the illustrated entry

So I uploaded a whackload of photos this weekend going way back to France...here are some highlights.

The town at the base of Mont St Michel:



Macarons d'Amiens...we bought a bag of these in Amiens and slowly worked our way through them. They don´t look like much but they're so delicious you think you could eat 10, but they're so rich two a day is actually the limit.


A canister of Anti-Gas ointment from a WWI museum:


These stones were very sad, part of a memorial to the unknown dead of WWI. We visited another small military cemetery nearby which had stones that ran the gamut...sometimes it would list the full name and regiment and date of death, others had only regiment and date of death, others had country only, some had date of death only and no country even. This would all have been based on the information that could be recovered from the body at the time.


This is what the land looks like at Vimy Ridge...most of it is planted with trees and has signs cautioning people to keep off the land because of the possibility of unexploded land mines.


That little sign stuck in the ground marks the spot where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen, France.


A lot of the buildings in Rouen´s old city look like this.


More from Carnival in Tolosa, Spain - I love the look on this girl´s face.


Nuns at the Guggenheim in Bilbao.


Sunset in Barcelona:


Crazy-looking seahorse at the Barcelona Aquarium:


Aww, look at them. So compatible:



Gaudi´s Sagrada Familia in Barcelona:



Alicante - we tried to climb this and got about halfway up to discover that all the gates were locked and we couldn´t go any further. Mom and Dad later took the lift up to the top:


The Alhambra in Granada:




Las Fallas is a festival that happens every March in Valencia. I belive that people make giant papier mache figures and then at the end of it all but one are burned (the one that´s saved is voted on by the people). It´s a huge huge party. I wanted to go but it´s impossible to find accommodations on short notice so I didn´t end up going until Monday, the day after it ended. At the hostel we met people who had come in a few days earlier and either slept on the beach or didn´t sleep at all so maybe that could have been an option.
Anyway, this seems to be the one that survived this year. It was out in a square on Monday (and for at least the next couple of days...I don´t know long it stays out) - the square was thronged with tonnes of poeple taking photos. They were mostly elderly, I don´t know why...maybe all the younger people were still recovering from the night before?

la cucaracha

That does mean the cockroach doesn't it?

So I'm happily ensconced in my new Barcelona digs for (hopefully) the next couple weeks. It's really big, in an incredible location just on the edge of the Raval, I don't have to pay a lot (it's much cheaper than a hostel), I get my own room which is not nearly as small as I was led to believe, the guys who live here are cool (skateboards in the hallway, lots of Afghan Whigs and Archers of Loaf albums in the iTunes library, and daily downloads of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report), good sized kitchen with a gas stove...and a big ass cockroach running around on top of said stove. We met when I lifted the water pot off the burner and saw something move out of the corner of my eye.
Two years of living in Palais Lansdowne with my furry little grey friends taught me that when you think you see something move out of the corner of your eye, your eye is probably not playing tricks on you.

Mr. Cucaracha is about 3/4 of an inch long and a rusty brown colour. He's wily and hard to catch once he sets his mind to it...oh it might look like he's just bumbling around on the stove top with no particular destination in mind, but when you rush out to grab some paper to squish him with he will find a hidey hole and then you'll be sorry. Update! I went back in later and found like 4 more Cucarachas running around on the stove. The guys say they see them occasionally...I must be super lucky to get such a show on my first day!

Anyway, this is a new and interesting experience, I've never really lived with roaches before. I'll let you know how it goes.

In other news, Valencia was nice. Even though I was about 12 hours late and missed the end of Las Fallas I was still met (unexpectedly) at the train station by the friend (who is currently cycling down the coast) I had just stood up for lunch...he decided to stay in Valencia and take a day off from the ride so I got an instant companion and a guide to take me to the hostel. This is not to be undervalued as the instructions to get to the hostel as defined online are something like this: "when you get out of the train station turn right and take three steps then look to your left. You will see a building that looks sort of like a castle. Walk toward it until you get to the Citibank, then turn left. Jump up and down seven times. Walk 150 paces until you see the statue of elvis and then close your eyes and quack like a duck. Open your eyes, walk for 10 meters, and voila! Knock on the red door and we'll buzz you in."

I exaggerate only slightly. The odd thing is that the directions generally do work, it's just a pain playing Treasure Map with a backpack strapped on your back.

The weather in Valencia was fantastic - on Tuesday it must have been in the high 20s (according to one sign it was even 30 degrees at one point) and sunny, we walked to the beach assuming that if a city's built on the sea the beach can't be too far from downtown. More than an hour and several blisters later (note to self: do not walk anywhere in flip flops ever again) we found the beach. It was nice, if a little powdery (still finding sand in the pockets of my jeans), so we drank a little sangria, lay in the sun for a little while, and then headed back. The buses in Valencia have televisions in them.

yo soy stupido

Travel tip #4 from your friendly neighbourhood idiot:
Read the train ticket carefully. Think about what the numbers written on it mean.
For example, 20:15 is not 10:15 p.m., it is 8:15 p.m.
If you fail to do this you run the risk of realizing, at 8:10 p.m. while you are using the bathroom in your hostel, that 20 is 8 and that you have 5 minutes to get on the train.
You can always try to do what I did, which was to run out of the bathroom screaming "oh my god call me a taxi!" at the hostel guys who grabbed my bags for me and ran me out to the square where the taxis are, only to find that because of the film festival taxis are rare tonight and the only one that came by was scooped by some jerk from North America who said "I was here first". Finally I got a taxi who drove like mad to the station but alas, I was 5 minutes late.
Then came the fun part which was trying not to cry while the ticket guys tried to change the ticket for me only to discover that everything from Malaga to Valencia is booked up until Tuesday and that because I missed the train I can't get a refund (because I would like to try to take the bus), they can only change it to the next available ticket. Finally I was able to find someone who spoke english behind the counter and he arranged for me to leave tomorrow morning and go through Cordoba, but I will still get to Valencia tomorrow afternoon. Not bad.
Then there was the triumphant return to the hostel where at least I was treated to free sangria and sympathy...and a reduction on the price for tonight (so nice).
So that's what...10 euros in taxis plus 13 euros in ticket supplements plus 10 euros for a place to sleep...33 euros or about $50.

Stupidity is expensive.

the rain in spain...

...falls mainly on Malaga.
I don't know if this is normal but it hasn't really stopped raining since I arrived. There have been brief breaks in the rain but it always seems to start up again. This has made it difficult to see the city but what I have seen is pretty nice and I think I'll come back later on.

I arrived on Friday which coincidentally was the first day of the Malaga Film Festival and the main theatre (the one with the red carpet and screaming crowds and Spanish film stars that I don't recognize) is about 2 blocks away from the hostel. Walking around the first night I came across this scene and of course had to settle in to watch. I think I saw the woman from Y Tu Mama Tambien and then got very excited thinking that maybe her costars would appear but if they were there I didn't see them. I kept waiting for Antonio Banderas to appear (I don't know if he's in attendance but apparently this is his home town) but since I couldn't see over the crowd anymore, and it was raining, I gave up and went home.

After 2 very late nights in Granada (and with the sneaking suspicion that I was getting a cold) I told myself that I was going to be a good girl and go to bed early. I forgot that it was Friday. And St. Patrick's Day. So I went down to the lounge and in two or three hours found myself with a group of others at an Irish Pub swilling Heiniken. How does this happen? I don't know. But I managed to extricate myself at the reasonable hour of 3 a.m. (I don't know what the deal is with liquor laws here in Spain but I haven't heard anything about 'last call' since I arrived)

There are a few french guys staying and working here so I've been practicing with them...it's hard though. One guy I can barely understand (too bad too because he's really cute...okay I have to go off on a tangent here. Before I came to Spain all I heard about was the hotness of Spanish men. Someone needs to answer for this because I feel I have been misled. Don't get me wrong, there are many attractive people in this country but in a contest of 'hot guys seen on the street on any given day' I think France wins, hands down.)

The rain yesterday was unbelievable but it let up a little in the evening and we met up with this great Welsh couple we had met the night before for drinks. It's great to go out with people who actually live in a place because they've already tested it and know where to go and what to do. They've also generously offered me a place to stay if I come back and since I would like to see Malaga in the sun I think I will take them up on that when I come back south.
We went to a great place (all big wooden tables and stools and tiled walls) for tapas and then to El Pimpi, a very cool bar that in addition to being Antonio Banderas' favourite bar in Malaga is also room after room after patio after room of bar. I think it must be two or three buildings spliced together because rooms just seem to breed other rooms. Also it has this great wall with photos of famous visitors including one of Tony Blair crouching next to or hugging a cask or something, looking like a dork.

Around 1 I really wasn't feeling well so went home all excited about the great fantastic 10 hour sleep I was going to have. What I got were an Italian couple whispering to each other from their bunks, drunken idiots screaming and breaking bottles in the street outside at 3 a.m., a roommate who came home at 4 a.m., a couple people who packed up their stuff and left around...I don't know...but it was too early. Note to anyone who stays in a hostel. Don't pack all of your stuff in fucking noisy plastic bags. And don't put them in your backpack, and then pull them out, and put them back in again...etc etc. How many times can one person insert and remove a plastic bag from a backpack? A lot of times as I discovered this morning. Really, if you're leaving early and you're only there for one night, why would you unpack all your shit in the first place? Anyway. Needless to say the anticipated 10 hour sleep did not happen.

I'm sure I'll be able to make up for it tonight though, when I hop on the 10:30 train that arrives in Valencia at around 5 a.m. tomorrow...if I'm lucky Las Fallas will still be happening and I might see something burn!

After that, looks like the cheap room in Barcelona is on so I will probably stay there for a couple weeks at least. Of course this all depends on the guys I'm staying with (I've not met them before) and the room itself...hopefully it's not a closet with a mattress on the floor! But I hope for good things.

Finally I may also have a local tour guide in the form of Mr Louis Vuitton sac (aka mr. soccer game or mr. darcy) who has sent me an email indicating he would "love to see" me. Frankly I find this a bit dodgy as I was neither looking my best nor at my most charming that night. To be honest I was pretty drunk on beer and sangria (and I was not alone....Mom...) and my lazy eye was probably in full effect. Maybe he has a thing for cross-eyed girls. We shall see.

Grrrranada

My time in Granada can be divided into two phases: pre-parental-departure and post-parental-departure.

Granada in the time of the parents:
- a 'friendly' taxi driver who offered to take us to see flamenco on our first night in town and who took the very very scenic (i.e. 30 Euro) route there and back
- getting dropped off at the flamenco place about an hour before the show started (mr. taxi driver kindly offered to take us to see the view of the Alhambra at night to kill time before the show...meter running of course. we had to turn that kind offer down) and being the only three people there while dancers warm up. It's not so bad however as we have a pretty good view of the Alhambra under the nearly full moon anyway. At the very last minute two huge busloads full of Canadian and Japanese students pull up and the place is suddenly full.
- the show is fine, the music and dancing are good, but the whole thing is so bizarre and calculated in this long narrow cavelike room lined with tourists, copper pots and pans hanging from the ceiling...I feel kind of like a john. The music is extremely percussive with a guitarist and a singer and a drummer and everyone else in the group clapping complicated rhythms and I find myself unable to not tap my feet to the rhythm and so I am shocked, shocked! to look down the rows of feet and legs lining the room and see not one single other foot or knee or hand moving in the audience. It must be like dancing for dead people. The second group of dancers is older and really very good...it includes a very old woman who gets up near the end of the set and sings and dances for us which is pretty cool. Then comes the 'audience monkey dance' portion of the evening as one of the dancers goes around the room pulling various audience members up one at a time to dance a few seconds with her. Maybe it's because these people are not wearing the right shoes but holy shit they can't dance. Not that I would have done any better but the contrast is pretty striking.
- the Alhambra monument is pretty amazing and we spend about 5 hours there wandering around the grounds and palaces and ruins and towers and beautiful gardens. There's an outdoor stairway in the Generalife area (the sultan's private garden I believe) with running water coursing through hollowed out railings and the sound it makes is amazing.
- we see the tombs of Ferdinand and Isabel who, among other things, financed Columbus' 'discovery' of the Americas. Also of their loco daughter 'Joan the Mad' who really loved her philandering husband, even after he was dead....
- the cathedral is beautiful and bright and a welcome change after all the gothic grey and stone of France

Granda after the parents go back to Madrid and then Saskatchewan (bye Mom and Dad! I had a great time, and thanks for all the beer, Popeye!)
- move to a hostel in a different part of town and immediately fall into the routine of lazy lazy days and staying up till 4 or 5 am every morning
- spend the days reading the papers in a sunny square with a big fountain in the middle, watching the streams of hippies and punks and uncategorizable dudes with mullets (the mullet is back with a serious vengance here in Spain...or maybe it just never went away. it's scary, though maybe not quite as scary as Toronto hipsters with ironic mullets and hideous 80s eyeglasses that cover half the face)
- wonder at the group of three skinny formless 11 year old girls who come to the square every day with a boom box and a stack of cds and who perform a grotesque parody of 'sexy' dancing to Destiny's Child songs and bad spanish dance music when they should be in school.
- find myself at 2 a.m. in an empty bar which looks like a flamenco cave...my companions start performing impromptu spoken word and then a couple guys show up with a drum and then a bunch of other guys show up with a guitar and we hear some real flamenco unexpectly in this place we thought was going to be a reggae bar...
- standing on the roof at 5 a.m. with James Dean (who, in case you were wondering, has been reincarnated as a precocious 23 year old from Chicago) looking over the city under a huge fat bright moon and stars after drinking beer all night...

Now I'm off to Malaga. See you there.

what was Hieronymus Bosch smoking?

After an 8 hour train ride from San Sebastian I met my parents in Madrid and we set out to drink as much beer and Baileys as possible.
I had many many problems with the language (Uno caña, s´il vous plait) and accidentally ordered giant plates of cheese for dinner, not once, but twice.

We spent hours and hours in the Prado with its crazy Bosch paintings....the Garden of Earthly Delights seemed to have nearly as large a crowd as the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. I was eventually able to get up close and personal with this incredibly weird piece of work, but you´d need hours to inspect the whole thing. Nevertheless it was very very cool.
The Prado is so huge and there is so much to see that I didn´t see it all unfortunately (I did see most of it though, and it was incredible). I don´t think I had ever seen any paintings by El Greco before and I really liked them a lot. The colours were fantastic.
We also went to the Reina Sophia which houses Picasso´s Guernica (which was pretty cool to see after seeing reproductions for so long) and the Thyssen-Bornemisza where I could have spent two days giving myself a private art history degree. As it was I ran out of time on the middle floor and had to rush through the impressionists.

To break up all the cultcha we wandered around the city checking out the Puerto del Sol, Placa Mayor etc etc (and our hotel was in a perfect location for all this walking, literally down the street from the Thyssen museum).

It seems to be a universal law that if you´re wandering around at night and you don´t really know where you´re going you WILL eventually end up in a red light district. We took a nice walk down a little street lined with lovely young ladies, me thinking...hmmm, there must be a club around here or something, everyone is all dressed up. Hmmmm, why are there so many groups of girls standing along the side of the street? Why is that girl pulling on my dad´s sleeve? O my GOD! And so on.

Madrid was cool but after three days it was time to hit Barcelona. Really we didn´t do a lot but since the weather was nicer than in Madrid we could do our drinking outside. We also spent a lot of time walking up and down La Rambla checking out the Michael Jackson impersonator, the living statues, and the red-faced and drunken Chelsea Boys who had come to town to support their team in a match against FC Barcelona. Maybe it´s because all of the good ones stay home, but this glimpse of english manhood makes my heart go out to the women of England. Sad, sad, sad to see these sad packs of 40 year old men roving the city, drooling and shouting incomprehensibly.
This level of madness made us think it was a final game but it turned out to be a semifinal or something...we found an american style bar and grill where most of the tables were reserved for the game but as we arrived early and were such wide-eyed strangers to the game of football our waiter let us have the last unreserved table to watch the game at. The bar started filling up with Barcelona supporters and the staff were turning people away. I went to the bathroom and when I came back Mom was chatting up a very very pretty man who had been seated at the extra seat at our table (how on earth she managed that I will never know). He was very nice, even though he was carrying one of those preposterous Louis Vuitton man-pouches. He tried to explain the game to us and offered to show me around the town when I come back to Barcelona.
Then, suddenly, I was trapped in a Jane Austen novel as my mother, Mrs. Bennet, went at him.
"Soooo, do you have a family?"
"Yes, my family is in Barcelo..."
"No, what I mean is ARE YOU MARRIED?"
"Oh. I am divorced."
"Ahhh...and what do you do for a living?"
"I have a communications and internet company."
"Oh! My daughter here studied communications and used to work with the internet!"

She was practically rubbing her hands together...okay, sorry Mom, I´m exaggerating. But not much! Poor guy...though I did get a pretty man´s phone number out of the deal so I guess it´s not all bad.

The game was great fun to watch as the bar was full of Barcelona supporters who went mad when they scored in the second half.

After a few days in Barcelona we decided to head to the heat and bought train tickets to Alicante along the coast where it is finally finally hot. Around 26º during the day and 20º at night...I lay on the beach this afternoon and caught the first sunburn of the year, may it be the first of many.
We´re here for a couple more nights (we got a pretty sweet room at a cute little hotel here) and then I think we´re off to Granada.

¿comment on dit "mardi gras" en espagnol?

I landed in San Sebastian very tired after taking about 5 different trains to get there (I´m sure there´s a much easier way...), trudged along the river to the hostel and immediately met a batch of new people. One guy was headed to the nearby town of Tolosa to check out the last day of the Carnival (it was fat tuesday/mardi gras or however you say it in spanish) so we got a small group together and headed out.

On the train somebody said "are you sure it´s still happening tonight? it´s been going all week, i think last night was the last night..." at which point we all realized we had no idea, contemplated getting off the train at the next stop and not bothering. eventually decided to cross our fingers and hope for the best. hopes were heightened when a group of children in costume boarded the train a few stations down the line, and we knew we were in the right place when we got off at Tolosa station and started seeing sights like this:




It was like halloween but with a team theme, we saw groups of chickens, obese synchronized swimmers, gay orchestras, vikings (with a huge boat float, it spewed out smoke and everything. like a viking disco) and children in animal costumes:





There was a whole group of people in blackface which was...interesting:


We went dancing in a little bar and this kid went loco and tried to kill us all!


Lots and lots of marching bands all over town:


Scary clowns:


And, finally, dubious foreigners attempting to blend in:


We drank massive 7 Euro beers, met up with one guy´s spanish teacher and her friends, danced on a sawdust covered floor, wandered around taking it all in, dancing in the street, grabbing a couple candles and joining the sardine´s funeral procession which wound all through the town finally ending up in a square where we watched them bury the sardine:



The blurriness of the photos is entirely due to the darkness, and has no connection to the volume of beer that was consumed over the course of the evening.

Eventually, maybe around 1? we decided it was time to head home and went to the train station only to discover that it was closed and there were no late trains tonight. Taxi or hotel? Hotel or taxi? We decided on the taxi option which was an adventure in speed (i´m sure he was going 150 km).

The next day we all got up sort of late, and went wandering around town later in the afternoon, drinking beer on the beach and climbing the hill when the sun same out and we saw sights like this:


That night I joined in on the ´regular´ wednesday poker game (currently in week number 2)....I don´t know how to play poker but that didn´t stop me from winning my very first hand with a full house. After screwing up several hands by bidding out of order and forgetting to BURN before I TURNED I finally got the hang of it, sort of. I won a couple more hands but that didn´t stop me from losing my 5 euros after a couple hours. Oh well, I was there for the cheap scotch anyway.

The next day went to Bilbao with Rianne, a nice young lady from Edmonton and my roommate in San Sebastian...the bus ride is ridiculously expensive to get there (16 euros round trip) and I don´t have much to say about Bilbao itself but yes, the Guggenheim is a magnificent building. Unfortunately the entire second floor was closed because they´re installing an exhibit but they had a couple of really really nice Rauschenberg things on display and a GREAT exhibit of photographs - 4 rooms full of photos of or featuring hands. Some of it was really beautiful.

Then we went back to the hostel where I developed a ridiculously high fever and went to bed early (I also had to catch an 8:30 train to Madrid), and was not able to take part in that night´s festivities...all I know is that they came home around 4 a.m....I wonder what kind of mischief they all got up to?

Conclusion: San Sebastian...A very good time, and I didn´t even eat much tapas.

Bayeux and Mont St Michel

The weekend in Bayeux was chill and I mean that literally...the only place I could get warm was in the shower. You might think that when the temperature is hovering around 2 degrees most restaurants and cafes would keep the doors closed. And you would be incorrect. And you would be cold, so so so cold all of the time, everywhere. And you would ask yourself: ¨Self, you´re from Canada. You´re supposed to be able to handle this kind of shit. What are you, some kind of sissy?" And then you would be forced to admit that yes, you are a complete failure when it comes to dealing with cold temperatures, you don´t understand these french freaks and their obsession with fresh air, and you decide to get the hell out of there.

Got up early Monday morning and took the train to Pontorson or as I like to call it "the gateway to Mont St Michel". The lockers at the train station were of course not operational but the train master (don´t know if that´s an official title, but I like it) took pity on me and let me store my bag in a spare room for the day. Then he tried to explain where I had to go to wait for the bus, I pretended to understand and walked outside...wandered around for awhile and then approached the first person I saw "Pardon, je cherche l´autobus a Mont St Michel." The look of horror on the poor guy´s face at being addressed in french made me realize that this was no frenchman....indeed it was Kohhei from Japan who was also waiting for the bus. He was carrying around his huge backpack still and when he found out I was able to dump it in the train station took off running in that direction. Unfortuntely he came back a few minutes later with the pack still on his back as the train master said no way...I guess a little french and some long eyelashes help in a situation like that. Good thing I mascaraed that morning.

Mont St Michel was pretty cool but I´m not sure you need a whole day unless you want to see the tides come and go. We were there for about 5 or 6 hours (trapped by the bus schedule) and managed to see all of the church at the top, walk around, get kicked out of one restaurant for not wanting to spend enough money on lunch, finallly go somewhere else to eat some crepes, THEN get kicked out of ANOTHER restaurant for only wanting to drink coffee, and wander around desperately looking for a warm place to drink coffee. We finally find the latter but not the former in a little hole in the wall run by a nice Corsican dude who tells me I need to go there. There are tonnes of Japanese tourists on this particular day and Mr. Corsica tells us that different nationalities visit at different times of year.
A minor stir is caused by a Japanese television crew which is wandering around the site led by two pretty young presenters....they have picked up a trail of people of all nationalities who follow them around through the narrow streets.....we see them go by and Kohhei runs outside to see if he recognizes them, but alas no.

Finally we leave to catch the bus....it takes a while to get back to Pontorson and Kohhei has missed his train by approximately 30 seconds (literally he was on the wrong side of the track and couldn´t get around in time I think). So I get to continue practicing french and we work out how the Train Master can change his tickets because now he´s going to miss all kinds of connections. Eventually everything is worked out and the Train Master and I bid Kohhei adeiu....hope you had a good time in Lyon! Thanks for the company at Mont St Michel!

Then begins a stage of the day I like to think of as "waiting in the unheated train station, with vagrants." It is really ·$·%//&% cold in the station and the only room with benches in it is not the nice well lit one shared with the Train Master´s booth. No, it is the lowlit colder backroom populated with various men of various scents and various respiratory ailments. Coughing up and spitting out various mysterious substances. It was a happy two hours.

Finally I boarded the train for Rennes, then caught my connection to Paris, THEN boarded my overnight train bound for Bayonne (and beyond as I later learned).

Sleeper cars are pretty comfortable (I can´t stay awake on a train anyway) but that doesn´t mean you get to take your sweet damn time when they call your station at 6 am. Because if you do, Sleeping Beauty, you will still be putting your shoes on when theÿ announce "next stop, Biarritz" and the train starts to move out of YOUR station. And then you will get to spend the morning in the train station in Biarritz.

From Biarritz I took another train to Hendaye, which I now believe to still be in France but for a little while I seriously was not sure which country I was in (french didn´t work anymore for communication) and then caught another train to the deceptively named Donostia (this seems to be the Basque code word, or name, for San Sebastian. Good to know).

And that is how I got to Spain.