Dustless Centuries- Padova University

So when I discovered a book I needed was in the Palazzo del Bo, the historical seat of the University, I got all geekily excitable, rooted about for my camera and wrote off the next hour or two as Tourist Time. Built in 1493, the place makes old-school look like a nursery fresh off the blueprints, as you can see:

 Track down your text in these leather-bound miniture files...

 The gateway of ancient intellect with a hint of, "I've only gone and lost my bloody parking ticket, haven't I?"

 As you walk through the main gate, pillars and stone wall carvings await...

 This statue of Palinurus was made in commemoration of the University's role in the Resistance, for which it won the Gold Medal for Valour. Padova 1, Resistance 0.

 The paintings represent birth and development of humanity, culture and science, and the multi-coloured stairs jazz things up a notch.

The main doors of the Palazzo are forboding, but remembering the University motto, "Universa universis patavina libertas (Paduan freedom is universal for everyone), originally chosen to show its independence from the Catholic Church, still seems inviting today. It seems, the gate an eddy of footsteps and chatter, the University of Padova is still raring and relevant, wise but fresh, despite its years. Book in hand, I totter past the carvings solemn gaze. Nothing like centuries of composed strength in the snarling, battling face of adversity to make you get your reading done on time.

(leave me a comment below, if you fancy/are bored. ooh, go on.)

Slow Start

It's a bit ironic really- I'm sat, sub-face-pack, in a beautiful, fashionable country shaped like a boot, while fixated on books/sites about beautiful things, like boots, worn by people packing some serious fashion face.

Don't give me that- you try being doped up on volcanic meringues and deepest-fill jam tarts from down the road, and then attempting wistful insights. Too much of Mama's 'special' home baking is making me just that. When's your Dumbass Day?
So, before we go skipping across the cobbles, tramlines and sheened store floors of Padova, I've got a few screenshots instead of snapshots. The focaccia made me do it.

Will Cotton

Mr Cotton has one of THOSE jobs. One that makes you take one scornful look at your snowballing university debt and dog-eared lecture notes and think, "Someone had to earn their living making delicious mess, big bucks and an renowned name for themselves from crafting big heaps of cake- why the Bicarbonate of Soda wasn't it me?!". Astounded jealousy aside, this man has his cake and sells it, recently to none other than Miss Katy Perry, who hired him to design the set for 'Calfornia Girls' video, and to paint her 'Teenage Dream' album cover.

Elie Saab (http://www.eliesaab.com/)
If a particularly diva-ish strain of the Ancient Greeks ever chanced upon a time machine, they would sashay aboard, tailors in tow, and head straight for the runway of Elie Saab, as they RSVP-ed to those amphitheatre premiers with a smile. Hopefully said time machine would break down enroute, somewhere in or around my kitchen. Stand aside chiffon, it's thigh time.

Marc Quinn

Down a street here, over a canal there, and in no time the Furby and I found ourselves lost in Venice last weekend, something which we didn't have a problem with at all. 'Lost' doesn't seem quite the right word. 'Lost' would imply a certain emptiness, a bland loneliness, and that there weren't bakeries, spritz bars, trinket shops, mask stands, glass stalls, gondolas, balconies, bridges and abounding quaint crumbling gorgeousness absolutely everywhere you look. In fact, I don't think I've ever found so much whilst claiming to be 'lost'.

During our rewardingly aimless wander, what should we find but a painting I've never seen by a forgotten favourite- Marc Quinn. Known to favour kitcsh, riches and risk (he once made a live-size sculpture of his own head, "Self"- using 4.5 litres of his own blood, created Roman-style statues with people with disabilities in place of gods, and designed a golden sculpture of Kate Moss in a pretzel-like yoga pose), it was just a little bit cool to see this intriguing mind set to canvas. Even as a self-confessed Modern Art Anarchist, the Furby was taken by it too.
(Couldn't find the exact painting...but here are some other nice ones. The one that got away was better though, promise.)

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Up. (Or: what the M4 does to your mind.)

Nice... fun... cool... is that all there is left? My vocabulary ebbing with the fuel gauge, I find myself.... "lost for words", and also, apparently, defenceless against the cliché.

Freckled buzz of the untuned radio seems onomatopoeic for the fizzing disintegration of grey matter, hunched blearily over the steering wheel. Where once, a matter of hours ago, it was lodged content- synapses twitching, dimly ticking over in its shell- it now dissolves to sparkless rubble, numb in my skull.

Think I better have some Fruit Pastilles.

It's only what tumbles serenely above the ... "concrete jungle" (it's worse than I thought...) that loosely sutures me to my sanity- clouds. As a Brit, it seems inherently wrong to root for our reluctant signature, our uninvited guests. But they have a "silver lining" (make it stop!). The plumes and gusts glow with dappled composure, poised above the towers, pylons and streetlamps that grapple at their blooms.

Wincing through the blurry windscreen, over the rim of my Coffee Nation, it seems that the sheer regal vastness of the heavens invite a soundtrack, deserve an accompaniment by a cathedral choir. Maybe even a theme tune (a little part of me wants that to be The Verve's 'Bittersweet Symphony'...). Their sleet-shot surges demand a requiem, a canon erupting from on high- to present and announce to us mere mortals below, that the Greatest Show on Earth is, in fact, effortlessly pirouetting atop our chimney pots.

The thundered footlights dazzle and snap, and from the cosy theatre of my Micra, I forget the gripe of a nation as the sky lit drama unfolds. I raise my hot chocolate dregs in toast, rain faith restored; it's actually pretty cool.

I would take my hat off, to the clouds above, as a sign of admiration and respect. If they didn't insist on, gloriously or not, soaking me within an inch of my life. Hmm. As 'they', I and the sufferers of clichés everywhere, say, "back to square one".

losing my grip?

Out into nothing

An odd thing struck me at, ooh, about 13,500 feet above Seville. As a self-confessed pudding enthusiast, I wish I could say that I was inspired at this point, by the dusty curvature whistling towards my trainers, to bake some kind of spherical, earthen Heston Blumenthal creation. Or perhaps the correct food blogger response (to the initially feared, but actually giggle-fit-inducing, sky-plummetting situation i found myself in) would be to empathise with the fateful sinking of souffles everywhere. Amongst the ruffling silence and gravity getting all carried away, my mind should have been gloriously awash with the smells and flavours of dinner-times past, flashing before my eyes....
THUD.

Nope. Somehow, all I wanted was 1 x can Diet Coke, fresh from the shop fridge, with all those beads of condensation on the outside, as if it had been making such a (successful) effort to be delicious it had actually begun to perspire. Such drinks might be tins of effervescent murk, chemical-ridden enough to polish a coin to a sheen, but if anyone thinks they can tell me Coca Cola don't know how to market themselves, then I would like to bloody hear it.

'Cafe Cloud 9' -Vendors of the glory drink

You like to think that you're immune to the stuff, oh yeah...

It's fair to say intention is 'honourable'. Except, more often than not, the word is meant in a sidling, Mark Antony way. Despite good intentions, it seems more at home describing the expensive dud firework, the post-Christmas diet, the "We should really do lunch sometime", than anything the dictionary would have you believe. Intention and reality: flippantly dreaming younger brother, dropping far-fetched plans quicker than he can pluck them out of the air, lazes near bluntly discerning older sister, her eyebrows smirkingly doubtful of his frivolities over her spectacles.

If today had gone according to plan, you would currently be perusing evidence of my obsession with GCBMB (Glam Crap Beyond My Budget). For this, read: caligraphy-fine seams, caramel-soft drapes, soirees of sartorial gems fresh and crisp pinned over ambitiously proportioned mannequins. Hours must have passed as I squinted for signs of GCBMB (sleek, slender bags with people to match, the tell-tale iridescent smoke of burning Platinum AmEx's, etc). Not a prima donna Labradoodle in sight.

Until... a distant pink placard caught the light. Peering over my sunnies, it hit me. Cosy reality was welcoming me home. Like a peckish prodigal daughter, I coyly scuttled over, wondering why I had ever strayed. Surely GCBMB could also stand for Gorgeous Cookery ...Baking ...Marvellously..... oh whatever, gimmee the cake.

"Tease", self-proclaimed 'Rock&Roll Bakery of Lisbon', turned out to be more bad-ass 'My Little Pony' than AC/DC, but it was undoubtedly a Nirvana... (I know. Can't be trusted with puns.). Black velveteen skull wallpaper, neon-glass tiered platters, pop-rock radio and faux-WWII "Keep Calm and Eat a Cupcake" poster : highly commended kitsch glitz.

The Aardvark picked a "Kiss Me on the Raspberry" (apparently in Portugal "Rock&Roll" loosely translates as demanding, yet confusingly vague, sluttiness?) cupcake, cooing over the miniature pick'n'mix treats lodged amongst Panda Pop blue frosting. As The Duck scowled testosterone at the 'manly' butterfly cake I suggested ("ooh look, there's a dinky little football on that one!!"), I confessed to my tastebuds- while window-shopping above my station is always relished, and my fascination with ogling snooty boutiques will be a life-long passion, I might as well face it: I'm addicted to... cake. There, I said it. (Oh don't kid yourself Robert Palmer, Valentines Day ain't got nothing on Victoria Sponge).

My slice was every crumb a rockstar, and a diva at that. Basking on lavish napkin layers, in a be-ribboned box, plus an actual fork escort- it found its every need pandered to. Eying the Prestige Pud, i began to feel that the borders defining who was the boss of whom were becoming concerningly hazy. Before things got dramatic, I asserted my authority. Nom nom nom.

And it was word perfect. Lunch didn't even get a look in. I mean, look at the size of the thing. The Aardvark's managed to face-plant the napkins enroute: a streaked blue daub told the story of its gooey demise. Sweet but short-lived, out with a bang ; a rock'n'roll hero till the end.

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Mission Improbable

While the Duck settles in front of the Spain vs. Germany match for the foreseeable future, unblinking over the rim of a Guiness, at a green screen filled with effeminate hairstyles and pain thresholds, I enjoy the sensation of not melting. 40 degrees is one of those things that's always more fun in retrospect, or in the possesion of strawberry daquaris/coastline/a wind tunnel. As I find myself with a freshly solidified brain, and nothing but waiting for the Granada-Madrid nightbus and a gormlessly sport-struck Duck in front of me, I thought I'd do some catching up.

Olhao, Costa de la Luz. Apre beach, the Aardvark and I embarked on a challenge. It's nothing new- up and down the country, all around the globe, anyone with enough time, money and venues attempts it- the contradictory contest in which the harder you try, the harder you lose. The Pub Crawl. Except we didn't have pubs, and as fond as we both are of fun-by-the-pint, it was time for a change. And so the Pastelaria Crawl was born.

Rules: three venues, three 'players', a different cake each in every venue. (Due to the 40 degreesness, the "Hell no H20" rule does not apply.)

1: Cafe Bijou

I coasted through my 'Moxgado', a coconut-rolled marmalade snowball, in minutes. The Aardvark ambitiously started as she meant to go on- a bulbous choux-bun grimly weighed down her napkin, not unlike the glistening contents of a surgeons kidney dish. Its marshmallow centre swelling a jaundice yellow, an optimistic Aardvark peeringly observed it as "like an eclair?". I pictured this particular dessert provoked just moments before purchase, a little bun with a bigger temper- "You don't want to make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry...".The Duck, gamely prepared to swap his doubles for danishes, embarked on layer after layer of ...what's in it? "...niceness.". I suppose that's what counts. A few minutes later, as the clock ticked round to Cafe 2, the Duck's pace was flagging. Marble icing glistened in defiance. "I can ... barely breathe".

2: Olhao Doco

The Duck lurked at the table while the Aardvark and I picked our poison. "I can't ... why do you DO this to yourself?!". This reminded us of the pub vs. pasteleria comparison- why is excess easier out of a glass that off a plate? The calorie binging, highs and lows and chance of a queezy aftermath drew parallel after parallel. On that note, I offered the Duck a biscuit- "it basically counts as a shot". Unamused, he stalked off to buy a paper.

The Aardvark's fruit slice turned out to be the cream pie's glamourous cousin- a slick rosy gloss daintly graced the fatty brick below. As deep as it was long, my 'Bolo do Noz' clearly favoured the "Less is more!? Don't be such a pussy" school of thought. The Aardvark enthused about the nutritional benefits of walnuts as I doubtfully nursed the syrupy glut, but, to my dismay, I left a few spongey boulders uneaten, and set off for Cafe 3 in shame. Definatly should have gone for one of those cookies iced like a prawn.

3: Cafe del Lightweight Embarrasmento
Our pot of green tea numbed the sugar-shakes, as the Duck raised "I told you so" eyebrows over The Times. The Aardvark tried to tame violent hiccup fits: "Not just normal hiccups- the hiccups of regret". Who knew sleepy village pastries packed such a punch? Only the crosstrainer can save us now. Our Fitness First, who art in the multiplex...

Davey Jones' Dinner Table

The ever ominous, but irritatingly knowledgeable "they" say that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. "They"'re right again; it seems Portugal is bringing out the bloke in me, because, after only five days, I find myself being gradually seduced, one plate at a time.

And that's how time should be categorized here- not daily but dishly: 5 days translates as minimum 15 full meals, plus drinks, plus snacks plus bites-of-other-peoples-stuff-that-looked-nice. A telling cultural idiosyncrasy: Brits tell the time by how much the sun isn't there, the Portuguese by how close it is to lunch-time.

Here's some of the gastromagic that's been enchanting me over here:


From 3 hot plastic chairs, the Duck ordered us "Bacalhao no chupa", because it sounds fun and it might not be a burger. Maybe fish would turn up? Maybe some veggies? What swiftly, nonchalantly arrived was more: it was Fish. And. Veggies. And some kind of beautifully unnecessary onion-mayo octopus, lurking in the shadow of a stout crown of Lemon.

The day after the night before, it was decided that we would do something nutritious/wholesome- cue "Mariscos Kivos": the kind of fish restaurant where you can adopt the air of a firm but fair ruler, casting a discerning eye over a fish tank, before making your deadly selection....anyway, as this seems creepy/ power-trippy, we took the indirectly carnivorous approach. The Aardvark, the Duck and I blearily ordered, "Arroz do mariso especial", before lolling table-ward, eyes still gilded with a lucid film of Super Bock.

Cue cutlery chimes and a muffled, dense sound, not unlike a hefty object dropped through the waters onto a sandy seabed. Squinting back into focus, we saw a cauldron, billowing brine steam, had landed. It could have casually housed 6 generations of rampant generations of be-pincered seabeast and scampering aqua-critter....coincidence? Trust the Portuguese to whack in a saucepan what we put on a pedestal- amid saturated, aptly sand grain shaped, rice grains, we dredged three lobster halves (does the remaining half still battle out its days, teetering round in inevitable circles, featuring in rubber-necking Channel 4 documentaries; "Extraordinary Bodies: Severed Stew Survivor"?).

3/4 of an hour later, the Aadvark could be found star-fished on her mattress, a sign groggily pinned nearby, "Please wake me up when I don't have all of the sea in me? xx".