The greatness of lists.

As my resolution for 2008 I decided that I should travel more. Nothing too big or far away, but just to see a bit more of this beautiful country I live in and maybe some more of Europe. The aim was at least one day or weekend per month to visit somewhere new. I cheated slightly at the start with one weekend in Toulouse and one chez my friends in Normandy; both great places but ones I already know but finally, at the beginning of March, I headed off at stupid o'clock in the morning to Lille in the north of France with my friend Susan (she of broken bones fame, see earlier posts!) Lille is one hour from Paris by super fast train and in 2004 was voted European Capital of Culture. We took the cheapest train tickets we could find, which meant that we arrived in time for breakfast and left at supper time. In between meals we managed to sightsee, shop, walk, visit museums, eat a bit more and even see a film. It's a very pretty city with lots of nice buildings but not a place which needs 11 hours to see!

After this adventure we got together with our friend Sam and made a list of all the places we wanted to visit, prioritising places none of us have been before (upsetting as the two of them have done a fair bit of travelling between them and I haven't!) We finally came up with Lisbon as our April destination and 2 weeks ago headed off in search of Portuguese sunshine. We found a little too much of that...
Whenever I've travelled in the past it's been either to an English-speaking country or to one whose language I've been studying. Lisbon was a whole new experience as the only word I knew how to say on arrival was "obrigada" and, as polite as it is to say thank you to everyone you meet, it doesn't get across that you have no knife and fork to eat your dinner with, or that your metro ticket which you charged five minutes ago is refusing to let you through the barrier! I discovered how frustrating it is when you don't even know basics like how to count or say Good Afternoon and started to feel much more sympathy for my elementary students. It was stupid to go there without a phrasebook but with a lot of smiles and sign language we managed to get everything we needed for the weekend. I thought we had got up early to go to Lille but that was nothing compared to the 4am start we had for Lisbon!! Despite not knowing how to ask for tickets on the bus, going a stop too far and getting slightly lost, we STILL arrived at the hotel before our room was ready. Here, fortunately the staff all spoke English and were super efficient - we hadn't even finished asking if we could leave our bags and they had already been whisked away by the porter! We did lots of sightseeing, rode on a mini train, took lots of photos, ate some VERY good cakes, spent a little too much time in the sun, turned a bit red and then went back for a well deserved sleep. We had found a street in a guidebook which promised lots of nice restaurants serving regional specialities such as cod, cod and more cod, but we were surprised to discover a narrow, ugly street empty of people except the slightly strange men lurking in doorways offering drugs to anyone who happened to pass! We finally found a place with some nice welcoming fairy lights and managed to order some cod. Or rather, Sam ordered and Susan and I added "dois" and "tres" The waiter seemed to find this funny until Sam asked him which wine went well with the cod...at which point he shook his head and practically ran away. He did come back later though and helpfully taught us how to say knife, fork and spoon, and then bill and money (he even wrote them down and drew helpful diagrams) Sunday and Monday we did lots of visiting too - Lisbon is really beautiful and I could easily have spent a week there. All in all a great weekend - thanks girls! Bring on the next one...

After the travel list came the TO DO list. I've been extremely lazy recently and have been ignoring all kinds of problems in my flat, mainly because I hate the telephone and don't want to call the necessary people to sort things out. But as I've discovered over the past 3 years of living alone, problems rarely sort themselves out so on Saturday I made a list and have been forcing myself to work my way through it. It's ridiculously easy in fact. In 3 days I have discovered that I'm not, as I feared, flooding the man downstairs each time I run water in my bathroom (who knew you could fix a plumbing problem with a jar of coffee!?), I have arranged an appointment for the insurance company to come and examine the damage from the last flood, I've got a new TV box thing on the way to replace my broken one, and have done a whole host of other small things I've been putting off. It feels great. It's amazing how much difference a list makes.