don’t call me a backpacker…

Look! More travel blogging! (I know it’s not as exciting now as the previous life or death scenarios you tuned in for.)

I know you’re all dying to know (sarcasm) how the first youth hostel experiences went for this thirty-something…

Night number one, dateline: Girona. Only one hostel in town, so there was no choice here. 10 bed room that started out promising, ended up with 7 people in there. I went to bed at 12am and most of the people were already in bed, so I stumbled through the dark. 10 minutes later, 1 of 3 German backpack dudes goes to the bathroom and starts barfing. Then I hear the sink running. Dear God please don’t tell me this moron is barfing in the sink! Oh of course he is. As he exits the air is filled with the oh-so-pleasant scent we’re all familiar with after one too many. I didn’t go back to that bathroom.

Oh but it gets better, at 1 AM the last guy goes to bed, waking us all up again. Then about 4 AM (i’m guessing) the aforementioned 3 German backpackers wake up, pack up their stuff, and leave, waking me and probably everyone else up again. Very little sleep was had.

Night number two, dateline: Barcelona. Despite the horrible night before, I decided to give it one more try to save money, but booked in advance since beds were in demand in Barcelona. A very cool hostel with 4-bed rooms. 3 college students, 2 guys and a girl, two of them from Orange county. They were cool and actually pretty funny, and were interested in my info about going to see the Dali museum. No drama and a great night of sleep.

The next day, I met Sarah in a cafe in the Gothic quarter. Had no idea she was American, but she just looked like someone that I was going to strike up a conversation with. We hit it off and decided to sightsee the next day.

I thought it was kind of a poetic that my travel buddies at the very beginning and very end of my trip were Americans named Sarah. This Sarah lived in Washington DC working in research for George Washington U, and has also traveled extensively in her life. She’s lived a bunch in South America so she had tons of insights on traveling there, which is on my future agenda… right after I learn Spanish.

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For the record – I did not want the trip to end.  I was done with Spain, I was ready to leave there. Although I had some difficult moments, I did not want to go home.  This signals to me, 3 months was easy and too short.  6 months would be awesome.  I met two guys along the way who were on month 7 and going strong.

I am back in San Francisco, although not exactly “home” yet.  Long story… another stupid on-the-fly traveling decision.

It’s amazing how for most of my trip I had zero air travel problems.  Well the travel gods were saving it up for me for the end.  It was a long nightmare trip that included my $25 chunk of black pork getting confiscated by customs, my camera and computer “viewed”, can I just volunteer for the cavity search too?  It’s a damn good thing I didn’t also try to smuggle in some Absinthe.  All of that caused my large backpack not making my last flight.

F the United States Customs and Immigration.  Worst country I visited.  This is such a ridiculous place in which we live.  i’ll stop now.

So I have a lot more to post about the trip, including the end of Spain, country wrap-ups for every country, and some more random pictures from all over the place I just need to get off my cell phone and sort through.

But first I’m trying to sort through 3 months of mail, various pieces of personal business to catch up on, I have a gig next week I have rehearsals for, etc, etc. Oh yeah, and that little detail of looking for a new job.  So stay tuned and thanks for reading.

I took so many Salvador Dali pictures he got his own photo album. However – SPOILER ALERT! – Don’t look at the pictures if you plan on going someday and want to be surprised, cause I pretty much give it all away. I hadn’t seen any pictures except for the outside of the building before I went, so I had the element of total surprise on my side.

The trip to Figueres and Cadaques to see the 2/3 of the “Dali triangle” was well worth the easy effort. I saw the museum, the house where he spent most of his life, and skipped the castle that he and Gala bought, for Gala to have time away from him, hah. Sounds like it was an interesting relationship.

The travel was cheap, quick, regional trains and buses to get up there and it’s a nice break from the city. However, in these towns it was hard finding budget places to stay, hence my need to do a few nights in my first youth hostel, eek!

Dali assisted building the museum in the 1970’s so it is a unique opportunity to see a tribute that the artist had a hand in, and created original works for. It was another experience that I had to put my ipod on my ears and try to ignore the rest of the package tourists, who were barely even looking at the art, to enjoy it. But the content was so good that was easy to do. There were many sketches, early and late works, but of course all of his “greatest hits” of the 30’s and 40’s are in big museums. Still there was tons of interesting work here because he was so prolific and lived so long.
The house outside of Cadaques was amazing in different ways. The tour of this is only guided, 9 people at a time, and you get 40 minutes to see the whole house. It was surprisingly simple, as you can see almost all white, with tons of light. The pictures speak for themselves.

The highlight for art geeks is the 3 unfinished works that still sit there from when Gala died, when he stopped painting until he died a few years later.

Figueres doesn’t offer much else to see really. Cadaques is a nice old town in a cove, that became an “artist colony” type of place prior to the years Dali moved there. But despite what those type of towns usually look like, this one actually seemed pretty normal. Many locals take weekend holidays there, but this was the place finding a cheap room was a big problem.

picture 1 in Vietnam, picture 2 in Girona…

picture 1 in Girona, picture 2 in Cadaques

picture 1 in Oakland, picture 2 in Athens…

I hate to admit it, but Rough Guide has really been letting me down lately. The edition I bought was 2004 but northern Spain needs some serious updating.

The last 3 cities I visited, Cadaques, Figueres, and Girona all had pretty bad info on the hotels, or they were closed, which is also frustrating. Today the first one I tried in Girona, the room smelled like poop, and they wanted $40 euros for it. If I had been in a better mood I would have laughed at him.

I will let Rough Guide off the hook however because they pointed me to one of the best meals I had in Spain today for lunch. The plat del dia – a tuna steak, small salad, steamed vegetables(!), some cold quiche thing, bottled water, glass of wine, and dessert of my choice… for $9 euros.

The big feature of Girona is the town itself, a wonderfully preserved medieval city. That part is cool. The second was the Cathedral with a long history, which Rough Guide made the first mention of any kind of it’s organ. So I got excited about going. They charge 4 euros and you can’t take any pictures. Want to know why you can’t take pictures – cause if anyone saw the pictures they probably wouldn’t come hah! It was a let down. The organ, standing in the middle of the room, was a big brown box, with ZERO pipes exposed. The cathedral was, well… another cathedral. Totally ridiculous. what a ripoff.

It seems like Girona is really stretching to convince the public it is a tourist destination. Not recommended.

For dinner I walked back to the square where I had lunch success. There was one bar packed full of people and what looked to be plates of food all over the counter. Score! It was the tapas version of “sushi boats!” Not all tapas but basically food on toast… they have a name for it, I forget. And CHEAP! You eat as much as you want and then they add up your toothpicks at the end. I have finally found some consistently good eats in Spain.

No I won’t be discussing the details of my budget. I will say however, that Spain has sent me waaaay over what I pictured my budget to be. The euro has brought me great pain. Or should I say the Dollar has brought me great pain (Thanks George W.) To give you an idea, when I take 200 euros out of the ATM, it turns out to be $266 u.s. dollars. And I’ve taken a lot of those withdrawals out this month. $266 lasted me so long in SE Asia.

So as I cried into my coffee this morning, gazing into my computer screen at my Bank of America account balances, I realized I need to tighten up for the rest of the week. The real challenge is just trying not to stress about it and enjoy my trip, which is hard for me.

So a historic night in my life – I have made it almost 3 months into my trip – and tonight – I stay in my first youth hostel… ever. pretty funny huh?

So far so good, out of 10 beds in this room only 3 of us here. But I will have to bite the bullet and stay in hostels when i get back to Barcelona too. Ah… youth. What I probably should have done was alternate nights between youth hostels, and normal pensions/hostals (what they call budget hotels in europe that I’ve been staying in) and I probably would have been happier with the results.

That brings me to my next topic – Bank of America.

I have practiced a great deal of restraint in not posting profanity laced tirades earlier in my trip about my Bank, which I used to enjoy in years past. However, their $5 out-of-country ATM fee is one of the highest around. But not just $5, NO, also a 1% additional charge for currency conversion.

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I would like to thank the following people who helped make this once-in-a-lifetime trip possible. Muchos Gracias.

Erika (and secretly Allen) for subletting my apartment. It sounds like they enjoyed it.
My parents for turning me into a travel freak since birth.
Doug for the initial idea, even though he has no idea.
the hundreds of people’s travel blogs I poured over for months before leaving.
Tia for the travel gear.
Tom for the books.
Kate and her 2nd grade classroom for looking after my 20+ fish.
and Kate again for looking after (hopefully) my car, and numerous other supportive comments.

Last but not least, my former employer of 9 years, IDG for financing it with my layoff! I blew through all of my large severance package and counting!!!

One of my ex-coworkers said I should post or send a picture of me giving the double middle fingers on the beach holding a cocktail. I thought I was above it… but I’m still thinking about doing it.

Thanks to my travel companions who I met along the way and kept me sane – Sarah in Hong Kong, Tom and Cristina in Java, Chris in Vietnam, Doug in Thailand, my diving team in Thailand, the Israeli kids in India, Yuki in India, and there were a bunch more I’m forgetting or just met for a short time. All the locals I met – tons in Indonesia, Linh, Sanyawadee, Jeep, Jet, Unni, Collins, Maria, Monica, Ignagi, and of course Joao and Teresa.

thanks.

ah screw it! who needs vegetables. just give me meat and bread! AYE!

After arriving in Barcelona (following a rather scary overnight bus to catch the stupid already-paid-for plane from Madrid), and settling on a decent room, I promptly napped for a few hours, my first real siesta.

After visiting the amazing gothic cathedrals in previous cities, I had at times thought to myself, “they just don’t build them like they used to.” Literally. Churches these days build plain, flat, concrete structures. Obviously money and labor are a problem these days, the King doesn’t exactly pay for them anymore. But what happened to glorious architecture?

I forgot about what was to come in Barcelona…

Per my usual routine, I don’t waste any time in hitting the biggest attraction first thing the next morning. The Temple Expiatiori de la Sagrada Familia. This was another absolutely moving experience on par with Borobudur and Mezquita. It should be incredible when finished, 140 years in the making by the time it’s done… but most of it’s giant predecessors took around 100 years to build.

The trip to the top of the tower, and walk down, was totally worth 2 euros, but not for those with fear of heights. I spent hours here taking in every detail, and reading everything I could. The basement is full of a museum with the fascinating history of what has gone on with the building of the temple, the destruction from the civil war, and other random Gaudi stuff. Also there is the current group of plaster modelers you can see either re-creating Gaudi’s, or creating new models for the building, as Gaudi preferred to work with models instead of drawings. I also spent some time fantasizing about how to get a Sipe organ into there…

After another mediocre tapas lunch, it was too late to go see the Gaudi designed park. I wanted to do that in the morning. So I went to the old town to visit the two churches featuring some of the best gothic architecture in Spain, the cathedral and Santa Maria del Mar. Both were great, but I think I was starting to “cathedral-out.”

Parc Guell in the morning was really nice. But I was not early enough to beat the insane throngs of tourists also wanting to visit. I’d say in Spain the top tourist groups are Italians, Americans, and Japanese. It’s hard to pick the most annoying between the Italians and Americans.

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The similarities between San Francisco and Lisbon are a little startling:

both are one of the furthest western points of the country
both have a large red bridge across a bay
both were almost completely destroyed by an earthquake and fire
both have many hills
both are surrounded by wine growing regions
both present big problems parking a car
both attract many tourists, homeless people, beggars

There are many differences too of course, like the history, but just interesting to note those.

I lost a pretty good amount of weight in the first two months of traveling from all my walking. However, that accomplishment is being threatened by Spain, and definitely by Portugal. It’s a good thing I wasn’t staying there longer!

With my trusty local guides, I was treated to the best of the best of pastries, cheeses, breads, wines, and some Portuguese home cooking! fantastic all of it.

I never did have Spanish sherry, but I think I did better with locally made muscatel in Lisbon. Really tasty apertif wine. I wanted to take some home because it was so cheap, but I knew it would get broken.

Fortunately I was able to take one delicacy home… pata negra, or porco preto from Alentejano!

Black pigs – known as the best pork in the world! They eat acorns from cork trees, and organic grass. We tasted some at a shop that was doing wine and food tasting. The lady was hell-bent selling me some wine, but the shrink wrapped cured black pork seemed more practical to me. It was $20 euros of meat, but tasted amazing, and Teresa confirmed that was a good price, it’s not cheap stuff.

Another surprise was a family dinner with Joao’s family for his sister’s birthday. By family, I mean 16 people in a small apartment! We got more muscatel, more good bread and cheese, and a multi-course meal which included about 6 desserts. ugh. It was great fun, even with only a few English speakers, they made me feel welcome.

Speaking of Portuguese, to me it sounds like a crazy cross between Russian and French, but there’s a few words that are the same as Spanish. I want to go to Brazil in my lifetime, but still seems like a stretch to learn this language. However, it was not that hard to read if you know Latin and a little Spanish, but impossible to speak.

I can’t remember what the oldest thing in my life I’ve ever seen? maybe fossils or something? Oldest living thing? hmmmm. On the road between Azietao and Lisbon, there are several 3000-year-old olive trees! That’s 1000 before Christ, 500 before the Acropolis. The trunks were amazingly fat.

Again, it was so great to have hosts for this part of my trip. To not look at a map, to not deal with public transportation, to not have to learn any words, even if only for a few days, was a welcome relief. Joao and Teresa have been only to Seattle in the U.S. but they were pleasantly surprised at what they found the reality of America to be. Most of the rest of the world does not think of America like it is, more like what they see on t.v. or encounter with tourists. So of course I will play tour guide when they come visit San Francisco which they plan on doing, as part of seeing more of the U.S. and of course rock climbing.

Thanks again you two!