Malta: a little bit of everything good

Every time I set up to start one of these recap posts -- I'm not gonna lie -- I feel the weight of this just... immeasurable task bearing down on me.  I have to talk about five days, and make it interesting, funny even, and true.  I have to link pictures, and caption them wittily.  Egad.  And all for you people.

Of course, I say it's for you, but really it's for ME, so I have a record.  So I can look back and remind myself how awesome my life was, at some future time when it sadly but inevitably will not be nearly as awesome.  For truth, I have been having legit nightmares recently about my old boss, Ursula.  Someday I will have to go back to all that (not to HER, but you know what I mean), but you better believe I will be eating up the company's bandwidth stalking my own blog for hours upon hours at a time.

It makes my stomach hurt thinking about it.

But for now -- for tonight -- I happen to be sitting in a very crummy common room in Genoa (Genova?), Italy.  Italy has both charmed and challenged me so far, made me fall in love with her all afresh and then immediately done something completely unnecessary and obnoxious to test the exact limits of how far my love truly goes.  And man, I do love her, but she is a solid brat at times.  And I miss the hostels in Spain and Portugal.  Also the prices.  My stars, the lovely prices in Spain....

But before all that, we must bridge the gap from Spain to Italy, and that takes us to the tiny, very white, very hot island of Malta, smack in the middle of the Med.

... I just plain don't feel like doing a blow-by-blow Hemingway-esque recreation this time around though, I gotta be honest.  "I walked through the hot bright sun and it was very hot, so I wiped my brow and walked into a cool dark cafe and ordered a whiskey and water.    I sat at one of the wicker tables outside while the waiter took his time and I wiped my brow again and thought about..."

No no no.  Just... no.  Five days is a lot to tackle that way, for one thing, and frankly, while I did have a pretty darn good time in Malta, the days do not exactly merit that kind of attention.  I took a fair bit of time off, in fact.  I took a couple naps.  I spent a lot of time planning for my future (that future being Italy, not any kind of real responsible future).

I got Italy all squared away, from my flight in to my flight out, from Rome to Athens on November 18.  This works out so very, very well, because it means I will have my Hobbit Coming-of-Age birthday in ROME.  Yep, Mama turns 33 soon (amazing, how did I ever let this happen), and I will dull the knife edge of another passing year by ordering my one no-holds-barred, throw-in-the-towel Italian dinner, in Rome.  It's going to be epic.

Before Rome though, it goes:  Pisa, Cinque Terre, Genoa, Verona, Venice, Florence, Naples, Sorrento.  I think that's a pretty damn fine list, if I do say so myself.  I will do day trips to Siena from Florence and to Vesuvius and Pompeii from Naples.  Amalfi Coast from Sorrento.  I wanted to stay in Siena and skip Florence altogether, since I was there in '09 and it didn't impress me, but fuck if there were ANY hostels in Siena at all.  So, to Florence it is.  I feel pretty good to have it all squared away, and now have a few weeks until I need to plan my next and last leg, to Greece.

But anyway, that happened, and it took a fair few hours, let me tell you.

But man, I am probably going to lose you if I don't pony up some mind-blowing photos of awesomeness soon, right?  Here's one:

That sailboat chaos, apparently, was the warm-up for the Rolex Middle Sea Race.  We watched in horrified fascination waiting for a truly epic sailboat collision  but it never happened, and I guess that is because we were watching some true pros in action.  606 nautical miles around Sicily!!

Brian and Melissa were impeccable hosts.  I knew Brian from way back, we had the same friends in college and played many a beer pong tournament.  I was just meeting his wife Melissa for the first time, but she was instantly awesome.  Brian and Melissa had rented this amazing white limestone house that my sister (when I skyped with her) said looked like a medieval castle.  She wasn't far off!

View from their roof!

We did a ton in the five days I was there... which honestly is kind of impressive considering there also was all that incredible lovely downtime.  We visited the St. Paul Catacombs, which were huge and incredibly creepy.  I just want to know -- where did all those bodies go??  Loved this... and especially loved that being three instead of one, I had the courage to venture with my companions into an area that may not have been expressly for us... I would be really interested to see how huge these things really are.

They just kind of went on and on and on.

We toured an old monastery that had quite a beautiful chapel.  Outside we could hear horses going by in carriages and people shouting in Maltese, and we joked that when we stepped back outside we would have gone back 500 years.

Dome in the chapel.

We toured all the old cities:  Mdina, Valletta, Sliema...

Wall around Mdina, the old capital.

Just hangin' out in Valletta.

Valletta, being gorgeous.

Visited the Presidential Palace and adjoining public gardens...

Presidential Palace

Brian and awesome dawg Janus in the gardens.

Acting my age, again.

And... one of my very favorite things (as you well know by now)... we had a beach day!!  At lovely Golden Bay, and we even splurged on a taxi to get us there.  I finally got my proper swim!  Two of them, in fact.  The water was cold at first but you acclimated almost immediately, and I just could not get over the fact that it was the last half of October and I was paddling around in my very own saltwater swimming pool.  No joke, the water was utterly crystal clear.  The clearest I've seen since Eleuthera,  (Although the sand in the Bahamas was whiter. :) )  It was a perfect day... not too hot, not too crowded.  We shared a bottle of wine and watched the sun set.

Never get tired of shots like these.

And then... there was the FOOD.  Oh my goodness, the food.  We ended up eating in a fair bit, which I was so completely jazzed about after a month and a half of restaurants and hostel dinners.  My first night we had chicken kebabs... the second night it was wine and cheese night along with some super spicy garlicky homemade salsa... and then, then was the chicken curry.

Melissa made chicken curry on Beach Day... slow-cooked the chicken all day while we were out and then made up the curry sauce when we got home.  Perfectly honest here people -- this may very well have been the best chicken curry I have ever, ever eaten.  Plenty of heat, balanced out with just the right amount of sweetness from the coconut milk... OMG.  And the second-best part -- we got to have the leftovers for lunch the next day!!

There were a couple nights out, balanced quite comfortably with nights in.  The three of us went to a wine bar one evening and had us a grand old time.

I adored this night, because it ended with Brian and I watching three episodes of Doctor Who right where I'd been forced to leave off!!!

My last full night, we went out with a bunch of folks from Brian's work, and they were a hilarious bunch.  Started the night at a nice Italian restaurant, migrated to an Irish expat bar and then finally to this ridiculous district that reminded me WAY too much of the Jersey Shore!!  No photos of this night unfortunately because I do that sometimes (I suck), but it was a lot of fun, trust me.

On my last day, I didn't fly until 9:30 PM, so had one extra full day hanging out and going for sushi.  Hooray!  Then it was one more Malta bus to the airport and I gave very heartfelt hugs to my two hosts.  Hope to see you again soon!

But now... now we get to Italy.

Pooping in the dark for Mother Earth

While on my trip, I have encountered several hostels with some variation of ideas as to how to be "environmentally friendly."  Now, I love the environment; I live in it.  It makes me really mad when people throw trash everywhere (ahem, Georgia), or build a nuclear power plant or any of those things that are going to hurt our planet in the long or even short term.

However.  Over the past month and a half I have come to the conclusion that there is a giant difference between being environmentally friendly and just being an asshole.  What follows are several true-life vignettes of faux-environmental assholery that I have come across and have thus been forced to deal with.

I can't remember if I've bitched about the push-button showers on here or just on facebook, but in both Paris and Madrid I had the (second-most) Irritating Showers Ever.  You know how, in some public bathrooms, you have that little push-button thing on that sink that automatically gives you ten seconds of water and then shuts off?  Yeah, imagine having that for a shower.  In Paris they made no bones about it, that shower was engineered to get you to take the absolute shortest shower possible, and it worked, largely because they also often did not have hot water.  But in Madrid, (I so wish I had gotten a picture of this sign) there was a sanctimonious little message on the outside of the stall saying something to the effect of: "our push-button showers may seem like an inconvenience, but you are helping the environment!"  Bitch, please.  You don't give a rat's butt about the environment.  You just want folks to not run up your water bill.  Your cheerful little sign does zilch toward canceling the reality where I'm not going to be happy about needing to push a button every ten fucking seconds while trying to wash my hair, which, btw, is going to take 20 goddam minutes no matter what kind of shower I am in.  I have a lot of hair.  But now, if I bitch to you about it, you get to stare disapprovingly at me like I'm spraying an entire can of Aqua-Net straight into the ozone.

My most recent hostel, in Cinque Terre, gave you a freaking TOKEN which entitled you to five glorious minutes of water.  Not just hot water, although the water was blessedly at least hot, but water at all, because when your five minutes were up, the nozzle just plain shut off.  Tough shit if you still had soap in places and were willing to do a final cold rinse to finish up.  No dice.  I'm sorry, but I'm in a hostel, not an aircraft carrier.  And to me this seemed rather extreme.  (Look forward to more on this gem of a hostel when I finally catch up to doing the Cinque Terre post.  This place was special.  And yes, this is in fact THE Most Irritating Shower Ever, over Madrid and Paris.)

And then there are the lights.  In this hostel where I am currently, the lights in the bedrooms do not turn on until after 5:00.  What is this, East Germany?  "But it helps the environment!", you scream.  Okay, fine.  Then explain why, in this same hostel, when you turn on the light to go to the toilet (every toilet has its own switch), it lights up the lights in every single stall along the row, and since the lights are on a timer, stay on long after I have finished my business and exited the bathroom.

My hostel in Barcelona had a real stiffy for the environment.  At least I could take a proper shower there, but the lights in both the shower and toilet rooms were on motion-sensor timers.  Guess what?  When you shower and the steam coats the glass shower door, the sensor can't see you anymore!  The light shuts off and you need to open the door completely and wave your arms retardedly at the sensor for five-ten seconds  (and seriously, this needs to be an effort, because the machine can't see you well if the bathroom is full of steam).  This happened, on average, about 3-5 times per shower, depending on whether there was hair-washing.  I got water all over the floor (wasted), and did not curtail my shower one bit.

Guess what else?  You know what you don't do a whole lot of while pooping?  Move.  I couldn't take a crap in this Barcelona hostel without having the lights go off on me repeatedly.  And yeah, it was no gigantic deal to wave my arms around and get them to turn back on, but for serious, people.  And what really got me, in the moment of pooping in the dark for the third straight instance, was that this tomfoolery was in no fucking way helping the environment whatsoever.  Seriously, it's not as if I'm going to sit there and say:  "Man, my poop session's only about half done, but I have been sitting here for a while already.  Guess I should just poop in the dark for a while.  FOR MOTHER EARTH."  No, I'm going to wave my arms around idiotically, punch the little sensor thingy with more force than necessary, and probably say a dirty word or five.

And then, once I have finally finished and exited?  Just like in this current hostel, the light will remain on because the sensor is also on an automatic timer.  It therefore is lighting up a toilet for absolutely no one, because the hostel does not trust me to be a barely-functioning adult and hit a light switch when I exit. (Which is hilarious, because I've already hit one about four times just now, proving my aptitude in this area.)  Environment -- not saved.  Human -- annoyed.  And everyone fails.

(Because I'm sure you are just SO curious, I have yet to poop in this current hostel.  I will be sure to report if I end up pooping in the dark here as well.)

I'd also really love to have some paper towels so I don't have to dry my hands on my jeans.  But even I know that is asking a bit too much.

So yeah, maybe I'm just not being a Captain Planet Team Player, but I seriously do not see the point of all the above shenanigans other than using the environment as a shield for doing what they want to do, save themselves money.  At least the Parisians had the forthrightness to just up and fuck us on our showers without telling us we should go dance naked under the moon in joy for our contribution.



EDIT:  10/26/12 -- Yep.  Lights went out mid-poo (after being on in all four separate stall rooms when I needed it on in one).  Let's hear it for smart eco-thinking!!!

Valencia: there's no such thing as too much beach.

After being chilly and rainy in Barcelona for my entire stay, of course it was beautiful the morning I left.  Whatevs.  I caught my 9:30 AM cheap train to Valencia with no issues whatsoever, and yet again settled in for a long, un-luxurious ride.  Only five hours instead of ten this time.  Bonus.  Hostel was easy to find, and once more I congratulated myself on my hardened backpacker street skills.  (Yeah, you know this one's gonna come around to bite me seriously in the ass sooner or later.  Just stay tuned.)

Indigo Youth Hostel was fine I suppose, no bunk beds which is always a serious plus, but this was also the first hostel I'd stayed in that specifically advertised themselves as a Youth Hostel.  And yeah, I could immediately tell the difference.  This place had a distinctly college dorm-like feel that my very much not-college-age self did not enjoy, but fortunately it seemed at least quiet.

By the time I settled in, it was 3:30.  I wanted to go to the beach.  I may have been thwarted in Barcelona, but today in Valencia it was sunny and warm.  I put on my suit under my clothes and headed out to tackle Valencia's metro and tram system.

Which I totally failed at.  Ugh.  Of course it's easy enough once you get the hang of it, but at first blush this city's mass transit is confusing as hell.  Had to do a metro U-turn which tacked on about 15 minutes to the trip, but finally I found myself once more looking out over the perfect Mediterranean Sea.

I was kind of starving, having only bought snacks for this short(er) train ride earlier today, and the plan was to buy a sandwich and drinks at a market and then set up shop on the sand nearby to a public toilet.  Except I walked along the boardwalk for quite a while and found nothing but expensive-ish restaurants... and the two public toilets on the beach were very much closed.  Well, balls.  There goes that plan shot all to hell.

I sighed and sat down at a restaurant that had a giant board out front advertising their burgers and other such tasty fare.  Sat down and was told... oh no, they only start serving food at 8:00.  8:00?????  It was not quite 5.  Why on earth would you put out a sign advertising food that you are not serving??  I ended up getting some sangria but no way was I waiting more than three hours to eat.

Plan B, failed.  And after everything else the afternoon was cooling off fast and I kind of didn't want to be wet anyway.  So I finished my sangria and took the tram up one stop to where the more reasonable restaurants were, and had a giant empanada.  Pretty tasty.  I wasn't entirely sure of the area my hostel was in yet, so went home early.

Next day -- sunny but cool.  Holy hell.  I wanted more than anything to just have a freaking beach day, but did not know how exactly to handle this with a chilly breeze and no place to pee for free that wasn't the ocean.  Eventually I decided I'd go to the beach just for lunch -- I hadn't had paella yet in Spain and the paella in Valencia was supposed to be extra yummy.  Then I'd come back to the city proper and do some touring.

But yeah, that so did not happen.  Of COURSE when I got to the beach it had warmed right up and it would have been just fine to spend the day on the beach and just go for a swim whenever I needed to pee.  I was starting to think that Nice might be all I was allowed for good solid swimming on this trip.  Nonetheless, I had a pretty damn good lunch -- DID find paella for not-too-expensive, and it was pretty good.  Sat on the beach for a long time... Valencia's sand is very, very fine and there was a strong wind blowing off the coast... so as I sat there every inch of me was slowly being buried in a fine layer of grit.  Worth it, of course.  When I had to pee I went back to a restaurant and got a glass of wine... and ended up getting a very good, light dinner there, some sort of seafood salad with honest-to-God Thousand Island dressing.  As the sun set I went back out to the beach, used my bag for a pillow and watched the subdued eastern sunset sky.

And then home.  Skyped with the folks.  Good day.

My last day in Valencia was technically a travel day, because due to RyanAir's particular peculiarities, my flight for Malta took off at 7:00 AM.  I needed therefore to be at the airport at 5:00ish... and that was well before the metro started running for the day.  SO, rather than fork over ~25 euros for a taxi, my Responsible Backpacker Self decided to check out of the hostel early and sleep at the airport.  So that meant I had THAT to look forward to at the end of the day, but first there was an entire day in Valencia to fill.  I wanted to go back to the beach, of course, but in the end I decided to at least see a little of the city before I left.

Had a good day touring, but my heart wasn't in it.  I wanted to be at the beach.  I also had a terrible experience over lunch... I got a sandwich and diet coke at this very cheap place... Spanish fast food, basically.  I went to sit outside, and was immediately accosted by one gypsy, vagrant, shark, and hawker after another!  SIX, all told.  Nigerians selling fake Ray-Bans, homeless guys with photos of kids I bet aren't actually theirs... The last three happened literally one right after another, the last one being this ancient wrinkled gypsy woman who wanted to sell me a bundle of apparently magic twigs.  I lost it, and with a "What the fuck is wrong with you people!?" picked up my tray and retreated back inside the cafe.

After my very frustrating lunch, I wanted to buy some stamps and mail some postcards.  But naturally the stamp machine was not working, and the other one that was working only accepted coins of which I did not have a sufficient amount.  Took a little over half an hour, I think, until those fuckers went into the mail slot.  Seriously, after all that, I really hope they all arrive.

Walked around a little... Valencia is of course quite beautiful, even if it has the unavoidable failing of not being a beach.

I got lost trying to find something that was closed... and then later walked all the way up to a contemporary art museum that was also closed.  I took my sad sorry self home and pan-fried my store-bought frozen pizza, in thirds, because my hostel did not have an oven or a toaster oven.  I showered, packed, and got myself to the airport in plenty of time to lay claim to a bench that mercifully did not have armrests so I could lay down across three seats.  This is Europe on a budget kids, and I hope you believe me when I say that in no way would I be doing anything else.

I enjoyed seeing Valencia, and I especially enjoyed my (sort-of) beach day.  But as you can tell, I was starting to get really run-down and tired, and it was getting a little harder to keep my daily focus.  Utterly perfect time to shake things up a bit and go drop in on my old college friend Brian and his wife Melissa... who had recently set up shop in Malta.

Underground, the story continued.

"All the world will be your enemy... and when they catch you, they will kill you.  But first they must catch you."

I'm sorry.  I have to do this.  I have to just burst forth with this book experience that I've had on my trip, because it just has been so, so long since any book has touched me this way.  Ladies and gents, this is not The Hunger Games.  This is not fucking Twilight.  This.  Is.  Bunnies.

Finally, after being told for my whole life that I need to read this book, and shoving it off because I assumed any book written about rabbits would be dumb, while on this trip I read Watership Down by Richard Avens.

And then I read it again.  Cover to digital cover.

This isn't a review.  Partly because I have not a single freaking thing to nitpick apart, and what fun is a review if you can't do that?  This is just a gushing because I have no one to talk about it to over here and I am going to bust if I can't find some way to throw quotes back and forth, punctuated with "Holy crap that was so awesome!"

I've been thinking hard about the last time I loved a book this much.  The first one that comes to mind is Sunshine by Robin McKinley, and although I did read that one twice through back-to-back as well, I'm fairly certain Watership Down is better.

I want to say this cuts all the way through the chaff and up to the true measure of a book -- one Lord of the Rings.  But it can't be that good.  Can it?

I'm not going to say any more.  This isn't a review.  But for serious, if you haven't read Watership Down and you have any kind of imagination and empathy inside you at all, make that the next novel on your list.  And then talk to me about it.  We can banter in Lapine.

Barcelona pt. 2: Antoni Gaudi Slept Here

Woke up to another cool cloudy day.  I got lunch at this tiny local cafe near my hostel, and surprisingly ended up with one of the tastiest dishes I had in Spain.  Just grilled chicken and white rice, but topped with this most amazing savory brown nut sauce.  So delish, and pretty good for six euros!

After taking it so easy yesterday, I really wanted to make my way around the city properly today.  So to knock out the Big Gun first, I metroed over to see the famous Sagrada Familia cathedral.  Emerging from the station, I took a long look and the first thought that went through my head was "Lord, what a weirdo."

Barcelona sure loves Antoni Gaudi.  All sarcastic quips aside, Sagrada Familia is one incredibly imposing piece of architecture, and I can only imagine how completely over-the-top it will be when they finally finish it.  Also, major props to the Barcelonians for trucking on with this immense insane project.  I've read that they expect to finish it maybe 2026 or 28, which means the cathedral will have been around 150 years in the making.  Hey, that's about how long it took to build cathedrals in the Middle Ages!! :)

So then... I went into the Burger King right next to the church and had me a Whopper Jr.  No judging.  I happen to be of the opinion that a Whopper with cheese, bacon, and jalapenos is one of the best things that can ever happen to a person.  And even a tiny Whopper, sans the cheese, bacon, and jalapenos, still makes for a pretty delicious snack.  And while my chicken and rice dish from earlier had been amazing, it had also been kind of small.

I walked through the lovely and architecturally chaotic Eixample District, wandering but also in search of two particularly famous Gaudi buildings.  Barcelona is just so... neat.  Nothing makes sense here.  Take Paris -- Paris is beautiful, it's gorgeous, but all the buildings kind of look the same.  On purpose.  Everything's white or ochre, every building has a Corinthian column somewhere.  Then there's Barcelona.  In Barcelona nothing matches.  Building next to building next to building, with completely different colors, styles, everything.  And somehow it all comes together so perfectly to create this mad colorful mosaic of a city.

After a bit, I did find both the Gaudi houses.  Do you think "Gaudi" is where we got the word "gaudy" from?

Gaudi House 1

Gaudi House 2

One disappointing word about Barcelona.  The ticket prices to get into anything here were absolutely insane.  Famous things in Europe of course do tend to be jacked up so the city can make money off the tourists, but here it was noticeably worse than usual.  I did not buy a ticket to get into Sagrada Familia, not because I wouldn't have loved to see the inside, but because it was something like 17 euros.  To get inside this last Gaudi house, above, was over 20 euros.  I can't think of any museum that I would willingly pay 20 euros to see.  I don't care what the hell is inside.

Instead, I walked over to (another) contemporary art museum  the CCCB.  (I can't remember what that stands for and am too lazy to look it up.  Sorry.)  Admission five euros.  Better.  They had an interesting collection of mixed media contemporary art on the bottom level, and a neat photography exhibit upstairs.

Book phoenix

... And then, I went back to the hostel and kind of took a nap.  Out a bit later for another cheap quick dinner at the market, and then I finally did have that early night I'd been wanting!

During my stay in Barcelona, it had been cool and cloudy, but so far it had not actually rained on me.  This changed my last day in the city, when it poured.  I of course had not brought my rain gear (I am a genius after all), so ended up buying an umbrella for five euros from one of the gypsies outside Barcelona's cathedral.  My umbrella I'd brought from home was kind of a piece of crap anyway.

Inside the cathedral

I walked around for a while, got myself pretty lost, and eventually got myself some fish n' chips at an Irish pub.  Because lawd, I have not had enough fat and carbs on this trip so far.

Saw Barcelona's Arc de Triomf (did not know they had one), and walked down through a park to see a famous Gaudi fountain.

Dodged more gypsies with fake redic "petitions" at the fountian.  Those fuckers make me so damn mad.  One day I'm going to just lose my temper and probably get beat down for my efforts.  Or at least spit on.

For my last Barcelona Adventure, I took the metro way up north to see the Parc Guell, designed by... Antoni Gaudi!!!  Barcelona really is all Gaudi, all the time.  Parc was neat in a Candyland sort of way, but you know what I am going to say next.  So... Many... TOURISTS!!!  Of which I am one, of course yes.  But jeezus people.  I legit heard one Mensa Candidate say to her friends as she posed for a picture:  "You know, it seems that whenever we do photos, I just always have my hair up."  Die in a fire.

For serious.

I decided I should at least see inside one Gaudi house while in Barcelona, so paid 5.50 to go inside the house here.  It was okay but very small and probably not worth 5.50.  I did get to see Gaudi's bed and Gaudi's death mask, so that was kind of cool.

Gaudi slept here.

Death Mask

I was feeling really strung out and annoyed by all the fucking tourists being retarded, so decided to take advantage of food and drink being really cheap in Spain and get myself a glass of red wine at an outdoor cafe.  (Normally I would never do this at a place like this as it would be way too expensive, but that is one of the wonderful things about Spain.)  Lovely man filled my glass to the tippy-top, so that made me happy.  I took deep breaths and looked out at THIS, and started to chill out.

There's zen behind that maddening crowd somewhere.

And then I got pooped on by a bird.  Right on my head.

So I finished my wine, stood in line for the toilet to clean the bird shit off my head, and then went home to the hostel to wash my hair.

They had free wine and snacks at the hostel that evening, and I made friends with a cool guy named Harp, so at least Barcelona ended on an up note.  But another early night for Mama, because once again I had to be up with the sun, this time at 7:30 for another Slow Boat Budget Train that would take me to Valencia.

I did love Barcelona, despite the weather, the crowds, the prices, and the disappointing Flamenco.  It was wonderful to be able to finally revisit a city that had lived so long in my memory, and find it to be every bit as engaging and unique as I remembered it to be, but in none of the same ways.

I have changed quite a bit from when I was 17.  It's been a ride, but overall I think I've learned more than I've forgotten.  Until next time, Barcelona.  I'm sure you'll have a whole new set of surprises for me.

Barcelona: thwarted dreams of beach and Flamenco

So as I mentioned at the end of my last post, I had decided to do the Responsible Backpacker on a Budget thing and take the one super-slow ghetto train from Madrid to Barcelona, and thus a trip that could have taken 2 hours on a high-speed train at a cost of 125 euros instead took ten, for 55.  Getting up really early has never been my forte, but I did make it to the station and on my train no problem.  What a sad sorry bucket this train was though.  Seats that did not recline, armrests that did not go up (so no sprawling across two seats), no tray table, no cafe car.  Luckily I had anticipated this last given the price, so had stocked up on lunch, snacks and drinks at the station.  Thank goodness there at least was a toilet.  I don't think we made it over 50 miles an our the whole time.

Actually had a pretty okay ride though, believe it or not.  Took two naps (I love you, inflatable neck pillow), ate my food and stared out the window.  West-central Spain is breathtaking.  I had no idea parts of Spain were such straight-out desert.  I think I watched for well over an hour before seeing a natural source of water.  Spain's colors are burnt orange and olive green, the orange soil fading to whiter limestone as you get closer to the coast.  Eventually we reached the sea and traveled along that for the last few hours.  I don't think I'll ever get tired of looking at the Mediterranean.

My hostel-provided directions from the station were extremely vague.   I suppose I really am getting better at this though, and was able to figure it out with no difficulty.  The only bad thing that happened is that Barcelona's metro stations and trains are boiling hot for some reason.  And crowded.  So of course I had no seat, and am standing in this packed car with the sweat literally pouring off my body.  I look down and see that my arms have turned magenta, so I can only imagine how my face looks.  Just one giant, unhappy moist tomato with a tremendous blue tumor that keeps bumping into everyone.  The backpacker experience at its best.

At least I did not get lost.

BCN Casanova (don't be misled by the name, it's just on Casanova Street), had advertised themselves as being an exceptionally quiet hostel.  That was why I booked it, and was quite pleased to see that they seemed to practice what they preached.  There were signs everywhere warning folks not to get drunk at the hostel, and to observe the 11 PM quiet time rule.  After the disaster that was Porto, I can't have too many assurances that a giant group of Germans won't be out to ruin my stay.

My long travel day on the Slow BoatTrain to Barcelona meant that I was pretty tired, so just picked up dinner at a local market with the intention of eating in the hostel and enjoying their Quiet Rule for an early night.  However, I did not count on meeting Erwin, a truly awesome young man from Holland.  We ended up staying up a little late, and yes, even getting a little drunk despite hostel rules.  Crap, we were those guys!!  We were super quiet though, so hardly on par with the Germans. :)

While drinking and chatting with Erwin, I decided that I wanted to spend my first day in Barcelona just hanging out on the beach.  After the summer sauna that was Madrid, it just didn't cross my mind that I would wake up and find Barcelona cool and rainy!! :(  Not beach weather.  I was disappointed  and kind of left without a plan for the day.  I ended up having a slow morning, reading through my guidebook and just catching up on emails and what not.  Sometimes the boring shit needs to get done, even if you are in one of the top cities in Europe.  Also, it meant I got to wait out the rain.

When I finally ventured out, it was lunchtime already so I stopped for a quick pizza (again, sorry Spain), and then headed down to the famous Las Ramblas.

I shamefully forgot to mention this earlier, but I have actually been to Spain before.  When I was 17, I went on a 10-day tour with my wonderful high school Creative Writing teacher, Doc.  This woman remains one of my most important influences and mentors, and she was a very big part of my high school life.  One of the amazing things she did was head off to Europe every Spring Break... and any students who wanted to could go with her.  Of course I did not realize the magnitude of her selflessness at the time, but now looking back I remain just so utterly floored that she was willing to spend her Spring Break -- her time in Europe -- shepherding a bunch of clueless, ridiculous freaking teenagers.  I.  Don't.  Even.  It's nothing I would ever do, be sure of that.

We visited a bunch of places mostly in southern Spain, and this is a big reason why I decided not to hit up Granada, Seville, and Cordoba.  We did visit Madrid, of course, but to be perfectly honest it was at the end of the trip and I remembered nothing about the city except Goya's Black Paintings at the Prado.  But Barcelona, we visited first and I remembered quite a bit about this city.  In particular, I remembered that it was my favorite place of anywhere we visited in Spain.  So I was very excited to venture out and see how the city in front of me measured up to my memories.

Catalunya Plaza

One of the things I'd loved best about Barcelona (back when I was a teenager and an idiot) was Las Ramblas, a street with an usually wide median that has become utterly thronged with kitch of every type imaginable.  Human statues, flower sellers, souvenir kiosks, caricature artists, hawkers selling this thing you put in your mouth so you could quack like a duck... and of course -- epic, epic crowds of tourists.

... yeah.

For some reason what I remember most about Barcelona was walking up and down this stupid street, paying way too much money to the human statues so they'd change position, buying overpriced cheap junk, and even getting a group caricature done of my friends and I which we later presented to Doc.

Ugh.

At any rate, I amused the hell out of myself, walking through this madness and remembering how awesome I thought it used to be.  One thing that was kind of neat -- I remembered this plaza where you could pay undoubtedly too much money and get birdseed to feed the throngs of pigeons.  Somewhere in a box in a drawer is a photo of me in all my stupid teenage gothness, covered in pigeons.  Somehow, miraculously, I did not get pooped on.  Pigeon poop would have been really embarrassing against black velvet.

Well, turns out this plaza is the Plaza Catalunya, right at the top of Las Ramblas.  And yes, the birdseed-sellers were still right there, along with all the fat happy pigeons and fat happy tourists.

Did not get covered in pigeons this time around.

Anyway, I got myself a big tourist ice cream cone and walked all the way down to the end of Las Ramblas, next to the port.  I explored that for a bit, then found my way to the beach and decided that, cloudy day or no, I really did just want to sit for a bit.  Got a "drink deal of the day" tequila sunrise at a beach bar before I noticed the market where I could have gotten a big beer for a euro instead.  So I did that next, and went out to get my feet all sandy one more time.

Never gets old.

Then I had to head home because I had signed up to do a Tapas and Flamenco tour that evening.  The tour began at a bar off of Las Ramblas, a bar that proudly and loudly advertised that they catered to the backpacker and budget traveler   So I was a little surprised when my draft beer was 3.60 euros.  That is... kind of a lot.  The tour started late, and then they started to go out the door without ever having gotten around to me with the sign-up sheet, even though I'd told them that I was here for the tour.  So I had some sardonic enjoyment politely calling them out on that.  They took us to this tiny place filled utterly with tourists.  I don't think there was a single Spanish person in the audience.  Beer was four euros.  My unimpressed face was just getting grimmer and grimmer.

Then the show started.  There was a longish instrumental piece and then finally the dancer came out.  Wearing a very modern and subdued black dress.  Not exactly what I was expecting... she danced for maybe four minutes, then the male dancer came out and they did a short number together.

Not exactly a spectacle.

Then they went off and there were another two or three long instrumental numbers.  Finally the woman came back on again... to stand behind a microphone (for some reason, because she never actually sang), and the guy did a long dance number by himself.  And that was... it.  The whole show lasted less than half an hour.  I'm sorry, but no one goes to a flamenco show to see men.  I was so disappointed  I can't even tell you.  I felt the entire show was nothing but a grudging bone thrown to the tourists.  Bah.  All I could think of was the tremendous Fado that Yes! Hostel had recommended back in Lisbon, and just kept saying to myself "Dammit, Yes! would have known better than to send me here."

After that, I was pretty sure our tapas would consist of maybe two or three dishes and one very tiny glass of sangria... but actually both the food and drink flowed plentifully.  That made me happy because I was starving but once again was disappointed because the food was just brought out in big bowls with no presentation or explanation.  I would have liked something along the lines of "So this is a traditional Catalan dish, and is made by..."  but no.  I was also kind of way too old for this crowd.  I sat next to a young girl from South Africa and it took me something like four or five tries to get her to understand that -- yes, there is a country named Georgia, and I teach there.  Not in the American state of Georgia.  When it finally sunk in, she tried to cover her embarrassment by saying flippantly "Well, if I talked about Durban you wouldn't know where that was either," and I politely refrained from telling her that yes, I had in fact heard of that city in South Africa, and also that there was kind of a difference between knowing about a random city in a foreign country, and knowing about an entire country.

I left when they started to do the pub quiz.  I'm too old for this shit.  But I sure learned a lot about plunking down my money for hostel tours in any hostel that isn't Yes!.  I walked in the rain through the awesome alleyways of the gothic district and found a metro by a miracle.

Madrid: the siesta was invented here.

It seems that every time I get myself ramped up and even close to being caught up on this thing, stuff happens and I fall way behind on this thing.  Spain has come and gone, and I am currently sitting in a lovely kitchen hanging out with superb friends in Malta.  Such an utterly tremendous and well-timed break from all the damn hostels!!  Malta is incredible, and being able to spend time just chilling with friends in their very own (awesome) house is even better.  In a little bit there will be eggs!!!

But first I must do Spain.  I loved Spain, of course.  How could anyone not??  But I will say right off the bat that I felt myself getting a little run-down on this last leg of my trip.  The consequences being that maybe I did a little less in each city than I am used to, but that is absolutely okay.  I had a great time, am rejuvenating in Malta for a few days, and soon will head off to ITALY, which is unquestionably the country I am the most excited about seeing.  I hope to do as much as a month touring all over this incredible place, just eating my heart out from the Alps to the boot and back again.  But -- first, Spain.  Madrid.

Spending the extra couple euros to fly from Lisbon to Madrid was so totally worth it.  EasyJet was fine, although the bullpen waiting to go out and actually get onto the plane was a little redic.  Took off on time though, and they didn't lose my bag, so that's all that really matters.  According to my hostel's directions, I had to take the metro from the airport and change a few times, but it all seemed pretty straightforward.  They  failed to mention that this trip, from bag drop to hostel front door, would take an hour and a half!!!  That is 30 minutes longer than my freaking flight took. :(  I was pretty over it by the time I finally got there, but at least I did not get lost.  Small favors.

No Name Hostel was fine, but after the incredibleness of Yes! in Lisbon, pretty much anything was going to be a letdown.  They had a nice courtyard though, and a beer vending machine, so I set myself up outside with my guidebook and map and began planning my days.  It was getting on in the afternoon, so I decided that for my first day I would just walk around the neighborhood a bit, get dinner, and have an early night.

I really liked the area around my hostel.  Tons of cool shops, bars, and restaurants with reasonable prices, and even a few markets which surprisingly can sometimes be hard to find!  Chose a cool little place and got a tapas sampler.

The little guy in front is a Pangolin, a sort of armored anteater that a friend back home gave me for luck before I left.  He's been good company on my travels!  After dinner I found a Mexican place that had mohitos for three euros, so I knew where I was straight up having dinner tomorrow....

The next day happened to be Sunday, and courtesy of my guidebook I knew that I could get into the two premiere Madrid museums, the Prado and the Reina Sofia, for free if I went at the proper time.  So I went and hit up the Reina Sofia, a modern art mecca that includes, among other things, Picasso's "Guernica".  Very cool.  They had a small room devoted (mostly) to Arte Povera as well, so got to see a couple by Mario Merz and Michaelangelo Pistoletto.

One by Mario Merz.  The Fibonacci Sequence is a major theme in many of his works.

After I had my fill of modern art (again), I had about an hour and a half before the Prado became free, so went and checked out Madrid's Botanical Gardens.

At around a quarter to five (Prado became free at 5:00), I wandered over... and found a massive line waiting for me!  I guess I wasn't the only one to want to avoid the 15(?) euro entry fee.  They shuffled us in like pros though, so it wasn't too bad.  Inside it was packed of course, which as you well know will detract significantly from my enjoyment factor of anything.  I did get to see Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights" which was awesome, Goya's Black Paintings and a bunch by El Grecco.

I got so seriously yelled at for taking this.  Worth it.

I did not see the whole museum however.  For some reason my legs were killing me, and I started to realize I was dragging myself from room to room through sheer stubbornness.  I left and walked home, checking out a church on the way because, you know.  Europe.

Dinner at the Mexican place was AMAZING.  I asked for it extra spicy and they brought me this tiny bowl of some brown oily sauce that was... really fucking spicy.  Heaven.  I couldn't even use all of it, but it made for the absolute best enchiladas ever.

The next day I took myself on a self-mapped, self-guided walking tour of Madrid.  I wanted to see if I could spend less than 30 euros the whole day, including all food, drink, bottles of water, everything.  So I didn't pay any entry fees for anything but had a great day wandering around in Madrid's very serious sunshine.  Saw a bunch of beautiful plazas, a couple gardens, and the majestic Palacio Real.

Plaza Mayor

Outside the Palacio Real

Madrid, being awesome.

A word about Madrid.  Madrid is hot.  As in, it was the second week in October and I was covered in sweat hot.  Humping it through the city in the early afternoon, soaked and headachy from the glare, I suddenly completely understood how the Spanish came to practice the daily siesta.  Because I knew I certainly could use a nap.  I cannot imagine visiting this city in August.

I walked over to the Parque del Retiro, stopping for a quick beer at the James Joyce Pub because, well, Joyce.  The Parque del Retiro  is huge and quite peaceful, with streams and ponds and lots of tall trees for shade.  They had black swans and turtles!!

Dinner that night was just at a quiet Italian place (one cannot live of tapas alone), and another pretty early and quiet night.  I had to get up at 6:00 in the morning the next day for my 8:15 budget train to Barcelona... TEN HOURS!!! :(  I guess that's what you get for 55 euros versus 125.

Lisbon pt. 2: Art and awkward tapas

(I know you guys hate it when I do two posts in one night, but I've got to catch up here.  Just remember to come back tomorrow if the first tired you out already. :) )

To follow up one the Amaze-balls awesomeness of yesterday, I started this lovely morning in Yes! Hostel Lisbon by... doing my laundry.

Now, I am only kind of kidding, because laundry needed to happen rather desperately.  I'd been washing out my "delicates" and t-shirts in sinks along the way, but that shite only carries you so far, and my jeans were starting to stand up on their own.  One of the truly stellar features of Yes! hostel is that they proudly sport a washer AND a dryer.  You can use them at your leisure... for three euros a load, each.  Okay, so my two loads cost me  12 freaking euros, which is no small amount for a shoestring backpacker like yours truly, but goddammit, as a cool Australian girl named Marie Claire said (I swear this was her name), I was "going to be the freshest motherfucker in the hostel."

But in the afternoon, my fresh-clad self (amazing how laundry does not transform battered t-shirts and jeans into anything else except clean battered t-shirts and jeans) humped it down to the Lisbon district of Belem, where there's a whole passel of museums and culture and stuff.

First place I hit up was the Jeronimos Monastery, which was incredible on the outside, and had that same curly-cake-decoration architecture that they had at the Quinta da Regaleira.

Vasco de Gama's tomb, inside

I checked out the basilica inside (the free part) but didn't feel like paying 7 euros or whatever to see the rest of it.  Also did not feel like paying for the Archaeological Museum that was also housed in the Monastery, but I did pay to get into the Portuguese Maritime Museum, which I thought would be pretty boss given Portugal's history of exploration.  Also, dude let me in for half price because they were going to close in 30 minutes.  Good points and bad.

The maritime museum was interesting, but not as cool as I kind of hoped it would be.  There were a lot of ship models, knots, and mannequins wearing different versions of Portuguese Navy dress.  I guess I wanted more of... the exciting stuff -- evading pirates, Vasco de Gama's spyglass, etc.  Oh well.  All the same the ships back in those days must have been freaking impressive.

One of the many models.  A frigate, I think.

In another wing they had a bunch of different royal barges, and that was pretty neat.  I didn't get to see the entire museum as they were closing, so maybe Vasco de Gama's spyglass was in the part I didn't see.  Overall, probably worth five euros, and definitely worth 2.50. :)

And then, because I seriously do love this stuff even though I know a lot of you think I'm crazy, I walked across the street and checked out the Contemporary Art Museum (free!!).  They had one of the best installations I've ever seen devoted to the different aspects of contemporary art since the '60s -- land art, surrealism, post-modernism, etc... including a whole room devoted to my beloved Arte Povera!!

A Mario Merz installation in front, with Anselmo's "Torsione" in the background.

Arte Povera is my favorite style of contemporary art; I actually did a huge project on it for grad school back in the day.  But because it's late and Mama is tired, I'm just going to be lazy and post the installation's description of Arte Povera, because they say it a well as I probably could.

Click to make it bigger so you can actually read it.

Arte Povera is a pretty fringe movement of contemporary art... basically 12-14 artists over ten years (1960 to '69) before the artists evolved to explore other aspects.  It's really hard to find Arte Povera in the States.  I get excited if I come across even one piece when touring the Hirshhorn.  So a whole room, of really excellent, really representative works, some famous and some that I'd never seen before, was a giant treat.  I took a picture of every piece pretty much I think, but I'll spare you and not post all of them here.

I also came across two really interesting installations by Helio Oiticica, who I'd not heard of before, but he must have a very interesting mind.  The first one, Tropicalia, featured live parrots (adorable) and odd, sometimes unsettling structures you were invited to explore.  The ground was covered with sand and gravel paths over that kind of guided you around.  Tropicalia led directly into the next installation, Eden, which had more of the same with a slightly different vibe.

He called the structures "Penetrables".

One of the reasons I like contemporary art so much is that it presents unfamiliar, unsettling, or off-base images or concepts almost always without context, inviting and challenging the viewer to analyze what exactly this piece or this experience is triggering inside his or her own psyche.  And yes, what happens inside your brain might be a big fat nothing.  That's cool.  But walking around Tropicalia and Eden, what I found myself experiencing was sort of a tantalizing forbidden pleasure at being able to actually touch the pieces, go inside, walk on the paths.  In the land of Do-Not-Touch America, I found this quite a little thrill.  And maybe that was part of his point?  Names like Tropicalia and Eden suggest forbidden, exotic, inaccessible places.  I dunno.  I just know I liked it, a lot.  Just an amateur here, folks.

Upstairs, they had all the famous Modern Art from earlier decades -- Picasso, Dali, Man Ray, Mondrian, Rothko, Calder, Duchamp.  I enjoy these works but honestly not nearly as much as the truly weird shit downstairs.  It was an impressive collection though.

So lessee... after all that, I emerged back into boring ole reality and quick checked out the monument to the Portuguese explorers next to the river.

Spotted a German backpacker doing a bit of unsanctioned urban bouldering...

He was really good at this, surprisingly.

I went back to the hostel, and the staff asked me if I had signed up for dinner... I had not.  I'd wanted to go out at least once during my stay in Lisbon, despite the comfy awesomeness of Yes!.  But they told me that Isabel's seafood stew was Amaze-balls, and that even though it was an hour past sign-up I could still get in if I wanted.  So... I did.  Lisbon would still be there tomorrow night.  Stew was indeed delish -- and Isabel brought hot sauce just for me!! I was so touched, I didn't have the heart to tell her it was not actually hot.  One more night of good, chill company, free drink tokens and capped off by the "how awesome is Yes! Hostel shot at 11:30.

So that brings us to the last day in Lisbon!  I went to go visit the Castelo S. Jorge, up on the top of the big hill, that I'd gotten lost trying to find back my first afternoon in Lisbon.  This time I finally did find it, although it took a while.  Castelo S. Jorge is not actually really a castle, it's a fortress.  Very skimpy on the living space but no expense spared on the arrow slits or battlements.  You know how much I adore tramping through things exactly like this, so I know you will understand how very bad the tourist situation was here to make me not like it.  This may have been the most touristy place I have been to since Paris.  And let me tell you, when you are traveling alone, (or anytime, really) there is NOTHING more annoying than having to wait to pass because some 18-year-old couple wants to celebrate their three-week anniversary by getting the perfect kiss-shot self portrait for Facebook.

I did not push anyone off the towers.  Hooray.

Throngs of kissers and posers aside, the fortress was quite cool -- very large and lots to explore and climb.

Archery practice anyone?

Next to the fortress, they had an archaeological site where they had excavated ruins from a Moorish settlement dating from... a long time ago.  7 BC maybe?

Pretty neat.

After the Castelo S. Jorge, I wandered back down the hill and had another tiny little brush wit a scam.  I walked into a tiny local place and asked how much a beer was.  I was told 3 euros.  That is a lot for Portugal, but I was really tired and my feet hurt, so I nodded and sat down.  I got my beer, and noticed a menu on the next table.  Wouldn't you know it -- a beer was actually 1.40!!  Shock.  I looked up with a blank stare and just locked eyes with the waitress for a second.  When I paid, my beer was 1.40.  Amazing.

I ended up having a much better time at a wine bar down the road... got a port and ginja tasting for free and then bought a glass of their second-least expensive wine.  Lovely place.  Nectar something.

Then it was time for more culture, so I walked to the MUDE, a design museum near my hostel.  They were featuring a collection of pop art and design from the 1940s to the 1980s, and had some cool pieces but sadly did not allow photos.  I liked it, and it was free.  Free is always super.

I wanted to find a cute quiet local place for my last dinner in Portugal, and picked what looked to be a real promising prospect.  Sat outside, friendly waiter, and ordered three of their cheapest tapas off a Portuguese menu.  I was feeling pretty good about my whole situation... until my first tapas came.

Yeah, that's a gigantic plate of grilled peppers.  Waiter must have had a laugh riot when I ordered it not knowing what it was.  And they weren't even hot peppers!!! :(  Tapas fail.

All the same it was a pretty good meal, although I'm sure the one back at the hostel was better.

Do you SEE how many peppers are on that plate?!?!?

I went back to the hostel after that to meet up with Jeremy, because we wanted to see some Fado.  Fado is traditional Portuguese singing that features the Portuguese guitar and typically sad or nostalgic subject matter.  A bunch of people had told me I needed to see some Fado while I was in Lisbon, and I was happy I wasn't going to have to seek some out all on my own.

Chilled out with a beer and folks at Yes!, and then Jeremy and I headed out to find this Fado place the hostel had recommended.  Against all odds, we found it no problem, and Fado was about to start.  Perfect.

I wasn't sure exactly what to expect, but I loved this.  We were the only tourists there I think, in a tiny place about the size of a double-wide.  The Fado was amazing.  We had four different singers, two men and two women.  Much like opera, not being able to understand the lyrics was not a hindrance in the slightest.  the emotions came through just fine, and I left wanting to listen to a lot of Linda Ronstadt and Judy Collins.

Had a great time, and wish we could have stayed longer, but I had to be up super early the next day to catch my flight to Madrid!  I'd splurged and bought an easyJet ticket rather than dealing with the 10-hour night train.  Jeremy was a superb temporary travel companion and I very much hope we cross paths again sometime in our future lives.

So that was Portugal.  Loved it as much as I was told I would when a good friend told me I simply had to add this country on to my itinerary.  Portugal did not let me down.

And next we have some red tail lights heading for Spain...