Intermission

I did put some of my Spain photos up on Flickr if you want to check them out.

I've been kinda busy since I got back. What have I been busy doing? Well, it probably took me about a week to get adjusted to the fact that, yes, I did in fact have to go into work every day and had to actually spend eight hours sitting and working and not running off and looking at stuff and having a good time. Because let's face it, vacation is the opposite of work, or at least it should be, and mine was. I did manage to get a handle on cleaning when I got home, but of course after a week, my apartment is once again covered in cat hair. And since we've been having these nights where it doesn't get below ninety degrees, it's not like I feel like cleaning and dragging the vacuum around in that heat.

Things have been going well with C. I find myself worrying about the situation a little almost daily, where is it going, what are we doing, but then I feel like things are fine when I'm with him. I have this huge history of dysfunctional relationships and it makes it a little hard to work on building a functional one, but I feel like I'm going on the right direction. Heather's husband actually approved of him and liked him, unlike everyone else I've ever introduced to them.

Segovia, An Ancient City

When I first went to Europe as a teen, one of the things that people talked about is just how ancient cities in Europe are. In the US, well, there are some cities that are a few hundred years old, and mostly on the east coast. California is one of those places of new construction and earthquake destruction, and there are few remnants of previous eras where I have lived, so I am not used to walking amongst anything but the very recent past at home. In addition to the suckling pig, Segovia, Spain hosted some of the oldest relics that I've ever seen, and had a feeling of centuries gone past. Right on the edge of the city, there is an ancient Roman aqueduct which is still standing. That's what, two thousand years, approximately? And I got to stand by it and touch those stones that were laid by someone who has been dead for millennium.

After being in Madrid for five days, I was citied out. With every spare surface covered in graffiti, and tons of people crammed in, I was very glad to take the one hour bus ride to Segovia and get out of the city. There were a lot of parts of Madrid that just looked like any other urban town, but Segovia was very different. Segovia was full of narrow streets, public squares, tiny buildings jammed in together. I think the most beautiful building in Segovia is the cathedral, and I took many photos on the inside of it, but I wanted to put up a photo of the outside. Whenever I see anything that old like this, I think about construction, and how they didn't really have the sort of equipment contractors have now, and how so much of this was done by hand. The cathedral had bells that went off at random times during the day, and had a 3 euro fee to go in and do the tour of the interior. I would recommend it because it was really beautiful and also very quiet inside, which was really soothing after being in the noisy areas of Madrid.

In addition to the cathedral and aqueduct, Segovia has an ancient alcazar (fortress) left over from when it was a Roman city. The alcazar is right at the top of a really high hill, and you can see out in every direction. The alcazar was a few more euros to visit, but it was pretty interesting with lots of exhibits, examples of old weapons and armor (though pales in comparison to the Tower of London). I think for an extra amount of euros, you could go up to the top of the tower, but DMA and I deemed that an unnecessary expense.

While in the alcazar, there were huge groups of annoying kids and teenagers. I could see why a lot of schools would choose this place as a field trip, but it was annoying to have to listen to them all shouting and pushing and having to walk around them to actually see things. So I was very relieved when I got into the courtyard of the alcazar. It was just a quiet, peaceful place, good for reflection. I imagined it filled with battle regiments, hearing a final lecture by their leader before heading off to battle. And maybe, after seeing too many movies, I imagined what would happen to me if I were suddenly transported back into time and had to fight in those battles. Though I'm pretty sure the women were just doing stuff like working in the kitchen or cleaning the stables, or the upper class women were sitting in a room upstairs, weaving and embroidering and gossiping. Not like I'd really want to be a warrior, but it sounds a bit more interesting.

Traveling On Our Stomachs in Madrid

Even after our return, DMA and I are still debating about which city had better food, Madrid or Barcelona. I just generally liked Barcelona that much more, and I am thinking that probably prejudices me a little bit against Madrid. The absolute best thing about Madrid was in fact the cuisine, which was just awesome.

You can see the counter at the Museo del Jamon that we ate our last night's dinner. I was just amazed at the huge selection of meats (and thinking of certain felines who might like to nibble on said meats) and wondering what the difference in taste would be between a ham that costs 25 euros a serving versus the 7 euros a serving. (I'm not sure what the serving was because it's in metric, but you get the idea.)

I was really glad that we started out in Madrid, because Barcelona is just sunnier and more appealing to me with the beach nearby. Madrid seemed to be covered by graffiti, every surface had tons of it. There was one ATM that I didn't want to use because it was covered in graffiti and there would be no way for me to see the screen.

We did end up getting out of the city for a while, and took a bus ride to Segovia, Spain. Segovia was originally a Roman city, and it has a beautiful cathedral, an alcazar (fortress), and a Roman aqueduct. But really, we went there for the suckling pig. However, I was dismayed that my suckling pig had a hoof attached. The suckling pig meal was kind of odd in that it started with a soup that DMA said had chicken fat/skin floating in it (and I'm not sure that was what it was, but the thought of eating pure chicken fat/skin made me a little ill). Then the main course, the suckling pig which was served with potatoes. This is the one thing that I noticed the most in Spain, that they would almost never put a little vegetable on the side of things. Pretty much every restaurant in America does that attempt at having something a little green or orange or whatever, but not so in Spain. Then I had flan for dessert. Oh did I mention that they brought me a whole bottle of wine for myself, since DMA drank beer or water? I loved Spanish wine, just really flavorful and perfect with the food. It's totally different tasting from California wines that are classified by what grapes are in them. If I had to say, generally the wines I had tasted like a fruity but stronger merlot, maybe if you mixed a zin, a merlot, and a cabernet sauvignon together.

The snack of churros y chocolat seems to be a national dish. I will say that these churros were nothing like the ones they sell in amusement parks in California. They seemed lighter, and really, they were probably way fresher. We went to Chocolateria San Gines which I now read is pretty well known. Calling the beverage hot chocolate doesn't really describe it. It's kind of like fondue but less sweet, and perfect for dipping the churros in. DMA also got me a cappucino which was good. I did try not to over caffeinate while on this trip by drinking coffee anytime except the morning, but this one really hit the spot after a day of death marching. We kept meaning to go back and get more churros y chocolat and figure out why some of the people got different looking churros that were larger, but we didn't make it back there.

DMA and I are good travel companions because we know when to let each other go our separate ways. Usually it was because I was tired of marching around and wanted to check on the internet, and she was tired of me complaining about marching around and lack of internet access. One day when we separated, she came back with this delicious selection of desserts. Before our trip, people had told us not to expect much of desserts in Spain, but we found the experience quite the opposite. The item on top was described by DMA as a "cream burger" because it was a huge layer of cream sandwiched in a bun-like thing. Also there were palmier cookies dipped in chocolate and a thing that was kind of like a pain au chocolat. Even being hungry, these ginormous desserts were too much for us and didn't all end up getting devoured by the time we left our Spanish apartment.

While in Spain, we made an effort to eat "Spanish food" but we did end up having dinner at an Italian place our second night in Madrid. As I mentioned, they aren't big on serving vegetables on the side in Spain, and we ordered a spinach salad that was a few leaves of spinach covered by bacon and avocado. Yes, it was tasty. And we had pizza. Then after dinner, the owner/chef/whatever he was of the restaurant brought out these two bottles of liqueur and two glasses. I ended up drinking way more than DMA because she didn't like the anise flavored one, and we stumbled back to our apartment, somewhat full and fairly drunk. I think that was the only time we had hard alcohol, but I still managed to stumble back fairly drunk several times.

Post-Trip Sans Photos

I really do need to update but part of why I haven't is because I still need to go through all of my photos and add captions and upload some of them to flickr and figure out which ones I'm going to be putting up here. That and I've been somewhat busy and somewhat jet-lagged and feeling just like I'm not in the right space-time for things. And here I am, back at my first day at work, and dragging my ass until 5 PM, trying to remember exactly how I do my job. I'm still not totally adjusted to California time, so I keep waking up in the middle of the night, really hungry, but when I wake up in the morning, I'm not that hungry. I assume some of that is because of having the travel day of eating 5 meals and my appetite will some day return to normal.

See, I was supposed to arrive to LA on Thursday and then have about 24 hours there before heading back home to San Jose. However, DMA and I got trapped overnight in Charles de Gaulle airport because our flight from Barcelona to CDG was delayed by almost 4 hours. And when we got in, they basically said, nope, we can't put you on a flight until the next morning. Ah, forced stay in Paris, the horror, at Air France's expense. Well, if you realize that CDG is like an hour out of Paris, and we were just totally exhausted from spending all day at the freaking airport, who wants to take that one hour train ride? We did end up walking around the small village where our hotel was a little bit, primarily because we didn't have access to our checked baggage and needed things. The hotel was pretty bad, particularly since my room had a toliet that went from continuously flushing to not flushing at all and the staff was pretty unreceptive to fixing it. The hotel was filled with other refugees who had missed their flights. I figure the first class passengers end up at a swankier place.

By the time I got back to LAX on Friday, I ended up having just a few hours to wait for my flight to San Jose, so I just hung out at the airport and tried not to fall asleep or drink coffee. I did buy a four dollar bottle of water. Finally, I got back to San Jose and Heather picked me up. After we dropped my suitcases off (which thankfully did make it back with me), we had some sushi and then it was off to sleep. I did sleep a wee bit on the plane but it still felt like the longest day of my life.

Hrm, this is funny, line by line synopsis of the least interesting parts of the whole story. Anyway, C came over on Saturday night and took me out to dinner and that was great. I think when you've just been dating someone for what, about six weeks and then leave town for about three weeks of being practically incommunicado, well, I don't think it was much of a problem. I even dragged him to a party thrown by Heather on Sunday and he seemed to survive it, so we shall see.

Anyway, I will get to working on the photos and whatnot and have some vacation related posts up soon.

Am Home

Trip home was mad. More later.

Tired Feet & Tapas

DMA has been living up to her nickname and keeping me marching around a lot.  I think the hardest was the day we walked up to the Park Guell because that was just all uphill.  Everything else has added some pain on top of that.  Yesterday we walked through La Rambla and along the shore, staring at the Mediterranean.  I didn´t poke my toe in, mostly because I wasn´t wearing the right kind of shoes, and also didn´t want to walk through the sand.  I read in some guidebook that before the 1992 Olympics, it was kind of a scummy area but now it has been improved.  It looked very nice but some spots were super touristy.  I ended up hitting up what seemed like either an endless line of flea market stalls or a bunch of separate flea markets for some gifting purposes, and found a perfect gift for my mom at a really touristy shop.  I got a few gifts for C so far, nothing serious, but I think a good representative.  DMA and I were both remarking about how we don´t usually get so many gifts, but felt like we had to since we´d both been talking about this trip for so long.  Sadly, I cannot take any foodstuffs home, or at least no ham, so you will have to take my word for how good it is.

Greetings from Barcelona

It is probably safe to say that I love Barcelona and I was lukewarm on Madrid.  I think it didn´t help that we were in this somewhat sketchy neighborhood in Madrid, but also every neighborhood there seemed a bit sketchy.  It was very urban in a sense of a lot of prostitutes and graffiti, and noise every hour of the day.  It doesn´t seem so in Barcelona.  We are at a really nice hotel that is not that expensive per day and it´s pretty quiet here.  I have yet to see any prostitutes here, though perhaps they are the high-class kind.

Anyway, so far in Barcelona, we have had three great meals and seen two great sites.  Today we walked to Sagrada Familia from our hotel and then took the metro to the garden designed by Gaudi.   It was an all Gaudi day.  I ended up buying a ton of souvenirs (though no lace for a certain cat was found as of yet) and got stuff for myself.  Which kind of sucks because I´m having some problems getting money as of now.  I haven´t been able to use my main ATM card thus far in Barcelona and I even both phoned my bank and tried an online chat and they said it should work just fine, but so far it has yet to work.  I have another account but it´s not full of funds, so this is somewhat frustrating and will cut into my souvenir buying, considering my main credit card is also tied to this ATM and I had a mild fit which DMA got to witness.  As I told her, the two things you don´t mess with are money and death.  Anything else can be found amusing.  

I think someone is waiting to use this computer, which is the free one in our hotel, so I probably should be kindly and eventually log off.  I am happy to have free internet access but I don´t want to abuse it.  Oh yup, he gave me a super dirty look.  Okay, catch you all later.

Museo del Jamon

We had dinner at the museum of ham tonight, well it´s not really a museum so much as a gigantic butchery plus bar plus restaurant. We mostly ordered tapas-style things which was plenty. Portions are huge here in Madrid. I took a bunch of photos which I will eventually sort through and upload.

I have to say, I´m not sure I´d ever come back to Madrid or recommend it. There have been things I like but on the whole, the city is filled with noise and annoyance, and reminds me of some of the worst parts of American cities. The city that never sleeps because it is too busy wallowing in its own graffiti. You seriously see it everywhere here. I even passed on an ATM because there was too much graffiti over it to see the screen. I don´t know, maybe I´m less urban than I think, but I miss having that kind of quiet that even San Jose has.

We are off to Barcelona tomorrow. More news from there.