If there is anything positive to be gleaned from losing someone you care about, it’s this: for a brief window of time, you remember to appreciate the people you have left. It’s sort of like when you’re eating a massive bag of popcorn (for those you who have read my blog for years, patiently…
In the center of Valencia sits the Palacio del Marqués de Dos Agüas (the Palace of the Marquis of … Two Waters? Wait, is that right? I’m basing this on my high school Spanish, which also inadvertently caused me to proposition someone when I was 16). The building – an ornate and sort of gaudy mansion…
I walked a lot in Spain. Ten or twelve miles on most days, sometimes more, most of it spent walking seemingly with purpose, and yet more often than not there was no specific destination where I was headed. When I ended up at a churro stand at the end of the day, it was COINCIDENCE. (“I…
I know that a good story requires build-up before a big reveal, but I’ve never had the patience for that. While everyone else is sitting through the rising action, I’m screaming “GET TO THE CLIMAX,” which doesn’t always fly in the middle of a movie theater or wedding ceremony or bris. And so, breaking all…
I’m going to tell you right now: when I visited the Alhambra, I took a lot of photos. Like, a whole lot of them.
If you were unable to guess from yesterday’s post, I’m oddly passionate about sculpture. This is surprising, even to me. If you asked me directly, I’d tell you: God, no, sculpture, ceramics, pottery, all of that is so boring. And yet I find myself buying weird vases and tiny ceramic figurines everywhere I go, and our house…
Do you remember when I told you about Las Fallas? The festival in Valencia where giant sculptures of plaster and wood are meticulously constructed over the course of a year, then rapidly burned down on one Bacchanalian night while crowds of drunken onlookers cheer? Pyromania isn’t really my thing (I’m more self-destructive than outwardly…
I’ve tried to write about La Ciudad de las Artes y Ciencias (The City of Arts and Sciences) before. It’s a rather remarkable collection of buildings (an aquarium, a science center, conference halls) in the center of Valencia, Spain, architecturally fascinating and utterly unlike anything I’ve seen in my travels. I wanted very much to…
Note: I started working on this post a while ago. I delayed publishing it, because it’s about laughing in a cemetery, and the empty void where my heart should be told me that putting that up in the wake of the horrible tragedies we’ve experienced wouldn’t be appropriate. I figured I’d wait until the news…
Tales of Food, Feminism, and Fury
by Geraldine DeRuiter
Available Now!
In Hardback, e-book, and audiobook from these booksellers:
