The relative price of wine

I’m sitting at the dinner table (sometimes referred to as the breakfast table depending on the time of day) and am enjoying a glass of Gran Feudo Reserva 2005 (6 euros a bottle here, or $8.50AU [even cheaper if purchased before the earthquakes in Japan]) of which later, lesser vintages are available from a well known Melbourne restaurant (at $40+ mind you) which will remain nameless only because I know there are other things at work here such as the protection of the Australian wine industry; the relative labour costs (though I suspect most Australian grape pickers are illegals too – in fact middleclass European backpackers working without a visa for travel money) and the fact that they (Movida … oops) have such delicious food; and then that cultural curb that has wine lumped in with the alco-pops “prevent youth violence on our streets tax” (which is destroying Melbourne’s music scene, by the way) or else as a luxury item that “foodies” (like me) are willing to spend a fortune on, for that “culinary experience”, whereas here good food and wine seem readily available and viewed upon as nothing more than simply a part of life … and I am thinking what a complex bouquet it has …

Trains, planes and automobiles …

Six flights; three days of driving and eight consecutive hours on a train. Then there’s a couple of suburban bus trips and a few of those mini-trams up and down the hillsides of Lisbon; a weird half tram, half ski-lift type thing up the bank of the Douro; taxis to and from airports, and of course the many miles just walking about. That’s the long and the short of it. Fair to say we’re now very much looking forward to stopping in Valencia for five and a half weeks and maybe (no definitely) investing in a pusher.

What a terrible blogger I am turning into. Here I am summarising; generalising, clearly to make up for my general tardiness. My mum has already been on my case about the duration between entries, and now that pesky Reservoir Dad has linked in, applying more pressure to the whole travelling Dad angle … just when I thought I was becoming too obsessed with the little one … too much the kind of reformed human being people expect new parents to be … or am I really channelling my own expectations now that I’m a new parent. I don’t know. We’ll have to see. I guess that’s the kind of thing I should write down on these virtual pages. I don’t know. If I think about it too much I won’t get anywhere.
To hell with it; back to summarising, for the time being at least until I catch up … maybe I’ll make it really easy for myself and write a list.
Yes, a list. Here goes:

Five good things about travelling with an infant:

1.       They (babies) are reasonably light and portable and of course, self-cleaning*

2.       Priority boarding (cue jumping) on all planes except Ryan Air (where you get precisely what you pay for, and there are no favours for the small fry)

3.       Extra legroom that comes with the bulkhead (basinet) seats

4.       People tend to talk to you more readily and sometimes even entertain the child when she’s had enough of the folks. A mother and daughter from Granada virtually adopted her on the train ride here. We’d been trying to get her to settle lying down on a seat when really she only needed a couple of strangers cooing over her and she was perfectly happy.

5.       Banding together and sharing the load. This is the unexpected upside of a few things on the negatives list, but as much as I frown upon high fives anywhere off the volleyball court (where Top Gun really made them mandatory), the end of a long and well executed journey can often be experienced as a deep and profound sense of shared accomplishment worthy of a bit of hand slapping … 

* I know babies aren't really self-cleaning. I just put that in to make our baby sound really advanced

Bad things about travelling with an infant:

1.       They quickly become heavy and unwieldy, especially when carrying them up a long incline.

2.       Confinement: generally the trepidation of travelling with child is due to being in a confined space. It’s not the tantrums that you fear, but just not being able to escape to a private place.

3.       Difficulty in doing regular baby maintenance on the move: It seems like nappy changes are more frequent and explosive (necessitating full clothing changes, I mean it's not like babies can clean themselves) and they're particularly difficult in plane toilets, even with the fold down change tables.

4.       People tend to talk to you more readily

5.       Embarrassment when you find yourselves doing silly things you would never have done before, like wearing child carriers around like they’re a fashion item, or like high fiving in baggage claim halls in front of your fellow passengers.

So on the whole maybe the good and the bad balance out. In terms of changes to travel arrangements it’s all about planning, timing and flexibility: same three things that seem to be most important at home now the Pants wears the pants at our place. But it’s a lot better travelling because … well it’s just a lot better travelling. You’re all in it together. You’ve got time and space to enjoy it all. We get to a place, put the baby on the bed; she smiles up at us and starts sucking her toes. We talk about what we’re going to do for dinner, where we talk about what we’re going to do tomorrow. We pass the baby across the table and pass the time.

"Change of scene?"

... With these words an increasingly restless Pants is passed across the dinner table.  The phase is repeated a number of times throughout the meal, and this to and fro buys us valuable time, effectively resetting the clock on the potential meltdown which may or may not occur (and for the most part doesn’t). Good parent, bad parent is how it goes, and “The parent is always greener on the other side” if you understand my meaning. 

In this way we are enjoying eating out, albeit sometimes with a greater sense of urgency and by incorporating some other interesting behavioural changes such as: cutting up each other’s food into bite size pieces; eating one handed; eating in shifts; eating without napkins so that (naturally) Pants can eat our napkins, or at least transform them into little papier-mâché clumps which you could say resembled people, or maybe animals. We’re going to collect them (her sculptures) and sell them to people who find this kind of thing amazing and cute, just to bolster the travel budget. We won’t tell them that they are mostly saliva.

Hola los pantalones

So we made it to Madrid. Actually through Madrid, as we are about to leave for Portugal tomorrow. Edie surpassed all expectations on the 14 hour flight from Bangkok. We were prepared to give her a free pass to let loose on even the biggest of tantrums once on the plane as - just by her mere presence in our entourage - many a rope barrier unhooked for us at the airport saving us from soul destroying queues at check in. But she pulled out another twig performance and woke towards the end of the flight refreshed and ready to make friends with anyone who would throw her a smile.
Madrid has been wonderful. We were met here by Beth and John (Edie's Aunt and Uncle living in Valencia - for readers not familiar with the extended family layout) and thankfully they were happy (John in particular) to fit into a baby travel routine (at least when recovering from jetlag) of, to be honest, a whole lot of sitting around an apartment, watching what seemed to be Spanish TVs equivalent of "Deal or No Deal" trying to work out just what the host intends to do with the rubber chicken he is wielding. I suppose in Australia the host of that show is enough of a rubber chicken that they decided to dispense with the prop.
Oh and we also go out  for tapa/ cerveza/ cafe con leche during the day (see photo proof below).

Edie has begun demonstrating a talent for falling asleep on bar and restaurant bench seats which cannot be relied upon but when it happens is a serious bonus. The, ah, not so gentle hum of spanish life seems to be perfect for at first a frenzy of stimulating sounds/ sights giving way to exhaustion and finally snooze-town.

Anyway, as you can see from this post, we have bought the camera and are not afraid to use it. So hopefully for those of you who (like me) prefer to read books with pretty pictures, this blog may now offer you something more to come back for. Hasta Luego amigos!