Upon
my graduation from Willamette University in 2004, former beau, AJ, and I
desperately wanted to travel; however, I had not yet made my millions with my
Anthropology degree nor he with his Rhetoric and Media Studies degree. How do you travel Europe without any
money? Teach English as a second language! We worked for a few months, saved enough for two
plane tickets plus some extra food and wine money and headed to Barcelona. Living on a teacher’s salary in the States is
hard enough, I am told, but working in a foreign country as an “irregular”, as
we illegals were called, was really tough.
As an irregular, we were paid less than an EU citizen for doing the same
job. Sound familiar? Bottom line, we had to put the traveling on
hold a bit and just enjoy our newly found local, ex-pat and other American
friends.
When
we did manage to save a bit of travel money, we figured a quick jaunt across
the border to Portugal was an economic way to slake the travel bug thirst,
pauper style. After eight years, what I
remember the most: the wonderfully friendly and accommodating Portuguese people;
how similar the written language of Portuguese
is to Spanish, though not the pronunciation; the Algarve coast with its breathtaking red cliffs; and most poignantly, the
delicious, orgasmic, melt in your mouth, don’t want to swallow for fear of
never tasting such a thing again, seafood.
I
have been back in the States now for six years.
Many people have heard me say that if I didn’t miss my family and we
hadn’t have run out of money, I would still be living in Barcelona; I loved
it. Needless to say, when Jonathan and I
decided to embark on this chuck it, sell it, store it European adventure, I was
ecstatic! Furthermore, when I realized
that our first farm hopping stop required that we fly into Lisbon, Portugal, that
was it. I was dabbing the drool from the
corners of my mouth! And, imagine my
additional excitement at the prospect of sharing my love for Portuguese cuisine
with my new cheffy husband!
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| PigWizard & Baby Bird, Europe at Last! |
After
an amazing week of hanging with my new family in Dawsonville, Georgia (love you
guys!), we hopped an I don’t remember what time plane to London (neither of us slept more than an hour on the plane but that's a whole other story), and laid over
for 4 hours before boarding our last 2 hour leg to
Lisbon. After a 20 minute cab ride with
an amusingly gregarious driver who ended most sentences with “man” (e.g. “You’d
be surprised how many Portuguese people have not been out of Portugal, man.”),
we arrived at our flat at I don’t remember what time. We found two cold beers in the fridge and had
a cheers on the balcony.
Exhausted
from our trip and, let’s be honest, from the last month leading up to the trip,
dinner consisted of a few potatoes and onions found in the flat, a zucchini, a lemon
and a bottle of wine purchased from the around the block Middle Eastern mini
mart (there’s one on every block and they don’t do siesta, which is a major
plus when you just need a few essentials and everyone else is napping). Sautéed
with a little bit of smuggled PigWizard chorizo (expertly packed in the checked
baggage to avoid the strip search that occurred in the Atlanta airport), delish
simple dinner, done and done.
Stay
tuned for tales of our breakfast of grilled sardines and snails…
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