Stories from Spain: Up in the Air

Even with all the great sites and activities that Barcelona offers, the one experience I wanted to have while I was there was a ride in a hot air balloon. I’d checked out all the online sites before my trip, but I’d figured it would be easy to book the balloon experience when we were actually in the city.

I was wrong. First of all, it’s not called hot air ballooning in Spain. After three different travel agents puzzled over my request, the last which had me write it down for translation, I was finally told that I was asking for the wrong thing around town. And after all that trapezing around Barcelona looking for a travel agent to help me, I ended up having to book it online anyway.

Using fans to inflate the balloon on the ground.

After an hour drive out of Barcelona on the last day of our Spanish trip, the hot air balloon wish was going to happen. I watched as the two balloons were slowly inflated using fans. I have to admit that nerves had fully taken over by this point, and I was second guessing my choice of dream activities. I was afraid of heights. I was terrified of falling from great heights. Why had I thought this was a good idea?

Then it was time to get into the basket. I had definetly not thought it out because I'd worn a dress. At this point in our trip, I had exactly two outfits cleaned, and neither of them would have allowed a graceful entrance into the basket which for some reason I had in my head would have a door. I did manage to climb gracefully into the basket though and hop right in, though the whole time I kept hoping that no one would see me fall over into it, in a very unladylike manner. It was during our drill on what to do if we have a rough landing that did it though. Had I lost my mind thinking I was going to go up in a hot air balloon?

Once in the air though, I did relax some. I can’t say that the nervous feeling went away, but it did lessen. There is something about being in the air with no control over when you come down as well as the uneasy feeling that you will tip over the side of the basket that doesn’t make relaxation possible.

Landing wasn’t easy either. Once in the air, the wind determines your destination. It took over twenty minutes just for the wind to steer us to an area we could safely land. It actually took less time to deflate the balloon and pack it all in than it did to land.


Once back at the launch site, our guides poured champagne and toasted sandwiches on the hot air balloon’s burners. It tasted almost as good as my appreciation for being back on the ground.
Wonderful experience… but one I don’t feel the need to repeat. Although my fear of heights feels nearly gone. The fear of falling on the other hand could use some help.

The balloon being folded back up after our flight.

The view of the other balloon from the air. The views were amazing.

Our balloon operator toasting our sandwiches.

Stories from Spain: Bullfighting and Madrid

The Royal Palace

Spain is an old country. Everywhere one looks history stares back at you. Its buildings are ornate and old—and always beautiful.  Just in Madrid one can visit the Royal Palace built after a fire for the second time in the 1700s, or even an Egyptian temple dating from 200 A.D. Businesses still close every day for Siesta and the Spanish tradition of the bull fight is still performed nightly—in most places that haven’t turned their bull arenas into shopping malls.




In Madrid, we stayed at Hotel Opera which was across the street from the Opera house. When asking for directions to the hotel, we learned quickly that it is pronounced like Oprah, and not the way we normally pronounce it in America. We were able to walk everywhere. The palace was only a block away as well as all the sights we journeyed to during our four days there.




The Bull areana

And there were many sights. From parks to shops to museums, we attempted to take it all in. Of course, bullfighting is one of the main attractions in Madrid, as well as other places in Spain.
I will confess to having read nothing on an actual bullfight before I attended a fight at The Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas. I figured I’d learn everything I needed to know during the actual fight. In fact, I believed I was attending one bullfight until I was informed differently right before the fight began.

The matadors sent in early in the fight had pink/yellow capes.

The opening ceremony is a majestic and formal beginning to the elaborate farce – show-- that follows. I found the whole fight to be completely unfair, and I felt sorry for the bull the entire time. I never considered myself to be an animal rights activist, but during the show I could see why there had been a few protestors outside protesting the show, as well as why Barcelona had did away with their arena and turned it into a shopping mall.


The main Matador held the red cape.

I’d always assumed that a bullfight was one man against a bull. It turns out that many matadors exhaust and injure the bull before the main matador faces the bull. And then I had to watch this multiple times. We managed to last through four of them before we had to excuse ourselves from the remaining two. We did watch one matador get injured though and carried out of the arena by the others. Until this, I was cheering for the bulls, but after this, I was conflicted. I don’t like seeing people or animals injured. So I consider this an experience that I don’t need to repeat.


How every bull fight ends-- the bull is dragged out of the areana

While in Madrid, we also went to the bull bar. This bar has its walls covered in bullfight pictures as well as the heads of bulls. It was a wonderful place to take in the history of bullfighting with very nice bartenders as well. This experience, though some of the pictures were distressing to look at, was not a terrible experience and one I’d recommend checking out. In particular there is one gruesome picture involving a horn going straight through the jaw of a matador. It’s one of those things that you don’t want to look at, but you can’t seem to look away.

We also visited the oldest restaurant in the world in Madrid—Botin. This restaurant is known for its roast suckling pig which comes to you with its little face still attached. I refused to look at this while we ate so no one ordered it, but the food was great nonetheless.

I don’t know if it’s because it is the first place we arrived or it is the coziness of the city, but I have a particular fondness for Madrid. Beyond the bullfighting, it was a beautiful experience.



The Bull Bar

Stories from Spain: Airline Mishaps

Traveling anywhere far requires airline travel, especially if one is going to Europe and doesn’t own some private yacht that can get you there. So of course, the airport is where my recent journey to Spain began. If my airline travel would have been uneventful, I would have far less stories to tell, and what would be the fun in that? At least that’s what I tell myself now, but at the time I longed for a few less stories.

The journey to Madrid began in New Orleans. The woman who checked our baggage in kept mumbling about our luggage being five minutes late. She eventually called a supervisor over who approved it going through. This would come back on us when later reached Madrid and our luggage did not. More on that later though.

In Miami, we had a connecting flight to Madrid. When we boarded the plane, someone was sitting in our seat. It turned out the airline had given us both the same seat, and they had made it to the seat first. After standing in the aisle a long time waiting for the attendants to fix the problem, and having all the other passengers sitting in seats that only they were assigned to staring at us, we were assigned new seats in what luckily for us were two of the few empty seats in the back.

It wasn’t until we reached Spain that we realized that our luggage would not be joining us just yet. Discovering this in Spain presented a communication barrier being they spoke Spanish and we did not. At one point, the lady at the desk was trying to dismiss us in what I recognized as the tone you use with someone you think is being utterly stupid, but I had managed to stick my finger in my eye and was crying. Not intentionally, of course. But I did notice her tone changed when she thought I was crying. Not that it got us any answers or any more help in locating our luggage which didn’t arrive until the end of the second night.

Our airline stories did not end there though because, of course, we did have to trek back home eventually.

Nearly three weeks after arriving, our flight home from Barcelona was delayed six hours. First, the attendants came on and said thirty minutes, then it was two and half hours, then three and half hours. All to fix a mechanical malfunction. After four hours, we had finally boarded the plane and were idling and waiting for take-off only for the captain to come on and tell us they had fixed the wrong part and would be fixing the part while we waited on the plane.
Finally, six hours after we were supposed to leave, the captain came on in a tone of voice usually reserved for bad news (Seriously, he should work on that.) to announce we’d be leaving.

We were told we had to fly to New York for a fuel refill and crew change, but we would only remain for thirty minutes and then leave for our connector flights in Miami. Only when we reached New York, we were told we must exit the plane and go through customs. American Airlines did have everything ready for us waiting as we exited the plane though. Some passengers were able to get immediate connecting flights, but we had to stay in New York overnight and return to the airport early the next morning to fly directly into New Orleans.

Thankfully, that last part was uneventful and our luggage managed to arrive with us. I wouldn’t say airplane travel is my favorite mode of transportation, but it certainly offers experiences unlike any other. It after all, brought me to wonderful experiences in Spain, and many more stories that I will share over the next few weeks.

Summer Vacations

Summer vacations are a staple in my family. Since my children have been old enough to walk, we have packed them and what seemed like everything they owned into the car and driven to some theme park. When a family is broken though, family traditions tend to get broken too.

So this summer I decided to reinstitute the tradition of spending our vacation waiting in line in the heat. Of course, this also meant tackling another milestone, and taking my first solo parent vacation.
We headed out to Florida with a well-planned vacation to accomplish. I had booked hotels and bought tickets online all in an effort to relieve the anxiety of doing it on my own. I did not map out my trip though because I had my trusty GPS.

I placed too much trust in that GPS, though. To give it credit, we always managed to end up where we were going. We also did plenty of sight-seeing of the area on the way, and not intentionally. There was an incident where it told us to go right, showed me to go left, and in choosing between the two, I chose the wrong way. Just another sight-seeing adventure.

Disney and Universal were fantastic though. We have visited both of these before, so instead of trying to see or ride everything the parks offer, the kids chose what they wanted to do, and we only did those things. They found their favorite rides and rode them again and again. It was our first stress-free theme park trip.

We spent most of one day in Harry Potter World. We wandered up and down the street, exploring the different stores, even eating at The Three Broomsticks. Last time we’d gone two years ago, Cara hadn’t been tall enough to ride on the Forbidden Journey ride inside the castle. She was excited to get to do it this time. Waiting in line, she began to get nervous and asked a million questions about what the ride would be like. The ride ended up being a bit much for her to handle. She couldn’t walk straight after getting off of it and ended up falling on the stairs you had to climb down to get off of it. They both returned to ride it again in the afternoon. What can I say? I’ve converted both my children into Harry Potter fans. They each came home with another wizard wand from Olivander’s wand shop and memories from the park.

I also did something I’ve never done before. I lost our park tickets… the first day. Those tickets I’d carefully had Fed Ex deliver to me fell out of my purse at some point during the day. No matter how frantically I searched the next morning, the tickets could not be found. Not to worry though. I kicked into problem solving mode and took care of it.

So first vacation as a single parent equals success. I even convinced Andrew to get on an airplane for a future trip. That people is a life-changing event since the boy never changes his mind. I better book the flight before he changes back.

Wanted: Relaxation

What’s more appealing than being laid back in a lounge chair with no worries except for a good book or maybe even some fruity concoction? Nice visual, right?

Relaxation is nice if or when you can come by it. Of course everyone has their own idea about what is relaxing. When I visualize what it must feel like though, I picture some beach in the middle of sky blue and white sand with absolutely not a thought on my mind. Relaxation, any form of it, is something that proves elusive to me often these days (some would argue always).

Relaxation requires certain key elements that I don’t think I possess.

A few years ago I thought maybe I could try getting a massage to help relax. Everyone praises this activity as a high form of relaxation. I didn’t feel any shade of relaxation during the experience. I was told that I had difficulties relaxing several times during the hour massage. Tell me something I don’t know. Every summer I go to the spa to get a facial. It’s one treatment I thoroughly enjoy even though every year I’m told that I am tense and unable to relax.

So why does relaxing prove so elusive?

For starters, I never do one thing at a time and relaxation requires doing absolutely nothing. As I write, I will have the television or music going. I will also be reading Facebook or Twitter at the same time. I will read a book while I eat a meal or have a conversation while I drive. My multitasking activities are endless. If I’m not multitasking, I feel as if I’m not doing enough.

This past week I decided to try the massage again. Mindy and I went to Revive spa for facials and massages. The experience this time around was much more relaxing than it was years ago. But the whole time I actually had to concentrate on relaxing. How is telling myself to relax relaxing exactly?

Hence the second problem contributing to my inability to relax is remaining still. Considering that even sleep is elusive most nights because my thoughts will not stop wandering, the daytime with all its distractions is impossible. There’s a type of writing point of view called stream of conscious. No one would want to read even a ten minute transcript of my conscious thoughts as they are worse than a toddler hopped up on sugar.

Obviously, relaxation is an issue. I can’t even take a vacation that I just enjoy the experience. I typically take my children to amusement parks where I have to wait in line which causes endless frustration. Once I tried the beach and the lack of activities to multitask drove me crazy.

I’m going to try though. Vacation this summer here I come. Hmm… I might have to take up meditation or maybe someone can offer another great idea.

What I wish I’d been told at Graduation

As another school year comes to a close, my Facebook feed is filled with parents congratulating their children reaching the milestone of graduation. Today, children can graduate from kindergarten to seventh grade to whatever grade a school feels is a significant accomplishment. But high school graduation is the one that most people associate with the caps and gowns of graduation, and Wednesday night I attended the high school graduation of my first group of high school students.

Most graduation ceremonies are similar. Administrators and students deliver inspirational speeches about anything being possible and following your dreams. At the graduation I attended, the overwhelming message of the valedictorians was that anything was possible, the world was their oyster so to speak. And though our superintendent tried to temper the idealistic nature of the messages, ultimately graduation is about the promises of a great life.

It all sounds positive and optimistic, and hopefully many were inspired to do great things, but what happens when life begins to fall in on those dreams? Maybe if along with the inspirational speeches at my own graduation, I’d been cautioned on a few things, I would have headed into the real world with a different attitude.

What cautions should be given at such a momentous occasion though. I can think of a few I personally would have needed to hear. First, friendships require actual work when convenience disappears. Every day you’ve shared school experiences with your group of friends, but then that every day quality disappears. If you are lucky, you may prolong the growing apart by attending the same college, but eventually you will have a separate life, with different interests, and it will require effort to see your friends more than once a year, or worse at your high school reunion. Some of these friends will be worth the effort, but some will not. Do not let the ones who are worth it go. It is okay to let the ones who are not though; you will make other friends, who may not share your growing up experiences, but they will share your life experiences. Sometimes you will find friends in the unlikeliest places. You just need to be open to letting them in.

You will not want the same things ten years from graduation as you did that day you walked across the stage and believed you could do anything. Everything that you thought you wanted in your inexperience may not bring you happiness or you may figure out you don’t like those dreams at all when you achieve them. You will not disappoint your eighteen year old self by changing your mind. That self didn’t know any better. You do. Let it go.

Which brings me to, failure is a great teacher. Growing as a person doesn’t mean you succeed at everything you do. Learning who you are and how strong you really are only comes through dealing with the mistakes you make. Which means it is okay to fail. Don’t be afraid to admit you have failed and don’t hang on too long because you are afraid to admit you’ve failed. Life goes on and you can’t move on to something better until you’ve admitted you’ve failed.

Speaking of failures, people can change, but it doesn’t mean they will. More importantly, it isn’t your job to change anyone. You are only responsible to change yourself. People must want to change; you decide what you will tolerate and live with. If you can’t live with it, remember the above. Admit that you’ve failed in your experiment and move on because…

Time passes quickly. One moment you are eighteen with all possibilities open before you, the next you are 35 with responsibilities that hold you back. All those dreams you have will take a back seat if you get caught up with day to day life. If you really want to make them happen, you need to learn to pursue them relentlessly. Dreams don’t come true by sitting and waiting for opportunities to happen to you or for the people in your life to care about your dreams as much as you do and help make them happen. Ultimately, you are in control of what is done in the time you have.

Because when people say they wish they were back in high school, they don’t mean the heavy books, never ending homework, and social drama. They mean that feeling of unending possibilities. The feeling that anything could happen and everything is possible if you only go out and make it happen. It’s a longing for the time before responsibilities. It’s what every speech at graduation encourages, even though the speeches lack the cautions of how to avoid the pitfalls that most people fall into.

It’s probably just as well that graduation doesn’t go on and on with these precautions considering most eighteen year olds don’t listen to well-meaning advice anyway. But It’s nice to believe I would have listened to my own advice then. What do you wish you’d been told at graduation?

Beautiful Blogger Award

Thanks to my good friend Donna, http://mylife-in-stories.blogspot.com, my blog has been nominated for the “Beautiful Blogger” award. Her blog is homage to all things fitting a Southern Lady, and I’ve occasionally made an appearance within the stories. Being friends with a fellow writer is both thrilling and daunting. I always wait to see how our adventures will play out in her writing. Perspective is extremely important when reading about oneself.

The award includes the stipulation that I list five or so random things about me that you probably don’t know. (Of course this is difficult to come by if you read my blog. I do tend to say what’s on my mind regularly and expose all my flaws.) I’ll give it a try anyway.

1.       Patience is not one of my virtues. I do try (sometimes), but apparently it just isn’t in my genetic makeup. Everything needs to happen in my time and heaven help whoever slows the process down. I still attempt daily to have patience though.

2.       Messiness drives me crazy. I’m a fan of “everything in its place.” And everything has a place or I will find it one. Due to this one, I avoid my daughter’s room until just the thought of its messiness is too much, and then I spend the entire day trying to put everything back into its place (which contrary to what she believes, everything’s place is not the floor.)

3.       Music is my stress reliever. What can I say; with one and two, I need to have something to relieve the stress.

4.       I wear high heels every day which is what I’ve come to be known for, but most people don’t realize that I have just as many flip flops as heel (I’ll keep that exact number a secret.) I can either be found in one or the other, but never tennis shoes.

5.       I zone out…. Often. I maintain that my thoughts are ADD and focusing on one thing at a time is impossible for me. I have learned to drift in and out of a conversation and I have to assume I’ve picked up the right strain of the conversation when I return because chances are I will have just noticed your hair or shoes or some cool mannerism that I can add to a character in a later story.

But enough about me, I now have to bestow the award on a few other blogs.

http://www.blogher.com/frame.php?url=http://www.karilife.com

http://alicepyne.blogspot.com/

http://ididntchoosethis.blogspot.com/

http://tastefulsavorycreations.blogspot.com/2012/05/whats-for-breakfast-eggs.html

Home of the Dead

When sitting around a camp fire, one tends to associate ghost stories with the story of choice. There’s something about darkness, a dancing flame, and a good storyteller that is enthralling. One does not tend to associate history with these ghost stories, but many of them are filled with history. Not the history found in the textbooks in a history class, but the history of the people's culture. Though much of these stories are questionable in their elements of truth, much can be learned from these stories that are filled with drama, intrigue, and mystery. For this reason, I’ve always been fascinated with good ghost stories told by a well-practiced storyteller.

This fascination has led to the creation of my mystery series character Raleigh Cheramie who connects to the dead in the middle of dying. Listening to these ghost stories over the years has inspired me as I write about this fictional world of ghost connections. Writers often are told to write about what you know, and I've sought inspiration from all these tales.

I’ve found New Orleans to offer many opportunities to listen to good ghost storytellers. I’ve joined several tours with guides who’ve been inspired storytellers. This Saturday between rain storms, I finally did the cemetery tour and visit to local voodoo legend Marie Laveau’s tomb. This tour has been on my list of things to do for years, but it had never been moved to the top. As I’m working on the next Muddy series mystery though, ghosts are at the forefront of my mind. So in the spirit of not putting off what you can do today and all… the tour became the scheduled activity for the weekend.

St. Louis Cemetery Number 1 dates back to August 1789.

An Unmarked Tomb: The marking of three X's on Marie Laveau's tomb began with a tour guide as a tourist gimmick. Now, unmarked graves have been marked on in the attempts for visitors to have their wish come true.

This is the future resting place of actor Nichols Cage. He purchased two abandoned tombs and had this pyramid shaped tomb built.

This is the tomb of Homer Plessy, famous as the defendent in the Plessy v. Ferguson trial that began the "Separate but equal" law.

This is the famous Marie Laveau tomb. It is said that if you make three x's on the tomb, leave an offering, and turn around three times, your wish will come true. Writing on tombs is actually forbidden in the cemetery.

Up a Tree House Part II

In all the excitement of the tree house, I didn’t plan on one thing. The reaction. My son didn’t react as I expected to the tree house, and that initial reaction incited a reaction of my own that wasn’t pleasant.

His initial excitement of getting a tree house waned less than five minutes after seeing it. At minute six, he began to list all the things he found to be wrong with it. It was too small, it was too girly, it wasn’t what he wanted, etc.

I’ll admit that I lost it at his ungratefulness. Fine, I’d paint it pink and give it to his sister. This prompted him to tell his sister when we picked her up from school that she could have it.

Which, of course, cost him a lecture on how so many kids would be grateful to just have a tree house. I can’t be the only parent to ever use that argument, can I?

Fast forward twenty-four hours later to when he’s had time to think about it some more. I picked him up from school, and he tells me he’s changed his mind. He does want the tree house. I asked him what made him change his mind and his response was, “Because I probably won’t get another one.”

Probably? That would indicate there was a chance he’d get another one. There was no chance in hell that I was buying or putting together another tree house. Of course, the “good” mother part of me just nodded and said no, this would be the only tree house.

Then his grand plans for the tree house began. Now that he had accepted the tree house as is with all of its faults (I thought it was great myself), he had to plan out the details to make it completely his.

He made a shopping list.

You mean I’m not finished spending money on this thing? I now have to decorate the inside? Did I invest in a second house instead of a tree house in my backyard?

It may have been better when he didn’t like it.

Saturday I took him to the Dollar Store to check off the things on his shopping list. He bought rugs for the floor, a table for their things, a string of lights for the ceiling, small battery fans to ward off the heat, command strips to hang the lights, and let’s not forget the batteries. (We did and had to return for them.)

He hauled it all up the stairs (which on the first night he wouldn’t climb due to his fear of heights. He certainly got over that fear as now he is jumping off the top as I yell in protest.) The new decorations prompted an argument between brother and sister about how it was all for a boy and not a girl.

Go figure.

Up a Tree House

This Saturday I built a club house. Okay, so I didn’t build a clubhouse as much as I oversaw it being built by people much more qualified. I’m not going to claim carpentry skills, even though as a single homeowner I’ve picked up some pretty cool skills in the last year. Using a saw and a level aren’t among those skills.

My son wanted a club house though. His idea for his new clubhouse was for me to buy a bunch of wood and for him to build it. Umm, no. I could come up with so many reasons to not go that route. All of those reasons in some way or another involving my son attempting to operate tools and ending up with less appendages.

So I bought a clubhouse kit. Trouble with the kit was that Andrew wanted a proper tree house off the ground. (Did I mention I don’t actually have a tree for it to go in like a proper tree house?)  My mother, who was co-builder, talked me into going six feet off the ground because of my son being so tall. Six feet off the ground looks like a tall building now that I’m looking at it from the ground. I can vividly imagine my accident-prone daughter rolling off its front porch. Hopefully, that’s just my overactive imagination.

The clubhouse kit came with a pretty interesting set of directions. My mom and I took turns reading the directions out to the volunteer builders. The directions were sparse to say the least. Whoever wrote those directions needed help. Obviously, they have never built the tree house or they would be much more specific in the steps. There was a clear moment in the process where I experienced all the frustrations of not being listened to by the one that I was calling out directions for. There may have been a little bit of yelling involved. But maybe, I can claim to be a better listener after the process.

The real issue with the directions was that it said it would take about thirty minutes to build. Right. Maybe if we had a crew of professional carpenters and better directions. We started at ten in the morning and finished at 5:30 in the afternoon, not counting the work done on the platform several days before. I’d like to see anyone figure those directions out and build it in thirty minutes.

It is built though except for a method to reach the tree house among the clouds (Yes, that is an exaggeration, I suppose). My son wants a rope ladder. I can see kids tumbling out the front entry, grabbing at a rope ladder. My mom has this fanciful scheme for some grand staircase. I wanted a tree house in my back yard, not a second house. I have only a few days to figure out a solution though because the children return soon, and I can see Andrew figuring out his own way to raise himself into the tree house. I don’t see that going well.