The blue and green journey

An Italian guardian angel

marinamorais — Thu, 8 Oct 2015 06:35:00 GMT

Anyone that has ever been to Venice will tell you it’s one of the most romantic places they have ever seen, meaning it’s got all the elements required: water, high prices and corny rides. That said, I can tell you by experience Venice is perfect for single ladies looking for a good time. Unless they’re two Capricornian Film students with mother issues, previously called “troublemakers” in a London nightclub by two American guys who had evidently been huge nerds in their teens.

How you manage to have two Capricornians in the same trip and none of them has done their travel research is beyond me. Maybe it was the romantic side of our writer’s sensibility that called for spontaneous walks to see what would happen. Maybe this whole zodiac think is pure rubbish – although there is something different about people who have had holiday birthdays their entire life, with few or no friends coming to their parties; some call it trauma, I call it independence practise. The fact was we had seven days ahead of us and no plan.

The first day was entirely spent sleeping in our cute chalet designed for adventurous couples in their honeymoon. I don’t care for your judgement.

The second day, we woke up still freezing from the night before. It was unusually chilly for spring and the hostel was environmentally friendly, so the radiators were a private staff joke. The whole trip had been planned at the last minute, so we were staying fifteen minutes away by bus from Piazzale Roma, where the island actually started. It was incredibly cheap, but, like Cinderella, we had a midnight curfew for the last bus back to the hostel.

I could describe to you in detail every single stunning wonder we saw walking aimlessly around the island, but you can see – and I dare say feel – all that beauty by looking at any photo anyone has ever taken in Venice. It is that amazing. It is that pastel-coloured. It is that packed with tourist every minute of every day. However, not everyone will be able to give you full account of these other things:

First of all, there’s no ugly Italian in Venice. Apart from an old waiter who worked in a restaurant near Rialto and kept asking us to join him on a roadtrip across Italy and yelling “thank you Brazil” because we were just “too pretty”. But really, you can instantly tell the difference between an Italian man and a tourist in that city. Vanessa and I accidentally entered a university’s premises at some point and it was very difficult to get out, not because Venice is a labyrinth (it really is), but because there were too many gorgeous faces in one single place and we couldn’t move.

Once we were able to resume our wanderings, we saw plenty of awesome stuff sprayed on the walls. Like “Luca, capriccio infame!”. Or “coglione, ti amo!” – ‘coglione’ means idiot, and that sentence is actually quite relatable to anyone. We saw many beautiful giant dogs, too. Like, who would bring a regular dog to Venice?

As the afternoon was coming to an end, we came across the most wonderful piazza ever, full of immigrant children playing ball games and incredibly good-looking Italian students drinking wine, because once again we were accidentally close to a university. We bought a bottle of wine from a supermarket and just stayed there, making wiiiiild… eye-contact. Once we emptied our wine bottle (yep), we decided to buy some more in one of the bars around the piazza. The bartender spoke Portuguese and she had lived in Fortaleza. And hated it. Too much prostitution – Can you blame her?

I had studied Italian online for a while and was ready to ask this very complex question to the most handsome Italian man we could spot whenever the time came: “Which way to Piazzale Roma?”. Of course, by the time the clock struck eleven-thirty, I just walked inside the bar again and asked the bartender for detailed instructions in Portuguese.

We took the very last bus back to the hostel. Some dude started making conversation in English with Vanessa and I was half carefully observing them and half paying attention to our stop. Which we missed. I immediately pulled the cord so we could take off at the next stop, but the son-of-a-bitch driver decided he wanted to drop two young ladies alone in the middle of an empty road at midnight.

We walked for about half an hour without reaching anywhere. We had no idea how far from the hostel we were anymore, as there were no signs and the road made a weird turn at some point. Then we got to a residential complex and there was a car parking in. I waved frantically when one of the most handsome people I have ever seen in person came out of the car. But there was no time to admire his beauty just then. I just asked the lifesaver sentence I had learned on my online course: “Do you speak English?”. No, he didn’t. My moderate to highly drunken mind tried to put some words together to explain our situation. I wanted to tell him we had missed our bus stop on our way to the hostel, which was called Camping Rialto, and wanted very badly to know how to get there. What I said was something like this: “We… bus… no… Camping Rialto… where?”.

He shook his head. Obviously. But then he mimicked a ride offer. And just like that we realised Handsome Italian Guy was actually our guardian angel sent to Earth to help us in a time of need.

He found the hostel, we said “grazie” about a million times and, when we got to reception, there was a (non-environmentally friendly) portable radiator for us that the reception lady had managed to arrange.

Now, isn’t Venice romantic?

Parisian autumn sweetness

marinamorais — Sun, 4 Oct 2015 23:48:00 GMT

It was a beautiful and refreshing autumn morning. We left our tiny rented apartment at Quartier Latin and walked to Jardin du Luxembourg, jackets off. The three of us had to do our best to resist the fabulous smells coming from the plenty cafés and crêperies on the neighbourhood – some of which had one day been creative refuges to all those talented, young and drunk American writers, as I came to understand better after reading Hemingway’s “A Moveable Feast” a year later.

Funny thing about Paris is it seems to have stayed the same as decades passed. You can easily shoot a film there set in the 1920’s or 40’s and have no trouble changing things on location or in post-production. No wonder Tour Montparnasse is hated by every single one of the Parisians. A skyscraper in a city that tries to resist time sounds rather unfit, right?

The grass was green, the flowers were turning from pink to orange and the leaves were falling off the trees in the most dream-like October scenery. We sat on a white bench facing the Palais and took some time writing a group note to a couple of friends who would be there in a few days. Carol hid it by a green wooden structure that held a small unimpressive tree. It seemed like a safe place no one would bother messing with. I picked a particularly cute orange leaf from the ground that I still use nowadays to mark one of my journals. It makes me think of Paris every day, involuntarily as it is.

We walked from corner to corner, taking pictures, admiring the statues and making plans for the day. At some point, we spotted the best tree ever to sit on. I can hardly see it being topped by any other tree on that merit, seriously. The only reason why we left that spot was we had only three days in Paris and it seemed like a stupid way to waste them. On our way back to the tiny apartment for a quick lunch, we passed by a gorgeous church façade. I will even risk my very little respected opinion by saying it was prettier than the Sacré Couer’s. It was called Saint-Sulpice and I took several photos on its white steps, because I really don’t care what other people think when I’m travelling and God would never punish me for my vanity when it was a church-related business, right?

So anyway, we stopped by a couple of stores before we reached the tiny apartment. Carol was blown away by a pair of socks exposed in a high fashion shop window and, once we were inside, she fell in love with ten other pairs, so it took some time before she was able to choose one and leave the shop with tears in her eyes for being too sane and not taking the whole stock with her. Lew spotted a pair of glasses in another shop window and we went inside to take a closer look. It was quite a traditional place and the very old owner had the most friendly dog at the doorstep, but the glasses were far too expensive, so we smiled our penniless student faces out with a Frenglish excuse.

There were two other stops. First, a pharmacy that won first place on my personal contest for Worldwide Worst Armpit Smell Ever, with two extra prizes for being able to extent the smell to the entire facility and for being a health-related place on top of everything. That was probably half the reason why we let ourselves be seduced by the smell of fresh muffins coming from a bagel shop near the Sorbonne. Man, was that muffin exquisite! Every country I visited, I tried a raspberry white chocolate muffin. Paris’ lost only to Stockholm’s.

After lunch, Carol, Lew and I took the tube to Montmartre. We took off at Abbesses station and were too impatient to wait for the lift, so we decided to take the stairs. Why on Earth none of us knew it was the lowest situated station in Paris I’ll never understand. The fact is we were thirty-six metres underground and had two hundred steps to take before we reached the surface. It was a cute walk and the walls were filled with lovely art, but we had very little time to enjoy the city, so it was a little tiresome, and it hadn’t been a sensible decision made upon the knowledge that those particular stairs were a beautiful artistic ride, so it felt kind of pathetic, as you can see.

I had been unimpressed about Paris my entire life, but Montmartre was too amazing not to fall in love with. The streets were gorgeous, the shops were cute, the architecture was quaint and the view from whatever high point you stood was unbelievable. Plus, it got this inexplicable bohemian air that made you feel sexy and flirty. We made the whole tour while the sun set. We took the funiculaire up, watched the awesome dude with the football do his tricks in front of the Sacré Couer’s steps, walked inside the church and got lost amongst the steep narrow streets. Carol and Lew decided to sit at a little restaurant to eat crêpes while I walked around buying postcards, pins and whatnot, because I had no money, but was spending it anyway. When I reached them, the waitress was bringing the crêpes and she spoke Portuguese, lovely lady.

Before we took the tube back to the tiny apartment –and I can never reinforce enough how tiny it was – we stopped by the Moulin Rouge. Of course we never got inside it, as we were neither rich nor incredibly good looking to get a free ticket. Instead, we just stuck around like most of the other tourists and found a giant fan thing to step on and incorporate Marilyn Monroe in front of the Moulin Rouge for the cameras (our own cameras, of course).

Cheesy, you say? I was in Paris, baby. Whatever.

Beautiful things are unforgettable

marinamorais — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 08:04:00 GMT

We were taking a trip usually reserved for those in one of the following three situations: on their honeymoon, away with the mistress, or in a post-retirement wedding anniversary. Only we were barely past our twenties and our budget was shorter than the clothes we were wearing on that hotter-than-the-sun September in Tuscany.

The lady from the guest house had already pointed out the cheapest places for us to eat – which, of course, were still more delicious than the most expensive restaurants in England, because Italian food is that ridiculous – and she had taken away any hope we had to visit the wineries without laughing at our penniless naïve faces. We loved her.

But Florence was quite small, considering we were going to be there for five days, so we decided to explore our options. And by exploring our options I mean getting in a random city bus and letting it take us some place we kind of knew existed near Florence.

Thank God it was hot and water was welcome, because we were drooling all the way to Fiesole. The view from the window, as the bus went all the way up five miles, was cuter than a baby panda. Florence is not filled with tall buildings like most cities. It’s packed with pastel-coloured houses and old-fashioned bridges, plus quite a lot of green. Once we actually got to Fiesole and were able to stare at the city from there, it looked like what I picture was the view the guards who stayed at the castles’ towers in the Middle Ages had.

We walked the entire town in about half an hour. Like most places in Italy, it had historical ruins open for visitation, but, like most places in Italy, we had no money to get in. So what was left to do was taking a nice hike to an old church even higher up. The view got better every step we took, though it always seemed impossible to get prettier. We walked past a beautiful white graveyard, filled with colourful flowers and occasional photos of the deceased. After eight months living in England, it was very weird to finally encounter my very Latin name, repeatedly written over the tombstones.

As we reached the peak point, we started our journey back to the centre of Fiesole, where we had spotted a couple of restaurants earlier. Needless to say, the food was amazing and we wanted to eat that spaghetti carbonara forever until we turned into a ball and could roll all the way down to Florence. Also needless to say, the restaurant had a beautiful view of the city. Fiesole as a whole was like the top of a giant skyscraper made of green and dirt.

We had walked past a gelato place before, but it was closed for lunch. European towns are full of small family businesses that can still afford to keep to the “lunch time is sacred time” tradition. And you never regret waiting. That gelato was magic.

As we got into the bus and were heading back to Florence, we saw a couple of wooden benches about halfway to the city, in the middle of nowhere, facing the view – evidently. And we took the bus back there half an hour before sunset the next day.

Few things my eyes will see in this life are going to top that sunset. It blew my mind, and opened my mouth. I went on and on about the spectacular experience we were having at such a young age and how maybe we would never come back there and, if we did, we would not have the money to do that for years and years ahead.

Because that’s what beautiful things do to us. They amaze us and get us depressed all at once. And they’re unforgettable.

Photos: Profile

marinamorais — Wed, 27 May 2015 03:55:00 GMT

Portmagee, Co. Kerry

marinamorais — Wed, 27 May 2015 03:27:24 GMT

I can never thank my past self enough for having stuck to the plan.
I had messed up. After having already bought the tickets to Kerry Airport, in Ireland, and paid for a room in a pretty island called Portmagee, I found out it took two buses and a taxi to get there, as neither my friend nor I had the money to rent a car.
Thank God we wore broke. The entire bus trip we looked mesmerised out the window. Trees, mountains, rivers, sky - it was all a splendid mix of blue and green. Bookworms like myself tend to keep in a mind box the best images created while reading landscape descriptions. We hope to physically find them one day, but how can nature compete to the vastness of imagination?
Well, it can. County Kerry looked like a living ghost of readings past.
The taxi picked us up in a gas station. Bill was a retired truck driver who turned his van into some sort of community taxi just to keep moving. The man went ballistic when told we were from Brazil. All his passengers were enthusiastically informed of our nationality too. They spoke Irish Gaelic, but he reminded them from time to time to speak English in our behalf.
He was so excited he decided to drive around a little longer, so we could take a better look at the place and listen to what he thought should be shared. At some point, a very humble man in his nineties stepped in. He told us he used to be an Olympic athlete. He had even been to Brazil once. There was a lot he could still remember from his golden years.
All the way to Portmagee our ears were dazzled by extraordinary stories while our eyes were still astonished by the raw beauty of the Irish countryside. The view from inside the car was idyllic. Industrial progress seemed like a terrible nightmare we had just woken from that morning.
Every time we passed another car or a pedestrian, the drivers would honk and the people would wave. We would later find out that was just out of cordiality and they didn’t even know each other. I felt like a Disney character about to sing and dance for a musical number.
Bill informed us Portmagee had less than four hundred inhabitants and its main street, by the quayside, could be entirely walked in three minutes.
He dropped us off. It was mid-September. With Summer finally giving in to Autumn, the weather could not be better. The tiny island smelled strongly of salt and fish.
Never before had I so truly assimilated what they say about how we should cherish our journey, no matter how great the destination. I do now.