Back in Spain :)

My last days at home I just wasn't feeling inspired to blog.  After leaving Lucy at Sonoma the count-down really began and I was doing my best to get my things in the barn squared away, squeeze in a few more visits and of course enjoy my remaining days at home.  My mom and I never fit in another ride, just too much going on for her with my dad's Rotary, and in the evenings when we could have gone it seems I was always too tired.  Still, last night when a friend asked me what my favorite thing I did at home was, I answered without hesitation, "riding with my mom." :)

I arrived in Malaga yesterday, 19 hours after leaving Reno.  I did sleep a bit on the plane, but it's always such fitful sleep that I never arrive very rested.  Angelines met me at the airport--it was SO good to see her.  As I was waiting for my bags to come in I ran over to the glass partitions that separate baggage claim from the pick up area, and spotted my little Spaniard immediately. :)  She came running over and we had our first non-pixelated view of each other in two months.  Skype is great, don't get me wrong--I LOVE it!--but there's nothing that can substitute the real thing.  I gathered my luggage as quickly as possible an raced around to meet her.

We came home to a great, home-cooked meal at my mother-in-law's house.  Such a welcome relief from airplane food!  Even when it's not horrible, there's just something not satisfying about eating on long plane rides.  Especially when you haven't brought your own food (like me in this case), you tend to eat just to stave off hunger or because you know that they'll gouge you if you try to pick something up during your layover!  Needless to say I had quite an appetite for the sopa de picadillo,  tortilla de papas and filetes empana'os  all served with a great big green salad.  DELICIOUS.  "You haven't missed your mother-in-law's cooking, have you?" was Angelita's only comment as I devoured everything on my plate and helped myself to more. ;)

I'm sure you're all wondering about my dog, right?  Well, it turns out I'm not easy to forget, even for a now eight-month-old puppy. ;)  She was very happy to see me and, much to Angelines's disgust, now only has eyes for me.  She follows me around and doesn't pay much attention at all to the mother who's so diligently cared for her these two months.  Ungrateful little punk... 

Last night I ended up going out for tapas with a friend and in typical Spanish fashion, wasn't in bed until 3am!  Welcome home, Viola!! ;)  It was really great to be out seeing people though.  They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder and while most of the time we don't need to be away to realize what we have, it's true that there's nothing like travel to make you appreciate home that much more.  My time in the States was great, and it really was just about the perfect amount of time; but still, nothing can substitute my own bed, my own house or my own dear wife.  

It's good to be back.  

My mom snaps a picture of the twinnie saunter through the Reno-Tahoe airport.

A Sight for Sore Eyes:

Bye bye, Baby

Li'l Hodge in her new room. :)

Yesterday we left little Lu at Sonoma State for the school year.  Today will be her first day of classes.  We all drove down and unpacked her stuff in a whirlwind.  I think we made record time.  The drive down took a lot longer than expected and of course we left the house much later than we'd planned to originally, so by the time we got there we were pretty sick of sitting in the car and also pretty hungry!  In just about 45 min. we got all her stuff out of boxes and put away.  The only thing left for her to do was hang pictures!

How long do you think it will look this good?

For dinner we headed over to my Aunt Kitt's house and it was lovely because my cousin Sarah and her kids were visiting at the same time so I got to see little Rowan before he's ten, as it turned out. ;)  We spent the evening playing with the kids, laughing and teasing each other and chatting with the adults.  Dinner was wonderful.

My parents stayed at my aunt's house but we girls decided to have a sister sleep-over at Lucy's apartment.  One of Lucy's best friends from Portola (they've known each other since pre-school) is living with her this year.  She joined us for dinner and then we decided to all crowd into her room for the sleep over since Lu's other roommate was home and asleep when we got back.  

Sarah and Vince didn't know what to make of us crazy cousins!

Lucy's little apartment really is cute.  Seeing how excited she was to begin hanging pictures and get her stuff moved in made me think about my own years at school.  Getting all that stuff into boxes at the end of the year wasn't ever much fun, but it sure was exciting to unpack and reorganized my things in a new room/house.  I think about all my room/housemates I had through college and since then, and I'm excited for my sisters.  Living with people isn't always easy, but at least in my experience you have a whole lot of fun.  

I think perhaps what really makes the college years so unique is the novelty of each new year.  Every year there is so much change--new roommates, new house, new classes...  I certainly never lived in the same place for more than the nine-month school year all through college and even after that I was moving every year until the city hall of La Roda granted me our little piso for a second year! (Perhaps that explains my strange attachment to that place.)

All that moving and change is stressful and looses it's luster after too long, but it's fun to look back and reminisce.  I remember how sad I always was when the school year came to an end because I knew there was just no way I'd ever get that year back.  Of course that sounds silly since you can never repeat a year, but the end of each year meant an end to the fun and memory-making of day-to-day living with my roomies... at least in that setting.  I have maintained those friendships though and it's always fun to get together and remember all the fun we used to have.  I can't wait for Lu and Maggie to have those same experiences. 

Camry "Wousel" and Maggie snuggling. :)

Sunday morning we woke up and all went out to breakfast.  We found a funny little hole-in-the-wall place, The Friendly Kitchen.  The Chinese couple who ran the place wasn't quite sure what to think of us crazy Wilbanks at first, but we had our waiter in stitches by the end of our meal.  He even made a few jokes himself and then very seriously told mom and dad that Lucy would be the Sonoma State beauty queen. ;)

Our good-byes were tearful, but it's been a great summer. I'm so happy Lu and I got to do our little road trip and that she and Maggie both got the time off to accompany me to Portland the last time I was there.  In these past few weeks at home I've been going through my things in the barn and among many other long-forgotten items, I found boxes of old letters that I've saved through the years.  Maggie, Lucy and I have decided to revive letter writing and I'm sure we'll be in good touch throughout the school year.

The whole crew for breakfast at The Friendly Kitchen, Rohnert Park.

On Modern Civilization

I've just finished reading David McCullough's The Great Bridge--fantastic.  It's the story of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and as dry as that may sound to some, I assure you that the book is anything but boring!  This is the second McCullough book I've read and I think I'll be taking another home with me to Spain to read on the plane.  They are fascinating books that bring history and it's characters to life on the page.  The fact that I devoured this one in a matter of days is a testament, I believe to the writing.
  

I could write an entire post about the incredible feat of engineering that was the building of the bridge, approved in 1870, when Brooklyn and New York were separate cities, and finished in 1883 (nearly exactly 100 years before I was born!).  But maybe I'll save that for another time.  Mostly I want to share this fabulous excerpt from Chief Engineer Washington Roebling's letter to one of the Bridge Board Trustees who was preparing a speech to be read on opening day (May 24, 1883) and had asked for some figures to show that the bridge would have cost much more if built in any other age.  In other words, he wanted some hard facts and figures to back up the idea that the bridge was representative of great advancement in science, technology and humankind in general.  This was the response he got from Roebling:

To build his pyramid Cheops packed some pounds of rice into the stomachs of innumerable Egyptians and Israelites.  We today would pack some pounds of coal inside steam boilers to do the same thing, and this might be cited as an instance of the superiority of modern civilization over ancient brute force.  But when referred to the sun, our true standard of reference, the comparison is naught, because to produce these few pounds of coal required a thousand times more solar energy than to produce the few pounds of rice.  We are simply taking advantage of an accidental circumstance.

It took Cheops twenty years to build his pyramid, but if he had had a lot of Trustees, contractors, and newspaper reporters to worry him, he might not have finished it by that time.  The advantages of modern engineering are in many ways over balanced by the disadvantages of modern civilization. 

I love it!  And his point certainly rings true today, in an era where solar power and energy consumption are the center of public debate.  It also seems to be a true and quite humble reality.  Even something as staggering as the Curiosity's Mars landing is really only possible thanks to "accidental circumstance". It's actually comforting to think of the great achievements of  humankind in this way.  No one people is greater than another for having achieved this or that, but rather all are equally ingenious for having used their circumstances to their advantage.  There is an over-arching commonality across the ages and between the cultures of the world--the singularly human capacity for creativity and innovation.

Challenges of Getting to Mars: Curiosity's Seven Minutes of Terror

This was one of the videos that we watched at the astronomy chat Thursday night.  It gives a great (if slightly dramatic) overview of just exactly what engineers, and physicists were up against when working on the Curiosity's Mars mission.  What really comes out in the video is the incredible capacity of the human mind for creativity.  To overcome the myriad difficulties in the Mars landing, scientists necessarily had to invent all manner of complex maneuvers and contraptions to successfully carry out the mission.  The "sky crane" and especially the "super-sonic parachute" sound more like Warner Brothers' creations for Wile E. Coyote (if only they were ACME brand) than anything actually used in an official NASA mission!  It is astonishing to think that that they really did this, flawlessly--we now have a rover the size of a small SUV on Mars.

This one goes out to all the nerds:

Heading West

The trip home from Massachusetts was an ordeal to say the least.  It perhaps deserves its own blog post, but I'm not sure that would be very interesting.  Suffice it to say that my flight was very delayed in CT.  I did, however, make my connection in Vegas (they held the plane for me!) so my arrival in Reno was only a few min. late.  And our waiting time while on-board the aircraft in Hartford was cheered by a most original song and dance routine performed by the flight attendants.  You gotta love Southwest! ;)

But what I really wanted to blog about was my last night in Mass. with Miriam and her lovely boyfriend, Taj. The two of them had each had extremely long days in the office and so our evening dinner plans came as a welcome respite.  We dined at the top of nearby Mount Greylock outside Adams, MA.  It's a high mountain by Eastern standards, about 3,500 ft, with great panoramic views from the top.

When I made our dinner reservations at the Bascom Lodge (right on top of the mountain) we were told that prior to dinner there was to be a brief astronomy "lecture" in the living room.  We made it up there for the lecture and it was really quite interesting.  Most of the star/constellation identification wasn’t new information for me, but the first part of the talk, in which the presenter explained the details of the Curiosity’s Mars landing—fascinating!  

Dinner was wonderful.  It was family-style dining and since we were a party of three, we were seated with the presenters to fill the table.  They were actually a lot of fun, and even more so when plied with a bit of vino.  We spent the dinner discussing the value of nerds in the world, theories of the universe and debating Pluto’s status as a planet.  It really was a great dinner and when we’d finished eating our new friends treated all of us to some spectacular views of the Northeastern sky through their telescope. 

Thursday dawned early and Miriam and I headed to Hartford first thing to explore the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum on a work mission for Miss M. which worked out nicely since my flight was out of Bradley International Airport.  Being a museum employee (though not of the Wadsworth), Miriam gets in free to all museums!  The best part about going with her, aside from getting bits of her expert knowledge of the art itself, is that I get in free, too. :)  So it was great to stroll through the galleries of the Hudson River School and several galleries of more contemporary art, most of which was American.  As it turns out, the Wadsworth was the first public art museum in the United States as well as the first institution to begin collecting contemporary American Art. 

My last 24 hours on the east coast were wonderful.  Looking back at these posts, I guess Miriam and I really did take advantage of our time together--though it seems we never have enough!  More important than all the things we did, however, we were able to work in a lot of time together despite her work schedule (mostly in the car!) to talk, talk, talk and catch up on each others lives.    As always it was good for my soul to see Miriam.  It really would have been terrible to be in the country and not see her.

I'm a happy camper.

A Walk in the Woods

Taconic Crest Trail

Though we weren't on the Appalachian Trail and although I haven't actually read Bill Bryson's book, the title seems appropriate.

Yesterday when Miriam got off work, the the two of us headed out for an evening hike. It was late and so we couldn't go out very long, but it was fantastic to be out in the forest and for Miriam it was especially good to get out in the fresh air after a stressful day in the office.

Looking over New York.

We hiked along a portion of the Taconic Crest Trail that winds through a 2,500 acre nature reserve owned by Williams College for recreation and study.  It was a beautiful portion of trail.  Mostly I was struck by the dense vegetation, something I'm not used to seeing in the Sierras.  These hardwood forests seem to close in around you so even though we were walking along a ridge there weren't any real views to speak of.  The foliage made a full canopy overhead.

After nearly two miles we broke out into the open and got the first of the "spectacular" views Miriam's trail book had promised us.  It was quite beautiful, though I'm not sure I would have said spectacular.  The rolling, green-blue mountains stretched out as far as we could see: New York to the west, Vermont to the north and Massachusetts to the southeast.

We finished off the evening with a burger and chili from the Purple Pub in town and ice cream from Lickety Split.  Just the kind of food you crave after a hike. :)

Connecticut: the 26th State

That is, the 26th State on my list...  It was obviously one of the first in the union as you cannot fail to notice driving through each little village that announces instead of population: Incorporated in 1665.  Or some other outrageously "old" date by American standards.

That is something that's struck me being here on the East Coast.  Can you imagine how silly it would be to have signs in the villages of Spain for example: La Roda, 720 A.D.  (that's just a guess actually.  I believe there were people living in "La Roda" before the muslim invasion of Spain in 711...although the church only dates from the 16th cent.)  It would be ridiculous, and yet we, as a country, are new enough that having existed for three hundred some-odd years is a source of pride to the point that we declare it upon entering any small town (out East anyway).  Age is very relative as it turns out.

I've gotten sidetracked from my initial purpose for writing which was to tell about my and Miriam's fabulous jaunt down to Connecticut.  It really did end up being a "jaunt" everything is so close out here.  When I was faced with the map of Massachusetts that occupied the entire two pages in Miriam's road atlas I thought this was going to be a much longer journey than it ended up being.  The scale had me completely baffled: an inch represented about 10 miles rather than twenty or fifty whatever it is I'm more used to seeing so that map makers can fit California into a reasonable space in a book.  I kept thinking we had much further to go than we did in reality and exclaimed throughout the whole drive, "We're already there?!"  Miriam was amused.

The drive should really have been even shorter than it was because we did end up getting slightly lost.  We were going the old fashioned way: ie. road atlas and Google Maps print-outs.  Neither of us has a smart phone and Miriam doesn't have a GPS in her car.  We got slightly turned around mostly because I hate Google Maps directions and need to see it on a map...but somehow couldn't find Mystic, CT. on the map and just thought it was because it was too small.  It turns out that I was looking about twenty miles west of where it actually was (yes, it's on the map) and so ended up giving contrary directions to Google Maps (whose directions, in my defense, weren't terribly clear to begin with).  Though it sounds like an oxymoron, I really am a good navigator when I know where I'm going! ;)

Needless to say, we were late for dinner, and poor Maggie was starving when we finally arrived.

We stayed the night in a little Inn on the Mystic River and had breakfast the next morning at a lovely little coffee shop called Bartleby's.  As we were heading back to the car from breakfast we ended up on the wrong side of the draw bridge over the river just as a small fleet of sail boats was passing through.  It was really cool to see the bridge go up so even though it pushed our schedule a little down to the wire we were glad to sit and watch the mechanics of this 1922 bridge.

From Mystic we drove west to Chester to visit Sol Lewitt's home and studio.  After lunch we also made a visit to the warehouse where a variety of personal works and works gifted to him or purchased by him are stored.  It was a very interesting visit.  The curator of the collection was a woman who had worked for some twenty years with Lewitt and knew him very personally and so not only could she tell us about his art and how he conceived his work, but she could bring the artist to life from a personal perspective, too.

It is always fascinating to get a peek at the unseen part of artistic creation.  I remember visiting the Picasso museum in Barcelona with Miriam and there was a show exhibiting his earliest sketches and scribbles...things never really intended for display, but that shed light on the artist all the same.  And of course when you're talking about Picasso, what he doodled on a napkin at some point in his youth, is intriguing.

Lewitt had a beautiful studio an entire wall of which was windows looking out at the surrounding birch forest.  He apparently never worked without blaring classical music, all of which he had copied onto cassette and carefully cataloged (some 4,000 tapes if I remember correctly).  My favorite was seeing his paints stored in old Skippy peanut butter and Tostitos salsa jars--so humanizing.

Lewitt's studio.

Tanglewood

Friday I did the unthinkable from a strictly Spanish point of view: flew the equivalent distance from Málaga to Stockholm, Sweden for a weekend.  That is correct, flying from Portland, Oregon to Albany, New York is slightly more than the distance spanning the European continent North to South.  And in reality, Williamstown, MA. which is where Miriam lives is just about half way between Málaga and Reno.  If you look at it that way, I will have flown "to Spain" three times on this trip!  But let's focus on the most important part of this sojourn which is, of course, my dearest friend Miriam. :)

I arrived very late on Friday night so yesterday was my first full day here in the Berkshires.  We spent the late morning by the pool... but weren't able to properly enjoy the water because a summer rainstorm forced us onto the screened in porch.  Once again, swimming wasn't really the focus of the morning, but rather chattering away to each other and the rain did nothing to hamper our conversation.

I couldn't pass up the close-up of the trombones!

After the pool we changed gears, and headed to Lennox, MA. and the Tangelwood summer concerts of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.  As many of you know, I have been very excited about music in general since my class this past spring semester and so when Miriam suggested that we attend a concert of the BSO, not to mention that the concerts are held outdoors, I jumped at the opportunity.  We saw Schumann's Symphony No. 4 and Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2.

The concert took place in the "shed", which was a covered, but open building housing the stage and seating.  There were also a number of people who had brought picnic dinners spread out on the lawn beyond the shed.  We chose to sit inside as opposed to lawn seating and in the end I'm very glad we did.  We were close enough to the stage to see the performers and right near a large jumbo-tron screen so we got to really see their faces, the conductor's expressions, etc.  We both decided that the TV screen enhanced the whole experience, but had we sat out on the lawn perhaps it would have felt as though we were only watching a concert on television.

My dinner in Lennox: seared tuna with wasabi sauce... :)

The music was fantastic.  Both Schumann and Brahms were romantic composers and so the pieces, while very different, were filled with the characteristic swells and changes in tempo and dynamics.  Just as my experience with the philharmonic in Málaga, my knowledge of the period made the experience that much richer.

After making our way through the gridlock ("tangle", shall we say?) of the parking fields at Tanglewood, we made our way into Stockbridge, MA where we promptly found a place for dessert: The Red Lion Inn--1773.  It was a beautiful old inn that I should have taken a picture of...  We devoured a walnut brownie sundae with hot fudge sauce. It was superb and exactly the thing to finish off a fantastic evening. :)

Some of Lewitt's work at Mass MOCA.

Today we are heading south to Connecticut (another state to check off on my list).  We are meeting one of Miriam's good friends from grad school in Mystic, CT. where we'll stay the night.  Monday is an excursion with for the interns at WCMA (the Williams College museum) where Miriam is currently working as an assistant curator.  I have kindly been allowed to tag along and so will be heading to Chester, CT. Monday to the Lewitt Collection.  For those of you non-art people, that is his home/studio where he did his work.  It's apparently not open to the general public so I'm very excited.  And I'm even more excited since on my last visit to Massachusetts, my mom and I saw some of Sol Lewitt's work at Mass. MOCA.  I will of course be able to tell you more on Monday.

So it looks as though this visit is shaping up to be time quite well spent.  No one can accuse us of wasting a moment, that is for certain.  Of course, any time with Miss M. is time well spent meaning that even as we lounge about in our PJ's I feel as though we are making the most of the moment. :)

A Bit of Back-Blog:

Suzanne, Kate and me enjoying the music with full bellies.

Two months is a long time to be away from my home in Spain... but in the end I think it's going to be just about the right amount.  I've been able to see nearly all my family and most of my friends and I haven't been so incredibly crazy as not to be able to enjoy just being back.  A few weeks ago my mom and I spent a fantastic day out on the horses and I've been meaning to blog about it since.

The stars of Code Bluegrass. :)

In the morning we loaded up the caballos and headed up to Plumas Eureka State Park for their pancake breakfast fundraiser.  My friend's parents' band, Code Bluegrass, was doing live entertainment and so we stomped our feet to the music as we downed beer-batter flapjacks, scrambled eggs and sausages. :)  I was even asked to swing dance with one of the men in living history get up...  it turned out to be the world's longest song and we were huffing and puffing by the end of our time out on the "floor".  It was loads of fun especially since my dear friend Katie and her sister were able to join us.

Swingin' like a miner. 

After breakfast, my mom and I headed to Jamison Mine trail head for a day out on the horses.  We had our picnic lunches and spent about five hours total exploring the back side of Lakes Basin.  My mom had never been out on these trails so it was new for her.  The first half mile was pretty rough for the horses, very steep and a lot of granite steps that are great for hikers but a little less fun on horse-back.  Still, our little mountain ponies did just fine and after that initial bit the rest of the ride was cake.  My little colt, who's not quite so little anymore, did great.  He's always a little silly when it comes to water crossings (tries to jump, etc.), but by the end of the ride he was plowing through the creeks like a little champ--didn't even phase him.

Lunch break at Wayde's Lake.

Fuego in his Spanish garb. ;)

We stopped at Wayde's lake for lunch and let the horses graze a little, then headed over to Rock lake just to explore.  Rock lake is gorgeous!  It's just a pristine pool in a granite bowl and the water is crystal clear.  We walked our horses down to it so they could have a drink. Fuego wanted to swimming: I had to rein him in quickly to avoid riding home in wet jeans! 

Looking out over Rock Lake.

The weather was perfect--sunny but breezy--and it was so great just to be out enjoying the world from the back of my horse with my mom's company.  When we finally got back to the trailer, we headed down to the restaurant/grill where Lucy works for a cold margarita each--boy did that taste good!  A wonderful way to end such a great day.

Prima Ballerina

PDX Playdate

Waving from the fish eye.

That's right, I'm back in Portland and this time my sissies came with me. :)  It's been a great trip.  This time we got to see Maggie's new home for the school year.  She's sharing a house with five other students in North Portland.  It's a cute little place--a perfect student house.  She gets her own bedroom which she claims is as "weird and quirky" as she is.  And it's true.  It's got moss-green, shag carpet and old floral print wall paper (pink and lavender with leaves that match the carpet).  She's also got one wall that is a chalkboard, fun for writing on, and two doors, one of which opens into the kitchen!  Sadly, I forgot to photograph the room. :(  Maggie was VERY excited to start moving in and get a key to the place.  We slept on the floor (yep, that nice green carpet) our first night in town.

Tuesday we met up with my cousin Marcie, her husband Rob and their son Danny at a great place called PDX Playdate.  It's an indoor play area, kind of like the McDonald's play areas, but a thousand times better, where the kids can go wild and parents have access to free wifi.  There is also a little cafeteria serving great food, beer and wine.  It was a great hang out for parents and I found myself getting envious of the little tots running around having such a good time.  Maggie and I finally decided to ditch our shoes and head in after Danny--What FUN!!!  We lept through the castle after the four and five-year-olds, crawled through the tunnels, bounced over balls, waved from the fish eye and slid our way out on the wavy slide. (see video below).

Maggie in the castle at PDX Playdate. :)

The little performers: ballerina and rock star.

Yesterday we met up with our other cousins in the area and were treated to a mini piano recital, a ballet performance followed by a rock concert and then later a water fight in the pool with burgers for dinner. :)  My cousin Sarah's kids, Rowan and Ainsley entertained us for the beginning of the evening and then we headed over to my cousin Matt's house for pool time and dinner with his two boys.  What an adorable, talented family I have! 

The morning had been cool and overcast and we wondered about our plans to swim in the evening, but the cloud cover burned off around mid-day and the pool was a perfect 80 degrees.  The boys, Gavin and David are little fish.  I couldn't believe how well they could swim.  We had several races and then a water fight before grill-master Matt served up the best hamburgers I've had in a loooooong time.  

Bedtime for a monkey

Lucy and David bonded over being the youngest siblings while Maggie, Gavin and I were competing like mad swimming back and forth across the pool.  When they came in last in the race and Gavin was gloating over his win, she whispered to David, "We really won...it's just that Gavin doesn't know it!  Shhh!  It's a secret." ;)  From that point on, she had a new little buddy.  She helped him eat at dinner and then was requested to read him a bedtime story afterwards.  In return, he regaled all three of us with homemade jewelry--bracelets and necklaces.


It's been a fantastic visit.  I am leaving tomorrow to visit my dearest friend, Miriam in Massachusetts and so this is the last time I'll be in the Northwest for quite a while.  It dawned on me yesterday, as we were saying goodbye to Rowan and Ainsley that Rowan might very well be ten the next time I see him (he's six)!  This thought occurred to me out loud and I immediately regretted saying anything because Rowan's face fell and he turned to his mom in disbelief, "I'm gonna be TEN the next time I see Viola!?"  Then, as I choked back tears he mused, "Wouldn't it be nice if Spain were just a city in Oregon?"  


Yes, yes it would, Rowan.

Cousin Lucy lends a hand to Ainsley.

The whole crew in the pool. :)

Big Girl Fun

Maggie didn't realize that holding the camera sideways on video mode makes a sideways video... oops.  Just turn your head to enjoy this one. :)

The World's Best Sausage!

Spicy Northern Italian sausage with fennel served with roasted onions, peppers and spicy mustard. Mmmm!

My sisters and I have been in Portland since Sunday evening... more on that later.

Yesterday we made a trip to the Farmer's Market at the South Park Blocks for the sole purpose of getting a sausage sandwich for lunch.  I fell in LOVE with these sausages six years ago when I lived in Portland and on cool, cloudy, Portland-style days, I still dream of them from the other side of the Atlantic.  

We arrived at the stand and there was a message notifying patrons that they wouldn't be at next week's market--Thank GOD we caught them!  I really would have cried right there in downtown Portland had I not been able to sink my teeth into that fantastic, spicy goodness.   

DELICIOUS!

I could have eaten at least three, but refrained.  Too much of a good thing...  Anyhow, this lunch will have to hold me over until my next visit to the States.

Sara and I prepare to ENJOY our luncheon. :)