| Madrid 1, Charlie2002-05-29
Well, we had a little drama right at the beginning. I didn't pay that much attention to the connections and looked last night and found we had a 32 minute international connection at Chicago for the Chicago to Madrid flight. We got to the airport and found this was an 'illegal' connection and the computer would not issue baggage checks for it. Orbitz was happy to sell it to me though. One option was to carry on which meant we would have to throw away Wynette's Leatherman-style knife and scissors. The other option was to reroute through Miami with a flight that would get in two hours later but which still had good seats. We decided to do that but it took about half and hour and we barely made the first leg out of Albuquerque. But the rest of it was fine with connections of adequate length. The flight got in a half an hour early in fact.
We were pretty tired after 17.5 hours on the road (from our door) but very glad to be in Madrid. By the time we got to the hotel it was 19.5 hours! The room is small but nice enough in a little two star hotel in a building with three hostels, each on a different floor. We rested an hour and went out to get the train tickets to Barcelona, a sleeper train (Tren Hotel they call it) in two nights. Kendra at 13 got a under-14 discount so we saved 31 euros (77 for me and 46 for her). Then we went to the Internet place and that is where we are now. After this we will go to lunch and then Retiro park. We hope to stay up until about 9 PM so we can recover from jet lag as quickly as possible. An amazing coincidence. We took the metro (subway) from the airport into town. It takes 30 minutes and costs 50 cents! As we were getting on the escalator down to the subway I see this young woman and we both do a double take. It turns out I had a dance class with her at UNM a couple of years ago. Her name was Triva. Wynette may remember that we saw her at Blockbuster video one time. She just spent a year in Granada studying Spanish. Small world. |
| Madrid 3, Charlie2002-05-31
Well it took a few days to get back to the Internet point again. We have been suffering from jet lag I think. Kendra stayed up until about 6:30 and fell asleep while I was reading to her and I stayed up until about 7 PM. I woke up at 11:30 and thought it might be morning. I got back to sleep until about 7 and Kendra sleep until 9. We were tired during the day and took a short (30 minute) nap around 4 PM and went to bed at midnight and got up at 10:30. We both feel a bit better today so maybe we have it beat. We take the night train to Barcelona in five hours.
The Internet point is as cheap as I have seen, 1 euro per hour, 93.5 cents. And it has loud rock music playing. The problem is the smokers but that seems to be a problem in Spain, and Europe, in general. The euro is at a 14 month high, up a penny from when we got here two days ago. Still Spain is pretty cheap. I went to the Prado yesterday. Kendra was tired and decided to stay home. It was mostly dead, white males anyway. So I'm not sure I get art. I mostly just strolled though wondering why these particular paintings were better than other people's paintings. Certainly the technique is good but a lot of people can do that I think. Is it the scene they paint, depictions of peasant life (lots of those in Goya)? Or the expressions on the faces? They say a picture is worth a thousand words but how much can these scenes really say? And why is it better to tell it ion code in a painting rather than just say it in words where it would be clear? For me, I passed most of them pretty quickly and I noticed lots of people were doing the same thing, 'doing' the Prado it seemed. I stopped at a few that seemed interesting, mostly nudes. I stopped at all the depictions of Christ because I wanted to compare how they did his physique. He was always pretty thin and a little muscular but he was not a hunk in any of them, none of them had his pecs very big at all. I guess he didn't lift much stuff. They had dozens of Reubens whose women never had much in the way of clothes on although all the men were pretty well clothed. The women are all pretty heavy in the middle, none of them would make it on TV these days. The must have over a 100 Goyas but I wasn't struck by any of them really. The Prado does have the big names for sure. There were two Rembrandts but they seemed to be on loan. The best artist was Hieronymous Bosch. In Spanish he is known as 'El Bosco'. I think this must be Spanish for 'nutcase' because he was really weird. I remember, of course, The Garden of Earthy Delights, but he had 3-4 more that were just about as strange. He seemed to have a fetish for people being cut up and tortured in various ways. Interesting though. I looked at all his painting very carefully while breezing through Valaquez and the rest of the gang. On the bizarre meter though I think the winner was the one that shows a cardinal kneeling at an alter with a statue of the Virgin Mary on the wall above him. She is holding her right nipple and an arc of milk about 10 feet long is going from her breast into his mouth. A couple of other ecclesiastical types are standing by watching with approval. What will these Christians think of next? I stayed about an hour an a half and I enjoyed myself but I'm in no hurry to go back and I still don't know why these paintings are better than others I have seen. We had a fairly fancy dinner the first afternoon (about $15 each) but Kendra likes simple food so we have had that since. That meal actually was pretty oily and each of us felt a bit sick afterwards. maybe it was too soon after we got off the plane. Last night we went to a place that had pasta, pizza and crepes -- authentic Spanish food :-) It was actually pretty good though. I had cava (sparkling Spanish wine) which was pretty good, my first wine of the trip. We had cheeze and bread for one lunch. We got some very good cherries for about $1 a pound. I am getting more of those for sure. Today we took the train to Aranjuez to see the Royal Palace (the summer palace) and gardens. We stayed on the city bus too long though and had to walk about a mile back and were a bit irritable but we got over it. Kendra and I seem to be able to travel well together although we are still getting used to our different styles. I like to do more things than she does. But we decided it was fine for me to go off and see something and for her to stay at the hotel. Kendra things I get too nervous about things and worry too much. She got interested in 'About a Boy' and read the whole book yesterday while I was at the Prado and the botanical gardens. I had to buy food to bring home to her so she could keep reading. We are ready for the movie now. Spain is pretty nice. It is a bit different from France and Italy and I have had to get used to it but now I have figured out where to buy food and things like that. We are both looking forward to Barcelona which is less spread out and, in general, cooler than Madrid (more hip that is, although it is in fact cooler in temperature also). The weather had been pretty hot and humid actually so it will be nice if that changes too. It is hot in the sun but nice in the shade. On the coffee front, I have to say that Spanish coffee is just about as good as Italian coffee. I have been having 'cafe con leche' and they have all been excellent. Kendra has been having hot chocolate and so we have become cafe habitues. The hotel is great and only 43 euros a night. The beds are very firm and comfortable. I hope Barcelona is the same. Kendra got a kick out of the tiny little elevators they have. With Kendra and I and our suitcases it is totally full. I have been trying to take the stairs. We are on the third floor, fourth by American counting. We took a sky ride thing over a big park in Madrid yesterday and it was very nice, great views. |
| Madrid 2, Logan2002-05-31
Hey everybody, ¿Que pasa?
Well we didn't get to the internet cafe yesterday but we are here now. It only costs 1 Euro per hour, which is 93 cents. We stayed in a small hotel room but the beds are really comfortable. Yesterday was basically a resting day. We took the metro to a park which had a cable car, kinda like the sky ride at Cliffs(for the ones in abq), only enclosed. We took the cable car to the end and then back. For the rest of the afternoon I sat at the hotel and read About A Boy, which was recently made into a movie. Great book. Anyways, today was more eventful than that. We got up around 10:30am(well duh, we didn't get up in the middle of the night) and ate cereal for breakfast. We had found some at a grocery type store. Then we checked out and headed to the train station. We dropped off our stuff to pick up later, we will be taking the night train tonight. Then we caught the train to a smaller town to visit a palace there. We got there and caught a bus which my dad assumed would take us to the palace. Finally we asked the driver and found we had missed the stop, OOPz. Well, he told us to go down the road so we did. We got to the edge of the main garden. After some thinking we went in the garden and looked at the map. We found that if we walked up and around a little we would get there. So we took a nice little walk in the BLAZING HOT SUN with INCREDIBLY ANNOYING NATS circling us. Nah, it wasn't to miserable, I didn't mind too much. After a lot of walking and a few streets crossed, and much debate, we found the entrance to the palace. Got in and caught a spanish tour. I tried to comprehend and translate but I'm not really a spanish expert, I just know a good amount of it. After that we went to a smaller garden and sat for awhile. Then we went on another quest to find the bus again and after asking a few people directions (well, 2) we found the stop. We only waited about 3 minutes or so and the bus came. We caught the train back and took the metro to where we are now. The internet cafe is pretty cool, those the spanish keyboards are a little ¡confusing! I havent figured out the apostrophie yet, in case you havent noticed. Well that is all I can think of, all of you take care. |
| Barcelona 1, Charlie2002-06-01
We had some of that "travel excitement" last night but it turned out fine. Kendra said I shouldn't be worried. Maybe not. Our train left from "Chamartin" which we took to be part of "Alocha" but instead we needed to take a communter train over to it. We figured this out around 10 PM but we still made the train by 10:30. It was supposed to leave at 11 PM but left an hour late anyway.
The sleeper train was pretty coo. We had a little double sleeper compartment with an upper and lower bunk and a small washbasin. Very compact but enough room. A cute little stairway to the upper bunk (Kendra was in the upper) which came out from the wall. They left a newspaper for you, in Spanish of course. We got right into bed but didn´t turn off the light until the train left at midnight. Each bunk had a little light. There was a lot of bumping, swaying, etc during the night but we both slept quite well. I guess it reminds you of being in the womb where there was also a lot of bumping and swaying. Anyway we loved it. We got to Barcelona at 8, right on time despite the late departure. We got to the hotel at 8:30. The town was pretty much dead, it is a Saturday morning. We got the hotel guy out of bed but he was pretty nice about it. But we can't get into the room until 12:30 so we have been wandering around the city for a while. We stopped at a cafe which had fried eggs so I had that. We both had cafe con leche, Kendra´s first and she seemed to like it. We sat in the park writing postcards and walked around soaking up the city. WE tried two internet places, both closed. This one is on the Ramblas (the main street of the town) and was open. The hardest part of traveling is when you are between places. We are like homeless people wandering the streets. We look like we slept in our clothes and feel dirty. I can't imagine how bad it would be to actually be homeless and feel like this all the time. We stay here for four days so we should have time to feel at home. One problem with the big cities, for me at least, is that there is so much choice. There are literally thousands of places to eat for example. I like the small towns where the guidebook recommends two or three places. We had our first "tapas" last night. These tapas bars are a bit like cafeterias where they have a few dozen different dishes along the counter and you pick what you want. You get a little place of each one. The idea is that you get to sample lots of different things. Now that I have the hang of it I will be a little more experimental next time. Every guidebook and the hotel guy warned us about pickpockets in Barcelona so it must be a big problem. We have our valuables in a pouch under our clothes so we should be okay although I always keep 20-30 euros in loose bills in my pockets to pay for things without partially disrobing. We'll see how it works. |
| Barcelona 2, Logan2002-06-01
Que pasa? Well we finally got to Barcelona, and obviously to an internet cafe. This one costs 3 euros per hour. (heh.. i just wanted to use the Euro symbol)
Last night we took a sleeper train from Madrid to here, which was cool. We had a cozy little room with just enough room for a bunkbed and a little basin. There was a cool little pull out stairway to get to the top bunk which I was amused with. The train was SUPPOSED to move at 11pm but it was around midnight before we actually left. I woke up in the middle of the night and before I remembered where I was I was wondering why the hell I was moving. Then, of course, I remembered I was on a train so of course it was MOVING. In the morning I was happy to find that we were going along the beach. I sat and watched as we swept along the Mediterranian shore. We finally came into the train/metro station. After looking at subway maps and all that we figured out that we just had to take one subway straight to where our hotel was. So we took the metro and walked (maybe 2 blocks or so) to our hotel. We got there around 9:30, and the guy was still sleeping. We checked in but our room won´t be ready till noon. So, we just dropped off our stuff and went to walk around. First we went to see whether we could find an open internet cafe but no luck, it was a little too early I guess. So we walked around and stepped into a cafe. I had a cafe con leche, which was pretty good. So then we walked around more and finally decided we´d but some postcards at a newstand we had stopped at. We sat doiwn and wrote them in the Plaza De Catalunya and wrote the postcards to some people. Then we decided to walk to another internet cafe, which was also closed. So we took one more chance and walked to one at the top of La Rambla, basically the center of town pedestrian area. So we came here, which is where I end my tale. Yeah, I sound like I´m telling a fairy tale don´t I? Anyways, all of you take care. |
| Barcelona 3, Charlie2002-06-02
So we slept until 11 (for me, noon for Kendra) today. I think we are still a bit jet lagged. We went to the zoo in the early afternoon. It was a pretty normal zoo. The cages were pretty small. I read that they are planning to move it soon to a place where they can have bigger enclosures. The animals looked a bit sad and bored but that is typical of zoos I guess. The setting is beautiful with lots and lots of trees. Most of the zoo is shaded so it is a very pleasant place to walk around. It was €10 (did you get that as a euro symbol?) each which seemed pretty steep to me.
Then we went back to the hotel. Kendra wanted to hang around so I went to see Sagrada Familia. Kendra read and walked the Ramblas. She can tell you more in her email. Around the turn of the century Barcelona was pretty well off from the Industrial Revolution and they had this 30 year flowering of architecture that they called Modernisme. It was called Art Nouveau in other places. The had three very good architects, including Gaudi who was a great architecture. He did lots of buildings around Barcelona but his magnum Opus was the Temple of the Holy Family (Sagrada Familia). They called them the Modernistas and their style of kind of neo-Gothic, using things from Gothic and other architectures to create a new style. It was organic, plant-like with no straight lines (Gaudi said there were not in nature. Is this true?) For example, the columns of Sagrada Familia (hereafter SG) are like trees. Gaudi was pretty religious and wanted this to be a great cathedral that would inspire faith. He spent the last 20 years of his life on it and died (by being hit by a tram) at age 74 while it was still only partially finished. They worked a little more on it and then some of it was destroyed (by Anarchists they say) in the Spanish civil war. They destroyed most of his plans and models so they are not sure now what he had in mind. It is still at most 50% done, with no roof at all for example. They are still building on it but they are not sure exactly what he had planned. Apparently he had some building ideas that they can't reconstruct so they aren't sure how to complete it. They say it might be done by 2020. It is too bad that it didn't get completed because it is extremely cool. It is a serious cathedral but in the Modernista style. It would be fantastic if it were finished and is pretty nifty already. Gaudi was already having problem in 1926 (1924?) when he died because it was going slowly and the rich people in Barcelona were getting tired of paying for it. It made me thing about cathedrals and accumulating capital. In 1200-1600 when most of the big cathedrals were being built they directly a *lot* of public capital to them. Religion was still powerful and could demand it. And cities used cathedrals as conspicuous consumption. After that they started getting a middle class and instead of spending everyone's money on cathedrals and the like they spent it on the people, the middle class. And they spent it on stuff for themselves, education for their kids, etc. By 1900 no one wanted to spend all that money on public works so it was not really possible to create a new cathedral. I thought the same thing when I saw the stately homes in England. When they were built the upper class had all the money and everyone else was desperately poor. So the upper class could build huge estates and mansions. Now we can't do that The same is true now I guess. We are spending all our money on SUVs, VCRs, video cameras, etc. and there is no money for huge, wasteful public spending. We called home and walked on the Ramblas for a while and now we are here. The Ramblas is pretty cool. They have lots of street performers. They have the usual musicians but we also saw tango dancers and break dancers. And there are a lot of human statues. People dress up in elaborate costumes and makeup, like all white or all gold (which we saw both of), and stand on boxes. When you give them some money they move around a little otherwise they stand like statues. It is all very entertaining. Tomorrow we go on a day trip to a mountain monastery called Montserrat. In a few days we are going to Tossa de Mar, a beach resort, then on to Terragona then back to Madrid. |
| Barcelona 4, Logan2002-06-02
Hey everyone! Well I was on later yesterday but didn´t want to send 2 emails in one day.
Weather Report: Hot and humid. Apparently 88% humidity and 64 degrees. Yesterday afternoon we decided to do more skyriding. :-D. We took the subway and Funnicular(a subway made for steepness basicly) to a station near the castle that my dad explained about. We walked over to a place with a skyride type thing, more like the tram in Abq though, over the harbor. We saw a cruise ship, with THREE pools on top. At the end of the ride there was an elevator down to the beach so we decided to check it out. A lot of the people there go topless, but there are so many people it makes it seem more natural. We decided to look for a heart rock for Wynette and found a pretty good one. Then we went back with intentions to check out the castle, but it was closing. We took the skyride to the castle and back, we will probobly go back to the castle later to see it. Today we woke up a little later. We decided to check out the zoo. I was particularly interested in the seals. They seem so much like dogs, like my dog atr least. Some were playing while others bathed in the sun. Then we headed back to the hotel and decided to spend some time doing our own things. Daddy went to the melting cathedral to see it while I stayed. I rested for awhile and then decided to go get some fresh air. I went and walked along La Rambla, the main street of Madrid. It was really interesting because there are a lot of people who try to make money and La Rambla is the perfect place. There was a guy who was manuvering a cute little frog marianette to play a little piano. There was also a couple tango dancing. It looked like the Argentine tango, very cool. They were probobly professionals because they were amazing. I watched them for while then decided to head back. I got myself some ice cream and walked around La Plaza de Cataluya. It has 2 very big fountains, which I watched for a few minutes. Then I headed back and waited about 10 minutes at the hotel for daddy. When he came, we decided to go make some phone calls. So we went to an internet cafe that had calls to the USA for 15 euro cents a minute. After the phone calls we went to get something to eat. We ate at a small cafeteria place with mostly sandwiches. It was actually very good. We each had a sandwich. We also had a pasta salid with fake crab in it. Then we went and walked a little more on La Rambla. We saw four guys doing break dancing, which we watched.Then we headed here, which is about the end of it. Tonight we are going to a lights show. |
| Barcelona 5, Charlie2002-06-03
Kendra decided to stay in Barcelona so I went to Montserrat by myself. It was just as well since I took a long hike.
You take the train, about 45 minutes, to the tram up to the Montserrat monastery. It is basically like the Sandia Crest Tram but a little smaller (20 people max). It is a very scenic ride, up the mountain at a 45 degree angle. I'm not sure if the monastery is still operating or not since I didn't actually go into it. They have a famous boys choir and sing Salve Regina and another piece every day at 1 PM but I missed that (got there around 2 PM). Instead I took the funicular (third form of transportation of the trip) up to the next level. From there it was an hour hike up to the top of the mountain on a trail with some hermitages along the way. I had wanted to nice hike and it turned out great. I passed everyone on the trail since I still have my high altitude fitness. The hike ended with about a hundred steps up to the very top of the mountain where they had a concrete platform. You could see 30-40 miles in every direction. It was very impressive. You couldn't see the ocean because there is a mountain range behind Barcelona that blocks it. It was great to get out hiking again. The trail was very nice, concrete at the beginning but then it was rocky and sometimes dirt. The trails in Europe are a lot more developed than I am used to from NM. Always lots of people and often paved. It is pretty hard to get away from people here. But all in all I really enjoyed the trip. On the way home I chatted with a guy from London, actually a New Zealander who has lived in London for 10 years. He was down to Barcelona for a long weekend. Apparently you can fly down for about 100 pounds (about $130 or so I think). They have just gotten cut-rate airlines like Southwest that don't serve meals and are cheap. He had been to Sagrada Familia yesterday too and was very impressed with it as I was. We are both waiting for them to finish it, only 18 more years. This morning we went to the market and got some more cherries and some bread and cheese that we ended up having for dinner. It is a big market off the Ramblas that the guidebooks all say you have to see. Basically it was like Grand Central Market in downtown LA. I didn't see anything that I wouldn't see in the LA market. But the cherries were cheap and again very good. I'll be down there again tomorrow morning for more. The Ramblas is pretty cool. It is always crowded and has street performers every 100 feet or less. There is a bird section and a flower section as you walk through. We have only seen half of it so far actually. Kendra was wishing we had something like it in Albuquerque. I told her not many cities had something like it. Actually it is somewhat like the Venice Beach boardwalk in LA except it is every day, it is wider and longer, there are more street performers, and a lot more things for sale. But the spirit is much the same. I wonder if there is anything like that in New York? I made reservations for the next three days (Wed, Thurs, and Fri) at Tossa de Mar, a beach resort about 60 miles north of Barcelona on the Costa Brava. I decided to get a fancier place so we could enjoy the beach (€96 a day) It is right on the beach and it should be fun. I hope they have an internet place there but then we'll just be kicking back at the beach so there won't be much to tell. Actually there is a lot of nice hiking around so I will be doing that. After that we have two days to schedule. We might just decide to stay at the beach. We'll see. We have one more full day in Barcelona. I plan to go to a few museums and Kendra and I are going back to Montjuiz to see the castle and ride the skyride again. |
| Barcelona 6, Charlie2002-06-04
So this was a day of missing things but it turned out pretty well anyway. They say that all publicity is good publicity and in the same way all travel experiences are good travel experiences.
I started out to see the Picasso Museum and the Contemporary Arts Museum. I waited until today since they have short hours on Sunday and are close on Mondays (lots of museums seem to be closed on Mondays). I got up and walked through the Gothic Quarter (that is, what most cities call the Old City) to the Picasso Museum and got there just as they were opening. the ticket line had about 200 people in it! Luckily I had just been reading the section in Rick Steve's guide about it. He spent a page on it, explained it in some details and told me what I should think about it so I didn't really have to actually see it, I could just feel that way about Picasso and save myself a long time, admission, etc. Actually I had had some doubts about it because I am not a huge Picasso fan. I did find out that he took his mother´s name rather than his father's name (which was Ruiz). As you probably know Spanish people get both names but he dropped Ruiz. And I hate waiting in long lines. The Rick Steve's guides are interesting. They are short and quirky and go for depth rather than breadth and also are quite opinionated. Normally I like this. So we are definitely getting into the high tourist season, in particular, hoards of US students have started to arrive in Barcelona and are swelling lines all over the city. So I decided to see a couple of cathedrals. Madrid is a great city but it doesn't have a great cathedral, I'm not exactly sure why. I guess it was more of a secular, royal capital. Anyway the Gothic Quarter has a good one and a great one. I say "great" not that it was really great (it was good though) but great in the sense of being really big, having taking 600 years to build, having 28 fancy chapels, etc. It stands with Chartres and places like that. But it didn't have a large rose window which is my favorite cathedral feature. The other one did though so I was satisfied. Next I went to an early Gaudi house just off the Ramblas. There I also found a long, long line of students holding the Harvard Student Guide ("Let's Go!") and it didn't seem to be moving so I skipped out on that too. Off to the Contemporary which opened at 11. But it didn't. I and about 20 other people waited 15 minutes and then we found out it is closed on Tuesdays. Of course, three different guide books said it was closed on Monday and open Tuesday through Saturday. Another guidebook failure. I guess Spain is a little casual about things like this. Three strikes but did I give up? Never! I went on to Parc Guell, a Gaudi park that is outside and is open every damned day from 9 to 9. It was a bit out, five subway stops and off my Barcelona map but it had good signs. It was up a big hill but there were several escalators up to it, right along the street! I guess they get a lot of people going there. It was quite good too. Then to Casa Mila, a Gaudi apartment building which was also very good. It was the using non-linear, melting cake (remember Richard Harris and MacArther Park?) style place. The interior apartments actually had many straight lines, I guess you just can't avoid it, but it was pretty interesting. The attic was very cool like a Gothic cave full of arches. They had a museum there which was very good. And you could go out on the roof and look around. Gaudi always put these odd shapes with lots of colorful mosaics on his roofs. Then I met up with Kendra and we went back to Montjuiz. WE got to the top and the day had gotten foggy. We were at a castle at the top of a small mountain and you could see the fog blowing over the castle. It was a pretty cool sight actually. You could see 2-3 miles, just barely making out the harbor. We visited a military museum which we both liked pretty well. Lots of swords, spears, guns, armor, etc. And we enjoyed the sky ride. We had a quick dinner at a sandwich shop and read out loud for a little while (Nick Hornby of course) and now we are back at the Internet place. A few random things and things I forgot to say before. At Sagrada Familia there was an elevator up to the roof, or you could take the stairs. The guidebook said the stairs were busy. I wanted about 10 minutes for the elevator and decided to take the stairs because there didn't seem to be many people. What I didn't know was that the stairs didn't go to some large observation place up on the roof because there is no roof, only the towers. The stairs go up, across a narrow bridge where about eight people can stand and then down again. The eight people, of course, go kind of slowly since this is their chance to see stuff. I went up about 50 steps and then the line can to a dead stop. And it moved about 4-5 steps a minute for the next 30 minutes until I got to the narrow bridge on top. The way down was faster. The first night I wake up at 4:30 AM to hear a loud voice "Hi Mom! I'm in Barcelona. Things are really late here. The parties start at 1 AM and we just got home." (the phone is right outside our room.) This goes on for about 15 minutes and she talked to everyone who is there, and it seemed to be large family. The second night I wake up around 2 AM to someone outside the door saying "Room 309" which is our room number. Then the door is unlocked with a key and a guy looks in, sees me sitting up in bed saying something like "what the hell?", says he is sorry and closed the door again. The third night was uneventful. I was accosted by a Gypsy beggar woman today, the first time in Spain. Faithful readers of these travel notes will know that Wynette was almost robbed by one in Rome who had a baby and misdirected her attention. She detected it though and we later saw the woman taking a call on her cell phone. they often beg with kids. This woman had streamlined things though and she just had a picture of her child that she was begging for. Cute little bugger, he is probably in college already. Well that is about it for today. Tomorrow we are going to go to Tossa de Mar, the beach resort as soon as we all get up, that would make it about 11:30 AM because we have to check out by noon. I hope there is in Internet place in Tossa. I expect there will be, in fact, I expect that the hotel will have it available for guests. |
| Barcelona 7, Logan2002-06-04
Hey people! Well a couple of nights ago we went to see a lights show, a fountain lights show. It was very beautiful, the sequences and all made it look awesome.
Yesterday was pretty uneventful, not boring, but not much to say about it. Today we went back up to MonJuiz, the castle. We took the skyride up again, which is always nice though we had to go with 2 other people instead of having our own thing. I was interested in the military museum. It had ancient armor and weapons and stuff like that. There was a British guy who was telling us a little about different things in one part, and it was actually interesting. I like looking at weapons and stuff, not sure whether that means anything or not lol. Anyway, I also loved the views, though there was a lot of fog. Then we went to a museum of just one guys work. It was pretty interesting, amazingly. My dad told me that people had commented that "a four year old could draw better than that" which actually interested me. I bought a poster of one of his paintings, it´s cool lookin. Then we ate. It was basically Spanish fast food, but it was good. I had a burrito type thing, fries, and a drink. Yum. Well then I decided I wanted ice cream so we ate some, I had swiss chocolate... very good flavor. Well that´s really all that is notable, tomorrow we are leaving for a cool beach town so that should be fun. |
| Tossa de Mar 2, Charlie2002-06-07
I am back on and I thought I would add a few notes. I forgot the explain the 3.01 euro Prado admission. They just changed from pesetas to euros here in January. All the prices are in both pesetas and euros and some are still just in pesetas every though they are not legal tender any more. All the receipts you get show both pesetas and euros. This was true in Italy and France also (with lire and francs of course). Anyway, they converted all the prices. I assume the Prado was something like 500 pesetas and they converted exactly to get 3.01 euros, or as they say 3,01 euros. This just shows how bad the Prado management was that no one thought to round it to 3 euros.
I had lunch after my last email in a recommended restaurant. One dish was very good and the other was only fair. Their cooking is a bit like French cooking with lots of sauces. I long for the simple, but wonderful food of Italy. The bread is good though, better than Italy I think. I also had "Crema Catalan" for dessert. Kind of like flan, a caramel custard with burned caramel on top. I just checked the weather and it will be more rain Saturday and partly cloudy on Sunday. Oh well. |
| Tossa de Mar 1, Charlie2002-06-08
It has taken a while to get to an Internet place. I assume you all have been missing my messages and checking your email every few hours ;-) More on why later but first:
Tossa is amazingly beautiful! The place is a real jewel. It is nestled in a valley that goes down to the sea. You can get there by boat or by a fairly winding mountain road. Most of the seacoast along this stretch of the Costa Brava is high rocky cliffs. The stone seems to be fairly soft and so it is ragged with lots of little caves and huge boulders in the water a few feet to a few hundred feet off shore. We took a glass-bottom boat ride yesterday and it went right along the cost and into two of natural caves that go in as much as 100 feet into the rock. It was beautiful. Every quarter of a mile to a mile there is a valley that goes down to the sea and forms a beach. Tossa has four of these close together so it has four beaches. The town is mostly whitewashed buildings. They don't allow high rises so the highest building is 4-5 stories high but most are smaller. It is clearly a tourist-oriented place but they have kept a lid on the rampant development. There is an old castle, mostly in ruins on this high cliff at the end of the "Old Town". A few of the towers and a fairly amount of the walls are still standing. You can walk up and walk along the walls, looking through the archer slits and openings. There are views of the town and the ocean and the four beaches and the cliffs between them. It is all quite amazing. The town is just the right size for walking around. As I said, it is definitely tourist oriented. The signs are all in German, French, Italian and English and you can get, four or five different papers in English or German or whatever. The only American paper is the International Herald-Tribune which is usually get and is quite interesting. English books and magazines are also available. We have not had good weather though. It started raining the last night in Barcelona but it was sunny when we left Barcelona on Wednesday around noon. We took a local train first up to Blanes. It was really like a subway with stops every 3-5 minutes. Then a bus to Lloret. Then another bus and a mule ride over the mountains to Tossa. Okay, I was kidding about the mule ride. The bus went right into Tossa. It was still sunny when we walked to our hotel but when we went out later to use the internet we got caught in a downpour and got pretty wet just getting back to the hotel. That was why we missed internetting on Wednesday. The hotel is quite nice. We splurged on a three star hotel and so the rooms are bigger and nicer and we have an ocean view and a balcony. The view out of the room is really pretty. The weather has been off and on rainy for the whole time. We got about three hours of sun on Thursday and about three hours today but it is still early and it got sunny again so maybe this is all done. The rain has been kind of fun though for us NM types. It rained hard for hours and hours. but it does makes doing anything pretty much out of the question. We did get down to the beach for a couple of hours on Thursday and it was quite nice. The water is a bit cold, I would say about 70 maybe. The beach is not quite sand but more like fine gravel and a bit uncomfortable to walk on but we used our Teva sandals and it was fine. The internet places are all in bars and are all coin operated. They all seem to be run out of Girona, the nearest larger town. Companies from there install them and keep them running and, I assume, give the bars a percentage of the gross. We have one near the hotel but it doesn't have AOL instant messenger which Kendra needs. We went out last night around 8:30 to the one recommended in our guide but and which stays open until midnight. Well, that's what it said in the book but when we got there it was closed up tight. I really don't understand it. All the other bars were still open, it was only this one that was closed. Another guide book failure. Our backup place was a couple of blocks away and we had a flyer. It was a "Unisex hair stylist and Internet point". We got there at 8:45 and they were closing at 9 so that was out. So that is why we missed on Thursday. It is now Friday and here I am at two in the afternoon. I am going to check the hours for tonight. It doesn't matter to me with email but for Kendra she needs her friends to be on-line when she is and 8 PM is noon in ABQ. The place is full of "holiday-makers" as they say in England. Lots of older people in town and, not to complain, but they walk pretty slowly on the narrow sidewalks :-) Kendra and I like to try to guess what nationality people are. We watch them coming, guess and they try to catch some conversation. Mostly people are British, German, French or Dutch with some Americans also. Almost no American students though, unlike Barcelona, which is nice. Some of the "British" might be Australian I suppose since we can't really tell the difference. We also check the license plates as we walk around (E, F, D, NL, and no letter which I assume is E, Espagne). Wynette wondered why it was Tossa de Mar and not Tossa del Mar. I saw a building (the urgent care actually) called "Casa del Mar" and below it, it said "Tossa de Mar". Maybe the Spanish experts can work this out for us. Did I mention the place has beautiful hiking trails also? I went on a very nice hike today for about three hours, up to about 1500 feet with great views of the ocean and Tossa. Like all hiking in Europe (in my experience) it was very organized with lots of markers and signs and a fair number of people. It is hard to get real wilderness experiences here I would guess. We continue to eat mostly fast good or bread and cheese and fruit in our rooms although last night I had dinner at the hotel restaurant which was supposed to be very good. It was good but not very good, not nearly as good and places in Italy. I am going to try another recommended place and see who it is. The hotel has a very good breakfast though. It was a egg cooker that you can use to soft boil your own eggs. it also has the usual stuff: fresh-squeezed juice, pastries, cheese, cold cuts, cereal. It has a toasting machine with a belt. You put the bread on one side and it comes out the other toaster on one side. There are a few old things that I forgot to mention that I remembered later for from reading Kendra emails. We went to a very nice fountain, music and light show in Barcelona on Sunday evening. It was at a place with a long street with lighted fountains on both sides. At the end was a large fountain that, apparently, can be computer controlled. They play classical music and design a fountain and light pattern to go with it. It was quite striking and pretty. We enjoyed it a lot. We also went to the Miro museum in Barcelona. Kendra could not understand why he was so great but then she ended up buying a poster anyway. She was especially incensed by the ones that consisted on a white canvas with a single, jagged black line through it. I was trying to explain how some of this art had to be understood in a context with other artists and pieces of art and there was a philosophy behind it. I don't think I was to convincing. But we both pretty much enjoyed going to the museum in the end I think. It makes you think if nothing else. I told her a quote from my art class at UCLA. The teacher said that Miro was the first artist about whom it was said "My four-year-old could have done that." Kendra is also incensed about the smoking in Spain. It is petty bad. They seem to allow smoking everywhere. We finally found an Internet place in Barcelona that didn't allow smoking. People smoke all over and it is very irritating. And they throw cigarette butts everywhere. In Barcelona Kendra and I started going to a restaurant right by our hotel about 10 PM to have dessert. We had some pretty nice desserts. Kendra is not big on gourmet good but she likes gourmet desserts, as long as they have chocolate in them, but most do. On final thing. The admission to the Prado is 3.01 euros. I didn't notice the .01 and had exactly 3 euros in change. I like to get rid of my change. I set it down and they guy pointed to the sign. I was .01 euro short so I had to break a 5 euro note. There was an article in the Herald-Tribune about how the Prado has been going downhill for years. It still has a great collection but the management is terrible and it is under funded. They mentioned how the pyramid had helped the Louvre by giving them a lot of extra room. |
| Barcelona 8, Logan2002-06-08
Well, we are back in Barcelona but more on that later.
We went to Tossa De Mar for three days, and internet was basically impossible to find there. We took a train to Blanes first. Then we caught a bus that actually only went to Lloret, another beach resort. FINALLY, we found a bus that did INDEED take us to Tossa De Mar, or just Tossa because that is shorter. We got there and found we had to walk ALL THE WAY accross the city to get to our hotel. Of course, it is at the very end of the beach, last hotel too, just outside of town. Oh well, it was a nice hotel. I was glad to discover it had TV... of course CNN was the only English channel. We did a lot of hanging out and walking around in Tossa. The town was very easy to get around in. There seemed to be a lot of British people, travelers that is, around. We took a ride on the glass bottomed boat, which was pretty cool. I like boats just how they are, but it´s kinda neat to be able to look through the bottom. We went into a couple of caves and looked around them. Tossa was, in all, very beautiful. The hotel served FREE that´s right not just cheap but FREE breakfast. I only caught it once but it was pretty good. There was an egg cooker to make soft-boiled eggs, which was amusing. And a toaster with a belt that transported the toast through the machine and well, toasting it. Now, how the hell did we come to be in Barcelona again? Simple, sort of. I decided that I would rather go back to Barcelona and my dad agreed with the idea. I like big cities more, just the feel of them is great. Of course there was that problem with the stupid hotels, basicly all of them were full. My dad made NINETEEN yes NINETEEN calls to different hotels, trying to find a room. Well, we had one hotel left, but my dad was sure there was no point in even calling. I offered to call, and was in awe when the guy told me that my request was possible. I was pretty happy. So this morning we went to the bus station and took just ONE bus back to Barcelona. Our hotel was only 2 blocks from the station, which set our spirits HIGH. The hotel is pretty nice, BIGGER tv too, hee hee. We decided to order from our PAYTV service. We got crazy/beaughtiful, the only movie playing actually. It was a pretty good movie, ending was happt but a little (actually a LOT) unrealistic.Well I thinkn that´s all for now. |
| Barcelona 9, Charlie2002-06-09
It is Sunday evening. We are going to go back to see the music, light and fountain show again tonight after we do our Internet stuff. I got the Tren Hotel reservations so we are all set for the rest of the trip. Monday in Barcelona. Then check out on Tuesday and spend it in Barcelona. Then the sleeper train to Madrid and go directly to the airport for our 15-hour, three-flight trip back to Albuquerque.
Tomorrow we might go up to the mountain above Barcelona and go to the "Parc d'Attractions", that is, an amusement park. The other things on our agenda are a harbor boat tour and the science museum. The trip is finishing up. Today I went back to Montserrat and hiked again but on a different trail. It was a very interesting one from the Monastery to a hermitage and it had hundreds of steps cut right out of the mountainside. As usual, it was nice to get out of the city and do some hiking. The views were as great as before. I met two sisters, about 50 I would say, on the train out there and we chatted a while. One teaches Spanish at a small college in Detroit and takes tax-deductible trips to Europe every summer. She is staying the whole summer and is renting an apartment in Seville. Kendra had fun today walking the Ramblas and watching the street performers. So I must be winding down because I don't have any new observations about Spain or whatever. I have been thinking about what I will do when I get home. |
| Barcelona 10, Charlie2002-06-10
Well, we decided to go back to Barcelona. The weather was not improving and Kendra missed the big city. We stayed three nights in Tossa and enjoyed it. So we took the bus straight back to Barcelona (only 1.5 hours and no mules).
Getting a place was an interesting experience. Again we were at the weekend. We decided Friday afternoon to go back the next day which means we needed a place for Saturday night. I looked through three guide books and called 19 places and all of them were full. That was all the places in our price range and in the one above it. There was one more place but I was tired and figured there was no hope but Kendra wanted to try it so she called and, can you believe it, they had a place. It was literally the last place we had to call. Our backup plan was to stay one more day in Tossa and try to get a place on Sunday night which I think we would have been able to fairly easily. But we are getting into the high season. We had to pay 127 euros but it is a really nice four star hotel in a good location. We checked the ticket and we don't leave until 11:50 AM from Madrid so we decided to stay here three days and take the night train to Madrid and then get right on the plane. It is a nine hour train trip and we have four hours to make the plane (the train gets in at 8 AM). A bit of a chance but we like to live dangerously and the trains actually have an excellent on-time record. The one from Madrid left a hour late and we still got in on time. So we have the rest of the trip all planned. Kendra is glad to get back to Barcelona. It is more exciting. She likes the performers and especially the human statues on the Ramblas. It rained today so we didn't get to see them. The hotel has movies available so we watched "crazy/beautiful" this afternoon while it was raining. It was pretty good. I had more museum trouble this afternoon. I went back to the Contemporory Museum and, Lord be praised, it was open. I step up to pay and the guy says the permanent collection is closed and they only have a small temporary exhibit so I decided not to got. Then I walked over to the Picasso Museum thinking the whole way that I should see it but I would rather veg out this afternoon. I get there and the line is even longer than the first time. so no museums for this boy. |
| Barcelona 11, Charlie2002-06-11
So we are just waiting for our sleeper train to Madrid. It leaves in five hours so we are killing time at the Internet place. Out bags are in a locker at the train station and we are sightseen out. We had planned to go to Star Wars Episode 2 but found out that it was dubbed! I was really surprised that they had done that.
We went to the Science Museum today and it was an interesting experience. Frommer said that 500,000 people a year go there and it had a planetarium. We took a train to the foothills of the mountains but the directions were not really that clear. WE walked about four blocks and then saw a huge sign for the museum across the street up on the hill. the letters were like 20 feet high. So we walked over there and up this long stairs and found a dirt parking lot and a building you couldn't get into. After asking some people we found out that only the huge sign was on this side of the road, the museum was on the other side of the road. We were already pretty hot and tired when we got there. We found out that the planetarium was not open today because school kids were using it. In fact, all the extra attractions were closed until the weekend. It was cheap so we went in anyway. It seems that the elevator also only works on weekends, at least it wasn't working today. The museum is small but on five floors, numbered -2, -1, 0, 1, and 2. They gave us this set of English sheets in plastic held together with a small chain that told about the exhibits since all the signs were only in Spanish and Catalan. I'm not sure where the 500,000 people were but there were only two other people there when we were there. The first thing was a temporary exhibit all about eggs. It seemed like it had put together by sixth graders. After 20 or 30 cabinets I was all "enough with the eggs already". Up to the second floor with the perception and optics exhibits. The exhibits were all numbered as were the English explanations on out xeroxed and plastic coated sheets. This would seem like the idea arrangement except they had failed to list the numbered explanation in numerical order. The sequence was something like 11, 12, 39, 15, 16, 7, 8, 9, 42, 41, 40 ... going on like that in apparently random order. I had to search for each one. the exhibits were pretty rinky-dink in any case although a few were pretty nice. so after wandering around four about a hour alone we decided to go. The student thing. This was the second time we were preempted by local students. We wanted to take a different boat ride yesterday but the students had reserved the boat for the whole day. So why can't these students sit in their classroom and study something instead of gallivanting all over on boats and going to shows during school hours? Starting about June 1 you start seeing a lot of American students doing the traveling in Europe thing. Christy and I did that and it seems like a good thing but they do clog things up. The woman I was talking to on the way to Montserrat said she always evaluated pensions based on whether there will be students there and avoids them if she can. They had been on a night train with a number of students partying all might. And, of course, there was the girl outside our room at 4:30 in the morning coming home from her partying. I don't remember all this partying but I guess Christy and I weren't really into that on our trips in 1969 and 1972. The Spanish seem much more tolerant of fast food than Italy or France were. The place is loaded with McDonalds, Burger King, and KFC plus there are tons of local versions of fast food. Maybe it is a degeneration of the tapas tradition. The nicer restaurants are good but, as I said, more in the French tradition of complicated dished. And not nearly as good as the food in Italy. Also the people seem a little fatter than in Italy and Rome. the young people are mostly think like everywhere in Europe but as soon as you get past the teenagers you see a lot more heavy people. It is almost unknown to see a fat person in France and few in Italy. Maybe it comes from being wealthier. I was reading an article in the Herald-Tribune about "slow cities" in Italy. About 10 years ago they started this "Slow Food" movement, in response to fast food, of course. Part of the movement was to preserve traditional species of food crops. they have dozens of kinds of wheat in Italy and lots of varieties of everything. The slow food people publish restaurant lists. Now they are extending the idea to slow towns where they are trying to preserve the old ways of life and not letting progress change them. I think they only have one so far but there are about 60 that want to be on the list. I thought about this because it appears that Spain is more unspoiled than France or Italy but it is getting developed fast because they have few regulations about it, unlike France and Italy. Apparently the Cost Brava (around Barcelona) is one of the few left that is still pretty unspoiled with high rises and such. Something like a quarter of the seaside homes are owned by foreigners and that number is rising quickly. Lots of Europeans are retiring to Spain. Well, I guess that is about all for our trip to Spain. We'll go get some dinner, do a little more web surfing and then go to the trains station. |