Spain Day 6: Jerez

IT’S CHURRO DAY.

Yes, after waddling home like the ice cream-laden ham-dumpster that I am, I have made the decision that come what may, today is the day I live my dreams and finally celebrate my 30th birthday by eating my white whale of a churro. No matter that my birthday was in January or that no one should spend this amount of dollars to eat what costs $1 at any Costco. The school systems and popular culture in America have told me to follow my passion and my passion is churros. 

As I am following my passion, I will let everyone know if the money follows, but churros don’t seem like very industrious desserts so I doubt they’ll be paying me anything to eat them.

I am not the best at learning lessons but I have internalized a Very Important Lesson: Eat the damn churros when you see the place is open. Don’t wait. DON’T WAIT TO EAT CHURROS. This is a lesson that I will pass on to my children, who will ask me earnestly, “Mom, what is the meaning of life?” and I will tell them just as earnestly, “You are really making this hangover worse, here’s some money to go get mommy a churro and what’s our family motto?” and they will sigh and say, “Don’t wait to eat churros,” and they will run down to the local Costco to get me a churro and while internalizing my valuable life lessons that will ensure they become very successful presidents who are also doctors.

I walk with Dan to the Churro Boob to finally fulfill my dreams and eat of the forbidden fried dough in the garden of desserts.

Hello darkness my old friend

We walk up and observe the prices, which, for the low low sum of 1 euro, I can achieve greatness. Usually it costs me about $5 to pay a homeless man to tell me I’m amazing, since they won’t do it for less than that for some reason, so this is quite the deal and I am thrilled. However, they sell churros by weight and not by the stick, my customary form of buying at Costco and all Six Flags establishments, and their weight is all in metric so I’m not sure if 1/2kg is the appropriate amount or if I should get ‘minimo.’ Dan suggests we go with minimo because 1/2kg of churros sounds like a lot, and he is a smart man who frequents markets where they sell him things by weight, so I defer to his wisdom and approach the counter. Behind stands a pillar of the earth, a wise and benevolent sage who is bequeathing his greatness onto the fortunate passers-by in the form of churros, and I approach this man with the same gravitas one approaches a yogi after a long trek up some mountain in Nepal because I am certain I’ve put in the same amount of effort by walking ten minutes from my hotel to get here.

In a small and deferential voice, I say, ‘Yo quiero minimo, por favor,” and silently I add O GREAT WISE MAN WHO WILL FULFILL MY DREAMS, and the very normal and nice Spanish man does not even blink and squirts more fried dough from a FREAKING CHURRO GUN into the giant vat of hot oil that makes dreams come true and pulls out a giant churro circle, snips a few pieces, and throws it all into a piece of paper in a cone shape so I can catch every single tear I cry into it.

Dan tells me to stop getting the churros soggy so we wander around the corner to the little cafe that is behind the churro kiosk (really part of it) and, completely unsure of what to do with my newfound treasures, I sit and order a cafe from the nice man who is making them. I open my paper cone of wonders like it is a beautiful woman’s arms covering her nakedness that I am pulling away so I can consume her insides. I hold up a piece of churro and take a bite, and the feeling of eating my dreams fills me with excessive joy.

The man who made my coffee looks at me from behind his glasses and sighs, and pulls out a packet of sugar and dumps it out on my paper. He points to the churros and at the sugar in the universal language for, “Idiot, you are doing this wrong,” and I thank him profusely in Spanish. Dan and I enter a whole new galaxy of amazingness that is sugary fried treats, and we strike up a lively conversation with Jesus, the coffee man who is also the churro expert, and another man Adolfo, who chimes in because he hears me say, “Soy de America,” like the ethnocentric sonofabitch that I am, and he says, “Soy de Paraguay, yo tambien soy de America!” We have a nice conversation about both being from America, which by the end I feel like is pretty accurate, and that I have as much in common with Adolfo as I do with people from Texas, and figure instead of splintering the Northwest into Cascadia we should start considering consolidating all the American continents and taking over the rest of the world and calling the whole thing America just so everyone doesn’t have to answer the question of where they’re from.

In the afterglow of churros, we explore the streets of Jerez, and I remind Dan that this is where flamenco was invented so we should explore some things related to flamenco.

Is it cultural appropriation if we get married in this?

I wrestle with the hardest decision of my life, which is not to buy a flamenco dress because I a. don’t dance flamenco and b. don’t dance flamenco.

I think briefly about learning to dance flamenco in order to wear this dress, but I weigh that against my decision to only eat churros for the rest of my life, and figure the flamenco dress will only gather dust after I transform into a stick of fried dough and only wear sugar until the end of time.

Earlier in the day, we were enlightened by Jesus and Adolfo to hit up Tabanco El Pasaje for some flamenco at 2pm. While the internet implies it might be a super touristy joint, the fact of the matter is that everything in Jerez is technically a touristy joint, because it is just not the big of a place. We head over, and decide that it is irrelevant what the nature of the place is, because it is awesome.

Sherry out of a tap, I guess that’s cool

We arrive a little late, so it is hard to see the flamenco, but they are a kind joint and have installed this giant mirror to make it easy for the latecomers.

Get there early so you don’t have 

to stare into the reflection of your mistakes

We return home for a siesta, and rise from our coma to go eat more food and enjoy the whole concept of eating at 9pm, which, as a restaurant worker and/or lady of the night, I appreciate fully and completely. We decide on a place called Bar Bocarambo, because Dan is interested in eating paella, and he has read that this place has paella. 

We arrive and realize the next Utter Truism of Spain: anything that is written on Google is complete and total lies. Not through the fault of the reviewers, but mostly because a lot of places just decide to do a thing sometimes and then they do it and they have no interest in doing it regularly because why should they? Life is lovely and relaxed in Spain, they are not your paella slaves, so if they don’t feel like making paella, they will not make paella.

I respect this wholly and do not fault them for the lack of paella. The bruise of no crispy rice dish is also assuaged by the fact that everything here is goddamn delicious.

Cola de toro is a national treasure in Spain and in my heart

Spinach croqueta is like if spanakopita 

and my deepest desires made a baby 

that was socially acceptable to eat

By the time the sorbet made of fresh strawberries arrives, I feel like we have failed as a country, because the ability to walk in to literally any restaurant and be excited for whatever happens to you in Spain is alive and well, while back at home I sometimes walk into restaurants and they throw me out for being ‘smelly’ and ‘an affront to humanity,’ and the food is also not as good.

By the end of our visit to Bar Bocarambo, I am as delighted as one person can be, and I am thrilled by the experience and by the beautiful Spanish words I read in the menu that I will carry with me forever:

Les damos las gracias por elegirnos y al mismo tiempo le pedimos disculpas por lis fallos que podamos cometer.

Which they translate as, “We thank you for choosing us and apologize in advance if we fail you in any way.”

And is how I will be opening all conversations for the rest of forever.

Lessons Learned in Spain:

     9.  Put sugar on your churros

     10.  Animal butt parts are delicious

     11.  The Spanish will make paella whenever they feel like it

Spain Day 5: Jerez

I realize today that I have eaten a lot of ham. I wake up and proclaim that I regret nothing and then fall back asleep until it is time for dinner. I wake up once more and proclaim myself the queen of Spanish culture because people have siesta here and I have just elevated the siesta from rejuvenating downtime to actual coma. 

By the time Dan and I go out, the sun is setting, and we are enjoying the relatively empty streets that will grow busier as the night grows longer. We do get to see our favorite residents of Jerez though, which are the multitude of dogs that roam around with their owners. 

Or no owners, whatever.

I think about how much better Spain is than home because dogs can just ramble around and do their own dog thing and it’s no big deal, and I think of how nice it would be for Likely, and then immediately think of how terrible it would be for me to continuously go to Spanish jail because my dog would round up all the local dogs and organize a crime ring where the dogs stole hams and also jewels and I’d have to explain to the police that I thought she had bought me all these diamonds and I can’t believe she betrayed me like this.

My Spanish is just not good enough to explain that they shouldn’t send me to jail, so I return to being thankful for leash laws in America. 

We have decided to return to the steak house, which is called Meson del Asador and is a traditional grill-type restaurant where they make very large plates of very large meats. Remembering our lessons from yesterday, I take the menu and tell Dan I will order us the perfect meal, and with my newfound knowledge of how to be an adult I select a salad item and also some vegetables, and also croquetas because it is important to always have those at every meal, and then instead of a plate of ham, I order other parts of the pig to eat, ignoring the part of the menu that says ‘para compartir’ and assume that just because it’s for sharing doesn’t mean it’s too much food.

Oh food

Plz stahp

FOOD STAHP

The food does not stop. The food continues. The food continues with portions that would make America weep in the knowledge that they are second-class when it comes to stuffing people until they die. We look around and see mostly families eating, and decide we probably should have enlisted seven more people to have shared this meal with us. But it is delicious and warms our bellies so we high-five for being really good at eating and wander out into the night with every intention of going home because we are so full that if we make any sudden movements it will be like the time they filled that whale with dynamite in the hopes of getting it cleanly off the beach but instead exploded whale guts everywhere and bits of whale were stuck to the beach for ages.

That is us, but if we exploded it will be completely whole pieces of Iberico ham.

So I get some ice cream.

Dan questions my choices. I tell him I am the queen of choices. 

That's El Queen of Choices to you.

He pats me on the head and rolls me back home and we go to bed to have probably very intense dreams of the ham overlords that now rule our lives.

Lessons Learned in Spain: 

     7.  Restaurants really want you to leave feeling full
     8.  I like ice cream

Spain Day 4: Jerez

We wake up and get some breakfast at the hotel, which consists of mostly ham, because we have forgotten the lessons of the previous day very quickly in the presence of more ham. After eating our delicious future regrets, we review the plans for the day:

1. Walk around Jerez
2. Look at stuff

Feeling sufficiently overloaded with an itinerary, we set off to try to fit in all of our activities.

Teapots, guns, and other essentials.

Authentic Spanish art.

As we wander, we remember that we actually do have one more thing to add to the itinerary. Anyone who knows me knows that the last time I traveled to Spain, I was cheated out of a churro, mostly because I will tell anyone who will listen, like a vegan at a barbecue, THIS IS CENTRAL TO EVERY INTERACTION THAT YOU UNDERSTAND THIS ABOUT ME.

Anyway, the story goes thus: We came to Jerez, and there was a marvelous kiosk in the center of the town that had an old man making fresh churros. The smell of freshly crisped dough evoked a happiness reserved only for Golden Retrievers at tennis ball factories. My eyes filled with tears, my heart swelled, but the line was long, and I considered if I would have enough time to get a churro before we had to leave, and as I considered, I was pulled aside to enter the mercado, and when I returned to the churro kiosk, my mind made up to brave the line and eat all the churros, the magical kiosk was shuttered and closed. Then it wavered like a mirage and flew into the sky, never to be seen again, and perhaps having never existed at all.

That last part didn’t really happen. It is just always present in my CONSTANT NIGHTMARES ABOUT NEVER GETTING A CHURRO.

Much of our trip was planned to retrieve this churro and stop the night terrors that have plagued me ever since, because my life is hard and the trials I face are many. We wander up the streets, not bothering to consult maps but walking based on the pull of my heart only, and eventually, we come upon a sight I thought I would never see again:

Like a heavenly boob.

Right where I left it, in the center of town, is the churro stand with the old man flipping churros. In a rare case of reality exceeding expectations, in my dreams there was only one churro stand and one churro man. In reality, there are TWO churro stands and two churro men, standing together, timeless in their pursuit of greatness, flipping churros like hardened warriors who fend off enemies back to back, only instead of fending off enemies they are delighting them, and instead of using swords they are sticking people in the face with fried dough sticks. 

I bask in the beauty of what I have come upon, but it is early, and Dan and I decide to satisfy Requirement #2 in our Very Important Plan and look around the square a bit before settling into our churro heaven. We walk around and look at things, and they are all very nice things, and then our bellies are ready to receive greatness, so we return to the churro kiosk to enjoy what is most certainly the best thing that will ever happen to me including the births of any children that I ever have, whom I will most definitely remind at every turn that they are great and all, but one time I had a churro in Spain so clean your damn room.

We make the left turn to get back to the square, and I am basically sliding towards the kiosk on a river of drool and I see its magical boob in the distance and then my eyes adjust to the sunlight and 

It.

Is.

CLOSED.

Dan quickly reminds me that we have two more weeks in Jerez, to prevent me from falling to my knees and trying to tear up the cobblestones and throw them at the very-shuttered churro stand, because we have fallen victim to the same thing that happened last time, which is that store horarios are pretty loose in Jerez, and when things are open and when they are closed is really dependent on how people are feeling that day, it seems to us, which I maintain is much better for the satisfaction of life of the shop owners, but much less better for the satisfaction of life for people who want churros 24/7.

To cheer me up, Dan buys me a rose from the flower market next to the churro stand, and he is so sweet that I shovel all my feelings back down into the dark pits I keep them in (the one labeled Desire for Desserts is the biggest pit) and we decide to go get something else to eat.

“I shall name his Squishy and he shall be my Squishy.”

Everywhere in Jerez are signs denoting ‘Hay Caracoles!’ and they have a friendly drawing of a snail next to them, and the snail always looks so happy we decide we should definitely eat his face off, because the lack of churros has made me a heartless beast who needs to consume the happiness of small animals. The only issue is that we have absolutely zero ideas how to eat these, so for the first few minutes we fumble around like dumb otters trying to crack shells on other otter bellies because I know these open somehow but how? HOW?!

Luckily, an old Spanish man comes along and sits at the table next to us, and rescues me from my stupidity by ordering some caracoles and picking them up and rapidly sucking the little suckers right out of their shells. He is halfway through his cup while we have barely removed two caracoles from their little tiny houses that are also the scenes of their own little tiny murders (the resale values are just through the floor). We realize there is a Better Way, and take to aggressively sucking the snails out with a gusto reserved for any activity that isn’t sucking snails out of their shells.

Horrific image of a snail village genocide.

We return home, full of entire civilizations of smaller lifeforms and also some sherry, and take full advantage of the siesta culture. I long suspected that I was a person made for siestas, and this first day in Jerez confirms it: I am the queen of naps and also naps are essential to a well-rounded adult life. We wake up ready to attack the evening, and exit our hotel once more, heading for the plaza where most of the restaurants are clustered. We follow this person, cuz she seems to know where she is going.

Always trust a lady who gets 20 men to carry her places.

We wander by some restaurants that have lots of people sitting outside, and then decide to try the restaurant with no people sitting outside, Tala Bar, because what do people know anyway?

So much room for activities.

The answer is a lot, because this place is fine, which puts it seventy stars ahead of anything that we get home. Because we deem the food just fine, we decide to move on to another tapas place, to have more tapas, because the beauty of tapas is that you can have tapas, and then have other tapas, and then more tapas, until you are drunk on tapas and also wine and also you are dying but you assume it’s from the walking and not from the mass amounts of tapas.

Our death walking takes us to a restaurante, where we quickly realize that at restaurants you order food, and not tapas, but we are American and very fancy so we order an appetizer to split and give them an expired coupon and talk about how much better our country is than everyone else’s. The server stares at us when we order a single appetizer and two drinks, and asks, “Algo mas?” We say no gracias and he continues to stare at us, then walks away. After a moment, another server comes up and confirms, “Algo mas?” And we say no gracias again and he stares at us again and walks away, and we smile happily for communicating perfectly in Spanish and letting these folks know we are tourists who are determined to eat every croqueta in the city, no matter the strange situations that allow for it.

After our wonderful journey of tapas, we figure we should get one more thing to round out the evening, and by now we have drank quite a few glasses of wine, and reading signs has gone out the window, so we enter another tapas bar and order a small plate of delicious tapas.

Figure 1: Not tapas.

Because we are hoping to invent a new way to seal our insides with meat, we order more ham tapas, only to find that we have inadvertently entered some sort of steak house where the small plates we are used to are actually the entire side of a pig. We decide that as we live by ham, we shall die by ham. It is a fitting death for people who can’t read or understand the country of Spain.

Lessons Learned in Spain:

     4. Don’t eat all the ham
     5. Read the names of places because they might be steak houses
     6. EAT THE CHURROS WHEN YOU HAVE THE CHANCE

Bonus gif of me asking Dan to take a picture of me next to a statue and being very good at posing for it:

Spain Day 3.2: Jerez

IT'S JEREZ DAY!

And for real this time! Which I know because we have finally pulled into the train station, and it is decorated with pretty tiles which denote being in a quaint Spanish town.

Suspicious wet spots denote being in a train station.

We get to the taxi line, and immediately realize that we will be needing our limited Spanish abilities a lot on this trip, because Jerez is fairly out of the way and most tourists do not come by train. 

We arrive at our hotel and I politely put all my things away and make a nice space for Dan.

This seems like a good place for a suitcase.

Our room is huge and gorgeous, with doors that open onto a small balcony. Doors that open out to a balcony are a key part of feeling like one is on vacation, so we are intensely pleased that we have this. Our room also has a little separate sitting area, which I go to investigate, and discover that this sitting room ALSO HAS DOORS OPENING ONTO A BALCONY. Two balconies! We can barely contain ourselves with all of our good fortune, until Dan says, “Hey Rox, I think there is another balcony…”

And then we discover that we are in a room with four balconies, which is an absurd number of balconies but also seems right somehow. We drown in our happiness, and I briefly consider taking pictures of the place in order to be a better travel writer and then review all the parts of the hotel, but that seems like an activity that doesn’t involve getting Spanish food and wine into my face as quickly as possible, so I abandon it in favor of walking through the city towards food and wine.

Immediately, I realize my ten pairs of shoes will do me no good because what I really should have brought was a FREAKING JACKET. As a person who goes places a lot, one would think I would be very good at packing by now, but somehow it has become quite the opposite, and the older I get, the more I just start throwing random items into a bag like a useless Mary Poppins, thinking, “Maybe I will need an Oxford dictionary on this trip, you just never know, better take it just to be safe,” and then arrive at my destination and freeze to death and get buried with my dictionary because I forgot to ask myself whether I’d need a jacket or not, to which the answer is always YES, something that I should know as a Portlander and also just a human being on the earth.

Anyway, Pro-Traveler Tip #2: Always bring a jacket. 

The jacket becomes important because while Jerez de la Frontera is supposed to be in the mid-70s, it’s taking its sweet time to get there, and somehow 65F in Jerez feels like 50F in Portland. Probably due to the many fountains full of water in the city, which is a fact I have not run by any scientists but sounds completely correct.

Ornate fountains have a severe impact on weather patterns in Spain.

Luckily for me, I do not travel/do anything at all without my black and white flannel, so I am at least relatively warm, but nonetheless I resolve to buy a jacket at the first place I see. 

This looks like a good place to start.

Dan and I sit down at this probable jacket store (my Spanish is not very good, any of those words could mean anything) and order some things. 

Not a jacket.

Former pig jacket, not good present-times jacket.

We leave the jacket store without any jackets but happier for the delicious wine and first plate of Iberico ham. We initially decided we would order a plate of Iberico ham at every restaurant, just based on how delicious and insanely cheap it is, but after the first plate we realize this would result in returning to the States as The People Who Ate Dan And Roxanne, so we eschew this plan for much more reasonable eating habits and lots of walks.

How else will we see all the walls?

And get our prayers answered?

After what seems like an interminable walk that Dan confirms was exactly twelve minutes, I beg to sit down somewhere, and we find a pretty plaza with outdoor tables. The nice thing about Jerez is that there are many, many outdoor tables for intrepid travelers who like sitting outside when it’s cold without a jacket. The other nice thing about Jerez is how completely devoid of people it can be, which means often you have a whole plaza to yourself. Well, almost to yourself, if you don’t count pigeons and teenagers, which I do not.

Teenagers are the pigeons of people

I lean back in the sun and bask in the tranquility of Jerez, of the quiet streets and the simply delightful foods and always-full glasses of wine. It is everything I hoped for, a lovely city with a small-town feel, with beautiful architecture and sights. As I reflect on how lucky I am in life, I see this:

“Prepare to get your pigeon world rocked.”

I did not think I could get any luckier but apparently I am the LUCKIEST PERSON ON THE PLANET because our tranquil glass of wine in a beautiful plaza turned into free front row tickets to some good ol’ fashioned pigeon sex. 

“Move over dude, let me get in there!”

“Awwww yiss”

“Dude, can’t wait to tell the bros about this.”

“Hey girl, we heard—“ “NOOOOOOOOO!”

“SANCTUAAAARYYY!”

I commend the lady pigeon for escaping, or possible male pigeon, because I am not a bird doctor and have no idea if this was a dominance display or a pigeon orgy (definitely a pigeon orgy) that ended in one of the birds seeking refuge at a church. Either way, I am laughing hysterically and narrating the scenario loud enough that Dan decides it is time to go home and put us to bed because we are running on some very questionable sleep and the highlight of our trip so far has been birds doing it and we’re possibly hallucinating.

“Stop looking at me, swan!”

Lessons learned from our first day in Jerez:

1. Bring a jacket.
2. Jerez is very pretty.
3. Don’t eat ham for every meal.

Spain Day 3.1: Madrid to Jerez

IT'S JEREZ DAY!

Wait, nope. It's Madrid Day first, which is hard to fathom because I have woken up very hungover and confused as to where or what I am. Dan reminds me that we came to Spain, and tries to joke with me about the hilarity that was getting me off the airplane and into the airport shuttle, but my blank stare confirms for him the incredible breadth of my previous night's drunkenness. I laugh it off and maintain I was not drunk at all and am just normally stupid, but he is not fooled by my lies, because when he suggests we go on a walk to get coffee and see the sights, I say, "Sure!" and forget that I hate walking or doing anything at all before 10am that isn't staring at the wall and wondering if the purpose of life is to love one another or destroy each other totally.

Or drawing dick pics.

We go on a walk to enjoy the sights of Madrid for the few hours we have before our train (or 'tren' in Spanish because I am very worldly now) but we have given zero thought to what to do in Madrid, so we just decide to walk to the train station so we know where it is later on. This makes perfect sense to me because my hangover is robust enough that it is entirely possible to me that the train station could move in between us finding it this morning and needing it later, so it's best that we triangulate its position and keep a beady eye on it.

Luckily for us, on the short walk to the station, the sights of Madrid find us, rather than the other way around.

Glorious.

It is a rainy day that is reminiscent of home, so we conduct ourselves like regular Portlanders by pretending we don't care about the rain but secretly wishing we had any of the umbrellas that every single person in Madrid carries.

Dry, cozy idiots.

We are pioneers and travelers, and the lack of umbrellas does not stop us from enjoying our morning, nor does it make us stick out like sore thumbs dipped in water when everyone else is enjoying not being drenched in the cold.

This seems normal.

My intense hangover prevents me from being upset at all the walking, which is good because at some point we get incredibly turned around and end up walking back by our hotel to find the train station, which apparently was right across the street. Dan apologizes for going the wrong way, and I make burbling noises and try not to throw up on his shoes, so we call it a draw for who wronged who and enter the train station to make sure we know which train to take later on.

Take the first palm to Main Street 

and then transfer to coconut.

I sometimes consider what I might find in other countries, but rarely do I think I might find a jungle inside of a train station. Madrid decides that instead of letting me enjoy sweating profusely and wondering why I am alive (to drink more, I think) that it will blow my mind with an ENTIRE JUNGLE INSIDE OF A TRAIN STATION.

It is humid. It is warm. It is a jungle inside of a train station. Honestly, I can't describe it any other way.

We return to our hotel so we can pack and ready ourselves for our trip, and all at once it dawns on us that we are intensely hungry. Though our hotel includes breakfast, the man who is serving it seems very upset that we might want food, so we venture out across the street (not to the train station) to eat a place called Casa Luciano, which one review described at 'regrettable' and another said 'horrible, not advisable at all.'

This seemed perfect for our station in life. I describe Casa Luciano as 'honestly not that bad when the lights are off and you can't remember what happened anyway' because despite the fact that the place is questionable at best, they gave us a plate of ham and eggs on top of french fries.

The equivalent of giant boobs and inability to see her face.

I order some sort of sandwich because my ability to order things in other languages extends to skillfully ordering sandwiches, unless I'm trying to actually order sandwiches, in which case I end up with omelettes. After eating, we pack up and bid goodbye to Sleep'N Atocha. 

It is train time, and because Dan is operating on the level of Not Able To Speak Much Spanish and I am operating on the level of Probably Dying But Hard To Say, the train station feels like more of a to-do than is generally the case at a train station. We stare at our tickets for a very long time, but for some reason all the words are in a different language and we are not quite certain what they all mean. Dan tells me it is up to me to ensure we get on the right car for first class, which I say is just fine, because I long ago learned not getting first class on a train was like asking if you can sit on the floor at a movie theater, like they'll let you do it, but why? There's a chair right there and it's really nice and no one else can have it if you want. 

So when we get to the first car and I ask the train conductor for Preferente and he says 'Si' and points to the car we're at, it all feels a little suspiciously too easy, but I go with it because I have no ability to not go with it. We stuff most of our luggage under the little luggage cage, except for my giant piece of Very Heavy Clearly American luggage in which I have put six pairs of shoes, because what if I want a lot of shoes? I guarantee that I will wear none of these shoes, but when you pack two hours before you have to leave, the thought that crosses your mind is, "What if people in other countries wear more shoes than we do? Should I bring more shoes? Am I a person who needs this many shoes? I think I am a person who needs a lot of shoes." 

A deep, soul-searching piece of knowledge from this trip is that I am a person who does not need many shoes, but I am a person who needs Dan to move a lot of shoes. He uses his Dan Strength to pick up my absurd piece of luggage full of a closet of a shoes and puts it overhead with many Spanish businessmen looking on, wondering what the actual fuck could fill up a piece of luggage that large, and I resist the urge to shout 'ZAPATOS, CABALLEROS' and instead pick a seat at random and sit in it.

Dan asks me if we have assigned seats, and in my shoe/hangover stupor I tell him they do not assign seats on trains. He tilts his head at me with the face that I now know in our affianced state means "You are very cute but wrong about many things but I can see part of your boobs so I'll go with it" and I pull out Sandwich #4 which causes another head tilt because at this point the sandwiches have been in my backpack for a day and half with mayonnaise and no refrigeration. This does not matter to me because I have heard Europeans don't refrigerate things so I am only disgusting for eating day-old sandwiches in America but very cosmopolitan in Spain. 

The train ride passes without incident. 

And with many beautiful sights.

Until people start getting on and off the train, and I realize that people do, in fact, have assigned seats. I panic and grab Dan's phone to check what our seats are. It says 3B and 3C, which I'm sure I've seen nowhere on this train.

Except here, right next to us.

I tell Dan that we somehow miraculously sat exactly in the right train car, in our right seats, with really no indicators to any of that. He nods sagely and says, "Well, you're a Zollenberg now, so get used to things like that," and I punch him and say it's probably more likely that he's going to trip on sandwiches that are far past their date of needing to be eaten, but facts are facts and we just luckily happen to be sitting in our seats. 

I decide that nothing more exciting will happen to me on this train, so I fall asleep for the rest of the ride.

SERIOUSLY NOT WHAT I MEANT 

WHEN I SAID TAKE MORE PICTURES OF ME

Going to Spain by Way of Iceland: Day 2 (technically)

ICELAND DAY!

I don’t shout this on the plane, because I am an adult now and know that shouting things make people think there’s a fire and that is how you get kicked off a flight in midair for sure. But it is Iceland Day, and as I wake up and shoot a last glance at Window Lady, who I still hope trips on her way to baggage claim (have an inconvenient day, bitch), I realize Dan and I are touching down in Iceland. This is a strange feeling, because Iceland is only the place where my favorite show is from, which is a kid's show called Lazytown where all the kids just eat donuts and a hot man comes to show them how to do jump splits and they just keep eating the donuts and watching him do jump splits because what ELSE are you supposed to do in that situation, your own jump splits? Forget it.

Sometimes he does regular splits and sings songs. 

Top of my Celebrity Hall Pass list.

We deplane and end up in the Iceland airport, which I realize has campaigned super hard near Portland because it IS Portland, and is full of artisan chocolate and artisan people and artisan sandwiches. I ask if we can have any of these things and Dan says we already have artisan sandwiches made by an artisan person (Dan) so we head over to the first class lounge because we are now on the Fancy People leg of our trip. 

I told Dan on the flight that the only thing I wanted was to go to the first class lounge and have some pancakes, but then I remembered we were going to Europe and therefore pancakes mean something different, which is sad pieces of flour paper and not the hearty flapjacks of American lore. So when we arrive and I see pancakes, I am skeptical, but it is 11pm our internal clock time and 6am local time, which means my stomach is a freshman college girl ready to believe anything anyone tells her.

I'm the best you'll ever have, baby.

Here’s the thing: these pancakes ain’t wrong. These are officially the Best Pancakes Ever. They are dense, they are chewy, they are fluffy, they are perfect. If these pancakes were an ass, they would be Jessica Alba in Sin City, CHAPS ON. After inappropriately succumbing to orgasmic pancake ecstasy in public, whereby Dan asks me to please conduct myself appropriately in the first class lounge, I tell Dan to try a pancake and confirm that they are R-rated and should not be served in public and maybe also try to do a jump split. He says they are the best pancakes ever but also I should calm down and stop making the other business folk uncomfortable and also no to the jump splits. I say PANCAKES I AM HAVING MROE and he goes back to doing regular Dan stuff while I stuff my face with the best pancakes ever and onlookers try to avoid my glassy drugged-up pancake stare that is normally reserved for people who are smoking crack or smoking crack and realizing it's actually really good crack and they better buy more before it all runs out.

Dan reminds me we have a nine-hour layover in Iceland in which we’ve decided to go to the Blue Lagoon. We succumb to the touristy nature of the venture because honestly we do not give a fuck and there is no better way to spend a layover than in nature’s giantest bathtub. For some reason, the internet screwed up our reservation and said we were going to the Blue Lagoon on July 7th (probably because European dates are the worst) but the very nice people in Iceland don’t care how much we are changing our journeys and let us go wherever we want and do whatever we want and, contrary to all of my Icelandic TV show viewing, eat as many donuts/pancakes as we want. 

We get on a nice bus with WiFi, because everyone in Iceland has WiFi, which is impressive for a volcano. What is not impressive is literally everything else about their landscape, but I have a feeling they know this because every ad they have they throw in some ponies, which is like sprinkling gold dust on your dinner, you know it’s just a piece of chicken but now it’s CHICKEN CON GOLD. 

This seems nice.

Iceland is not chicken con gold. It is mostly rocks. 

After fifteen minutes, we see some blue steam rising above the rocks, and I point it out to Dan very calmly.

“DAN THAT STEAM IS BLUE DAN LOOK IT IS BLUE 

HAVE YOU SEEN BLUE STEAM DAN DAN DAN BLUE STEEEEAM"

He says blue steam is cool. 

We are happy that we booked at 8am time for the hot springs because we have heard they are very touristy, but one thing that is universal with tourists is that they do not do stuff before 10am unless your plan is to never sleep and start hallucinating. This means for two hours, we have a pretty empty hot spring that is milky blue and relatively deserted. Also hot. ALLEGEDLY. I assume I am the first person who has ever visited a hot spring ever and tell Dan I will confirm the hotness of the spring. Dan, who has lived in Montana and maintains he has been in many natural hot springs says of course they are hot, but clearly he does not know because I am the first person to visit a hot spring ever. I tell him I will let him know if this is true and then I get in and the water is in fact hot and I am impressed. I tell Dan he can also be impressed and he does not answer me because he is busy being Dan which is normal and used to hot springs. 

JUST A REGULAR DAY FOR DAN I GUESS

I bring my phone to the springs because it seems this is the Done Thing, and after a few pictures, I realize the Done Thing sucks because we are in a goddamn pool and carrying your phone around sucks.

 Am I an Instagram celebrity now or 

do I need to actually use Instagram

I run back to the locker room and throw my phone away, and when I return to the hot springs I instantly regret this because Dan agrees to wear a silica mud mask with me and now I have no way of capturing it for all time. He puts it all over his face and I put it all over my face and chest and we are finally the perfect depiction of the White Family, because we are literally covered in whiteface. I consider retrieving my phone to recreate the moment, but instead here is an accurate representation of Dan's face:

After a few hours, we decide it’s time to go back to the airport, and we prepare ourselves for our journey, only to the have the bus driver tell us he will not be returning to the airport for another hour. This is hard for us because we were planning to return to the first class lounge to drink until we had to leave, but we are well-seasoned travelers used to changes in plans, so we go back to the Blue Lagoon cafe to drink there instead.

The cafe only has weird liquor and dried haddock, and as we are one alcoholic and one Jew, we congratulate ourselves for making the Right Choice.

Party in Iceland and Only We Are Coming.

Finally, we notice that is time to go and we head out to the bus. I see the bus driver running down the Blue Lagoon path and recognize the face of a man who needs to poop badly, so I prepare myself for a long wait at the bus stop. Dan rubs my arms vigorously to keep me warm, because it is fucking cold in Iceland, for some reason (if only there had been some context clues, honestly). I mention he can rub my chest if he really wants to keep me warm, and he says I have been watching a lot of Batman Begins. I say clearly I am just very good at survival skills but he does not rub my boobs to keep me warm, and I loudly reconsider our relationship. He offers to continue feeding me, so I decide to stay with him.

We re-arrive at the Iceland Airport, ready to kick it in the first class lounge again. Because Dan’s life is blessed, the entire food arrangement is smoked fish and deep-fried shrimp. I mix a cocktail that tastes like garbage and it is so overwhelming that I decide to spend the rest of my time in the delightfully comfortable lounge sleeping. Dan says please don’t sleep because we will probably miss our flight and I say that is a him problem because clearly I am the type of person to miss a flight so he needs to save me from myself.

The saintly Dan stays awake while I snore in the middle of a public place.

Not what I meant when I asked Dan 

to take photos of me on this trip.

Eventually, we decide we need to leave this lounge because it is the Garden of Eden, full of smoked fish and coffees and cocktails and we will never leave unless we make the jump. So we leave the lounge to get to our gate. 

Nothing is happening there. We realize we’ve made a huge mistake.

Until some ridiculous children start making hilarious sounds next to us. I am on their wavelength because I am kind of drunk and sleepy and there is no reason to be standing in line for a flight without making ridiculous sounds and/or crying hysterically. We start making fish faces at each other, and then popping our lips, because we are standing in line, and what the fuck does one do in line but entertain oneself with one’s own facial sounds?          

Kids just get me.

                                                                                                                        

We board the plane and immediately fall asleep. Did I mention this leg was first class and everything was super fucking comfortable? I probably did not, but this leg was first class and everything was super fucking comfortable.

Dan, in his inimitable Dan wisdom, recommended that we fall asleep for an hour and a half in order to beat jet lag. He probably slept for that length, while I slept for way more than that time and then grunted and flailed every time he mentioned I should wake up. Eventually he manages to wake me, and I immediately order gin and tonic and Campari because we are fancy and also it is very free and then I immediately order another and the very sweet flight attendant doesn't speak perfect English so she says, "Another?" and I say yes another and prepare for a delightful flight.

She's probably right to ask.

Dan, unhappy with the prospect of another sandwich, orders cured fish on a plane, like a madman.

I, too, like to live dangerously.

Somehow, by this point, I've ordered many drinks, and according to Dan, I am very drunk. I tell him I am not drunk just very excited to be doing sky stuff and he says we have landed and also to hold it together because we have to navigate customs. But it is Spain and we are well-versed in Spanish customs, which basically means you walk through the door and you're in the country and maybe someone waved at you when you walked by, but probably not.

We magically teleport to the center of Madrid, where we are staying at a place called Sleep'N Atocha. It is adorable and amazing probably but I am now admittedly quite drunk so I tell Dan FOOD NOW PLEASE and we wander down the street to find food. After a few minutes, we pop in to a place which I do not know the name, but this guy greets me.

"May I get you a drink?"

A giant octopus on the wall who looks like he will pour me a beer is always a welcome sight, and we order lots of food and wine. Because I am drunk and can only partially claim to know how to speak Spanish, and definitely can't claim to know how to read English or Spanish, we pray whatever words I say turn out okay.

Look, food!

After gorging on delicious food items and drinking all the wine, we stumble back through the streets of Madrid to pass out in our cute little hotel room, because I've achieved blackout status.

Getting drunk on airplanes is fun.