Andorra

This job comes with more holiday time than I've ever had. It also comes with more paperwork, a longer commute, and longer meetings than I've had. Andorra was great fun.


ANDORRA'S CAPITAL: ANDORRA LA VELLA


WAITING FOR THE NIGHT TRAIN BACK TO PARIS


SKI LESSONS


THE WINDSWEPT SLOPES


As always, Paul made all the travel arrangements. All I had to do was pack! We took the Eurostar to Paris and enjoyed a meal and a walk while we passed the time until our night train to the French/Andorran boarder. Our trip home was the same thing in reverse. Those two weekends in Paris came right after the birthday/proposal weekend in Paris, making for three weekends in a row in that romantic town. Isn't life grand?

We skied every day but the last when we took a bus ride through the rugged mountains to the capital city to check out tax free shopping. The people were friendly, and the slopes offered everything we wanted except snow. We got spoiled by the snow in Colorado last year. Still, the prices were low enough that we could afford two mornings of private lessons with Alejandro from Argentina. My skiing vastly improved thanks to this and then slowly deteriorated as the week went by and I drifted into old habits. More lessons next time!


Mom and Dad are coming to Europe for the first time since I moved over here. Actually it's the first time since I graduated from high school. Along with seeing some English sights, the four of us are going to Rome for Easter. Look for my next blog to be about that.

Hope you are all well.

recipe for turning forty

Turning 40 has all kinds of attachments, I guess. People raise their eyebrows at the very least anyway. For me, it’s been as easy as turning 20 and 30. Maybe I’ve found the perfect recipe.

Ingredients:
Europe
Younger boyfriend
Paris
Travel

▫ First move to Europe a few years before turning 40. This will make you feel like you’re 27 instead of 37.
▫ Find a younger boyfriend. Not too young mind you. Like an avocado that you press the stem end for ripeness, you can check a younger man’s readiness. Has he settled into his career? Does he have a savings account? Does he own real estate? These are good ripeness tests. But you don’t want over ripe. Is he spontaneous? Does he like to travel? Does he like to dance?
▫ Spend two years meeting your boyfriend in romantic places all over Europe. I recommend Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, and Lisbon.



▫ The last ingredient is a bit out of your control, but this is true of many recipes. You can mix everything together perfectly but the oven may heat unevenly or the humidity level may cause your cake to fall. It takes some luck. Your boyfriend takes you to Paris for your birthday, just one night. He takes you to the Moulin Rouge for dinner and the show. Then he takes you to the Trocadero to view the Eiffel Tower at night. While sitting on the steps, he asks you to marry him. Accept.

I love forty!

city gardening

I returned from sunny South Africa and it’s plethora of flowers itching to do some gardening. The weather here was obligingly mild, so I put my front garden plans into effect. We have a ledge beneath our bedroom windows. It exists because the upper floors of all of the buildings on our street are recessed from the ground floor about three feet. It’s not a balcony really, just a deep ledge. The back garden consists of flower pots on deep window sills. I guess this is city gardening. The realtor in the business beneath us smiled encouragement each time I passed him on my way in and out of the flat to the back of the buildings where I had soil and pots stashed by our trash bins. We now have a row of lavender that will bloom all summer and can be trimmed like a hedge, bordered with rhododendron, fuchsia, and finally a lemon scented evergreen at both ends of the row. Now when we look out the bedroom windows, we see green instead of tar and roofing material. I’ve also got some pots with tulips from our last trip to Amsterdam and two pots with geraniums from the summer that should have died months ago. I don’t have the heart to kill them, so they sit out of favor in the corner. One has flowers on it! Last week, winter finally arrived as the photo shows. We woke to a winter wonderland that seldom occurs in London. The plants are fine, and the geranium has another bloom on it.

South Africa

Happy New Year!

The best way to deal with London’s dark and wet winter is to go south, and Cape Town did not disappoint.

I’ll stick to the highlights. If you want more, please email me and I’ll go on and on. We were there for twelve days, and Paul made sure that we did something new each day. I’ll give them to you in order.

Day One: We flew from London to Johannesburg in the dark and without a window seat, but on our leg from Joburg to Cape Town, Paul was upgraded to a window in business class and gave it to me. I spent the entire flight looking out that window at my first glimpse of Africa. Joburg seems to go on forever with townships dissolving into mines and then into flat, red earth with only a few roads and one snaking river to break up the land. As we neared Cape Town, the landscaped changed to row after row of jagged mountains and deep valleys. Green crept into the landscape and the rock turned to grey and white. As we started our approach, I spotted Robben Island, where Mandela was imprisoned, and the steel blue of the Atlantic. We turned and Table Mountain entered my view, not from the angle of the photos I’ve seen, but recognizable. As we finished our turn, I spotted a wide curving shore, False Bay and the other side of the peninsula that begins with Cape Town and ends with Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope. On that day, I would have called it the Indian Ocean, but I have since learned that Cape Agulhas is Africa’s southern most point and where the fish and plants that live in the water are more similar to the Indian than the Atlantic. Whatever body of water it is, the combination of oceans on either side and Table Mountain in between is a spectacular introduction to the city.

Day Two

Paul’s parents, Neville and Jenny, drove his sister, Melissa, and us to Cape Point, the end of the peninsula. We stopped on our way at Boulder’s Beach where African penguins have taken up residence. The beach is open to the public, but only a limited number are allowed each day. A section has been closed to swimming and walkways have been put in so the birds can be viewed without disturbance. On the road south of Boulders, we encountered the first of many baboons with their young. This group was paying tag on the gate of someone’s driveway. Once in the nature reserve of Cape Point, the houses disappear. The road is high above the sea and the landscape is low growing bushes and a profusion of flowers I’ve never seen before. We parked and walked to the first lighthouse. A second was built lower down the cliff because of prevalent mist higher up. We walked along the eastern side of the point to a viewing platform above this second lighthouse. By now, I knew I wasn’t looking at the Atlantic and the Indian, but this doesn’t diminish the feeling that standing at that point brings. From there, we walked west to the edge of the Cape of Good Hope and then down to the sea and another parking lot where Neville and Jenny waited in the car. Paul and Melissa have been here several times but were moved to wonder about the feelings of men like Diaz and da Gama as they rounded the point just as I was. I got my first of several sunburns on this day, tricked by the cooling sea breeze into forgetting I was in Africa after all. We ended the day with sundowners at a restaurant on the beach. Sundowners are drinks that you have while you watch the sun sink into the ocean. We sat on a large patio filled with suntanned and relaxed people. The view of the 12 apostles, a mountain range running behind Table Mountain, was spectacular. Our meal close by was of melt-in-your-mouth steak, unlike anything available in the UK. Yummy.

Day Three

Stuart and Laura live in the UK but were also in Cape Town for the holiday and invited us to go to a game park. We drove east through landscape that reminded me at times of eastern Wyoming, northern Oklahoma and northwestern Utah. Four hours later, we arrived at our destination, a beautifully decorated/designed resort with animal skins on the walls, a swimming pool, and thatched chalets for us to sleep. That evening, we were driven around the park and saw elephants, rhinoceros, giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, springbok, impala, and bontebok, which is my favorite. With night, came a dazzling display of stars, and I saw the Southern Cross for the first time. Orion is in the southern sky as well, an old friend.

Day Four

We had another drive through the park and saw everything again as well as a huge lion in the distance. These are kept in an enclosed area, separate from the others. We visited the cheetah enclosure as well. Two were sleeping right next to the fence. A guide took six people at a time into the enclosure of two others that were free to move about even though they stayed put. It was a bit unnerving to be in there with them like that, especially when we left and walked with our backs to them.