Protein-Packed Cashew Butter Cups That Have No Business Being So G-D Deliciousby Randi / June 2, 2017
Recently, Husband and I spent a weekend in Madrid, and then two weeks later we returned to Spain for an extended trip through Andalusia, because whenever we go to Spain, we go back two weeks later. Not really on purpose, it’s just how our travels always fall and it’s weird but hey we like Spain. If we go to Spain once, we go twice, usually in the same month. But this part of Spain, the southern part, was new to us, although I did spend a weekend during college in Malaga at a resort I found on hostelworld.com for supercheap but I didn’t leave the resort the whole time so it doesn’t really count. Also I was alone at the resort, which was filled with Spanish families and lots of children and everyone stared me and it was the most awkward thing ever. Anyway, we’re not here to talk about that. We are here to talk about something that finally surpassed the awkwardness of that Malaga weekend: Easter week in Seville. See, we didn’t realize that Seville was the epicentre of Easter, not until we were smack dab in the center of the insane crowds and shocking costumes. I don’t know if you know this, but you know Jesus? Hoo boy, he’s big there. And Jesus Fever spreads at similar strengths throughout all of Andalusia, so while I’m just talking about Seville today, the rest of my Andalusia posts will feature similar levels of craycray bananapants.
I was really excited to go to Seville, not just because I thought Andalusia was the fairytale land from “Enchanted” (it’s seriously ONE letter off) so I thought I was getting into some kind of Neverland situation. but also, I always wanted to go to Seville, well, since 1998, when “You’ve Got Mail” came out. That’s where Birdie fell madly in love!! But it wasn’t meant to be. I’m sure you know the unparalleled genius of “You’ve Got Mail” as well as I do but it’s always fun to watch (best at the end):
AHHHHHHHH oh no you’re fine i guess
Despite not meeting any fascist dictators (my trip to the USA was a month later), I enjoyed the sights of Seville very much, although the timing of our trip made things…interesting. Going during Easter week is not necessarily a bad idea; in fact, Husband loved all the Easter hubbub. I got a little tired of it but I’m still glad I saw things I would not believe if you told me. You have to be prepared to deal with endless crowds that could very well block you from doing what you planned to do that day. Numerous parades happened all day long, all week long, because instead of a measly Monday off to celebrate, Spanish people take the entire week off and probably the one after it too. During the parades and marches, people would cram into the streets like sardines to catch a glimpse of people dressed up…like Klan members. I kid you not. The traditional Spanish Easter costumes that even little children wore look eerily like what white supremacists play dress-up in. They came in ALL COLORS though, not just white. There was black, there was purple and magenta and green and lots of other colors I can easily name but can hardly get over. There’s nothing tying this traditional hey-zeus garb to the worst of American culture, and I’m pretty sure that Jesus, and Spain, came first before neo-Nazis and the American south, so it’s just an unfortunate coincidence if you’re familiar with the latter. As far as I know, the Spanish have no idea that their special costumes remind us of dirty diaper people so there’s no reason to tell them and tarnish what’s clearly their favorite time of year. Because lordy, do they LOVE them some hey-zeus. As Americans, we never got over the shock of seeing these costumes everywhere we looked, but it’s nice to see the pointy hats and not run in fear for your life so like let’s not bother them about it.
CRUUUUUCIFIIIIXUUUUUS REEEEX COELEEEESTISSSS
There were other costumes too, like these, um, executioner? outfits. In the rest of Andalusia we saw even more variation, including a Teenage Widow costume that I look forward to sharing with you in future posts. Seville had some of the densest crowds though, and the most participants, as you would expect since this was the center of it all. Like I said, we had no idea that Seville was Easter Capital of the World – can you imagine going on vacation and seeing these scenes the entire time? So nuts! It’s a good thing we expected Easter to be big in a hugely Catholic country; we just didn’t know it would be the entire week. Incredible!
In addition to the costumes, there were parade floats, gilded beyond belief with giant nativity scenes but for Easter, whatever you’d call those. These were some serious floats, and in the tiny, ancient alleyways of Seville, we often wondered how in god’s name they would make it through the narrow passages. I guess with god’s grace. Or by? I don’t know I wasn’t carrying the floats. The one pictured below was what we encountered one evening on our way to dinner. Needless to say, we had to pick a different restaurant.
this was precarious
But like I said, there’s plenty of Easter treats in all the other towns we saw in Andalusia, so let’s talk about what makes Seville particularly special. Its history as the cultural and financial capital of southern Spain means it has very important stuff to see. The river, which is either called Guadalajara or LaGuardia, divides it into Sevilla and Triana, and I wish we had more time to spend in Triana because it looked really nice. And crossing the bridge in the evening from one side to the other was so beautiful, and as in most European cities it was my favorite sight.
we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it oh we’re there |
I forget what this statue is but ME GUSTA MUCHOOO |
REAL ALCAZAR
In every city, there’s the big thing to see. Oh I gotta SEE the big f-ing thing! In Seville, it’s the Real Alcazar, not to be confused with the fake one because you say it ‘ray-al’ and it means royal. It’s the old Moorish palace with endless rooms and courtyards and gardens and fountains and really purdy tiled walls and it is really cool. Now this is the pinnacle of that Moorish architecture in Seville I was talking about. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage site (I mean what isn’t these days) and the royal family still uses parts of it when they are in town, which is super weird considering there are hundreds of tourists at all times. The gigantic palace has lots of smaller palaces within it and lots of patios and special historical rooms, and I learned all about them from my audioguide but then forgot everything about them. But pictures!
oh look this is a courtyard a what a courtyard 
beautiful tile! 
this might be the Courtyard of the Dolls – or the Courtyard of the Maidens. It could be one of those. But can anyone really ever know |
this ceiling is INCRED 
Oh I remember the audioguide about this facade, the Facade of the Mudejar Palace! It’s clearly an example of Islamic art but its actual existence is a Christian thing |
And just when you think you’ve seen all there is to see while you’re inside, you find out that there are like acres and acres of outside gardens and maze-like paths and fountains and it’s so wonderful.
I think that is a statue of Mercury which would make this the Mercury pond!
I love maze-y gardens
From the Gallery of the Grotesques (!) you get a great view of a lot of the palace and gardens
THE CATHEDRAL OF SEVILLE
this is a great picture
The other big f-ing thing you have to see in Seville is the Cathedral, which is the third largest church in the world, unless you are going by volume and then it’s the biggest, but like, what. Weird fact, Spain. Once you have seen Saint Peter’s, it is hard to get excited about other cathedrals, no matter how much water they can hold. But this was indeed a nice one. I had an audioguide here too but literally not one word stuck around. I believe it was built by the Spanish. OH and Christopher Columbus is buried there so you can spit on him.
THE JEWISH QUARTER
old timey map of the jewish quarter don’t mind the flash
OH YEAH now we’re talking! Well, we’ve been talking, because the Jewish Quarter is the main touristy section of Seville and includes the Real Alcazar and the Cathedral so you’re in it allatimes. This was actually the Jewish quarter during medieval times, in both senses of the word (the era and the slang of describing something as so stupid as to be archaic). Ferdinand III (not the one with Isabella) concentrated all the city’s jews in this area because he was so scared of their big strong bodies (lol just kidding) so he thought it would be easier to watch them out of the corner of his eye if they were all in one spot, and then he went to hell. It remained the Jewish Quarter until 1492, when the Alhambra Decree kicked all the Jews out of Spain. This decree came from the later Ferdinand, the one with Isabella, who by the way the Sevillanos ABSOLUTELY ADOOOORE, who were dicks. But Seville loves them, and seriously everywhere we turned there would be some monument or at least sign (and street name) for The Catholic Kings, as they called them. I really like calling them both kings but that’s where any good feeling ends. So the jews were expelled from their homeland as the universe decrees must happen every century, or they converted to Catholicism with their fingers crossed behind their backs so they could stay in their home. People are crappy. Anyway, you can learn all about the long, extended history of hatred for jews in the Centro de Interpretacion Juderia de Sevilla, the small museum in the Jewish Quarter that recounts all the horrid events. It’s not a great museum, as it is mostly lots of writing on walls so you just read and then walk to the next wall section and read more, but the information is put forward nicely. The staff will give you a map of the important parts of the ancient Jewish Quarter so you can walk around the neighborhood and see what happened to the synagogue (it’s a parking lot), the school (it’s a parking lot), the famous jeweler’s (parking lot).
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OH THIS IS FUN. In the 15th century, you had to prove that you had no Jewish blood in your system in order to hold public office or be a member of an organization. It doesn’t say what kind of organization. Is that ALL organizations? That seems overbroad. Anyway, people are horrendous.
A much more fun thing to do in this area is to see a flamenco show! A popular place to go – for free! – is Carboneria, mostly because it’s free. You pay your dues by buying food (which is very much not good) or drink (same) but it’s all in good faith, no one watches or forces you to. Anyway, it’s a big cafeteria looking place that gets packed to the gills and a lady dances for a minute and then people play guitar, and then someone sings, and then maybe the lady will dance for another minute. If you can see anything, that’s great, but odds are you can’t see anything. It’s worth it to pay for a really good flamenco show if you have never seen it before. We have, so we kind of just popped in for 30-45 minutes and then said we came, we saw, we tired.
This was our view — after we moved seats to get a better view. Somebody somewhere is dancing.
PLAZA DE ESPANA
Plaza de Espana is without a doubt my favorite part of Seville. I guess I don’t love it enough to figure out how to get an accented ‘n’ up in there, but I do really love it. It’s a huge, gorgeous (slightly dilapidated but that’s part of it’s charm?) pavilion that houses government offices both in Spain AND the newer/subpar/NatPo Star Wars movies! Look I was standing where R2 was!
Despite the various joggers, strollers, and government workers present, the plaza feels sort of serene and special. It’s a beautiful place and I cannot imagine what it’s like for those people who go there every day to work. They probably hate being cooped up inside a boring office even more than most people because they know this lovely spot is just outside the door. We went early our last morning before we walked to the train station to go to (camp) Granada.
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pretty |
FOOD AND LODGING
As for food, I had a long list of places but few worked out, either because they were closed for Easter or we literally just could not get to them because of parades. We pretty much just ate a lot of tapas in the tapas bars – the famous Seville-style gazpacho called Salmorejo was vegan-friendly as far as I could tell. Just like tomatoes and bread and oil pureed. Thinking about it now, I’m actually starting to gag because I had so much of it and got so sick of it, but it’s pretty decent. What is not vegan-friendly at most traditional places, that I was so upset about because I counted on it being my main source of food all week, is espinacas con garbanzos, or spinach and chickpeas. I KNOW. My fave thing. I had it once or twice and it seemed fine, but the third place we had it it was CLEARLY cooked in hot ham water. It was too good to be true to think that it was vegetarian at the super old traditional bars. Oh blergh. My favorite meal was the vegetable paella (pictured) I scored at a restaurant right outside our hotel on a sort of main drag. It was really delicious and I’m so glad I got to have paella!
One of the HappyCow places that did work out was the ridiculously named Coq and Roll Market. The man working was super nice and helpful, and I immediately ordered a great green juice. The best when traveling! Then we had a nice arugula and pecan salad and a hummus sandwich. We kind of got our wires crossed because we (thought we) asked for hummus with crudite, but the sandwich was good and bread is good and everything was good so no complaints.
One night, when we crossed the bridge into Triana, we chanced upon what I am guessing must be the Mercado de Triana, an upscale food market that was packed with cool people and blasting live music. They had all kinds of stalls, including one preparing vegetable-focused food like this delicious veggie pie. It had really olive oil-y (in a great way) tomatoes and eggplant and stuff on a crumbly crust and it was really good!
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But nothing beats the gelateria (I’m sorry, ‘heladeria’) we found close to that same bridge, a place called Giolatto! They had a whole section of dairy-free ice cream! And everything was perfectly labeled and they said on the sign that there was no cross-contamination, so that way they could advertise to those with allergies. Most importantly, the ice cream I had – dark chocolate and strawberry – was amazing.
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Yumm I wish I could have that ice cream (and the paella, if we’re wishing) right now!
Seville was full of chance food encounters that turned out to be brilliant, like how a lot of the regular gelaterias in town also had horchata, a sweetened rice milk kind of thing. Horchata is usually vegan, and amazing. I love it so much!
We also happened upon these absolutely stellar freshly made potato chips! I’m not a potato chip person at all – I would take tortilla chips over potato chips any day, all day, for as long as I can remember. Just not my thing. However, I would permanently change teams for these hot fresh amazing potato chips. Man aliiive.
Seville was full of chance food encounters that turned out to be brilliant, like how a lot of the regular gelaterias in town also had horchata, a sweetened rice milk kind of thing. Horchata is usually vegan, and amazing. I love it so much!
We also happened upon these absolutely stellar freshly made potato chips! I’m not a potato chip person at all – I would take tortilla chips over potato chips any day, all day, for as long as I can remember. Just not my thing. However, I would permanently change teams for these hot fresh amazing potato chips. Man aliiive.
freshly chipped potatoes!!! |
dance emoji! |
Probably our most favoritest fortuitous food experience was when we randomly found the Ines Rosales store. Ines Rosales is the famous brand of Spanish tortas – thin, crispy, super flaky pastry cracker things made with olive oil and usually sugar and cinnamon or other flavorings and they are addictive beyond belief. You can find them in London in Selfridge’s or a place in Borough Market, with a considerable markup. We are indeed addicted to them so finding their actual store was super exciting for us. And they had flavors we never saw before, from orange to cinnamon to savory thyme and rosemary ones! We haven’t tried the savory ones yet, I don’t know why. Since Seville was the start of our Andalusian adventure, this meant we were carrying around tons of fragile tortas the whole week! We took really good care of them though!
This is what the hotel looked like inside! So cool! But so hard to navigate correctly!
As for lodging, we stayed in the heart of the Jewish Quarter at the Las Casas de la Juderia, which was gorgeous if super confusing. From the front, it looks like a regular hotel off a main street, but it’s like 15 different buildings on this somehow huge piece of land in the middle of the city, and it’s hard to go through the winding little inner-hotel paths to find your correct building but it’s SO cool. It’s such a beautiful place, and they had a pool! I mean it was the coldest pool I have ever ever tried to go in but still, yay for pools! The wifi did not reach the rooms, which sucked, but that’s the only drawback. It’s a really cool place and it was nice to be right smack in the middle of everything in such a great city. I really enjoyed it and would definitely be willing to go back. I’m curious about how different it is when it is not Easter!
did not see Antonio no no too sexy too sexy!
Related Posts
Traveling through Kyrgyzstan Part 3: Do I Prefer Wilderness Now?
Now that our time in yurts is over (forever?!), I could fully relax (well I still had to worry about bathroom breaks) and enjoy the rest of our journey around Kyrgyzstan. This country kept surprising me! The people were nice, the food was plentiful, the watermelon was given to me, the roads were in existence. Most of all, the landscape kept enthralling us with its extremely varied beauty. We still had a few more days driving with Sacha around Lake Issyk Kul and in small villages and towns before we landed in Bishkek, the big city capital. I liked the activities almost as much as I liked the fact that we had activities, but I started to get sick of the little villages. (Literally.) Hence my completely shocking personal revelation mentioned in the title.
Catch up on the previous Kyrgyzstan posts!
Crossing the Torugart Pass; Tash Rabat
Part 1: Back in the Yurt Camps
Part 2: Issyk Kul and Kyzart Village
Crossing the Torugart Pass; Tash Rabat
Part 1: Back in the Yurt Camps
Part 2: Issyk Kul and Kyzart Village
Snow capped mountains never get old
Day 5
“Everything’s coming up (roses?)”
Our lovely be-gardened guest house in Tamga village continued delighting us on this new day, with a lovely breakfast in the lovely little dining space surrounded by the beautiful flowers and tons and tons of…bees. Bees? Bees. I guess with flowers come bees. We had forgotten this since bees are super endangered everywhere else in the world save for this garden, apparently. I had oatmeal and watermelon and apples for breakfast so it was a great start, aside from the bees.
“Everything’s coming up (roses?)”
Our lovely be-gardened guest house in Tamga village continued delighting us on this new day, with a lovely breakfast in the lovely little dining space surrounded by the beautiful flowers and tons and tons of…bees. Bees? Bees. I guess with flowers come bees. We had forgotten this since bees are super endangered everywhere else in the world save for this garden, apparently. I had oatmeal and watermelon and apples for breakfast so it was a great start, aside from the bees.
We set off on our drive, stopping shortly again at the lake shore for a few minutes just to take more pictures and enjoy the view for a little longer and so I could pee in the most picturesque outdoor pop-a-squat location yet. You’re welcome.
We drove through a valley called Jeti Oguz, which is famous for its enormous cliff-face stretch of the same name, which means Seven Bulls. The cliff face is of dark reddish brown bumpies that symbolize “furious bulls” standing together. I am a taurus; is that the bull one? If so I would like to be called Furious Bull from now on. If not I don’t care astrology is dumb as a trump.
furious bulls
The plan was to continue our eventual complete loop around Issyk Kul Lake by heading to our next stop of Karakol, but we had a surprise stop at the most amazing geo park (eco park? both). Seriously, it was a surprise to us at least, because the itinerary for today pretty much just said ‘drive to karakol’. So unforch that means I don’t know what this geopark was called (I’ve been trying to find it online! Maybe it existed just for us like a Brigadoon situation OMG IS KELLI O’HARA GOING TO SING WHEN I’M THERE??? oh no chill out this already happened and she didn’t, time doesn’t work like that no matter what McConaughey says (just kidding I totally believe him). The whole big area is Jeti Oguz and it might just be the resort or park or the same name but I can’t confirm.
For a few hours we drove along (and across!) the most beautiful somehow jade-colored rapids, up and around the rockiest of paths (I almost didn’t care because it was so beautiful but man alive that was some shaking) and hills and the scariest little bridges across the river rapids. Those bridges, man alive, I saw the first and was like ‘who would be dumb enough to walk across that little plank of a bridge!’ and then we DROVE across it, across ALL of them, in an SUV.
taken from a rickety little plank bridge erma erma erma
This valleypark was enormous! There’s security at the entrance (I guess it works because the whole thing is surrounded by mountains that sneakers can’t drive down so) and then you can just drive and hike for miles and miles and hours and hours like we did, all along this insane colored water. I know it doesn’t look amazing in the pictures (no filters!) but it was like pure jade and so incredibly beeyoot.
After we drove through most of this amazing valley, Sacha parked the car in a clearing and was like ‘there’s a waterfall about 40 minutes hike that way’ he literally just nodded his head upwards. That way just meant ‘up’ the mountain. And he said we should go check it out. We were hey so how do we find it exactly, like how much upping and in what part of the ENDLESS MOUNTAINS AROUND US ARE WE TALKING. He pointed to a person on a horse about halfway up the mountain and was like ‘they’re going to the waterfall so you can follow the path they are taking.’ Guys this was not helpful. The horse was like already a kilometer up the mountain and we couldn’t tell how he got to that point or what came next. We started up the mountain and the ‘trail’ was pretty much ‘do you see a way you can go that will let you continue your journey? does it seem a little ridiculous but less ridiculous than the other options you observe? follow that one!’ It was scary! Thank god Z was a boy scout because he could tell MUCH better than I could which fork prongs (tines?) were probably the right ones. The scary trail (or lack thereof) put me in a mood something terrible. AND of course I kept skidding the whole time because it was gravelly!
Finally, after lots of treacherous rocky crossings and tree branches that gave way when I tried to grasp them, we found the waterfall. IT WAS FINE.
“just go up” “okay, monster man”
who dat ninja
view from our waterfall trek
So apart from the skidding and the constant fear of tumbling down the mountain because of the tiny little narrow not-trails, this whole geo park majig was amazing! It’s so beautiful and so fun. I wish I knew its name.
I couldn’t know it betterrrrrr if I knew its name! (anyone?)
Because we had to enter (with tickets I think) at the entry point (you don’t say), we had to drive allll the way back through the valley and across the rapids and over the bridges and through the woods in order to leave. Haha ‘had to’ like it wasn’t such a treat to see it all again. We continued our drive towards Karakol in order to reach that town by lunchtime. I was sooo pumped for lunch because, are you ready for this? You know the website (and super useful app) HappyCow that I talk about all the time? If you don’t know, it tells you what restaurants near you (everywhere in the world) have vegan options. It’s magic (no it’s crowdsourced so if you find something incorrect it’s on you to fix it). Well, the ONLY HappyCow listing for ALL of Kyrgyzstan that wasn’t in Bishkek (the big fancy capital) was in Karakol! I was so so excited. We found the place, called The Fat Cat Cafe, sat down and looked at the menus and…there was not one thing veg on it. Well there was a grilled cheese for vegetarians CAN YOU SEE HOW HARD I’M ROLLING MY EYES? I asked the worker ‘hey so I was told that you had vegan food?’ and the woman said “Oh yes I can make you lentil soup if you give me like a half hour, 45 minutes? I haven’t been to the market yet today so I would need to buy vegetables and lentils.” THA FUCK? I reread the only other HappyCow review of the place (there’s a second on on there now with the TRUTH you’re welcome) and it said there was vegan food ‘on request’. So, first of all, no way in hell this place should be on HC if it doesn’t have any regular menu items that are veg. Second of all, WHAT KIND OF RESTAURANT ISN’T PREPARED FOR THE DAY AT 2PM ON A SATURDAY? Isn’t that your busiest time, all restaurants in the world? What kind of place is run like that? And I don’t just mean for the vegan request. Like, she hadn’t been to the store yet, at all, on a Saturday afternoon. And she had other employees just sitting around. What kind of fuckery I can’t even. I reported them to HC hoping to get them deleted but they are still on there. Le sigh.
Luckily Sacha has been to every restaurant in town and knew good ones with vegetarian options. If I’m reading my blursula picture of the menu correctly, it was Dastorkan restaurant, a good restaurant and an amazing name for a JK Rowling character. The menu even had 3 green-tipped pages that were all the vegetarian options.
do you think they put my salad on a heart-shaped plate because they knew how much I love salad
vegetable soup!
broccoli to share! I share my vegetables I”m such a good wife
This place was great! We also got the requisite basket of fluffy lavash bread. It was great…except, I don’t know if it was the food here, or the food the night before, or the spring water from a few days ago, or who knows how many endless factors, but I started to feel sick soon. We were staying in Karakol that night, at a nice little guest house about 10 minutes drive from the restaurant. We arrived and relaxed for a little and I had a little of the Travelers’ (TM(i)) but thought nothing of it. Z and I soon walked to a cafe to use their wifi (yay!) and after a little while I Traveled (TM(i)) again. I started to feel worse so I said let’s walk back to the house, I don’t feel so good. We had made it about 2/3 of the way when I vomited the hardest I ever have right on the sidewalk. Well in a grass patch but still. It was very violent and horrible and so painful that I thought I was choking. LUCKILY it happened, if you can even believe it, in front of what can only be called “Apteka Row” (the russian word for pharmacy) – a whole string of pharmacies. Z ran into one and I think just pointed out the window to me and was given anti vomit and anti nausea pills. It seemed to help a little, despite the fear of taking unmarked Kyrgyz pills (I still have some if anyone wants to try! or examine). When we returned, I told Sacha I wasn’t going to eat dinner and he was SO mad because the owner lady had already started making it and I was like okay if you really want me to try I will happily vom again on her little white tablecloth. I didn’t say that but I should have. But like come on dude.
So, I just slept the whole evening and night. Luckily I had some saltines from China in my pack and had those in the morning. Saltines are amazing. You watching The Good Place (also amazing)? You know when Ted Danson is like “I wish I could have tried a saltine”? I feel him.
Someone tell McConaughey to get a message to this girl in the past and alert her ‘girl you gon vom’
DAY 6
“Suuuuunday morning TIME FOR CHURCH!”
The mean old lady and the mean old Sacha made me drink tea for breakfast even though I HATE tea especially strong black tea and, guess what, tea makes me nauseous, because they both thought that my drinking bottled water instead of tea was what made me sick. This is the kind of ‘bullshit science’ that republicans can only DREAM of taking hold in America. FFS. It’s funny, actually – our Trans Siberian guidebook mentioned offhand that old Russians in Siberia had a weird rampant distrust of ‘dangerous’ cold water, warning against its consumption for no reason other than that it had become a rural myth. But now in Kyrgs we actually meet the old (ethnic) Russians who believe this! Ahhhhh! Shut UP!
We had a busy morning planned with lots of activities and somehow we still had to end the day at our guest house in Chon Kemin – more than 300 kilometers away! First we had a visit to Karakol’s mosque, called the Dungan Mosque, which is really cool because it was built like a Chinese Buddhist temple! We haven’t seen nearly enough of those! No it was really cool to see how the roof had dragons and other traditional Chinese symbols carved all over, and the structure as a whole was very China.
buddha mosque buddha mosque
What was not cool, was that this mosque made women wear these RIDONK heavy coverups like f-ing WIZARD robes. So smelly and so extra hot in this weather and just ugh annoying. I try to be chill about all religions but I can’t get behind any of the parts that require women to cover up so the mens don’t get too excited. Control YOURSELF, Aaron.
who dis ninja
it me
After the mosque, we went to the Holy Trinity Orthodox Church. So much religion! The church was built in 1894 in the ‘six-pillared’ fashion but it has only 4 pillars! Fan thyself!
I really dig the whole decaying wood thing they have going on here. Very wool.
After all the gods and everything, we were to see a local museum in the town of Cholpon Ata, which is a really satisfying name to say. Unfortunately, the museum was closed, despite the sign on the door with the museum’s schedule clearly stating that they should be open right now. Guyssss. Sacha made a few calls and we amused ourselves in the small grocery store next door. GUESS WHAT I FOUND.
MANNER!!! Why didn’t I get more than one? (Ed. note: Don’t cry for me. Have you seen my instagram? Thanks Emmeline & Josh!)
When we returned to Sacha, he had bad news: The museum people said it was closed today because they had no electricity. Sacha didn’t buy their excuse and said “I think it’s really because they are sleeping.”
We still had more to do though, so no harm no foul. Next up was the Open Air Museum of Petroglyphs – a whole field of rocks and boulders with ancient drawings made from carving or scraping and such. Some had miraculously retained their clarity, but most had faded in the like thousands of years.
After we burned in the dry sun to a sufficient crispiness, we had lunch at a terrible cafe on the side of the road that was giant and full of tourists and had wifi but had a terrible waitress. She brought me my vinaigrette salad with fish on it even after Sacha made sure she knew no fish! Who puts fish on a vinaigrette anyway! Also people were smoking in the bathroom. It was an OUTDOOR restaurant. I don’t understand. I ate some vegetarian borscht instead (soup is always a good idea) and then we continued the drive to Chon Kemin and our last guest house, one run by the popular tour agency CBT (we were looking at CBT and NoviNomad when we were deciding who to go with, but CBT was terrible at answering emails and our questions so NoviNomad luckily won out. If you like loud hostels with giant dorms full of yoots, CBT seems the choice for you.) Because it was a CBT house, it was full of the most tourists we’d seen in weeks! It was a nice enough place and it had wifi! It was just a shock to have all the noise and PEOPLE when we’d been mostly in isolation for so long. I love isolation from other tourists.
The best part was the saddest part – our last gorgeous communal dinner in a yurt with the traditional set up. How wonderful is this kind of meal!
There were many plates of tomato salad (course) and vermicelli and carrot salads all over, and then the main event was plov, the main dish of Kyrgyzstan (and Uzbekistan and like the entire region I think). Plov is a rice pilaf usually with giant hunks of mutton or other gross meat (spoiler all meat is gross) on top. It’s a lot of rice. Mine was rice with bits of carrot. It was a lot of rice – the vegetarian platter was almost as big as the meat version but the meat plate was for like 11 people and the veg was just for me! How much rice do you think I can eat! I have to save room for watermelon!
We made some small talk with the other tourists and met some that didn’t make us too angry or annoyed (progress) but then, as is our wont, spent most of the night trying to get the weak wifi to connect. We heart wifi. Then we enjoyed our last night’s sleep in a shared space! We hate sharing! From here on out – hotels! (Well and hostels but private rooms!) Tomorrow we leave for Bishkek!
A Train Journey to Beat Them All: Ulan-Ude to Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia
July 8-9
Dear little laptop diary,
Dear little laptop diary,
I didn’t think I’d need to write to you on this train. It was supposed to be barely 9 hours, just a get on-go-to-sleep-get off-in-Mongolia one, as we left Ulan-Ude. But Real Russia, the company that booked most of our Russian train tickets (we didn’t want to risk missing our preferred dates and routes if we did it ourselves) made a mistake with our agenda, and told us our train was at 8:47pm tonight, when it was really at 3:47pm today. (Someone I bet added five hours to get Moscow time (which all trains in the country run on) instead of subtracting. Idiots.) So instead of getting another day to explore Ulan-Ude as we wanted, we rushed around to check out, see a final museum, and walk in the heat to the train station. It was a soul-crushing walk for me, as I have more weight in my pack than ever (stupid good vegan nonperishable food finds I keep finding and buying and then needing to pack!). Well that part was just spine and neck crushing. The soul-crushing part is how nervous I am about the Mongolia border crossing. It can take well over 4 hours, with the train stopped and bathrooms locked. I can’t go for more than 2, and I can’t do anything about it especially in a room with two strangers, so I’m just dehydrated and super g-d nervous. I told myself that as soon as we got on the train, it would be okay, I would sit, and use the bathroom, and make my bed, and relax and read as I learned from our previous trains.
Well.
Tiny laptop, this is a Chinese-run train. They alternate who does this route, the Russian trains or the Chinese trains. Remember my previous posts about how rough the Russian trains were? Like I said about the minibus on Olkhon, I think the universe is messing with me, because those were luxury compared to this Chinese one. It’s been an hour and a half and I’ve cried three times. The attendants are men, whereas the Russian ones were all women. The Russian women were nice, whereas the Chinese men are surly, smoking IN THE carriages and hallways, and don’t speak a word of English or Russian, just Chinese. The toilets are similar, except worse – no toilet paper, no paper towels, no soap. Thank god we packed an emergency roll of toilet paper; we just never thought we would need it on the sleeper train. The attendants keep locking the bathroom closest to them, which is closest to us, I think just for their own personal use – it’s not an official locking time or anything because they keep telling me just to use the one at the other end. There are two bathrooms per carriage for approximately 40-50 people. You cannot keep one for your own usage. I could cut a bitch for that. On the Russian trains, the bed sheets came in plastic wrap with a small hand towel included. Here, the sheets were just handed to us loose, dirty and grimy, and there’s no towel. No toilet paper, no soap, no towel, no bathroom access, and it’s five hours longer than I was prepared for. This really sucks. The Russian ones, I was in the moment when I wrote those diatribes, kind of going overboard considering they were all in all pretty nice (well, the rooms, not the toilets). But this is all disgusting. And we are going to be traveling by train in China for 5 weeks after Mongolia, so there is a lot of this to come. I am so upset that we didn’t have one more nice Russian train! I can’t believe I’m saying that!
Shoutout to my friend Sarah for gifting me a packet of toilet seat covers. Thank the Kiwi god for you.
The two men – yup, it’s two men again – in our cabin are a mixed bag. One is a Chilean man about our age, and when we arrived he was laying on my bed. Oh no no no, dear. He had a lot of stuff on his, I guess. But he ended up being very friendly, and he speaks English well and is nice. The other man is German, and he said he was a vegetarian so I was really excited. However, he is one of those. The weird ones. He seems to really be only a raw foodist. He has a hand-cranked food processor on the table full of nuts, a lemon and bananas on his little wire shelf, and his entire suitcase is full of various supplies, all food-related. He just said he was preparing his breakfast, for which he hand-cranked wheat into a flour (I think, he said it was wheat) (this is a different hand-cranked machine than the nut processor) and added some seeds and probably goji berries, I was trying not to stare. I mean it all sounds great to me, right, but then I asked if he makes a porridge of it with the samovar water and he said ‘no I don’t cook it, that would make it unhealthy.” boy bye.
He smells bad too, as total hippies usually do.
I can’t get over how the train attendant men are so mean and just smoking in the carriage. It’s so smoky. I can’t really convey to you just how smoky it is. I wish I could say my eyes were tearing from it but it’s the opposite; they are so dry they hurt in my head. Like I can feel them being super dry in my head. It’s weird and awful. And my lungsss mannnnn. I’m just breathing in cigarette smoke with mean Chinese men and feeling like crap. I think this is just a breaking point after weeks of travel, longer than I ever have traveled. Am I going to be completely miserable all through China? I’m so nervous now. I was so excited about China and now I’m just sad. This really sucks. It sucks not being able to communicate with the attendants. I didn’t think of learning Chinese phrases yet – we’re not even in China! We’re going from Russia to Mongolia! How on EARTH could these attendants have gone all through Russia “caring” for passengers (this train began in MOSCOW) without speaking something besides Mandarin! I think they are lying about not understanding any Russian. They have to! Ughhhh. All the signage is in Chinese characters too. It’s so frustrating. And my belly hurts. I had a pear and some crackers for dinner, which was not smart because now I’m super thirsty and I can’t drink water because the border crossing is coming up soon and who knows how long I’ll have to hold my pee. Z is in the restaurant car which actually has a few decent looking dishes (vegetable soup with no sour cream?? what a find!) but I can’t eat it because again, I can’t pee for 4 hours at least. I can hear some of you saying “just don’t drink so much water” but I have barely had water today and I barely had any on the minibuses from hell but I still had to pee AND I have debilitating headaches if I don’t drink a lot of water. (And before you say um that’s not normal, I know, and I’ve been exhaustively studied by endocrinologists, and it’s just how my body is, no disease or anything. I just have to deal with it, which is hard on this Chinese crap machine.
Please tell me I’ll at least be able to find vegan dumplings in China. If I’m spending five weeks traveling in disgusting paperless toilets and I can’t even have vegan dumplings I will cry. Again.
So tiny laptop friend, my only friend on this godforsaken cigarette factory. We just made it through the Russian exit border and the Mongolian entry border. It took about 3 hours, I think. I’m trying not to look at the clock because then my body will be like hey girl why haven’t I peed five times in that amount of time? The Mongolian border agent looked through my passport twice as long as she did the others in our cabin, which was worrisome, but maybe she was just trying to show her female dominance to me in front of three males of the species. Before the Russian border agents got to our cabin, I RAN off the train and RAN to the station and peed super fast and then RAN back outside to make sure the train was still there, I was so scared of missing it that I was hyperventilating. As soon as I got outside and saw tons of fellow passengers standing on the platform I breathed a sigh of relief and also regret that I didn’t pee more. [ed. note 10 days later: I know this is a lot of oversharing about my bodily functions but guess what, you ain’t seen nothing yet. #diarrheainthemongoliancountryside]
Anyway, I made it, hungry and thirsty but we’re now officially in Mongolia. We finished at the border at about 12:30am and we land in Ulaan Baatar (even though there are so many a’s, I’m tempted to add more) at 6:30am. So it would be okay to get five hours of sleep or so before a big day of sightseeing but it’s so freezing cold, all of a sudden after it was boiling hot most of the evening, that I am actually using the disgusting wool blankets the train provides and I’m sure have not been washed in a good 4 years. Can’t wait to get to the hostel and wash this gross train experience off. But we’re at that point in our travel where even DURING a good shower I still feel dirty, and as soon as I get out of the shower I’m officially gross again. Fun times!
As crazy as all of this is, the craziest part is that the scenery on this route was the most beautiful yet. We didn’t expect that at all! It definitely helped to have something so nice to look at when I was standing by the open hallway windows trying to get fresh air. I hope China is nothing like this train, but we still have all of Mongolia to go through before we find out!
