Like its wines, Portugal’s cheeses are little-known, varied, and delectable. It is not a country for the lactose intolerant. Every meal starts with a soft, pungent cheese in the middle of the table, waiting to be dug into with fresh white bread.

And then there’s a wine shop like this one, which specializes in Portuguese wines and Ports, and an array of cheeses from a variety of animals: cow, yes, but also sheep and goat. If you can believe it, this ‘meal,’ which began with a crisp Sauvignon Blanc from Southern Portugal, took two hours to ford through. It’s a lot of cheese, even for two people, and after several pieces you start to slow down, but don’t want to leave any behind.

Surrounding a generous dollop of homemade pumpkin jam (sweet and yet savory, similar to quince paste) and served with lots of crusty, flour-dusted white bread were:
1. Quemoso — a strong, hard goat cheese
2. Mistura — made from sheep and goat
3. Curado — a fantastic mix of sheep, cow, and goat
(At this point I was fantasizing about what genetic engineering proponents were going to do with this information in the future — cheese from a shcoat, perhaps?)
4. Azeitao D.O.P. (Dominacion Origin Portugal) — a soft, runny sheep’s cheese
5. A basic cow’s cheese from Azores, surprisingly sharp and salty
6. Serpa D.O.P. — a hard, biting sheep’s cheese

I am actually slightly allergic to milk, but that didn’t stop me from savoring every morsel of the two-hour cheese feast, cut by the pumpkin jam, light Portuguese wines, and ending with a white Port — Krohn Branco Seco, 8 years in the cask — that tasted deliciously like honey wine and was so delightful we actually shelled out 25 euros to take a bottle home to the States. Amongst our friends, it lasted about a week, but what’s the fun of traveling if you can’t share bits of your experiences with friends who can’t or don’t?

It feels like a long time since I wrote Scent of ’69: Woodstock, 35 Years Late, about my Soviet-raised father’s pilgrimage to Woodstock, NY, and our discovery that the iconic drug-saturated, mud-soaked concert of the 60s was held nearly 70 miles away, in Bethel, NY.

And it’s taken a long time for me to make the real pilgrimage, out to Bethel and the original 600-acre dairy field where the most influential musicians of the 1960s counter-culture revolution played for 3 days to an enraptured audience of young hippies — enraptured both by the music and by the cocktail of acid and other drugs filtering through the grounds.

The Woodstock concert field has aged and tidied itself, much like the original Woodstock audience. Those pictures you see of long-haired young women dancing barefoot in the rain? That churned-up mud is now the spic-and-span concert location known as Bethel Woods: Center for the Arts. It’s got a Woodstock museum (known as The Museum at Bethel Woods) celebrating the 1960s in multi-media format; it’s got a massive concert stage set at the bottom of a natural ampitheatre; and it’s got a tastefully fenced-off field that, if you look on your tourist map, was once the site of one of the most fabled musical events in modern history.

Woodstock is turning 40 this summer, with a special anniversary concert on August 15th, and in preparation Bethel Woods is holding a series of concerts designed to draw in those who were at Woodstock, those who wish they’d been there, and those who wish their generation had anything as inspiring to turn to. We made our way up last weekend for a triple-play of Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, and Bob Dylan.

I’m just old enough to admit that I looked forward to and enjoyed Willie Nelson most of the three. With a voice like currant wine, he sounded just as good as on my great-aunt’s old scratched records of him. John Mellencamp rocked out, and Bob Dylan … well, his voice was marginally less functional than when I saw him over a decade ago in Minnesota, but a legend’s a legend.

We live in a pretty rural area, but the drive up to Bethel takes you through decreasing size and quantity of houses, and increasing farmland. The site itself is one of the most picturesque in the county, rolling green hills and wheat silos. Approaching Bethel Woods, you’d hardly guess you’re coming up on one of the most active and popular concert venues in the country — if you don’t count the traffic, that is, which crawled for a good 10 miles.

The picture up top shows the landscape behind the parking areas. Besides the pleasant, sunny day and tidy fields, it’s the parking areas themselves that first give away the spirit of Bethel. A beautiful site, yes, commemorating an incredible event, but Woodstock it ain’t. For this concert, no cameras were allowed past the main gate, so pictures stopped here, on the endless rows of shiny cars and SUVs full of people who’d been tailgating the afternoon away, some of them getting immensely drunk before the 5:30 p.m. concert in hopes of reaching the Woodstock spirit through inebriation if not through attendance.

We sat on the lawn, which is the thing to do if you’re cool, whether you’re young or old. It’s also, at $35, a heck of a lot cheaper than a seat up front, even if you spend an extra $5 for a lawn chair rental, which it seems most people do. You can see the stage and hear the music just fine, and with decent binoculars might even be able to figure out which one up there is actually Bob Dylan.

It’s all so well-run it’s actually a good family destination. Plenty of people brought kids and babies, and although there were plenty of places to buy food and alcohol, drinks were limited to two per person per transaction, which does reduce guzzling. Bringing your own food is restricted to a 1-gallon bag per person, and of course no liquor of your own allowed, all of which adds to the festive picnic-like atmosphere but in no way decreases the totally falling-down-drunk state of those who’d been slugging it back in the parking lot for hours already.

It was a great concert, and the audience enthusiastic, but as a generational statement was a little sad. It wasn’t just the need of my generation to get totally pissed at every opportunity, just to feel like life is worth living, it was how badly the whole audience wanted this to capture something of what we’ve seen in those iconic Woodstock photographs, something of the abandonment and rebellion that feels lost to us now.

Every generation probably feels that way. But late in the evening, when it started raining, first a tiny spit and then a hopeful drizzle, people finally began to dance. They bopped around at first, and finally moved with abandon as it rained harder. From our perch on top of the lawn, I could see the whole mass begin to seethe slightly, as it wished, and hoped, that this time too could be like 1969, and they would finally be free.

Free of what, nobody knows, but that’s what Woodstock means to us: some kind of freedom. Maybe, by letting the music overwhelm us, we’re just hoping we’ll reach a point where we have nothing left to lose.

This week my husband and I have been mulling over a life-changing question. We’re contemplating scraping together enough cash for a down payment on a piece of property next to my hometown in Montana. Why? Because for years I have yearned to move back, and he’s willing to contemplate the idea … someday. (Actually, for years the conversation was, “I’ll live anywhere in the world with you, just not the Northeast of the US. If we live in America, it has to be somewhere nice, like Montana.” So we’ve been in the Northeastern US nearly 8 years now and the Hudson Valley is starting to grow on me — all these great farms and lots of hiking … but the weather sucks, and there’s ticks with Lyme disease all over.) This doesn’t mean we’re up and moving to Big Sky country, that’s not the life-changing question.

The question pertains to how we would pay for such a purchase. Assuming we could scrape together a down payment and get a loan for the rest — not looking too likely on either front at this point — we worked out a budget whereby we could actually just make the monthly payments (assuming no change in income — if we lose jobs, we’re screwed anyway, though).

There’s only one way we could do it: give up travel for a minimum of two years.

We’re both travel addicts; that’s probably why we got married in the first place, the shared lure of “somewhere else.” Travel takes a big chunk out of our budget every year, even with using frequent flyer miles and hotel points and finding lots of deals. It still costs money. Our landscaping is in shambles (literally, if you count the path cave-ins from woodchuck activity) because we would really rather spend the money hiking for a week in the Outback, or visiting small Russian villages, or hiding out on remote Scottish islands.

But we’re considering it. Because we’re having kids, life is short, Montana’s just about the most amazing place on earth, and we’d like to believe we could move back someday. And don’t underestimate the need for handy relatives to help out with childcare, a lack that has made life where we live very difficult at times.

We’ve contemplated temporary travel bans before, mostly for financial reasons, but never really stuck with them. It’s akin to dieting, I told my husband when he scoffed at the idea that we’d be able to stick with it this time. It’s not about denying yourself the cookie — it’s about persuading yourself that you would actually prefer feeling slimmer at the end of the day more than you want to eat that cookie right now. If you eat the cookie, then enjoying it is more important than losing weight. (Okay, messy analogy, and now I want a cookie, but I don’t diet so I don’t mind eating one.) We’ve never stuck with a travel ban because the reason for doing it — saving money — was way less interesting than going somewhere new.

In this case, though, the scales are wobbling fairly evenly. A two-year travel ban is actually something we might do … no visits to family in Russia or my desired trip to the village where my father was born in the Ural Mountains, no trek through Tibet that I’ve wanted to do most of my life, no visiting one of my best friends in Chile, no popping over to California to visit my sisters or Britain to visit my in-laws. That’s a lot of ‘not’s.’

So I’m curious: what would you give up travel for, even temporarily? Anything? Nothing? What is possibly more important than the lure of discovery in a foreign place?

I live in Austin, and when I travel, I’m bummed that my early morning departures and late night arrivals back home usually mean that I can’t spend more time at the Austin airport.

Yes, I know that’s a bit weird, but there are good reasons to hang out at ABIA (except for the lack of free WiFi, which seems rather strange in such a tech-savvy city.)

The amenities inside the Barbara Jordan terminal at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport are a snapshot of some of the goodies available in the Austin metro area. You won’t find many chain stores, but you will find branches of Austin-tacious local stores and restaurants once you get through security, plus live music all over the place.

Some airports are so boring and featureless, they could be located anywhere on the planet (this includes parts of LAX in Los Angeles and La Guardia in New York; why such distinctive cities have such generally bland airports is a mystery to me.)

Airports have a captive and often bored audience;  during limited layover times, people usually don’t want to leave its confines to explore the city beyond.  Why not bring the city to them? I’m not sure this makes them hot new vacation spots, but they can enhance your travels rather than add to the misery level.

At Austin’s airport, you’ll find live music playing from a performance area located behind Ray Benson’s Asleep at the Wheel Road House.  From an article in the Austin Business Journal, Musical Acts Help Austin Airport Shine:

“Austin-Bergstrom’s music program, which began when the airport opened in 1999, has grown from two shows a week at one location to 11 shows a week at four different airport venues.

In comparison, Nashville International Airport’s live music program has an average of two to three shows a week.”

There are four airport venues for live music:  Ray Benson’s Roadhouse, Monday through Friday afternoons, Lefty’s Bar & Grille on 6th Street Wednesday and Thursday afternoons,  Earl Campbell’s Sports Bar, late afternoon Wednesdays through Fridays and the Waterloo Records/Austin City Limits store early on Friday afternoons.

Food choices at ABIA include Salt Lick BBQ, Schlotzsky’s Deli, Maudie’s Tex-Mex and the ever-awesome Amy’s Ice Cream, plus Austin Java Coffee and even one place selling those sugary delights, Round Rock Donuts.

Not a nasty ol’ Burger King in sight….

Thanks for visiting the biweekly/fortnightly Carnival of Cities, where we tour the world in a single blog post.

The next edition (on July 29) will be hosted on Trekaroo.

If you’d like to host the Carnival on your blog, please email me at sheila “at” sheilascarborough “dot” com. Available dates include August 12 and August 26.

Off we go….

Cities in the Americas

Montréal, Québec, Canada Fiona Leonard highlights the water crisis in One Drop posted at Year In America.

Detroit, Michigan, USA Dominique King presents Photo Friday: Detroit’s Concert of Colors posted at Midwest Guest, saying, “Celebrate diversity in Detroit with the annual Concert of Colors, featuring Super Session II (a revue of Detroit-area talent organized by producer/musician Don Was.)”

San Antonio, Texas, USA Colleen Pence found San Antonio Businesses on Twitter posted at Social Media Mentoring, saying, “This post features a list of businesses in San Antonio who are on Twitter. This list is a living, breathing thing that will be revised often.”

Orlando, Florida, USA Watch Me Eat chows down at Lottawatta Lodge at Blizzard Beach posted at Watch Me Eat, saying, “A visit to Walt Disney World’s Blizzard Beach water park.”

Atlanta, Georgia, USA Amy @ The Q Family found 5 Indoor Soft Play Areas Around Atlanta for Kids & Toddlers posted at Atlanta With Kid Travel Blog.

Los Angeles, California, USA Henry spends Three Hours in Los Feliz – Part I posted at Finding Freedom, saying, “This article covers the first part of an afternoon spent walking through the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. The article includes sights, stores, restaurants, bars, and the addresses and phone numbers of each location.”

Washington, DC, USA Jon presents “That’s One Small Step for Man…” – Reaching the Moon 40 Years Ago posted at The DC Traveler, saying, “In July 1969, manned space travel brought the first men to the moon. The National Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC is hosting a series of moon landing programs.”

Montezuma Beach, Costa Rica Marina K. Villatoro enjoys Montezuma Beach, the Pot of Fun at the End of the Rainbow- Photo Friday posted at The Travel Expert(a), saying, “This is a great town in Costa Rica, for beaches and eccentricities.”

Flagstaff, Arizona, USA Mudslide Mama presents Best Things to Do Around Flagstaff, Arizona posted at Traveling Mamas.

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada J.W. presents Yesterday’s Vancouver posted at The Collective Picture.

Seattle, Washington, USA Mary Jo Manzanares presents The Gum Wall of Seattle posted at The Seattle Traveler, saying, “This quirky attraction is pretty gross, yet the spot is always full of gawking visitors. I don’t get it!”

Asheville, North Carolina, USA Amy @ The Q Family presents 13 Things to Do in Asheville with Kids posted at The Q Family Adventures Travel Blog.

Cities in Europe

Henley, United Kingdom Happy Hotelier has 3 Reasons why you should visit Henley Royal Regatta once in your Lifetime posted at Happy Hotelier, saying, “Henley is a small town on the Thames. Worth a visit in itself, but if you are in the neighborhood during “Royal Regatta” don’t miss it. It took me approx 15 years to acknowledge it:-)”

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