Timing and tenses

I'm exhausted. Or I was. The break in Morocco has been extremely relaxing. I am finding tenses problematic - I am writing this 'live', but with intention to publish it only when I am back home. Not because I'm concerned about being robbed as people know I am abroad (generally would-be burglars would be right 50% of the time anyway), but because I wrote up what remained of the Thailand trip report in what felt like record time and now they're all queued up and this sits behind them. Today, in the present tense, it's Monday. Monday evening to be precise and I'm sitting in front of a log fire near Marrakech. Look, there's the laptop in the photo in fact.

But by the time this hits the world it will be next Saturday as I've got three days of trip report lined up, plus the post before this one when I'd just arrived here, even though I am now back. Or will be. Douglas Adams did this a lot better.

[In another mind-bending leap of tenses I stopped writing this yesterday and went to bed and it is now tomorrow. Or today again if you're me. What it is for you I have no idea.]

The break has been extremely good for me. Although I will now have had a day back in the office and it may all be forgotten. Hard to predict. My brain barely engaged on Monday which I found to be perfect and Mrs L found to be difficult. We are staying at a lovely place, Dar Zemora, a villa in the heart of the Palmerai. Set in a nice garden there are just seven rooms, five of which were occupied when we arrived and we are now down to three. I think the staff outnumber the guests quite considerably. We have our own terrace, several rooms, a log fire and a four poster bed. Meals can be taken on our terrace, which made for an extremely pleasant lunch yesterday when we basically did nothing at all. Unwinding I think they call it, and boy did we need it. It is super comfortable and very lovely.

Daylight. Clearly a different day.

Today, which is now Tuesday, we are going on a little adventure - to a botanic garden in the morning and then to the Medina in the evening. Although this is my sixth time in Morocco I have never spent any time in Marrakech at all, including the world-famous Medina and I am quite looking forward to it. The chaos that awaits us there versus the calm that envelops us now will make for an interesting contrast. You might wonder why I am blogging on holiday and I am wondering that too. The answer is that I felt unable to write anything at home and that has suddenly changed. I hope it continues, and anyway, I have precisely nothing else to do. It's nine in the morning, the orange juice for breakfast was as good as I had hoped, and the first rays on sunshine are creeping across the lawn. See above. A Serin is jangling from that row of trees over there and you'll have to take my word for it that the Bulbuls are extremely noisy. Yesterday a White Stork flew over and that is about all that has happened. We are in a temporary bubble and enjoying it tremendously.

Montagnes

Back in August of last year I went to Chamonix with some good friends - Charlie, Ben and JT. Andy, the fifth member of the gang wasn't able to make it. We've known each for about a million years, or it seems that way. Since the start of University more or less, which is coming up to a horrendous 30 years ago. Half a lifetime, although I think the actual milestone being celebrated was 25 years since we all graduated. We met up for similar reasons in Zermatt in 2018, I'm not sure why mountains are involved. I think Charlie just likes them! 

We're all arts graduates, none of your STEM nonsense here. All four of us studied French in some way, combining it with other things. For Charlie and I that was Management Studies, and ensured a year away at a French Business School. We chose the South of France, lived together, and had a thoroughly marvellous if rather un-academic year. Ben added classics, and taught in a school in the sud-ouest during the same year, and in fact we met up a few times as Montpellier and Dax are not hugely distant in the grand scheme of things. JT went to Canada I think, he was always ambitious like that. So nearly three decades have passed and we are all still alive and broadly doing OK, let's meet up somewhere and some fun. Mountains anyone? Yes, mountains will do. 

Ben and I arrived first even though we were supposed to arrive last. JT and Charlie's earlier  flight was cancelled, whereas our later flight was not. In the ensuing chaos Charlie ended up on the next flight out the following morning, but somehow JT missed that boat (well, plane) and didn't travel until the following day by which point we were probably over the half-way point! Transport woes did not end there but I can save that for later. 

Ben and I had a riotous journey. Even though we managed to get there on the correct day our flight was really quite delayed which meant we were able to spend a lot more time in the airport lounge than originally planned. Seeing as we had the time we started with a few drinks. After working up an appetite at the bar we then had a very leisurely multi-course dinner and then moved on to after dinner drinks. Lots of after dinner drinks. We continued the after dinner drinks on the plane too and were pretty well oiled by the time we arrived in Geneva where our transfer was waiting. This is a rare event in my life, and pretty rare in Ben's too - we are normally serious people who are not stupid. On this occasion however..... I make make no apologies, we had not seen each other for a long time and despite the sad news that our travelling companions were not with us we had a lot of fun.

The next morning we were quite in need of some cool mountain air for some reason..... Up the cable car to Brévent it is then! What a view! What. A. View. I now remember why we come to the mountains. I am not a skier by the way, I tried it a couple of times in my youth and never really enjoyed it, I just found it boring and painful. Walking in the mountains in the summer however, well that's just an excellent use of time, despite my near certain tendency to be crushed by patellar tendonitis at the drop of a hat. 

Charlie met us halfway up the mountain at some point in the late morning. The band is getting back together. We went on a short walk during which my legs behaved perfectly, or did they crap out? I can't remember. Actually maybe they did let me down? Anyway, we were together again and it was all very pleasant. This is the type of friendship where even if you don't see each other for months or years it is as if time has stood still when you do get back together. I am sure you know what I am talking about. In short it's great. That evening we consumed a hundred-weight of cheese and then attempted to replicate the previous evening's antics in various bars in Chamonix, pretty successfully I might add.

The next day JT arrived reasonably early and we went up the other side of the valley to the Mer de Glace. The others are in much better shape - less Burgundy I expect - and marched up there. I could barely walk so was forced to take the red train a little later after having a nice walk birding around the town on the flat. Chamonix was gearing up for an ultra-marathon, a gruelling course where you run around the Alps day and night. For seriously fit people only, I was content just to watch these perfect humans wander round the town as they got ready.

In common with many other glaciers the Mer de Glace has retreated so far in the face of climate change that it is now a Mer de Pebble where Glace once was, but in any event the weather was pretty filthy, with cloud obscuring most of the view. We all took the train down, and back in the town the weather was nice enough to sit and have lunch outside. With Sparrows. We went for another walk along the river, the boys being kind to my legs. Very bizarre whatever this tendon is, I can walk perfectly happily either uphill or on the flat, but a single step downhill is agony once it has gone. We then repaired to the roof-top hot tub of our hotel and consumed a series of colourful drinks. This is what old guys do apparently, sit around and get pinker and more wrinkly. In the evening we sought out yet more cheese (although I passed and had something else) and then spent the rest of the evening in a very loud bar pretending we were a lot younger than we were. We fooled no-one.

Our final day and my knee still did not allow for strenuous descents so I chilled out whilst the boys climbed Mont Blanc or something. JT had had to leave already but Charlie, Ben and I had a leisurely lunch and then watched some of the superhumans complete the course which happened to finish just outside our hotel. They had been running through the night and to be fair most of them looked like it. Incredible though. Soon it was time to go, our decadent long weekend was over, and so we took a taxi back down to Geneva and had a walk around the lake until our flight home to London left. If it left that is. UK Air traffic control was having some kind of meltdown and we were not sure what was going to happen. More on that later, as it had a significant impact on my next trip and I had a decision to make. Still, a wonderful few days. Already looking forward to 2028.

Lisbon

Back in March I went to Lisbon for a long weekend with my son. No particular aim, just to wander the city, take in the sights, eat a bit of nice food, some nice wine. Possibly take a photograph or two? It ended up being one of the last outings for my old Canon camera, at least in the context of a city break. As well as my birding lenses I had a collection of wide angles and intermediate zooms. Things like a 16-35, a 24-105, and a 70-200. Like the camera itself they were huge lumps, but they did the job. Heavily. Note the tense - had.

Henry meanwhile carried a tiny Sony mirrorless job that he could fit in his pocket. It and the lens, a basic zoom, weighed a combined 711g, the image quality and general abilities totally fantastic. My camera body alone weighs 1525g and certainly doesn't fit in any pockets! Add the lenses and I was lugging around close to 4kg. My mind was made up. As soon as I returned from a trip in July where I wanted a particular Canon lens I was going to sell the lot and make the switch. And that's exactly what I did. Ebay'd the whole lot. Did I lose money? Yes, loads. Do I regret it? Well, nobody likes losing money, but I'd had great use out of those lenses for years, in some cases a decade. It was time to modernise.

But this isn't about that. It's about Lisbon, one of the great capital cities in Europe. It is staggeringly beautiful, with wonderful buildings, an eclectic tram system, very hilly and views galore. We had a brilliant time. It is so long ago now I can barely remember how long we were there and what we did. Two nights I think, and largely we walked and walked. And, apparently, clicked and clicked - the photos will no doubt remind me. I've only just been through a very large set and made a small selection. Despite that this is a very photo-heavy post. 

Lisbon is heavily, perhaps excessively, tiled. It's really quite extraordinary.

I like this photo, it reminds me of a very similar one I took in Valetta which also had a old lady on a balcony. Apologies old lady, but you know how it is.

There are tiles, and then there are tiles. These are tiles.

Lisboa sits astride the mouth of the river Tagus, at that point more of an estuary. A huge bridge, the ponte 25 de Abril, which celebrates the 1974 revolution which eventually ushered in democracy, spans the strait.

Wonderful

The city is ridiculously hilly, and you don't feel remotely bad tucking into large lunches having tackled so many slopes and steps.

Trams feature heavily, especially in some of the older narrower streets around Alfama. They're used by a healthy mix of locals and tourists - easily separated! 

So do Tuk-tuks!

There are lots of scenes like this, though you often have to wait quite a while to get just a solitary figure like this.

Whilst the tiles are quite blue, many of the buildings are on the warm spectrum - yellows, reds, pinks, browns. 

I took about a million photographs of trams.

More tiles. Just because.

The Caixa Geral de Depositos, the National Savings Bank, is a huge 1990s half-temple half-citadel in the Arco de Cego district. Worthy of a slot on any itinerary. We decided not to try and photograph the entirety of this behemoth of a building, but just went for small elements of it.

More of the Caixa

There are several colonades like this.

This mural reminded me of Colombia

Oooh look! A tram!

Yet more steps.

"No way!?"

Breakfast. Sometimes we were forced to have several breakfasts.

Anyway, that's a small flavour of Lisbon, an excellent place in which to spend a few days. Not far away, and not expensive. I can also recommend White Port and tonic as a very refreshing mid-afternoon drink.