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Sunday, May 29, 2011

The Midnight Hour

The midnight hour. 
It has a nice literary ring to it, doesn’t it?

But it's not something I’d given much thought, until I read a  post on the  Baltimore Sun’s web blog a few weeks before our departure, written by John E. McIntyre, that pondered the questions:

Does midnight belong to the day that is ending or does it belong to the day that is beginning?  Or does the fact that a digital clock reads 00:00 at precisely midnight, mean it  is neither?

And what does that have to do with travel?

Well, quite a bit. Take midnight in Spain. It's dinner time there. Unlike our Kirkland lives where the middle of the night is when you wake up and take a 'trip to the bathroom'. 

That presented a challenge: would we dine at midnight or at least at the respectable dinner time of 10 p.m. or later? Answer: no.  We tried, but couldn't last that long.

In fact, we thought we were doing well to still be tapeo-ing (making the rounds of tapa bars) at 8 or 9 in the evening. And after eating tapas then, we really didn't have room for a real multi-course meal.
(And that plan of mine to search for flamenco's duende - that Spanish show of 'soul'  fell through when I couldn't make it until the 1 a.m. showtime).

There is no escaping the impact of travel on time.

We leaped forward three hours when we landed in Florida and then eased ourselves into new time zones an hour at a time - six times - as our ship crossed the Atlantic. We jumped back an hour when we flew to London and then moved head an hour when the Eurostar whisked us to Paris. The next day we gained two hours when we went to Iceland and another seven hours when we landed in Seattle. No wonder we couldn't remember the date, let alone the day.

Back home during our first night in Kirkland, I woke at 1 a.m. -  no, not for a potty run.  I was hungry! By my tummy time I'd 'missed' breakfast and it was nearly time for lunch.

Dang, if only it had happened in Madrid!

Note: Click on the 'flamenco' above for a taste of flamenco on YouTube.

3 comments:

  1. What an intriguing post- I had never thought of the whole midnight hour concept :)...and I do know from traveling how it can be quite interesting figuring with all the time differences and changes.

    Thanks for the suggestions about exploring Chelan- I need to go back now and check out those places you mentioned :)

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  2. Thanks for writing as it is good to hear from a fellow travel blogger. When you go back to Chelan, check out Manson, just down the road on the other side of the lake. . .you will love its 'downtown'.

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