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Saturday Thoughts

November 10, 2018 at 10:07 am by Claudia

I took this photo earlier this week and now, due to rain and winds, those leaves are on the ground. Both Don and I felt a bit blue yesterday because it got much colder and we had a strong sense that the temps had officially moved to ‘winter’ mode.

And we’re not big fans of winter, to put it mildly.

It’s windy today, but sunny.

I’m remembering a couple of questions that were raised during my travel posts.

One reader asked if it was hard to find vegetarian food while traveling. The answer is that is was surprisingly easy. The French and the English love their meat, that’s for sure, but we could always find a vegetarian option on the menu, and quite often, a vegan option. Even on the first night we arrived in Paris, jet lagged and exhausted, we wandered into a bistro down the street and the lovely man behind the bar said he could whip up a salad for us with hard boiled eggs and nuts and other sources of protein. And he did. It was quite tasty.

The world is changing. Vegetarian and vegan options are becoming mainstream. Don thinks that eventually, maybe not in our lifetime, but at some point, meat will be a thing of the past. Raising animals for meat is not all good in terms of the environment, and for both us, it’s not at all a good thing morally. We could never go back to eating meat. Nor do we have to, when there are so many wonderful options out there, so many more than there were when I first became a vegetarian over 30 years ago. I pray for the day when we no longer kill our fellow innocent beings for food. When I don’t have to see cute pictures of cows on the kitchen walls of those who think nothing of turning around and eating them. Or when millions of turkeys are no longer slaughtered so humans can celebrate “Thanksgiving.”

I also pray to do better myself, because though I am consistently vegetarian, I am not consistently vegan. And I still wear leather shoes.

Another reader asked what I meant about the trip being transformational. Well, it was transformational in a few ways. Moving beyond the borders of this country and visiting another country, another culture, is always transformative. We escape the bubble in which we live. We see the world with fresh eyes. We meet people, talk to them, get different ideas and points of view. We see a world that exists quite nicely apart from ours. We also learn about issues that are important to those who live in whichever country we are visiting.

My awareness expands. My world expands.

Also, traveling involves constant visual stimulation and a constant flow of information. Seeing the Seine at all times of day, learning about the history of Notre Dame, or the Tower of London, or the ancient and now gone theaters in London that were once gathering places for live theater. Talking to a cab driver about Brexit: “Well, we’re a democracy and we voted for it, so that’s what’s happening.” Talking to another cab driver about being born in the East End and being a true Cockney. Grappling with the fact that Paris was occupied by the Germans in WWII. That London was bombed repeatedly during the Blitz and seeing the evidence left on the walls of buildings, on the walls of the Tower of London.

I got a greater understanding of history, of the patterns that keep recurring, of the past and how it is echoed by our present. And that there’s nothing new under the sun.

The trip took us far away from the States and into completely different worlds. How could that not be transformational? Also, with all the stress and insanity of the past two years here in the U.S., it was an enormous gift to leave it behind for 2½ weeks and just be. I cannot tell you how much that meant to us, how much we desperately needed it.

We were with each other 24 hours a day, every day, and we loved it. We travel well together. We miss that sense of being away from everything, just the two of us, completely and utterly engrossed in new sights, new sounds, new things, new people. To be honest, we’re still having a hard time adjusting to being back and, if we had unlimited funds, we’d be heading back there shortly.

I felt more free there than I have in years. I felt as if I had wings.

Anyway, I hope this answers those two questions. If you have more, feel free to ask.

One last picture of a sunny porch filled with potted plants. It’s going to get very cold at night this week, so these lovelies will soon be no more. That always makes me sad, but at the same time, I’m grateful that they’ve lasted this long. I fully expected to come home and find them gone due to some freak hard frost, which often happens in October.

Currently reading Michael Connelly’s newest, Dark Sacred Night. Excellent, as always. Lee Child’s newest just came out a few days ago. Susan Hill’s newest Simon Serailler mystery comes out on November 20th. And the great Louise Penny’s newest will be published on November 27th. I’m excited about all of them. The positive side of colder temps? Tucking into some hot cocoa and a good book.

Happy Saturday.

In the Meantime…

November 9, 2018 at 10:08 am by Claudia

Since all of my posts have been about our trip to France and the British Isles of late, I thought I’d do a little catching up today. Some of these photos have been on Instagram, so if you follow me there, you’ve most likely already seen them.

I did some antiquing and treasure hunting over the past couple of weeks.

I was hoping to find one of these well-known marmalade crocks in England, but I never had the time to do any antique shopping. Darn! I had a feeling that the same woman I purchased the cubby cabinet from would have some in at least one of her locations. I gambled on my pick of the locations and it paid off, as she had several. This is the one I chose. It’s old, has lovely crazing and makes me happy. I also got a round ironstone butter pat as well as a set of six Noritake butter pats.

Yes. Another collection. I like them. And they’re small, which is now a necessity in this tiny house, already jam-packed with collections.

The other day, I stopped at a local antique shop and found these:

Another Fiesta/Harlequin egg cup in a dusty rose.

And a tiny little pitcher/creamer from England.

It’s been warm enough this week that I was able to open the front door and let the sun shine into the living room. But that’s changed as of last night. A hard freeze, with all the catalpa leaves on the ground. My porch plants look like they’re hanging in there so far, but it’s only a matter of time.

Sigh. Both Don and I remarked this morning that it seems like a big change happened last night and we’re heading into winter. This is always a hard transition for me and it gets harder every year.

The bush that I wish was elsewhere always wins me over at this time of year. This is a shot of our burning bush taken from upstairs in our bedroom.

I cleaned up my desk the other day, which had become completely covered with paperwork and things I gathered on our trip. Then I sat in my chair, did some work on my laptop and listened to some bossa nova music. Occasionally, I would turn the chair toward the dollhouse and eventually, I found myself looking for my rubber mallet. The result:

I demoed the staircase and the wall that separated the living room from the kitchen. I cut some dowels to hold the ceiling up until I come up with some pillars, perhaps flanking a kitchen island.

It looks a lot roomier, which is what I wanted.

Here it is with some furniture so you can get an idea of where I’m headed.

The island would probably be right behind that chair. I’m thinking of beams on the ceiling. We’ll see.

Finally, I was sitting here in the den on election night with my back to the window, which faces west. It had rained hard all day long. Don wasn’t here, he was headed home on the bus from NYC. Suddenly, the room turned orange and I turned and looked out the window, grabbed my phone and ran outside. The entire sky was this color:

I’ve never seen anything like it. As I turned back to the house, I gasped.

A rainbow spanning the sky behind our house.

A double rainbow:

On one horizon was a glorious sunset. On the other was a huge rainbow.

Then the sunset turned to this:

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite so spectacular in our 13 years here. Yes, great sunsets. Yes, the occasional rainbow. But both at the same time? Never. It was incredible. I called Don, who was on the bus, and told him to look out the window and he managed to see the rainbow and the orange sky.

I took it as a good omen. Turns out it was.

Happy Friday.

Edinburgh, Part Two

November 8, 2018 at 11:41 am by Claudia

Just a side note: get ready for more insanity from that sorry excuse for a man for the next two months. Just like a cornered rat, he will do anything and everything to try to stop the Mueller investigation before the Democrats take over the House in January. Fortunately, Mueller is a thousand times smarter than him. I’m sure he’s figured out every move T will try to take. I’ve seen this analogy a lot: Mueller is the Master Chess Player here. T can barely understand checkers.

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Okay. On to Edinburgh. We were in Edinburgh for about 36 hours, so we could only see so much. I let Don take the lead, as he had never been there. Same with London.

We headed to the Prince Street Gardens and the walk to the Castle.

This is the statue of Sir Walter Scott that is part of the Scott Memorial.

You can see it on the left in this view from the other side of the gardens.

Somehow I had never gone inside Edinburgh Castle during my previous visit, and Don definitely wanted to go there.

We paid the entrance fee and explored the Castle.

I have one photo for you other than the one above, because it was so damned windy up there that I was afraid I’d get swept over the battlements! We did watch a film on the history of Scotland and its soldiers that was very interesting. It was beautiful up there, high above Edinburgh, but incredibly cold and windy.

A stained glass window inside the Castle’s chapel.

Eventually, we got so cold that we made our exit.

We headed further into Old Town.

The library. I love the inscription above the door.

We stopped for a snack at a ‘patisserie.’ Were we back in Paris? Hot chocolate for me, a sweet concoction for Don, and these.

Scones, clotted cream and jam, because I knew that Don had to sample this staple of the British Isles. He, of course, loved them.

As we walked along, we encountered the famous statue of Greyfriars Bobby.

Greyfriars Bobby was a Skye Terrier who spent 14 years guarding the grave of his master until Bobby himself died at the age of 16 in 1872. His master was buried in the graveyard of Greyfriars Kirk. I told Don the story of Bobby and we saw the Kirkyard across the street so we decided to explore it.

This is one of the oldest buildings in Edinburgh, completed in 1620.

A dark and windy day, rather appropriate for a visit to the Kirkyard.

All around the edges of the property are private graves, with monuments, many of them decaying.

I learned from a gentleman that I’ll soon introduce you to that the iron gates that kept these family sites private were taken down and used for the war effort during WWII, which explained something that had puzzled me – why were the sites so exposed?

Bobby’s grave. “Let his loyalty and devotion be a lesson to us all.”

We were walking around, discussing the grave markers when a man appeared and started explaining one of the gravesites to us in his charming Scottish brogue. His name was Wallace. He appeared out of nowhere, like the Scottish version of a leprechaun. But he is very real. He is a trained volunteer at the Kirkyard. They are a devoted group who appear every morning at 7 am to clean up trash and debris and share their knowledge of the history of this place with visitors. Wallace ended up taking us around the entire Kirkyard.

It was one of those moments where we thought to ourselves, “This is what the whole afternoon will be about.” By that, I mean, it was unexpected and magical and we were connecting to a lovely man and his spirit in a way that was rare. Whatever else we had planned was shelved. We also learned so much about the history of Greyfriars.

From Wallace:

• Greyfriars was where the Scottish Covenant was presented by the Covenanters in 1639, which said, in essence, that they would only pledge their allegiance to God and not the King. The King did not like that, and 1200 Covenanters were imprisoned in the Kirkyard while awaiting trial. They had very little food or shelter and townspeople would do their best to sneak food into the Kirkyard for them. I saw the gates behind which they were imprisoned – I can’t imagine what they went through.

• Bodies were wrapped in linen and were buried only 12 inches below ground. When the weather is wet, bones often rise above the ground and the volunteers mark the site with a stick and then go back when they can and push the bones back underground.

• J.K. Rowling, as a single parent who had very little money, used to write in the Elephant Cafe, which overlooks the Kirkyard, and she drew much of her inspiration for the first Harry Potter book from there. Many of the character names were adapted from the names on the tombstones. The George Heriot School, which is just beyond the grounds of Greyfriars Kirk, was the inspiration for Hogwarts.

Don and I are not Harry Potter fans, so we had no idea of any of this. Of course, now we want to read the series, having seen the real-life inspiration for its settings! It also explains why we saw so many young people taking pictures of the grave markers and the school.

• During WWII, Hitler instructed his soldiers not to bomb Edinburgh Castle. First of all, it was a directional marker for the flight to Glasgow, which was the site of industries that Hitler would want to obliterate, and secondly, Hitler planned to take over the Castle when he won the war as one of his private residences.

Behind these gates is the inspiration for Hogwarts.

The George Heriot School.

Wallace and I by the gravestone for the master of Greyfriars Bobby. Seems strange to be smiling, but after you’ve been there a while, you become entirely comfortable with the history and the gravestones and Wallace’s passion about the Kirkyard, as well as his wonderful sense of humor.

At one point, Bobby was in danger of being carted off by those who didn’t understand his devotion to his deceased master, but the children who lived nearby and an Edinburgh official banded together to protect him and allow him the freedom to come and go from the Kirkyard, just as any citizen of Edinburgh. One of the sextons would make sure he was safely inside the yard each night.

Don and Wallace in front of the grave marker for William McGonagall, considered the worst poet in the English language. Wallace quoted a few poems for us and they were, indeed, terrible. McGonagall is the inspiration for one of the characters in Harry Potter.

Wallace, by the way, made an appearance in Braveheart.

Thomas Riddell was the inspiration for the real name of Voldemort.

“Robby” robin, who lives in the Kirkyard and sometimes lands on Wallace’s hand.

I can’t tell you how much our time with Wallace meant to us. We still talk about him. He is gentle, kind and funny man who is devoted to his volunteer position. It was what I would call a Holy Encounter: spiritual, unexpected, and incredibly powerful. Our day turned into a journey that we didn’t expect and are profoundly grateful for.

Wallace may be in Florida as I write this. He and his wife were headed there for a vacation and I think it was about two weeks after our time there. Enjoy the sun, Wallace!

Just a quick note about our hotel, The Principal George on George Street. It is situated in three Georgian buildings that have been combined to form the hotel and it was wonderful. Gorgeous, with a great staff. They gave us a complimentary upgrade before we even got there, so we had a huge corner room with a king size bed and a beautiful view.

Our view:

Incredible restaurant – the best meal we had on the entire trip – with a great breakfast, as well.

There we go. Fini.

We headed home the next day.

And now it’s back to normal Claudia posts. I hope you’ve enjoyed these posts from our trip. It’s been a pleasure sharing them with you.

Happy Thursday.

Saturday Thoughts

In the Meantime…

Edinburgh, Part Two

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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