mediterranean

i'm lying here in my bed in the apartment that i've moved into in quito, ecuador - an apartment owned and shared with an ecuadorian woman that i enjoy and fear - and i've got pause to consider the last few weeks that i spent in europe.

2 weeks ago i made a snap decision to go to madrid. it turned out to be a good one - as these snap decisions usually are - and i spent 5 days basking in the hot spanish sun, eating tapas with friendly tourists, and hanging out with some beautiful spanish boys. i eschewed tourist sites in favour a people and squirrel-based approach to tourism and it was a winner.

the classy highpoint was a night of fever, vomiting and diarrhoea from the comfort of someone else's bed. the poor dude thought he had a hot date coming over and ended up nursing me all night as i staggered between his bedroom and his toilet. ondrej: 'the worst date you've never had.'

still nauseated and slightly thinner, i flew to lyon to meet g. we stayed with his cool friends cécile and laurent, and their even cooler children nils and cassandra (who i enjoyed so much i forgot to take any pictures of and will regret that until the day i die).

we drove down through walnut orchards (who knew that freshly stolen walnuts could be so moist and delicious?!) to the french alps and down into the ardéche region, where the earth is dry and the villages are made of ancient stone buildings all huddled around tight networks of lanes, and fields of orange and yellow are sundrenched and beautiful. we hiked along canyons and swam in the cool streams at their bases. it was life-affirming!

g had always told me about the towns he used to live in, and i got a good sense of them on googleearth, but i was finally able to walk the streets of these places - aigues-mortes, montpellier, sète when we hit the coast and spent our days snoozing nude on mediterranean beaches during the day, and eating exquisite food in restaurants hidden in the labyrinthine streets of historic old towns at night.

if amsterdam had been a celebration of the end of an amazing relationship as boyfriends, then the south of france was a celebration of the debut of its successor: an amazing relationship as ex-boyfriends! and hot damn we had a good time :)