Setting: The New House. Three weeks ago. Babboo is running around the house while Isabel folds laundry and The King hangs the wet laundry on the rack.

Isabel: Babboo and I are going to Portland in a couple of weeks.

The King: Wait. What?

Isabel: I know I told you months ago that Carrisa from Tulsa was coming to Portland to visit Rhi. So I’m going down to Portland. And dude, I must take Babboo. They will want to meet Babboo. And we’re having lunch with THE TV GODDESS and I’m going to talk about nothing but TV AND BLOGGING. It will be the best lunch of my life.

The King: Was I invited?

Isabel: Not really. But, I guess, you can come. Only if you promise to do all the driving to and from Portland. Oh, and don’t forget to book us a hotel with a pool.

The King: (Skeptically) Sounds fun. I can’t wait.

And that is how we ended up spending the last weekend in Portland. We split our time between the following activities:

• hanging out with friends from the interweb.
• hanging out with The King’s friend from his FRESHMAN year of college.
• hanging out with one of The King’s missionary companions.
• hanging out at a Portland pumpkin patch.
• eating my weight in eggs benedict, ice cream, and kettle corn.
• eating my first (but hopefully not my last) caramel apple shake.

Kill me now.

(The “kill me now” is in reference to the eating part and not the friends part.)

Oh yeah, and we also had to deal with Rhi being locked out of her car. I don’t want to name names or place any blame on who was at fault with this whole situation.

Just know that if you ever have a house guest from Tulsa, don’t let him/her near your car locks.

Hey, I’m just saying.

The King’s suggestion for getting into the car was to “let the keyless fob rest for five minutes and then it will work.” Whatever. We did not have five minutes. So we headed out to lunch in my car (thus The King going against his promise to do all the driving). But get this, when we came back the fob worked like butter and Rhi and Carrisa were able to drive away in the shiny red car.

So it looks like it was a good thing The King came with Babboo and I to Portland.

(Guess who can’t find the memory card from her camera? Just guess. I hope I find it eventually so I can post pictures of said blogger lunch and pumpkin patch.)

**Sidenote to Carrisa: Remember how you made me promise to tell you exactly what The King said about you? Here you go (and I quote):

Isabel: What did you think about Carrisa?

The King: She’s shorter then I thought she would be.**

And there you have it; Carrisa is short. (Happy Birthday Beotch!)

Edited to add:

Rhi, DeAnn and me.  (Carrisa was taking the picture.)

I have a very specific fear when I travel. This fear is very real and very frightening to me. I go to lengths avoid any confrontation with my fear while on vacation.

No, I’m not afraid of bed bugs in hotel sheets.

I’m not afraid of getting pregnant by using public toilets.

I don’t worry about missing my flight. Or not being able to get a taxi or a bus.

The European subway systems don’t scare me.

My fear is that that I won’t fit in with the locals. That I’ll look like a tourist. You know what I’m talking about. I don’t want to be the stereotypical American wearing huge white tennis shoes, elastic waist slacks, fanny pack, straw hat, and a Bermuda style shirt walking around with a backpack and a Rick Steves guide book.  (Rick, I love you!)

It’s not that I hate people that look like tourists. I am a tourist. I accept that. I just feel embarrassed when people can tell that I’m a tourist. I don’t know why I feel this way. I just do. I go to great lengths to fit in. I pack my bags with things that won’t call attention to my vacation status. No “God Bless America” t-shirts or Nike’s. I try to just keep my clothes simple. No bright prints. Mostly just black. Or maybe tan. And I never ever pack white tennis shoes. White tennis shoes are the #1 “I am an American tourist” piece of attire. (I have one pair of black Simple shoes I bought for our first trip to Europe. They are pretty much only worn when on vacation.)

I accept that it is hard to not look like a tourist. There is no way to look like a local when standing in line to see the Mona Lisa or when at the top of the Eiffel Tower or in Times Square. I would die before riding the subway while looking at a guide book or a map. In fact, I try to not even speak while on the subway. The King and I have mastered the “is this our stop?” look. Words are not needed. Because as soon as the other subway riders hear you speak English, it’s a dead give away that you’re a tourist.

I want to fit in with the crowd.

Last year while in the subway at NYC, a local New Yorker stopped and asked me directions. Me! As in, she thought I was a local New Yorker. Me! The silly little girl who grew up in a farming community in Utah. A local!

Is it wrong of me to admit that I loved this so much?

At the start of a meal with our friends in Berlin I busted out my travel sized bottle of anti-bacterial sanitizer. I washed down Babboo and myself with it. We had had a long day of traipsing across the city using the subway and public toilets. We were covered in germs. Eww! Our friends looked at my little bottle and then they looked at each other. And then they laughed. I asked them what was so funny. They said that the sure fire way to recognize an American was the little bottle of anti-bacterial hand sanitizer in their side backpack pocket.

I quickly moved it under the table and continued to clean up in hiding. Dude, lesson learned.

(Also, why doesn’t the rest of the world love Purell like the Americans do? It is like a little gift from God.)

So now I knew to keep my anti-bacterial use to our hotel room and dark corners. I would not be using it on the subway or in a museum.

As you all know, we spent most of our time in Europe on the beach in Spain. Before our trip I contemplated what shoes would be the best for this leg of our trip. I hated to admit it but I just knew that a good pair of Crocs would be perfect for both beach and city travels. I also hated to admit that nothing would scream “AMERICAN TOURIST!” like a Croc-wearing-family. And so, I did not buy us Crocs. Instead I bought some little aqua socks from Target, even though I knew they would not be as fabulous as the Crocs. I just could not do it. I didn’t want to be one of those tourists.

I saw a few people sporting the Croc look in Germany. These people weren’t tourists or American ex-pats, so I wasn’t sure how to explain why they were wearing them.

And then the minute (the minute!!) we got near the beach in Spain it all changed. Every.single.person was wearing Crocs! And not a one of them was an American. They were all these hip Europeans in their cute summer dresses and their beach tans…and their Crocs. It was old men and young women. It was small babies and teenager. It was people wearing bathing suits and people wearing work uniforms or people wearing nothing at all except Crocs. I saw white Crocs and red Crocs and yellow Crocs. I saw Crocs with the little button thingys on them and some that looked like they had been worn everyday for the last three years.

(At a gas station in Formentera, Spain.  Every single person there was wearing Crocs.)

And then there was us, the American Tourists, not wearing Crocs. We totally stuck out in the crowd. It was clear that we were tourists.

And I was mortified.

So tell me, do you have any travel fears?  And if so, what are they?  (Also, am I the only person that doesn’t own Crocs?)

You know how I mentioned a certain something-something I saw written on The Berlin Wall? And then once I got home from our trip to Europe I never mentioned it again. Nor did I share the picture proof I swore to have?

Yeah, that’s because that was the day we toured around Potsdamer Platz WITHOUT A MEMORY CARD IN OUR CAMERA! Yeah, I was sick about it. So instead of thinking about it, I just blew it off and tried to put it out of my mind.

“I’ve been to Potsdamer Platz before”, I told myself, “I don’t need no stinkin’ pictures from this trip.”

I changed my thinking this morning while I was downloading some other pictures. Dude, I found the missing pictures!

That’s right, I found all most of the pictures from that day. Apparently, at some point, there was a memory card in the camera.

Without further ado, may I present you with the Deutschland edition of “Oh my heck, we love teenage vampires“, written on THE BERLIN WALL.

(The best part may be the “me too!” written underneath! To which I think most of us would agree!)

———–

Hey, did you check out my latest New Thing?

I tired to be all smart and crap in high school. I really got into art history and visiting museums with my friends. We would go out to JB’s restaurant (one small step up from Denny’s) and sit and talk about books and poems and art.

During this time I also go into visiting used book stores. I loved buying books that had been read and loved previously. There was something extra special about reading a copy of “Gone with the Wind” that was covered in coffee stains and notes in the margins. To me this just felt more like the way a book should be read.

I would visit the used book store and come home with piles of paperback books to fill my time with. I read the classics as well as books I had bought solely based on the cover and the wear and tear. One visit to the bookstore ended with a hardback book I picked up because the description on the book sounded interested to “pretending to be smart” teenage Isabel.

The story traces the travels of six young people who tour Europe and Africa in the 1960’s searching themselves and a meaning for their lives in a world where they have no control in their own affairs.

I fancied myself somewhat of a hippy, so a book about hippies sounded right up my alley. And so I bought “The Drifters” by James A. Michener and started to read it. From the first chapter about Joe, a Vietnam draft dodger, this book captured my attention. It’s actually quite odd that I loved this book as much as I did. There was nothing similar between my life in small town Utah, as a devout Mormon, to the characters in the book that traveled around Europe experimenting with drugs and having random sex.

They were truly hippies and I truly wasn’t.

So the book follows this group of kids from all over the world. They each have their own story and reason for ending up in Torremolinos, Spain. But that’s where they end up, at the Wilted Swan bar in Torremolinos. James A. Michener writes about Torremolinos like it’s some kind of magical place for people who love life. The front of the book had a map of all the locations in the novel. I studied where Torremolinos was in Spain and just assumed it was a mythical location that had been dreamt up for the sake of the novel.

Meanwhile I lived in Utah, where it snowed all the time and the only beaches were ones near salt lakes and chemical filled lakes.

Over the next years I read and reread “The Drifters” any chance I got. I wrote a paper about it for my high school English class as well as one of my college English classes. I tried to talk my friends into reading it and often quoted passages to boyfriends.

As far as I recall I never convinced anyone to read it.

Until about three years ago when I loaned my paperback copy to my BFF May. (My hardback copy has since been lost.) I’m not sure that I really believed she would read it. And if she did read, I wasn’t sure she would like it.

But she did read it. And she did like it. She also asked me how in the heck 17 year old Isabel had gotten her hands on that book? She understood that it really wasn’t the typical book a 17 year old who is stuck lives in Utah would read. I agreed with her and recounted the story of just finding it in a random used bookstore and being drawn to it.

And yet I never got online and looked up anything about the book. It was like this little gem of a secret that was mine alone. I took it with me when we went on vacation so I could read about these kid’s travels while I traveled.

(Mexico 2005. Reading “The Drifters” on the beach.)

And still, I never really thought much about where the book was set.

That is until The King and I were driving to our destination outside of Malaga, Spain and I saw this sign.

I freaked. The King was all “I told you this place existed and that we’d be driving through it!”

I was all “I don’t remember!! HOLY CRAP!”

And then I freaked out a little more.

I sat in the car trying to channel my teenage self. I pictured myself sitting alone in the bedroom of my youth, reading “The Drifters” and dreaming of far away places. Places that I never ever for one second could have dreamed I would one day visit. I wanted teenage Isabel to know that I was there.

I was in Torremolinos.

Days later, on our way back to the airport to fly to Formentera, we took a little detour and drove around Torremolinos. I didn’t see a bar called the Wilted Swan. I didn’t see anyone that looked like Joe or Yigal or Gretchen or Cato.

But I was there. I was in Torremolinos. And that’s all I cared about.

Teenage Isabel was happy.

So tell me, what book local would you like to visit? And why?

There are stereotypical things that you always hear about nudist resorts and topless beaches. You know, things like:

• Don’t worry, nobody is looking at you
• Don’t worry, everybody else is fatter the you are
• Don’t worry, there is nothing sexual about it
• Don’t worry, it’s not that big of a deal
• And be prepared, there will always be That One Guy

After spending five (sunny and glorious) days at the Costa Natura nudist resort (“where nudity is natural”) (seriously, it says that on their brochure) outside of Malaga, Spain I learned the following:

• I never once felt like anyone was staring at me (or my naked child) inappropriately.
• The King, Babboo, and I need to get out in the sun more. We are very white.
• We were about 30 years younger then everybody there. (Think Arizona in the winter. Except naked.)
• And we were about 80 pounds lighter then everyone else. (The statement that Americans are the fattest people in the world must be a rumor. Dude, the Germans and Brits on Holiday in Spain were way fatter then the Americans I know. I’m just saying.)
• Apparently Europe loves the Brazilian wax. I didn’t see a single pube on any of the woman there. And they were all a bunch of old ladies. (Note to America: It’s time to embrace the Brazilian.)
• There was nothing sexual going on.
• Except for That One Guy we saw walking up and down the beach wearing a c*ck ring. We’re thinking he sneaked into the resort. Dude, he was creepy. (And not at all impressive. If you know what I mean. And I think you do.)

The two minutes it took to walk from our car and through the compound to our condo might have been the most surreal two minutes of my entire life. Here my little family was, weary from a day of travel from Germany to Spain, loaded down with our backpacks and fully clothed. And here was an entire resort, with a swimming pool, tennis courts, a restaurant and snack shop, a hot tub, badminton court, lawn bowling set up, play ground and lawn area all being fully utilized by a large number of elderly vacationing Brits and Germans.

Who were 100% sans clothing.

Let’s just say I saw more ball bags in those 2 minutes then every other minute of my life put together. (Which really isn’t saying much…but you catch my drift, right?)

It was hard to keep a straight face.

Picture, if you can, a very lovely restaurant situated next to a gorgeous swimming pool, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. The restaurant is surrounded by big picture windows. It is full of couples having a romantic dinner. They are laughing and enjoying themselves.

And now picture every single person sitting at the restaurant TOTALLY and COMPLETELY naked. (Except for the waiters, of course.)

Picture a group of elderly friends, gathered together for a quick game of lawn bowling. They are laughing and having a good time. It appears they are old friends who are vacationing together. They are holding wine glasses and taking drinks between their turns. Some of the husbands and wives have matching sandals. You can tell who belongs to whom.

And now picture every single one of these old people naked. playing lawn bowling.

Dude, it was ball bag central. And it made me laugh out loud. It was just so….not natural. Which is an odd feeling, since being naked is actually the most natural thing in the world. What is odd is that Babboo didn’t seem to even notice anything out of the ordinary. I’m not sure at what age children recognize that everyone at the grocery store, the restaurant and the park is fully clothed. Apparently it must happen after 29 months because my kid was oblivious to the nakedness.

We found our condo and put our bags down. This is the point that The King told me about the contract he had to sign when we checked in. You know, the one that promised that we would adhere to the rules and be completely naked for the next five days. And so we stripped down. I think The King and I both realized at this moment that there was nothing to do except to go for it. We had to. The sun was out and I was desperate to get down to the beach. I wasn’t about to spend the next five days hiding out in my condo because I was afraid of a complete stranger, who I would never ever see again, seeing my girly parts. Especially a stranger that was older then my grandma.

So yeah, The King got naked. I got naked. And Babboo got naked. (Although we were informed that children didn’t have to go naked, we figured Babboo might actually enjoy it more then The King and I would.) We covered our bodies with sunscreen and grabbed our towels.

We walked outside the front door of our condo and parts of my body that had NEVER SEEN THE SUN rejoiced in their new found freedom. Mostly I just tried to act like it was no big deal. I threw my shoulders back (since I didn’t have a bra on to help my boobies look better) and tried to find the most casual way to carry a towel and a book without looking like I was tying to cover up with my towel and book. I didn’t feel like anyone was looking at us. But if they were it was only because they were wondering why such a young family was there and why we were so pasty white. You see, every other person was the color of leather. I don’t think any of them had ever seen a bottle of sunscreen. Hell, they probably weren’t even as old as they looked. It was just all the sun damage.

(We did notice that when walking behind someone you could see that there was one part of their body what wasn’t tanned. It’s the little part between your butt cheeks and your legs. Yeah, all of them have one little white spot there. I guess there is no way to get the shine to shine there.)

The resort had its own beach access, which was guarded by a (clothed) employee of the resort. I guess he was there to make sure nobody broke through the compound walls. I found I felt like a tool being around someone fully clothed. I wish the employees would have been naked too. Especially the grounds keepers. They freaked me out with their clothes and their looking and their weed eaters.

(Here Babboo takes a break from sun bathing [naked] to make his bed. He’s gotten very good and covering his important parts for the camera.)

There were a few other families there, but on average it was just mostly retired couples. I saw one family that had their teenage kids with them. They sat next to us one day on the beach. Just sitting there, like any family, eating some ice cream cones and splashing in the waves. Let me tell you something about Teenage Isabel; I would never have wanted to hang out with my parents naked. But these kids seemed just fine with it. I mean, can you imagine a teenage boy seeing his mom naked? Or a beach full of other naked woman?

That kid was either in Heaven or Hell. I’m not sure which one.

The next few days were spent the same way anyone would spend a vacation at the beach. We laid out in the sun and read books, when Babboo would let us. We took breaks to push him on the swing set. We ate lunch outside on our patio and took naps in the afternoon. In the evening, afraid to eat at the restaurant inside the gates, we put clothes out and ventured out into the town for dinner. It always felt weird to put clothes back on. Walking in and out of the resort fully dressed felt so wrong. It really just isn’t comfortable being the only person clothed. It’s liked being the idiot wearing jeans to a formal event when everyone else is in a gown….times a million.

There you have it. My basic final thoughts on the whole thing was that, yes, it was a little odd. But really, it wasn’t that big of a deal. And frankly, it’s a memory that I’ll always have. While some people can say they visited the Great Wall of China or they’ve eaten dog meat in Vietnam, I can say that I stayed at a nudist resort.

(It was dark and late at night. So I felt safe in bringing out the camera for a quick family picture…with out clothes on.)

So tell me, do you totally judge me harshly for this? Do you think I’m weird or a freak or some type of perv?

And honestly, would you ever do it? If you say no, you’d better tell me why. I’m totally curious. (And if you’ve already done it, I’m dying to hear all about it.)

All of the pictures from our trip have been downloaded. Unfortunately I’m at work and can’t open them all to look at them. This is mostly because I’m pretty sure nobody at my work wants to see pictures of The King and me in our bathing suits. And even more so because I’m sure nobody at my work wants to see us, um, not in our bathing suits. Although, I must admit, that the nudist resort we stayed at in Spain DID NOT ALLOW CAMERAS. This is for the best. Be assured.

(The nudist resort also made us sign a written contract stating that we would not wear any clothing during our stay there. Oh yes, little old me who thought I could arrive and just, you know, forget to take off my clothes. Yeah, a contract was signed PROMISING I WOULD GO NUDE. Dude, they are hard core there.)

(More on that later. I promise. Our stay there is like ten million blog posts all rolled into one.)

I’m not sure how I’m going to explain to my mom the lack of pictures from our trip for FIVE ENTIRE DAYS!

“We forget about our camera back in our hotel room.”

“We ran out of batteries.”

“We left the lens cap on the entire time.”

“We didn’t see anything worthy of taking a picture of.”

This last excuse is sort of true. While I didn’t really want a picture of a group of seniors playing lawn bowling IN THE NUDE (except for shoes), I sort of did want one. You know, just to show the interweb.

So while it’s still too early to say which are the top pictures from our three weeks in Europe, the following (initial) ones are definitely at the top of the (current) list.

This is the only picture proof that we were actually at this resort.  It was taken after we had checked out and had left the guarded/gated community.  (You think I’m kidding about the guard and the gates.  I am not.)

Okay I lied, this picture was also taken at the resort.  It was taken in the wee hours of the morning on the day we checked out.  Come on, I had to have a picture of me with this sign.  I HAD TO.

We spent most of our trip in Formentera, Spain.  It’s an island off Ibiza.  And dude, it’s awesome.  If you ever get the chance to vacation there, take it.  It is also full of naked people.  I came to realize on this trip that American are the only people in the entire world that wear swimming suits that cover their body.  Everyone we saw was with topless, completely naked, or wearing a bikini.  Not even the old ladies waste their time with one piece suits of tankinis.

While taking an innocent picture of The King and Babboo walking back to the beach from getting lunch out of our car, this naked dude just walked right into the shot.

It was awesome.

Like we do, we tried to take a self-family-portrait while having lunch outside of Gibralter.  Babboo had another idea.  He thought his piece of bread would look better then he would. And thus he held up his lunch just as I took the picture.  While you might not think it’s funny, I think it’s comedy gold.

Oh yeah, we went to Gibralter. Which was….nerve racking.  (To say the least.)  Although the Rock of Gibralter in the back ground does make for a dramatic picture of The King and Babboo.

We also spent a few days in London. Which resulted in pictures like this one of The Hand Job Centre.  (Again, comedy gold!)

And again, a family picture of the three of us. But this time at Piccadilly Circus and with a napping Babboo and no a pieces of bread.  (And one very bright bright sun!)

We also paused to do hand stands at Big Ben.

Where even I did a few cartwheels.  (Although The King couldn’t seem to manage to get a shot of me mid-cartwheel.  So this is my photo-finish.  Clearly I’m ready for the Olympics.)

This kid guard at Buckingham Palace was like 12 years old.  Seriously.  I could have totally taken him, gun or no gun.  And then I could have taken over England.  Oh yes, I was *this close* to being the next Queen of England.

We had lunch at Tiergarten in Berlin with our lovely friends who live over there.  We were able to spend five entire days with them.  We tried to talk them into moving to Seattle and living in our basement.  While we couldn’t convince them of this, we are hoping to meet them some place for our next big vacation.

As always, we just loved Berlin.

And I don’t care how much of a nerd this next picture makes me seem like.  Dude, when I saw King Cross on our London subway map, I just knew we had to go and check out Platform 9 3/4.  (I didn’t even know this existed there.  I would have been happy enough to just just gone. But having an actual Platform 9 3/4 there just made my vacation.)

(Christar, Becky, Mrs. Squirrel, Miss Zoot, and the rest of you Potter fans…this ones for you!)

So yeah, I have a few more pictures to go through.  And a whole list of things to tell you about.  But for now, these pictures are the best we got.