Brighton VegFest, Yummy Food, & Thoughts On Peopleby Randi / March 31, 2015
As soon as we stepped off the airport bus near our hotel in Bilbao, the pouring rain turned to hail. It was hailing on us. Serious, scary balls of hail pounding on us like we’ve never before experienced. What a lovely welcome, Bilbao!
Luckily, the hail stopped that night, but the rain continued for almost our entire visit. That sucks, but although Bilbao isn’t as pretty in the rain as Paris is, it was still a solid trip in a nice city. Now, those adjectives might seem decidedly underwhelming, but I mean them with all my heart without going overboard with praise. Also, Gabrielle Union was wrong and you cannot just be whelmed in Europe.
Luckily, the hail stopped that night, but the rain continued for almost our entire visit. That sucks, but although Bilbao isn’t as pretty in the rain as Paris is, it was still a solid trip in a nice city. Now, those adjectives might seem decidedly underwhelming, but I mean them with all my heart without going overboard with praise. Also, Gabrielle Union was wrong and you cannot just be whelmed in Europe.
Fighter of the night man!
Landing in Bilbao, Spain, I thought I was sooo clever calling it Bilbao Baggins, like The Hobbit. Of course, five minutes later, we see on the road signs that, in the Basque language, Bilbao is ‘Bilbo’. So, not as clever as I thought. By the way, that Basque language is quite something. It’s a language isolate – meaning it has no discernible relationship to any other language. ON EARTH. That’s freaking wild. When you’re in Europe, you’re like, hey man, hit me with the romance languages, I’ll figure it out, they’re all close enough. But then in this region between Spain and France, all rules and prior knowledge go out the window and you are left staring at some hybrid of Japanese and Klingon where every 4th letter is a ‘k’ and every 6th letter is an ‘x’. It is CRAZY and crazy interesting. Where did they come from! How is the language not related to any other spoken on the planet? (That Klingon thing doesn’t seem too far-fetched now, does it? (Husband has me watching too much Star Trek.)) Everyone speaks regular Spanish though, but not many people we encountered in restaurants, shops, and train stations spoke English. So prepare some Spanish! I’ll get you started with some necessary phrases: “Donde esta la biblioteca? Me llamo T-bone la araña discoteca!”
OH LOOK IT’S THE ACTUAL ARAÑA DISCOTECA!
OH LOOK IT’S THE ACTUAL ARAÑA DISCOTECA!
If you know “Community“, or me at all, then you know that when I saw this giant spider outside the famous Bilbao Guggenheim (more on that below), I exclaimed “Ahh! It’s the araña discoteca!” (“What. It’s 2009.”) Now, this is where my talents of persuasion? lying? convincing myself that things are real? paid off. Husband is finding out only right now, as he reads this upon publishing, that I was making up my Bilbao history: When we walked up to this, he said “What??? It’s a giant spider! What the heck!” or something like that. And iiiiii said, “It’s called the araña discoteca. I read about it. Important in Spanish history.” Oh my god I’m awful. But good. So there we have it.
The disco spider stands (dances?) near Bilbao’s spectacular Guggenheim museum. Designed by Frank Gehry, it evokes the feeling of the water it’s on, with its wave-like sides and its shimmering fish-like scales. The building is gorgeous and larger than you can imagine, and although the atrium is splendid as well, the best part is the exterior view. Paying to get into this modern art museum seems almost silly when the best art is free to see outside.
The disco spider stands (dances?) near Bilbao’s spectacular Guggenheim museum. Designed by Frank Gehry, it evokes the feeling of the water it’s on, with its wave-like sides and its shimmering fish-like scales. The building is gorgeous and larger than you can imagine, and although the atrium is splendid as well, the best part is the exterior view. Paying to get into this modern art museum seems almost silly when the best art is free to see outside.
As a mountain of steel makes its way to the sea
Right?? It’s beautiful! Now, there isn’t much to do in Bilbao after you see this lovely building, so you might think, hey I guess I have to go inside. But…um…you don’t? The aforementioned atrium is gorgeous but the actual art hanging on these lovely walls? Balls. It’s all balls. I’m not the biggest modern art aficionado (could you guess?), but I can appreciate it, most of the time. Most of this stuff, however, was ridonkulous. Like if a toddler threw a bottle of paint at a wall. (Or his poop.) Or if a psychopath took a knife to some leather chairs. (There were actual destroyed leather seat cushions hanging on the wall.) One exhibit was just an old car’s motor. Unaltered. A car motor. How is this art! Someone tell me! The only item in the entire cavernous museo that I thought wow this is nice was a log by Ai Weiwei that somehow had a tiny picture of China drilled through it. That was awesome. The 2-D primary color blocked walls? Not so much.
There’s also this. A whole floor of this. The stuff of nightmares.
Luckily, there’s more fun external art to behold at this site. My very favorite thing about Bilbao was how dog-friendly it is. Everywhere we went, people had their dogs with them. (Rarely on leashes, which makes me absolutely nuts because I always frantically try to figure out who belongs to unleashed dogs in case someone is lost and I need to take care of them. So stressful. Just use leashes!) People who have seen me around dogs know that I go kind of nuts talking to them in my special dog voice (a high-pitched squeak that I cannot control), so all weekend in Bilbao was like me on helium. Doggies everywhere! It was amazing! I like to think that the very famous Flower Dog by Jeff Koons, standing proudly and beautifully outside the main entrance to the Guggenheim, is a symbol of how dog-friendly this city is. It’s possibly the most dog-friendly city I’ve ever been to. (And therefore the biggest point in its favor.)
PUPPIEEEEE!
More puppieeeee! That’s not me. (Move bi#$* get out da way!)
Me with a puppy!
Once you see the Gugs, you’ve done what you’re supposed to do in Bilbao! So now what? Well, stroll along the river in the rain and smile at how pleasant the little city is. It will be raining, I promise you. Oh it was on the trip that I was like ‘Ohhhhh the rain in Spain is mainly on THIS plain, that’s what they were talking bouttttt!’ Revelation. It made me okay with raining all weekend to feel like a part of a musical.
Then what? Well stroll some more. See some dogs and, if you’re like me, try to pet them and play with them but then realize that these dogs freaking speak Spanish so they don’t know what you are saying when you say “HI PUPPY YOU ARE SO CUTE! YES YOU ARE SO CUTE!” and their humans really have no idea probably what you are saying either or what the heck is wrong with you talking that high-pitched so you can try to adjust your language mid-freak-out and say “Hola….perro?? Tu es…um….HII PUPPYYYYY!” That’s pretty much how it went. 100x per day.
Walk over to the old town, as every good European city has, and wonder as your wander about the tiny streets and are lucky enough to catch adorable sights like this:
Then what? Well stroll some more. See some dogs and, if you’re like me, try to pet them and play with them but then realize that these dogs freaking speak Spanish so they don’t know what you are saying when you say “HI PUPPY YOU ARE SO CUTE! YES YOU ARE SO CUTE!” and their humans really have no idea probably what you are saying either or what the heck is wrong with you talking that high-pitched so you can try to adjust your language mid-freak-out and say “Hola….perro?? Tu es…um….HII PUPPYYYYY!” That’s pretty much how it went. 100x per day.
Walk over to the old town, as every good European city has, and wonder as your wander about the tiny streets and are lucky enough to catch adorable sights like this:
How cute is this! Does the building management make sure all the tenants have colorful umbrellas or like do Spanish people just know how to be adorable?
Another great treat was the stained glass in one of the train stations. Okay, this is where the language barrier got really rough. We needed to go to a nearby town for a fancy dinner (check back tomorrow!) and wanted to take the train. Well, we didn’t. We couldn’t get a straight answer from anyone (also, like, no one worked in the stations?? because Spain in the afternoon = sleepytime?) as to which was the correct station and which was the correct train and where to go and just f it, we took a taxi. Anyway, one of the stations – whichever it was – had this nice glass.
Another great treat was the stained glass in one of the train stations. Okay, this is where the language barrier got really rough. We needed to go to a nearby town for a fancy dinner (check back tomorrow!) and wanted to take the train. Well, we didn’t. We couldn’t get a straight answer from anyone (also, like, no one worked in the stations?? because Spain in the afternoon = sleepytime?) as to which was the correct station and which was the correct train and where to go and just f it, we took a taxi. Anyway, one of the stations – whichever it was – had this nice glass.
Bilbao also has a very cool suspension bridge that is pedestrian only AND is lined with like astroturf!! It’s so fun and squishy!
A really fun part of Bilbao is the funicular ride to the top of the hill. It’s a three-minute ride and costs like 70 cents or something crazy. It’s a scary steep climb, but so worth it for the views, although it will likely be foggy, and for one of my favorite sights, the fingerprint statue.
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doesn’t it look like there’s a crazy floating sky mountain like out of Avatar??
Why do I love this!
There were many lovely views around Bilbao. Near our hotel was a park with lots of fountains, which was nice but seemed redundant in the rain.
You’d think at night this park would be full of criminals and drug dealers but it was pretty safe.
There were also some hilarious things we came across. Down the street from our hotel, we found a weird mall. It was one of the only things in the city open on Sunday afternoon — but every single store in the mall was closed! So why was the actual building open to the public if every store was closed? Because one of the entryways had a few crappy kids’ rides, and every. single. child. in Bilbao was there with its family playing with the crappy toys. It was so so random. In this scary ghost mall was also this restaurant:
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Yes, this restaurant was called La Mafia, and every single seat in the place had a name written over it – a name of a character from “The Godfather” movies. I mean. That’s ballsy. And hilarious. And it’s inside a mall. It doesn’t get better.
Oh wait, YES IT DOES! Of course it gets better because Bilbao sells The Thermomix! If you aren’t familiar with The Katering Show, you must must must watch this right very now before continuing with your life, even your breathing. It’s the best thing out there. So, being a huge fan of the show, when I saw this gigantic ad for the actual real-life breathing (probably) machine that does it all but unnecessarily, well I freaked out! It’s real! It’s alive (probably)! And it’s beeyoootiful! No, it’s not, it’s frightening, but oh man how I adore it, if only for the jokes.
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Can you believe it’s real?
So, Bilbao may not have a lot of activities to do, but it’s a nice town to walk around in for a few days. If you go, you’ll have a nice, pleasant time, as long as you aren’t out very late when all the yoots come out of the woodwork and take over the city and all the streets like awful drunk ants. Ugh yoots. Anyway, during the day it’s nice. I wouldn’t go out of my way to go if you have limited time in Europe, but like if you live on the continent then why not. (Ringing endorsement!)
We’ll talk about the food for the next two days. See yaaa.
So, Bilbao may not have a lot of activities to do, but it’s a nice town to walk around in for a few days. If you go, you’ll have a nice, pleasant time, as long as you aren’t out very late when all the yoots come out of the woodwork and take over the city and all the streets like awful drunk ants. Ugh yoots. Anyway, during the day it’s nice. I wouldn’t go out of my way to go if you have limited time in Europe, but like if you live on the continent then why not. (Ringing endorsement!)
We’ll talk about the food for the next two days. See yaaa.
Freaking love this little pink and blue buildings.
Oh hey here’s a statue of John Adams on the main drag.
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Vegan In Mexico City Part 2: Coyoacan! Frida! Nacho Libre!
What’s up party people! We’re back and ready to talk more about Mexico City! We have so much to talk about because as usual we packed an absurd amount of Activity into our short time there. (Okay other practiced travelers are probably saying ‘no you do a normal amount of Activity for a travel blogger since we need to see as much as possible when visiting a new place’ but you forget how much sleep I need.) As I said in Part 1 of the CDMX posts, we’re breaking up the info roughly by neighborhood to give it at least a chance at making organizational sense.
ok these might not be bears but you get it
In this post, we’re moving south to the Coyoacán neighborhood of Mexico City, where we find the famous blue house of Frida Kahlo, Casa Azul. I mean I guess it’s the famous house of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera but he seemed like a bit of a wanker so I’m going to focus less on him. Just a few blocks away is the Leon Trotsky house, where the Soviet revolutionary/Marxist/politician/Bolshevik/ Communist Party leader/&c lived and died in exile but not before partying with the Kahlo fam bam. I almost used a photo of the Trotsky house as the banner picture for this post but thought that might be weird/get me on lists. Anyway, aside from those two house museums we’re gonna eat great food and then go to a spectacular spectacle that I shockingly loved: Lucha Libre, the crayballs Mexican wrestling extravaganza.
Let’s start with the Commies!
THE LEON TROTSKY MUSEUM-HOUSE
Since I’m American, let’s start with the commies. You know how into all things Russia we’ve been for the past few years, learning as much as we can about the people taking over America, &c (and their language! правда!) so we weren’t missing this. I recommend a visit – it’s pretty quick and fairly interesting. It costs 40 pesos and would not take you more than 40 minutes to visit, so it’s like a peso per minute, a ratio that bothers me much less for museums than it does for theatre, strangely.
Trotsky was kind of a big deal in the USSR in the early 1900s, which is pretty much the time of all the big Soviet leaders whose names you know, like Stalin. Trotsky did not like Stalin. I mean no one ‘liked’ Stalin but he did it to his face. I really want to give him the nickname ‘The Trots’ but he’ll probably haunt me for that so no. Okay, so Leon was big into Marxism as a teen, as all teens are (?) and helped form the South Russian Workers’ Union. Since that sounds kinda nice, unions are good, he was exiled to Siberia, while I on the other hand paid to go there which is hilarious. (It’s not bad.) An enterprising young Trotter escaped to England, changed his name to the one we know now, and met up with fellow Bolshevik revolutionary Lenin, and they drank and argued in all the classic English pubs every night till closing about which of them would be commemorated in the future in every single Russian village and city with a giant and I mean GIANT bust of his head. (It was Lenin.) Mista Trotterrrr returned to Russia in 1905 for the Russian Revolution and was again exiled to Siberia and again escaped. This f-ing guy, am I right?
His radicalism got his azz thrown out of lots of otherwise nice places like Paris, Spain, NYC, and Switzerland (I mean but ‘neutrality’ favors the oppressors so fork you) (I know I know it is bothering me too that that list goes city, sovereign, city, sovereign but that’s how the source material I’m referencing does it ugh) and then he went back to Russia in time for the 1917 revolution. I mean he shows up for the important events, you gotta hand it to him. He was instrumental in the Bolshevik’s successful power grab, and he became Lenin’s secretary of foreign affairs. He did lots of stuff, yada yada yada, learned English from Seinfeld, and seemed to be the successor to Lenin, but as The Death of Stalin taught us, once a leader gets sick all hell breaks out and the succession struggle falls into chaos. When Lenin died, Stalin emerged as leader, and since Trottingham East didn’t like him and in fact openly criticized his polices, Stalin propagandaed him, removed him from his posts, and then exiled him from the Communist Party and then the Soviet Union. After some time in Turkey and a few other Euro stops, Trottingham North was granted asylum in Mexico! Yay Mexico! He and his fam first lived at the Casa Azul with Frida! Did you know! Trotavarius had an affair with Frida, a fellow Communist (Alexander did you know), but like who didn’t (we will get there). I imagine he also ate some amazing food that must have been a welcome respite from cucumber-tomato salad (what I had all throughout the former USSR). After a few years and a few too many fights with Diego (I can imagine what about), the Trotskys moved a few blocks away to their own house, which is now the museum. Despite being probably as far away as possible, Stalin was still mad and prob jealous of the food so he ordered Trotsky’s assassination. The first one, using guns, was a failure, but the last one, with an ice axe, well, the details make it seem like also a failure (I wish I didn’t know the details) but he died the next day from his wounds.
So the museum! So fun! The entry building has lots of photographs from Trotsky’s life and info about his work. It was fun to practice reading Cyrillic again and to listen to all the Russian tour groups (I think when we were there it was just us and Russian tour groups). It’s not super informative but some of the photos are interesting. The real focus of the museum is his actual house and gardens. It has been kept just as it was when he lived there, which means it’s dark, due to bars and shutters on the windows. That also means some of the interior walls still have bullet holes from the failed attack. In the kitchen, his pots and pans are still out; in the bedrooms, shoes are still lined up; and in Leon’s study, his papers and glasses and books are still on his desk. Out in the lovely gardens is his tomb.
So, it’s not the most popular tourist attraction, but I definitely recommend a quick visit before the Casa Azul, especially since his relationship to the Kahlos can help you understand them more.
CASA AZUL: THE BLUE HOUSE OF FRIDA KAHLO
When you visit the Frida house, you buy tickets online in advance. It’s too busy and popular to risk otherwise. But even so, you’ll wait in an endless line snaking around the house, around the block, and several blocks away to enter. Yes, when we arrived in what we thought was good time for our ticketed slot, ticket holders were waiting in a queue for almost an hour. In the SUN, guys. It was rough. If it was for the theatre I would have missed most of the first act and demanded an exchange and better seats.
Is it worth it? I mean I’m not a Frida nut but it’s pretty interesting and, ya know, it’s the big f-ing thing to do. If you really don’t care, then by all means skip it; there’s no reason to set aside a whole afternoon for it. But if you have the time, it’s fairly interesting. You learn a lot about Frida, what she went through, what kind of person she really was. And the house is lovely.
Once you enter, they will try to shuffle you straight into the museum part of the house, where you look at Frida’s and Diego’s paintings with lots of tourists taking selfies with them even though, if I recall correctly, you aren’t allowed to take pictures. Don’t let them manhandle you though – there are no bathrooms until you finish the entire inside tour of the house, so find them first and then go back. It’s a MADHOUSE, wall-to-wall people, and you’ll get agita trying to read about all the works when people are blocking everything. There are some interesting works in these initial rooms, but the better stuff awaits when you see the rooms as they lived in them.
I especially liked the kitchen. I don’t think we were allowed to take pictures but we have this one, so.
Surprisingly, the super long video that’s playing on a deck out in the garden space was incredibly interesting. I usually zone out in museum videos, especially ones that are this long (it’s like a whole movie) but it was great. As we already learned, Frida had an affair with Trotsky, but did you also know she probs had one with…Georgia O’Keefe? Yah. More important than her affairs is the information about Frida’s chronic pain. She had polio as a small child and its effects changed her body forever, leaving her with one leg shorter and significantly weaker than the other, due to muscle atrophy. As a teenager, she would suffer even more after a streetcar accident, which left her with fractured ribs, spine, clavicle, pelvis, leg, a crushed foot, a dislocated shoulder, and an iron railing through her hip and pelvic floor, causing the infertility represented in many of her paintings. They didn’t think she would survive the accident, but she did, and was left with a lifetime of pain.
Her father encouraged her to start painting as she recovered, and that’s how she met Diego. If you’re more familiar with her art than I was, you’ve seen her pain and suffering, as well as her strength, in her works.
In fact, her famous clothing style was a direct result of that: her corsets were really back braces helping her stand up. The square tops of her Tehuanan ethnic heritage could fit over and hide the brace. Flowers in her hair, her famous braids, and other interesting adornment above the neck would lead people to look up instead of down at her broken, withered legs, which were also hidden often by big skirts.
She went through a lot, is what I’m saying. And I knew some of her famous work and some generalities about her life, but I never knew she was disabled. She was an artistic pioneer in large part because of her pain, and it’s worth noting how her disability is largely erased from the popular narrative (and of course the cinematic portrayals). Of course, she still had quite a life – people long thought of her as a victim to Diego’s infidelity, but girl could get it too, and did – but you understand a lot more about her when you know how she was constantly suffering.
Also, she and Diego were Communists. I think it fairly hilarious how much she would despise the capitalist pigs who make endless tee shirts and tote bags with her face on them and how bewildered she’d be by the people wearing them. She’d hate the gift shop on her property selling all kinds of shit with her face. I think she’d hate the Christmas ornaments most of all, or she’d find it all utterly hilarious.
Okay, that’s enough of the serious stuff for today, right? Let’s switch to Arizona trash-bag mode and talk about food and wrestling.
VEGAN FOOD
Coyoacan is a fantastic neighborhood for vegan food. We planned on eating lunch at Aura Vegana (at Malintzin 199), and we stick to most plans, but we were almost enticed away to several other vegan establishments we discovered just as we wandered!
First, we saw Pan Gabriel, a bakery billing itself as entirely vegan! According to HappyCow, it is all vegan, but heads up – inside, we found several products with egg, and several others that reminded me of that one doughnuttery that appeared at the UK Vegan Fest like 9 years ago and told everyone that their giant amazing doughnutty things were vegan even though they looked exactly like another company’s products that were not vegan and then they disappeared from the face of the earth, so, ya know, be wary.
They have a lot of gorgeous bread products, cakes, rolls, sweet empanadas, all kinds of bakery treats that made me absolutely lose my shit and overpurchase in a glutinous fit. However, the actual goodies were disappointing. Everything was very bready, even the things that weren’t supposed to be bread, like doughnuts and cookies and brownies and cakes and well I guess that’s everything. And nothing was sweet enough. Honestly I would skip unless you hear of improvements, or unless you like your treats to be shiny bread.
LITERALLY NEXT DOOR to Pan Gabriel is a restaurant called Temictli, which is billed as ‘Plant-Based’ on the awning but even though I despise the cowardliness of people using that phrase all the time now instead of just saying vegan, they get a pass because they sound amazing and the lady was so nice (also because it’s not in an English speaking country so they can do what they want with words). Temictli’s menu looked OFF THE CHIZZ:
This is not even all of it! We were so tempted to stay put and skip Aura Vegana, but unforch the lady explained that even though she let us in and gave us a menu to look at, they weren’t actually open yet. Oops. Next time Temictli, you sound AMAZ.
So that means we stuck to our plan of Aura Vegana, which was pretty good.
Aura Vegana is a small cafe on the ground floor, right at the entrance, of a larger building with a bar up top and other restaurants inside. They have English versions of their menus, and they have green juice. I was sold before we sat down.
I assume I ordered an ‘Emerald’ juice, which mixed my classic hits like celery, orange, coocoomba, kale, spinach, parsley, and lemon, but I have a slight memory of husbo saying something like ‘you always have stuff like that at home’ so there’s a chance I actually had the ‘Turquoise’, which is celery, parsley, grapefruit, prickly pear, and pineapple. Either way guys, they have various green juices and it’s cool.
Since apparently I share pictures of menus now, here’s one from Aura:
I don’t know why these are called ‘Morning Dishes’ and the next page of the menu – all food from other cultures, like ravioli, various hamburgers, curry, hummus, Vietnamese noodles? – was called ‘Afternoon Dishes’, but definitely stick to Morning because you’re here for Mexican food.
We decided to share an order of enchiladas and an order of chilaquiles. This was baby’s first chilaquiles, which means I didn’t realize what I was getting into: it’s like, fried tortillas with sauces and junk on it, and it’s pretty delicious but was pretty heavy for me. Also, for being called ‘tofu chilaquiles’, there wasn’t much tofu. In fact, there was one piece on top, so, you know. The enchiladas were great, a bit more my speed though it was all heavy, creamy, filling food. We chose the little hogweed and portobello version, although there was not enough little hogweed – I found one strip of greenery which I’m assuming was the little hogweed. Maybe that’s why they said little.
It was all delicious, if heavy, but I should have known that going in. The cashew cheese on top was excellent, as was all the sauciness. Mexican food is amazing.
Outside, we passed a local park that was literally covered in paleta and gelato shops. Paletas are the Mexican ice pops that are made from incredible fruit purees (if you are cool and want vegan ones), which we enjoyed throughout the Yucatan. We decided on watermelon and horchata sorbets from one of the parkside shops, and we liked it, and we loved it.
LUCHA LIBRE
Alright I’m here, she’s here, we all made it to the craziest thing we did in Mexico City, the thing you have to do if you visit CDMX even though it seems ridiculous and if you’re like me you are probably like ‘really?’ but if you are like me you will give it a shot and you’ll be glad you did because it’s HYSTERICAL and SO FORKING ENTERTAINING. On a Friday night after our exploration of Coyoacan and communism and everything, we took the metro to the Arena Mexico for some Mexican wrestling, straight out of the Jack Black movie Nacho Libre but probably not entirely like that but honestly I’ve never actually seen it so shh but it doesn’t matter because now I’ve seen the REAL THING, BABIEEEES!
Lucha Libre is Mexico’s professional wrestling, of the sort you’d see on TV where you know they were faking it but it doesn’t matter. The wrestlers wear masks and costumes and have specific characters to play. The wrestling is as boisterous and raucous as the crowd, and they favor dramatic flips and crashes and bams (I don’t know all the terms) over rule-following and it is RIDICULOUS and it is HILARIOUS and it is AWESOME. I cannot recommend it enough.
When we arrived at the Arena Mexico, there was a line longer than the Frida house line, but it moved. We didn’t have tickets, and neither did the many western tourists in line with us. We had fun talking about our travels and Nacho Libre with the other tourists (I’m really good at lying about movies), and we also bought some amazing swag. Ingeniously, the sidewalks along the side of the building/blocks and blocks where the line travels are filled with souvenir stands. We bought husbo’s brother a Lucha Libre mask, then a few minutes later at another stall we bought him a cape (he’s a fan), then a few minutes later we got t-shirts. It’s like a neighborhood version of the rack by the supermarket checkout.
When we got to the main entrance, we were told there were good 200 peso tickets left for great seats. If you want to spend less, I’m sure you could. The place is freaking enormous, and I don’t think it’s possible for it to sell out, so don’t worry about tickets being available. There were lots of high sections that remained empty.
The only downside to going to Lucha Libre is the venue security, worse than any I’ve dealt with yet. Not only did they take my water – and they didn’t have any free water in the venue, only bottles for sale, which is illegal??? – and my snacks, they took MY GUM. My gum that I can only get in the USA and needed for the plane home so I didn’t vom! Dammit security lady! So so weird.
Aside from that though, it was stellar. Such a spectacle, such a loud ridonk spectacle, and so much fun.
We saw a lineup of 5 matches, I think, including group fights, a random parade of women? I forget, it was bright and loud. But it was awesome. We had recently enjoyed season 2 of Glow so we were jonesing for some well choreographed wrestling that looked painful but wasn’t.
I honestly can’t believe how much I enjoyed this. I definitely recommend it for a touristy but fun cultural experience that you kind of cannot miss. Once we were seated, it ran from about 8:30pm-11pm, about the length of a regular show we’d be at on a Friday night anyway, so it was a new super fun kind of evening entertainment for us.
Here’s my absolute favorite part: all the Mexican babies that are not only up so late but exposed to the UNBELIEVABLE NOISE of this place (bring earplugs if you’re sensitive…not that this baby had any…)
Alright, that’s it for this post! Which of the things that you are probably surprised to have found in this post did you enjoy the most, the Communism or the wrestling?
Oh oh one more thing, found in a shopping mall:
Yangshuo, China: The Best Boat Ride, Pretty Landscape, and Adventures in the Town
After weeks of hustling around China on crappy trains, we made it to the ‘relaxation’ portion of our 5+ weeks in this country – four days in Yangshuo, on the Li River. The area is quiet, a make-your-own-adventure sort of place, with incredible natural beauty both on and away from the river. I prefer water beauty, so the boat ride from Guilin to Yangshuo down the Li was my absolute favorite (abfav) part, which is a slight shame considering it barely counts as the beginning of this section. It only gets worse from here! No it was all fiiine. We’ll get there. The journey takes about four hours, and despite the chaos of the boat station (it cannot be called a marina or a ship terminal; the typical Chinese chaos makes it a boat station), the boats themselves were sleek and nice – with the usual full-volume phone noises and screaming children (and adults), naturally.
Our hotel/teahouse (it’s hard to tell what’s a hotel or hostel here; nice places are like, teahouses) in Yangshuo booked our boat tickets for us and had a bus (full of other tourists and other pickups, naturally) pick us up at our Guilin teahouse (the Traveling With, loveyou4eva) and take us all to the overflowing boat station, where a nice lady gave us all our tickets. Thanks to the Tea Cozy, our Yangshuo digs, we had Second Floor tickets and not just measly First Floor. Supposedly that means a better view, quieter/well behaved crowd, and an overall better, ‘upper floor’ experience. I think it definitely is worth it for the views – that’s what this boat ride is about! – but I laugh at you if you think elevation helps crowds of Chinese people behave civilly. Yes this trip is making me intolerant! Make it stop!
We were seated in a comfy chair section of 6 (all the floors on all the boats look like this, pretty surprising) with two Chinese couples, one with a child who was, let’s just say, not well behaved, as per uzh. At this point in our trip, Z was ill. He will downplay it now, in hindsight, but it was quite flu-ish and awful, so he just wanted to sleep, but this kid sitting with us wouldn’t let that happen. Actually no one onboard would let that happen. We took turns going out to the deck for pictures and fresh air (haha no that’s where everyone smokes there’s no fresh air in this country) (I guess we just went out for sunburn then, and lots of it (I’ve never been so tan I hate it)). At one particularly nice stretch of scenery early on, I asked Z if he wanted to go take a look for pictures and he said “I might go out just to throw a Chinese kid overboard.” We learned soon after that the parents sitting with us had just returned from a year at Oxford…so…oops. Unclear if they heard it, but they definitely speak English. But hey, your kid’s obnoxious.
There were so many other screamy kids that soon it all balanced out with noise coming from all angles, so it was okay? Is that how it works here? I especially loved this little girl who was wearing a shirt covered with PICTURES OF KRYSTEN RITTER. WHAT??? Whoooo do the parents think it is? Is she big here? I mean I hear Jessica Jones is great and I quite enjoyed Don’t Trust the B**** in Apartment 23 but on a toddler’s t-shirt? In China?! Such random shit here.
probably the best thing I’ve seen in all of Asia
The boat ticket includes lunch, but of course this being a lawless, orderless land, there’s no way to get a specific sort of meal, like, say, vegetarian. Everyone gets the same tray, and that tray includes stuck-together rice (not sticky rice, that’s different, just poorly cooked rice), frozen peas and corn, a section of breaded crayfish I think, and a section of breaded chicken strips. Cool. Cool cool cool cool. At least I had peas and corn and rice. I hated wasting the other food and it was frustrating that they didn’t have the option of not wasting it in the first place. The bar downstairs sold chicken nuggets and watermelon in addition to the regular soft drinks and potato chips so I had watermelon. Isn’t that so interesting.
Aside from the overall minor noise and the food issues though, this boat was so amazing. As usual, the signage was great; I got a few of the goods. The second picture is blursula so check the captions.
this sign says ‘Fallinto the Water Carefully” I mean if you say so
I think I would love a cruise through scenery like this, I guess they do them down the Yangtze. But then again it might be like just a loooong wavy version of the train journeys so far so maybe not. Dammit other people ruining everything. Well they didn’t ruin this. It was too beautiful!
It really was incredibly sunny, as you can see from my trademarked Sun Face.
have you ever seen a forehead so SHINAYYYY like a treasure from a sunken pirate wreck scrub the deck and make it look SHINAYYY
pretties!
water buffalo!
I almost didn’t want the gorgeous ride to end, but I was excited to get to our boutique teahouse in the countryside of Yangshuo for four days of relaxation, swimming, hiking, biking, climbing, kayaking, whatever. Z chose the Tea Cozy Hotel, which had a very nice room with an amazing view from the balcony (which was too hot to go out on, but still, what a view).
apparently i just share pictures of toilets now on the reg
view of the balcony from the bed
view from the balcony
The biggest problem was the same problem that plagues all of China – despite many official ‘no smoking’ signs, the staff didn’t bat an eyelash at the many, many Chinese men (I don’t even think they were all guests, just like random taxi drivers and who knows who) who would smoke in the lobby and throughout the main floor, PLUS for a few nights our next door neighbors were smoking in the room, which is REALLY not allowed. Even the staff got the teensiest bit upset that someone was smoking in a room, but there was ‘no way of figuring out who it was’ apparently and while we had this conversation 4 different men were smoking near us in the lobby. FFS CHINA. (And yes, it was billed as a non-smoking hotel when we booked online.)
Another main drawback was that it didn’t have a pool, and like, the #1 activity in these parts is seriously ‘having a pool’. The staff had promised us months ago that we could use the pool at their sister property 1 kilometer away anytime we wanted, and that they’d take us there. That’s not the most convenient but hey it’s better than nothing! Of course, of course, this being wild west China, the pool at the resort had to be emptied the day we arrived for some reason, and this being a land of low-to-no technology, it took more than 3 days to fill it. So despite asking every day ‘can I please go swimming now?’, I was repeatedly told that, sorry, the pool only has a foot of water in it/two feet/three feet/red fish/blue fish. Only on our very last day was I able to go, and only because the sister property’s guests had apparently had enough and they were swimming even though the water STILL wasn’t up to the proper level! So the other staff told my staff ‘sure send her over there are people swimming anyway so who cares anymore.’ Thanks! It was a pretty nice pool, kind of cold and…I don’t think chlorinated? Also it wasn’t until I was leaving after my swimming time that someone decided oh right we should be constantly filling this pool to get it back up to normal and then stuck a hose in. I mean. Get your shit together.
pretty decent pool huh
This sister prop had really nice grounds (ours was just a single building) and apparently had a gym too, so I was a little disappointed at first that we didn’t choose this one, but like, I think I’d be even more pissed off if we chose the place that had a pool and paid for that amenity and then COULDN’T use the pool for three out of four days. If I were the guests there I’d be demanding money back.
So, our staff of apparent teenagers? felt bad? about how I couldn’t go swimming? and about the smoke? no I don’t think they did I think they just sensed my rage and didn’t want me to hulk out, so they gave us teacups as presents. Now, that’s a very nice gesture, don’t get me wrong, but you’ve heard about the state of our backpacks. We now have bubble-wrapped orbs sticking out of them, taking up valuable peanut butter space. I hate living out of a backpack.
We had all these high hopes for exploring the Yangshuo countryside, but Z’s illness got worse, or at least didn’t get better, which sucked for him, so one day we asked the staff if someone could drive us into town to a pharmacy we saw one night. They got a driver to take us TO A WITCH DOCTOR. We wanted to go to a regular (for China) pharmacy in the town where we could try to find recognizable stuff. Instead, we were driven to a dusty garage area where an old man stood at a dusty brown counter in front of a wall of hundreds of brown dusty bottles that an old woman sorted through for the small line of patients. It was, shall we say, not trustworthy. It was kind of frightening. But we couldn’t communicate what we actually wanted because the driver didn’t speak English, so we just went ahead with this freakshow. When it was our turn at the shack opening, we handed the witch doctor the list of symptoms that the hotel lady had written down for us. Then the old man and woman started sorting through no less than 18 different bottles of pills and sorting combinations of 18 pills into 7 different hastily folded little paper corners to hold them. Z was like ‘…this isn’t all for me, right? I have a bad cold maybe.’ But no, all those pills were for him. They communicated to take one combination of all 18 pills THREE TIMES A DAY. That is a LOT OF SHIT for what might just be a horrible cold and even for what could be the flu. TOO MUCH WITCH DOCTORING. Z was like…um…okay…sure…and then the witch doctor was like oh wait stop, and ALSO take two of these other pills that are in a regular foil pouch morning and night. We looked up the characters on the foil later and it was amoxicillin. Pretty sure he didn’t need that but whaaat. All of this medicine cost 18 yuan, or like, $2.75, so at least it wasn’t expensive to tempt fate like that.
Z did indeed take the pills a few times. I know! The next day, after 3 or 4 epic pill-swallowing sessions (SO F-ING MANY), he looked at me and was like WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING TAKING THIS I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS! I went into town and got him regular cough medicine (children’s, I think, best I could do).
Unfortunately, because of Z’s sickness, it hindered what we could do with these four days meant for exploring nature and being all outdoorsy and stuff. I mean, most importantly, poor Z was sick, yes that’s what I meant first. Further down the oh no list is how it affected my vacation of course. He just slept all day every day, pretty much. So I had that one day of swimming, I worked out a lot, we watched the one channel on the TV that had English movies (cut by ads at worse times than they do in the UK, which is quite a feat, like midsentence instead of the UK’s preferred right-as-a-sentence-ends-but-before-you-hear-the-enunciated-end-of-the-syllable-so-it’s-crazy-abrupt cuts), I went into the town by myself and had a shittonne of bubble tea, I went to a wacky expat’s wellness center for a yoga class (we’ll talk about that later). I should have done more myself, but a) I would have gotten so lost you can’t even believe, b) I probably would have gotten injured, knowing me, and then been injured AND lost, and c) it was a nice bed, so, we were lazy and it was nice. At least we still got to enjoy the incredible karst scenery from the nice bed. The karst scenery is the kind of limestone landscape that got eroded into cray cray bananapants shapes like caves and grassy hills and overall mountainous terrain that juts out of nowhere, so it seems, and surrounds the village with peaks that seem completely alien to what should be there, like they were dropped in from nowhere to make the area look like a foreign planet with huge peaks and valleys of green. It’s pretty awesome, and I guess I should have explored more by just like walking around it, but again, see above a, b, and c. The village our hotel was in was still the dusty dilapidated sort, and the town was only a slight improvement on that, so I think seeing the view from the balcony (from the bed) was probably the nicest way to enjoy the area. Or at least that’s the story I’m sticking to for my benefit.
Yangshuo town! Cute!
So about that yoga class…
There are two HappyCow places in Yangshuo town, a vegetarian Chinese restaurant we went to twice, called Lotus, and a Western hippie’s wellness center + cafe called Mood Food Energy Cafe, with juice, smoothies, salads, and other western health food like tahini sunflower burgers, plus massages, meditation, yoga and other classes. I was eager to try their yoga classes, and maybe get a massage or try the ‘tourmaline sauna’ that the owner had raved about when I visited the first day just to gather information. When I went back for yoga, my first of what I hoped would be daily classes, I went in assuming, because the owner was an English-speaking man and all the staff i’d seen so far were white, that it would be in English. Fair guess, right? Everyone was white! I was the first student to arrive so I made myself comfortable and stretched on a mat. It was a pretty nice studio. Then an older lady walked in. I pointed to the mat set up at the front of the room for the instructor and then pointed to her, asking ‘are you the instructor?’ She smiled and went over to that mat and lay down on her back and started doing scissor stretches with her legs and arms. So I copied her. For like five minutes. We just laid there kicking one leg up then the other just chilling and getting warmed up, I assumed. This is a lot of assuming that has happened by now. And then, three other people came in, plus a younger Chinese lady who said something to the older lady which I’m gonna guess is, “hey that’s my mat, I’m the instructor and that’s where I go”, and took her rightful place at the front. So I had spent five minutes following some random old lady’s old lady stretches because I thought she was the instructor, and she apparently thought I had said, ‘hey I got a mat out for you and put it at the front of the room, lady I don’t know and didn’t know was coming!’ So I was already deathly embarrassed before we even started.
There are two HappyCow places in Yangshuo town, a vegetarian Chinese restaurant we went to twice, called Lotus, and a Western hippie’s wellness center + cafe called Mood Food Energy Cafe, with juice, smoothies, salads, and other western health food like tahini sunflower burgers, plus massages, meditation, yoga and other classes. I was eager to try their yoga classes, and maybe get a massage or try the ‘tourmaline sauna’ that the owner had raved about when I visited the first day just to gather information. When I went back for yoga, my first of what I hoped would be daily classes, I went in assuming, because the owner was an English-speaking man and all the staff i’d seen so far were white, that it would be in English. Fair guess, right? Everyone was white! I was the first student to arrive so I made myself comfortable and stretched on a mat. It was a pretty nice studio. Then an older lady walked in. I pointed to the mat set up at the front of the room for the instructor and then pointed to her, asking ‘are you the instructor?’ She smiled and went over to that mat and lay down on her back and started doing scissor stretches with her legs and arms. So I copied her. For like five minutes. We just laid there kicking one leg up then the other just chilling and getting warmed up, I assumed. This is a lot of assuming that has happened by now. And then, three other people came in, plus a younger Chinese lady who said something to the older lady which I’m gonna guess is, “hey that’s my mat, I’m the instructor and that’s where I go”, and took her rightful place at the front. So I had spent five minutes following some random old lady’s old lady stretches because I thought she was the instructor, and she apparently thought I had said, ‘hey I got a mat out for you and put it at the front of the room, lady I don’t know and didn’t know was coming!’ So I was already deathly embarrassed before we even started.
And then it started, and it was in Chinese. The instructor spoke English and tried her best to repeat everything for me after she’d explained to the others, but there’s only so much time in a day so I’d hear like 3 minutes of Chinese explanation of a pose and its benefits or whatever, and then in English she’d simply say ‘reach your shoulders like this.’ So I didn’t get the maximum benefit, I imagine.
It would be fine, not knowing the language of instruction, if it were a yoga class like any I’d ever done before. And I’ve done yoga since I was like, 17. That’s a whole lot. But it wasn’t a flow or anything familiar, and she didn’t say the sanskrit names for poses. Because it wasn’t really a ‘doing poses’ kind of yoga! It was so herky jerky and random. Like, we did a few sun salutations to warm up, that was great and familiar. But after those two minutes, we all got belts, and she wrapped them around our shoulders and we reached overhead for like, 15 minutes. It hurt! I have extremely tight shoulders and upper back, which has only worsened this trip with the backpack, and she was not happy about that. So instead of being like every other yoga professional in the world and gently offering ways to improve or stretch in a certain way to safely expand on this movement, she hoisted the belt back and up so hard that she almost dislocated my shoulder, and I was screaming in pain and she kept pulling my arms up and up where they clearly would not and could not go, until I looked at her and said ‘stop!’ Like, are you kidding me? What kind of yoga is this! Is it just because you can’t sue for anything in China so they’re like screw safe practices?!
After we tore our shoulders apart, she had us wrap the belts around our thighs and do variations on chair pose for 20 minutes. I didn’t understand what kind of baby squat they were all doing until after she did her Chinese shpiel and then said to me, simply, ‘like chair pose.’ Thanks, finally! That was intense, obviously when held that long, and everyone was laughing through the pain but like, is this yoga? So strange. For this, since she kept wanting to pick on me for everything, she realized she hated my feet, like, a lot, and she tried to pull my big toes out to make them straight. I’ve told you before, I have bad bunions, so like, pulling my big toes to make them straight REQUIRES SURGERY, woman. After I realized what she was doing I was said ‘clearly they aren’t going to do what you want them to do, fake podiatrist!’ It was ridiculous! Was she trying to break bones to see if the center could heal them with crystals or something after? Or was she just an idiot? Needless to say, despite the great thigh DOMS I got later, I did not return as I had originally planned. What a shame! I was so excited for a real yoga class with other people after all these months of travel and then I find one with a crazy lady literally trying to break all my bones. If anything though, this kind of made me want to get certified as an instructor JUST SO I could balance out her awfulness in the instructor universe with my normal-yoga-doingness-that-doesn’t-lead-to-broken-bones.
After this super random class, I went downstairs and had dinner in the cafe. I was so excited for a big salad and other health food-y stuff, but honestly I have to say, while I liked the food okay, the service was abysmal. The friendly owner I had met days before wasn’t there, and it was full of all these women who were kind of glaring at me the whole time. There was an office-type room full of white women working on computers – I think getting massage training? according to some signs in the room? – and they just kept staring and giving me resting bitch face and I was like duuuuudeeeee what is wrong I changed my sweaty clothes what am I doing wrong? Despite how awkward it’s been for us as the only white people in a lot of these parts of China that we have trouble understanding and grasping, THIS was the most uncomfortable I’d felt in weeks – surrounded by other white women.
NOOCH SALAD!
I did get my big salad though, and guys, it was covered in nooch! Nooch! It’s been so long, I’d forgotten how much I loved it! Yay! It was a really good vegan health food store take on a Caesar, so, in fact, nothing at all like a Caesar, but just how I like it, a lot of lettuce and tofu and nooch. I also got salad rolls (so much salad!) that were fine, if needing a little more substance inside. I got that tahini-sunflower burger to go for Z plus a pita and hummus plate, which they wrapped up HILARIOUSLY with the hummus and other dips in those tiny tiny little plastic bags, like thumb-sized. Not enough hummus for your prices, guys! But clever packaging, I guess! The burger was decent (of course I ended up eating it the next day, Z’s first desired solid food in days was not going to be yoga center health concoctions) but the dips were weird. I wanted to try all the vegan desserts and smoothies and stuff but the service really was bad and honestly, despite seeming on the surface like a place tailor-made for me, I couldn’t get out of their fast enough. Kind of sad. But what an experience!
take out container pictures you love it
lolol it’s like they repurposed the tiny plastic bags that extra buttons on a Gap sweater come in and put hummus inside
A much better food experience awaited at Lotus Vegetarian, on the happening pedestrian West Street, near plenty of clubs and coffee bars and, a new fave, a place called Mango, where they specialize in mango smoothies of various sorts. I know! Amazing! We went to Lotus a few times and tried so much that was all pretty good, some great. They also bring you a dish of watermelon and a little set of peanuts, corn, and pickles right when you sit.
Above, we have my standard big ole plate of broccoli order, this time coming with black fungus (fun mushrooms) and noodles (because why not just throw noodles in everything); next is the Homestyle Tofu, which was very good; and then it’s the Guilin-style stir-fried bean noodles, tofu skin, and mixed vegetables. Loved this dish! It combines all my favorite things – vegetables, tofu skin, and beans in noodle form! Good stuff.
Above we have a huge plate of bok choy and mushrooms, most of which I put in our room fridge and had cold the next day, and then a really good black noodle dish with MORE bok choy (GIVE ME ANOTHER VEGETABLE MAYBE ONE DAY) and spicy tofu that was so spicy that I didn’t even realize at first that it was STINKY! It wasn’t TOO stinky so it was still good, but yeesh! China luuurves its stinky tofu!
Finally, we have this stupid hot (temperature! wasn’t spicy and also spicy is never stupid) fluffy tofu and vegetable claypot sort of jawn that was delicious, and probably my favorite dish from Lotus, the Kung Pao Chicken mockery. I tried to bring most of this on the train the day after ordering it; NB, bringing leftover Chinese food on a train is a bad idea. Eating all this stuff in a restaurant when it is cooked is a great idea though!
I only had one meal at the hotel, because the food was fine, but some of the staff members really put me off. Like they commented on how much food we ordered when it was literally like a salad, a tofu, and dumplings. That’s a normal amount of food for one hungry person, let alone two. Shut up. Anyway, the food was just okay. The tofu was really good but the dumplings were not. And guess what kind of salad it wassssss yes you know it.
that’s right
Dinner at the hotel was really only worth it because the other tables were occupied by a group of Italians, which led Z to make THE DAD JOKE TO BEAT THEM ALL: “What’s an Italian’s favorite Chinese food? CIAO MEIN.” oh my god it still hurts.
Lest you think Yangshuo town is all food fun and no drink fun, I must admit that my favorite part of this entire four day stay was my drinkage. I went to the aforementioned Mango a few times – there are outposts of various sizes on literally EVERY block – and got the regular mango smoothie (most others have milk) and a cup of plain mango. Each time, I tried a different bubble topping because as we know by now I am obsessed with the bubble tea bubbles. Mango has a CRAZY bubble/pearl menu. The first time I went, I didn’t realize that their offerings weren’t just the regular tapioca balls, and I was HORRIFIED when I bit into one and it was the juice-squirting kind. SO GROSS. I do not want a little thin-skinned ball full of fruit juice; I want chewy weirdness! Luckily my second attempt was a total win. For some reason I pointed to the pearl option that said sweet potato – I guess I was just super curious. Lo and behold, the little thin skin of the pearl ball gave way to an inside of cooked sweet potato! WHAT. Just tiny little droppings of cooked sweet potato inside the bubble ball pearl dot. Can you EVEN. Because I COULD NOT. I am so obsessed! WHO MAKES THESE.
Wonderful smoothie, GROSS BUBBLES
Good mango, AMAZING bubbles
But you know what’s coming. Obviously I saved the best for last. Right up the block from where our hotel’s shuttle (regular car and driver who I think only drove me around the whole week) picked up and dropped off was a GONG CHA! My favorite of the bubble tea chains! Now, I’m pretty sure that this is one of the fake, copyright-infringing imposter Gong Chas that Jojo warned me about, BUT, I think I actually liked it more than the real! I KNOW BUT HEAR ME OUT. What are my main requirements for good bubble tea? A menu with English translations that I can point to, with a section for adding bubbles, and a sugar level chart so I can get low-to-zero sugar. CHECK, CHECK, CHECK. And, unlike all the others, they actually listened and didn’t make my drinks diabetes in a cup like all the others. And what’s my favorite thing about bubble tea? THE BUBBLES. And this amazing imposter Gong Cha gave more bubbles than any other place! Like, to the point where I was STRUGGLING to catch them all after I’d finished the liquid. It was so great. I love that stupid fake shoppe.
One time we forgot to pay – we each thought the other had paid and the worker didn’t seem to notice – and we didn’t realize until we were at dinner later! Luckily we were still downtown, so we just went back after dinner and saw the guy and were like, we didn’t pay! And it wasn’t until we took money out of our wallets that it clicked for him and he was like ahhhhh you didn’t pay but I didn’t even realize you didn’t pay! Good thing too or we would be in a some scary Chinese jail. Where I doubt they give you bubble tea.
Given that the town had my favorite tea shop, a lot of mango smoothies, good vegetarian food, fun yoga adventures, and a decent overall vibe, I think I enjoyed my time there more than I did out at the remote teahouse – the complete opposite of what was supposed to happen. It’s just that Yangshuo is meant for nature-tourism, and aside from looking at the beautiful scenery, I didn’t actually do that. Maybe I squandered my time in the end, but I enjoyed myself in my own way. Also I slept a decent amount, which has been seriously lacking this summer so hooray! Despite its issues, we were able to relax at the Tea Cozy as intended and enjoy that view. So cool. Here’s one last piece of karst for you!
