Semana Santa Processions

Semana Santa is decidedly the most austere time to be in Sevilla, as per the Roman Catholic religion mandates. Apparently, though few Spaniards regularly practise their faith, everyone comes out of the woodwork to celebrate the holy week services and attend the religious processions that close off sections of the city at any given time. The pomp and circumstance of the week was sometimes difficult to understand, but I had to appreciate the ritual and tradition attached. On top of that, generations of family seemed to gather together to take part in the week's events.

The processions include marching bands, 'pasos'--wooden or carved sculptures of the events of Jesus's life during the holy week or of the Virgin Mary's grief, and hermandades--religious orders of brothers, carrying long candles and wearing nazarenos, capes with hoods to conceal the wearer's face. The processions start on random streets and end in any one of the city's many churches and cathedrals. The big procession is on Holy Friday and ends in the Cathedral of St. Mary. The week following Semana Santa is the Feria de Abril, the city's biggest festival. It's suposedly the most exciting time to be in the city; the Plaza de Toros opens for the season and everyone celebrates the resurrection of Christ. We left on Holy Saturday so didn't get to partake in the feast, but preparations were well underway all around the city.

Sevilla

For our post-marathon treat, Rosa and I hobbled our way to Seville, Spain, a destination which had been on my top ten places to go list for years. We'd planned it to be there during Semana Santa (Holy Week), which had both its delights and shortcomings. The first major shortcoming happened when we tried to book accommodation. Every hotel was booked, even the expensive ones. This is how we found ourselves in a suburb of Sevilla, called Camas (Beds). Our arrival was filled with pathetic fallacy--the skies tipped down on us as we made it from city bus to bus station having left umbrellas in London. It was late. None of the local bus drivers really knew where our hotel was. One tried, a man named Alonso who we would come to know very well in the coming hours. Rosa spoke her Spanish and he guaranteed that he would stop at our hotel, even though it wasn't on his route. We drove and drove and drove. I saw a sign for what looked like our hotel, but we both shrugged it off because Alonso was taking care of us. Half an hour later, he turned around, bus still careening forward down the road, remembered that he’d forgotten about us and cursed up a Spanish storm. This is the only reason we ended up in a Spanish man's car driving through backwaters of an Andalucian city at midnight. He offered to take us back to his house and feed us bisteca, vino tinto and cerveza. In his own words (and in spanish): 'I am not a pervert, I promise. I'm just trying to make right my mistake. You seem like nice girls and you need to get home safely.' We opted for the McDonald's drive-thru instead. From there, the week turned into a series of wine and tapas crawls, flamenco watching and spot the processions of men, women and children in eerily KKK-style robes. It rained all week so many of the processions were shortened or cancelled. But as the pictures suggest, it was quite a city to sit in and enjoy the scenery, odd people and plentiful rioja.

The 2011 London Marathon

Against my better judgment, and my knees, I decided to run the London Marathon.

Rosa and I trained together for the most part. I'd had an amazing 20-miler final long run. I was ready.
oh, and in a tutu.
Rosa, Dawn, Chuck and I met in the wee morning hours of the 17th of April to head down to Greenwich Park. And I thought I had this one, I really did.

After waiting for 27 minutes to let 2/3s of the other 38,000 people running the race start, I crossed the start line with Muse in one ear, Rosa in the other and a veritable feast of bell ringers, beer tipplers, preachers, drummers and drunken supportive idiots cheering along the route.
And life felt good.

Until I crossed Tower Bridge at mile 12 and then it was just metaphorically downhill from there. The day was hot, but no hotter than Edinburgh. The crowd of 10,000 was exhilirating and, unlike edinburgh, I had cheerers in The Isle of Dogs, Canary Wharf, The Strand and the Finish Line. But it didn't seem to matter.

Rosa and I, who'd up to that point had been running together, split off from me and I had a little walk. And then a run. And then a walk. And a run. You get the picture. I met a girl who'd thrown in the towel and chatted with her a bit. I got passed by a man running in a gigantic giraffe costume. I marvelled at how lovely everyone else's charity supported their runners.

I finished the half in 2:17:11, slightly under pace for my desired 4:30:00 finish.

I honestly don't know what happened but my brain refused to send the signals to my feet to just go faster and get it over with. In Edinburgh, I remembered hitting the mile 20 and thinking 'yes, it's only six more miles. you can do this, you can run a 10k'. And then I proceeded to smile, enjoy the end of the race and sprint the last 400 meters.

In London, I hit mile 20 in a fug of exhaustion. All I can remember from then on: running through the showers, which caused me to shiver; smiling wanly at a Charity Girl (not my charity--mine was disappointingly unsupportive) who gave me a Jaffa cake; thanking the darkness of a tunnel out loud; flicking off Paul and Mark while simultaneously screaming at them 'this f***ing sucks! this is s***!'; seeing the 385 yards 'til the finish sign and thinking 'nope, just i'll lie down here' and crossing the finish line in what felt like an hour later. In reality, I crossed the line in 4:54:47, 34 seconds slower than Edinburgh.

There was a dearth of joy.

In fact, the woman at the line who tried to cut the timing chip off my shoe had to move my foot to her. Nothing worked any more. So I rescued my kitbag from the giant trailers located eons away from the finish line and drooped on a curb. I couldn't get up. But a nice binman eventually helped me. Shaking, nauseous and shivering on a 26-degree-celsius day, I thought I was going to faint. And with jammed mobile phone reception to get a hold of my adoring fans to carry me to the victory party, I nearly walked myself to the medical tent.

Alas, I limped my way down to the Embankment. It's amazing what a free shower, massage, dinner and beer(s) will do to transform you:

In the end, I raised over £2400 for charity, which, you know, isn't so bad. But I won't be running another marathon for a long time.

Pisa, it leans!

On the last day of our mini whirlwind tour of tuscany, Rosa and I took the train back through the region and up to the city of Pisa, known most notably for its tower that leans. or maybe it's more notable for the millions of pictures tacky tourists take (me too, me too!) of themselves 'catching' the 'falling' tower. We had most of the day to burn before a 7pm Ryanair flight and spent most of the time taking stupid pictures, freaking out about the marathon, shopping for shoes and trying to find dinner, which proved far more difficult than we thought.
first glimpses





Other than the tower, Pisa seemed like a city forgotten by time. You could tell that it was one day loved, but between the influx of tourists and immigrants and the collapse of major infrastructural necessities, Pisa was grotty and run down. Lots of smells and rubbish. There were some attempts at regeneration, which it will hopefully receive because Pisa did have its raffish charm. One of our highlights was this super cute cafe:

And of course there was also the three minute ride on the train from the city centre to the airport and the weird Pisan culture phenomenon of free snacks at bars leading up to the dinner rush. It was odd. Restaurants don't serve dinner until like 8. Like none of them. But instead all of the bars opt to serve a high end buffet of starters and hot snacks that rival any Hornsey School parents' evening snack selection. Which, okay honestly doesn't take much, but we're talking bruschetta and fondue and vegetables and pate. You order a drink and you snack for free. These Italians have got something right.

And then we boarded a plane into the future where marathon glory and pain awaited.

Montepulciano

Other than the food, culture, people, espresso, wine, sun, landscape, etc, i also love the trains in Italy. they are cheap. they are on time. they rock. and trains in tuscany whoosh by to other tuscan regions on a quarter-hourly basis. So we hauled ourselves, walking this time, down to Siena central station and over to Montepulciano, a town I know because it's the home to my all-time-favourite red wine.

After a thirty-minute journey we arrived into Montepulciano central station looking for the city centre. And we wandered. and wandered. and wandered. until it transpired that the station was a neat seven kilometers from the city. so we waited and waited and waited for a bus. but it was worth the wait...
going in...


These buildings may look familiar because, in more recent history, the town was featured in the second 'Twilight' film, 'New Moon'.

we started our tour by devouring beautiful bruschetta
and appreciating red, white and green in various aesthetic forms









everything about this town invited you to stop. sit. drink. eat. stop. sit. i don't know how to more explain it. From all angles you're staring at cobbles or towers or churches or shops tucked into medeival walls. and you feel little. and lucky to have found it.

arrivederci!

Tuscan day tripping

On day two of our Tuscan adventure, Rosa and I ate copious amounts of pasta, booked ourselves onto a wine tasting and hillside wandering tour and faced off with a Siena City Bus. As is the case with all battles of man versus machinery, we lost. Big time. but we also learned a valuable lesson: if a journey will take you 30 minutes to walk but the seemingly straightfoward bus will take you ten minutes, walk. Always walk. Always.

Two hours and four journeys around the hospital roundabout later, we ended roughly where we started getting a tourist glimpse of the what would be equivalent to the Calendonian Road/Hornsey Estates parts of Siena.

But we perserved and hopped on our Italian-guided minibus tour of Monteriggioni, San Gimignano and a vineyard whose name escapes me. Between teeth-grinding driving, we were given the local history of the area, which revolved around ancient feuds over land between the Florentines and the Sienese. Thus, fortress walled towns like Monteriggioni popped up around the various vineyards and fields in between.
Monteriggioni







San Gimignano
After an hour of dipping in and out of city walls and craft shops, our lovely tour guide herded us back into the bus and over to San Gimignano, home to artisans, beautiful wine and one of Italy's most prosperous old Roman Roads that served as a major stopping point for Catholic pilgrims on their way to the Vatican.






Today, it houses lots of gelato stops and tourist mayhem, but the city's fourteen towers can be seen from miles away.
We wandered for roughly two hours before making our way back to the mini-bus and to our last stop.

Wine Tasting
Now this is where i'm really sad i haven't written down intimate details because the last stop on our little day trip happened to be to a beautiful, beautiful vineyard owned by a terribly flirtatious Italian man and his family somewhere in the tuscan foothills filled from end to end with Chianti grapes. The vineyard had been in his family for three/four generations and though it ran like a well oiled machine, the winery maintained a very intimate feel. Rosa and I got slowly drunk off of sweet red wine, dry white wine, olive oil and even truffle oil whilst glimpsing out into the terrace.




After a series of this-isn't-my-life moments, Rosa bought a bottle of truffle oil and we stumbled on home clutching our stomachs and feeling beyond grateful to be in europe.