The Panini Dairies no. 12
It's just more adventuring, really... are you over the EuroSummer yet?
I am beginning again to warm up to the sun. Here, on a cliff side in Nice, it’s light bounces off the sweet peach juice that winds snail trails down my wrists. I am mirrored by another, though her hat a different shade, as she too lets the summer fruits sing a zingy lullaby on her tongue. She looks as though she’s got it down, the whole solitude thing. Prepped with a bag for a day alone. I wonder if she thinks the same of me, surrounded by green grapes and black olives and a basket of apricots.
A feast for a pair of kings,
come join me if you like.
A spread to make two tummies sing.
This Nice is pretty nice.
I know, I know, I’m STILL playing catch up. How dare I let the ball slip! Come on, friends, surely we know better by now than to expect more of me - it is EuroSummer, after all!
I am throwing you back in here for a trip along the coasts. France, Spain and Portugal - 3 countries, 1 month.
The trip began (as it usually does, with 2 overenthusiastic travellers on a budget who booked their trip months in advance with little consideration of where they might be, physically and spiritually, when it finally rolls around) on a very long bus. Jasmine and I became increasingly well acquainted with each others’ favourite seated positions and modes of passing time as we ventured motorway to avenue along the coasts of Nice, Marseille, Malaga and Seville.
In Nice, we experienced the un-matchable highs of a 6-5 win of our Matildas in the Olympics and Jasmine’s first ever steak and frites. In Marseille, even the tremendous low of a Matildas loss was trumped by our hike through the Calanques de Marseille.
After being promised by the internet that the hike to this particular slice of paradise would take little more than 45 minutes, we ventured out in the midday heat, conquering peaks that made us say “now that’s beautiful, but I hope that’s not the beach we’re aiming for, all the way over there” (it wasn’t, ours was much, much further away), dry rocks that made slippery feet numb with fear and boulders that were double Jasmine’s height. Even my trip motto, “Tell you what, Jasmine, you don’t see this every day”, couldn’t keep up morale by the time hour 3 rolled around.
When we started our downhill trek towards the Calanque, I began on the trajectory of, “I am SURE it can’t be much further”, and “there’s NO WAY it keeps going around this bend for much longer”. Spoiler alert: it was and it did.
With the last mouthfuls of water and some squashed croissants on board, we entered the home stretch. I could feel we were close, but this trail had fooled me once or twice before.
If I’ve learnt nothing else on this trip, it is that nothing motivates Jasmine Fuentes like an oncoming poo. That, and she can accomplish all that even she doesn’t believe she can. When we reached the beach toilet, I had never been more proud of anyone. I sat in the sand and smiled as she sat and squeezed out her victory poop.
The rest of the day (and if I’m honest, there was decidedly less of the day left than planned) was spent in the kind of euphoria that is only achieved after one is sure they’ve beat death. I’ve never seen Jasmine so relieved as when we discovered we could catch an Uber home. Hands on tum, she floated from the shore with the sun on her face, like a father, fallen asleep in front of a movie he’d insisted on watching.
MALAGA
Moseying down the soft sand, a bag of market snacks hanging off my shoulder like a car full of hitch hikers on a ride to the next beach. Small, delicate steps until the heat is too much. Rush to the shore and let the wave peel the sizzle from my heels as it falls back to sea. The shells that fill my makeshift bikini pockets fall out every now and again, disguising themselves once more amongst the trodden mosaic. Oranges and reds of the molluscs that were, scattered in a cubist’s sunset.
I am sitting now, reclined under a palm tree as Pablo’s many women used to pose (although perhaps not so nude), grounded by a hat whose shade falls over my face, my shoulders, my chest; biting at the heels of the sun, but not the heat. The water from my bottle is warm, but still I take sips between licks of my melting icypole and mouthfuls of stuffed olives.
I have, in fact, eaten little other than olives for some time now. Doused with oil and herbs, marinated in lemon, stuffed full of anchovies. In vermouth, on the bus, with sandy fingers. Black, green, purple, brown. They all combine in a soft confetti as they chase each other through my middle. Party belly. Bring your swimmers for the sangria pool, mingle with the orange slices and the sardines.
I refuse to believe they are the cause of my lingering stomach ache - I’ll just keep blaming that on the “hard water”. Hello Mr Olive Man. Yes, please, I’d love some more. Give me a mix. Add some more for the road. Food for the soul, like munching popcorn to watch the views and all the life that comes with them.
The immense gardens of Real Alcazar, Sevilla, host a community of peacocks, an orchestra of cicadas and a myriad of flowers, bright and browning, fighting desiccation with each minute that passes towards midday. The palace stands, intricate and delicate, as though composed in reverse; big slabs of marble carved into, one stroke at a time, to reveal bedrooms and alters and roofs of stars that match the Sevilla sky.
We have taken some solace in a small square hidden in the endless gardens. I’m protected from the day’s full sun by the round shadows of a lime tree, letting time pass me by as I watch pomegranates rosy to ripe. Nature’s Flamenco. Deep pink opening up across the faces of fruit like a fan, twisting amongst each other in a bulbous tango. Tangled before the fall.
I could sit here for a long time, skirt hitched to my thighs, bunched in a makeshift cushion on my sandstone perch. Knees towards sun, toes tapping to a memory of last nights dance floor, still dusted with the dirt that caught a ride back to the hostel in my sandals.
We made some new friends last night that matched our grooves and our moods. The four of us sat together and were reminded of home in the form of a familiar accent and an easy laugh. All the way through a night of foreign music, commissioned dance floors and following the leader, wherever we may go, we strengthened our nomad bonds. We chatted like a pair of castanets in conversation. Clack, clack, clack, clack, until the hostel took us by surprise. Even then, undying night in our palms, we sat on the doorstep and passed around a couple of Kit Kats and some more free love. We revelled in the happy coincidences and unparalleled parallels, hinting at the feelings of real friendship with deep smiles and unforced sincerity.
I like when that happens. People jump out at you, and catch your heart midair as it falls from the scare. Take me by surprise, in the very best way. I hope the fright never fades. I want to keep free falling into friendship forever.
Beyond Seville on my coastal adventure sat 2 weeks of Portugal, waiting patiently, cross legged at the end of the continent. I said goodbye to Jasmine and began to weave my way through new friends and old, pausing only to dig my toes deep in the hot sands and munch my way through a Pastel de Nata (or 3…)
I am thinking of shells again, as I often do on beaches such as this. I search for them among the weeds, find them decorating the sand, feel as they crumble among each other, softly crushing in a cascade of cracks and crunches. They amaze me, consistently. The way they colour, their divine imperfections. It is of no added strangeness to me that they grow more beautiful as their cracks catch the light. The sun glistens most intently on the underside of each oyster, the very part that hides away in the dark until it all goes tits up and bums to sky; until the shells crumble, stumbling their way towards an unrecognisable finale.
Until then, I enjoy their parade along this cliff line. I’ll squat amongst the beached algae, to hell with the smell, and watch the sunlight dance with wobbly legs across each peaking shimmer. A toe or two tapping out of time with their tinkering; out of time with the fall of light across their bottoms; in time with nothing, for I know nothing of time on this endless day of sun and sand and shimmers that shimmy off seashells.
It really is places like these that remind me of the goodness of life. I mean, it’s not really any surprise - the ocean is as clear and blue as the sky and the sand is dotted with shells the way the night is full of stars. As far as the backdrops for all my meals go, the first look up after an afternoon nap, the long list of little beauties to celebrate in a sangria cheers - it doesn’t get a whole heap better than this. And the company? Well it’s Emma. She blends into the background seamlessly. Just as beautiful, just as bountiful, filled with the same bottomless spoonfuls of my love and gratitude for my current place, right here in this world.
We will be joined by Lucy in Lisbon tomorrow, and the thought of their new friendship through me makes me giddy. It is no great lie, what they say about people making places. A boring place with a best friend is much more enjoyable than the most incredible view in the world if you’re sat next to The Grinch who Steals Sunsets.
The concept seems uncomplicated, and yet the thought has me ever-filled with gratitude, yet again, for all the love that could fill oceans like all the empty seashells searching for a shoreline.
I keep my heart open to friendship like my eyes are peeled for oyster shells in the sand, and I keep them both just the same, safe in the little pocket on the left side of my chest.
I believe that is all to say to you for now (thank you for patiently wading through this one), so with more endless summer days and more reward beaches and bathrooms and more tapas tables for two (but I eat the tapas and Jasmine eats chicken and potatoes) and more perching like princes and more 2024 Olympics (Paris and the longer awaited Amateur Albufeira Edition - which I won, by the way) and more (and more and more and more) stairs in Lison and more pocket sized love from friends that took me by surprise and of course many more panini, there will be much more to come.
Loveeee