don’t call me a backpacker…

Have you noticed a ridiculous overusage of “Top 5, 10, or 20 lists” in the media over the last few years. Know why? Another symptom of the internet age shortening people’s attention spans and media outlets watering down content to retain readers. They (the lists) annoy the shit of out me.

I’ve noticed upon my return home, that people don’t want to “just” ask me about my trip, because they don’t want to spend more than a few minutes hearing about it, or I must be pretty unbearable. So they ask for a Top 2 instead.

It also amazes me how some supposed friends of mine can’t take 10 minutes out of the last 6 months to even glance at my travels and get an idea of what I did. (you’re all off the hook) Whatever. It was for me, not them.

So without further ado, I reluctantly present to you my Top 6 of my 9 country whirlwind backpacking “don’t call me a backpacker” trip.

6. Lisbon, Portugal – having friends/tourguides made the quick visit of this cool city very thorough, not to mention home cooked meals.

5. The Acropolis, Athens, Greece – yeah

4. diving on Ko Tao, Thailand – an improvised plan that was such a great decision

3. Cordoba, Andalucia, Spain – just a perfect small Spanish town, and the Mezquita was very moving for me. In retrospect maybe it’s just the feeling one gets the first time you see Moorish architecture in person, but still a very special city.

2. Kochi, Kerala, India – the last bastion of old, slow, friendly, beautiful southern India. I sooooooo want to go back and explore more.

drumroll please Anton…

1. Borobudur, Central Java, Indonesia – simply incredible monument surrounded by spectacular scenery.

pictures do not really do it justice. they do not convey feeling.

I took a little break from the blog to get my life back together and finally relax at home. Been pretty busy for being unemployed: drinks with friends (ok i do have a few still), doing my taxes, doing a lot of obsessive-compulsive-grocery-shopping and experimental cooking, had my first job interview today with another tomorrow…

But now I’ve got some free time, the “lost photo” gallery is up. I also found some missing pictures that should have been in previous galleries – so Portugal, Indonesia 2, and Spain 2 have been updated. The pics from my cell phone turned out pretty crappy, but previously overlooked photos include a few gems, like this one…

I took close to 2000 photos. I’m pretty sure that’s more than I’ve taken in the last 10 years combined.

I’ve been working on technical blog stuff this week as well – wordpress updates, and I added a long overdue MAP of my trip in the sidebar! I was trying to get the map going before and during the trip but it just got frustrating finding the right software.

The coolest thing is to zoom in on Java, look in particular the volcanoes, on my map with Google’s satellite pictures. The Mt. Bromo area can be seen perfectly in incredible detail. I attached my pictures so you can see the pictures with the overhead views – pretty damn cool… If you have a lot of time on your hands, Ha Long Bay is also really interesting to see.

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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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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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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There’s at least one enjoyable thing you can count on every single morning in Spain: some of the best fresh squeezed orange juice you’ve ever had IN YOUR LIFE. I kid you not. It’s funny because I was really ignorant about that fact before I came, and then I was like, oh of course, Valencia oranges. But the oranges grow all over the country like weeds.

Other than that, the food on the whole here (there have been some exceptions) in Andalucia has been rather bland.

First, just getting food in Spain is needlessly difficult. Is the place open? No? well then why are there 15 people sitting here? What time is it? Is there a menu? Am I ordering off the right menu for what time it is? Do I order at the bar? Can I sit down? If I sit down will I be charged more euros? Geeesshh!

I guess it’s all part of the culture, and I’m a self-proclaimed culture junkie. So I try to have a sense of humor about it.

I already told you the story about the pig ears (gag.) The tapas have been hit or miss. The salads are just bad, there’s rarely vegetables (except tomatoes) with anything, I can see how this would be a vegetarian nightmare. I haven’t been eating at fancy places of course, just typical cafes and bars which all have food.

The one big exception to this is the seafood near the coast. It was quite good. I had the famous pasado and calamare frito (fried) in Cadiz. The Spanish claim that “take out fried fish” was invented in Cadiz, which of course the British disagree. It was really really good, better than fried fish I had in England for sure.

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