entire Southern Atlantic, from Bordeaux down to Morocco, hadn’t seen any sign of a swell in more than two weeks. The surfers’ loss was our children’s delight; what was nearly always a treacherous coastline was instead as still as a bathtub for days on end.
Praia de Vale Figueira: This vast and empty swath of sand spread out just behind our cove in Arrifana and ran south for nearly fifteen kilometers. It was poorly marked from the N-120 and accessed by a long, winding unpaved road. Kendley decided to go au-Naturaliste on this one, as her only neighbors consisted of the handful of kids from the local surf school and an occasional osprey.
Carrapateira (Praia de Amado & Bordeira): Some of the Costa Vicentina’s most savagely gorgeous coastline is split between Carrapateira’s two beaches. A series of meandering boardwalks hovered timelessly over the amaranth and thyme-draped dunes that connected Amado and Bordeira via the Pontal de Carrapateira. In between places was an endless fossilized seacoast; calcareous cliffs that had been eroded by rain and waves into ragged pits, caves, grooves and funnels. The limestone melted around insoluble red clay banks near the beaches, and the reminder that Carrapateira is a world-class surf destination came suddenly upon us at Amado. The full force of the Atlantic concentrated itself into a consistent beach break that drew an international crowd. A German hitchhiker we picked up said it was his favorite wave, despite the fact that conditions had been way off for the past several days (cue the smoke billowing out of my ears).
We seldom ventured south of the Vicentina for fear of the crowds. We made one exception to visit the dramatic headlands, lighthouse and tour buses at the Cabo de São Vicente near the point of Sagres at the Algarve’s extreme southwestern corner. While several civilizations have assigned great significance to this area (the Romans believed the sun sank into the ocean near Sagres, thus marking the edge of the known world), the cape gained its name from the more modern tale of the martyred Saint Vincent, whose body was said to have washed ashore near the foot of the cliffs some time in the 4th century.
Turning east, there were decent beaches at the Brit-haunts of Luz and Salema, but more memorable were the decadent, organic, made-from-scratch treats at Chicca’s.
Finally we reached Lagos, the first real tourist town along the southern Mediterranean stretch of the Algarve. That meant the beginning of the onslaught of tourist menus, bead sellers, dingy rentals, and beaches brimming with bodies. But it was also the home of the Ponte da Piedade, a surrealist’s seascape containing stone grottos, natural arches and bizarre shapes that serenely stood in stark contrast against emerald-hued water.
As tourists were a known quantity here (I suppose rightfully so), a handful of local fishermen-types frequently pulled alongside a small dock built into the stone to pick up and whisk paying customers from one watery landmark to the next. In my opinion, it was worth the price entirely just to have swum in that sea…
In altogether too short a time, our two weeks in the southwestern Algarve came to a close and we found ourselves trading sand and swimsuits for the Alentejo’s relentless heat. From where we stand today and from where we’ll be in a month or a year from now; those long, wild Atlantic beaches of the Costa Vicentina seem as far away as the ends of the earth. That’s how we know we’ll be back.
The post Roads Less Traveled In the Algarve: Portugal’s Forgotten Costa Vicentina (PHOTO ESSAY) first appeared on OliverTheWorld.
]]>The post Out on the Tiles: Living Lisbon’s Summertime first appeared on OliverTheWorld.
]]>It’s been a while since my last post, but I can admit to having a pretty qualified excuse. For the past two weeks, we’ve made our home the ancient and decadently crumbling neighborhood of Alfama; Lisbon’s historic and, in many ways, cultural heart. In an attempt to align ourselves with the locals, we went Internet AWOL for a while and instead made every effort to suspend ourselves in the ether of what has been the most charismatic urban atmosphere we’ve encountered while traveling in Europe over the past eleven months.
The allure of Lisbon, for us, was the sense of being both tourist and local. Every day, we were as likely to stagger up the stairway streets (escadinhas, literally “ladders”) alongside romper and flip-flop-clad tourists as a stooped grandmother on her way home from the local feira (market). To break the back of the endlessly scorching Lisbon afternoons, we ferreted out little joints that gave us the best price on a pingado gelado (like a macchiato served alongside a glass of ice) and Portugal’s signature delicious meat snack: a bifana (grilled pork cutlet on a roll). We sorted out the fastest walking routes (with the best views over the city to boot) through alleyways between Barrio Alto and Chiado. We noted the differences between Spanish and Portuguese bullfights while attending one at Campo Pequeno (the Portuguese frequently put the bulls out in the pasture to stud after a good fight and the primary objective of the bullfighter is essentially to be gored, which is more unbelievable in real life than I can possibly describe). Truly, after two weeks, there has been so much we fell in love with here in Portugal’s capital and even some things that made us cringe, so I felt it would be best if we all shared what affected us the most.
Emily: After a rainy, chilly month of May spent in Northern Spain and Portugal, Lisbon brought us the first of the summer’s heat. Every other night, I hung our laundry out on the line where it would dry in hours. With all the wash we’d accumulated in nearly three straight weeks of transit, it became like a ritual to me. A glass of vinho verde, a bucket of clothespins, and the breeze blowing across the River Tejo. The rhythm of my evenings were dictated by the bells of the Igreja de São Vicente de Fora. The church’s twin pearly white steeples, city icons in their own right, rose up just in front of our kitchen terrace and kept time every thirty minutes. Some nights, a fadista’s voice from the restaurants below wafted up from the tangled warren of Alfama’s travessas (alleyways) to our second story balcony. After the kids were in bed, Ryan and I would lean out over the railing, our faces aglow in the light reflected from São Vicente, and we would just listen to the singers’ soulful fado lyrics as they were woven together with the accompanying Portuguese guitar. 
I also loved how, at the end of a particularly hot day, the dusk settles over Lisbon in just such a way. A pink tinge forms a filmy layer over and between the staggered white-washed walls and red-tiled roofs of the old city and swallows wheel in jilted circles above us before returning to the eaves of abandoned buildings. The river echoes the blue of 18th century azulejo (hand-painted tiles) panels offsetting our little plaza, and in the little street below an old man stirs the embers smoldering in an old, rusty, halved oil drum before laying a trio of salted sardines on the makeshift grill. I don’t know how to say it better…but it is so achingly summertime here in this city.
Of course the heat worked against us some of the time. Lisbon is a city for those who go on foot, and while Alfama was home to us, it put us in a situation where our primary mode of transport was our own two legs. We walked the long stretch of waterfront all the way to the Praça de Figuera more than once in a sweltering 96°, and we have the sunburns to prove it. But that experience leads me to Ryan’s hit list…
Ryan: The tram. From the moment we climbed aboard the old, creaky wooden 28 and rode it full circuit from Graça to the Basílica Estrela, we knew the city in a unique and more intimate way. In Alfama near our apartment, we were always casting eyes over our shoulder and keeping our ears alert to the telltale sound of grinding brakes as we crossed the street at Escolas Gerais where the tram makes its narrowest (and most harrowing) ascent up to the Miradouro da Senhora do Monte. There are seven brutal hills in Lisbon, and for €2.80 per person, the price was worth it!
I also fell in love with the city’s festive atmosphere. Maybe it’s because we landed in Lisbon at the beginning of their official summer (June), but it’s been one party after the next. The highlight was the raucous celebration of Lisbon’s patron saint. During the Festa do Santo António, every level surface in Alfama was converted to a communal dining area and locals served homemade sangria and sardinhas assadas (grilled sardines) to anyone who stopped. Another night we had the good fortune to stumble across a free fado concert held in front of the baroque Igreja São Roque in the neighborhood of Bairro Alto. Ana Moura’s sultry contralto nearly brought us to our knees.
Oliver: Our house looked right at the Larga Santa Marinha, a little plaza with just enough surface area for him to learn how to ride his bike. After four evenings and a tremendous amount of effort on behalf of his father and several local alfacinhas (locals) cum cheerleaders, Oliver was maintaining his balance and executing turns like a pro. And, according to him, the little plaza “was also a great place to kick a soccer ball without it rolling down the big hill”.
And what does a five year old complain about in a city like Lisbon? The streets themselves. For a little guy with two left feet to begin with, the calçada portuguesa is an accident waiting to happen. The sidewalks, plazas, and in some cases the streets in Lisbon are paved with innumerable blocks of chiseled black basalt and white limestone that form intricate mosaics. While timelessly beautiful (in the evenings they glow under the lamplight), the surface of the pavers have become polished with time and use to the point of being downright slippery. Furthermore, out-of-place stones frequently jut out haphazardly and threaten to trip even the sturdiest pedestrians. More than once, Ollie’s loping stride lost it on the calçadas, and he was sent flying into the gutter.
Kendley: Wherever we wandered, from the Tower in Bélem to the manicured gardens in Parque Eduardo VII, the girl always found an excuse for an ice cream break. The telltale signage outside the doors of countless local cafes advertised the day’s selections, and with her squeaky little “Olá” and a couple of blown kisses, the shopkeepers would practically dive into their freezers at her command.
Other Highlights:
Museo Nacional do Azulejo (National Tile Museum)
Mosteiro dos Jerónimos (located in Bélem)
Feira da Ladra (Thieve’s Market in Alfama)
Oceanário (aquarium)
Igreja de São Roque (located in Bairro Alto)
National Pantheon (located in Alfama)
Palácio Nacional da Pena (located in Sintra)
The post Out on the Tiles: Living Lisbon’s Summertime first appeared on OliverTheWorld.
]]>The post Off the Beaten Path in Ireland: The Road to Torr Head and Carrick-a-Rede first appeared on OliverTheWorld.
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If there was a way to somehow distill the essence of Ireland such as to contain it in a bottle so that it could be taken as an elixir at the end of a particularly long and difficult day; a sort of tonic that could lift the senses and revitalize a weary heart; perhaps that could be achieved if one set forth on a sunny day from the small town of Cushendun on the Torr Road towards Ballycastle.
Now, folks savvy with their geography might already have spouted off that the town of Cushendun lies smack in County Antrim, which puts it firmly into the territory of one Northern Ireland that lies under the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom, per the treaty that ended the Irish War of Independence in 1921. This arrangement is an undeniable fact, though there have been many folks (particularly those from West Belfast) who have sacrificed their lives and the lives of others in defense of Irish sovereignty. Nationalists and Unionists aside, for our purposes the land I am about to describe belongs to the ancient kings of Ulster and the Red Branch Knights. So, with nary a Union Jack in sight, this part of the country seemed to me, as they say, just as Irish as all the grass in Kerry.
Completely by accident, we found this road along the cliffs, and having done so, we might just have discovered the finest stretch of roadway in all the isles. Coastlines have a way of drawing us to them like a magnet, so it was no wonder that we dimmed down the volume on our GPS, which, ever since we turned out of the driveway of the inn we crashed at the night before, had bleated at us to take the next turn onto the A2. Rather than opting for that faster, better-maintained roadway that linked the two towns, we passed right through the signage alerting us of the single-track road prone to sudden closures ahead, ignored the notices urging trailers and caravans to turn back, and began to climb up the road to Torr Head.
This road appeared to have been hand-chiseled out of the side of a grassy cliff that plunged several hundred meters down to a glassy mineral-blue Irish Sea. Sheep and gnarled gorse shrubs jostled for a bit of purchase here and there, the later a riot of yellow that jeered in response to the sunlight that morning. I imagined that gorse all over Ireland asked the same question of the sun, as it did that very morning: “who are you that disappears from time to time and leaves behind nothing but gray skies, day after day? We are always bright for this land; we can carry the light of day when you are nowhere to be found!”
To the despair of farmers across the county, scarcely a month had passed since unseasonal snowdrifts had swallowed the first of the year’s lambs. When we arrived in Dublin in late March, the snows followed our heels clear all the way County Kildare as we fled west toward the coast. But on a day like this one, even as far north as we were, there was indeed no sorrow in the countryside and winter’s bite had since released its hold. Spring was bounding forth everywhere we turned our eyes; it erupted in streams from the mouths of roadside daffodils.
Kendley napped as was her custom in the late morning as we snaked along a rollercoaster of green, blue and limestone. Oliver shuffled a deck of Angry Bird playing cards and lifted his gaze here and there when Ryan or I ‘oohed’ or ‘ahhhed’ at the more dramatic turns in the road.
The horizon was brindled with high, passing clouds and the Mull of Kintyre off Scotland’s southwest coast, clear in the distance, seemed close enough to skip a stone all the way to Cambeltown. We had read that emigrated Scottish clansmen relied on the strategic position of the headland as a base to send signals to their allies back on Argyllshire. An abandoned 19th century coastguard signal station built over the remains of a 2,000 year-old ring fort stood quietly at the farthest tip of Torr Head and evoked two different eras in the span of a moment.
Jewel tones abounded. Pasturelands were hemmed into wobbly parcels that vanished vertically into the horizon where it met the sea. It ended as quickly as it had begun. The road made a swan’s neck turn inland toward Ballycastle and the sea retreated to the west behind us.
Not long after leaving the Torr Road, we had returned to the coast and were easing along a lane that brought us to Carrick-a-Rede and its famous rope bridge. While most travelers along the Causeway Coastal route continue straight on through to Giant’s Causeway, we knew to give this particular place a stop, if only to elevate our heart rates for the afternoon.
For 350 years, local fishermen with a penchant for adrenalin kicks had strung a rope bridge 98 feet above a 66-foot chasm to connect the mainland to the offshore islet of Carrickarede (literally, “rock in the road”) in a clever attempt to reach the sheltered waters that harbored salmon as they migrated around Ireland’s northern coast. Today, the bridge is owned and expertly maintained by the UK’s National Trust, and for five euros fifty, brave travellers can make the crossing themselves.
At our approach, the wind kicked up and the bridge began to sway. Nesting kittiwakes and guillemots wheeled in the updrafts below us, and when I looked down between the slats in the bridge, the tiny hairs along both of my arms stood straight us against the wind. I do believe if it weren’t for Oliver and Kendley hauling me like a team of draft horses, I would have remained there forever, clutching the handrail and whimpering like a fool.
To be fair, it was FAR from the worst swing bridge we had ever crossed. In Nepal and Laos, several rickety things slung a hundred feet above dry riverbeds come to mind. I was fortunate that Carrick-a-rede, with its steel cables and 10-ton load capacity, was well equipped to convey heavy Western bodies.
Safely deposited on the other side, the kids squared themselves away among tall grasses to pluck at pioneering dandelions, leaving Ryan and I to skirt the edge of the little islet where it dropped down into the sea. A microburst was curling around the northern headland and making a direct line for us. An angled path of rain sheeted down, and the approaching clouds were gunmetal against the sea. These micro-storms in Ireland are not unlike those that track over Bali or more tropical zones; they tear down a coastline with all the ferocity nature can muster, only to retreat in a moment’s time back out over the Atlantic. The rains come, and then they are gone.
Despite knowing this, we were without shelter on Carrick-a-rede, and our escape back to the mainland was entirely dependent on re-crossing the rope bridge. Thanks to lack of foresight and the illusion of a deceptively beautiful day, we were all jacketless and to make matters worse, Kendley had the early makings of her second Irish head cold in a series of three (the first acquired on the Beara Peninsula, the last in County Kilkenny). Jousting for a place in line among the healthy barrage of Chinese tourists who had descended on the islet shortly after our arrival, we shuffled across the bridge just as the first gale of the storm enveloped us. The bridge keeled left and right and the constant footfall across its rails set it bucking from front to end. I clutched Kendley with all my might (she led the way), and moaned softly for the entire two minutes it took to cross the chasm.
And just like that, it was sunny again; the islands off the coast visible where the clouds had been swept away. Next stop, Giant’s Causeway, where I would endeavor to keep my feet on firm ground.
The post Off the Beaten Path in Ireland: The Road to Torr Head and Carrick-a-Rede first appeared on OliverTheWorld.
]]>The post The Sands of Harris first appeared on OliverTheWorld.
]]>“You’ll get off the boat in Lewis and you’ll say to yourself…wow, now that’s really something”. Clustered around their dinner table, our friend Davy’s eyes grew wide and round as he illustrated his point. Nodding her agreement, his wife Cheryl chimed in.
“Then you’ll get to the Isle of Harris and….”
Ryan and I leaned in a little closer, caught our breaths. Davy’s eyes closed momentarily and then suddenly flew open as he threw his hands up over his head, jumped up from the table and shouted.
“WOWWOWWWWWWWW!” Their cat, Inga, who had been patrolling the area for a handout, jumped nearly three feet straight in the air. Ryan and I lurched back in our seats.
It is precisely in this manner and environment in which we always seem to unearth the greatest destinations that we are so fortunate to come across in the course of our travels. It happens always in the company of good friends who incidentally, are locals. With eyes flashing, they whisper (or bellow) the names of these places as if they were sacred words. A prolonged silence nearly always follows.
“It’s that incredible, is it?” Ryan was calculating the driving mileage in his head, but I was ready to make the decision of where we would be off to next right there on the spot.
This was how we found ourselves, one week later, arriving at the village of Uig on the western corner of the Trotternish Peninsula, Isle of Skye, waiting to board the CalMac ferry that would cross the Hebridean Minch to the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides. That was the plan; only it didn’t exactly play out that way.
The afternoon of our departure was a blustery one on Skye. Our little cottage on the Waternish had rattled all night in the wind, but we just assumed business as usual for a ferry service plying these far northern waters. We were shocked then to learn that our ferry had been postponed till very early the following morning, and, as a concession, we were granted IOUs for an evening meal. On the matter of procuring emergency accommodation so late in the day, we were left to fend for ourselves. I was practically blinded by the Calvinist fire in the ferry terminal attendant’s eyes as she matter-of-factly deadpanned, “tis an act of God, my dear” while I glared at her from across her desk.
We somehow managed with the help of a sympathetic local inn-keeper, who, when he heard our story, marveled at our gumption, but quickly pointed out that long-term travel with two children under the age of 6 years wouldn’t exactly be considered his cup of tea. At that particular moment, with the prospect of taking two kids down for a supper of reheated scraps at the little longshoreman’s pub on the wharf, followed by five hours of sleep prior to boarding a ferry in the frozen pre-dawn darkness, I was finding it difficult to disagree with him.
The following morning, semi-conscious and quivering under the weight of of four cups of coffee apiece, we finally steered into Tarbert, the port town situated on the isthmus connecting Lewis and Harris, which are the two disparate parts of essentially one island. Early morning sunlight of the like we had not seen in weeks back on mainland Scotland streamed into our van as we climbed up the road leading up over Harris’ escarpment to the western side of the island. Innumerous navy-blue lochans, many no larger than a swimming pool, were scattered throughout a lunar landscape of Lewisian gneiss, some of the oldest exposed rock in the world. This strange countryside had served as the backdrop for the scene that took place on the surface of Jupiter in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and it was easy to see why. But then, amid all that rock, there they were, swirling westward and melting into a dozen shades of blue. The beaches.
By design, neither Ryan nor I consider ourselves top-drawer folks. Certainly when it comes to matters such as where we choose to lay our heads at night or the way in which we arrive at our intended destinations, we are happy to entertain any and all comers. But in the matters of a beach, we hold fast to a certain standard. In Western Australia, we once ventured 1,000 miles across a wasteland of abandoned iron mines to reach a nirvana of white sand at Cape LeGrande. In Thailand, it took us two weeks to discover the palm-fringed sliver of solitude at Koh Kradan. My favorite beach in the Caribbean happens to be one on the island of Vieques that only very recently opened to the public when the American military base packed up and moved on, leaving behind a sanctuary accessed solely via a 45 year-old jeep track through a jungle. For the right beach, we will always go the distance.
And here we were. The white arcs around Nisabost, Seilabost, Borve, Horgabost, Scarista and Luskentyre were studded with bleached limpet and little neck shells; the same that would eventually succumb to the forces of the sea and time to become the fine white grains that blinded us that early morning of our arrival. For seven days we strode up and down dunes that wild Atlantic winds and currents had pushed high above the strand; had carved great sand valleys and drawn long spits out into the sea. The dunes had been colonized by plants seen nowhere else in Scotland, were great sand pastures that, one day, with the coming of spring, would leap alive with the brightness of wild flowers. Every second of those precious days was spent gazing out from the machair, those grassed-over dunes, where we watched the tide pull in across the sands and release.
It was in the machair that we came upon Tony and Isla, the Highland and Eriskay ponies that belonged to the beautiful daughter of the couple from whom we hired our cottage on Luskentyre. I learned that Toby, fourteen hands, barrel-chested and whiter than the driven snow, was descended from the Queen’s own private stock and possessed the perfect temperament for long hacks on the beach, which our gracious hosts so kindly obliged me. Isla, barely more than a foal at her two years and yet unbroken, was content to chase us through the dunes, a dapple-gray shadow to our longer stride that whinnied after her companion as the sun dipped behind the offshore island of Taransay. In the evenings after a ride, both Oliver and Kendley clambered up from the freshwater burn where Ryan had watched them attempt to snare minnows with little nets, and shared in the task of grooming Toby’s flowing mane, tail and feathery fetlocks. Before the day was over, we were all flocked in the long, white hairs that the horse was gradually giving up for the season.
Some days we walked to what we perceived were the ends of the earth, and indeed the word Hebrides traces back to the ancient Norse “Havbrodoy”; ‘islands at the edge of the sea’.
At the Rubh An Teampull site on the tiny Toe Head Peninsula, we found evidence of prehistoric settlements in the toppled stones of a mesolithic (4,100 BC) midden that was built over by a 15th century chapel. With just two gables remaining to frame the sea, the only callers on that particular day were a handful of black-faced sheep and our inquisitive children. The farm track on the return led us past scores of charmingly disheveled Highland cows and their new spring calves.
Another foray brought us to the modest home and workshop of Donald John Mackay, who, with his champion good looks and endlessly clacking Hattersley loom, wove masterpieces of Harris Tweed. We learned that it was the handful of folk like Donald John who clung to the old traditions that made life on Harris so uniquely resilient amid a modernizing world. But while Harris’ remoteness made for its charm, it was also its greatest curse. Families had been abandoning the Hebrides for more than a century to find work on the mainland or on foreign shores, and thus Harris’ young people had become its single-most precious resource.
In many ways we spent our short time on Harris exploring and learning, nearly always in the sunlight of the gradually lengthening days and sometimes under the cover of a light, chilly, horizontal rain. We committed every inch of its shoreline to our collective memory, we caught and held each angle of the light as it fell away to the west and intensified the turquoise and mineral greens that flowed beyond the tidal flats. We absorbed as much history of its people as we could and carefully observed their rituals and their ways.
It was some of the happiest days our travels had afforded us in the seven months since we had left California, and indeed, we pondered and even inquired about stopping right then and there to make a home beside the sea. For now, such a notion is committed to our dreams, or perhaps to a future spent in a quiet place. So much is wonderful and new in the course of an adventure such as ours, and even when it isn’t; when the journey is long and gritty and the sleep less than plentiful; the thread of a memory of a place like Harris endures.
The post The Sands of Harris first appeared on OliverTheWorld.
]]>The post When the Sun Shines In Scotland first appeared on OliverTheWorld.
]]>On a late February day in the northwest of Scotland, we had been given a gift. It came in the form of a radiantly beautiful day, one in which a low-slung winter sun glazed the pastures and seacoast of the Inner Hebrides with a warm, topaz light. For the first time in months, we striped down to our thermal layers without a thought for the down coats that, of late, had become as much a part of our outward physical appearances as our fingers or toenails. After days of Scotland’s horizontal rain and a biting chill, it was time for us to venture outside.
We had taken up a temporary residence in a small crofter’s cottage bang on the only road that lead through the township of Toberonochy (pop. 17) on the wee Isle of Luing. Sixteen miles south of Oban, remote Luing (6 miles long and 1.5 miles across) was connected to the rest of the world only by a ferry that departed from another island that was, in turn, connected to the mainland by a bridge. Once a thriving slate-quarrying and cattle-rearing community, the island’s population had steadily receded since the First World War. From the ferry at Cuan Point clear down to the southern tip of the island, we took turns spotting the former farmsteads that had long been reduced into crumbling sheaves of slate and mortar.
Our first fine day on the island followed an evening in which we learned the nuances of lighting and maintaining a peat fire. In the morning my eyes were still bleary and blackened around the eyelashes, but the sun was out and already the children had set themselves off to explore our surroundings. Armed with an ordnance map, we made a southwestern course toward the old byre at Kilchattan, just south of a 600 year-old cemetery that overlooked both the strait and flanking island of Shuna. Here, several head of stocky and hale-looking cattle rose to meet us and warily kept an eye to Oliver’s erratic galloping and stumbling stride. Twenty-one months old on that very morning, Kendley lowed softly at them and appeared proud of the fact that she had finally learned “what the cow says”. They had short, thick necks and hides of the deepest auburn, and appeared to subsist even in these cold months on the roughage and sparse grasses that sprang up all along the roadside. I later learned that the “the Luing”, established on this very island from a cross between Shorthorn and a Highland breeds, was an officially recognized pedigree that was exported worldwide and renowned for its hardiness.
Several times we breached cattle grates and farm stiles and, using a skill he had cultivated several years ago while in New Zealand, Oliver employed his best behavior when traversing a working farm. Each time we passed through a gate or over a fold, he conscientiously returned them to their closed and tethered positions. We soon ascended a ridge that was topped with a wind turbine and flanked by a stand of scrubby Scotch pine that served as a rookery for the resident gray herons. Beyond the miniature forest and all around us was the sea, still and opalescent. The afternoon sun had diffused throughout the haze that settled around the surrounding isles and skerries.
I surveyed the narrow strip of marsh that separated us from the raised shoreline. “Wouldn’t we just cut straight through?” Ryan gestured at the telltale band of clustered mat grass that grew over the bog. “You won’t find a solid footing on that,” I replied. “Follow the sheep track through it and it will drop you straight down to that beach”. We picked our way gingerly through the marsh, mindful of the lime-green sphagnum that veiled the most treacherous of surfaces.
The coast was solemn fringe of dark slate, polished smooth as boot blacking by the powerful tides that swept around the island. Two oystercatchers, startled by my arrival, fluttered across the strait, their kleep kleep a standard for so many of the isolated shorelines I had visited in the past. Above the strandline, map lichen so ancient that it pointed the way back to the last Ice Age, bloomed across the rocks. A merganser wailed and plunged beneath the surface and the tide licked past clusters of barnacles and limpets. Across the channel, what might have been a farmhouse that had fallen into disuse, slouched toward the sea that was as quiet and even as my breath in the bright air. I found a bit of softer ground near a fairy knoll and watched as Oliver cast an improvised fishing line with a washed up stalk of oar weed.
It occurred to me that, for the moment, we were living here, and participating in the life of this island. Of course we weren’t bailing hay or keeping the inventory at the little general store up the road, but, for the moment, this island was all that our lives entailed. I rather liked it. A long walk up through the heath in the morning, counting the rock pools that dotted the coastal fringe, a bit of surveying here, noting the changes in the landscape there. Before long, Oliver came galloping; he was clutching the skull of a roe deer that he had found lying in the heather. We discussed his discovery at length, imagining the former animal and pondering over what might have brought it to its untimely end. When we looked up, the sun had settled back further in the southwest and was cradled among the cliffs of the nearby island of Scarba.
I was in the midst of explaining to Oliver that Corryvreckan, the third-largest natural whirlpool in the world, lay just a few kilometres to the south of us, when I heard Ryan shout. I looked up to see him in the middle of the marsh we had crossed to reach the shoreline. He was still carrying Kendley in the carrier on his back, only now he was horribly cantilevered over his left leg, flailing his arms and visibly standing nearly a foot shorter than he ought to.
“Oh God. He’s gotten himself stuck in the bog”.
Sure enough, Ryan had tried to take a short cut back to the sheep track through the mat grass, but had put a foot down in the wrong place, only to sink up to his knee in the mire. Not only that, the weight of the baby and carrier on his back was driving him over, face first. But before Oliver and I could get to him, he had somehow managed to free himself and, quite miraculously, both his shoe and his poor knee were still in proper working condition. Kendley, in tears, was visibly shaken. The wind shifted and brought along with it a chill from the northeastern highlands. It was time to make our way back to the cottage where a fire and a pot of Scotch stew that had cooled all afternoon on the back hob of the little stove in our kitchen was waiting for us.
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]]>The post Aotearoa by Pictures: Part 1 first appeared on OliverTheWorld.
]]>When I recently purged the hard drive on my Mac in a vain attempt to rid myself of some obscure, persistent error afflicting OS X, I came across several previously unpublished photos from our two months spent RVing in New Zealand during June and July 2010. Rather than archiving them into obscurity, I sent them for a quick pass through Light Room with the hopes of giving them a new life on OTW. Don’t ask me why I never published a word on these adventures so many years ago. I have no acceptable answer, other than the fact that New Zealand was so profoundly, so indescribably gorgeous, that I fell completely under its spell for a sum-total of 70 or so days, and before I could utter a word, the whole thing was over. Yes, it was something like that.
In the following twenty photos (trust me, that seems like a lot, but I promise you won’t find yourself nodding off), I strive to capture the essence, from our perspective, of New Zealand’s magnificent North Island…from Wellington to Kerikeri and everywhere in between, but in no particular order. And for anyone who is curious, our weapon of choice was one chosen for cost and practicality over aesthetics. All photos are courtesy of our (since retired) lowly 12 mp Panasonic Lumix purchased in none other than Bangkok‘s notorious den of knock-off electronics, Pantip Plaza.
1) Pohutakawa Tree, Bay of Plenty We came across this old giant clinging to the coast as we began our broad arc around Bay of Plenty. Beside him stood a small, clapboard church, what with its prim little steeple, stood a silent sentry beside the old Pohutakawa as the sun sank into the bay. Inside, beneath the floorboards under the small baptismal font, a “whānau“, or extended family of southern penguins had made their nest, evidenced by the subtle fishy aroma when we walked through the doors.
2) Mt. Ngauruhoe, Tongariro National Park Home to two of NZ‘s most famous ski fields, Ngauruhoe, an active volcano, has had recent bouts of geothermal activity which has prompted several evacuations over the past few years. Many folks will recognize this mountain as the incarnation of Mt. Doom in Peter Jackson‘s Lord of the Rings films.
3) Pukeko This handsome fellow is a pukeko, which is the Maori name for the New Zealand or Purple Swamp Hen, and is a swamp-dwelling member of the rail family (hence those sexy legs). Unlike the kea, kākāpō, kōtuku or the extinct moa and huia, the pukeko is one of the few birds native to NZ that has flourished since the arrival of man. We found him one morning grazing at our campsite in Rotorua.
4) Tokumaru Wharf, East Cape Some of New Zealand‘s most impoverished areas are found in the East Cape region where the largely Maori population continues to remain culturally isolated. To me, this barren and windswept landscape is more so the heartland of this indigenous people, what with its pastoral valleys, sweeping bays, crumbling piers and hilltop maraes.
5) Love. Here is one of the few photos (and incidentally, my favorite) capturing an actual PDA between Ryan and I. We are on Auckland’s North Shore (Devonport) on Mount Victoria, looking across the Hauraki Gulf at the volcanic Rangitoto Island.
6) Horses, East Cape Waaaaayyy out on the tip of the East Cape (about 2 hrs north of Gisbourne), we found Reg at Eastender Horsetreks who took us across rivers, into the waves, up steep hills and deep into the bush. Never mind the fact that this was the first time Ryan had ever sat on top of a horse!
7) Oliver Leaping At the Goat Island Marine reserve, we ogled snappers as they cruised under a glass-bottom boat. Later in the evening, we parked our campervan on a particularly wet, grassy hill and found ourselves stuck fast the following morning. Luckily, the local farmer/home stay owner was on hand with her tractor to pull us out.
8) Stranger at Piha Beach Both Piha and Karekare were two of the most sublime beaches we visited during our time in New Zealand. Black sand swept up from the Waikato River was scalloped into a glittering fish scale lattice-work by the retreating tide, which, at its vanishing point in the horizon, lifted off the earth in an ethereal metallic mist.
9) Cathedral Cove This particular spot along the Cormandel heaves with tourists in the on-season (150,000 pass through each year); a great many of whom come to take in the famous view that links this beach to Mare’s Leg Cove through a natural stone arch. On this particular day, we were the sole visitors, and the shot that intrigued me the most was this one of Ryan, looking through the arch, as I looked through the surrounding pohutakawas at him.
10) Holding My Baby outside Te Puia‘s marae. As part of our time in Rotorua, we just HAD to get our Maori on, so we hangi-ed and haka-ed over at one of the best cultural institutes in all of Te Whakarewarewa.
11) Bridal Veil Falls Fifteen minutes from Raglan in the Waikato region of the North Island, the Pakoka River plunges 55 meters over sheer sandstone and basalt cliffs. The lushly forested descent to the lower plunge pool recalled waterfalls we had seen previously in Australia’s Far North Queensland, or even Northern Thailand; both an indication that the very top of New Zealand verges on a sub-tropical climate.
12) Auckland Harbor or Waitemata Harbour, is an iconic a seascape as any other in the country. The Maori named it after volcanic obsidian, in accordance with the way it gleams darkly in the sunlight.
13) Asleep at “Home” Our 5-berth motorhome was where we lived for all of 10 weeks throughout our tour of the North and South Islands. Oliver‘s carseat was strapped to the far left bench at the very back, which converted to a fold-out queen-sized bed by night. In addition to a sensational off-season discount, the kind owners of Adventurevans NZ threw in a crate of toys and goodies to keep the little guy occupied during our long hauls.
14) Megaladon at Kelly Tarlton’s Sea Life Aquarium visiting KT’s was one of those impulsive decisions that we tend to make when Oliver spies something that remotely resembles an aquarium out of his periphery. Traffic stops, heart palpitations ensue, and we are reminded of the fact that “there might be amazing sharks in there, probably about a thousand that I have never even seen before” (indeed, he is keeping a tally). We were recently forced to disappoint him when aquarium in Paris wanted the equivalent of $75 for entry, but in this instance, near Auckland’s Harbour Bridge, resistance was futile.
15) Tidal Stream at Karekare Just due south of Piha Beach where the Waitakere Range drops precipitously down rain-forested ravines onto black sand beaches, Karekare is a place where I would like to go and grow old. This place is isolated and wild, accessed only by a small unsealed road that winds around the cliffs; and is frequented by few, aside from the lonely surf patrol that minds the rip in the warmer months.
16) Sunset Near Whakatane We caught this view on the final few miles up the Bay of Plenty between Whakatane and Mount Maunganui. It was as if an enormous beating heart had pulled us right inside itself and was drawing us from one chamber to the next. For twenty minutes, I barely breathed.
17) Bolton Street Cemetery with a View of Thorndon Wellington’s oldest cemetery, which dates back to 1840, is located near the birthplace of NZ‘s best known writer, Katherine Mansfield. The cemetery, which sits in a suburb outside Wellington, is a great place for tui-spotting.
18) Road to Kawhia-Raglan We love visiting surf towns all over the world. Raglan has its own place in the endless summer, although in New Zealand’s brisk winter months, it was all but forgotten. We caught a moment of paradisiacal late afternoon light on the deserted track leading over the ridge from the one-coffee-shop town of Kawhia en route to Raglan.
19) Ollie & the Giant Kauris 2,000 years ago, the Tane Mahuta sprang from seed. The Maori believe him to be the “life-giver”, in that he tore his parents, the earth and the sky, away from their embrace so that life could begin. While Ollie was not allowed to hug the extremely sacred and largest living kauri tree in New Zealand, he shared his love with another of his smaller sisters.
20) East Cape Driftwood Three years after taking this photo, its location still escapes me. A forgotten beach on some isolated shore; old tree bones bleached by cold Pacific waters and a silver light that could be owed to either dawn of dusk.
The post Aotearoa by Pictures: Part 1 first appeared on OliverTheWorld.
]]>The post Christmas Market Crawl first appeared on OliverTheWorld.
]]>Throughout the month of December, as we made our way through Northern Italy and into Slovenia before finally coming to rest in Austria for the holidays, we had the occasion to peruse several of Europe’s best Christmas markets – also called Adventmärkte, Weihnachtsmärkte and of course, Christkindlmärkt. While we miss friends and family in particular at this time of year, the ‘Christmas Spirit’ embodied by these markets and the festive atmosphere that we were able to appreciate and enjoy truly made this holiday like none we had ever experienced before.

Stop 1: Verona, Italy
The first signs of the season began to appear while we were in Verona, Italy, a city that shares a tradition of aligning itself with Nuremberg, Germany over the holidays. A romanticized town in its own right, Verona was made to seem even more so trimmed with glittering lights and freshly hewn pine boughs. A meandering Advent market began in the handsome Piazza dei Signori where typical wooden stands clustered around the statue of Dante Alighieri, whose dour expression and crossed arms appeared to rebuke the surrounding merriment.
“What’s his problem?” our five-year-old scoffed. “Does he have an attitude like that guy wearing the same dress in Ferrara?” He was referring to the statue of the puritanical and ultimately schismatic Girolamo Savonarola; and if Dante had indeed overheard our son’s comparison, I was fairly certain the poor guy would be tossing in his grave.
The market flowed on beneath the whalebone arch (where its namesake dangled precariously over passersby and was said to fall upon a person who had never told a lie; oddly we were all left unscathed) to the bustling Piazza delle Erbe, where an enormous Christmas tree stood hemmed in by the surrounding palazzos. Vin brulè (literally, burnt wine) sellers stood shoulder to shoulder with folks selling aged cheeses, cured meats and artisanal chocolates.
After a visit to the vastly overrated Casa di Giulietta, where Oliver posted a letter to Shakespeare’s tragic heroine (“Dear Juliet, Seriously, who would want to kiss a girl? That’s just disgusting!”), we left the city via the Piazza Bra, where the ancient Roman amphitheater was fitted with a giant steel shooting star.

Stop 2: Ljubljana, Slovenia
After Verona, we had set our sights on the Christkindlmarkts found in the small townships of the Alps, all the way from Italy’s Trento Alto-Adige region into Austria’s Southern Tyrol. However, early snows in Balzano and Innsbruck, combined with our car’s lack of winter tires, were enough to keep us away from the Brenner pass, so we diverted our route into little-known Slovenia. The end result was potentially the wisest decision we had made in a long time, as the air of festivity in Ljubljana was the finest and most intimate we experienced over the entire holidays.
Beginning at the Dragon’s Bridge, delicately-lit willow trees ushered our family along the high banks of the Ljubljanica River into the glowing heart of the Prešernov Trg (Central Square). Here a massive Advent market spread through the old city like spokes on a wheel; everywhere cozy wooden booths were nestled side by side, and vendors turned out everything from loose spices, wooden cutlery, and hand-spun cotton candy to bags of Slovenian Christmas tea. Various corners of the market were devoted to grilling heaping plates of Ćevapčići, a grilled meat dish that originated in the Balkans. Everywhere was the sound of vendors tapping their ladles against the ember-warmed metal drums that contained red and white varieties of kuhano vino (cooked wine) and medica (honey schnapps). Dedek Mraz, or Father Frost, made an appearance as we crossed the Triple Bridge, and as resplendently dressed as he (she?) was in a floor-length white fur coat and matching fur cap, both our kids still mustered the courage to accept the small sweets that were offered. As an organ grinder’s nostalgic tunes wafted through the air, the old castle atop the hill in the center of the city, Ljubljana Grad, turned from shades of blue to pink to brilliant white.

Stop 3: Graz, Austria
It was unexpectedly difficult to pull our selves away from Slovenia, particularly after a day-trip to Lake Bled hinted at the natural surprises that could be found in this tiny country. Nonetheless, we needed to put distance behind us, as Vienna, our destination for Christmas, still lay nearly four hours ahead of us. We made a short stop in Austria’s second-largest city, Graz, and were treated to a number of easily accessed Christkindlmarkts throughout the city. The Engelsspiel-Pavillon (translation: angel’s game) in front of the Rathaus (City Hall) featured an old-fashioned carousel and one particular vendor who turned out freshly-pressed waffles topped with cinnamon and sugar, which conveniently became our children’s meal of choice for the next 48 hours. In the nearby Landhaus courtyard, 50 tons of crystal-clear ice had been arranged to form a nativity scene that would prove to be as ephemeral as the aura of the holiday itself.

Our favorite Christmas market, however, was the atmospheric Aufsteirern Weihnachtsmarkt on the Schlossberg hill. Accessed by a number of steps, a futuristic glass elevator and a modern funicular, the old ruined fortress straddled a small, forested mountain that literally rose up from the city’s center. The market was staged inside the open-air bowels of the castle that were hewn from the mountain itself. Inside, lanterns and chains of lights set the room aglow as carolers in Tyrolean hats shared table space with visitors who clutched steaming mugs of glühwein (mulled wine, with our without a shot of brandy) and glühmost (mulled cider). Various folks had staged their wares in niches in the castle wall; one served raclette, a Swiss style of cheese melted inside its rind, scraped onto toasted dark bread and topped with fried onions; while another browned Käsespätzle, fresh German-style egg noodles, cheese and browned onions in a large iron pan. In another little alcove, Oliver and Kendley rolled, baked, decorated and bagged a dozen Christmas cookies while we waited.

Stop 4: Vienna, Austria
The Christkindlmarkt has existed in Vienna since the Middle Ages, and the city boasts no fewer than thirteen separate and distinct markets over the holidays. The largest market, 1) Wiener Christkindlmarkt at Rathausplatz, spilled out in front the Gothic-styled City Hall, and was framed by trees draped with heart-shaped lanterns. Everywhere were tourists of every make and mold, snapping up painted glass ornaments, winter hats and bread bowls full of hot goulash. Booth after booth was chockablock with heart-shaped Lebkuchen that wished passers-by a Fröhliche Weihnachten or a Glückliches Neues Jahr.
The imposing building rising up behind the festivities had itself been turned into a gigantic Advent calendar; twenty-four of the illuminated windows along the façade had been fitted with numbered green curtains.

2) The market in front of Karlskirche was popular in our camp for a few particular reasons: the pony corral, the nativity scene complete with live animals (both occupying the area where the fountain had been emptied for the winter), and the ride-on Christmas-themed toy train that looped around several of the booths. Unfortunately, all of that nonsense set us back nearly ten euros and left us with a screaming toddler whose pony did not lope quite quickly enough to her liking. A bratwurst here, an Apfelpunsch there, and we were off to see more.

3) The Wintermarkt at Riesenradplatz was stumbled upon by accident, really. We had been gifted with nearly a 50°F cloudless day just after Christmas, and the kids needed to air themselves out after having been buried under a small pile of new toys for the past 36 hours. Right beside the giant Ferris wheel at the entrance to the Prater amusement park (one of the oldest in the world), the market had shed it stalls of ornaments and baubles, and was instead set on plying exhausted parents with glühwein, candied, toasted almonds and regional pastries. Another slice of Sachertorte was just what the doctor ordered.

4) Last but not least, the New Year’s market in front Schönbrunn castle. After spending a full day at the Tiergarten, the Hapsburg family’s private menagerie turned world-renowned zoo; we whetted our appetites on Nockerl (dumplings) and Baumkuchen, a traditional pastry that is made to order on a spit by brushing on even layers of batter that are then rotating over a heat source. Oliver set his sites on a hand-made doughnut that was custom filled for him with vanilla and chocolate custards while he watched. Everywhere there were traditional handicrafts left over from the tide of Christmas travelers that had descended on the city for the last two weeks of the year. Beyond the market, the Baroque balustrades of the palace apartments, the frost-covered rose gardens dormant for the winter; there stood the Gloriette, theatrically gleaming down from where it stood high upon the hill.

The post Christmas Market Crawl first appeared on OliverTheWorld.
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