La Pedrada de Noemi Residency Journal 1

I flew from Dublin to Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Spain on June 1st.  My trip was not the best (though it could've been much worse) - it was delayed due to the pilot reaching too many flight hours, then when we boarded I was seated next to a couple on the aisle, with the woman in the center seat and the man in the window.  The man was very perturbed by the delay and yelled and cursed at his partner, at the airline and plane in general, at the fight attendants, and so on.  I was concerned and didn't love being in the same row as him.  The flight was with Aer Lingus and apparently they are a very budget airline (I do try to buy the cheapest tickets) - not only did they make me pay extra for one checked bag, but they also didn't even serve complimentary drinks or snacks and made me gate-check my carry-on (for free, but I prefer to keep it with me).  Finally about two-thirds of the way through the flight an attendant sternly told the angry man to shut it and that he had been like this at the gate, too (!!) and that if he kept it on he'd have problems on arrival.  Honestly, I think if this were a flight with US flight attendants, he wouldn't have been allowed to board or would have been kicked off already or the flight would have been diverted...

Then as I landed I checked that my residency program director, Noemi, was going to come get me.  I had texted her via WhatsApp a couple times through the day keeping her up to date, and so when I opened my phone I assumed I'd have contact from her - but instead, I got a very confused response and eventually realized I'd mistyped her number by one numeral and was texting some other random person in the region.  So from her perspective, I hadn't contacted her at all or let her know about my plane delay or anything!  Fortunately she's very nice and also on top of it so when I finally actually reached out to her, she said she was only a couple minutes away from the airport.  I was kind of mortified though - it's rude not to let the person picking you up from the airport know that you will be delayed if you have the opportunity to tell them.

Luckily, my baggage arrived relatively quickly and mostly whole (I lost a zipper pull I think in Ireland?).  I came out and found Noemi, and we made our way to Agüimes which is where she lives and where I will stay with her (in her house).  She had an eyepatch on one eye, and explained that she is taking a course on welding and soldering and a piece of metal had gotten into her eye!  Fortunately it wasn't too serious but it needed medicine and to rest for a couple days.  A friend of hers kindly drove her to the airport and drove us both back to Noemi's.

Agüimes isn't very far from the airport, so we got there fairly quickly which was good because it was around 10pm at this point.  Noemi's friend departed and Noemi took me on a quick tour of the house and the village and then let me use some of her groceries to make dinner before I went to bed.  I'm staying on the second floor of her house.

The next two days I used to decompress, unpack, explore the town a little, get to know Noemi, do laundry, go grocery shopping, and so on.  I was kind of tired from all the gung-ho exploring of Ireland!  Noemi's English is probably around my level of Spanish - maybe a little worse - so we tend to talk in Spanish.  I'm actually kind of surprised at how well we've managed given that I am not fluent in Spanish.  Noemi is super busy right now though with her welding course, teaching art courses, and other responsibilities.  She kindly took the time anyway to chat with me those first two days and even took me down to Arinaga on the second day to walk the promenade and see the beach.  I had told her that I know the most biodiverse and interesting ecology in the Canary Islands is actually its marine ecosystem, so I had purchased an underwater camera (a middlingly-low version as I didn't want to invest too much in what might be a once-off piece of equipment which may or may not be that useful).  She has a friend named Silviu who she said would probably be willing to help me explore the ocean who lives in Arinaga and pointed out his door as well while we were there.  The evening of the second day the town Agüimes was celebrating Corpus Christi and they laid out a "carpet" of dyed salt and sand through several town roads and then had an evening mass in the church followed by a procession over the "carpet."  It was a relatively small ceremony, not a festival or anything, but it was interesting to witness.

Something I was unprepared for is the wind.  There is a lot of wind.  It makes it feel cooler than it is, and it's already rather temperate.  I brought two pairs of shorts, but I don't know if I'll be using either!  The wind is so strong that there is genuinely no need for a dryer here.  In other places I've been they also do without dryers (Ireland, France, Portugal, mainland Spain, Italy, Peru) but the clothes tend to dry kind of stiff and can depending on the weather take days to fully dry.  Here, the wind moves the clothes around so much they are perfectly soft and they dry within a few hours of being hung up - even cargo pants, which often take days.

The third day I started to work on a new painting.  There was no new inspiration yet from the Canary Islands, but I was feeling like I wanted to start my studio practice so I decided to work with some imagery from the US and Ireland.  That evening, I met Noemi's partner who had just gotten back from a trip to Egypt, and we all chatted.  Noemi had also arranged that I meet with Silviu the following morning to start to explore the ocean.  She said he knows how to scuba as well as snorkel, and I might be doing either or both!  I had read about scuba diving and thought about it before coming on the residency, but the literature said you probably shouldn't take your camera down on your first go since you should be focused on just managing your breathing and the gauges and everything, and I thought it would probably be too costly or time consuming or both.  I figured I'd probably just go snorkeling, and that might still be the case, but it was interesting that if he thought it was a good idea Silviu might be able to teach me scuba diving as well!  To be honest, I only have memory of having snorkeled once and that was around sixteen years ago, but it seemed mostly fine so I guess we'll see how I do!  Noemi said she's never been scuba diving but perhaps someday she will.

So I went to bed at the end of the third day excited and nervous all at the same time about what the following day would bring.

Intercambiador ACART Residency Journal 14

My final days in Madrid were spent in the studio, figuring out how to pack up and ship my artwork back home, and completing visits to the Prado and Reina Sofia museums as well as the Palacio Real and the Catedral de la Almudena.

When I studied abroad at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas-ICADE ten years ago, I took an art history class that was held most of the time in the Prado, so I feel strong nostalgia not only for the artwork inside but also for the rooms and building itself.  The Prado has a shocking amount of masterpieces for the size of the collection.  It's always interesting to me how even when I've seen the pieces in person as well as via reproduction, I'm still hit every time I go with how some artists really suffer in reproduction while others are assisted by it.  A guard stopped me fairly early on and pointed out that on my guide it says in a tiny icon on the back that no photos are allowed, so unfortunately you won't get to see any of my own photos of Bosch's salon, or Velazquez's Bufones series, but I actually wasn't warned at the very beginning so I can share a couple images with you!

The Reina Sofia allows photos in all its exhibitions except the "Pity and Terror - The Path to Guernica" Picasso retrospective.  Though I respect its historical and artistic significance, I don't really emotionally connect with Picasso as much as other artists and pieces in the Reina Sofia anyway - I am, for instance, somehow always surprised by the engrossing, varied details and the meticulous brushwork of Dalí.  There were also a large number of temporary exhibitions featuring a range of artists including several contemporary ones.

No photos were allowed in the interior of the palace, but the Palacio Real is a really interesting space - on the one hand, the wallpapers, stucco decorations, and much of the decor is over-the-top and stands up to modernity just fine; on the other, some parts have suffered more than others.  The ballroom/dining hall floor has seen better days, and some of the furniture seemed worn and small - in fact, so did a few of the rooms.  Overall, though, the effect is pretty regal particularly when focusing on the Salon Gasparini or the Throne Room.  

The Catedral de la Almudena is right next door to the Palacio Real, and though the interior of the cathedral is nice, my favorite part (where no photos are allowed to preserve the holy atmosphere) is the Capilla del Santísimo which is inlaid in mosaic tile by artist and Father Marko Ivan Rupnik.

My flights back home were great - though American Airlines had in their infinite wisdom chosen to use a plane with no personalized in-flight entertainment on the cross-Atlantic trip over, they did use a super teched-out plane on the return voyage.  The windows tinted and untinted electronically, and the personal monitors in the seat backs had the most complex navigational information system I've seen as well as a surfeit of television and movie selections.  I unfortunately didn't manage to get an aisle seat, though, which my knees really felt, but I did get asked to move from my middle seat to a window seat across the plane and happily complied so I could at least not be penned in on both sides by people.  Plus my new seat neighbor was a nice guy.  I was fairly worried the whole day as my connection in Dallas Fort Worth was only two hours, which is cutting it really close, but fortunately everything - passport control, baggage claim, customs, security - went smoothly and decently quickly and I made my next flight on time.  That plane also had personalized in-flight entertainment, weirdly enough, as it's quite atypical on such short domestic trips.  American Airlines, I do not understand you.  Please to have personalized in-flight entertainment on all the longest trips first and then if you can on the rest it would be a nice perk.

I landed, my luggage came out in order, and my amazing colleague Susan came and picked me up!  I am home!

Hobbled But Here! - Cerdeira Village Residency Journal 1

Amidst all the bustling about I had to do prior to setting off on my summer of back-to-back Iberian Peninsula residencies, I managed to get my left foot slammed in a heavy metal shop door four days before I needed to leave.  I had it X-rayed to make sure I hadn't fractured or broken anything - the results thankfully came back that it was just swollen and bruised - and then tried to ice and rest it as much as was possible during those intervening days.  I flew out on Friday, May 19th from MCI connecting in Philadelphia to then go on to Lisbon.  I had decided when scheduling my flights to spend two days in Lisbon before heading on to Cerdeira Village since it's my first time in Portugal.  

My foot was still not really ready to attempt all the various stressors of airports, so I requested wheelchair assistance in the airports.  Everyone who helped me was very kind, and though at the beginning I felt guilty for requesting it, by the time I saw how many lines I got to bypass, I was grateful; one of the hazards of lines beyond the obvious of having to stand a lot is other people blindly backing luggage/themselves into your feet and I really didn't fancy taking another hit to my wounded foot.  Plus the request came with the ability to request aisle seating on the right (putting my injured left foot into the aisle), which meant I could avoid seatmates from bumping me and stretch it out to rest it in the aisle during non-service periods.

My first flight from MCI to PHL went off without a hitch; the plane was bare bones but functional (no inset TV monitors, sadly, but I don't expect them on domestic flights - they're more of a rare perk).  My second flight from PHL to LIS, as is often the wont at PHL, was delayed by slightly over two hours.  It did mean I was able to eat something at an airport restaurant, though, which was good because though my second flight was international and came with dinner and breakfast, I discovered that American Airlines does somewhat weird vegetarian meals (I signed up for the special meals ahead of time to accommodate my vegetarian diet).  They collapse all the veg*n meals together, which makes sense to maximize utility, but then don't actually make the whole meal vegan - they randomly pick and choose what will be vegan and what will be vegetarian in ways that seem to maximize taste issues.  For dinner, there was vegan pasta in marinara sauce with a not-great fake cheese but an accompanying dinner roll had milk as an ingredient and we were just not given the separate cheese slice that accompanied the dinner rolls for other diners.  There was also a salad and fruit, which I appreciated, but I think everyone got those.  For breakfast, the whole standard meal was vegetarian (blueberry muffin, granola, yogurt, and some form of healthy-ish dessert/granola bar).  The veg*n meal instead came with yogurt (still with milk), a vegan cookie, and a small dish of fruit.  I did appreciate the fruit, but wasn't sure why we didn't also get one of the other options for a similar quantity of food items.

The time really stretched on during the second flight, too, because unlike every other international flight I've taken in recent years, this airplane also had no individual tv monitors in the seat backs.  I was really, really thankful I had decided to buy a Kindle Paperwhite in anticipation of being mostly disconnected while in Cerdeira Village because that was my only entertainment.  To be fair, the plane did have a few overhead monitors scattered through the plane and you could try to watch those, but you obviously had to watch whatever was on (from afar) and had no ability to pause it while service was happening or you went to the restroom.  I just ignored that option and read (or briefly, tried to sleep - it's very hard for me to sleep upright, though, so I think I caught about 15-30 minutes).  My seat was also in the very back (no recline) and directly below the flight attendant's overhead storage, and they kept rummaging through it.

Toward the last few hours of the flight, I also noticed both my feet were swollen to the point that my sandals and my compression wrap on my left foot were really uncomfortable.  I assume it was due to the pressure change, though I have to say I've never noticed this side effect before.  I knew I wasn't really in a position to redo the wrap properly if I took it off, though, and I needed it to walk even a little, so I ignored that problem and just loosened my sandal straps.

When I got off that plane, my left foot was basically numb and I thought that it was really very good that I asked for wheelchair assistance.  It was especially nice because it also let me skip the long customs line for a much shorter staff-and-disabled line, and then the very nice attendant also got my luggage off the baggage claim for me, stuck it on a trolley, hailed a cab, and got it put in the taxi for me as well.  (She asked if someone was picking me up and I answered that I was going to take a taxi; the Lisbon airport is surprisingly central and most people can either walk or take the subway to their destination but my foot was alternately numb and throbbing and my luggage is, even when both my feet work, not a joy to navigate the subway with.)  Even though I knew how close the airport was to my AirBnB, I was still pleasantly surprised that the ride only cost 8.5 euro (I gave the taxi driver a 10 and she helped me get my luggage into the building proper).  

I then rode in the archaic lift (with manual door guards) up to my host's place, and thankfully was immediately let in; though that's how it ideally goes, I had to wait for around 20 minutes to get access to my AirBnB in Paris.  The first things I did were to take off the compression wrap and get the ice pack I put in my suitcase into the freezer.  Then I took a short nap - around an hour and a half.  I rewrapped my foot and went out to see if I could catch Tram 28.

Before my foot incident, I had plans for what I wanted to do during my two days in Lisbon, but due to my foot (and also due to the delayed flight which together with the short nap ate up much of the first day), I decided to significantly curtail my plans.  Luckily one of the tourist attractions is done primarily sitting down: Tram 28.  It's an old-school single car tram that takes passengers through the Alfama district and past a number of famous sights.  Waiting in line for the tram was a little rough (I regretted not tossing my sunscreen into my bookbag even though it was already 4:30pm - the sun was still fierce!) given all the tourists who had the same idea, and I had to wait for a tram with available seating due to my foot, but I eventually got onto an empty tram and snagged a coveted window seat.  While waiting in line, I also briefly befriended a nice Canadian couple who let me in on the best side to sit on and that my attempting to walk much of the Alfama would be a bad idea due to its numerous inclines, declines, and straight up stairs.

The tram ride was nice, though it was also surprisingly fast - we zipped by a lot of places that I would have liked to explore, had I had the time and a better foot.  When we came to the end of the line, since we were kicked off anyway I chose to take a small exploration before returning and also snagged a bite to eat at a vegan-friendly waffle place and literally the only place open that served food at that hour.  I was a little sad that my attempts to order both a savory and a sweet waffle were lost in translation and ended in only the sweet one being delivered; that being said, though I would have preferred the savory one once the sweet had been placed at my table I realized there was no way I would've been able to eat two of them and Europe is not a doggy-bag culture.  So what I ate was a strawberry-greek yogurt-granola topped oat waffle; it was really quite good and very affordable even though it wasn't quite what I had in mind as a meal.

I got back on the return tram, and got off in the Alfama district near the Arc de Triomphe.  I wandered around for honestly probably way too far before deciding I was pretty thoroughly lost, it was 8pm, and my foot had started to complain a while ago and was getting pretty insistent about it - so I just hailed a cab.  That ride ended up being only 5.5 euro (rounded to 6 euro with a tip), and I decided it's affordable enough to rely on taxis if my foot is hurting.

I do have to say I keep spending cash in Lisbon so far; I'm surprised but the taxis, metro, and restaurants so far did not want to accept credit cards.  I brought some cash along, though, so it should be fine.

Back in my AirBnB, I met one of the other people renting a room here - she's a Spanish professor at the University of Lisbon who is almost done with the semester and will then return back to her home near Galicia, Spain, when it's over.  We briefly chatted and then I got ready for bed and turned in around 9:30pm.

I woke up at 12:30am, and try though I might, I could not go back to sleep.  Jet lag is annoying!  After just lying in the dark for 45 minutes, I decided to journal instead.  And now here we are, and here I will leave you to hopefully return to sleep shortly in order to wake rested and at a semi-normal time on Sunday!

Don't Use the Bank of America Travel Center

I (and several travelers I know) have the Bank of America Travel Rewards credit card, because it has no foreign transaction fees which makes it useful for international travel.  The credit card is associated with the Bank of America Travel Center, which is advertised as providing double reward points on flights purchased through the Travel Center.  I decided to buy my tickets to my art residency this summer at La Maison Verte through the Travel Center to take advantage of the reward points, but when a problem cropped up with part of the flight, Bank of America wouldn't help.  Bank of America acts as a third party between you and the airline (much like reserving a car or hotel through a third-party site like Expedia) and everyone pointed fingers at everyone else when the problem arose that cost me a rather high surcharge to fix.  I've actually had this third party shenaniganery happen before with a site like Expedia (and learned to book car and hotel rentals directly as well), but in that case I was still able to do a credit card chargeback to fix that problem.  In this case, though, because Bank of America is both the vendor and the creditor, they found against my chargeback request as well as my refund request.

The credit card itself is still good for foreign travel, but I won't be using the Bank of America Travel Center to buy plane tickets again.  My recommendation is to buy directly from the airlines.