Budapest, Vienna and Prague

Budapest buildings like blocks of wet clay left exposed to the sun for too long: breaking apart. No salt in the cupboards of our Airbnb (it is only when you have no salt at all that you realise you will need it for basically everything). Szimpla kert with its disarray of rooms, lights, 80s computer screens and furniture I would have happily carried away with me were it allowed. 

Vienna, stepping back into summer all of a sudden after two days of rain and fog in Budapest. I slip on a vintage dress, bare shins. No sachertorte because I am an idiot. Klimt and I in the same room, eye to eye. I spend so much time staring at the paintings yet I can't get enough. Sucking in the blue hues underneath Judith's murderess skin, pink and silver cheeks, the slack in the ladies' thin wrists, swimming, floating, dreaming. 

Prague. Tourists drive me mad, souvenir shops selling Bohemian crystal (whatever that is) and fridge magnets and wooden toys made in China. I could be anywhere in the world. I sit on a wet bench at the Old Town square and feel nothing but hostility. Then we go see a gut-wrenching matinee and suddenly I feel again. Art Nouveau gems send me daydreaming. Lavish ball gowns with lace and beading of such detail I can't imagine how long it must have taken to finish one. I try to picture what kind of women in what kinds of smoky, dimly lit ballrooms might have worn them, sweating into the precious fabric and walking around the room to display their dresses from all possible angles. Alphonse Mucha and Obecni Dum. 

The things we saw in Berlin

Italia

I remember the mountains, how excited we were just by the sight of them. The man who sold us sweet, ripe tomatoes from Sicily. The thick, cold gelato that melted and ran in the heat of Milan. The smell of cow dung and ripening crops over the blue, darkened fields when we rolled the windows down, turned the radio off and listened to the grasshoppers on the quiet country road. The feel of the algae-covered, slimy little pebbles on the bottom of the lake that made us both squeamish, quick, quick, further in, deeper so we can't brush against them with our soles. Dipping in heels, shins, thighs first, taking a breath when it reaches the waist, then submerging with a screech and soon forgetting how cool it felt going in.

The enclosed hobbit hole of a room with plaster walls like meringue, the whirr of the fan in the night... Hitting our too-tall heads on the too-low door frames, swearing.

The cherry on the top: stumbling across horses on the final day, younglings really, long thin legs, not ready for riding yet. A random hike through a dense, humid patch of forest and finding a bunch of them in an enclosure kicking up terracotta dust, huddled together and curiously watching us approach. The bravest of them comes to say hello. Soft, soft snout against the palm. 

And you, of course, telling me over pizza and Peroni: 'I'm buying what you're selling.'

Le poète

Blue Paris

The last time I went to Paris the weather was almost exactly the same as this weekend; no leaves on the gnarly Horse chestnut trees, just conkers, and puddles and soggy mud at Tuileries. Great, dramatic sky with curtains of rain in the distance. A bit of VDay cuteness. Too much bread but never enough pistachio-flavoured things.