the lake

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wild honeymoon · Skane (Sweden)

Our trip started in Copenhagen. We stayed there for three days - which, by the way, was more than enough to visit the main sites - then we crossed Øresund Bridge by train (super cool!).

As we got to Sweden, we rented a car and... headed north!

This is pretty much what we did:

View honeymoon in a larger map

...

I'll be posting some more pictures of our trip in future posts...

I loved every minute of our honeymoon, despite a few difficulties such as almost being arrested by the Norwegian customs police officers who thought we were drug dealers - but that’s another story and I’ll leave it for a later post. :)

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crab fishin'

Though we prefer going to the lake house during the winter, we usually spend our summer vacations there too. This year wasn’t any different. 

The thing I like the most about going there is all the nature and wildlife that surround us. (I should bring the camera with me more often, so I don't miss anything. Last week we bumped into a curious, supercute squirrel standing on a tree branch. It was staring at us just waiting for me to take its picture... but, of course, I didn't have the camera with me.)

There’s another thing, though, that I love to do during the summer there: crab fishing. There are, basically, two different ways to do that:
 

1.) With a baited handmade fishing pole Lucas so professionally designed (that could easily take China out of business with the blink of an eye, but we are just way too kind to do that) using a tree branch, some electric wire, a small stone (to make sure the bait won’t float) and a paper clip as a hook. And some Spanish sausage as bait (sic! It works :P).

crab fishing 3 from Luisa on Vimeo.

crab fishing from Luisa on Vimeo.

our professional fishing equipment

 
2.) Using a crab net; which is not that fun, in my opinion, since it is a much more passive kind of activity.

crab fishing 2 from Luisa on Vimeo.

crabs in a bucket from Luisa on Vimeo.

It all consists in luring the crabs with the sausage. They seem to be always hungry, so that’s quite easy. When they finally come close to the bait, I usually pull the string just a little so that the cute little crab goes “Hmm, my dinner is about to escape, but I’m much smarter. I’m gonna grab it and eat it up like a savage before it even knows what hit it!”. And well, as I always say, persistence is sometimes only stubbornness.

wms with lovely tapas

We had a great time yesterday. I enjoyed every minute of what was destined to be a dull Saturday. As I've told you before, I am a winter type of person and when summer arrives, I get a little more bitter than usual (I know I'm weird), especially because we live 350 km away from the nearest beach - not that I love going to the beach, but it is definitely the most effective way of putting up with our Spanish summer. However, the second and more practical option is to live inside a heatproof apartment with our powerful air-conditioning system always on - I am pretty sure this machine of ours could cool entire cities! 

Anyway, yesterday we decided to pretend it was snowing pretty heavily outside and we watched a movie cuddling on the sofa, with my favorite kind of wine and these homemade tapas my husband carefully prepared for our weekend movie session. Isn't he the cutest?

FROM PARIS WITH LOVE « action

I don't care for action movies all that much. As for John Travolta, I'm voting for this look instead of his usual shaved face. Bad boy.

wms: our weekend movie sessions

Lucas and I don't always seem to have the same taste in movies. And because he is the download freak in this house, my job is to select the ones that deserve to be in our weekend movie sessions.

The thing is yesterday he bumped into a movie he had seen many years ago. I normally try not to read the summaries before watching a movie because I do judge books (and movies) by their covers, you know. Shallow grave is a lame title, c'mon! But he said it was good and... well, I decided to give it a chance, though I must admit I first thought of green monsters and zombies as in Michael Jackson's Thriller. Don't get me wrong: I like his videoclips but, in this case, my plan was not to spend and hour and a half watching zombie ninja moves. Except it was nothing like that at all! 

SHALLOW GRAVE (1994) «« thriller

Three roommates living in a four-bedroom apartment are trying to find the perfect tenant for their empty room. After lots of unconventional interviews, they finally agree on one of them. They give him a key, the guy moves in, locks his door and well... that's when the most unexpected things happen.

It's not like it deserves an Oscar or anything, but I thought it was totally worth the time invested. A surprisingly young Ewan McGregor is already a very good excuse to watch it.  

good old stuff

Talking about movies you must see before you die… I guess I could go on and on and on that subject for hours. Yet, I totally freeze when people ask me what my favorite movie is. I guess I never knew the answer to that one: it is almost like asking parents to pick their favorite child. I have ABSOLUTELY no idea what my favorite movie is. I could never, ever choose among the ones I really love which, by the way, would be too many to list. And I don't think I could even remember all of them at once, not to mention try and sort them in order of preference (God forbid!). Here are two good old ones I genuinely love:

COOL HAND LUKE (1967) «««««
The very best example of how an unbelievably simple plot can turn into a great movie. Luke is a former war hero; he is bold, impulsive, inquisitive. He is not very fond of rules and he doesn't really appreciate being told what to do. He ends up in prison for damaging public property while being drunk. It actually seems he has chosen to be there, though: just to prove a point or something like a personal challenge. He keeps confronting authority just for the fun of it.
Luke escapes and gets caught, escapes and gets caught. Maybe he runs only to see how far he can get. Maybe he doesn't even want to be out to begin with. With his captivating personality, everybody loves him and he quickly becomes an idol in prison. Some people have talked about the biblical symbolism of the movie, as for Luke representing Christ: a good man, hated by the authorities but loved and followed by his prison disciples like a savior. Note the scene when he kneels down and prays to God.
I personally recommend special attention to the fight scene and also to the one other prisoners eat off his plate. They are truly amazing. And if you have company, why don't you bet if he can eat the fifty eggs? I would have won. :P 

What we got here is a failure to communicate!

BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967) «««««
A photo slide show leading to a great motion picture. Bonnie works as a waitress in a small town when she meets Clyde, a small-time thief who had already been in jail before for robbing a gas station. She feels deeply bored and sees in him the opportunity of having some kind of adventure.
Bonnie and Clyde is filled with violence (it is no Pulp Fiction, though) and I absolutely loved the way they handled sex and impotence (it was 1967!). People say the movie is way too simplistic to portray Bonnie and Clyde’s real lives but, hey, I loved the story the way it was told and I assume the most important things are there (and, frankly, there is no need for further details). The movie is great the way it is.
Their dreams alternate from becoming crime stars and having lots of money to forming a family and being completely anonymous, but they soon realize that the life they chose to live will make it impossible for them to have it all.

"You ain't gonna have a minute's peace," Clyde warns Bonnie. "You promise?" she replies.

I chose those movies by chance, and it was a coincidence they were both released in 1967 – and that they never get old. How cool is that? And both movies end pretty much the same as well: people try to break them but they just won't break.

Watching a movie is always something special for me. It is something like a ritual: lights off, silence and a glass of wine. The thing is I haven’t come across many good ones lately. Any suggestions?

game over. try again.

Eu não sei bem porque escrever um blog é tão complicado. 

É complicado porque eu penso nos detalhes, em vez de dar renda solta ao conteúdo, talvez. Sério, gostaria de ser mais como aquele que é capaz de escrever coisas engenhosas em times new roman 12 verde claro, numa página web com fundo azul de bolinhas.

Não posso, confesso. Tenho que dar meu toque à página, me sentir em casa e gostar dela. Ai, que superficial! Mas é toda uma relação aquilo que eu desenvolvo com os modelos do blogspot… é por essas e outras que minhas últimas empreitadas não foram bem sucedidas: estava sempre pensando em como deixá-lo bonito.

Enfim, vou tentar novamente. A la tercera va la vencida, o eso dicen.