Venice

In the spring of 2014 we took a two week trip around northern Italy. It was my first time in the country and our first stop was Venice. Expectations were high, to say the least - could the city live up to all of the cliches? Spoiler alert - yes it could!

What could I possibly say about Venice that hasn’t already been said? Probably nothing as I am not a Venicistorian and neither are you, but I’m gonna give it a go.

The island of Venice is situated off the Eastern coast of Italy and is accessible via boat or train. We stayed on the neighbouring island of Lido, which is quieter even though, unlike Venice, it has motorised land vehicles (commonly referred to as cars). We ended up staying on this picturesque island because it was a bank holiday weekend in Italy and we were priced out of the fancier hotels on Venice island. No way is this guy paying over a £100 a night for a 2* hotel!

We forked out for a Best Western hotel instead, which was delightful. We arrived on the hottest day of the year so far and the temperature continued to rapidly rise... The room we paid for had air con, however we weren't allowed to use it. Apparently 26 degrees is not A.C. weather in Italy. In Britain that is hot enough to walk around with only a thin piece of fabric separating your genitals from the world. But not hot enough for chilled air in Italy. (I did find out this was for environmental reasons, as air con isn't used until June, as a rule, and this was only April. I’m all for saving the environment but the CO₂ that bellowed from my lungs as I moaned and complained about the heat probably cancelled everything out, so they might as well have turned the A.C. on).

As I sit writing this, on a beach surrounded by men and women wearing jeans, I start to question my temperature control. Am I going through some kind of early on-set male menopause? Is this how Scots feel when they wear shorts in five degrees and call me a southern pansy? Or is my South England attitude / culture / acclimatised body the perfect model?

Lido beach - definitely worth a visit if you're in Venice during the summer.

The downside to having this British temperaturement is that it makes us stand out like tourists more than I would like, as we never seem able to blend in with the locals' attire. And besides, my five Italian phrases are rarely used, as I only ever get responses in my native language. It is both the curse and blessing of a native English speaker. It's incredibly helpful to navigate the globe as almost everyone speaks a little bit of your language, but impossible to learn a language as everyone wants to practise their English.

Anyway, we have spent the last two days walking for miles around Venice, taking in the beautiful buildings and delicious foods. The sheer visual beauty of the place both during the day and at night really added a feeling of warmth and romance like no city we have visited. Unfortunately when this is coupled with excessive consumption of delicious food with many generous scoops of gelato, one struggles to reach that romantic climax as often as one would like.

I'd like to say we limited ourselves to one
gelato a day, but I'd be lying.

Venice has no cars, no mopeds, and it does not stink – that myth has officially been debunked by one of England’s greatest sniffers. I realise that calling myself England’s greatest sniffer makes me sound like either some kind of deranged glue addict or a human version of an overly forward bottom-smelling dog. But I am neither. I am merely an expert in bad smells thanks to having an older brother who enjoyed the nasal torture of his siblings and a diet that didn’t help the situation either.

We decided that going inside museums wasn’t going to be our thing in Venice. I would like to say that I love learning and love culture. But so often going around museums is too structured and organised to allow the sort of creative learning I like. I need to dip in and out of cultural learnings and not be overwhelmed by information in one burst. I feel museums are often too much like that teacher in school who loved to lecture at you for an hour rather than let you express your own understanding and thoughts on a subject. That coupled with the exorbitant museum entry fees really left us little option but to sit in piazzas and drink coffee and Spritz (the Italian Pimms!), staring at the beautiful museum buildings. What a shame!

We walked and we walked around Venice enjoying the sights, tastes, sounds, and lack of smells. We wanted to be more observers of beauty than tourists of destinations. I didn’t even make a note of anywhere we went besides seeing the Grand Canal and St Marco’s Square – two things even a blind man could see walking around the city.

As it was a national holiday, the city really was quite busy, so places like this were a little
overcrowded for our liking. Still, it's a pretty fantastic sight to behold and well worth a detour
from the maze of side streets.

The square isn't really visible here, but it's a lovely photo and in the right area!
The famous St Marco's Square did flood at night, which is when we realised what all of the wooden boards had been lying around for - they were a makeshift walkway across the water.

Some people choose to sit on beaches for 10 days, drinking margaritas and watching the waves splash into the sand. We chose to sit in restaurants and cafes guessing people’s ages and nationalities. I think you can learn a lot from just watching people go about their lives. It puts certain things in perspective, especially in such a romantic, idealised city.

  

Back to Lido and back to the beach. As I write there is this giant flying beetle wasp thing that seems particular fond of the free crisps we got given with our iced drinks. I was told to ignore it by our waiter but I feel like it’s one of those natural things that I seem ancestrally scared of. Like birds pooing on my head when flying over me. Actually maybe that came from when a bird pooed on me after a particular hair cut in Manchester... by an Italian man. Too many coincidences. If a coincidence is really a coincidence, why does it feel so contrived?

Also there is a metal stair case that protrudes onto the beach spoiling the view somewhat. However it will take more than these things to throw me off my stress-free existence at the moment. Having a city so full of romance, culture, beauty, and food with a beach a mere twenty minutes away is something of a dream scenario. And the alcohol helps too.

Before sharing a carefully selected snippet of the hundreds of photos we took of this breath-taking city, I will just briefly mention the train ride from Venice to Verona. We ended up sitting opposite a Czech man and Argentinean woman who were delightful. They were friendly and we very much enjoyed swapping stories. We also forgot to validate our ticket but no-one checked – ka-ching!

 

 

Los Reyes

Spain loves the Three Kings Day more than Christmas. It is a Christian celebration, a.k.a. Epiphany, that I was fairly ignorant of until a few weeks ago. The celebrations started on our first full day in Spain and involved a huge parade through the centre of town. We know we're special but even this was a warmer welcome than we expected. The centre of town was at a standstill, marvelling at our arrival to Valencia. It was reminiscent of the Carnaval thrown when we arrived in Brazil.

There were floats full of adults and children throwing sweets at the huge crowds of people. It was delightful to watch and ended with an address from the Three Kings to the thousands of little people who stood waiting in a wild frenzy. 

The kings declared "You shall be good kids! You shall tidy your rooms! You shall eat vegetables!" and everyone went wild.

We noticed how many toddlers there were just out and about at midnight on a Friday. Whether this is a holiday thing or a Spanish thing remains to be seen.

The next day was a public holiday and this is the day when kids are given their presents - a whole week after Christmas. 

So far our time in Spain has highlighted the friendiness, party-loving attitude, and intense Catholicism that exists in a large portion of the population. This combination is going to lead to a lot of interesting experiences and we shall be reporting on them with the the usual candor and amusement.

Christmas markets were still up in January for Los Reyes!

So many people!

First tapas while we hid from the crowds.

Seconds after this photo was taken, one of the stilt walkers stacked and fell over. She was okay.

The traditional cake that comes with a crown!

Ice skating in the sunshine in 15 degrees.

Next we will be diving back in time to 2014, when we had two wonderful weeks in Italy.

Stay tuned mis amigos.

A New Start

And breathe. 

It's been over two years since our last blog post. Rio feels like a distant memory. South Korea feels like a forgotten dream, with the blog being the fading recall during your morning tooth brushing. Except the blog doesn't fade, it acts as an anchor in time of our thoughts, fears, and actions during many transformative experiences. 

Well, the blog's back so guess what? We're about to embark on another trans experience.

Most of our friends and family know we are moving to Valencia, Spain. Why? In the words of the dude who climbed Everest, "Because it's there". Also we're taking back control of free movement before Brexit removes our freedoms to take back control.

What will we be doing? Well we were supposed to be arriving jobless but Katie is too efficient and has landed a job before we landed a foot on Spanish soil, so she'll be teaching English. I will not be working. Well, I will not be being paid for any work. No, I am not volunteering but I am attempting to make a dream a reality and test my own entrepreneurial skills. More details to follow once things are a bit more real and a little less fantastical.

One thing's for sure though - Blog of the Morning Calm is back! So expect posts on all things Spanish, as well as some of our other travels that we haven't shared with you yet. You see, I have been writing blogs on all our holidays for the last five years, waiting for a time to post my insights, rambles, and snaps from around the world. I'll be using this platform to relive our hols, flex my writing muscle, and build up rapport with the virtual world. So take a deep breath and get ready. This shit just got professional.

Brazilian Frutas In My Mouth

I have done my best to be informative and enthusiastic in my food posts from Brazil but I must admit that generally speaking the food hasn't really thrilled me. That was a bold statement and maybe hindsight will change my mind but as it stands there is just one thing that I miss eating now that we have we left, and that's the fruit.

Brazil is the only tropical country in South America (or so Simone said in the cooking class!) and the fruits there are like nothing I've ever had before. Okay so we ate a lot of delicious watermelon in Korea, incredible mangoes in the Philippines and of course Britain is great for apples and strawberries...but the variety of fruits in Brazil is mindblowing and I honestly have never eaten pineapple like that before. I have a lot to tell you about and am worried I'm already writing too much so I'll try to keep the word count down...

We'll start with an easy one - pineapple. 

I say easy one, but we actually encountered two types of pineapple in Brazil. We didn't manage to try them side by side so cannot tell you how they differ from each other but none of it tasted like what we have in the UK. For starters, there is no woody central part. All of the flesh is edible and wow, it's juicy! It is also very sweet with hardly any of the acidity that one might expect. Definitely a winner and one of our most regularly selected juices. The taller ones you can see at the back of this photo have quite pale flesh and Dave bought a bag of it at a service station once, plucked from the back of a van and very skillfully chopped right in front of us. I will confess though, that I never bought one from the supermarket because I just don't possess the strength required to break into those bad boys!

Barbecued pineapple is a Brazilian classic. It tastes pretty good, especially when sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. Just remember to peel it before you grill it!

What are these bizarre and intriguing looking things below? Okay they are just grapes, but don't they look weird! They actually tasted pretty much like standard grapes though. 

This next fruit is a custard apple. We had trouble describing the flavour of the juice, but when we tried to actual fruit it was a bit clearer - somewhere between a mango and a pear. I'm not a fan of pears so would rather just eat a delicious mango but it is definitely interesting and worth trying.

Bananas are everywhere in Brazil and there are quite a few varieties, but since they all pretty much look the same, we didn't take any photos. Now we all know how I feel about bananas so clearly I didn't do any taste testing but this is what people told me about them:

• Banana d'agua (water banana) is the kind we have in the UK and these are considered the basic banana in Brazil
• Banana ouro (gold banana) is the smallest and sweetest kind
• Banana prata (silver banana) is not very sweet and takes a long time to spoil. This kind is sometimes used in the savory dish farofa, although traditionally that should be made with...
• Banana-da-terra (plantain) is not sweet and is commonly used in savory dishes in many different countries.

Ok I can't resist any longer, I need to tell you about açaí! This was by far the most significant fruit discovery of our time in Brazil and I am going to try really hard to keep this brief. Açaí berries grow on a tree in the Amazon. They look similar to blueberries and have purple juice. Because they are perishable and hard to transport, most people in Brazil only really know the fruit in frozen form. It is sold as a frozen pulp, which is then blended with sugar and sometimes honey, banana, strawberry and even guarana - a berry that contains about twice as much caffeine as a coffee bean. Açaí is considered a superfood, and you may have come across it in health food shops, but the way it is prepared and eaten in Brazil means it is highly calorific. Nevertheless, people eat it in huge quantities, especially by the beach. And in Manaus, which is a city in the middle of the Amazon, we managed to try fresh juice, although it really just tasted the same as the frozen stuff.

I have heard the flavour described as being like a cross between chocolate and raspberries...I'm not sure I agree with this, but can't for the life of me think of a more accurate description! If you want to try it for yourself, either book a trip to Brazil or come and visit us in Maidenhead where, if you're lucky, we'll let you sample the açaí liqueur we brought back with us.

Below is a fruit called inga. We were given loads of it by the "local" people we visited in the Amazon. It grows in pods that are about two feet long and the black seeds are roughly the size of a plum stone. The white part is edible and has a subtle, sweet flavour with the texture of wet cotton wool. If I had to compare them to anything it would be lychees, although I'm not too sure why. They are definitely the strangest naturally occurring thing I have eaten.

This little fruit below is called umbu, and unfortunately by the time we found out about it, the season had passed. We did get to try it once - the skin was quite thick and by the time we got into it, most of the juice was running down our arms! The flavour was very sour and citrusy, like a more flavoursome lemon. I'd love to have tried it as a juice and will make a mental note to try it again if I get the opportunity.



Next up is possibly the most controversial fruit we encountered - Cupuaçu. It's the things in the photo below that aren't bananas. After several tries, I decided that I definitely do not like it, whereas David is still torn. We had it as juice, in chocolate, as a kind of jam and as ice cream. Without sugar it is truly disgusting and with it...well I think it's probably the Marmite of the fruit world.

This was the first really weird fruit we tried in Brazil and as disgusting as it was (we made the error of not asking for sugar!), it didn't put us off. After that, we tried as many different fruits as we could and they almost all came in the form of juices.

This is acerola, which we saw translated on menus as "Barbados cherry"...whatever that is! This fruit is very high in vitamin C and has an extremely sour flavour. It is often combined with other juices, usually orange, and we even had it in a caipirinha once. It has a stone in the middle and a texture somewhere between a cherry and a grape. 

This is a bottle of suco de caju - cashew juice. Here is has been made into a fizzy drink but it is usually served as a normal fruit juice. If you have never considered where cashew nuts come from, I suggest googling it - it's fascinating! The juice tastes a bit like cloudy apple juice, with a subtle nutty aftertaste. Quite nice really, but not something I'll miss.

One of our favourite places to get juice was Bibi Suco - a relatively healthy restaurant that served juices made from frozen pulps. We probably liked them so much because they were a bit like a slushy and full of sugar! Below you can see blackberry on the right, which tasted just like a coulis! And on the left is caja, another Amazonian fruit containing a lot of vitamin C. The fruit itself looks like a small mango and tastes very sour and "tropical" - similar to a mixture of orange and mango really. It became one of David's favourites and I think he does miss this one.

Other juices we tried were watermelon (my favourite), pineapple and mint, tamarind, mango, strawberry, custard apple, and Dave's absolute favourite, graviola. Someone recently pointed out to me that graviola juice can be bought here - Rubicon make it and call it guanabana. Having tried it at least a dozen times, the best we can come up with is to describe the flavour as a bit like pineapple, or just generic "tropical" flavour. It's white in colour with quite a thick consistency and makes an amazing ice cream.

Finally, I'll leave you with this photo. Some of these fruits you'll be familiar with but there might be some you don't know. Starting at the top left and working clockwise we have: honeydew melon; papaya; more melon; passion fruit (yes they really are that big and yellow in Brazil! And they were by far our favourite fruit for caipirinhas); mango; guava; bananas.

This photo does a good job of summing up our trepidation each time we tried a new juice!