A walk through Palencia

(If a picture is worth 1000 words, a regular computer must be worth at least 5.5 netbooks. I definitely use my computer much more often than my netbook. It's easier to type on, faster, and just plain prettier. Really, the only thing my trusty but slow netbook has over my beloved laptop is an SD slot. And that, dear readers, is only important when one is meaning to create a picture post. Say, in order to introduce one's blog audience to one's new home. I'm afraid it hasn't happened yet. But: what kind of writer would I be if I relied solely on pictures to give you an image of the place? Let's see what I can do to paint one first. The actual photos will come later.)

So, you're a traveler arriving to Palencia on the bus. You arrive in the station, grab your bag, and walk out into the late-September sunlight. You're on a non-descript street with a park on the other side, a dusty and much-used children's climbing structure in the center. You're not sure what direction to go and ask a couple of bored-looking teenagers, who point toward a round-about.

At the roundabout, things start to get interesting. There's a shoe store whose window is stacked with knee-high boots, a pizza place, a typical Spanish bar with metal countertop and stools. Even at this time in the afternoon, when the streets are empty, there are people there reading the 'Diario Palentino' and drinking hot, sweet espresso out of tiny cups. You walk past a shuttered bakery whose window is piled high with glossy truffles, fluffy cakes, and cookies packed with nuts and chunks of chocolate. Mental note: come visit later.

At the other end of the intersection you pass onto Calle Mayor, the nervous system of the city, a narrow stone pedestrian street that makes up most of Palencia's downtown. Beautiful old buildings in various archetectural styles and soft colors rise on both sides, most supported by columns that form a colonade for walking underneath. At first, the Calle Mayor resembles an outdoor mall--and in many ways it is. Flashy fashion boutiques crowd one after another, jockeying for space with banks and cell phone stores. But start to look carefully, and you can find almost everything you need here. A bakery, wafting the scent of new cookies into the street; Pilar's Imprenta for all your stationery needs; an electronics store; a supermarket; a coffee shop. This side of the Calle Mayor is particularly architecturally stunning. The Provincial Office is here, with a spun sugar spire; an old university facade looks like a Venetian Palace. On one side a brief passage leads to the Plaza Mayor, or town square, a small but bustling stone plaza where children play in the evenings on the statue in the center. On the other is a street that opens toward the cathedral, whose pinions are topped in those same evenings with a flock of storks and whose grandeur is surrounded by one of the town's only true plazas, filled with trees and open-air cafes.

You reach the halfway point. Calle Mayor is bisected by Calle Cestilla, a bustling automobile throughway. If you turn right here, you can find the striking coral city hall, topped by white icing flourishes. You'll find the city's theaters here, too, and the green cast iron Mercado de Abastos, filled with butchers and produce stands. But you keep going straight, and the pedestrian street continues.

A grand casino with turn-of-the-century architecture serves famously delicious meals on one side of the street, a laundromat and fabric store shore up more fashionable shops on the other. In a few moments, you can see 'La Gorda,' the smooth soapstone sculpture of a woman that marks the street's only fork. Walk to the right and you'd eventually find yourself on the banks of the Pisuerga river, with its assortment of stone and metal bridges arching over the green water, ducks swimming underneath and branches trailing in the current. But you choose to walk to the left, and the end of the Calle appears. You've reached the Parque Salon, an expanse of manicured trees and flowers that features children riding merry-go-rounds in the evening and whose benches fill with the elderly as the sun goes down.

Past the Parque, continuing north, the town changes. To the south, the city has an old, classic feel. Now, you are in modern neighborhoods, apartment buildings whose first floors are packed with bars and shops. The Plaza España welcomes you with a fountain and a scattering of cafes. Soon after you pass the boxy Escuela de Idiomas, where students of all ages study German, English, French, Italian. You see busy playgrounds set with spindly trees and clusters of churches in brick, concrete, sandstone.

Walk far enough and you will pass the rusty red brick walls of the Fabrica de Armas, a working gun factory. Keep going: now there are car dealerships, industrial warehouses, a giant mall, a hospital and famous nursing school. If you had enough time, you could walk all the way to the edge of town and into the hills--and from there you could see the whole town, the neighborhoods dissolving into the plains beyond, and a giant statue of Jesus Christ (called the Otero here), watching over everything.

The last 48 hours, in more ways than one

Here I present to you: a description of my last few days in Ireland. Afterwards will come pictures of Ireland aplenty. All the while I am frantically packing. I leave on my flight for LA at 11:30 Friday morning. My itinerary looks like this: Boston --> San Francisco --> LA --> Hong Kong --> Kunming. It is going to be a LONG trip.

So: after staying up way, way late with Ollie talking about all manner of interesting things and looking at an old book all about little towns in Ireland, I curled up with the dogs in their bedroom (yes, the dogs have a bedroom) and slept well. In the morning, I had a simple breakfast and then Brenda and I went to Graignamaugh, which sounds kind of like Grandma when you say it but not quite. The drive to Graignamaugh was just as magical as the town itself, more of the Irish Countryside You Thought Didn't Actually Exist, with incredibly green, rolling hills, shetland ponies, dilapidated barns, old farmhouses whose roofs are no covered in ivy and leaves from the trees growing in/through/around them. In Graignamaugh, Brenda took me to a very old Abbey which has been reconstructed as it was in 1000something AD. It was almost completely empty and had beautiful glass windows and a diorama of what the full abbey complex (which is no longer standing) would have looked like. Afterwards we took a walk along the Barrow, which is another little river, like the Nore in Inistioge, that divides up the countryside. We saw all sorts of painted barges on the river, from Travellers (that's the word these days for gypsies) who come through.

I had to catch the bus back to Dublin in time to see "Shirley Valentine," the play Emily set designed for, so Brenda drove me back into Thomastown, but not before Ollie had written down a list of typically Irish snacks that I should buy for the trip. I settled on Mariettas, a sweet, sort of vanilla-flavored biscuit. The ride back was quite wonderful, we went through a few towns we had skipped on the way down including a charming small city call Naas, but I actually fell asleep for most of it. Not before I spotted the partial rainbow as the clouds parted, though. No pot of gold that I could see-- alas.

Managed to meet up with Katrina and Emmalee and we again traipsed the city looking for a suitable restaurant, before deciding on fast food kebabs at a chain called Abrakebabra (harhar.) We were part of a ten-person audience at "Shirley Valentine," which was a one woman play, all monologue, but quite good and the set was excellent. Emily found out later that night that the play was selected to go to a national drama festival in North Ireland during St. Patrick's weekend-- very exciting. Post-play, we trooped over to Temple Bar again to discover Half Moon, a late night crepery with OBSCENELY delicious crepes. Colm, Emily's Irish kinda-boyfriend, came with us, and there we discovered another random cultural difference. Picture the scene:

Emily: [picks at her crepe, which has marshmallows and nutella in it] Why is the inside pink, do you think?
Colm: Well obviously. Marshmallows only come in pink and white, do the math.
Us: [staring at him] Noooo... marshmallows only come in white.

Turns out that in Ireland you can only buy marshmallows in mixed bags of pink and white. Another random cultural difference (also, Irish paperclips are gold.)

My final day in Ireland was the most touristy, mostly because it suddenly dawned on me that I was leaving the next day and I lost the tourist shame that kept me from taking too many pictures (how could I not take pictures of Brenda and Ollie? Honestly.) Emily and I had a leisurely breakfast and then she got me into the Book of Kells exhibit at Trinity for free. The Book of Kells is said to be one of the most richly decorated ancient books in the world (It was made in approx. 800 AD). There was a really interesting exhibit about how the ancient books were made-- binding, calligraphy, grinding the inks, etc-- and the book itself was really gorgeous. We also stopped by the Long Room at Trinity Library, which is basically this heart-stoppingly enormous hall filled to the brim with a copy of basically every book published in Ireland since the mid 1600s. The ceiling is enormously high, two stories, and every wall is filled with books. It was definitely a sight to see, but they sadly didn't allow photography. Emmalee and I waited for Emily while she went and did an errand, watching a Trinity a capella group perform on the steps of the Examination Hall, and then we went off to Bewley's Oriental Cafe, where we had fancy coffee drinks and scones and were generally touristy and caffeinated.

Next stop: St. Stephen's Green, an enormous landscaped park in the heart of Dublin. It was quite a lovely day, sunny and everything, and we had fun watching the ducks and admiring the greenery. Emily split off from us then, and Emmalee and I spent the rest of the day exploring North and then Medieval Dublin. Walking around North Dublin (the "sketchy side" of Dublin) was interesting because it was, indeed a little more dilapidated, but mostly just very different in atmosphere from the rest of the city. I think it gets a bad rap, though. It was still charming. Emmalee and I got special student tickets to go up the Chimney, a converted industrial chimney with an observation deck on the top. It felt like the excellent way to round out my trip-- the 360 degree view of the entire city felt like a perfect sum-up of the whole thing. Add to that that we had probably the best half an hour of light all day, and you have a magical trip-ending experience for E3.50. We had seen a really old-looking church from the top of the Chimney, and so Emmalee and I went to explore to find it. It didn't have a name, but the plaque outside told us that it was established in 988 AD. As we wandered across the Liffey into real Medeival Dublin, that number started to seem like the norm. Old Cathedrals, the oldest Pub in Ireland (established 1098 AD), a chunk of the original city walls. It was wonderful to think about these structures withstanding the forces of time as the city grew, morphed, changed around them. Another excellent way to finish my trip.

For dinner, we met Katrina at a Nepalese retaurant I'd read about in my book, which was quite delicious, followed by gellato at a hip store down the street in Temple Bar. The night was very relaxed, we bought jewelry, met up with Emily and Colm at the Palace Pub, where I tried Bailey's Irish Cream (it only seemed right), and decided ultimately not to go out dancing because it was late, Katrina wasn't feeling well, and the place we wanted to go cost more than we had thought. It was a fantastic last night, however, drinking in the city as much as possible, trying to remember the ambiance, the lights on the old buildings, the accents drifting from people around me. Enough to satisfy me and get me through the long trip home.