All by Elyn Aviva

Gluten-Free Wales?

Elyn Aviva
Culinary Travel, travel essay

by Elyn Aviva

 

When we told an English friend that we were going to Wales for a few weeks, he looked at us with undisguised pity.

“Bring your own food,” he urged.

“Surely you’re joking!” I replied with a laugh.

He shook his head grimly. “Trust me. Bring your own food.”

I have celiac disease, and finding gluten-free (GF) restaurant food can be a challenge—even in countries renowned for their cuisine. I must stay away from wheat, barley, rye, kamut, and spelt in all forms, including bread and flour. What travails would await me in Wales, I could only imagine.

Filled with foreboding, my husband, Gary, and I headed off to Wales to do research for our “Powerful Places Guidebooks” series. Late at night we arrived in Cardiff, capital of Wales, and headed to our B&B. Actually, it was a “B” with only one “B”: bed. Our host offered us an alternative to a homemade breakfast: discount coupons for breakfast at the hotel across the street.

The next morning, we strolled over to the hotel’s unprepossessing side entrance, pushed the door open, and walked on faded carpet to the shabby dining room. Plates displaying the gritty remains of congealed eggs, burnt toast, and greasy bacon were piled on the tables. Hesitantly, we approached the barren breakfast buffet. The plastic cereal bins were nearly empty, and the bowl of fruit salad held nothing but a few wrinkled orange slices stuck to the bottom. Apparently, we had missed the early morning breakfast rush. Judging by the unappetizing remains, it was just as well. We began to worry. Maybe our friend had been correct about Welsh food.

 

Facing Fear at Cave of the Cats in Western Ireland

Elyn Aviva
Historic Travel, Life Lessons, Off-the-beaten path destination, Sacred Places

by Elyn Aviva

Even photos of the Cave of the Cats gave me the willies. I wasn’t going to enter it, not if you paid me. I was sure of that. My companions could go in if they wanted, but not me. We sloshed through the wet field to the entrance, a dark inverted triangle almost hidden by an overgrown thorn bush. A gash, a hole in Mother Earth. “No way,” I muttered, shaking my head. Jack, flashlight in hand, offered to go in first, and I watched him slither into the tight-fitting slit.

County Roscommon in western Ireland has a reputation for being boring, but it is anything but. The Rathcroghan complex has been a powerful place since the Neolithic, roughly 6000 years ago. It is an enigmatic landscape shrouded in myth, the burial place of long-forgotten heroes and the kings and queens of Connacht. It is one of the legendary “Celtic Royal Sites” of Ireland, ranking with the better-known Hill of Tara. Like Tara, Rathcroghan unites legend with history. It includes over 200 sites: ancient earthworks, tumuli, ceremonial avenues, ring forts, standing stones, the remains of a Druid school, holy wells, and caves. We’d come for the caves—one in particular, the Cave of the Cats.

Oweynagat (pronounced “Oween-ne-gat” or “UUvnaGOTCH”) or the Cave of the Cats is a spooky place, filled with powerful energies both of the earth and of the Otherworld. The Morrigan, Celtic goddess of death, destruction, and passion, is said to reside within.

Two Ex-Pats in Girona, Catalonia

Two Ex-Pats in Girona, Catalonia

Elyn Aviva
cultural immersion

words + photos by Elyn Aviva

 

“I can’t believe we live here!” I said to Gary as I stared in fascination at the multicolored reflections dancing over the rippling surface of the Onyar River.

River OnyarHe squeezed my hand and leaned over the railing of the stone bridge. Ducks floated by, luminous in the evening light. “I know just what you mean,” he replied. “Who’d have thought that what started off as a whim would end up being such an adventure?”

I nodded, admiring how the brightly lit cathedral spires were silhouetted against the velvet black sky. I sighed, contentedly. Then, hand in hand, Gary and I strolled across the medieval bridge that divides one part of Girona from the other. We walked down the Rambla and sat down at a sidewalk café. We ordered a cortado, a fragrant cup of espresso laced with a touch of milk, and an artisan beer. We looked at each other and grinned. Ah, what a life.

Just two years earlier Gary and I had been pondering what to do next with our lives. We knew we enjoyed traveling in Europe and wanted to do more of it with less hassle. Why not move to Europe for a few years, I suggested. We weren’t getting any younger. We had good health, enough money, a love of adventure, and much to be grateful for. If not now, when? Gary agreed, and we began making plans to move to Spain, a country we had lived in briefly once before.

 

A Chocoholic Falls off the Wagon

Elyn Aviva
Culinary Travel

by Elyn Aviva

I don’t know what I was thinking. Or rather, I wasn’t thinking. Like a lamb being led to slaughter, I followed our friend Jack into Oriol Balaguer’s chocolate kitchen in Barcelona. I knew I was a dead duck the moment I walked in. The sweet spicy scent of Gran Cru chocolate filled the air, and streams of satiny liquid chocolate poured exuberantly into stainless steel sinks. It was like being transported into paradise.

It’s true confession time. I used to belong to a Chocoholics Club. Note the operative verb: “used to.” Once a month, one of the members would make an over-the-top chocolate dessert, which we would savor briefly and then devour. Devotees of chocolate we were—and some of them still are. For health reasons, I had sworn off the dark, creamy, butter-and sugar-laden delights. And, except for an occasional lapse, I usually avoided succumbing to temptation.

So what was I doing in Balaguer’s High Temple of Chocolate? Jack (www.discovergirona.net) leads specialty tours in Catalonia, and the opportunity to do an interview with master chocolatier/pastry and dessert chef Oriol Balaguer was too good to pass up. I hadn’t considered the consequences—but now I knew. I knew I would live to regret it—but I also knew, as I took another deep, soul-satisfying inhalation, that I didn’t care.

Oriol has been winning prizes for his chocolate and pastry creations for the last 17 years—and he’s only 39. Best Pastry Chef, Best Book (The Dessert Book) in the World, Professional of the Year—the accolades don’t stop. Not only is he a brilliant inventor, he’s also a master marketer. He’s turned buying chocolate into a time-valued event.

When is chocolate like haute couture? When you are Oriol Balaguer and you present twice-a-year collections of new tastes, textures, and shapes. Last season’s collection is so last year—but so good that it is still available and still in great demand. Oriol also launches monthly “concept cakes” in his specialty shops, where each item is displayed like a precious jewel. Suddenly, everyone wants to purchase the latest product, score the most recent release for their dinner party.

A Backup Plan: Don’t Leave Home Without One

Elyn Aviva
Family Travel, Life Lessons, Travel Tips

words + photos by Elyn Aviva

At last the long-awaited day arrived. Our kids (Jesse and Yui) and Sophie, our adorable granddaughter (two years and eight months old), were flying from California to visit us in Spain. My husband, Gary, and I took the train to Madrid on Wednesday, the day before they were supposed to arrive, and spent the day exploring museums and sipping espresso at outdoor cafés. It was a lull in the middle of Holy Week, which runs from Palm Sunday through Easter.

That night, just before we went to bed, the cell phone rang. It was Jesse, my son, calling to say their flight had been cancelled and they would update us when they knew more. Two hours later, another call. Jesse again. They’d managed to be rebooked, but instead of arriving at Barajas Airport at 11 a.m. on Thursday, they would be arriving at 7 p.m. No problem, we assured them. We were relieved they were still arriving the same day.

The initial plan had been to drive north on Thursday to Sahagún de Campos, the small town where Jesse and I had lived for a year in 1982. Jesse was hoping to reunite with schoolmates he hadn’t seen in 28 years. These friends were returning to their pueblo, Sahagún, to celebrate Holy Week. We realized that if the kids arrived at 7 p.m., by the time they got their luggage and we picked up the rental car, it would be too late to drive all the way to Sahagún. So Gary went online (we had free wifi at our hotel) and booked two rooms in a hotel in Segovia, en route to Sahagún. We knew that Jesse and Yui wanted to see Segovia, so we figured that would make the best of the situation.

The Alignments in Carnac, Brittany, France

The Alignments in Carnac, Brittany, France

Elyn Aviva
Historic Travel, Religion, exotic travel

words + photos by Elyn Aviva

We drove around a corner and encountered an astounding sight: row after row of standing stones, stretching to the horizon. “Pull over!” I demanded. Barely waiting for Gary, my husband, to stop the car, I opened the door, jumped out, and ran over to the green metal fence that separated the stones from me. I shook my head in disbelief, in awe. So many stones, lined up and going—where? Why? They fit no category I knew: they were an enormous puzzle of countless granite megaliths pointing to the sky, rooted in the earth. Hundreds, thousands of stones lined up in slightly wavering rows that went on for kilometers, as if the stones were frozen in the act of marching—somewhere. What was the point? What did they mean? What were they for? The stones made no response.

Nowhere in the world has as many megalithic sites as Brittany, and Carnac is in the center of them. The amazing profusion of ancient remains includes isolated standing stones, rows of alignments, earth-covered tumuli, quadrilateral and oval enclosures, and table-like dolmens, each with its own energy and story.

The dolmens with their elaborately engraved interior walls are intriguing, but the 6000-year-old alignments fascinate me. Many of the original stones have been hauled off for re-use in nearby farmhouses and fences, but nearly 3000 menhirs (Breton for standing stones) remain. They are lined up in three sets of slightly undulating rows facing approximately northeast/southwest and extending for kilometers. Starting in the northeast are the Kerlescan alignments, followed by the Kermario alignments, and ending in the southwest with the Le Ménec alignments. The different sets contain from eleven to thirteen rows, and include from approximately 600 to nearly 1200 standing stones. Each set ends in the southwest with an ovoid or quadrilateral stone enclosure (or what remains of one). The cumulative effect of so many stones, so many alignments, extending for such a distance, is awesome.

Healing at Saint Onenn’s Holy Well, Brittany

Healing at Saint Onenn’s Holy Well, Brittany

Elyn Aviva
Historic Travel, Religion, travel essay

words + photos by Elyn Aviva

It was a place you couldn’t find unless you’d already been there—or unless you found someone to take you there, someone with permission to cross from here to there….

While my husband, Gary, and I spent the day in Paimpont, our traveling companions visited a holy well in the nearby village of Tréhorenteuc. By chance, they had met someone in a bookstore who told them about it and led them to it. They had dangled their feet in the water and meditated, one by one. It was a lovely place.

The Black Virgin of Rocamadour

The Black Virgin of Rocamadour

Elyn Aviva
Personal essay, Religion, Spirituality

words + photos by Elyn Aviva

She called to me just as I was falling asleep, exhausted from too much travel. We had had a long, twisting drive to reach her sanctuary, perched on the side of a sheer bluff in the Lot region in southwestern France. My husband, Gary, and I had gone to bed early, around 9:30 p.m., too tired to enjoy a night stroll through the tiny medieval village of Rocamadour, which sheltered her chapel.

I was almost asleep when I heard her loud and clear, as if she were standing next to me. “Get up!” she commanded. “Come visit me in my sanctuary! That’s what you’re here for!”

I groaned. I was tired. Besides, I’d already visited the Black Virgin of Rocamadour in her sanctuary just a few hours earlier, right after we had arrived, because we’d been told her chapel would close at 7:30 pm.

I turned to Gary, lying next to me in bed. “She’s calling me.”

“What?” He mumbled.

“The Lady is calling me to visit her. You want to come?”

He muttered something. Then, “You go ahead.”

Suddenly energized, I sprang out of bed and got dressed. After all, when the Goddess calls you, you have to go. I knocked at the room next door where our friend Anne was staying. I knocked again, louder. After a few minutes she opened the door, looking sleepy.

“The Black Virgin is calling me to go to her. Want to come?”

She nodded. “Give me a minute.”

Soon we were on a night-time pilgrimage to the Goddess, walking through the silent, deserted streets, climbing the 223 steps of the Grand Staircase that lead up to her cliff-side sanctuary. We followed the Rue de la Mercerie to a small square, the Parvis de St-Amadour, center of the holy precinct. Then we walked up to the upper landing and stood in front of the chapel doors. They were locked.

I shook my head, disappointed. “I know we were told the sanctuary would be closed, but I’m sure the Black Virgin told me to come and see her.” Maybe it had just been a daydream, I thought, or a moment of confusion as I drifted off to sleep….

The Camino de Santiago: An Inner and Outer Journey

The Camino de Santiago: An Inner and Outer Journey

Elyn Aviva
Historic Travel, Life Lessons, Personal essay, Religion, Spirituality

by Elyn Aviva

I first heard about the Camino de Santiago in 1981 from my friend Michael, when I was looking for a topic for my Ph.D. in cultural anthropology. Michael idly mentioned there had been an important medieval pilgrimage road in Spain and suggested I look for it—I might find its art and architecture of some interest.

In the summer of 1981 I arrived in Spain, still looking for a topic for anthropological fieldwork. I ended up in Sahagún, a small town in the north-central province of León, where I stayed at the Benedictine nuns’ guesthouse.

I Heard The Call of Girona

I Heard The Call of Girona

Elyn Aviva
Historic Travel, Religion

by Elyn Aviva

I heard the Call whisper to me as I pressed my hands against its crumbling grey stones. I was standing in the medieval Jewish quarter in Girona, aka “The Call,” a Catalan word based on the Hebrew qahál, which means “a meeting or a gathering.” And gather they did, long ago, the Jewish residents of Girona, Spain, in the winding streets and narrow alleys, in the covered corridors and on the steep-stepped sidewalks. Hurrying to work, to play, to study, hurrying to synagogue to pray. They arrived in 898 and for 500 years they were integrated into the city—except for those dreadful times like 1391 when suddenly they weren’t and they became the targets of violence and repression.

I had seen their traces in the Museum of Jewish History, housed in what had been the Girona synagogue until 1492 when all the Jews were expelled, ending 500 years of coexistence. Suddenly they were gone, all gone, forced from their temple, their homes, their land, and sometimes from their faith.

I had seen what little they had left behind, displayed in the museum’s evocative exhibits. One gallery held fourteenth-century limestone gravestones, engraved in Hebrew (“Josef, a young child who was a lover of joy, the son of Rabbi Jacob. May he be present in Glory, protected by his Rock and his Redeemer" and “the honored Estelina, wife of the distinguished and upright Bonastruc Josef. May she have her mansion in the Garden of Eden”). Other galleries were filled with rare artifacts, facsimiles, and borrowed objects, with modern reconstructions and pictorial displays. Nothing else remained of the once-thriving community—except its reputation. Not even time’s amnesia could silence that, for Girona had been the center of a famous medieval school of Kabbalists, those mystical philosophers who believed the universe was made manifest in ten emanations.  

The most famous Kabbalist of that time was Rabbi Moses ben Nahman (also known as Ramban or Nahmanides), born in Girona in 1194 and died in the Holy Land in 1270. In 1263 King James I of Aragón (a personal friend) summoned him to Barcelona to defend Jewish beliefs against the Dominican Pablo Christiani, a Jewish convert to Christianity. King James awarded Nahmanides a prize and declared that never before had he heard "an unjust cause so nobly defended."

Blood On His Hands

Elyn Aviva
Culinary Travel, cultural musings

words and photos by Elyn Aviva

 

He was a good-looking guy, even though he had blood on his hands and his jacket was spattered with red stains. His eyes were intense, his smile tight, his long fingers graceful as he sharpened his knife, the thin blade scraping rhythmically against the long steel rod.

The carnicería was packed with customers, patiently impatient, enjoying Julio’s ongoing spiel, willing to wait (for wait we would) while he cut each piece of meat to order. There were five butcher shops (not counting two supermarkets) in Sahagún, the small town in northern Spain where we were living, but this was the best. I had it on good authority.

“He’s an artist,” my late friend Paca had explained. “He can slice a piece of meat so thin you can see Barcelona through it.” No small task, given that Barcelona is 500 miles to the east.

Inside the entrance to the small shop was a red ticket machine. Take a number and you will know where you stand. Or so I thought at first. But I was quickly disabused. The flashing number on the bright-lit sign above Julio’s head never changed.

“Who’s last in line?” I asked, my limited Spanish having expanded to cover such necessities. A man leaning on a cane pointed to the elderly, burgundy-haired woman beside him; she nodded. I knew my place and sat down to wait. And wait. An hour would be fast, I realized, for it was just before the holidays, and everyone was stocking up to feed the hoards of friends and relatives returning home.

Homemade chorizo sausage, marinated pork loin, pork tongues, skinned rabbits, quarters of young and slightly older lamb, whole chickens, duck pâte, smoked pork chops, soup bones, bacon, tiny quails packed close together, pig ears, beef steaks, stew meat, chunks of beef to slice into fillets—and more—were tightly packed inside the glass-fronted case that separated Julio from his customers. Another case was crammed with rounds of cheeses and heaps of packaged pork products, its flat top covered with jars of leeks and asparagus and tuna, and bottles of local fruit conserves. On the wall behind, assorted Iberian hams hung from ropes tied around their shanks.

Lunar Standstill at the Calanais Stones

Elyn Aviva
Spirituality

words + photos by Elyn Aviva

It was a light and stormy night in late June, 2006, the second light and stormy night since we had arrived at the edge of nowhere. We had traveled for days to reach the Isle of Lewis, most northern isle of the Scottish Western Isles, to witness a rare astronomical event called the Lunar Standstill. Raw and rough, the wind felt as if it had blown in from around the world—and it had, for there was nothing in the Atlantic to slow it down.

We had journeyed by bus and ferry and car to stand before the Standing Stones of Calanais (aka Callanish), to participate in the once-every-18.61 years Lunar Standstill. The pale sun would set around 11 pm, and then the full moon would skim the southern horizon, go behind Sleeping Beauty Hill, and come out again—giving the appearance of a double rising—and shine between two tall stones in the central stone ring. Archeo-astronomers believe this marking of the movements of the moon gave the builders important power 5000 years ago.

Calanais consists of a slightly squashed central ring, four radiating stone arms, and an underground, box-shaped cairn. The central megaliths stand 8-12 feet high, their uneven silhouettes resembling a Rorscharch test. Was it a temple? A cemetery? A community center? A calendar? Nobody knows for sure. The silent stones reveal their purpose slowly, if at all.

We couldn’t wait to see the Lunar Standstill, but wait we had to. The night before, icy rain had ruined our chances. We hoped for better the second night, but the moon had coyly disappeared behind a layer of clouds, only occasionally peeking out. The event was taking place right before our eyes, but we couldn’t see it.

We had been drawn to this desolate distant land because we wanted to experience what the ancients had experienced (whatever that might have been) millennia ago. We were not alone in that desire. Shivering dreadlocked tie-dyed youth chanted and drummed to the moon, equally determined to have an experience. Nor were we and they the only watchers on that wild and windy night. A choir of Church of Scotland youth clung together, courageously singing “Amazing Grace” against the encroaching pagan forces. As if intimidated by such competing claims, the moon scuddled behind another back-lit cloud and stayed there.

At the end of the stone-lined path that led north from the ring of monoliths, a group of blanket-wrapped elders sat on chairs, impatient with those who blocked their view back down the aisle. Oblivious to their muttered complaints, a photographer set up his tripod in front of them. He pointed his camera toward Sleeping Beauty, waiting for a momentary glimpse of the moon gleaming between two grey and glistening stones. They looked like giant fingers pointing at the sky.

Power Places

Elyn Aviva
Religion, Spirituality

words + photos by Elyn Aviva

Souls in the form of lizards and snakes slither their way to the seashore sanctuary of San Andrés de Teixido in northwestern Spain. At least that’s what local Galician folklore claims about this hard-to-reach pilgrimage shrine, perched on a cliff on the Costa da Morte. “If you don’t go there before you die, you’ll have to go there afterwards”—or so the legends assert. So why not go now, I thought to myself? It would certainly be simpler and more convenient. Besides, I was intrigued by these Celtic-tinged stories of transmigration of souls in what appears to be a deeply Catholic country.

Rather than slither, I went by car, wending my way up and around curvaceous roads shaded by huge eucalyptus trees that swayed in the strong Atlantic breeze. Their medicinal scent filled the air. I pulled over near a TV repeater tower to walk a short stretch of the original pilgrims’ path, careful not to kill any insects I encountered en route—after all, they might be souls on pilgrimage. Or so the legend goes.

At last I reached the tiny village of San Andrés and left the car in the large parking lot at the outskirts. I strolled down the narrow lane lined with souvenir stands selling wax ex-votos in the shape of body parts, brightly painted hard-baked bread-dough offerings, and tiny bundles of hierba de enamorar, a local pink flower that is supposed to be a love potion. Something for everyone, I thought. But was there anything here for me?

Around a bend I came to the white-washed sanctuary that guards the relics of the apostle San Andrés (Saint Andrew). The church was surprisingly small, given the size of the folklore that surrounds it. Legend says that San Andrés was distressed because so few pilgrims visited his isolated shrine, so he complained to Christ; Christ felt sorry for him and promised that nobody would enter heaven if they hadn’t gone first to San Andrés de Teixido. It was a great marketing ploy, judging by the popularity of the shrine over the last 400 years.